In an era like this, just having a familiar face brings all sorts of advantages.
More than the Namgung siblings running around announcing themselves, the young Licentiate of Jeong Manor being among them had an effect.
As it happened, I was dressed as a scholar and was also wearing my name tag.
When sword-carrying martial artists run around in chaos like this, people usually hide even deeper.
But it's a different story when someone in scholar's clothes like me is mixed in with them.
A few people I'd at least exchanged greetings with while coming and going recognized me.
“You just need to hurry to the Governor. He's gathering people right now to flee outside Lizhou.”
“Is that so? Thank you. Goodness. Becoming a Lord Licentiate and now doing this sort of thing, too.”
It wasn't something I was doing because I was a Licentiate, but I didn't bother correcting him.
In fact, a Licentiate, as an official-in-waiting, does have a duty to cooperate in matters like this. For someone who'd meant to quietly run away, the gratitude was a little ticklish.
And I began to feel like breathing was getting harder little by little.
It felt as if some kind of force, which I couldn't possibly compare or explain with my knowledge, was gradually filling every direction.
Should I say the air was becoming denser?
If it got any worse, I felt like it would be like water filling my lungs.
Maybe it was just a stamina problem.
My body was creaking like this, but maybe dopamine was overflowing in all the chaos, because moving wasn't hard.
But my unintended experience as a knight-errant didn't last very long.
KWOOOOO.
A sound like something enormous falling pressed down, as if to overwhelm every sound of the chaotic city.
When I looked up, a blue meteor was falling from the sky.
I thought my eyes were wrong.
And right after, I realized it wasn't a meteor but a person.
Of all places, it was plummeting as if to strike directly where I was.
“What the hell is this now…….”
Grumbling with irritation mixed in was the most resistance I could put up.
Fortunately, it gradually slowed down and stopped right in front of me.
The Daoist holding a sword set foot on the ground, wreathed in blue radiance.
“Ngh…….”
So, what am I supposed to do?
I'd spoken to him because even if I started running now, it'd be screwed to hell anyway.
What could I do at my movement speed?
“Sect Leader? Are you all right?”
“I am not. Hurry and take shelter.”
Even if you say that, sir, I can't use movement arts or anything like that.
“Elder Divine Sword!”
Namgung Ho-won, who seemed to have rushed over immediately, appeared in a fluster.
“Stand back. The Captain will come down.”
The Divine Sword said it briefly, then raised his sword again.
At that moment, blood spurted. It looked like he'd taken a serious wound.
At the word "Captain," I looked up at the sky.
The blue sky was being pushed back, and the Blood Heaven was closing in.
It would have been nice if it were romantic like an evening sunset, but it was a burning blood color.
And a figure, so far away it was barely visible, seemed to be looking down this way from within it.
I couldn't keep up with the situation at all.
So I could only laugh.
A red energy bloomed greatly in the sky.
The Daoist called the Qingcheng Divine Sword spoke hurriedly.
“Get away from here at once. I will clash as high as I can, so brace yourselves to lessen the impact.”
“Everyone, get down!”
What does that mean now? I just did as I was told.
Namgung Ho-won quickly had people lie flat on the ground or hide behind cover.
When I moved in a fluster, he grabbed me with the strength of his grip, pulled me over, and hid with me behind the wall of a nearby house.
At some point, my fear had run off somewhere.
When I'm already caught up as deep as I can be, what meaning does this thin wooden wall have?
Even so, I couldn't bring myself to stick my head out, but when a corner of the eaves collapsed and fell and the sky came into view, I had no choice but to look.
Even an outsider like me could feel some kind of "force" gathering.
Maybe it was because something so enormous was taking place that even an outsider like me could feel it as it was.
Once again, I could only stare blankly.
I was starting to get sick of my own passivity.
I have no strength. I can't do anything.
All I do is get swept along.
***
The biggest reason the Divine Sword had raised his altitude was, first, to avoid harming the ground.
Naturally, the Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit, for whom destruction itself was the goal, tried to smash the Divine Sword down to the earth.
Since the Captain lacked a movement art like the Fluttering Willow Drift, the Divine Sword had slipped away well and driven the fight into the air, but that mutual-destruction move just now had thrown it off.
‘If the degree of injury is the same, the Blood Flow Eight Heavens Art, an outer-school qi art, has the advantage.’
It was the difference between a martial art focused on the flesh itself and one centered on inner arts training.
In the battle of moves, he had been read in an instant.
‘Recovery is different too.’
That was a trait unique to the Blood Flow Eight Heavens Art.
The reason they were called blood men was that they drew vitality from the blood that death spills.
If the Divine Sword did not properly receive that attack now, far too many people would die.
And if the Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit's body recovered, it would be hard for the wounded Divine Sword to overcome him.
To prevent that, now was the time to show the ultimate technique containing the essence of Qingcheng.
‘It will be even harder to drag this out for long.’
Inner-school qi arts were always lacking in the endurance to sustain a long fight.
It would be a great expenditure, but there was no time to hesitate.
Azure Cloud Crimson Glow Sword Art
The lofty sword arts of the orthodox lineage inevitably entailed such expenditure.
With a single technique, one of shallow cultivation might exhaust all his inner arts and wither away.
But only such techniques earn the name of ultimate technique.
Sheathing the sword.
That alone changed the surrounding sky.
The raging domain of storms grew calm. It happened almost instantaneously.
With a stamping step, he shot up into the sky.
The Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit had just begun to charge toward the Divine Sword with his arms crossed.
If that were simply allowed to crash into the ground, the entire area would vanish.
Drawing the sword.
The domain that had briefly stilled split apart along with the sword qi he thrust out.
Through the gap, not the blood-colored sky but something like a dazzling sunset glow was released.
All of Qingcheng's swords are azure.
That is why it is Qingcheng.
But only swordsmanship that has reached its peak takes on a soft red light like the sunset glow, hence the name Azure Cloud Crimson Glow.
If the residue of inner arts rising like steam was the azure cloud, the giant red slash that split it in half was the crimson glow.
The Divine Sword predicted the point of collision.
The altitude he had originally ascended to so as not to scatter the aftershocks was the height where clouds played.
This was far lower, an awkward height where the clouds were still visible above and people's faces could be made out.
The impact would scatter onto the ground.
He could only hope that the government troops and the Namgung children would somehow save many.
***
I stared blankly at the blooming sunset glow.
It could be called beautiful, but it was at the same time something that had to be called majestic.
It was far too mythical, and far too cosmic, to be a radiance created from a single human body.
I don't know what the people of this era would think, but what came to mind first for me was the Orion Nebula.
The sky, which until now I'd thought was just raging madly, had become more beautiful than anything.
I understood that the immense torrent of power had grown so dense that even my mortal eyes could see it.
And I kept my gaze fixed, as if bewitched, on that majestic, celestial clash.
This crap is martial arts…….
No, this is what martial arts are.
If what I'd felt watching Jeong Manor get blown away entirely earlier was terror and dread, now it was more like awe.
I can't believe such a thing is possible from a human body.
Why can that even happen, and why would anyone do that?
And absurdly, a thought like this occurred to me too.
If only I could unleash a phenomenon like that from my own fingertips.
I feel it keenly, why martial artists throw themselves into the martial world.
If you witnessed a scene like that at some moment in your childhood, you might run toward it even if your own death awaited at the end.
But that majestic sight lasted only an instant.
What followed was a scene like a vast, outstretched celestial body contracting.
Space warped, and a flash flared as if everything were being sucked into the gap.
Before I knew it, I was looking up with my mouth open.
No fireworks could ever be greater than this.
What followed was a massive explosion and shockwave.
I realized at once.
Cover means little.
Being practically right beneath it, most of us won't survive.
It spread out in a sphere, clearly visible to the eye.
It was striking straight at here, the nearest ground.
“Licentiate!”
“Get down!”
I heard the voices of the two Namgung siblings in my ears.
But I couldn't take my eyes off it.
The blast pressure reached right before my eyes.
Namgung Ran appeared.
“Hngh!”
With a battle cry like a groan, a bluish energy bloomed from the tip of her sword.
The thought crossed my mind that this might be something called a sword barrier.
Right after, the blast pressure poured down on me.
Thanks to the sword barrier, I could see the whole process clearly.
Namgung Ran's sword barrier moved as if cutting the blast pressure itself with a sword.
Around the sharply edged barrier, the terrifying blast pressure split and crushed everything around.
Commoners' houses, haphazardly built of thin wooden boards, were crushed and collapsed just like that.
On that side, Namgung Ho-won swung his sword and knocked it away.
It was a single instant, and an instant like eternity.
When it passed and I came to my senses, I was standing amid ruins.
“Hoo. Still, most people were not near us. We will not be able to save everyone, but…….”
Namgung Ho-won said calmly.
The collapsed houses had been flattened as if compressed in a radius of about three zhang, centered precisely on where I stood.
And a much wider area had collapsed or was collapsing as if hit by an earthquake.
No, the ground itself was actually still faintly trembling.
Should I call it fortunate that this was an era without tall buildings? Many people were screaming and running away.
At least many people survived. Didn't they say that even in modern warfare, bombing has less lethality against people compared to its visible impact?
There must be dead beneath the rubble, but anyway, that's how it was.
I finally came back to my senses.
“You were thinking about saving people on a battlefield like that?”
I truly could say nothing else.
Namgung Ran, who had blocked it, was also drenched in sweat all over, unable to say a word.
Thunder and lightning began to sound again in the sky above, and if even a part of those fragments fell to the ground, who knows how many would die.
I clearly understood what this world's martial arts were and what realm they belonged to.
I also realized why Hong-hyung sometimes described Absolute Masters as natural disasters in human form.
The fragments of each of those sword strikes alone could produce destructive power on par with a missile.
Yes, this is that kind of world. It always was. I just didn't know.
Somehow, part of the city had become a plain. The view opened up in every direction. A few military officers staggered up from the rubble and shouted.
“You there! It's dangerous to go that way. Hurry and evacuate back there! We have to gather at the Governor's!”
Perhaps as an aftereffect of that collision just now, the Blood Heaven was being pushed back.
The blue storm wrapped around the sky again, as if telling us to leave Lizhou quickly.
“What do we do now?”
When I asked that, Namgung Ran answered with difficulty.
“The Divine Sword seems to be pushing himself too hard. It looks like we must hurry. But it seems we cannot save everyone.”
“That is right. I think we have helped enough with the evacuation around here, so now I hope we can find my brother.”
Now the situation around me no longer mattered.
What I'd just seen kept coming back to me.
Let's look back.
I was never originally someone with such a great aversion to the murim.
What drove me away was the absence of talent, and at the same time, the weight of killing.
But with that just now, I came to understand why martial artists train in martial arts.
If you could do something like that, how could you turn away from the murim?
This is longing.
Living peacefully just by taking office is a lost cause. Seeing what happens to the officials here, anyway.
To begin with, if you accidentally get caught up in a fight between Absolute Masters while walking down the road, you're already dead.
The greatest protection, in the end, is your own martial might.
Various reasons lead me to a single conclusion.
As it happens, I recently received the price for falling into this strange world, thousands of li from home.
Following the Namgung siblings at a run, I was completely out of breath, but I touched the book inside my robes.
The scroll floated before my eyes.
The very first screen of the scroll, which was gradually being reorganized into a form familiar to me, appeared.
Come to think of it, there'd been a refresh here from the start, too.
I pressed it.
This book tries to provide what I want most.
It reads everything about me and produces a matching result.
Then what I want right now.
[Books]
[Treasures]
[Secrets]
It isn't this.
The ink danced.
Redrawn, it began to create completely different categories once again.
[Constitution]
[Martial Arts]
[Consumables]
“Haha……. Khk, cough.”
Trying to laugh while out of breath made me cough.
Still, the laughter came.
I can enter the martial arts.
In fact, maybe I met this book for that from the very start.
I pressed [Constitution].
Above everything else among the items for sale, what appeared at the very top was.
[Supreme Grade Heavenly Martial Body] - 72,500 points
I hesitated for a moment at the enormous price, but in the end I pressed it.
A light that only I could see bloomed from the scroll.
The Heavenly Martial settled into me.
***
The book inside Heo Saeng's robes stirred slightly.
No one noticed.
『.
..
…
……
User: Heo Saeng.
Objective changed.
Re-evaluating subject level based on Sword Star Namgung Hyeon-ri.
Bone structure evaluation…… 1 in 10…….
……Error…….
1 in 100……. Provisionally rated 1 in 1,000.
Insight evaluation…… 10 in 10.
……Error…….
100 in 100…….
……Probability of error excessively high.
Re-examining for error.
1,000……. 10,000…….
Rating confirmed: 10,000 in 10,000.
Extreme imbalance. Physical constitution cannot be granted.
Minimum conditioning required.
Prioritizing constitution dependent on mental aptitude.
Reorganizing list.
New function acquired per subject's payment…….
Heavenly Martial Body……. Highest possible specification…….』
The ink swirled like that inside, forming words and erasing them.
And then the book stopped moving again.