Chapter 302. It’s a Problem If It’s Dark.

The First of the Unorthodox Path pointed at me with his finger.

“Are you angry? If you die, another corner of Im Sobaek’s heart will crumble. That is what I want. He should have helped the Unorthodox Alliance. I suppose this is karmic retribution.”

When the First of the Unorthodox Path smiled spitefully, his crooked teeth showed.

Every time I saw that idiot’s face, even my anger lost its way.

He did not seem to have particularly good perception or a well-honed body, so the fact that he possessed such skill was almost awe-inspiring.

Rather than a diseased body, perhaps he was a true god of disease.

Either way, he was an idiot.

Just how twisted a heart had he lived with all this time?

I answered in an indifferent tone.

“So in the end, you tormented people because of that?”

“Would there be any other reason?”

All I had to give a man like this was my contempt. As I faced the First of the Unorthodox Path, I gave a hollow laugh, then spat toward his face.

“Ptooey!”

The startled Unorthodox bastard backed away with an absurd look on his face, then stared at me, slightly dazed.

“What do you think you’re doing? How rude.”

“That’s all I have to give you. You dodged like a startled dog. Hahaha……”

The First of the Unorthodox Path’s expression gradually hardened.

I lightly waved a hand.

“Enough. Now I’ll accept the challenge of an idiot. Conversation only works if words get through. Rather than talk to someone like you, I’d be better off teaching a neighborhood dog to speak. Why? What’s with that look?”

“…….”

The Unorthodox bastard seemed angry enough to unleash the Violet Haze Divine Art.

“For the crime of instigating mountain bandits and river pirates. For the crime of burning commoners’ homes, staging hostage situations, and operating Black Fragrance……”

With an impassive expression, I met the Unorthodox bastard’s eyes again.

“Accept my contempt.”

As soon as the agitated First of the Unorthodox Path charged in, I pulled far away as if training the retreating form of the Cloud-Treading Steps. A drop of cold sweat fell from my back and armpit.

The Unorthodox man spoke as he walked toward me.

“I retract my offer to take you as a disciple.”

“Even better. I can’t end up old like you.”

“You brat!”

Without drawing my sword, I first ran while making my body as light as possible. Since my lack of sleep was making my body heavy, I also needed the drowsiness to flee while I was running.

The Unorthodox man was probably close to impervious to blades.

I had no idea how that had happened. If I tried to find out in detail, I might die, so I lost interest.

“Let us see how long you can keep running.”

Fortunately, imperviousness to blades and lightness arts were different fields, so he was not so fast as to overwhelm me.

I moved by the narrowest of margins, then drew my sword and turned around.

Only then did I understand why the Sword Demon had fought so listlessly. Since he must have realized the man was impervious to blades, there had been no need to attack excessively. The Unorthodox man took my sword with his body and reached for my collar.

I retreated while pouring out sword wind.

I copied exactly how the Ghost Demon had swung his sword as if scraping the ground, raising a sword wind mixed with stones. In an instant, the Unorthodox man was struck by a sword wind mixed with heaps of stones, and his gray robe was torn until it hung in tatters.

The First of the Unorthodox Path gave a sneer and threw off his robe. Now his lower half was in sleep pants, and his upper body was bare, making him look like none other than a mad old man.

“Try more.”

Watching that vicious-looking old man with black and white hair mixed together chase after me to kill me was terrifying, to say the least.

The Unorthodox man struggled to grab me.

I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable swinging my sword, thinking that the wooden sword might snap the moment it was caught in his hand.

‘Damn it…… What a strangely powerful enemy.’

Those artless attacks made me even more uncomfortable.

Because they were hard to predict.

I was doing it too, but the Unorthodox man was also deceiving me from beginning to end. Perhaps he thought he was slowly getting used to our exchange, because he smiled and swung his hand.

“Will you only run away? Would you still be able to flee if I killed the others first?”

The Unorthodox man suddenly stopped chasing me and looked around, searching for the Ghost Demon and the Lust Demon. The two had vanished without a trace.

I regulated my breathing and enjoyed the brief rest.

Even speaking felt like a waste of time.

The Unorthodox man asked me.

“……Where did those things go?”

I did not answer.

They were not fools anyway, so the very act of hiding was likely a psychological battle.

I focused my mind and injected cold energy into the wooden sword, then attacked the Unorthodox man. When I abruptly switched to the offensive, the First of the Unorthodox Path seemed delighted and responded with motions meant to grab my collar or claw at me. I cut past the First of the Unorthodox Path’s neck, face, and chest as if grazing them, and once or twice, I thrust while aiming for his eyes.

But the long sword did not reach his eyes.

At close range, the Unorthodox man released palm force with both hands.

I lowered my sword vertically and barely blocked the palm force.

Kwaraaaaaang!

I had blocked the palm force with my sword, so why did the back of my head ache? While I was shoved back through the air, the Unorthodox man instantly closed in and chopped down at my body with the edge of his hand.

In midair, I knocked away his hand-blade with the wooden sword, then flew off in another direction. I struck the ground with my left hand and shot up into the air, but this time, a ray of light flew from the Unorthodox man’s hand.

I forced my body to move in midair and dodged it, then struck away the second ray of light with the wooden sword.

Thud!

For an instant, heaven and earth switched places. After wandering through heaven and earth three or four times, I landed and slipped the wooden sword back in. The moment I came down, a queasiness surged up as if I needed to vomit blood. Even when one has eaten poorly, if an impact strikes the inside of the body, bitter bile is bound to rise.

In any case, sword arts had little meaning.

The Unorthodox man approached with a hearty laugh.

“So you want to do this with palm arts? Good.”

I found that idiotic exchange funny and laughed again.

The Unorthodox man said,

“Sect Leader, do not laugh. Stop laughing.”

“Why? I laugh easily by nature.”

“I mean do not sneer. It is not proper courtesy toward a senior.”

“Senior, my ass……”

Suddenly, this thought occurred to me. In any case, unless I was prepared to die, I would not be able to defeat an opponent like this.

Running away was not the answer.

Stabbing him with a sword was useless too.

If I prepared myself for death, what could I do?

When the Unorthodox man approached me, for the first time, I advanced a step with the Cloud-Treading Steps and put strength into both palms.

Thud!

To block any variables, I poured out the palm force of the Moon Shadow Heartless Art and the Golden Turtle Carefree Art, even releasing waves of qi. Because my opponent had lived a consistently cowardly life, I faced the crisis head-on. The moment our palm forces clashed, I guessed that this old man was far older than I had expected. His internal energy was that deep.

Sado’s mouth fell open.

“To throw your life away like this.”

“…….”

“How long do you think you can last?”

I smiled and poured out my power.

“One shichen?”

Sado shook his head and answered.

“Half a shichen. Within that time, I’ll burn away all your internal energy.”

I matched internal energy with him in all seriousness. Even if my internal energy ran dry, the next opponents, the Lust Demon and the Ghost Demon, would be able to fight him far more easily.

In the next instant, it seemed the quick-witted Sado was pouring out palm force to pull his hand away, so I raised my power even further.

“Why? Going somewhere? You can only let go after you kill me.”

“…….”

For now, my right hand was frozen white from the full moon’s cold qi. That cold was holding Sado’s hand in place as well. With my left hand, I used the palm force of the Super Chicken. Because there was a risk that Sado might use some other method, I wrapped my entire body in the lightning qi of the Hundred Battles Ten Stage Art.

When I killed the First Sword of Dongho……

My body remembered what it had been like to unleash three divine arts at the same time. Martial arts, after all, begin within the body, so they are far removed from any scholarly approach.

Without properly understanding the principles, I was unleashing three martial arts at once.

Gradually, Sado’s internal energy grew deeper and deeper. I felt a pressure as if walls were closing in from every direction, and even my breathing became increasingly difficult.

But I did not feel bad.

Because this was the right method.

A man who could stake his life to kill a bastard he disliked—that had been me from the start.

I ceaselessly gifted my internal energy to Sado.

When Sado’s brow furrowed deeply, as though he had sensed something……

“……!”

I explosively raised my power and held Sado fast. Before I knew it, the Lust Demon had flown in from the air and struck Sado’s back with his right palm, and the Ghost Demon, arriving just a little later, slammed Sado’s back with his left palm.

Thud! Thud! After the sounds rang out, silence flowed for a moment.

Sado’s shriveled face rippled like waves, then his eyebrows shot upward. Even after taking two palm strikes squarely, this vicious old man did not cough up a single drop of blood.

Instead, he moved his head and glared at the Lust Demon and the Ghost Demon. Though it seemed impossible for his head to turn, his snake-like neck twisted around and sent them a gaze filled with killing intent.

Sado said,

“……Now the balance is somewhat right. Each of you, do try your best. Let us see whose internal energy hits bottom first. I’ll break your limbs one by one.”

Was it because he himself was such a cowardly bastard? He had become a man of character who did not even call us cowards.

When Sado spun rapidly in place as if trying to shake off the leeches clinging to his back, the three of us had no choice but to spin along with him. For some reason, it felt as if letting go would leave us crushed to death beneath a massive boulder we had been desperately holding up with both hands.

The part of Sado’s shoulder struck by the Lust Demon kept freezing white, then returning to its original color. It was visible to the eye how Sado was pushing back the ice art with his internal energy.

I opened my mouth with some difficulty.

“Sado.”

“…….”

“The Sword Demon will be out soon.”

Even though I had only spat out words mixed with bravado, Sado’s expression darkened sharply. In truth, I had no way of predicting when the Sword Demon would emerge from the Demon Sword Soul Battlefield.

I simply wanted to lie.

There are times when you wish a lie were not merely a lie, and this was one of those times.

I endured while carefully burning, piece by piece, the internal energy I had painstakingly accumulated.

Life, when I thought about it anew, was a continuous series of moments spent enduring.

Though it had no connection at all, I recalled wiping tables at the inn. Memories flashed through my mind of wiping tables, washing rags, cleaning dishes, sitting briefly in a chair, and enduring my tedious life.

Back then, there had been no particular hope.

Now, too, there was no particular promise of anything.

But enduring was, from the beginning, no different from my own exclusive martial art, so I kept drawing up my internal energy like water from a well and poured it unstintingly into Sado. If it ran dry, I intended to burn even my life force and drench Sado with that.

Suddenly, there came the sound of something shattering with a crash, and the wail of ghosts soared into the sky.

I looked up into the air.

The Light Sword was rising.

Sado lifted his head with an incredulous expression and looked at the Light Sword flying through the air.

“…….”

Then Sado looked at me. The Light Sword, which had been wheeling in the air, scattered ghostly wails as it returned to its master, and the Sword Demon appeared from the collapsing Demon Sword Soul Battlefield.

The moment I saw the Sword Demon, I swallowed a bit of saliva.

‘Oh dear.’

He had come out, yes, but there seemed to be a problem. Unlike usual, black spirits were clinging all over his body, and even his eyes had turned pitch-black, so his gaze could not be seen.

The Lust Demon spoke in a tense tone.

“Master? It’s me. It’s Mongrang.”

The Sword Demon, who had already begun approaching us, slowly moved his head with his pitch-black eyes and assessed the situation. Even under normal circumstances, his stern and serious personality made him difficult to deal with, but seeing his eyes rolled back into blackness, it felt like he would be even less receptive to jokes today.

After suffering an internal conflict, I asked the Sword Demon,

“Eldest Brother, can you see anything?”

“……!”

“It’ll be troublesome if it’s dark. A person ought to live brightly.”

The Lust Demon and the Ghost Demon looked at me with flustered expressions, but surprisingly, even that bastard Sado stared at me in shock.

In truth, if the Sword Demon swung the Light Sword around indiscriminately here, we would be the ones spraying blood. That bastard Sado was, after all, impervious to blades. Perhaps because the Sword Demon had appeared, the bastard seemed inwardly tense and was not even making a sound as he breathed.

The Sword Demon felt as if he had come back with qi deviation plastered all over his body, so the situation was troublesome in every possible way.

“…….”

This is why you ought to make good friends in ordinary times.

The words of adults always come to mind at times like this.

When the Sword Demon opened his mouth, black breath flowed out. At a glance, it was clear that he had been in an extremely difficult situation inside the Demon Sword Soul Battlefield. Judging by his condition, it seemed rather that he had solved the problem quickly and forced his way out no matter what.

How could I know the Sword Demon’s heart?

A devil who had wanted to become an outstanding swordsman stood beside us.

I looked at the Sword Demon’s pitch-black eyes, which felt especially sorrowful today, and said,

“Eldest Brother, do something somehow. You have to go see Yoran.”

Perhaps the Sword Demon truly could not see because of qi deviation; he stretched out one hand and felt around at us as we matched palm forces. After touching this guy and that guy, he felt Sado’s face.

Because the Sword Demon was in a state with spirits draped over him, he did not seem able to hear me well either, but I said to him,

“That’s the bastard who needs killing. The one you’re touching right now.”

“…….”

“An enemy of the Four Great Villains.”

The Sword Demon raised the Radiant Sword and struck Sado on the crown of the head with the end of its hilt.