Kwa-gagagak!
As the Sword Force surging above the sword platform deflected the formless slash, a deep trench was carved into the ground beside the Sword Demon.
From the rising cloud of dust, a man with a grim countenance burst out and swung his arm.
An ash-gray Aura rippling in the shape of a sword in the empty air.
As that Aura grew even more intense, I likewise flared my Sword Force fiercely and met it head-on.
Ka-ang!
Though my sword alone was blocked in the air, what rang out was the sound of blade clashing against blade.
The shockwave from the clashing Auras scattered the dust from moments ago in an instant.
Perhaps because the Sword Demon's realm was still unstable. The Aura that should have been unwavering wavered, slowly being cut away by my Sword Force.
But that was all.
No matter how much I cut away the Sword Demon's Aura, the sword he held—that phantom sword extending past his fingers—could not be cut.
I wished for my sword to reach what it could not in my previous life, to cut what could not be cut.
That single-minded Intent allowed my strikes to cross space and sever the formless.
His sword-finger was likely the same.
He was one who wished to become a sword himself, wasn't he? Unless the Sword Demon himself died or his will was broken, that sword would never break.
I knew it in my head. Intent is the power that forces the impossible into reality.
Every Harmony Realm martial artist could invoke their own miracle without the heavens' aid, and I was no different from the Sword Demon in that regard.
But knowing it in my head and truly understanding it were two different matters, weren't they?
Surprisingly, it seemed the Sword Demon felt the same. The moment I opened my mouth, he did too.
"Sword Demon. You don't wield a sword. You wield a realm."
"Sword Demon. You don't wield a sword. You're wielded by one."
"…"
"…"
Sword Demon and I stared at each other in silence. The power in our swords grew with each passing moment, until finally, as if by mutual accord, we swung our arms wide in a sweeping motion and put distance between us.
It was partly a reflexive action, and partly something I had deliberately induced.
Normally, when you create distance like this, you quickly steady your stance and clash again, but…
For me, this distance was still within sword's reach.
"Hup!"
An invisible slash tore through the air, once again arcing toward the Sword Demon's neck. Instead of correcting his stance, the Sword Demon swung his sword first.
KWAANG!
The Sword Demon was pushed back, skidding across the ground from the impact. His stance was unstable, but to him, that was a trivial matter.
His stance was twisted and he seemed to have taken a minor internal injury, yet the bastard's sword didn't waver by even a hair.
That was the Sword Demon for you. Unlike me, who found the opponent's openings and lured them into collapse, he was a strange swordsman who could wield his blade perfectly even when an opening appeared.
That was why, before the regression, we had crossed swords many times without ever reaching a conclusion.
My martial arts and the Sword Demon's martial arts held principles that were complete opposites, and our realms were nearly identical, both at the very edge of Transcendent Peak.
…But now, it was different.
If I had my way, I would settle this unfinished duel right here. I wanted to prove that my sword was right, but this was not the time for that.
When I casually turned my gaze, a battle was unfolding nearby that couldn't even be compared to the fight between me and the Sword Demon.
A twin spear, imbued with a blood-red Aura, pierced through the air like two crimson dragons, a fist containing power that could literally shake heaven and earth, and countless sword energies fell like rain.
And the Heavenly Demon watched all of this with a weary expression as he reached out his hand.
Sometimes with a fist technique, sometimes with Force Qi Skill, and sometimes as he had done to the Lord of the Black Alliance, he mimicked his opponents' martial arts while blocking the torrent of killing moves pouring down on him.
His responses changed with each moment—the sight of him was less like a man cornered and more like someone idly passing the time out of sheer boredom.
Even staying true to his own words that he hadn't come to fight, he minimized his attacks and focused entirely on absorbing the opponents' martial arts.
To put it the other way, if I couldn't reach the Heavenly Demon, he would surely kill everyone here, just as he had promised.
But could the Heavenly Demon truly kill those three if he went all out?
No matter how much of a monster he was, it wouldn't be an easy task at this point in time. Yet that didn't mean it was impossible.
He might take a few wounds here and there, but in the end, he would keep his word.
…I can't just leave it like that.
"Hoo."
As if the fatigue and wounds piled up in my body meant nothing at all, I watched the Sword Demon charging at me and drew in a breath.
He had already closed the distance, thrusting his hand forward in a sword-finger stance. I watched the ash-gray Sword Force ripple and pierce through the air… and let out my breath.
Breathing.
Breathing is the foundation of all martial arts. Through breath, a person distinguishes self from other.
It also draws in the Natural Qi drifting between heaven and earth, making it one's own, and smooths the connection between movements.
What I do, in the end, is break the opponent's breath and maintain my own.
But no matter what I did, if the opponent's breath refused to break… then I had no choice but to push harder from my side.
The moment I made that resolve, my breathing changed.
The already fierce flow of the Crazy Wolf Life-Stealing Art surged even more intense. It felt as if I might lose hold of the internal energy flow that I was gripping tight with my Intent.
The speed at which it circulated through my Meridians grew so fast that it felt like it would spill over the edges.
I surrendered my body to it and, before I knew it, swung my sword toward the ash-gray Aura rippling right before my eyes.
KWAANG!
"…!"
At the explosion-like Loud Noise, the Sword Demon's brow furrowed ever so slightly.
"You fool. No matter how urgent it is, to fall into Qi Deviation."
"Not yet."
As the Sword Demon said, this was close to Qi Deviation. My internal energy was rampaging as if it would break free of my will at any moment, and although my strength had grown, my senses had dulled, making my whole body feel as if it were floating.
But it was fine.
I had experienced Qi Deviation once before, in the blazing Iron Blood Faction before my regression. And this life, I had gone through it once more before the towering halls of the Heavenly Poison Sect.
If I had experienced it twice, it would be stranger still not to put that to use.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The energy of the Crazy Wolf Life-Stealing Art raced through my Meridians in time with the madly pounding heartbeat.
It's fine. This martial art was fundamentally built this way from the start.
Even if I ascended to the Harmony Realm and freed myself from the obsession of murderous intent, the roots of the martial art would not change.
"…It seems I can control it one way or another, but if it's not perfect, it's putting the cart before the horse. Sword Demon. A man of your caliber should know that well."
"That, too, is something we can only know by watching."
I curl my lips into a grin and adjust my grip on the sword.
The hand-seizing technique I used when fighting the Azure-White Flood Dragon in the North Sea before. I infuse it with the Mystery meant solely for wielding overwhelming force.
It's fine. Every sensation is slipping slightly out of control, but… the Aura still resembles the Moonlight I saw that day.
I swing the Aura, clearly thicker and brighter than before. The only thought etched into my mind is the single intent to cut.
"Kugh!"
The Sword Demon once again thrusts his sword toward the incoming sword strike.
KWAANG!
Fragments of scattered Aura. The Sword Demon's body was shaken without mercy by a Loud Noise loud enough to deafen the ears.
But his sword did not waver, and his body, protected by Protective Qi, dispersed the impact as much as possible.
Rather, the bastard squeezed his body into the opening revealed by the large movement. But.
SEOK.
"What is this…?"
The slash that began from the Sword Demon's sword tip and stretched beyond the blade grazed his neck.
Unfortunately, it only cut the surface, resulting in a negligible amount of bleeding. Yet the Sword Demon's eyes widened, as if he couldn't understand why the strike he had clearly blocked had flown at him.
But this was only the beginning. He poured even the internal energy meant for his Protective Qi into the sword without reserve.
He swung the sword force, swollen to at least half again its size.
CLANG! CRACK! CRUNCH!
Sword clashed against sword without a moment's respite. Though the Sword Demon's stance wavered, his unyielding blade still caught every one of my attacks, and from time to time he even struck back.
The tangled paths of the swords were no different from before, but the results were slowly changing.
A sword strike that shot out half a beat later than the sword that should have been blocked. It wasn't that it pierced the Sword Demon's unbreakable blade.
The enlightenment I had gained from witnessing the Immovable Wisdom King Step at the Shaolin Temple… I had applied that principle to the technique of imbuing sword energy into the sword wind.
If power could be infused into the sword wind, then there was no reason I couldn't carry it into the extension of my sword strikes.
Thanks to this, even when the Sword Demon blocked my sword, he was exposed to the follow-up strikes, and shallow wounds began to accumulate on his face and upper body.
However, since this was my first attempt at such a technique, and because of the wildly rampaging energy, precisely targeting his vital points was nearly impossible.
Every time our swords clashed, the scattered slashes flew in all directions, laying waste to the surroundings.
Building walls collapsed at an angle, and the floor was carved with dizzying sword marks as if a wolf had clawed at it.
A faint trace of shock and disbelief flickered across the Sword Demon's expressionless face.
He was the kind of man who, with a sword that neither broke nor wavered, always pursued the most ideal path of the sword he could draw. And he was doing so even now.
However, no matter how perfectly one blocks, there is no way to deal with a sword that flies in while ignoring the block.
Perhaps I'd picked up a bit of a knack for it, but I could now sense the uncontrollable slashes in advance and dodge them.
At this rate, I, exhausted, would fall first. But I wasn't the only one who had found the trick.
"Three feet six inches."
"…?"
"The length of your sword. It's the most common length, after all."
"Hah."
I stamped the ground, charging toward the startled Sword Demon.
Once I knew the length of his sword, even the invisible things, even the ash-gray Sword Force that rippled strangely for a Force Qi, held no fear for me.
No matter how solid, no matter how sharp, in the end a sword only means something if it reaches the opponent, doesn't it?
The Sword Demon swung his sword-aura finger. I twisted my upper body, evading the blow instead of blocking it.
"…!"
As always, his sword was textbook-perfect. It left no exploitable opening, forcing me to defend rather than dodge.
However, I had moved my body somewhat recklessly.
Similar to the Sword Demon, but different. I was still the master of my own actions. I simply knew now. The important thing was the unbroken flow.
I unleashed my boiling internal energy in bursts, swinging my sword here and there.
I explode my internal energy from my elbows according to the principles of the Thunder Step, and I use the mysteries of the Gwiyeongbo to create subtle gaps in timing, making my sword strikes even more dizzying to track.
The important thing is the unbroken chain of attacks.
Still, the Sword Demon's blade does not waver. He is dismantling all my moves step by step in that bizarre manner where the sword moves first and the body follows.
The slashes that extend far along the trajectory of my sword sometimes get deflected off the Sword Demon's blade, sometimes glance off it entirely, and begin to wreck the already-ruined surroundings.
A veritable small storm made of swords. The Sword Demon, who withstands it all with a single blade, is my enemy, but he is surely a splendid swordsman.
However, that is all.
I concentrate the overinflated Sword Force into a single point.
After all, Aura is internal energy compressed beyond its limits using Intent.
In other words, if I only had a stronger Intent, I could compress it even further.
The Heavenly Demon is right beside me. And he only granted me a brief reprieve—this time too, he intends to kill the people I hold dear.
The single-minded will to cut him down is not enough. I press down with the Intent to protect.
The reason I wield my sword is surely for moments like this.
The scale of my madly rampaging sword strikes begins to shrink.
Because the Aura surrounding my sword is thinning at a visible rate.
As the Sword Force's thickness decreased, its brightness grew fiercer, and the sharpness of my sword strikes began to increase as well.
And so, the moment the Sword Force became a thin membrane enveloping my sword.
At a glance, the deep ink color characteristic of Black Iron vanished, leaving only a white sword resembling moonlight.
This time, instead of dodging the Sword Demon's blade, I swung mine head-on to meet it.
Shrrk.
I cut through the sword that should not have broken.