"Hmph! Playing cheap tricks, are we!"
Yul Hwi's form had vanished in the blink of an eye.
Yet Yi Gok showed not a shred of alarm, channeling savage ferocity into his blade as he carved a long diagonal arc through the air with its tip.
SHING—!
CRACK CRACK! CRACKLE! SNAP SNAP SNAP!
WHOOSH! FWOOSH!
A feast of searing flame trailed the shriek of the blade cleaving air, engulfing a vast swath in roaring fire.
In its wake, a wide, crescent-shaped clearing emerged before him, carved by the fan-shaped blaze.
Dozens of towering bamboo stalks, caught in the heat, crumbled and toppled—a foregone consequence.
"I got a thorough read on every trick up your sleeve during the bout! Do you really think some shallow illusion will work against me when I'm fighting at full power?!"
SHING! SHING—!
BOOM BOOM BOOM! CRACK CRACK!
FWOOSH! WHOOSH!
Even amid the acrid gray smoke that had conquered the surroundings, Yi Gok bellowed his booming challenges without the slightest difficulty.
"Even if you turn tail and run, I don't care! With that pitiful level, even if you learn the Moon Vein's Yin-Cold Qi Arts, you'll never amount to anything!"
"Do you hear me?! Even if you flee under cover of night, you'll die by my hand in the end!"
"You gutter rat from a ruined house!"
FWOOSH! WHOOSH!
Before long, Yi Gok was surrounded on all sides by choking smoke and towering walls of flame reaching a full jang in height.
"Go on, then! Try coming at me with the same cowardly tricks you used to ambush my brother! Just like you so proudly showed off earlier!"
Roaring fury and ceaseless fire—the relentless barrage of slashes that set hapless bamboo ablaze one after another.
And yet, through it all, not the faintest sign of exhaustion or strain.
From that display, Yul Hwi—crouched low on the ground a mere three jang from his opponent—was able to confirm his first conclusion.
'He's drawing power from the surrounding flames and heat.'
It was not as remarkable a feat as when he had inhaled the stray fragments of Yin-Cold Qi that the Moon Vein elders had discharged back in Taewon.
But at the very least, this swordsman called Yi Gok was clearly making excellent use of the inferno he himself had created and the heat it produced.
"How long are you going to cower like a rat?! Was all that big talk earlier nothing but a bluff?!"
SHING! SHING—!
Even the sword strokes he was flinging into empty air like a fool were not being wasted, as several cycles of repeated behavior confirmed.
'He's making the surrounding flames and heat—which feed his strength—even more powerful.'
Much like a seasoned assassin who, before commencing the actual killing, would invest long hours and painstaking effort into creating the optimal environment to dispatch the target in a single strike.
Unlike the typical martial artist who relied solely on personal martial arts, this man clearly understood the importance of environment for achieving victory.
For Yul Hwi, who still held the assassin's operational doctrine at the core of his being, it was a rather fascinating and surprising sight to see this behavior from someone who was not even a specialist assassin.
After all, a man who knew how to turn his surroundings into allies was inherently more threatening than one who simply charged in on the back of personal martial prowess.
'This isn't something I can dismiss just because my depth of insight is higher.'
The smoke stung his eyes and nose, degrading his vision and smell. The crackling roar of flames on all sides and the heat searing his skin made it nearly impossible for his hearing and sense of touch to function properly, either.
CRACK CRACK! CRASH CRASH!
On top of that, the cover around him was collapsing at an alarming rate—no small nuisance in its own right.
'What a vicious thing it is, this Blazing Yang Qi Arts.'
If a mere pinnacle-level fighter could manage this much, how formidable would the firepower of a master who had transcended that realm through the Blazing Yang Qi Arts truly be?
A daunting supposition.
But it was not all cause for worry.
If the Blazing Yang Qi Arts could produce this kind of overwhelming spectacle, then the Yin-Cold Qi Arts could doubtless create something equally devastating in return.
Though for the time being, he would have to make do with channeling the Extreme Yin Qi within his body as best he could according to the circulatory patterns of the Phantom Slaughter Demonic Art.
"Did you run away?! There isn't a single Moon Vein warrior around to help you anyway!"
'So this isn't purely a personal grudge, then.'
It was also about time to put a proper blade to that noisy mouth.
His silence thus far, merely observing the man's rampage, had been nothing more than a preliminary analysis to identify the unique characteristics of the Blazing Yang Qi Arts—the first time he had ever faced them head-on.
Whoosh.
Just in time, as burning bamboo crashed down above his head, Yul Hwi's form finally leapt back into the gray veil of smoke.
'Now it's time to test my own capabilities against the Blazing Yang Qi Arts.'
Just as he had done in his days as Annihilation, he had not the slightest intention of simply finding the optimal route and ending the fight with a single lethal strike.
For now, he would continue the life-and-death duel in the familiar manner of an assassin, while exploring and experimenting with diverse applications of his Extreme Yin Qi.
When else would he get an opportunity like this—to freely experiment against a genuine high-level practitioner of the Sun Vein?
Extracting the maximum possible value from every opportunity as it arose—
That, too, was an essential quality that any seasoned assassin had to possess.
'So let's start with this.'
As it happened, Yi Gok was striding forward again, his next horizontal slash carving a long arc through the air.
Whoosh.
"...Him?!"
And Yul Hwi had taken the man's back with precision.
Normally, he would have surged in without hesitation and planted a clean strike in the back of his neck. But—
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
"?!"
This time, Yul Hwi also put his own elemental attribute to a proper test.
The first trial: channeling Extreme Yin Qi through his palm centers and projecting it outward, in the exact same manner he had used to block the Moon Master's attack a fortnight ago.
"Khrgh! Playing your cheap tricks again!"
CRASH CRACK CLANG!
"Tch! As expected, this won't work."
Whoosh.
No sooner had a thick layer of ice formed over Yi Gok's skull and back than a fresh eruption of heat from the man's body shattered the Extreme Yin Qi-forged ice to pieces.
Not by applying heat to melt it, but by destroying it in an instant, leaving not a trace behind.
The implication was singular.
'Until I learn a proper Yin-Cold Qi Art, I'll have no choice but to limit my Extreme Yin Qi's role to a supporting function for my killing arts.'
It would be a lie to say he was not disappointed, but he had anticipated this to a degree, and so he swiftly collected the hollowness threatening to settle in.
'Then how about this?'
"?!"
In the same instant that Yul Hwi's form flickered as if to vanish back into the smoke, Yi Gok's face flooded with urgency.
SLICE!
What followed was a deep, long gash torn into his left shoulder.
"Ghhk!"
"Hm. No problem on this end."
A wound incomparably deeper than anything from the earlier bout—deep enough to expose a glimpse of white bone beneath.
On top of that, having detonated a burst of Extreme Yin Qi through the tip of his dagger at the moment of impact, not a drop of blood could seep from the ravaged flesh—a grotesque sight.
This was the very basis for his initial assertion that, in the worst case of having to leave the Sun and Moon Gate, his killing arts alone would suffice to pursue his grand ambition.
Having now tested it firsthand against a practitioner of the Blazing Yang Qi Arts, the result was more than satisfactory.
Of course, conversely—
"You rat bastard!"
The moment the man realized he had been made a plaything and a laughingstock, an uncontrollable fury exploded from within.
SHING—!
SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH!
"Hm!"
And as if to channel that fury in full, Yi Gok's sword began to move with sudden, blinding speed, tracing an irregular pattern of variable forms.
'I thought he was a heavy swordsman, and now he suddenly switches to swift swordplay with deceptive variations?'
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
CRASH CLANG!
He hastily created distance and threw up an ice wall from his left palm center to respond, but even Yul Hwi had to suffer a fair setback against this unexpected assault.
Not that it necessarily meant taking a wound.
'He's still just a pinnacle fighter who can't use a Protective Qi Barrier.'
Granted, Yul Hwi's own physical realm was no different in that regard, yet the decisive distinction was that the depth of insight contained within his essence stood on a tier far above.
TAP!
"?!"
On equal footing where neither could employ a Protective Qi Barrier, facing the dazzling flurry of swift, deceptive sword forms that had suddenly materialized before him—
Yul Hwi's response was the polar opposite of his earlier evasion: a head-on counter.
And at twice the speed he had shown thus far, at a minimum.
In this kind of engagement, he knew full well that pulling back to bide his time was far less effective than closing in with the resolve to trade flesh for bone.
SPURT! SPURT SPURT!
"Greenhorn."
"Wh-what the...!"
As a result, his upper garment was instantly shredded to tatters and soaked through with his own blood.
But he succeeded in reaching his target position.
And that was enough.
SLASH SLASH SLASH!
SLICE! SLASH SLASH!
"KRAAAAAGH!"
As if the swift swordplay the man had shown with his long blade were not even worth acknowledging, a merciless torrent of dagger strikes savaged the opponent at a speed far beyond.
Like Traceless Life Seizure before it, this was the manifestation of Lurking Shadow Blood Rain—another technique drawn from the original Phantom Slaughter Demonic Art, successfully refined by stripping away every trace of overt demonic qi and killing intent.
In truth, even within the Phantom Slaughter Sect—which prized a single lethal strike over prolonged combat—this particular chain technique was far more frequently employed for interrogation than for assassination. A deeply notorious one, at that.
The hallmark of this dagger-based chain technique was that every single strike in its storm of blows unerringly singled out vital points, muscles, critical meridians, and major joints, carving them with inhuman precision—all because the practitioner was an assassin with an intimate knowledge of human anatomy.
And on top of that, it demonstrated a meticulous control that somehow kept the victim's stubborn thread of life from snapping.
After all, its purpose was to inflict extreme terror and agony upon the subject of torture—not to silence them by killing them and thereby waste all that painstaking effort.
CLANG!
"Gkh, gkhaaaah...!"
No matter that the man was a Sun Vein warrior brimming with Blazing Yang Qi that seethed and boiled inside him—
As long as he remained trapped within the confirmed confines of the pinnacle, it was only natural to crumble helplessly before the cruel onslaught of a technique infused with a far deeper level of insight.
FWOOSH!
CRACKLE! SNAP SNAP!
And so, in the heart of the blaze that still raged and spread ceaselessly in all directions—
SPLAT!
Yi Gok, the very instigator of this entire commotion, collapsed facedown and flat, his beloved sword slipped entirely from his grasp, sinking into the pool of blood that had formed over his own shadow.