Chapter 140

Inside the No-Return Cave, the Six Extremes Demon King Step had been unbeatable.
I had passed through most of the traps as though taking a stroll and practically slaughtered the Radiant Moon Jin Family’s collateral members in an instant.
I had even defeated a phantom beast, so my confidence wasn’t unfounded.

But apparently, it wasn’t enough against a Transcendent master.
Death-Line Step, Lightning Step, Reverse Step.
I had used all three footwork arts in succession, yet failed to deal any significant damage.
Instead, I had been countered and burned through even more internal energy and stamina.
By now, I had barely a couple of fingernails’ worth of internal energy left.
Whatever I did, I only had enough left for a few attempts.

-The Six Extremes Demon King Step is one and six, and six and one.

That was what the Heavenly Demon had said.
I had interpreted those words simply.
As I had experienced firsthand, mastering one could lead to mastering another.
But was that really all he meant?

‘What if the Six Extremes Demon King Step was originally derived from a single movement?’

It was an idea that had been nagging at the back of my mind for some time.
The day the Heavenly Demon first showed me the Six Extremes Demon King Step.
What I had perceived as five distinct footwork arts might actually have been one vast, continuous flow.
That would explain why advancing one also advanced another.

‘It’s only a guess, though…….’

But now was the time to put that guess into practice.
If I failed, I would die. But I would die just the same if I didn’t try.

‘Fine. Come on.’

I prepared myself to use Death-Line Step.
Charging first in my current wrecked state wouldn’t be a wise choice.
My plan was this.
First, read the trajectory with Death-Line Step and slip inside.
Then transition naturally into Lightning Step, linking the motions into one continuous flow to catch him off guard.

Shuuk!
At that moment, Jin Mu-myeong swung his staff.
The instant I avoided its trajectory with Death-Line Step, I immediately unleashed Lightning Step.
I intended to give him no time whatsoever to respond.
But it wasn’t easy.
Trying to immediately compress a body that had been relaxed for Death-Line Step made everything inside me protest.
Of course it wouldn’t be smooth on my first attempt.

‘Again.’

I repeated the same process.
This time, I managed to transition into Lightning Step, but.
Ppeok!
Jin Mu-myeong leisurely stepped half a pace back and swung his staff into my forearm.

‘Again.’

I gritted my teeth and endured the pain.
I analyzed my latest failure.
I had been so focused on the disharmony in my body that my movements became unnatural.

‘Don’t forget that they’re one footwork art. No breaks. Let it flow like water.’

Again, the same process.
This time, the transition was considerably smoother.
But there was still a split-second gap.
Jin Mu-myeong didn’t miss it.
His staff changed direction and slammed hard into my side.

“Keuk.”

The impact knocked the breath from my lungs.
I staggered several steps backward.
At that moment, I was once again infinitely grateful to the Guardian Court Master.
Without the Protective Armor, that blow would have ruptured my organs.

Jin Mu-myeong sounded impressed.

“You can certainly take a beating. But I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”
“…….”
“Are you trying to link those footwork arts together? Why? Using them separately would be far more efficient.”

As expected, he wasn’t someone I could underestimate.
He had figured out what I was trying to do.

While he ran his mouth,
I asked myself.
Was the order wrong?
Should I have started with Lightning Step instead of Death-Line Step?

‘……It’s not about the order.’

There couldn’t be a fixed order to something that was supposed to be one footwork art.
Then came the fourth attempt, the fifth, and the sixth.
Every attempt failed.

“Ptoo!”

I spat out the blood pooling in my mouth.
My legs threatened to buckle, but I barely held myself upright.
It felt as though my entire body were being torn to shreds.

‘Ha. When was the last time I struggled this badly?’

Actually, there had been more than a few times.
But never in a situation like this.
A world continuously collapsing around me.
A lunatic stubbornly refusing to let me go because he was determined to kill me.
My internal energy was almost completely gone, and sheer willpower was the only thing keeping me standing.
On top of that, the time limit imposed by my True Blood Severed Meridians was steadily approaching.
If I hadn’t taken a Tranquil Frost Pill along the way, things would have been even worse.

Kugugung, kugung!
Thunderous crashes rang out one after another.
Light that seemed both violet and black seeped through the cracks.
The collapse of the Illusory Formation Arrays seemed to be entering its final stage.

Jin Mu-myeong slowly raised his staff.
The faint glow around it grew clearer until, for an instant, it shone almost blindingly bright.

“It seems it’s time for us to part ways.”

His meaning was obvious.
He wanted to settle everything in this final exchange.

I took my stance as well and thought.

‘What am I doing wrong?’

My mind raced.
Every failure I had repeated until now flashed through my mind at once.

Until now, I had been using Death-Line Step in response to Jin Mu-myeong’s attacks.
I read his trajectory, slipped into the opening, and tried to turn it into a fatal strike.
But was that really the right approach?

‘……No.’

That wasn’t the Heavenly Demon’s way.
Waiting for the enemy to attack and then adjusting my footwork to match?
Would a footwork art created by the Heavenly Demon really be so passive?

Of course not.
The Heavenly Demon always seized the initiative.
His opponents adjusted themselves to him. He had never adjusted himself to them.

‘Right. This is it.’

Suddenly, everything became clear.
I had been trying to take the safer route because of my body, my internal energy, and my injuries.
But I couldn’t do that.
I had to force my enemy to adjust to me.
When I moved, I had to make him move in response.

The tiny scrap of internal energy I had left.
I had to make it count.
Without hesitation, I charged Jin Mu-myeong.
A strange light entered his eyes.
Apparently, he hadn’t expected me to attack first.

As though already certain of victory, he casually moved his staff.
I could tell at once that the force behind it was powerful enough to make the floating fragment beneath us tremble.
I didn’t know its name, but it was clearly an extraordinary ultimate move from some staff art.
Before the staff strike, condensed with Aura Qi, could come crashing down, I twisted my body.
I began circling to the right with him at the center.

“Dodging is useless.”

The moment his ultimate move cut through empty air, he turned with it and changed the staff’s trajectory.
The staff, glowing with Aura Qi, followed close behind me.
Kwaang!
The staff slammed into the spot where I had been an instant earlier.
The force was enough to nearly split the floating fragment beneath us in half.
Shards sprayed in every direction, but I ignored them and kept running.

Kwagang! Kwagang!
At last, his staff, which had repeatedly missed me, caught up.
More accurately, I had slowed down.
The staff, wreathed in Aura Qi, thrust straight at me as though to run me through.
At that exact moment.

‘Reverse Step.’

My body shot backward.
The staff that narrowly missed me immediately swept horizontally in my direction.
I leaned my torso backward while twisting my ankle to change direction.
Changing direction while moving at such speed placed enormous strain on the body, but all the training I’d undergone with the Heavenly Demon hadn’t been for nothing.
Even with my internal energy nearly depleted, my body still obeyed the movements I demanded of it.
My trained abdominal muscles let my back bend just far enough, while my strengthened ankle held firm and allowed me to change direction.

I turned.
Jin Mu-myeong’s face came directly into view.
The distance between us was roughly three meters.
I unleashed Lightning Step to close that distance in an instant.
Jin Mu-myeong pulled his staff back and thrust it at me like a spear.

‘I knew it.’

It was fast and threatening, but this time was different.
Now he was adjusting to my movements.
I held the initiative.

‘Death-Line Step.’

Just as I had planned, the moment I used Lightning Step, I was already prepared to transition into Death-Line Step.
That allowed me to evade the staff’s trajectory and close in by one step.

Sswaek!
A vicious horizontal strike came crashing down toward my head.

‘Death-Line Step again.’

Two steps.
Only one remained.
As I advanced, Jin Mu-myeong reversed his staff and aimed for my chin.
It was similar to the attack that had nearly caught me before.

‘Death-Line Step again.’

I advanced at an angle, slipping past the trajectory of death.
Three steps.
Now there was almost no distance between Jin Mu-myeong and me.

Jin Mu-myeong’s eyes widened.
We were too close for him to swing his staff.
At this distance, I had forced him into exactly two possible responses.
A headbutt or a knee.

‘Not the headbutt.’

It didn’t fit the way Jin Mu-myeong had fought until now.
And it wasn’t the sort of choice a proud Transcendent master would make.
That left the knee.
Sure enough, his knee shot toward my solar plexus.
I had expected it and was already holding my dagger in a reverse grip.

Puk. I felt the cold-iron dagger sink into his thigh through my fingertips.

“……!”

Jin Mu-myeong immediately lowered his leg, but the cold-iron dagger had already carved several inches through his flesh and pulled free.
Releasing his staff, Jin Mu-myeong formed his right hand into a knife-hand and drove it toward my neck.
It carried more than enough force to break my neck.
But at that exact moment, my cold-iron dagger buried itself in his side.

Jin Mu-myeong’s knife-hand stopped just before reaching my neck.
The strength had gone out of his arm.
It had truly been a hair’s breadth.
Looking into his wide-open eyes, I said.

“Too bad.”
“……Indeed. Had I been just a little faster, we would have died together.”

His eyes curved into a smile.
The cold-iron dagger remained lodged in the left side of his abdomen.
If I pulled it out, he would collapse almost immediately, but I didn’t.
There was something I had been wondering about him for a while.

“So the reputation of the Demon Cult’s Seventh Young Lord was no lie. No, if anything, you were underestimated.”
“That Seventh Young Lord has something to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve felt like I almost recognize you for a while now. Since things have come to this, you might as well tell me.”

Jin Mu-myeong chuckled.

“It isn’t a name I can proudly give.”

The strength was fading from Jin Mu-myeong’s voice.
The life in him was steadily weakening.
Rather than answering my question, he looked out at the collapsing world and muttered.

“……In the end, I suppose I won’t earn the Jin Family’s recognition.”

I froze for an instant.
Why did he need the Jin Family’s recognition?
This was supposed to be nothing more than a job.
If he wanted recognition, shouldn’t he be getting it from the Nightflower Valley Lord?
Unless he had some close connection to the Jin Family.

‘Wait. The Jin Family?’

“Ah!”

It felt as though a blocked meridian in my head had suddenly opened.
Without thinking, I asked him.

“Is your real name Jin Hwa-un?”

His gradually unfocusing eyes suddenly sharpened again.
He was stunned that I had guessed a name he had never told me.

“How do you know……?”

That reaction was answer enough.

‘It really was him!’

I knew there was something strange about him.
The Nightflower Valley Lord was a peerless master known as the Mercenary King, and Nightflower Valley possessed power comparable to the great sects of both the orthodox and unorthodox factions.
Jin Mu-myeong, no, Jin Hwa-un, was that Mercenary King’s disciple.
But he had another hidden identity, one that would make him nothing short of a catastrophe for the Radiant Moon Jin Family in the future.
The Radiant Moon Jin Family was trying to kill me, had prospered to become second only to the Demon Bell Geuk Family, and would undoubtedly become a major obstacle in my future.
With this man around, it would be plunged into uncontrollable chaos.

“Hey. You can’t die yet.”
“What do you……?”

I pulled out the Golden Wound Medicine and liberally sprinkled it over Jin Hwa-un’s abdomen.
I tore off part of his clothes and pressed it against the wound.

“Why are you doing this?”
“Doesn’t make sense to you, does it? If you don’t want to live, just say so. I’ll leave you here.”

I rummaged through my robe and pulled out a pill.
A Vitality-Preserving Pill Ju Ok-hwa had given me.
She had told me to take it if I ever suffered a critical external injury.
It wasn’t an elixir capable of saving someone destined to die, but it should at least keep a fading life from slipping away.

“Swallow.”
“…….”
“Spit it out if you want to die.”

Jin Hwa-un answered with his actions.
He opened his mouth.
I roughly shoved the Vitality-Preserving Pill inside.
His throat bobbed, so it seemed he swallowed it immediately.

“Can you walk?”
“Hard to say.”
“Use your internal energy and hold on.”

Squeezing out what strength I had left, I supported Jin Hwa-un.
Because we had kept descending while fighting, the floating fragment beneath us wasn’t particularly high anymore.
The problem was that I had to jump down while carrying Jin Hwa-un.
A height that would have been nothing on my own became a gamble with a man stabbed in the abdomen.

‘I guess there’s no helping it.’

Kurureung!
The entire world shook.
There was no more time to hesitate.

“Grit your teeth.”

Unlike before, I had no time to slow our descent by scraping my cold-iron dagger along the side, so I simply jumped.
The instant we landed, my entire body screamed from the impact.

“Keuk.”

A groan escaped Jin Hwa-un.
I had applied Golden Wound Medicine and pressed cloth against the wound, but fresh blood was still soaking through.
At this rate, he might bleed to death before we even reached the exit.

‘Faster.’

The ominous light I had seen earlier was steadily spreading.
It had already swallowed the fragment where we had first stood.
It looked as though it were chasing us.

Grimacing, I jumped down several more times, then ran across what little stable ground remained toward the exit.
It felt strange to have my arm around the shoulders of someone I had been trying to kill only moments ago.

“Baek Su-gyeong.”
“Save your thanks.”
“No. Jin Si-myeong will be waiting outside the exit.”

Oh, that.
Right. That bastard would absolutely do something like that.

“Once we’re out, just keep your mouth shut.”

Just before leaving through the exit, I held on to Jin Hwa-un and tore a Concealment Talisman with my free hand and front teeth.
At the same moment, I escaped the collapsing world.
Taking with me a scion of the Radiant Moon Jin Family’s legitimate line who had been exiled long ago.