Chapter 375: Who Is the Villain Here? (5)
"Ha. A Demonic Cult rat spouting nonsense!"
Acting as though he had no idea what was going on, the Alliance Leader roared and swung his long saber.
But Il-mok didn't miss the split-second when the Alliance Leader's face completely twisted.
Whoosh.
Il-mok twisted his body and barely slipped past the saber's arc and then sneered. "Your acting needs work."
"Tch. Let's see how long that mouth of yours keeps running."
As if he'd decided the conversation wasn't worth having anymore, Cheok Pae-myeong kept swinging his saber in relentless succession. Wrapped in Force Qi, the saber ca in at a speed that was almost too fast for the eye to follow. Not a single movent was wasted. It was an extrely practical saber art, built on nothing but efficiency and speed.
Il-mok hadn't noticed it before, but now that he knew who the Alliance Leader really was, it made a certain kind of sense. There was an unmistakable military stench baked into the man's technique.
Since taking those heavy blows head-on would be too taxing, Il-mok countered by using tight footwork to dodge by re inches, or by utilizing the principle of softness to effortlessly parry the blade aside.
Clang!
Just as his sword clashed with the saber and he was about to redirect it using softness, Cheok Pae-myeong abruptly released his left hand from the grip and launched it forward in a surprise attack.
Il-mok quickly adapted and extended his own left hand to answer.
Smack.
For a brief mont, their right hands kept sword and saber locked together while their left hands tangled in a grappling exchange. Suddenly, the Alliance Leader spread his fingers and tried to lace them through Il-mok's guard but Il-mok yanked his hand back fast.
‘Internal energy clash is too risky.’
If their palms connected, it would quickly devolve into a raw contest of internal energy, and that was a battle Il-mok didn't want.
For all of Il-mok's absurd achievents given his age, internal energy was the one area where he still fell short compared to the old veterans. And it was common knowledge throughout the martial world that Cheok Pae-myeong had obtained so fortuitous encounter in his youth and cultivated a vast reserve of internal energy.
Now that Il-mok knew Cheok Pae-myeong was a puppet of the Imperial Family, he couldn't help but suspect that the so-called fortuitous encounter was sothing the Imperial Family had handed him on a silver platter.
To avoid the internal energy clash, Il-mok pulled back his hand and launched himself away at the sa ti. He used the force of the Ascension Sword rebounding off the saber to put distance between them, and Cheok Pae-myeong wasted no ti and slashed his saber through the air.
The Force Qi riding along the saber flew out in the shape of a crescent moon, and Il-mok kicked off the air using Sky Walk to shoot himself higher.
"Don't get clever with cheap tricks!"
Unwilling to let him escape, the Alliance Leader mirrored him and stepped onto the empty air to give chase.
Clang!
Two n hurtling through open air, trading blows between sword and saber in rapid succession. It looked less like a fight and more like sothing out of a legend.
They traded several exchanges in the air like that.
Clang!
The Ascension Sword and saber collided again, and the rebound sent Il-mok flying backward. Instead of catching himself with another Sky Walk, he let himself drop straight to the ground.
‘Aerial footwork isn't sothing I can keep throwing out.’
He'd been maintaining Sword Force while trading blows with the Alliance Leader, and stacking aerial footwork on top of that had been draining his internal energy from his dantian at an alarming rate.
Certain that victory was in his grasp, Cheok Pae-myeong stomped off the air and dove after the falling Il-mok.
‘Just a little more and it's over!’
Pat!
With the montum of the dive compounded by aerial footwork behind him, the Alliance Leader closed the gap at terrifying speed. Just before Il-mok's feet touched the ground, Cheok Pae-myeong's saber was already screaming toward him.
Clang!!
Il-mok swung the Ascension Sword and struck the flat of the saber, and used the rebound to hurl himself sideways into a roll. It was essentially a Lazy Donkey Roll.
"Ha! Squirming around like the vermin you are!"
As soon as he touched down, the Alliance Leader sneered and lunged straight for the rolling Il-mok by using his lightness skill.
anwhile, Il-mok seamlessly used his lightness skill as he rolled and then rose out of it in one fluid motion and twisted his upper body just enough to let the incoming strike scrape past him.
The Alliance Leader tried to swallow his growing impatience as he kept hounding Il-mok.
‘Just a bit more!’
To anyone watching, Il-mok looked like a man one step away from collapse, stumbling and retreating at every turn.
But as exchanges kept piling up, Cheok Pae-myeong’s saber never once touched Il-mok directly no matter how many tis he swung and pressed the slippery young man.
Just as the Demonic Cultist narrowly slipped past the long saber for the umpteenth ti, a thoroughly unimpressed voice bored into the Alliance Leader's ears.
"You're a lot duller than I expected."
The random jab made the Alliance Leader's brow furrow, and in that instant...
Pat!
Il-mok reversed direction and drove straight at him.
"You've got a death wish, don't you!"
Thinking the boy had practically served himself up on a silver platter, the Alliance Leader swung his saber, but Il-mok didn't so much as blink as the blade ca hurtling toward his neck.
Clang!
He flicked the Ascension Sword just enough to nudge the saber's path by a hair and forced himself inside Cheok Pae-myeong's guard.
Cheok Pae-myeong tried to kick him out with his left leg, but Il-mok was already expecting it and pressed his left palm down onto the man's knee.
"Urgh!"
The Alliance Leader once again released his left hand that had been gripping the long saber and unleashed a palm strike toward Il-mok, and Il-mok swung the Ascension Sword as if to slice that hand clean off.
Startled, the Alliance Leader yanked his left hand back in alarm and swung the saber one-handed with his right.
Swish!
Il-mok just tilted his head to the side, and the saber missed him by a whisker.
Scrape.
The blade grazed his cheekbone and left a shallow cut that welled with blood, but Il-mok didn't even blink, and he didn't step back either. He kept right inside the kill zone, swinging his limbs and pressing the Alliance Leader harder.
After dozens of exchanges up to that point, Il-mok realized a crucial fact.
"Looks like you've been living a comfortable life."
Every single one of the Alliance Leader's moves was fast, clean, and devastatingly powerful, yet ironically one-dinsional.
The martial arts forms themselves weren't the issue.
"When was the last ti you were in a real life-or-death fight?"
His techniques didn't account for complex, layered exchanges. In other words, it was the habit of a warrior who had grown too used to fighting people weaker than himself.
"Shut up!!"
Furious at being mocked by soone he thought he could crush like a bug at any mont, the Alliance Leader let out a roar and swung his saber.
But swinging a saber recklessly at this range was practically suicidal.
Thud.
Before the edge could get anywhere near Il-mok's body, Il-mok reached out his left hand and clamped down on the saber's hilt.
‘As expected.’
Just as Il-mok had suspected, Cheok Pae-myeong was not a man accustod to having his own life on the line.
He wielded a long saber, which boasted a greater reach than a standard sword or blade. Combine that with the overwhelming martial prowess derived from his high realm, and he was too used to dominating his opponent one-sidedly.
Because of those factors, his techniques were built for killing the enemy while keeping his own neck safe.
He might have been different once, but there was no question that ever since he rose to be called one of the Twelve Heavenly Pillars and took the seat of Alliance Leader, he had fought in nothing but low-risk battles.
And Cheok Pae-myeong had been Alliance Leader for a good ten years.
In contrast, Il-mok had spent those sa ten years clawing his way through countless bloody death matches one after another.
People liked to call Il-mok a peerless genius because he always managed to reach a new enlightennt and evolve during his fights against older masters, but there was another way to read it. The reality was that if he hadn't managed to break through his limits every single ti, he would have been slaughtered long ago.
That had been the nature of his life.
It certainly wasn't a life Il-mok had asked for, but putting his life on the line had beco as mundane as breathing for him.
Just like what he was doing right now.
Clang!
Trapped in extre close quarters, their weapons, punches, footwork, and kicks all blurred into a chaotic ss. With barely enough room to properly swing a sword or a long saber, the two n resorted to using their weapons like bladed brass knuckles.
They traded that kind of chaotic close-range combat for a good while.
Clang!
The Ascension Sword and the long saber slamd into each other once more.
Thud.
Both of their left legs tried to kick each other, but they were too close to extend properly. In the end, their shins smacked into each other instead.
With their right legs planted firmly for balance and their left legs and right hands both locked together, the Alliance Leader drove his left palm at Il-mok's heart, and Il-mok thrust his own left palm forward to et it.
‘It's over!!’
The Alliance Leader kept that triumphant certainty locked behind his teeth. Elation lit up his face. The current situation ensured that he would win if this bout of clash turned into a clash of internal energy, and he would also win if the boy tried to dodge since their proximity was too close for a proper dodge.
But right before their left palms collided, Il-mok curled three of his fingers inward, leaving only his index and middle fingers extended in a sword hand seal, and thrust them forward like a spear tip aid directly at the center of the Alliance Leader's palm.
Cheok Pae-myeong scoffed and poured more power into his palm.
"Hah. You think that kind of trick is going to—"
The mocking words died halfway through. Then, blood spilled roughly from the Alliance Leader's mouth.
The Alliance Leader's palm hadn't been punctured by Il-mok's fingers at all.
"When...?"
Before he even realized it, a throwing dagger was buried deep within his own solar plexus.
Il-mok forming sword fingers at the last possible second wasn't so desperate bid to pierce the man's palm strike. It was simply the hand seal required to execute a telekinetic strike through the Hand-Controlled Sword art.
"Cough..."
As the Alliance Leader choked on his own blood, his fading vision captured Il-mok staring down at him with a cold smirk.
"Always hide thirty percent of your true strength until the bitter end. Did you already forget sothing that basic?"
The Alliance Leader had no answer for that.
The light of life rapidly faded from his eyes as the dagger sat lodged in his core.
The mont Il-mok pulled back his left leg and the Ascension Sword, the Alliance Leader's lifeless body crumpled to the earth.
Thud.
Il-mok looked down at the Alliance Leader's body where it lay sprawled on the ground.
"The, the Alliance Leader has fallen!!"
"Alliance Leader!!"
Hearing the cries of the Orthodox Faction’s martial artists upon seeing their leader’s death, Il-mok imdiately launched himself straight into them.
Slash!
With the great lion that had been holding back the tiger finally dead, the remaining pack of wild dogs was helplessly butchered by the tiger's relentless claws.
Il-mok cut through them and carved himself a path in an instant, making straight for where Sword Venerable Namgung Jin and Seo Wan-pyeong were locked in battle.
Slash!
He cut down anyone who got in his way as he moved, and as he swept his gaze across the battlefield, a bitter look crossed his face.
‘A lot of people died in a short amount of ti.’
Many of the bodies scattered across the field were Orthodox Faction warriors. While Il-mok and Seo Wan-pyeong had been holding down the Alliance Leader and Namgung Jin, Jin Hayeon, Hyeokryeon Seon-ah, and Jeong Hyeon had managed to cut down a good number of Orthodox fighters. But expecting just the three of them to protect every Demonic Cult mber was asking too much, so Demonic Cultist bodies were scattered here and there as well.
The bitterness only lasted a mont.
When he reached his destination, Il-mok struck at Namgung Jin, forcing him to abort his attack on Seo Wan-pyeong.
"Tch."
Namgung Jin clicked his tongue and redirected his sword path, knocking Il-mok's sword aside.
Riding the recoil to land softly on the earth, Il-mok kept his eyes locked on Namgung Jin and called back to his senior brother. "Third Brother, leave the rest to ."
Seo Wan-pyeong was not in good shape.
He'd avoided anything fatal, but wounds had piled up across his body until his dark clothes were soaked red, and the thick blood dripping from his chin proved he had suffered massive internal trauma.
Hearing Il-mok's confident voice, Seo Wan-pyeong looked at his back with half-glazed eyes.
Even though Il-mok was undeniably the junior here, Seo Wan-pyeong couldn't help but feel that his back looked broader and more reassuring today.
"Forgive for being such a pathetic older brother."
With those final words, the sheer exhaustion caught up to him, and Seo Wan-pyeong blacked out, collapsing onto the dirt.
"Hah. Just because you managed to kill the Alliance Leader, it seems you think you can treat this Venerable lightly."
Namgung Jin said it with a face full of irritation, then shot a blast of Sword Force toward the unconscious Seo Wan-pyeong.
Bang!
But Namgung Jin's sword force detonated in midair, dispersed by a swing of the Ascension Sword.
‘Alright. I didn't have enough ti to completely refill my dantian, but there's no way that old bastard is at full strength either.'
By slaughtering those Orthodox pawns on his way over, Il-mok had managed to leech a decent amount of internal energy back through his Ascension Sword.
Pat!
Kicking off the ground, Il-mok lunged at Namgung Jin in a fast preemptive strike. And while doing so, he tossed a command to Ju Seo-yeon over his shoulder.
"Miss Ju! Move my Third Brother to the rear!"
"How dare you take your eyes off !"
Furious at the utter disrespect, Namgung Jin rained down a flurry of heavy sword strikes, but Il-mok parried them all with a look of indifference.
'They say the Namgung Family wields the heaviest and greatest sword in the Central Plains. Turns out the reputation wasn't entirely exaggerated.'
The force behind those blows sent a numbing shock up through his grip, and Il-mok was forced to shift his approach, choosing to redirect and evade rather than clash directly with Namgung Jin's sword.
'Looks like Miss Ju managed to drag Third Brother out of the danger zone.'
He let out a quiet internal breath of relief and kept exchanging blows with Namgung Jin.
Then Il-mok's expression contorted into a nasty scowl.
‘Damn it.’
From the north, a powerful presence was closing in fast.
"You filthy Demonic Cult bastards!! I, Yangmuja, will kill every last one of you!!"
Yangmuja's shout shook the air and split the space around him, and the Buddha Venerable and Fist King Hwangbo Ak were charging alongside him. Their extraordinary level put them out in front, but behind those three ca a column of several hundred Orthodox warriors.
For a brief mont, Il-mok weighed his options, then made his decision.
Just as he was about to order the Demonic Cult mbers to fall back—
"Cease this at once!!!"
A booming shout packed with internal energy exploded outward from the east.
And it was a voice Il-mok knew very well.
He'd heard it once before, right before his showdown with Cheok Pae-myeong during the Ei aftermath.
"You are all being deceived!!"
The voice belonged to none other than the Beggar King.
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