A Martial Art For Swordsmen Under Heaven

Gongson Han silently stared toward the banquet hall, where chaos had suddenly erupted.

“…….”

This was, in a word, unprecedented.

Unable to tell whether words or swords were being exchanged inside the banquet hall at that very moment, Gongson Han repeatedly swallowed dryly.

From Gongson Han’s perspective, having served the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master for quite some time, the idea of Dokgo Mu-jin defeating him was utterly absurd.

The Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master was simply that accomplished a martial artist, while Dokgo Mu-jin had been an endlessly frail invalid.

Then why did he have this shitty feeling? Whenever he recalled the Sword Hero Gate Master’s expression, gestures, tone, and everything else from moments ago, the uneasy thought that the impossible might actually happen kept flashing through his mind.

“Haa…….”

After Gongson Han had stared at the second floor for some time, one of his subordinates spoke to him.

“What do you think is happening up there?”

Gongson Han answered without taking his eyes off the second floor.

“Who knows? I don’t either.”
“Come now, there’s no way our Sect Master would lose to that arrogant bastard. You’re worrying far too soon, Young Sect Master.”
“Right? Still…….”

Kwaaaaaang!

At that moment, a tremendous crash erupted upstairs. The banquet hall door came flying out in shattered pieces as a thick cloud of dust blanketed the area.

Gongson Han hurriedly covered his nose and mouth with one sleeve while using his other arm to wave away the pale dust hanging in the air like fog.

“What the hell is…….”

Before he could even grasp what was happening, another figure came hurtling down from the second floor at high speed.

Judging by the way it moved, was that a person flying through the air? If so, it had to be the Sword Name Gate’s Sect Master after losing to their Sect Master.

Gongson Han struggled to suppress his rising delight as he slowly approached the fallen figure. If it was the Sword Name Gate’s Sect Master, he intended to mock him to his heart’s content.

The figure obscured by dust drew closer and closer……and once it was finally within arm’s reach, Gongson Han smacked the Sword Name Gate’s Sect Master hard on the head.

“Take that, you stupid bastard!”
“…….”
“……Huh?”

The instant the figure’s features became clear, roughly fifty-eight thousand possible futures flashed through Gongson Han’s mind.

And most of those futures led to the same conclusion.

So……apparently, the impossible had gone and happened. Instead of Dokgo Mu-jin lying helplessly on the floor, the bear-like Sect Master of the Sword Hero Gate was sprawled there on his ass.

Meeting the Sword Hero Gate Master’s blazing glare, Gongson Han let out a rather bitter, hollow laugh.

“I’m fucked.”

After kicking the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master through the door, I slowly made my way down to the first floor.

After facing him myself, I knew for certain. The Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master was nowhere near a match for me.

In fact, there was probably no one left in Yongmyeong County who could rival me.

I’d long since surpassed the point where the bravado of men from some backwater town could make any difference.

In other words, that phrase I’d gotten into the habit of saying, ‘I am the strongest,’ was at least true as far as this town was concerned.

“……I am the strongest.”

I recited it one more time for no particular reason before continuing to beat the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master.

Once I reached the first floor, however, I found myself confused despite being the one who had done the beating.

The Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master was glaring at Gongson Han as though he wanted to kill him, while Gongson Han had his hands drawn together and his head lowered like a puppy that had just been scolded.

I picked at my ear while watching the situation unfold, then spoke.

“……Sect Master of the Sword Hero Gate.”

The Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master twisted his head toward me, then glared at me with murderous eyes as he spoke to Gongson Han.

“……Young Sect Master, I’ll hold you accountable after this is over.”
“……Yes.”

What in the world had happened between them? Had Gongson Han, after putting up with too much for too long, finally snapped and smacked him on the head?

‘Nah, that’s going too far.’

No matter what, what kind of sect had a Young Sect Master smacking the Sect Master over the head? I was curious about what had happened, but I didn’t bother asking.

Meanwhile, our dear Young Sect Master Gongson Han, who was apparently about to be held responsible for something, wore an expression of such despair that it looked as though the sky itself had collapsed.

But Gongson Han wasn’t going to be chewed out or beaten by the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master. That arrogant, brainless bear bastard was going to die by my hand before the night was over.

The Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master gripped the longsword at his waist once more, spat out a wad of bloody phlegm, and addressed me.

“Sect Master of the Sword Name Gate.”
“What?”
“What sort of fortuitous encounter did you have? I almost feel like congratulating you.”
“Thank you.”

I deliberately answered like the most polite young man imaginable, but that seemed to make the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master even angrier.

The enraged giant bear thrust his longsword once more and charged at me.

His sword strikes and ability to take a hit were certainly on a higher level than the others, but he was still nowhere near enough for me.

I deliberately did nothing but evade the Sword Hero Gate Master’s crude sword attacks without countering.

His unbearably crude first technique ended, followed by the second, and finally the third……then, with his face gone pale, the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master performed the first technique again, only faster.

“……That’s all?”

His skill was utterly pathetic. He was a failure as a martial artist, a failure as the Sect Master of a sword sect, and even a failure as a man of the Black Path.

How had someone this weak managed to rule like a king all this time, exploiting the weak, committing every manner of evil, and fattening his own belly?

I caught the Sword Hero Gate Master’s outstretched arm and crushed it with the strength of my grip.

“Kraaaaagh!”

The villain’s clear, ringing scream echoed out, and the instant the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master dropped his sword from his broken arm, I grabbed his face and slammed him into the floor.

Kuuuuung!

Was that the sound of the perfectly good floor breaking, or the Sword Hero Gate Master’s skull? Apparently, it was both.

When I loosened my grip slightly, I saw the Sword Hero Gate Master’s hollow expression beneath the blood pouring from his forehead.

Fear had replaced the anger on his face, while killing intent had replaced the amusement that had filled mine until now.

After carefully studying my expression, the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master spoke in a timid voice.

“Sect Master, wait.”
“Speak.”
“Do you intend to kill me?”

I gripped the neck of the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master where he lay on the floor as though I might snap it, then asked,

“Why? After tormenting so many people, now that it’s your turn to die, you’re getting scared? I don’t know how a bastard like you had the nerve to put Hero in your sect’s name. I may not be a chivalrous hero myself, but even I know a villain like you has nothing to do with righteousness or chivalry.”
“…….”
“What in the world could convince me to let you live? If you know a way, then open your damn mouth and tell me.”

Maybe being a bear meant he couldn’t understand human speech, because the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master remained silent for a long time.

After a silence bordering on complete stillness, the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master finally spoke with a half-resigned expression.

“……If you kill me, the Black Serpent Gate will move. They’ve been backing me all this time. Can you handle that?”
“Really?”
“Indeed. You don’t want a bloodbath sweeping through the town either, do you? The Black Serpent Gate is not known for mercy. First, if I……”

Kwaang!

Before I even let the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master finish speaking, I brought the Demon Wail Sword down and smashed his skull apart.

There was nothing to gain from listening to bullshit like that until the end. Bullshit was just bullshit.

With a splattering sound, dark-red blood and chunks of flesh burst from the Sword Hero Gate Master’s head and sprayed across my face, leaving the Demon Wail Sword drenched in blood.

Looking like a blood-soaked ghost, I muttered a curse under my breath.

“……I asked for a way to spare you, and you start spouting bullshit.”

A person dies when their skull gets smashed apart. There are no exceptions. The Cult Leader dies, the Alliance Leader dies, I die, and bastards like the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master who torment the weak in some backwater town die too.

Knowing that truth, I had spent my previous life cutting off and smashing countless heads with my sword, and right now I was doing the same damn thing all over again.

I felt not the slightest regret over the death of a villain. I roughly wiped the blood from my face and calmly looked around.

“…….”

The men around me stared with all manner of expressions.

Having lost their Sect Master and become unemployed in a single instant, they struggled to comprehend the situation with expressions caught halfway between fear and disbelief. Gongson Han was among them, of course.

With the bloodstained Demon Wail Sword resting over my shoulder, I slowly walked over to Gongson Han.

“Gongson Han, snap out of it.”

He still looked completely dazed, so I gave him a slap across the cheek.

“I said snap out of it, you bastard.”

Gongson Han clutched his swelling cheek and answered.

“Yes, yes.”
“As you can see, I won the fight between the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master and the Sword Name Gate’s Sect Master. Who won?”
“The Sect Master of the Sword Name Gate won.”
“Correct. However…….”

I looked around and spoke as though making a declaration.

“A Sect Master’s defeat doesn’t necessarily mean the sect itself has lost. If anyone wants to challenge me, I’ll welcome you with open arms. Anyone?”

Far from challenging me, no one even said a word. Apparently, that idiot Sect Master had managed to amass a fortune without earning even a speck of loyalty from his subordinates.

Of course, if anyone actually trusted a bastard like that, I probably would’ve killed him first…….

Either way, people like the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master deserved to disappear from the world. But I had no intention of slaughtering every last one of these dimwits along with him.

I watched the fear on the men’s faces before speaking to Gongson Han again.

“Gongson Han.”
“Go ahead.”
“From now on, I’m the Sect Master of the Sword Hero Gate.”
“Pardon?”

I grew tired halfway through speaking and plopped down on the floor before continuing.

“I mean exactly what I said. From now on, I’m your Sect Master. Is that difficult to understand?”
“But……aren’t you the Sect Master of the Sword Name Gate?”
“That’s also true.”
“…….”
“I’m the Sect Master of the Sword Hero Gate and the Sect Master of the Sword Name Gate. Just understand it that way and deal with it. From now on, I’ll take over all the weighty duties of the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master. Got it?”

Only then did Gongson Han understand what I meant and nod.

“Ah, understood.”
“Good.”

In other words, this was a kind of trap. If I started acting as the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master, then the Righteous Sword Gate and all the other trash that had been in bed with them would come crawling over on their own.

And for now, my plan was simple. I would merge the Sword Hero Gate, Righteous Sword Gate, and Sword Name Gate into a single sword sect.

There was no particular reason. When sects with similar tendencies clustered together, pointless trouble was bound to happen.

I jerked my chin toward the bear bastard with the smashed skull.

“Have your men clean up that bastard’s corpse, wipe up the blood, and clean the phlegm he spat out too. He really let that one fly earlier. Rotten bastard.”
“…….”
“Until then, I’m going to rest for a while. Give me a room.”
“You’re going to rest here?”
“Yeah. I’m planning to stay here for a while. If anyone comes looking for the Sect Master, call me.”
“Understood. I’ll prepare the finest room for you.”

As I climbed the stairs, I calmly organized my plans for what came next. There was no need to storm the Righteous Sword Gate immediately.

Once word of the Sword Hero Gate Master’s death spread, the Righteous Sword Gate would be the first to react anyway.

There was no need to chase down and beat someone who was going to crawl over to me on his own.

I’d simply hide like a rat and pounce when they arrived. The so-called Rat-Bastard Strategy. It was a pretty idiotic strategy, but then again, it really was an idiotic strategy.

Once I cleaned up all the surrounding sword sects and forces, united them as one, and finally spread the name of our combined sect throughout the realm…….

‘Wait. The sect’s name?’

Come to think of it, I’d decided to gather all these forces into one sect without ever thinking of what to call it.

What would be a good name? I thought long and hard, but I had always been terrible at naming things, so nothing particularly appealing came to mind.

Dokgo Mu-jin’s sect, Dokgo Mu-jin’s sword sect, Dokgo Mu-jin, Dokgo…….

“……Dokgo Gate?”

I shut myself away in the room the Sword Hero Gate’s Sect Master had used and devoted myself entirely to circulating my qi for a while.

External cultivation was indeed the foundation of combat, but that didn’t mean accumulating internal energy could be neglected. Internal energy was the foundation of all martial arts.

Martial artists were people who climbed the mountain known as martial arts, and the act of accumulating internal energy was the climb itself. How one climbed that mountain differed from sect to sect and faction to faction.

Just as the orthodox, unorthodox, and demonic paths differed in nature, their martial arts each possessed their own characteristics.

Of them all, the martial arts of the Demonic Path were the most ruthless and unnatural.

Demonic arts offered rapid progress in the early stages and tremendous power, but they also made it easy to suffer qi deviation, and one careless mistake could even result in being consumed by the art itself.

That was one reason so many people on the Demonic Path became monsters who had abandoned their humanity. Because when monsters create demonic arts, those arts give birth to more monsters…….

I too had learned a haphazard collection of such demonic arts.

A basic form of the Soul-Seizing Art, a demonic art that converted the true qi inside the body into demonic energy and released it, an art that raised one’s yang energy to produce Samadhi True Fire, and so on…….

Naturally, that also meant I’d suffered qi deviation countless times, fallen prey to inner demons, and on more than one occasion nearly failed to ever open my eyes again while circulating my qi.

But among them all, there was one demonic art I had used most often and made the focus of my training.

A sword martial art whose end no demonic martial artist had ever reached, and which none had truly mastered.

‘……Limitless Sword Art.’

Paradoxically, the Limitless Sword Art was less a demonic art of the Demonic Path and more a martial art that embodied the realms of a swordsman.

Most of it described how to master the sword, how to cloak a sword in qi, and how to release that qi outward.

In short, the Limitless Sword Art was a martial art that directly embodied the realms of the sword itself. Put another way, it was a brutally simple martial art that pursued the sword itself to its absolute limit.

There was only one reason why, despite such an utterly simple nature, not a single person had ever reached its end. The final realm of the Limitless Sword Art was none other than the realm of the Sword God.

I too had devoted all my time in my previous life to mastering the Limitless Sword Art, yet I had never even glimpsed its end.

A steep mountain could be climbed with enough effort, but how was anyone supposed to climb a sheer vertical cliff?

‘……How else? You just keep going as far as you can.’

In this life as well, I would begin cultivating the Limitless Sword Art. There was no special reason.

I had been the Sword Demon in my previous life, and in this life, I’m a swordsman. If I hadn’t reached the end in my last life, then I would simply reach it in this one.

That was why I hadn’t begun practicing any of the other demonic arts this time. From now on, everything I accumulate in my dantian and every martial insight I gain would be directed solely toward the Limitless Sword Art.

Come to think of it, my lifelong dream had always been nothing more than becoming the Sword God.

I had failed in my previous life because I had lost my way……so this time, I immersed myself in circulating my qi with the resolve that I would succeed without fail, absolutely, no matter what happened.

The Limitless Sword Art was broadly divided into five realms, each of which took the form of a sword.

The first realm, the Wooden Sword, represented pursuing the foundations and fundamentals of the sword, like a newly made wooden blade.

The second realm, the Iron Sword, represented refined technique and skill, like unbreakable steel.

The third realm, the Killing Sword, meant learning how to imbue the sword with emotions such as killing intent and wield them through the blade.

The fourth realm, the Transcendent Sword, meant transcending even those emotions, regaining perfect calm, and attaining Unity of Spirit and Sword.

The final realm of the Limitless Sword Art, the Limitless Sword, was exactly as its name suggested. Sword and man, man and sword.

It meant reaching an absolute realm of the sword beyond all forms. In other words, reaching the realm of the Sword God.

In truth, even conquering the first realm of this insane martial art was no easy feat.

After all, perfecting the foundations and fundamentals of the sword already meant reaching the very peak for an ordinary swordsman.

In my previous life, I had died without fully conquering the Transcendent Sword realm.

How far would I be able to climb this time? There was no way to know.

Either way, both then and now, my only goal was to reach the Limitless Sword and become the Sword God.

Since no one could see even an inch ahead in life, it was better to place meaning in maintaining an unbreakable resolve than in obsessing over the result.

Holding fast to the resolve that I would one day kill the Cult Leader and stand at the pinnacle of the sword……I finally finished circulating my qi and opened my eyes at the summit of the Wooden Sword realm.

“Phew…….”