The White Wolf (3)

Jin-hyeon’s eyes flashed.

‘Did he evade it?’

The feel at the sword’s tip was subtly light. Proof he hadn’t cut through bone.

Amazingly, Ha Suk-heon evaded Jin-hyeon’s sword. He had even retreated more than ten steps.

It was strange that he was only showing that level of evasion now. It had to be an art with a past.

“You bastard…”

He hadn’t been cut to the bone, but a large wound ran through part of his pectoral muscle and upper abdominal muscle.

Ha Suk-heon’s face flushed red.

The force of the explosive power driving in was tremendous. Not just the power, but the brute savagery that shoved its way in made him flinch, and he had to pour out all his internal energy to block it.

‘What monstrous internal energy!’

He couldn’t tell what kind of inner cultivation method he’d learned. If he had to guess, it was the kind thick with killing intent and brutally rough.

‘If I hadn’t used that footwork…’

That footwork he’d used right before getting cut was an advanced ultimate art the Cheongyang Association had kept secret for a long time.

It was also an art that couldn’t be revealed outside. If circumstances forced him to use it, he had to kill everyone who saw it.

He couldn’t use it lightly, but he couldn’t just offer up his life either. Who liked dying in defeat, after all. He still had things to do.

‘It can’t be helped.’

The opponent was too strong. It was absurd, but if he only used Cheongyang’s arts, he would die.

Ha Suk-heon made his priorities clear.

‘Fine. It can’t be helped.’

Jin-hyeon, staring at him, spun the iron sword idly.

“That footwork just now. Is it an art Cheongyang keeps hidden?”

“Shut up!”

Ha Suk-heon snarled and ground his teeth.

“You bastard! You dared to deceive me?!”

He didn’t care about the details. What mattered was that Jin-hyeon was one of the forces behind the attack on the Divine Iron Merchant House.

That alone meant he’d been played. His reaction when Gong Cheong introduced him had felt off. Turns out he’d been aiming for Divine Iron.

“I’ll kill you for sure! Even if you come back to life, you won’t be able to set foot in Sichuan……!”

In that instant, Jin-hyeon vanished.

He read the presence and shifted aside in a flash, but his chest turned cold on its own. Ha Suk-heon raised every nerve and braced for what came next.

‘What the hell is that footwork!’

It was like he melted into empty air and moved. The speed was one thing, but that bizarre internal energy control that made his presence vanish for even a moment was truly shocking.

That footwork alone pushed him into bringing out Cheongyang’s secret art.

Papapang!

Jin-hyeon’s attacks stormed in from the side, rear, above. Fierce as a gale.

Ha Suk-heon retreated like mad.

His forearms and chest took serious wounds. It wasn’t impossible to match him, but the moment it turned into a contest of power, his internal energy and stamina would run dry first.

Peopeopung! Peopung!

Explosions boomed. Cracks etched into the ground.

He kept blunting Jin-hyeon’s attacks with fist wind and palm force. He avoided entering the sword’s range at all costs, burning internal energy to buy an opening.

‘Once.’

The curves and straight lines his iron sword drew were beautiful enough to make you dizzy, and chilling.

‘Just once. I have to cripple him with a single counter. If not, I’ll have to kill them all for real.’

That couldn’t happen. He still had many things to do with the Divine Iron Merchant House.

Peopung! Seogeok!

A small sword wound was carved into his shoulder.

Even weaving that footwork into his evasion, the sword still forced its way in and left a wound. That brute, headlong ferocity and savage swordplay were not lacking in the slightest to be worthy of being called first-rate in Murim.

Ha Suk-heon cut off his thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to wonder what art the opponent had learned.

He had to aim for the exact instant an opening showed. If it landed cleanly, the opponent would die without even collecting his bones.

Peopeopung! Jjeong!

‘Come more.’

His fist, forced to swat away the sword, took a cut. It meant the strike was sharp enough to pierce Cheongyang’s internal energy, even the Iron Qi Art.

His face grew more twisted, but in truth Ha Suk-heon was colder than ever.

‘Come more.’

Jin-hyeon’s iron sword moved as if possessed.

The slashes that hammered in left and right diagonals, top to bottom, bottom to top. And the speed of the thrusts that stabbed in at intervals was so great it drew an empty gasp.

‘More! Come further in!’

But Ha Suk-heon was also one of the masters famed in Sichuan. Not someone who only trained arts, but a master rich with real combat experience.

He was already used to Jin-hyeon’s sword forms. He knew when the slashes came, and when the thrust that made your heart drop would spring out.

‘That’s it.’

Jin-hyeon’s sword was growing sharper, faster.

Sword speed rising and movements turning more dynamic. Proof the opponent was feeling impatience too. Ha Suk-heon endured to the end and received the swordplay.

‘The moment to counter is coming!’

It was then.

‘Huh?’

Even though it wasn’t the time, a question rose naturally.

‘What? His swordplay is gradually…’

Faster, and faster again.

Sharper, and sharper again.

That alone would be fine. But the problem was that around the raging sword forms, a sword wind savage beyond measure was beginning to rise.

It wasn’t sword wind intentionally driven out with internal energy. Sword wind that naturally followed from form and explosive force. A savage art that harmed even outside the range of the technique.

‘Since when?!’

Ha Suk-heon looked into Jin-hyeon’s eyes.

In an instant, his expression changed.

‘Don’t tell me this bastard—!’

Pararararak!

The iron sword moving inside the colorless sword wind produced a subtle afterimage.

Sword shadows multiplying in an instant covered parts of Jin-hyeon’s body. The shadows that endlessly followed the iron sword drew countless dots and lines, like snow scattering in a gale, like leaves falling in an autumn wind.

‘…It wasn’t a sword art?!’

Only then did Ha Suk-heon realize. The “swordplay” that had driven him this whole time wasn’t a named martial art.

If he had to name it, it was Practical Battle Sword. A nameless sword form built on the War-Sword Three Arts, drawing on his own enlightenment and the sword shapes of the masters he faced after returning, unfolded by his own sense.

War-Sword Three Arts alone couldn’t cut through the harsh Kangho. War-Sword Three Arts was astonishing, but it was sword learning like an insight infused with the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s enlightenment. It wasn’t Jin-hyeon’s martial art.

Like the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s Hungry Wolf Sword.

Jin-hyeon intended to make a martial art suited to his body, his mind, his enlightenment.

And that work wasn’t as hard as he expected. The years spent together were far too long to treat the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s enlightenment as something distant.

Learning life from life, innate nature adapted to reality. Insight into experience and martial learning became enlightenment, calling forth another enlightenment.

Jin-hyeon realized the path his Sword Dao, his way of the sword, would take.

A martial art holding extreme power that would not break. Endlessly free, endlessly savage.

A wind sword that could rake and blow away everything in its path, like winter’s cutting wind, like a typhoon with rain.

He didn’t know if it was a path to hold for life, but at least in this moment, a wind-shaped martial path was here, one he could pour himself into without regret. Under the full sky, the most supple, yet also the strongest and fastest ghost sword was here.

Flash!

For the first time, Heavenly Escape Steps that aimed straight on, not from a blind angle.

At a distance closed in an instant, a massive wind carrying Heavenly Wolf’s power dyed the creaking iron sword a deep blue.

‘!!’

Ha Suk-heon threw a punch without meaning to.

An advanced martial art the Cheongyang Association had kept secret for a long time, not even five years since its analysis was completed.

Before the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader even stirred, a family from Jinzhou in Hebei, driven out as being demonic, fled as far as Sichuan and perished, leaving behind a martial art steeped in resentment.

One of the three great ultimate techniques of the Eon Family Fist. The Returning Soul Divine Fist unfolded.

Kwareung!

Before the punch even finished swinging, the air exploded and crushed down on Jin-hyeon’s upper body.

It was a martial art on a different plane. A fist art with such power that fist pressure alone could break bones and rupture organs.

The iron sword’s sword wind increased explosively.

Kagagagagang!!

Sword wind that hammered and cut Ha Suk-heon’s fist, hard as steel, scattered in every direction.

But it wasn’t just once. The slash was a single slash, but the sword wind that surged with it became hundreds of blades and battered Ha Suk-heon’s fist.

Before it even went in straight, more than a hundred small sword winds poured down. Tiny abrasions began to appear on Ha Suk-heon’s fist carrying the hard, powerful force of the Returning Soul Divine Fist.

Kagagang! Pisyuk! Kagagagagang! Pisyuk!

The pouring sword wind finally carved deep cuts into Ha Suk-heon’s fist several times. Cut and cut again, sword wind stabbed into the opened wounds.

It happened without a moment to react. Ha Suk-heon’s mouth fell open.

When Jin-hyeon’s iron sword drew a perfect half-circle—

Pu-hwaaak!

The Returning Soul Divine Fist’s power vanished entirely, and the fist hardened beyond Iron Qi Art, hardened further by Corpse Stiffening Art, became drenched in blood.

“Kyaaak!”

A scream burst out on its own.

It couldn’t be helped. Ha Suk-heon’s fist was completely ruined. The red cuts climbed from his ragged hand up to his forearm, as if dozens of blades had ground him down.

But it didn’t end there.

Peok! Peobeobeok!

“Kyaaaah!”

The explosive force from the sword wind that infiltrated through the wounds tore muscle, ripped nerves, and ground bone as it climbed toward the upper arm.

It was like transparent insects that devoured everything had gotten inside. Ha Suk-heon pulled up his internal energy with all his might and poured it into his right arm.

Just then, Jin-hyeon’s iron sword sent out another blast of wind.

Pu-hwaaak!

The pouring sword wind gouged through Ha Suk-heon’s carotid, collarbone, and central sternum.

Strength drained from Ha Suk-heon’s eyes.

His face, staring blankly at Jin-hyeon, grew whiter and whiter.

“…What martial art is that?”

“I don’t know.”

Jin-hyeon slung the iron sword over his shoulder as if to show him.

“Thanks to you, I tested it well. I’ll grind Cheongyang down and drink it.”

Ha Suk-heon let out a hollow laugh.

Sagak! Sagaksagak!

Even then, sword wind climbing up his right arm ground away at his shoulder muscle and bone.

It was a martial art beyond horrific. Uncontrollable attacking power. A wind art that devoured everything of the opponent.

Jureureuk.

Blood running from his nose and mouth, Ha Suk-heon muttered,

“My eyes must’ve been rotten. To not have seen the man you are. But you should know this. Our association will never—”

Peoeok!

Ha Suk-heon’s head flew into the air.

“I never allowed any last words.”

Huuuuung.

With his neck gone and his pulse slowing, the sword wind devouring Ha Suk-heon’s right arm visibly weakened.

Jin-hyeon clicked his tongue inwardly.

‘A qi art that accepts the ferocity of Heavenly Wolf Qi as-is. This is more dangerous than I thought.’

Dangerous, but powerful. To Jin-hyeon, that mattered more.

‘The internal energy drain is significant. I have a long road ahead.’

It was something to fix step by step. Right now, something else mattered more.

Paaak!

Jin-hyeon sprang toward Han Cheol-sang.

Above the place he vanished from, sword wind that didn’t vanish yet swirled like falling leaves, then faded.