"..."

Clad in a pure-blood robe and a demon mask, Jung Yeonshin slowly stepped forward.

For now, he had to pass himself off as one of the Blood Flame Cult's foremost rising disciples. The Seventh Apostle had told him that pure-blood robes were treasures bestowed upon the Apostles.

'My martial prowess still falls short of an Apostle's. I'll have to act like Go Jonghak.'

The Blood Flame Cult had its own nobility. Families as old as its headquarters had naturally formed an entrenched elite.

The Third Apostle's son had been one of them. Go Jonghak. The man who had ceaselessly tried to keep Jung Yeonshin in check at the headquarters.

He had died after thrusting a boy who had never learned martial arts at Yeonshin and demanding that he drain the boy's core energy. Yeonshin remembered snapping his neck.

He decided to impersonate the bastard.

TAP.

He kept his steps leisurely and his torso upright, carrying himself as though he looked down upon the whole world. He impressed the thought upon himself.

Outside the headquarters, no one was nobler than he was. They were all worthless vermin.

He approached Namgoong Mi's seat of honor without hesitation, discreetly gauging the distance between them.

"Hmm..."

"He doesn't seem to be anyone ordinary..."

The guests who called themselves orthodox martial artists could not move, even though they must have realized he belonged to the Blood Flame Cult.

Jung Yeonshin's appearance and the waves of qi emanating from him overwhelmed them.

Few in the local martial community could rival that presence. He was circulating the Demonic Asura Blood Art with the attainment of a Desolate Fortress blue robe.

One after another, they lowered their eyes. These people had long cowered before the unorthodox Profound Truth Sect.

They were nothing like the guests who had shouted indignantly at Namgoong Mi's prompting. Almost none of the martial artists dared show any spirit before Jung Yeonshin.

The Namgoong clan was different.

"What's a mere blood fiend doing here?"

"Are you an Apostle's blood relative?"

The Namgoong warriors immediately rose and reached for their swords, but Namgoong Mi lifted a hand slightly, a curious smile on her lips.

Her fingers, so smooth and white they might have been carved from jade, brought them to a halt.

"I like the color of this fruit."

Jung Yeonshin spoke with core energy still gathered in Yeomcheon, the acupoint at his neck. His strange voice resonated deeply, mingled with the cracking sounds he deliberately produced.

His unhurried steps brought him within arm's reach, diagonally to Namgoong Mi's left.

He smoothly picked up a piece of peach. Rather than launch straight into a fight, he intended to distance his assumed Blood Flame Cult persona from his true self.

His qi might feel different, but he could not change his build. He had to keep them from thinking of the Desolate Fortress's Lightning Genius.

'Words and actions nothing like my own.'

For the first time in his life, Jung Yeonshin meant to provoke someone. He was not confident. Could he pull it off?

"Fruit too fine for the rabble here."

He raised his indifferent voice a little, trying to sound arrogant. It suited him.

He was puzzled by how much more comfortable it felt than he had expected.

"..."

No one but the Namgoong experts raised their heads. Surprisingly, it seemed to have worked.

He had no idea how he looked, wearing a precious pure-blood robe and a demon mask while circulating the Demonic Asura Blood Art.

Did they see him as a true noble of the Blood Flame Cult?

Then Namgoong Mi's lips moved.

"I was about to take that. Don't you think white peach suits me?"

She slowly crossed her legs. His gaze met her faintly smiling eyes.

Her words continued smoothly.

"A blood fiend playing the noble before me. Could it be that you feel inferior to our house? You really don't know your place."

"You talk too much."

"What?"

"That's a busy mouth for a head that's about to come off."

Jung Yeonshin spoke languidly behind his demon mask.

Then he moved his hand.

He casually tossed the peach in his hand at Namgoong Mi's neck, ignoring the gasps around him.

She rose without dodging. The fallen fruit was lightly crushed beneath her fine leather shoe.

"You must have heard the rumors and come to suck out some core energy."

She smiled as she spoke.

"Kill him."

As she finished, Namgoong Mi roused the internal power throughout her body, recalling the waves of qi the blood-robed demon before her had displayed.

She could not afford to take him lightly. She intended to use the Changling Blossoms warriors as her hands and feet to gauge his strength.

'Before that, though.'

She would first slow him down with her qi arts.

The chill of the human-shaped snow ginseng surged icily from her energy core.

Enduring pain as though her blood vessels were burning, she raised a hand. A thin film of ice formed around her body, a shimmering ripple of five-colored light.

Its appearance alone befitted her noble standing. She expected its effect to be no less worthy.

WHOOSH!

It happened in an instant. The moment white mist burst from Namgoong Mi's entire body, the demon jerked to a stop.

The chill of her internal energy was faster than any sword strike. With a little smirk, she retreated in soft, light steps.

Changling Blossoms warriors rushed in from every direction. Chaos erupted in a heartbeat.

Food and wine scattered everywhere as the clash of swords rang out.

CLANG!

Jung Yeonshin felt the vibration travel up into his right hand around the sword hilt.

One man's attack had been fast, but he blocked it with the flat of his iron sword before he had even finished drawing it. His movements had indeed slowed.

The cold penetrating his body was no ordinary chill. It seemed best understood as a form of internal heavy-strike technique.

Even so, his muscular strength remained unchanged.

"Pathetic sword force."

Jung Yeonshin spoke calmly behind his demon mask.

His guard did not waver. The instant the Namgoong warrior flinched, he struck the man's face with the back of his left hand without delay.

A loud thud rang out. He felt his hand catch the man's jaw and sent him flying.

"Hagh!"

It was a deathly groan. The man's eyes rolled back as he flew away unconscious.

Jung Yeonshin knew the moment he delivered that blow. He could handle this without using the forms of his distinctive martial arts.

He had grown considerably stronger. At the very least, he was well beyond the bottom of the blue ranks.

He advanced without stopping. He could clear away the stray blades that might otherwise come flying at him first.

He was grateful for Namgoong Mi's decision to use her underlings as expendables.

'I have to keep fighting this way.'

Just as he greatly intensified the flow of his Demonic Asura Blood Art, another Namgoong warrior shouted urgently.

"Sword formation!"

A sword formation: a tactic in which several swordsmen gathered to strengthen the links between their forms.

Apparently, seeing Jung Yeonshin strike had convinced them to attack together. A world apart from the guests, who had already withdrawn far away, unfolded.

Five Changling Blossoms warriors faced the demon-masked figure.

Jung Yeonshin narrowed his eyes. The Namgoong men occupied every angle before him and swung their swords.

He immediately responded with the swift-sword formula, but the iron sword Namgoong Hwashin had procured for him moved only as fast as theirs.

The meridians throughout his body gradually began to ache. The invading cold was formidable.

'I've slowed down a great deal.'

It did not matter.

Moving slowly, he evaded and countered at once. His sense for measuring combat distance had reached the realm of instinct.

It remained extraordinarily keen despite the numbing sensation in his skin. He slipped past five blades by a hair's breadth and forced his own strikes through.

One each. Just one each. Five strikes were enough.

Jung Yeonshin drew his iron sword from the fallen warrior's abdomen. This had been the last one.

Blood trickled down the blade ever so slowly, drawing silence over the scene.

His pure scarlet robe seemed draped in a noble killing intent.

So much so that the blood of the Namgoong clan's Changling Blossoms warriors looked like filthy stains.

"..."

While everyone held their breath, Namgoong Mi had still not moved.

This was a battle between experts. A rash intervention could instead disrupt their attacks.

She was the master of Changling Blossoms. What did it matter how she used her underlings?

It was enough to watch how long the enemy could sustain the prowess he had shown.

Only then did Namgoong Mi step forward.

"You don't seem to have trained your eye technique very deeply."

She spoke as she slowly approached.

"But your sense of distance is quite exceptional. You judge your reach well. Were you born with it?"

Her tone was relaxed. She had seen the demon-masked figure's movements grow steadily slower.

The human-shaped snow ginseng's energy, assimilated through agony, was that powerful. This internal power belonged to another realm.

Jung Yeonshin stood still and watched her.

A frostbitten sensation was sweeping through his entire body. Exposure to just one attack had left a considerable effect.

He had expected as much, but without having learned the Movement Art, he would never even have considered challenging her.

'I can't use my distinctive martial arts.'

He could not deploy his new palm technique here. Its characteristics were unmistakable.

He could use it only when revealing his identity no longer mattered.

With soft, light footfalls, Namgoong Mi approached, smiling.

She did not look careless, yet she brazenly closed the distance.

Her confidence in her cold internal power seemed immense. The martial art justified it.

She understood her own internal energy completely. She had accurately discerned that Jung Yeonshin was beginning to struggle to hold himself upright.

"Shall we have a look?"

She came as close as a lover and extended a snow-white hand, lightly touching the demon mask covering Jung Yeonshin's face.

"At that ugly face first."

Her lips curved into a thin arc. The gesture looked utterly defenseless.

It laid her vicious nature bare.

To a fellow martial artist, such treatment was the greatest possible humiliation.

'That's it.'

Jung Yeonshin thought. His talk of ten moves had concerned a formal duel.

He had no intention of insisting on a fair and honorable fight. He had exposed an opening to lure her in, but had not expected her to come this close.

His martial world was different from hers. It was a struggle to live.

He wanted an easy victory over an opponent he had never faced before.

'I can do it. The Supreme Flame Dragon is stronger.'

The Hwangbo young clan head, who had refined the innate heat of his Solar Divine Meridians, possessed denser internal energy.

Jung Yeonshin recalled the technique he had devised after seeing him.

As it turned out, he had been told that many of those called experts in the martial world could use this art.

'True Samadhi Fire.'

He had been using it since the moment she began to approach. It was a technique that applied vibration to core energy, starting with its smallest units.

Movement itself generated heat. It was different from the instantaneous heat emission of the Supreme Flame Dragon, born with Solar Divine Meridians.

This was an internal-energy master's delicate manipulation of core energy.

HUM.

The resonance came from within his body.

He felt it clearly. The chill in his meridians crackled as it burned away.

His entire body, made as sturdy as steel by the Movement Art, readily endured the heat and vibration. The circulation pathways of the Demonic Asura Blood Art carried a destructive current throughout him.

A crackling sensation arose in every acupoint, through his twelve primary meridians, his eight extraordinary meridians, and beyond.

He could do this all day. His enemy had not noticed the thaw within him.

Jung Yeonshin immediately activated the radiant demon arts.

The instant the upper dantian in his head blazed fiercely, the Radiant Demon Squad's exclusive art drew in every kind of information.

Their postures, Namgoong Mi's laughter-tinged breath, even her gaze fixed on his mask.

Amid it all, a single invisible trajectory arose. It was a ray of light in his mind, visible only to Jung Yeonshin.

The combat path of the radiant demon arts. The boy followed it exactly. The move began at his right elbow, his shoulder barely shifting at the very end.

His hand glided forward.

Just before Namgoong Mi could remove his mask, he seized her throat.

The movement was perfectly natural.

Namgoong Mi's unshakable confidence, the radiant demon arts' combat path advancing from her blind spot, the distance reduced to nothing, and his strike's sudden acceleration after eradicating the cold—all combined into the spectacle of an opponent subdued in a single move.

The Radiant Demon Squad's Lightning Genius was a fighter.

"...!"

Her smooth neck lay in his firm grip. Namgoong Mi's eyes widened to their limit.

Had she ever been subdued so absurdly in her life? She would never even have seen or heard of such a thing.

Jung Yeonshin slowly spoke.

"A noble of the World of Blood that shall encompass all beneath heaven commands you."

"Hngh...!"

"Lowborn wretch of Namgoong."

The Blood Art responded to his words. It felt as though the body honed by his Movement Art had been thrown wide open.

The mental image of this moment joined the intent that formed the formula.

'You subjected Young Master Namgoong's mother to every humiliation, he said.'

Someone who lacked for nothing had committed every kind of cruelty. Jung Yeonshin considered it.

Was he not more worthy of dignity than this Namgoong Mi? It was a thought he had never had before.

An arrogant intent sprouted in his mind.

He spoke.

"Kneel."

It was before a large audience. The moment he put sincerity into his words, he felt a curious sensation.

The energy drawn into the circulating current of the Demonic Asura Blood Art increased slightly. In other words, he was accumulating more qi.

The torrent of core energy seemed to laugh wickedly, as though telling him this was how the Blood Art should be used.

'This, too, is enlightenment.'

Jung Yeonshin spoke once more. This time, his voice held undiluted contempt.

"What are you waiting for, you wretch?"

"Y-you... You..."

Namgoong Mi could not finish. Nor did she show any sign of moving.

He had sealed a paralysis point the moment he seized her throat. He had immobilized her through pressure-point sealing.

Even if she wanted to kneel, she could not. Control of her body lay in Jung Yeonshin's grasp.

"Still not moving. You're quite defiant."

"Kh... Kgh..."

The boy holding Namgoong Mi aloft by the throat chuckled low behind his demon mask.

The hem of his pure-blood robe, reaching down to his feet, fluttered like drifting blood. It was a grotesque yet mysterious sight.