The moment the demonic warrior whose chest had been split reeled back, another demonic warrior hiding in the tree above came flying at Yeon-a.
As if she had already predicted the direction, Yeon-a drew her sword back and thrust it up toward her upper right.
Thock.
“Guhk...”
The demonic warrior’s body jerked; they could not even scream. Their feet did not reach the ground, and they could not retreat backward.
Yeon-a did not torment the demonic warrior who had rushed at her throat for long.
Slash.
Flinging the demonic warrior away, Yeon-a blocked another one charging in from the left.
Clang. Clang.
Yeon-a sliced into the vital points of those who ran at her and quickly neutralized them.
Slash.
She moved toward the demonic warrior’s sword stuck in the ground.
Yeon-a pulled the sword out and, as if throwing a throwing dagger, hurled it into the sky to her left.
Boom.
The demonic warrior hiding in the tree, startled, knocked the sword away and fell.
Yeon-a guessed the position of the cultist hiding among the trees. If their formation truly followed the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams, then she could also predict their order.
On the ground, the four demonic warriors surrounding her were standing at set intervals.
The four directions of east, west, south, and north.
If you tilted a new set of east-west-south-north coordinates just a little and overlapped them on top, the four directions turned into eight.
If you looked down from the sky at those two sets of east-west-south-north, what you saw was an Eight-Trigram Formation.
It was a formation that could be deployed in places where the trees grew thick or the streets were packed with buildings. A human prison that cut off retreat and drove the enemy into a corner.
Yeon-a guessed that the original form of the formation they had unfolded had not been the Eight-Trigram Formation.
Eight people were too few to execute a joint assault without gaps.
'The original form must have been a Sixty-Four Hexagram Formation.'
If they had created a martial art out of the eight trigrams that held the changes of nature, then naturally they would have used the Sixty-Four Hexagrams, which extended those into the changes of nature and human affairs.
If it had been sixty-four martial artists piled tightly in rows and columns, they would not have made such a sloppy formation; they would have created a perfect purgatory.
Yeon-a twisted her body and sprang up into the tree. Then she went straight across to the next tree and cut away the small branches.
Slash.
The demonic warrior rushing at Yeon-a panicked and jumped back.
Boom. Clang. Clang. Slash.
Driving the enemy back at high speed, Yeon-a cut into a vital point.
“Guhk!”
While the demonic warrior toppled, she snatched the sword away and dropped straight to the ground.
The moment she left the front of the roots, the two martial artists remaining on the ground exchanged glances, then charged the Tang Clan’s direct line.
As if she had been waiting, Yeon-a swung the swords in both her hands.
Boom. Clang. Clang.
The twin swords blocked the combined attack of the two demonic warriors.
Clang. Clang.
After crossing blades a few times, she could feel their speed and strength.
There was a difference in level between the two. Only one side was fast.
Clang. Clang.
The two gathered forward, then drew back, pressing Yeon-a and dodging her attacks. But because their speeds did not match, their joint assault easily opened gaps.
Whoosh.
The moment the demonic warriors closed in, Yeon-a lowered her body and spun.
“Urgh!”
Her sharp blade sliced across both demonic warriors’ knees at once.
Because of it, they lost their balance, and their swords turned toward each other.
Yeon-a slipped out from between them and rose up behind the martial artist whose reactions had been faster.
Crack.
She kicked the demonic warrior’s back.
Thock.
“Urk!”
The fast-reacting martial artist’s sword pierced their comrade’s solar plexus.
Yeon-a did not cut the back of the now-unprotected demonic warrior. Instead, she sprang up, stepping on their shoulders and head. Using the momentum, Yeon-a shot straight back up into the tree.
The demonic warriors came at her in the sequence of the eight trigrams, but the timing with which they dove in was all over the place.
Once she let them have bait, even their order got scrambled; the martial artist who should have been the last to enter the fray moved out of turn.
Her suspicion that this was a hastily thrown-together formation solidified.
Whoosh.
The instant Yeon-a stepped onto the branch, the leaves of the tree across from her shook violently.
Yeon-a had lived in the forest for over ten years. She had roamed the mountains longer than the lifespan of many wild animals.
It was not difficult for her to tell apart a branch shaken to create confusion and a branch shaken because a human had stepped on it.
Boom.
When Yeon-a threw one of the twin swords she was holding, the leaves shook violently and spat out a person.
Before the demonic warrior who had fallen to the ground could even stand, Yeon-a rushed them.
Clang.
The demonic warrior blocked with their sword, scooting their backside backward. Their expression was wretched. Perhaps sensing their defeat, there was a trace of grief in it.
Clang. Clang.
But Yeon-a did not show the demonic warrior mercy.
Someone who had come running to kill little girls now shed tears because their own life was precious—that sight only filled her with disgust.
Then, all of a sudden, the demonic warrior’s gaze changed.
The whites of their eyes turned blood-red, and with a shriek, they sprang up.
“Uwaaah!”
Even though their forearm had been deeply slashed, the demonic warrior swung their sword at once.
Yeon-a’s eyes narrowed slightly.
It was because the force transmitted through the blade had changed.
'...Their sword art changed.'
The sword path mainly connected five points.
Clang. Clang.
As Yeon-a crossed blades with the demonic warrior’s sword, she soon read the pattern. It was a sword that moved within the Five Elements.
Because she had vaguely heard stories about the Blood Cult’s martial arts, Yeon-a found their swords bewildering.
Their sword art felt oddly similar in nature to the orthodox sects’, as if someone had revised it.
No—that did not mean she could say she had read all the sword strikes that had poured out. She had probably missed the ones she did not know and let them pass, and only recognized the ones she was familiar with. So Yeon-a could only read the orthodox sword arts she already knew.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Soon the sword, which had been roaming among the five points of the Five Elements, began moving between just two points.
Sword strikes traced out in bold arcs poured down, as if drawing solid lines in the air.
Water and fire.
As the opposing extremes were linked, the surrounding energy surged. The energy of two polar opposites coiled around the tip of the sword.
Clang.
Each time their swords met, Yeon-a felt her inner energy roil. The energy gathered in her palm was sucked straight into the demonic warrior’s sword.
'So it’s a sword art that winds up and steals inner energy.'
The demonic warrior created a flow and stole the other person’s energy.
But it was not an attack that would work particularly well on Yeon-a. From the start, her internal strength was nothing remarkable.
Boom.
Yeon-a’s strong point was not the energy accumulated at her blood channels, nor some overwhelming strength.
Her weapons were her eyes, which could perceive movements as quick as a bird’s flapping wings, and her mind, which could understand them.
On top of that, she had spent the last three years learning Wudang’s martial arts, so now her body was able to keep up with her mind.
The more real combat she experienced, the more she grew at a mad pace. It was truly a talent heaven had bestowed.
Boom.
The sword that had been moving in straight lines suddenly began to curve, drawing arcs.
It was as if a current of air had been created, distorted by the clashing energies of water and fire.
The fierce air current soon split into yin and yang.
For a martial artist who relied heavily on yin energy or yang energy, that sword art would likely be fatal.
Yeon-a had a slightly absurd thought.
She wondered if the person who had created this sword art had never actually trained demonic arts.
Perhaps they had simply tried to use life-destroying demonic energy to shackle yang energy and yin energy.
Feeling a chill of revulsion, Yeon-a no longer met the sword head-on. She stopped trying to read her opponent’s sword and prepared a single decisive strike.
Slash.
The moment the demonic warrior moved their sword to the left, Yeon-a brought her blade down on the demonic warrior’s left arm.
“Aaagh!”
The demonic warrior’s arm was slashed deeply, bone showing, and the sword fell to the ground.
Even though she had neutralized them, Yeon-a did not stop swinging her sword.
Slash. Slash.
“Uwaaagh!”
The demonic warrior’s shoulder hung in tatters. One more cut and the arm would fall off.
When Yeon-a raised her sword high again, the demonic warrior flinched and toppled backward.
“S-spare me!”
For the first time, the demonic warrior spoke words she could understand. They crawled across the ground, mumbling desperately.
Faced with a tear-streaked face, most people might have felt a twinge of sympathy, but Yeon-a kept walking toward them without stopping. As if the demonic energy had rubbed off on her, her clear eyes had gone murky.
Clang.
The moment she brought her sword down, Yeon-a flinched.
The Sword Sovereign, stepping in front of her, pushed her back with a twisted expression.
“Get ahold of yourself.”
At the anger in his voice, Yeon-a suddenly sprang back.
Once she came to her senses, Yeon-a drew in ragged breaths.
“Haa. Haa.”
At some point, she could see that Wudang’s martial artists had filled the surroundings.
When Yeon-a lowered her gaze to the ground, her body went rigid.
The enemies she had thought she had “lightly” slashed were strewn across the ground. The demonic warriors’ necks were severed, their arms and legs cut off. Without realizing it, Yeon-a had butchered them.
Just then, the Sword Sovereign grabbed Yeon-a’s wrist.
“Urgh!”
A cool energy began to flow through her whole body. Yeon-a did not know what the Sword Sovereign was trying to do, but she trusted her master and remained still.
After the energy made one full circuit through her body, the Sword Sovereign pulled his hand away.
Yeon-a felt her mind clear.
The world began to come into sharp focus.
Then the Sword Sovereign’s gaze and the Sect Leader’s expression came into her field of view with perfect clarity.
Remembering something she had forgotten, Yeon-a turned her head toward the tree roots. The twins hiding inside the burrow were staring at her with vacant faces.
Yeon-a realized that she had forgotten about the twins and gone wild.
When she had broken through and cut down the sword art of that first demonic warrior, she had become excited and lost her mind.
Only now did Yeon-a recognize that she had fallen into a state of no-self.
And now she could understand the reaction of the Wudang martial artists who were so angry.
What she had gained through that no-self was not some enlightenment about the principles of martial arts. She had recognized the chaos rooted in her own heart...
Yeon-a called to mind the scene of her breaking through the demonic warriors’ formation and closed her eyes.
She had not stopped her sword whether her opponent died or begged for mercy.
It had not been because she had to protect the twins.
The emotion she had felt each time she broke apart one of the sword arts was, unmistakably... pleasure.
In Wudang, where they regarded the weight of life with great seriousness, this was an attitude that could not be allowed. Having spent so many years in the martial world, the Sect Leader and the Sword Sovereign had read Yeon-a’s inner self completely.
Yeon-a lowered her head.
It was because she, too, could feel the evil lodged in the depths of her own heart.
At that moment, something damp touched her hand.
Without a word, Wudang’s First Disciple stepped up and sprinkled disinfectant on Yeon-a’s hand. A moment later, that gaze rose toward the Sword Sovereign.
In a gentle voice, the First Disciple said,
“Sword Sovereign, Yeon-a is injured.”
Yeon-a was the Sword Sovereign’s direct disciple, but because she was so much younger, she had first been registered as the Third Disciple. If the distribution of generations and ranks got tangled, there were times when a high elder would have to use honorifics to address a child as a superior, so in cases where they took on a very young direct disciple, they would sometimes straighten out the generational order in this way.
For someone of the Sword Sovereign’s level, taking on a chick of a child as a disciple was unusual even in Wudang, so the Sword Sovereign had voiced no objections about his disciple’s rank and simply followed the sect’s decision.
Thus, the First Disciple also regarded Yeon-a as a martial artist far below.
Like an uncle shielding a niece he had to protect, the First Disciple placed Yeon-a between himself and the Sword Sovereign and Sect Leader’s gazes.
“The Tang manor must be worried about whether the twins are alive or dead, so wouldn’t it be best if we went back for now?”
The First Disciple’s calm voice cut through the tension.
The Sword Sovereign let out a heavy breath, then set off.
As they turned to head back to the Tang manor, the First Disciple slipped the bottle of disinfectant into Yeon-a’s hand and smiled with crinkling eyes.
“It’s all right. Once you see how the Tang Clan reacts, you’ll forget it quickly, and they’ll only find you commendable. Thanks to you, the Tang Clan’s direct line kept their lives, didn’t they?”
“Yes...”
“Don’t make that kind of face.”
“What kind of face am I making?”
“You rescued those children by yourself, yet you look as if you had committed some terrible crime.”
When Yeon-a could not answer and dropped her head, the First Disciple patted her shoulder in comfort.
“The first time I cut a person, I also lost my reason and saw nothing. I imagine it was the same for the others as well. So don’t shrink into yourself too much.”
“....”
“Come now. Let’s go to the Tang manor. Once you experience how the Tang Clan treats a benefactor, you’ll feel better too.”
'Benefactor.'
That word struck Yeon-a’s heart for a moment.
Yeon-a lifted her head slightly. The Tang girls were being led out from the roots by Wudang’s martial artists.
Yeon-a had heard from the Divine Physician that Tang Sohwa cherished her younger siblings dearly.
All at once, her guilt faded in color, and a squirming joy began to assert its presence.
“That said, don’t get too pleased. They might scold you a bit too harshly just to keep you from getting carried away.”
At the First Disciple’s voice, full of concern for her, Yeon-a nodded and schooled her expression.
But her heart was still pounding.
She wanted to hurry back to the Tang manor and tell the woman who had once been her own benefactor that that woman’s siblings were safe.
