The Scholar Divine Sword Has Come!

What business could be so urgent that she had to go off and see to it with me, the man she wanted dead, standing right in front of her?

Our party hurried after the Beggars’ Sect men, tracking the Demonic Cult.

What is Oh Ju-hyang after?

I had left Yeo-seol behind at the inn. Five escorts had stayed with her, men whose wounds had not healed enough to make a fight easy for them, and with them there I could keep from worrying overmuch about her.

Beggars we met here and there along the streets pointed us the way, and we had only to move as they pointed for the trail to hold. Half an hour on, the beggar we met where the woods began pointed to one place.

Paeng So-un pulled ahead of the rest of us and made to go into the woods.

“Hold! Wait a moment!”

At my word the party came to a stop. Pressed as we were for the chase, being brought up short like that had Dang Jin-ok and Jegal Do-won openly frowning at me.

“What is the matter?”

I put my question to the Beggars’ Sect man.

“Is this the right way?”

He nodded without turning a hair.

“Yes. This way.”

I looked him full in the face, because the feeling the Flying Dantian sent me came from the opposite side. I set the three spirit energies turning and read his blood flow.

Just as I thought! He is lying. And yet he looked every inch the Beggars’ Sect man, beyond any doubt.

The Beggars’ Sect man who had been guiding us opened his mouth.

“What is the matter?”

Seeing that I seemed to doubt the man who had pointed out the way, he added a word.

“This beggar is a fellow who has been working our district for better than three years.”

Which was to say there was no doubting that he was a beggar.

“A spy of the Demonic Cult, then. If he has been here from three years back, does that mean the Demonic Cult laid its plans from before that? Is there a trap if we go this way?”

At my words the Beggars’ Sect man started, then bolted off in the very direction he had pointed.

“What is this!”

Paeng So-un, startled at the beggar’s flight, went after him. I raised a hand, plucked a leaf from over my head and threw it.

— Fwing!

— Thock!

The leaf struck him square on the back of the skull, and the fellow, unable to master the force of his own running, pitched forward and went down headlong.

The Beggars’ Sect man looked the fallen beggar over, came back and grew angry.

“What is the meaning of this? Why have you killed him?”

Whether he still took the beggar who had fled for one of the Beggars’ Sect or not, the Beggars’ Sect member flew into a rage.

“That Beggars’ Sect man was leading us in the opposite direction just now. What would that mean, do you suppose?”

“There is no reason for him to give a false direction. And how is it that you are so certain of it?”

I was about to give the answer I had half prepared when Paeng So-un spoke up in my stead.

“This elder brother of mine knows the mind-reading art.”

“The mind-reading art? What is this, some child’s game?”

When the Beggars’ Sect man snorted a laugh as if it were absurd, Paeng So-un took offense and shouted.

“Then how else would he know that beggar had lied? Do you know who this gentleman is? He is the Scholar Divine Sword, Scholar Cheon Tae-san.”

At that the Beggars’ Sect man’s eyes went round.

“Truly?”

I gave no answer and turned the other way.

“If you wish to go that way, go that way. I shall be going this way.”

At my word the party followed in the direction I had taken.

“From here on, still your presence as far as you are able.”

I ran in the direction the Flying Dantian could be felt.

Paeng So-un came up beside me and whispered.

“But how in the world did you know?”

He said it because he too knew the tale was absurd.

“When I fought at the docks before and threw those papers, I had smeared them with Thousand-Mile Fragrance. Though a thousand miles lie between, one can still feel Thousand-Mile Fragrance.”

“Ah, so that is how you knew at once even when she was across the way from us.”

“That is so.”

“Indeed, you are thorough to the last, elder brother.”

“I shall look at how things stand, and if it seems dangerous I will not step in.”

With the martial power our party had now, if we took on Oh Ju-hyang and her followers, I might come out of it alive, but the rest of them would be more than wiped out.

“Once the Beggars’ Sect elites come before long, will it not be a fight worth having?”

I nodded at Paeng So-un’s words.

To fight them on even terms, some hundreds at the least would have to come.

I did not look for so very much.

“Kill them!”

“Hold them off!”

“Yaaagh!”

From far off came the din of weapons clashing, and screams of every kind with it. We put on speed and ran for the place of the fighting. Clearing the woods, we came in sight of two hundred-odd men tangled together and fighting. A battle on a large scale was under way.

Paeng So-un muttered.

“That is the Azure Dragon Corps.”

Those in the Azure Dragon Corps’ martial robes came to near fifty.

“Eh? Those are Dang Sect people.”

Jegal Do-won opened his mouth.

The Dang Sect warriors looked to be above fifty as well.

For all that Oh Ju-hyang and her followers were running riot, the Azure Dragon Corps and the Dang Sect warriors were holding them off well. What held them was the poison the Dang Sect was scattering. In a place like this the Dang Sect’s worth showed itself. Peak masters though Oh Ju-hyang and her followers were, they could not make light of the Dang Sect’s poison.

“What is that bastard doing here?”

Dang Jin-ok spat it out, a coarse curse and a worried word in one.

At the head of the Dang Sect’s fighting line stood a young man, scattering hidden weapons and poison like a madman.

Since it seemed nobody knew him, Jegal Do-won spoke up.

“That is Dang Ji-in. Young Master Dang Jin-ok’s younger brother.”

Paeng So-un nodded.

“Ah, Dang Ji-in. The Dang Sect’s hellion.”

Dang Jin-ok must have felt the sting of it, the Murim Alliance’s own hellion calling the brother he doted on the Dang Sect’s hellion, and he glared at Paeng So-un.

“He is my younger brother. Guard your tongue, Young Master Paeng.”

“Ought we not to step into the fight ourselves?”

With the Dang Sect’s warriors in a fight for their lives, Dang Jin-ok was in a fever to move. Dang Ga-ryeong already had both hands full of hidden weapons and had set herself to fight.

And yet it puzzled me. Oh Ju-hyang had left me behind and come all this way for no more than this battle?

Why has the Demonic Cult’s Fourteenth Pavilion Master come out this far?

Oh Ju-hyang was guarding a young man who had been left senseless. He was glaring at Dang Ji-in.

A young man Oh Ju-hyang guards…

I looked him over carefully. And then I saw a blood dragon embroidered on the left breast of his martial robes, and I knew. That mark, even in the Demonic Cult, only one sort could wear.

A mark none may wear but the three disciples of Jeok Cheol-mok, the Demonic Cult Leader. And by how young he is, this will be the third disciple, Mo Dong-gwak.

Above all, seeing how Oh Ju-hyang prized the young man so, I was certain of it. For she was a Pavilion Master who backed Mo Dong-gwak.

No wonder she had no choice but to put this ahead of her revenge on me.

And yet Mo Dong-gwak was known as a master past the peak level, and he had been taken down as easily as that?

Oh Ju-hyang shouted out the answer to my question for me.

“Take Dang Ji-in alive! We must find the antidote to the Formless Poison!”

Hearing that, Dang Jin-ok and Dang Ga-ryeong went pale.

“That mad bastard! He brought the Formless Poison with him?”

“Has the youngest lost his mind? There is no chance the elders of the house gave him that, so it seems he brought it out in secret…”

“No wonder. I did think they were holding off the Demonic Cult wretches with their innate true qi amplified rather too well.”

Soaked in blood, Dang Ji-in stood at the head of them with madness on him, fighting in a trance. What was more, at a single gesture of his hand, Demonic Cult men with their innate true qi amplified dropped two and three at a time.

So that is the Formless Poison.

A poison without color or smell, the mightiest there is. It could not be seen, so it could not be avoided, and a man was simply taken by it. Transformation Realm or Mystic Realm, it was said, against the Formless Poison a man could only be taken.

“Push them harder! The poison will run out before long!”

The Demonic Cult men shouted from the rear.

“There is no chance the Formless Poison lasts forever!”

The Formless Poison alone was holding this fight in any kind of balance. And sure enough, once it ran out, Dang Ji-in was as good as a dead man. To my eyes he seemed to be fighting in order to die.

Dang Jin-ok came over to me. Never until now had he come so close.

“Master Scholar Cheon.”

More than that, his manner of speech was positively deferential. His lips were trembling a little. It clearly cost him something to get the words out at all.

“Save my younger brother, I beg you. There is no one I can lean on now but you, Master Scholar Cheon.”

Now that her own brother had forced the words out at such cost, Dang Ga-ryeong pressed in beside him.

“I ask it of you. Please save my younger brother. I will repay the kindness.”

Dang Ji-in was thrashing about in the very middle of the battlefield. Saving him meant risking a push into the center of the fighting ground. Had he been out at the edge of it, neither Dang Jin-ok nor Dang Ga-ryeong would have asked me at all.

“We will of course take your back.”

At Dang Jin-ok’s word I nodded. I would have to stay a while at the Dang Sect, so putting these people in my debt was no bad thing. A selfish thought, to be sure, but this was not a business to be settled purely out of chivalrous spirit.

“Let us go. Let us save him first, and reckon up the kindness after.”

When I said a thing so utterly grasping, Dang Jin-ok’s face wore, if anything, a look of relief. There were a fair number of men who thought as he did, that no true chivalrous hero existed in this world.

I spoke, meaning to step into the fight.

“Have a care for yourselves, all of you. And as far as you can, join with the Beggars’ Sect masters when they come.”

I was on the point of flinging myself forward.

Paeng So-un raised his internal force and cried out.

“The Scholar Divine Sword has come! The very Scholar Divine Sword who gave the Demonic Cult’s Fourteenth Pavilion Master Oh Ju-hyang a thrashing and sent the Twelfth Pavilion Master running for his life! The master who killed the Iron-Bear Ring Saber, Corps Chief of the Demonic Cult’s Sacred Heaven Iron-Blood Corps!”

At Paeng So-un’s words my face went hot. There was nobody on earth, at any rate, who ran wild the way he did. He had set himself deliberately to shame me, I thought.

“Whoaa! It is the Scholar Divine Sword! The Murim Alliance’s secret weapon has come!”

“Mm?”

I started at the sound of the Azure Dragon Corps cheering.

They know me?

Paeng So-un spoke with a proud face.

“Hahaha, elder brother. Elder brother will not know of it. The rumor of the Scholar Divine Sword has spread now not only through Jiangxi but into Sichuan and Hunan. Did I not go round a few wine houses at night on the way here? Even there the storytellers were telling tales of my elder brother.”

I let out a long sigh. This was no time for lamenting.

Dang Ji-in’s Formless Poison must have run out; he could scatter no more of it and was being driven back fast. For all that the Dang Sect’s warriors spent their last strength to shield him, they were no match for the Demonic Cult warriors with their innate true qi amplified.

“Kill that fellow and find the antidote to the Formless Poison!”

Oh Ju-hyang shouted at the top of her voice.

I brought every inner elixir out of the leather pouch. I threw them up into the air and ran. At the same moment the inner-elixir beads shot out all together like lightning.

— Fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing!

Inner elixirs of every color pierced clean through the Demonic Cult warriors’ skulls.

— Thock-thock-thock-thock-thock!

Even in the middle of a battle, heads bursting made no small sound, and the men fighting faltered.

Twenty inner elixirs made a road.

I picked up a fallen sword, drove the three spirit energies to their utmost, and brought out the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique’s Dragon’s Breath Flooding the Sea. Spirit energy gathered on the blade, and an azure dragon sprang out. The spirit energy became sword qi and went forward, sweeping everything about it. Even to my own eyes it was a grand spectacle.

With that, a road was opened clear to where Dang Ji-in stood. I ran for him, swinging the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique in a trance.

“Whoaa! It is the Scholar Divine Sword!”

To think I should ever be cheered like this by the Murim Alliance’s Azure Dragon Corps warriors.

Dang Ji-in gazed at me with longing admiration in his eyes.

“Sp- splendid. Damn splendid!”

Just then Dang Jin-ok’s sharp voice rang out from behind.

“You madman! Have you lost your mind? Do you know where you are? Come here!”

To Dang Jin-ok and Dang Ga-ryeong alike, Dang Ji-in seemed to be a little brother still.

“Eh? Brother, you’re missing an arm?”

“I lost it fighting the Demonic Cult. Those fellows are strong. This is no time to be showing off.”

“You sons of bitches! To dare cut off my brother’s arm!”

All at once Dang Ji-in shot forward, scattering hidden weapons.

“Hey!”

I caught hold of Dang Jin-ok as he made to go forward.

“Stay here.”

I went back to Dang Ji-in’s side and summoned an azure dragon at the Demonic Cult martial artists rushing in. The azure dragon carried such force as it went forward that it looked to be writhing.

“Uwaaaagh!”

The Demonic Cult martial artists could not get clear, and where they struck the azure dragon their bodies were torn apart. The azure dragon passed, and as Demonic Cult men filled the space and came pouring in, I waved a hand and bored holes through their heads with the inner elixirs floating in the air.

— Thock-thock-thock-thock!

As the Demonic Cult men went down pouring fresh blood from their brows, Dang Ji-in looked at me with awe in his eyes and asked.

“Scholar Divine Sword. What are those hidden weapons? Iron pellets?”

That he could take an interest in my inner elixirs even in the thick of this settled it. The fellow was mad through and through, and no mistake.

I bored holes with the inner elixirs through the brows of the Demonic Cult warriors rushing in about me. Any who dodged even that died with his heart run through by my sword. Having taken heavy losses from me, they fell back.

Oh Ju-hyang glared at me, holding the young man up. With the battle fallen into a lull for a moment on account of me alone, she settled on something and spoke to one of her followers nearby.

“Take the Third Young Master and go.”

When the follower looked at her, Oh Ju-hyang went on.

“I shall stay here and get the antidote to the Formless Poison. And if I cannot get it, I shall die.”

The follower took Mo Dong-gwak on their back and broke away from the battlefield at speed. There was no one here who could shake these people off and go after the Demonic Cult Leader’s disciple. For if they made up their minds to die, we should have to make up ours to be wiped out.

“Attack!”

Oh Ju-hyang took the lead and came charging at me.