I shoved Tang So-wol away, sending her flying far into the distance.
Then, I aimed my sword at the crumbling front gate—more precisely, at the old man who was slowly walking through it.
"Heh heh. These young ones these days have good instincts."
The old man's lips twisted into a smile as he looked at the tip of my sword.
At first glance, he seemed like an ordinary old man. No—among old men, he looked particularly frail and aged.
His back was bent so severely it was nearly folded in half, rendering his originally towering height meaningless.
His gaunt body, devoid of any muscle, allowed the outline of his bones to be discerned through the wrinkled skin.
Time had struck him full in the face, it seemed—wrinkles had taken over the role of his features entirely.
With his hands clasped behind his back, the old man who had just stepped over the wreckage of the front gate looked as though he could drop dead at any moment.
…And yet, the aura he gave off was somehow ominous.
While not quite on the level of a Harmony Realm martial artist who had fully harmonized Essence, Qi, and Spirit, a martial artist who had reached a certain level of attainment began to let his own unique presence seep into his aura.
A martial artist who wielded a blade, whether sword or saber, would exude a sharp aura; one who primarily used Fist and Leg Arts would feel like solid rock; and some, regardless of their weapon, radiated an overwhelming dominance that cowed their opponents.
The higher one's realm, the more blatant and unmistakable a martial artist's aura became.
This was likely because the deeper one's martial art, the more of one's life had been stripped away in its pursuit.
In that sense, the old man before him was giving off a rather peculiar aura.
It was an atmosphere of something being off. Not that he was dangerous, or that he seemed strong.
It was simply that something was wrong. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but it stirred an instinctive sense of revulsion.
This was an aura typically felt from those who had mastered forbidden martial arts—the Forbidden Arts—which were especially vicious, even by the standards of the orthodox and unorthodox sects alike.
For example, tearing out another person's heart and eating it raw to absorb their Innate True Qi, or arts that granted rapid progress but only through killing others rather than through Training.
Most of them were specialized in cruelly sacrificing others to increase one's own achievements, and they had a slightly different character from demonic arts.
That made sense, since demonic arts were, at their core, martial arts that allowed one to grow stronger quickly, even at the cost of wounding oneself.
However, the Forbidden Arts were martial arts created solely on the premise of sacrificing others.
Merely learning them marked one as a Martial World Criminal, and even the Outer Murim or the Demonic Cult would come charging with fire in their eyes, so few people ever showed interest in them…
Was it because it promised a rate of progress rivaling demonic arts, while allowing one to offload the side effects onto others instead of oneself? Just when people were starting to forget, someone who had mastered a Forbidden Art would always pop up again.
And now. The old man before me had, in all likelihood, mastered a Forbidden Art.
"But that instinct, that talent of yours is what drove those four to their deaths. In the end, all is as fate wills."
"So what? Are you telling me not to resent you, but to resent the heavens instead?"
I let out a hollow laugh, then unleashed my internal energy and stomped the ground.
Given the circumstances, that old man was probably the grandfather Hwangbo Gwang had mentioned—the one behind this whole affair.
Even if he wasn't, there was no need to exchange words with someone who opposed me, let alone one who had mastered a Forbidden Art.
KWA-RUNG!
With every step, thunder roared from my feet, and the speed that changed from moment to moment deceived my opponent.
Thus, at the instant my opponent's expectations were off by half a beat, I swung my sword.
The arc, aimed precisely at the old man's neck, was twisted roughly by the blazing Sword Flame, resembling the bite marks of a beast.
It was a little too late to dodge completely, and if he tried to block it, he would lose at least an arm.
The old man's Aura was ominous yet fierce, but he had not reached the Harmony Realm.
Therefore, this was a sword strike that could force damage on the old man, whether great or small. That was how it should have been.
"You're hasty."
The old man's arm traced a bizarre trajectory.
It wasn't that the trajectory was incomprehensible in how it was executed. It was that the movement was impossible for a human body.
How could a fist strike, with the entire forearm bending rather than the joint, possibly be something a person could do?
The fist wrapped in ash-gray Fist Energy finally struck the sword blade.
Thud!
The recoil from two different types of internal energy colliding sent both the sword and the arm flying apart.
I hadn't expected it to be blocked like this, but I'd never thought it would end with a single sword strike to begin with.
I released the killing intent I had been suppressing for the ambush all at once, focusing it on the opponent before me.
Surprise flickered in the old man's eyes at the killing intent that constricted his neck from all sides. However, it didn't seem to restrict his movements.
Just as with Hwangbo Gwang, the old man's reaction suggested his very sense of threat from killing intent had been broken.
It didn't matter. Slowing an opponent through killing intent lost its effectiveness the higher their realm was, so I hadn't held much expectation for it in the first place.
Recalling the other purpose behind concentrating my killing intent, I twisted my body with a somewhat rough motion. It was as if the sword moved first, and my body followed behind it.
The sword, which should have been deflected away, swung down with even greater force.
As if being drawn toward the point where the killing intent gathered.
"Hup!"
Swoosh!
The sword shot forward with a ferocity sharper than before, aimed at the old man's collarbone.
It was a shame—just short of reaching the neck—but for a moment, he was confident that this time, at least, it would be enough to tear off an arm.
The old man's wrinkles twisted sharply into something resembling a smile. A satisfied voice followed.
"Fierce, even. Truly, you are the material I have been searching for."
The next moment, he could see how the old man's arm bent in a way that should have been impossible.
Crack!
The old man's right arm suddenly swelled.
An arm that had surely been as thin and withered as a dead branch had abruptly transformed into that of a sturdy man.
An arm that did not suit the old man's gaunt, bent body.
Ash-gray internal energy spread wide around his arm, making it look like a boulder as it slipped between the trajectories of my sword.
Thud!
The sensation of striking something solid. My sword strike was sharp enough to hold its own anywhere, yet it only managed to graze the old man's forearm.
Even I—who had spent years fighting as an Unorthodox Sect martial artist and crossed blades with Demonic Cultists until I was sick of it—was taken aback.
"What the…"
What kind of martial art could possibly make this happen? No, was this even a martial art to begin with?
Martial arts were, by nature, a study built up day by day. There might be minor differences between them, but this one truth never changed.
No matter how bizarre the demonic art, the fact remained that one had to gradually build power through training.
In that sense, the old man's arm suddenly bulging with muscle was an utterly bizarre sight.
He withdrew the sword before it could be caught and continued swinging it.
Neck, chest, eyes, sides, thighs—he probed everywhere, as if searching for any part he could properly cut.
But each time, the spot the sword touched swelled unnaturally, and the old man's body only grew larger.
With sounds like bones being crushed, the old man's frame continued to expand.
Even when he stopped his sword strikes and put some distance between them, just in case, the transformation didn't cease.
The wrinkles that had been so deep they made his expression hard to read smoothed out, revealing contorted features.
His hunched back straightened, and he regained a height more than two heads taller than me.
His body, packed with muscles that writhed grotesquely, was clearly not that of an old man no matter how one looked at it.
It was as if he had undergone rejuvenation… or perhaps experienced the Rejuvenation technique.
The old man, whose face oddly resembled Hwangbo Gwang, opened his mouth with a voice that had grown younger to the level of a middle-aged man.
"Heh heh. They say you haven't reached Protective Qi, yet you managed to pierce through that thick internal energy and land a wound."
"…This is absurd. Does your internal energy overflow or what?"
The reason my sword failed to properly cut through the old man's body was simple. The External Arts of his suddenly rejuvenated body were at a considerable level, and on top of that, he had wrapped his entire body in Qi Flame by pouring out his massive internal energy.
Just as a branch can be easily cut without internal energy, but a thick tree is hard to cut even halfway through without it.
A body of such overwhelming size and weight carries great meaning on its own.
No matter how sharply I honed my Sword Flame, cutting through that thick layer of Qi Flame and the hardened flesh beneath it in a single stroke was a distant prospect.
However, wrapping one's entire body in Qi Flame forged from pure internal energy and control rather than Intent-refined Aura was nothing short of madness.
The consumption of internal energy was so immense that, as with the Blood Flame Fist Demon, it was a move one would only pull out as a last resort before death.
Yet the old man before me was doing it with a calm expression, as if this tremendous waste of internal energy meant nothing to him.
When I sneered at this, the old man grinned.
"Jealous? But I'll let this one slide. This is internal energy forcibly swollen by eating all kinds of Spiritual Medicine and devouring people over more than a hundred years."
"A hundred years? No, wait—did you just say you ate people?"
So he was practicing Forbidden Arts, as I expected. A body brimming with vitality unbefitting his age, and a massive reserve of internal energy. And given his mention of eating people, he was indeed of the Essence Absorption Art lineage that even touched upon Innate True Qi…
"That's right. The Blood Flower Sword Demon. A talent nurtured by devouring the talents of young people like you."
"If you think having internal energy alone makes you strong, then I suppose that foolishness could be called a talent too."
"Hmph. It seems you don't quite understand. The talent this old man speaks of is talent in the literal sense."
The old man shook his head with a voice that seemed to understand yet not. He picked up one of the guards who had collapsed on the ground beside Hwangbo Gwang.
The old man's body was swollen to a strange degree. Perhaps it was because the guard had lost an arm and a leg and was hovering between life and death.
The guard's body was lifted with such ease.
Unlike Hwangbo Gwang, the guard's dantian hadn't been destroyed, so although he couldn't move, he hadn't lost consciousness yet—his body twitched intermittently.
He had been acting as if he couldn't feel my killing intent at all, but the moment he sensed the old man's presence, he convulsed like that.
As if he could sense what was about to happen to him.
The old man watched the guard's feeble resistance with a benevolent smile.
"Yu Cheonghyeon. You were a young man who came to the Hwangbo Clan after hearing rumors that they would grant martial arts and positions to anyone with talent and loyalty. To put it kindly, it was a bold move; to put it harshly, it was a foolish one. But thanks to that, you accepted the Grand Ritual without any suspicion, so I welcomed it all the more."
"The Grand Ritual…?"
No matter how I thought about it, the feeling wasn't good, and my brow furrowed on its own. The old man, of course, paid it no mind and continued what he had to say.
"He was a friend full of passion and skill. His footwork was especially excellent. He showed rapid progress in both his footwork and leg techniques. …But unfortunately, he can no longer run on two legs."
That was true. That was why I had cut his legs as well, unlike the others.
The old man, still wearing that benevolent expression, continued speaking.
"Heh heh. You'll be fine now. …Your talent, along with this Hwangbo Yeongcheon, will become the backbone of the Hwangbo Clan."
"Aaaaah! Gyaaah!"
The moment the old man spoke his own name, the guard, as if drawing strength from some unknown reserve, thrashed his remaining limbs wildly in resistance.
Hwangbo Yeongcheon subdued him as if it were nothing, then lifted the guard up and bit into his head.
Crunch.
Needless to say, a human mouth is not large enough to swallow another person's head in a single bite.
So Hwangbo Yeongcheon began to eat it little by little. As if it were a piece of fruit.
Crunch. Crunch.
Even under the shocked gazes around him, he chewed and swallowed with care, not letting a single drop of blood or a single piece of flesh fall.
Then he picked up the headless guard's corpse and tossed it away like a worn-out rag.
Covered in blood, Hwangbo Yeongcheon's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. …His footwork eerily resembled the movements of the guard who had lost his head.
Only then did I understand what Hwangbo Yeongcheon's goal was.
"What a madman."
He intended to devour me and make my talent his own.