The day before the party left Xuzhou was wonderfully clear. The spring sunlight was brilliant, settling vividly on Jung Yeonshin’s dark eyebrows.

He was returning from the government office, where he had sent word to his seniors. He had informed Chung Myung and the others scattered throughout Southern Zhili of what had happened—something only his affiliation with Desolate Fortress made possible.

The magistrate had looked troubled, explaining that the messages would take time to arrive. Yeonshin had also wanted to send a courier to Shandong Province, where the main force should be, but with an entire province to cross, he could not expect speed.

‘It can’t be helped.’

Leaving the government office behind, Jung Yeonshin had another problem to consider. Heon Wonchang had trouble moving. With his internal injuries, putting him in a jolting carriage or on horseback was not a decision to make lightly.

‘How should I take him along?’

Still wrestling with the problem, he returned to the guest room. The Great Hero of Desolate Fortress lay on the bed with his eyes half-open. Before Yeonshin could even close the door, Heon Wonchang turned onto his side. Their eyes met, and he grinned.

“This really is agony.”

“I’m concerned for the august person of the Great Hero of Desolate Fortress,” Jung Yeonshin quipped.

Heon Wonchang’s grin widened. He seemed never to tire of hearing his epithet. Plenty of commoners had been hovering around the inn, hoping to catch a glimpse of Heon Wonchang, the Great Hero of Desolate Fortress.

“I’ve become a burden.”

“The great Sword Dragon is waiting for us.”

“Hmm? Lady Wiji?”

Jung Yeonshin told him about their conversation. Heon Wonchang’s face immediately contorted, so much that it was almost painful to see.

“Your heart is as vast as the ocean, Young Master Jung. I’m deeply moved! But don’t do this. The Blood Flame Cult is at war with one of the Eight Great Families? There’s no chance they haven’t sent Apostles. Didn’t you see the Seventh Apostle’s power for yourself last time?”

“I took out his eye.”

Jung Yeonshin answered calmly and leaned back against the wall. Stroking the hilts of Northern Radiance and the Desolate Sword in turn, he continued slowly.

“All I need to do is lend a hand. The Namgoong clan’s experts won’t be sitting idle, either.”

They exchanged a few more words.

‘There’s no reason not to do it.’

Jung Yeonshin had already decided. He could earn merit while preserving his comrade’s martial arts. Heon Wonchang could not overcome his stubbornness.

The Great Hero of Desolate Fortress was, after all, an expert of the Radiant Demon Squad. However unassuming he might look, he had an excellent sense for assessing a battle. He realized that the longer they argued, the less time Jung Yeonshin would have to spare.

“First you save my life, and now I’m indebted to you as a martial artist as well.”

With a rare look of seriousness, Heon Wonchang briefly closed his eyes, then opened them.

“Then this must be what’s troubling you, Young Master Jung: how to take a living corpse like me to Huizhou.”

“... They said we have about a month. If we have to come all the way back up to Xuzhou from Huizhou, there won’t be much time to spare.”

“Don’t worry about that!”

Despite his grave internal injuries, his voice had lost none of its volume. Heon Wonchang smiled as he continued.

“There’s a reason martial artists whose qi circulation has been disrupted by qi deviation are vulnerable to jolts. Years of training have fixed their will into a single pattern for directing core energy. Regulating their internal energy as usual becomes poison to them. They do it without realizing their bodies are in tatters.”

“Then?”

“My family has a secret art called the Great Tortoise Breathing Method. And it’s no ordinary method. It even stills the flow of core energy to safeguard the fine internal meridians. It’s an assassin’s secret technique, so it remains wonderfully stable over long periods.”

He had mentioned assassins while describing his family’s secret art.

‘The Great Tortoise Breathing Method?’

It was said to be an art for ambushes, using internal energy to slow one’s breathing and heartbeat and conceal even one’s core energy. It belonged to the concealment arts displayed in Desolate Fortress’s martial repository.

An assassin’s secret technique. Jung Yeonshin repeated the words to himself. An assassin establishing a martial family was an absurd notion. An assassin who had washed their hands in a golden basin and retired from the martial world, however, was plausible enough.

This was the first time Heon Wonchang had said anything about his family, however little. Yeonshin nodded without revealing his thoughts. A peculiar relief seemed to enter Heon Wonchang’s eyes. He slowly continued.

“You could bury me in the ground anywhere, so long as you left an air hole. A little carriage rattling is nothing. There’s no need to worry about me. Go and show them your martial arts, Young Master Jung.”

“The injured man will stay safely hidden... If transporting you won’t be a problem either, that really would be reassuring.”

“Of course! I, the Desolate Fortress Sacred Warrior, will be no one’s burden!”

Heon Wonchang laughed heartily, only to choke and cough as though blood had risen in his throat. Shaking his head, Jung Yeonshin pushed away from the wall and left the room again. He visited the government office to borrow fine horses and a carriage, then explained the circumstances to wiji myohwa.

Her expression darkened at the mention of the Great Tortoise Breathing Method. She was an heir to one of the Nine Great Sects, which stood at the pinnacle of orthodox martial traditions. She could hardly welcome an assassin’s martial art.

“... You are both chivalrous warriors. I’ll guard the rear.”

Fortunately, wiji myohwa was broad-minded—a true hero who did not judge people by their martial arts. Jung Yeonshin thanked her with a martial salute.

And so two people and one half-dead corpse set out.

* * *

Xuzhou and Huizhou were not close. They lay at the northern and southern ends of Southern Zhili.

This time, they encountered a great many bandits. These were not the martial world’s forest outlaws, but commoners driven by a failed harvest to use their plows to hurt people. And crop failure, they were told, was not the only disaster. Perhaps because of the Blood Flame Cult’s uprising, bandits grew more numerous as they approached Huizhou.

“What else would the unorthodox factions live on? They just sink their teeth into the backs of commoners.”

Surprisingly, those words came from wiji myohwa. Whenever she spoke of the Blood Flame Cult, even her eyes grew sharp. She seemed to be speaking more freely because their lengthy journey together had brought them a little closer.

Whenever the bandits refrained from trying to kill them, they simply frightened them off with a display of presence. After doing this time and again, they finally reached their destination.

“We’ve arrived,” wiji myohwa said.

The two of them had, in fact, just buried Heon Wonchang in the ground nearby. They had no choice but to anticipate a fierce battle.

Jung Yeonshin gazed past the men guarding the gorge’s entrance. This was the border between Chizhou and Huizhou, a place called Azure Wild Valley. From time to time, he could feel waves of force colliding in the distance. As expected, this seemed to be no ordinary skirmish.

“You two.”

The men in the distance approached. Five of them had red hair, making their identity clear before they even drew near. One took the lead: a bald man with a square jaw. The waves of qi reaching Jung Yeonshin’s skin were quite powerful. He seemed to be an ordinary cultist on the verge of attaining the level of a Blood Master Swordsman. Some might have mistaken him for one already.

He spoke.

“You two look far from ordinary, boy and girl. Fine horses and a carriage, too. Leave everything you have right here and turn back.”

A finely finished carriage was a luxury item. Anyone could reasonably assume its owners carried plenty of travel money. The bandits they had encountered on the journey had thought the same.

But the Blood Flame cultists stopped ten paces away. They came no closer, carefully maintaining that distance.

‘So this is one of the unorthodox Thirteen skies.’

The man was reasonably perceptive. He seemed to have sensed something from Jung Yeonshin and wiji myohwa. Some of the bandits they had met earlier had been different. They had charged heedlessly toward wiji myohwa with designs on her, only to end up rolling across the ground.

“The character for ‘desolate’... Blue robes...?”

Another man, edging sideways, muttered to himself. He had sharp eyes. Suddenly, their tongues loosened.

“A blue robe of Desolate Fortress? At that age?”

“He must come from some illustrious family. Probably grew up swallowing spirit medicine like meals. Watch out for a single direct blow. His internal power alone will be tremendous. One mistake and we’re dead.”

“That’s all he has. We just need to crush him with skill. What magnificent prey.”

They began chattering among themselves. This was the Blood Flame Cult’s true face. They valued a mass of internal energy they could absorb more than their own lives. They were even making assumptions based on Jung Yeonshin’s appearance.

‘They don’t know me.’

A peculiar light entered his eyes. He seemed to have discovered a weakness of the Blood Flame Cult.

These men were ordinary cultists, not Blood Master Swordsmen. Fire ants. They were incomparably more numerous than the swordsmen. A heretical cult filled with fanatics was said to be especially strict about obedience to superiors. Those above gave orders; those below carried them out. There was no freedom. Information did not circulate easily.

The men began striding toward them. One even broke into a sprint using his lightness skill. It was as though the prize belonged to whoever grabbed it first.

wiji myohwa stepped forward. The instant her palm struck the leading man’s solar plexus, a surging pulse of core energy rose between them.

BOOM!

Dust scattered in every direction. A wave of force unleashed a howling gale that scoured even the rocks. The men charging alongside him tumbled helplessly across the ground.

Jung Yeonshin sprinted through the aftermath of the Zhongnan Sect’s Azure Cloud Heavenly Dipper Palm. He knew the battle between the Namgoong clan and the Blood Flame Cult was unfolding just ahead.

Without hesitation, he reached out with his left hand and seized a man’s face. It was the bald man, the one closest to a Blood Master Swordsman’s level.

“Ghk!”

Lately, Jung Yeonshin’s face was the only part of him that betrayed his age. His body, honed through the Movement Art, had matured with time and had recently been growing at an astonishing rate. His build was already approaching that of an adult. The fingers wrapped around the man’s face were long enough—meaning that, with internal energy, he could run while holding a grown man by the face.

THUD!

A storm rose beneath the foot he planted in the earth. The moment he pushed off, he felt it. Within the sharply defined muscles on either side of his thighs, the layered core energy of the Classic of Initiating Transcendence surged.

It was beginning.

BOOM!

He sprinted with the man still gripped by the face. The gorge before him scattered into hundreds of streaks that flashed past.

WHOOOOSH!

The wind sweeping past his ears struck with tremendous force.

If he wanted his battlefield achievements to stand out, shouldn’t they be as spectacular as possible? He had given it considerable thought.

Even as his lightness skill raised a gale, Jung Yeonshin drew his sword. Sunlight shimmered silver along the rippling pattern of its blade.

He burst onto the battlefield in an instant. The bottom of the gorge was as broad as a plain. Hundreds of people swarmed there, displaying their martial prowess. The extraordinary array of martial arts created the martial atmosphere of a war between thousands.

He paid it no heed. Jung Yeonshin leaped straight down and hurled the man in his grasp.

THUD!

“Wh-what?”

“Who the hell are you!”

His Mobility Arts seemed to wrap him in the wind peculiar to the noble race. His blue robes streamed out like an immortal’s robes.

WHOOOOM!

By then, the cry of the sword song was already rising from Northern Radiance. The Blood Flame cultists who had tormented him so relentlessly began to collapse, spewing blood.

THUD!

He deliberately struck the ground hard. The billowing dust was immediately shredded by a storm of force. The moment he landed, he sprinted again. Following Jung Yeonshin’s Northern Radiance, the course of the battle twisted in an instant. As though an invisible typhoon had unfurled around him, people fell sprawling in every direction.

Most died instantly. This was not power someone at Jung Yeonshin’s level should have been able to display. Somehow, the sword song formula he had adjusted beforehand spared the Namgoong clan any casualties.

He cut straight through the battlefield. In an instant, he reached a point where he could see the Namgoong clan’s leadership. A stunningly handsome young man with a kindly face, an energetic woman with a bronze complexion, a middle-aged man of overwhelming presence, and several elders all showed different emotions.

Then it happened.

“Lightning Genius of the Radiant Demon Squad. You actually came back.”

“I still remember that terrified face of yours. And now you’ve brought some strange martial art.”

He looked back to find familiar men smiling. They smiled despite knowing who Jung Yeonshin was. Blood Master Swordsmen, their glossy hair a mixture of black and red. The waves of qi the pair emitted together were far from ordinary.

Jung Yeonshin silently regarded them. A scene rose vividly before his eyes. That memory could never fade. It was the first time in his life he had fled. He understood why they looked so scornful. These were the men who had stood at the forefront during the Dragon-Phoenix Summit and hurled Thunderclap Bombs at him.

Every one of them was mad. They seemed utterly unconcerned with how many ordinary cultists died.

“Did you think joining the Namgoong clan would get you anywhere?”

One of them spoke, holding a Thunderclap Bomb he had silently produced like a hidden weapon. The surrounding martial artists visibly flinched. When the Dragon-Phoenix Summit had fallen apart, Jung Yeonshin at Huizhou’s Lotus Pavilion had been just like them.

A footstep fell.

This time was different. Jung Yeonshin advanced without stopping. He knew without looking back: the Namgoong clan’s strongest experts would be watching him.

He slowly parted his lips.

“You bastards. Let’s make one thing clear.”

He sheathed Northern Radiance and drew the familiar Desolate Sword in one fluid motion. Anyone could have recognized the bearing of an expert. The Desolate Sword’s blade emerged naturally and began to drink in the sunlight.

He adjusted his grip once. Its cold touch grew hot in an instant.

“You’re the rebels if you throw first. I bear no guilt.”

Jung Yeonshin spoke calmly.