Jung Yeonshin was not particularly offended. He had not stepped aside because the Divine Sword Squad Leader promised him a reward. It had simply happened before he knew it.

What struck him more was the dissonance between the squad leader's different sides. An absolute master who had displayed godlike might was now talking like a frivolous fool. It was decidedly awkward.

"You've swindled him, Squad Leader. That's outright deception."

Yeon Soha furrowed his brow and continued.

"I knew it. It's always like this. You and Granny Ak are the ones who disgrace our unit. You're dragging our dignity through the mud in front of a junior you've only just met."

"No, it wasn't a lie."

The Divine Sword Squad Leader shook his head.

"Lightning Genius. I hope you won't misunderstand. I meant friendship with our Divine Sword Unit. That's something worth boasting of in its own..."

"Utterly shameless. You must be finding those internal injuries easy to manage."

Ak Surim snorted, standing with her weight on one leg. She had the manner of a village hooligan.

With the face of a girl who looked about Jung Yeonshin's age, she openly mocked the squad leader. He found her peculiar as well.

"I keep my promises. What do you say? Travel with our unit until we've passed Xiangyang."

"We can't go all the way back to the fortress. We have another mission afterward. It's always like that... Never a moment to rest."

Yeon Soha was quick to interject.

"..."

Jung Yeonshin did not answer. He merely stared at the Divine Sword Squad Leader.

Under his sustained gaze, the man fussed with his purple robe and turned his head slightly away—a stark contrast to how he had looked in battle.

That was when it happened.

It began faintly.

Jung Yeonshin suddenly felt a vibration beneath his feet. This was different from the aftershock of a martial stomp.

It was a strange rumbling that seemed to rise from very far away. Slowly, faint tremors layered over one another and seeped into the soles of his feet.

"Ah...?"

Ak Surim's expression turned alarmed.

The sound coming from above was ominous. It was growing louder.

In less than a breath, everyone there seemed to sense what was coming. At the same time, the crowd spread along the ridges began scattering, shouting over one another.

"The mountain god...! The mountain god is angry!"

"Isn't this heaven's punishment for the Desolate Fortress's atrocities?"

"A landslide! It's a landslide!"

Among the cries were the voices of those who lived off the Namgoong clan's scraps in Huizhou. But no one paid them any attention.

"We'd better get out of here, hadn't we?"

Ak Surim's dazed murmur set them in motion. Waves of qi rose from Yeon Soha, the Divine Sword Squad Leader, and the other masters of the Divine Sword Unit.

"This is all because you made such a racket fighting the Namgoong clan head..."

"Head out through the rear! Get the White Qilin first!"

Landslide was the right word. Dust rose from several of the enormous peaks lining both sides of Azure Wild Valley.

It was an immense, choking cloud of yellow-brown dust. Earth began sweeping down along with heaps of rock.

RUMBLE!

Jung Yeonshin, too, first glanced toward Namgoong Hwashin. A powerfully built senior of the Divine Sword Unit had slung him over a shoulder like a bundle.

Nature had brought the duels to an end. This catastrophe had been caused by the fierce battle between the Divine Sword Squad Leader and the Namgoong clan head.

'They created a natural disaster with human bodies.'

WHUMP!

Jung Yeonshin ran alongside the senior carrying Namgoong Hwashin, a handsome middle-aged man.

The man flashed him a grin, then flinched at the sight of Ma Yeonjeok keeping pace beside the boy.

"What are you doing? Did you trade your cultivation for a slug?"

Running ahead, Ak Surim shouted shrilly over her shoulder.

She raced along with a spear strapped to her small back, looking more at ease than any other warrior in the Divine Sword Unit. Even as she ran, she kept turning this way and that. Only her face belonged to a girl. She watched over the masters like a mother looking after her children.

The problem, rather, was the faintly smiling Divine Sword Squad Leader.

His movements were slow. Given his martial prowess, it was difficult to believe, but he genuinely seemed to be struggling to keep up.

The waves of qi that had been arranged with absolute precision were unraveling like a tangled skein.

Jung Yeonshin's eyes widened slightly.

'His internal injuries are severe. And the core energy he's expended... I can't even begin to estimate it.'

He recalled the moments just after the Namgoong clan head's death. Ak Surim had told the squad leader, as if in passing, to steady the breathing of his mental cultivation method.

It had been broad daylight, with countless martial artists watching. How heavy was the burden borne by the fortress's foremost master under the Desolate Fortress Master?

Jung Yeonshin felt the reality of the fortress's position anew.

The man could not allow anyone to see a weakness.

What if he showed frailty before all those sects? The challenges the Desolate Fortress would face from that moment onward...

'I can't even imagine.'

So the boy thought.

Then he became completely certain. The Divine Sword Squad Leader was concealing his internal injuries through endurance as superhuman as his martial prowess.

He tried to fathom what lay behind the duel's overwhelmingly swift conclusion. Had the squad leader been desperately throwing every ounce of strength into it?

It was said that each of the Eight Great Family heads could stand as an absolute power in Murim.

Could any martial artist face the Namgoong clan head and emerge unscathed? No one came to mind other than the transcendent Desolate Fortress Master.

Limited though his experience was, that held true across the entire Central Plains. The squad leader, who had escaped with nothing worse than grievous internal injuries, was an unreal existence.

"Squad Leader, shall I carry you on my back?"

Yeon Soha spoke lightly.

Jung Yeonshin was not the only one who had noticed. The Divine Sword Unit was the Desolate Fortress's foremost fighting force. Many of its members possessed insight equal to the boy's.

Their leader's refusal to show it did not mean they could fail to discern the purple-robed master's abnormal condition.

Several had already quietly gathered around him.

"Hmm. That would stand out too much."

The Divine Sword Squad Leader did not bother denying it.

"I'm struggling here, so stop talking to me. All of you."

Still joking, he pushed harder. His thick thighs seemed to be propelling him through sheer bodily strength.

Despite his scholarly looks, his body was honed to an extraordinary degree. Yet his core energy seemed unable to support it.

WHUMP!

Jung Yeonshin moved a little farther forward.

Up close, it was unmistakable. Every step the man took was terribly heavy. At this point, the problem was stamina.

RUMBLE!

"We need to get somewhere out of sight, quickly."

Yeon Soha muttered as thunderous sounds pursued them.

He appeared to be one of the Divine Sword Unit's actual youngest members, but his usual buoyant air had vanished.

The same was true of Ak Surim. She irritably flicked aside the hair falling across her face and kept glancing at the squad leader.

"Faster! We don't know how far it'll spread!"

"Those people—aren't they from the Desolate Fortress? They're already all the way over here..."

Even amid the chaos, many martial artists were fleeing along the paths between Azure Wild Valley's ridges and gorges.

Every one of them knew lightness skills. There was something disquieting about the sidelong looks they cast at the squad leader and the other Desolate Fortress masters.

Huizhou in Southern Zhili was entirely the Namgoong clan's territory. How many people here were bound by debts and grudges to the direct-line family members killed today?

Countless people would be tied to them by favors and shared interests, as well as enmity.

"If someone could guide his core energy through one circulation, he'd be a little better..."

Ak Surim bit her lip lightly. Their pace was far too slow for the Divine Sword Squad's reputation. They were matching the speed of their leader, who had just fought a fierce battle.

"The squad leader himself is the only one who could do that while running with a lightness skill."

Yeon Soha spoke almost in a whisper, surveying their surroundings.

There were masters among the martial artists fleeing nature's wrath.

That meant some of the crowd had enough breathing room to look around. That was what made this dangerous.

Anyone who kept watching the Divine Sword Unit would inevitably find their pace suspicious.

'At least they're a long way off. Not even masters could hear an ordinary speaking voice from there.'

It would have been better if they were among common folk. But the foremost warrior of the Desolate Fortress's Divine Sword Squad could not appear weak before the martial world.

RUMBLE! RUMBLE!

Now the inner walls of the gorge were collapsing. Nature's fury, roused by martial arts, approached as a catastrophe beyond their power to resist.

Jung Yeonshin studied the faces of the Divine Sword Unit's masters. Their easy composure, which had suggested they could trade jokes even if the sky fell, was fading.

This was a crisis. With the entire martial world's attention focused on this event, there would be no shortage of people here openly hostile to the Desolate Fortress.

'There's a world of difference between supposition and certainty.'

Could two or three of the Eight Great Family heads join forces and kill the Divine Sword Squad Leader? Anyone could say so.

Few would deny it, either. The history of Murim had shown that no matter how high one's martial prowess reached, opponents would always emerge.

But actually displaying weakness was another matter. The time and place made it all the more significant.

"Squad Leader, breathe properly! We're going to be slaughtered! Think how much trouble we've stirred up!"

"There are an incredible number of bastards gathered here. It looks like three or four of the Thirteen skies came to watch, too. This place is full of scum who'd join forces and bury us first if the mood took them. Without you, we'll be in a bloody battle at once."

"The White Qilin would certainly die."

It was Yeon Soha and the other masters of the Divine Sword Unit. The words they shouted in breathy whispers were desperate.

It was almost comical. Jung Yeonshin thought calmly that they ought to use sound transmission instead.

The Divine Sword Squad Leader gave a faint chuckle and put more strength into his body. A long breath escaped through his nose above tightly pressed lips.

He resembled a wounded tiger fleeing while pretending nothing was wrong.

Packs of wildcats were running with him on every side, after all. At its core, the Desolate Fortress was the enemy of the entire martial world.

The Nine Great Sects, including Zhongnan and Shaolin, which had treated Jung Yeonshin with chivalry, were exceptionally fair-minded.

"Grandfather."

"Speak, Yeonshin."

Ma Yeonjeok answered evenly. Running beside him, he looked like a domineering immortal.

"Can't you use a lightness skill and circulate core energy to soothe internal injuries at the same time? You're a purple-robed master too."

Jung Yeonshin asked directly. At the purple rank, all three energy cores should have been honed to an extraordinary degree.

Dividing one's internal energy between separate operations belonged to the realm of supreme sensory control. Ordinarily, it defied common sense. That meant the upper dantian played a major role.

"... It would be difficult for me now."

After a brief silence, Ma Yeonjeok continued.

"The Ma clan's martial arts are truly fierce and swift. Strength builds quickly, but it also begins to deteriorate early. Unlike the orthodox martial arts of the Nine Great Sects, ours make it difficult to maintain one's capabilities. They merely make it easy to attain supreme martial might while young."

"Which is how you helped yourself to the squad leader's seat when you were still a wet-behind-the-ears brat."

Ak Surim had drawn closer. She spoke with a snort, and Ma Yeonjeok's eyes widened.

"A brat? You Ak whelp were a blue-robed snot-nose back then!"

"How nice to be so old. Calling someone a snot-nose like some brat yourself? Let's maintain a little dignity, former squad leader."

After snapping back, she turned her gaze.

Her eyes met Jung Yeonshin's through her constantly swaying hair. She flicked it back; it was blacker than even her black robe.

"Boy. You have a way, don't you? You've been looking around with those bright eyes all this time."

"... I do."

"Come to think of it, you seem quite good at using your upper dantian. I could tell from your attacks. Your sense of timing was strange, even though you haven't entered the higher realms. Yes! Hurry up! Do it for him!"

The insight of a black-robed supreme master who had undergone Rejuvenation was indeed exceptional.

Jung Yeonshin fell silent for a moment. Ak Surim immediately began chattering insistently.

"Why? What's the problem?"

"For the squad leader to entrust his Gate of Life pressure point to a martial artist he's only just met..."

"What do you mean?"

It was the Divine Sword Squad Leader who asked. His breathing was now noticeably ragged.

At the same time, warning voices rang out from both flanks of the Divine Sword Squad's group.

"Aren't those the Martial Dragon Society bastards? They're coming right down the gorge. Looks like they're determined to check. One burst of qi from the squad leader would send them straight back on their way."

"The Martial Alliance is up on the left, too. I can see Lingering Spirits and the Blood Flame Cult as well. Those blood fiends never stay exterminated."

They had named four of the Thirteen skies. Still running, Ak Surim drew alongside Jung Yeonshin.

The waves of qi she released carried even her scent sharply to him.

"Lightning Genius. Is that blue robe and its gleaming golden 'Desolate' character just decoration? If we can't trust that, what can we trust? Squad Leader, say something. His energy detection looks extraordinarily good."

"Lightning Genius. You have my permission to lay hands upon my august person."

The Divine Sword Squad Leader remained playful even in a crisis.

Ak Surim caught the back of Jung Yeonshin's hand with her small one.

There was not a trace of hesitation as she guided it toward the squad leader's back.

Her palm, restored to that of a young girl, was remarkably soft.

'Her calluses are thin. Rejuvenation isn't all good, either.'

He thought this as he roused the core energy of his Jung Clan Dynamic Art.

If Rejuvenation meant losing the entire body one had forged through long years of training, it was something he might only consider once he was very old.

Was it because he had overcome a great mountain? His thoughts continued even as he placed his hand against the Divine Sword Squad Leader's back.

'Very old...? Right. First, I want to grow old.'

That was the boy's wish. He would also have to stay alive to ponder the question the Blue Qilin had left him.