The Vein Entry Trials began with a total of one hundred twenty-eight participants.
Following Yul Hwi's overwhelming victory that so strikingly adorned the opening chapter, the subsequent bouts naturally saw their outcomes decided at a far less severe level of confrontation.
It was only natural.
Whether they succeeded in vein entry by claiming a high rank or failed to do so, in the end, every single one of these people was, broadly speaking, a human asset belonging to the Sun and Moon Gate.
So even if those of similar skill clashed fiercely and one unintentionally fell into severe internal injury or a critical state—
A case of permanent bodily damage like the first bout was something that should never have occurred in the first place.
That was precisely why examiners existed—to prevent such unforeseen incidents.
"And what of it?"
"What? No, did you not hear a single thing I just said? Even so, to openly rip someone's throat open like that...!"
"Did the opponent not pour out sword qi first in an attempt to sever the tendons, meridians, and spine of my four limbs?"
"With your skill, you could have easily dodged all of it."
"On the other hand, I made sure that man will have no trouble making a living through martial arts in the future. If anything, I would call that a rare act of warm goodwill in this harsh martial world."
"If only you'd just keep your mouth shut...!"
"It was a matter the examiner let pass without objection. I fail to see why Miss Baek is making such a fuss over it."
Six bouts remained until the championship.
In the meantime, Yul Hwi lounged in the shade of a secluded tree a fair distance from the arena, idly watching—or not—the fights playing out below.
"Did you not say it yourself? To crush and smash him to pieces."
"That's...!"
"I merely accepted your commission and carried it out to the letter."
"What?! N-no! Why are you suddenly pinning that on me—?!"
At the shrill, almost shrieking protest—as if she had been terribly wronged—Yul Hwi furrowed his brow deeply, his exhaustion entirely genuine.
"What exactly is the problem? Is it really so upsetting that I made it so that Seomun whoever-he-was can never again spout nonsense about you being 'feisty' or whatever else?"
"Hoo—! I don't care if you rip him apart or grind him to dust. It's just...."
"Just?"
Her trailing, hesitant words lasted only a moment.
Before long, Baek Seol's concern surfaced plainly on her face, and she began to lay out her worries in a grave tone.
"The Sun Vein already doesn't look kindly on you because of what happened in Taewon. If you go and openly ruin the Yang Sword Gate's rising star—practically a limb of the Sun Vein—like this...."
"And then what? Are you suggesting the Sun Vein will punish me over a tragic incident that occurred during a Vein Entry Trials bout?"
Yul Hwi's tone, thoroughly indifferent without even a hint of sympathy, remained steeped in towering arrogance.
"Listen well, Miss Baek. The fact that the Sun Vein's elders and martial force units suffered heavy losses from the combined assault of Shaolin, the Jinju Eon Family, and the Plum Blossom Swordsmen of Mount Hua back in Taewon was not my fault."
"Of course not! How could that be your fault? It's just...."
"And yet, the Sun Vein finds the very existence of this Yul Hwi so repulsive that they want to sever every last tendon and meridian in my body?"
"......It's not exactly like that, but it's still true that I worry. You've only just been admitted to the gate—you haven't even formally entered the Moon Vein yet."
"Hmph! And do you truly think the Sun Vein would go so far as to kill me within the Sun and Moon Gate? Me, who is to become the Moon Master's disciple? They would dare?"
"Haah! Please don't say things like that. With the Young Moon Master having collapsed, rumors about you suddenly becoming the Moon Master's new disciple have thrown even the Moon Vein itself into turmoil."
Faced with Baek Seol's troubled expression—as if confronting an enormous calamity she could not look away from—Yul Hwi quietly raised his internal assessment of her another notch.
'The fact that she shows me no hostility even after hearing all this...... means that even if I were to take the Young Moon Master's position, she wouldn't easily turn her back on me.'
Who would have thought that the single act of saving the Sixth Elder's life would come back to him in this fashion?
From the position of a stone that had simply rolled in from outside, it felt as though he had laid the very first stepping stone on the grand path ahead.
Was that why?
Yul Hwi decided to reveal a little more of his true worth to Baek Seol.
Just enough that it would pose no problem whatsoever even if she changed her mind and turned against him.
"Listen well, Miss Baek. Unless a high master of elder or martial force unit captain rank from the Sun Vein attacks me openly, there is not the slightest chance of me suffering any setback within this Sun and Moon Gate."
"How can you guarantee that? Our gate doesn't consist of just the Moon Vein and Sun Vein. There are also no small number of high masters whose constitutions didn't suit elemental martial arts, who ultimately failed to enter a vein, yet still reached a lofty level on foundational arts alone."
"...Oh? Now that is new information. Then where do they belong? Are they split evenly between the Moon Vein and the Sun Vein?"
'There are high masters who never received the elemental martial arts of either vein? That's rather surprising.'
Granted, the foundational arts themselves were of a fairly high standard, as he had witnessed through Seomun Yeol earlier.
With enough dogged persistence in that alone, anyone with a modicum of aptitude could more than reach the pinnacle.
But to think there were people who, unable to receive elemental martial arts due to their constitution, had continued to push beyond that ceiling and existed in a class of their own...!
He had assumed the only ones around were the sort of lesser fighters stuck at the first-rate level or the threshold of the pinnacle—like those among the attackers who had raided the Taewon Yul Family, the ones he had killed with his own young hands.
'This place truly is the den of demons of the Central Plains......'
The more he learned, the more the Sun and Moon Gate's formidable strength and latent potential sent chills crawling up his spine.
And the answer Baek Seol provided next was a story of considerable significance even to Yul Hwi, who intended to use the Sun and Moon Gate as the foundation from which to shake the entire martial world to its core.
"The Martial Vein takes orders only from the Gate Master. Neither the Moon Master nor the Sun Master can issue them any directives whatsoever."
"The Martial Vein?"
"There are plenty who mock them as the 'Veinless'—people who will spend their whole lives grinding away at foundational arts and nothing more—but at least I don't see them that way."
"May I ask why?"
"Because they are the very backbone of our Sun and Moon Gate's strength."
"Hm."
'The backbone of their strength......'
Come to think of it, even the force that had stormed the Taewon Yul Family in the past had included far more masked individuals unaffiliated with the Sun Vein than those who bore its mark.
And just recently, when a delegation had set out to negotiate with the Martial Alliance, a considerable force had accompanied them to Taewon as a precaution, he had been told.
'So they became the sacrificial lambs to ensure the Sun Vein's elders escaped alive.'
He had heard that only three Sun Vein elders survived the furious combined assault of Shaolin, the Jinju Eon Family, and Mount Hua, so that was almost certainly the case.
The martial force unit members who accompanied them—captain and vice captain included—had all perished, he was told.
'Since the current Vice Sun Master is serving as Gate Master, all the Martial Vein personnel on that expedition must have been attached to the Sun Vein side.'
By contrast, the Moon Vein's elders had scattered even the Ice Jade Unit they did have for a perimeter search.
If one were to weigh the rights and wrongs, it was actually the Moon Vein that had far greater cause to raise a stink.
And yet despite all that, the Sun Vein was tampering with the Vein Entry Trials to somehow cripple the one who had been designated as the Moon Master's disciple.......
"The fact that the Martial Vein takes orders only from the Gate Master means that the moment the current Vice Moon Master inherits that seat, control over the Martial Vein passes to the Moon Vein."
"Exactly. After all, the Martial Vein are people who hold their loyalty to the gate itself—they have no attachment to either of the two veins."
The words "have no attachment"—or rather, could not have attachment—kept circling around Yul Hwi's rounded ears.
A wretched fate in which those who failed to receive elemental martial arts, under the alternating rule of Moon Vein and Sun Vein, were doomed to train in nothing but foundational arts for the rest of their lives, forever cleaning up after the two great veins.
For reasons he could not quite articulate, the sudden thought arose that perhaps they were the ones who would play the most critical role when the time came for him to move the Sun and Moon Gate.
Because he possessed a demonic art of the highest order—one that would not pale even when measured against any supreme technique in the world—devoted entirely to the singular, absolute purpose of killing.
What if he refined the Phantom Slaughter Demonic Art and imparted it to the Martial Vein members, those despairing against the insurmountable wall before them?
And what if he used them to form an internal faction and launch simultaneous assassinations across the entire Central Plains?
'People who, simply because they were born in Gangso and showed aptitude for martial arts, can never escape the Sun and Moon Gate's shadow of their own volition until the day they die.'
"Young Master? What's with that sinister expression?"
"It is nothing. And sinister, you say? That is rather harsh."
A handful of thoughts that had streaked through his mind like a flash of light.
Having swiftly filed them away in a corner of his head, Yul Hwi sprang to his feet.
"It seems my turn will come again shortly, so I should head back down."
"Huh? W-wait, I'm coming too!"
Not betraying the slightest hint of his dark intention to make contact with the Martial Vein at the earliest opportunity,
He strode briskly back toward the arena with his characteristically unrestrained gait.
***
SQUELCH!
"Gakh!"
"Halt! Yul Hwi of the Taewon Yul Family wins!"
The bouts that followed were a string of anticlimactic victories.
So much so that the past few days Yul Hwi had spent fretting over what might happen if he suffered a setback with both his Extreme Yin Qi and killing arts sealed away now felt thoroughly hollow.
And by now, he had a relatively clear understanding of why things were unfolding this way.
First and foremost, the yawning gap in the depth of insight between himself and the greenhorns who stepped up as his opponents was the greatest factor.
The second-most significant contributor to his victories was the cruel and merciless display he had put on in his very first bout.
'And that sort of fellow was supposedly the favorite to win this Vein Entry Trial.'
As it turned out, Seomun Yeol—who had reached the semifinals in the previous trial—had apparently been the most heavily favored to win this time around.
Yet that man had poured out lethal sword qi in earnest, only for Yul Hwi to dodge it all with mere shifts of his upper body before raking a fingernail across his throat and tearing out his vocal cords entirely.
For greenhorns who had not yet formally entered either vein and were half-affiliated with the Martial Vein at best, it was only natural that they could not muster the nerve to fight with everything they had.
'Meeting the Moon Master's requirement should be achieved without any difficulty.'
With that thought, he had been dispatching every bout faster and more cleanly than any other participant for some time now.
By the time the sun that had blazed high overhead sank halfway below the western mountains, Yul Hwi at last stood face-to-face with the final opponent of this Vein Entry Trial upon the arena.
And that opponent was—
"Hm?"
'Well now. Look at this one.'
A man who already harbored a brimming reservoir of Blazing Yang Qi within his body—a figure with the weathered bearing of a thoroughly seasoned wanderer.