"Sword Demon. You are always the same."
With the Heavenly Demon's voice, which sounded strangely satisfied, a black sky—no, an Ink Color Aura so dense it could be mistaken for one—descended.
Heavenly Demon Dominance Step.
Those who would stand before the Heavenly Demon must bear the weight of the demonic power he had accumulated over the years.
How many martial artists had crumbled helplessly before the Heavenly Demon Dominance Step, forced to offer their necks?
That was how heavy the Heavenly Demon's karma was, built upon countless deaths and regressions.
"But this is not a weight I must bear."
Eons of time, the resentment toward the heavens that had cast him into the endless abyss, the longing for all that had been forgotten.
None of it was his own. It was not something placed upon his shoulders, but something that fell down to crush them.
If so, it could be cut away. After all, a sword was, from the very beginning, a tool meant to cut something away.
He cuts.
The moment he made that decision, the sword swung naturally, tearing through the demonic energy and drawing a white line between himself and the Heavenly Demon.
Yes. That was it — drawing a line. Your despair belongs to you alone; it is not something to be forced upon others.
Of course, my sword's will was not something that could be forced upon anyone either.
Whether one loathed martial arts or loved them, in the end, the only thing a martial artist who had set foot in the martial world could do was clash their convictions against one another.
One side may bend, but neither can be dyed by the other.
Swerk.
The sky. The massive demon's foot, conjured by the Force Qi Skill, is severed by my sword and scatters.
Thanks to that, the Murim Alliance Leader and the Lord of the Black Alliance, free from any constraint on their movements, rushed past me on either side and charged at the Heavenly Demon.
"Well done!"
"Kuhaha! The chance to wash away our shame has come!"
Staggering as if drunk, yet by the time one's senses caught up, the Murim Alliance Leader had already arrived before the Heavenly Demon.
And the Lord of the Black Alliance, approaching in a straight line with a ferocity and speed as simple to read as a wild beast.
The Murim Alliance Leader's staff, once called the Uicheon-singae, bent as its tip blurred.
"Even in the lowest places, righteousness blooms. You were once the same. But now you have become a dog that stirs chaos in the world and bites people to death. It is only right that you be beaten to death!"
-How laughable. You do not understand me. How much can words heard through someone else's mouth truly resonate in your heart?
"Even if I do not understand, the way of a human being does not disappear!"
A massive surge of internal energy erupted from the Murim Alliance Leader's worn staff, claiming all eight directions.
A trajectory that, whether dodged or blocked, would inevitably end in being beaten like a dog. As long as its flow was not severed, the Staff-Beating Technique was the most stubborn martial art of all.
…But the Heavenly Demon neither severed the rhythm nor relied on Protective Qi bolstered by vast Demonic Qi.
He answered by precisely deflecting each of the Murim Alliance Leader's attacks, one by one, as if he had seen through the Staff-Beating Technique long ago.
Crack. Crunch. CRASH!
The sound of Aura colliding and grinding against each other. At the end of it, the Murim Alliance Leader was sent flying back, unable to withstand the backlash from the difference in internal energy.
"You foolish beggar. Do you not realize that while you wear silk instead of rags and eat from porcelain instead of a gourd, you have drifted far from the compassion you once sought?"
"Kugh!"
Swallowing the blood that burst from his mouth, the Murim Alliance Leader charged at the Heavenly Demon once more. No longer having the leisure to trade words with the Heavenly Demon, he gripped his staff and rushed forward.
And the same was happening to the Lord of the Black Alliance.
"Damn you… Are you saying you even predicted the martial art this Alliance Lord refined himself?!"
"Lord of the Black Alliance. You are truly an easy man to read. Beast-like cunning, ruthless decisiveness, an ideal Unorthodox Sect martial artist and gambler who adapts to the logic of power better than anyone. …That is your limit. When it comes to you, this Sovereign needs to predict nothing at all."
The Black Alliance Lord's spear was certainly different from what I knew.
It relentlessly sought out openings and forced its way in by any means. Actively leveraging his conviction of certain victory to drive a single strike into a vital point… This was not a "martial art for killing people."
He stabbed the same spot, again and again. From any stance, he poured in maximum force as he thrust the long spear.
The single spear became not a dagger for piercing exposed vital points, but a last bastion for deflecting the incoming Aura flying at him.
His body movements meant to pressure the opponent had conversely transformed into movements meant to escape the pressure of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
What the Lord of the Black Alliance chose to face the Heavenly Demon was to tear down his own martial foundation and adopt a simple yet clear breakthrough power.
It was a decision made because he had briefly faced the Heavenly Demon and experienced his absurd Force Qi Skill… that thick Protective Qi.
I too thought it was not a bad strategy.
A clash of strength against strength. If the outcome was decided by instinct and fighting spirit, rather than what a person built through effort and time, and a bit of luck, then this lord had grown tired of such battles. …Even at this very moment.
It was a misconception.
The Force Qi that rose and scattered in the air transformed into countless beastly forms, blocking the Lord of the Black Alliance's attacks and beginning to push him back in turn.
A water buffalo engulfed in flames, a roc whose single flap of its wings seemed to blot out the sun, and a true dragon that split not the earth but the sky and the sea.
These were familiar shapes. Of course they were—they were the divine beasts the Heavenly Demon had to defeat one by one before his regression.
Of course, they were not as overwhelmingly massive as they were in those memories.
At most, they were about the size of a person, or slightly larger. And frankly, their target was not the Lord of the Black Alliance.
They were simply rampaging madly, as they had in his memories, striking at everything in sight… even the Heavenly Demon, the master of the Force Qi, and the other divine beasts were attacking each other.
It was a sight reminiscent of the final moments of the Azure-White Flood Dragon, which had once lost all reason and surrendered itself to rage.
The Lord of the Black Alliance was forced to retreat again and again, merely from being caught in the aftermath.
Wondering if this was some kind of sorcery, he activated his Heavenly Eye—and in that instant, he understood.
"Hah."
It was not sorcery. It was simply that the curses left behind by the divine beasts the Heavenly Demon had once struck down had become part of the Simma, and had melted into the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
And the Heavenly Demon had merely released them for a moment.
Yes. From the very moment he had felled those divine beasts, the Heavenly Demon had been enduring the malice that clung to his mindscape and rampaged within it every single moment.
The divine beasts he had once defeated seemed to have been annihilated for some reason even after the regression, but the final Intent that had clung to the Heavenly Demon appeared to be the exception.
That was surely one of the reasons why the already-maddened man had gone even more insane.
The two had charged in with great momentum, yet they had failed to land any meaningful blow on the Heavenly Demon.
The two strongest martial artists among us, excluding myself, had been blocked so simply… but that much was enough to keep the Heavenly Demon's power in check.
After all, neither I, nor the Murim Alliance Leader, nor the Lord of the Black Alliance himself had ever thought we could reach the Heavenly Demon with our own strength.
Namgung Dowi, his internal energy flowing in strands of piercing blue that resembled the sky, stood ready. The Sword King slowly raised his sword.
"Then what of a sword built up over a long time through human effort, Heavenly Demon?"
The boundary between heaven and earth, divided by the line I had drawn. Between them, another heaven opened.
A sword. A heaven created by stacking countless swords. The Namgung Clan's Sword Heaven unfolded according to Namgung Dowi's will.
Though he held but a single sword in his grasp, it felt as though countless blades were descending from the heavens to aim at the Heavenly Demon.
A world enclosed by swords. The scenery Namgung Dowi beheld—his very mindscape—unfurled thread by thread, pushing back the Heavenly Demon's Demonic Qi.
Yet the Heavenly Demon merely assessed it in a calm tone.
"Sword King. You have always been a martial artist worthy of respect. However, the Namgung sky is not yet complete."
"The path of the sword has no end, so the Namgung sky shall remain unfinished for all time."
Namgung Dowi gave me a single nod, then strode toward the Heavenly Demon.
And toward him came pouring the essence of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
Every martial art learned through countless repetitions within that repeating world, all of it taking the form of Force Qi Skill, surged toward Namgung Dowi.
A fist wrapped in a spinning vortex, a sword flowing like water, a spear shooting forth at lightning speed, a blade where resolve and ferocity coexisted.
Every weapon seen in the martial world, the martial arts required to wield them, and the principles underlying them all.
A miniature martial world—or perhaps what could be called the history of the Heavenly Demon—unraveled in an instant, all of it aimed at Namgung Dowi's neck.
And Namgung Dowi faced it with a single sword… no, with the countless swords that he and the Namgung Clan had accumulated over the years.
The fist wrapped in the vortex was drawn in by a sword strike that precisely mimicked its rotation, crumbling into nothing.
The continuous and uninterrupted flow of the sword was severed by a strike that fell like thunder.
The spear flying along the shortest path, carrying the Mystery of Speed, collided head-on with a thrust imbued with the mystery of striking first and was pierced through.
The blade that seemed capable of cutting through everything in the world was swept away by a trajectory tracing a gentle curve, vanishing into the distance.
If, at the end of the enlightenment I had gained from encountering many swords, I had chosen to discard every mystery I had ever learned and embrace a sword devoted solely to the fundamentals.
Namgung Dowi—no, the Namgung Clan—was the opposite: a house that collected many swords, made them their own, and sought to witness the pinnacle of every mystery.
Thanks to that, it seemed as though the Heavenly Demon, who had mastered various martial arts through countless regressions, was being parried at every turn.
But.
He missed one of the daggers flying toward his blind spot, and it pierced through his thigh. He could not stop the threads that freely cut through space from wrapping around his sword.
Even when the trajectory traced by the Judge's Brush—resembling the letters and paintings drawn in the air—was cut by Namgung Dowi's sword, the brush tip did not stop.
Beyond that came whip techniques like living snakes, staff arts that crushed with weight unlike a blade, and a host of strange weapons laced with sorcery that even the Illusion Witch's power could not block.
The things the heavens of the Namgung Clan could not contain slowly shaved away at the Sword King's body.
His leg was pierced through, blood poured from his shoulder, and his upper body was torn open nearly to the point of touching his internal organs.
It did not take long for him to reach a state where he was barely clinging to life.
But Namgung Dowi's feet did not stop. Even as his flesh fell away, even as the fear rose that he might no longer be able to hold his sword, he kept walking.
And so, the moment he stood before the Heavenly Demon. Namgung Dowi… the Sword King curled the corners of his mouth into a grin.
"This should be enough."
"Yes. It is sufficient."
Nodding his head, he unleashed in a single burst the Intent he had refined and refined again until now, and at the same time focused it entirely on the Heavenly Demon.
He cuts.
But what does it mean to cut? Is it the sharp tip of the blade piercing into the opponent? Is it pressing down with the edge that which one seeks to sever, dragging it along as if pulling? Is it refined internal energy grazing past?
None of it.
It is my resolve to cut. That is all there is to cutting.
The human mind is the sword, and the will is the Sword Art itself.
If one resolves to cut, there is nothing that cannot be cut.
"Hup!"
I swallowed a light breath and swung the sword. An unremarkable vertical slash, nothing grand.
Yet, for the first time, the Heavenly Demon moved.
The Heavenly Demon swiftly retreated, then made as if to strike down with his fist.
At the same time, the colossal demonic figure that blanketed the sky—the true form of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—brought that fist crashing down.
The sensation of my blade slicing through the Ink Color aura that emanated from his fingertips.
It was at that moment, as I had cut just past halfway into the Force Qi Skill the Heavenly Demon had unleashed.
—Heavenly Demon Splits the Heavens.
The Heavenly Demon's low Intent resounded, and my vision was dyed black…
And then, it shattered.