Episode 303. Demon Swordsman in the Left Hand, Swordsman in the Right Hand.

The moment Sado was struck on the head, I was inwardly astonished.

“…….”

It was because the blow did not look like much. But what surprised me more was that Sado’s internal energy, which had felt like a massive wall, had momentarily cut out.

I could tell because I was contesting internal energy with Sado. That meant Sado also had to send internal energy throughout his body for the blade-proof invulnerability to be possible.

All this time, Sado had been putting on an act of receiving Geomma’s sword with deliberately clumsy movements and gestures. His behavior was Sado’s own, but the true foundation of his martial arts was pure, orthodox internal energy, one might say. Of course, it did not seem like this bastard had built up his internal energy through proper means.

Geomma once again struck the crown of Sado’s head with the hilt of the Guangming Sword.

Thwack!

Why did I feel laughter welling up?

With the Four Great Evils clinging to him, Sado’s weakness had been exposed.

Was this simply luck?

Or was it the result of various circumstances overlapping?

It was a fact I would not have noticed if I had only contested internal energy, and a secret difficult to uncover if I had fought using only sword or palm techniques.

The essence of this battle was nothing more than Sado, whose internal energy was far deeper than ours, crushing us with that internal energy.

Clearly, it was not perfect blade-proof invulnerability.

Once again, a brief rhythm erupted.

Thud!

Every time Geomma struck the crown of Sado’s head with the Guangming Sword, I felt as if I were hearing a drumbeat. Taking advantage of each opening when Geomma struck Sado’s crown, I shifted the internal energy battle completely to the offensive.

Had there ever been such a perfect combined attack?

Originally, four against one was a shameful thing, but since the four of us were not the Four Great Saints anyway, we did not care about such things.

Perhaps because his concentration and mind were shaken, Sado’s shoulder was gradually dyed white by Saekma’s ice technique.

Moreover, since I had been holding Sado’s arm from the very beginning until now, I had absolutely no intention of letting go.

I withdrew my Geumgu Soyogong and, as if fanning flames in a house already ablaze, piled on the ice technique of midwinter.

Thwack! Thwack!

Like a reliable woodcutter splitting firewood, Geomma brought the Guangming Sword down like an axe.

‘Good.’

I wanted to pour out words of encouragement and concern to Geomma, but I held back for a moment because I had to maintain the offensive.

Anyway, Sado had been caught by the Four Great Evils.

This bastard would die soon.

If I had come to Baeksado alone, acting on my temper as in my previous life, I probably would have fought Sado and then jumped into the river, pursued by the Gunseon. Strangely, if even one of the four had been missing, we would have won but suffered grave injuries.

But now, I held Sado fast with my internal energy and administered a one-sided beating.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thud……!

Only now did blood trickle from Sado’s mouth, his eyes were completely bloodshot, and the arm and shoulder where the ice technique was encroaching had frozen entirely.

Even in this situation, Sado forced an awkward smile and spoke to me.

“Munju.”

“What.”

“Please spare me. I have much to tell you. Martial arts as well.”

Perhaps because he could not make out the conversation well, Geomma narrowed his eyes and stopped moving, tilting his head slightly.

I spoke to Sado.

“You’ve had it rough. Now go meet your subordinates.”

“Say that again.”

“The parents of the girl found at the auction house fell to your subordinates. I cannot spare you.”

“What relation do those parents even have to you?”

“I’ve taken the child as a disciple of the Four Great Evils. You should have kept your subordinates in line. Eldest Brother, let’s keep smashing his head.”

Geomma looked at Sado with jet-black eyes and spoke in a low, heavy tone.

“……I am the First Master.”

Immediately after, the hilt of the Guangming Sword fell on Sado’s crown.

Thwack!

A laugh escaped me.

“Exactly.”

I had watched Gwima’s expression change emotionally from beginning to end. Sado’s internal energy was now in a state where I could handle it entirely on my own, and since Gwima had realized this as well, he too swung his right hand at Sado’s head.

Thwack!

“I am the Second Master.”

While Sado dispersed his internal energy to block Geomma’s attacks, I pushed the ice technique through that gap.

I was tenaciously scattering Sado’s internal energy, so I inevitably looked at Saekma. Our eyes met, and Saekma sent a palm strike at the back of Sado’s head.

Crack!

“This is revenge for the Fourth Master. Take another hit.”

Thwack!

Saekma struck him for my share as well. A blossom of laughter bloomed within me. If only Geomma’s condition recovered, this battle would be a grand victory. Then Geomma raised the Guangming Sword high and struck Sado’s head with the hilt engulfed in black specters.

A crunching sound rang out, and Sado’s head suddenly burst, splattering the four of us with blood.

In that instant, perhaps because my palm force had plunged through Sado’s body, his dantian area also cracked like a watermelon as he collapsed to the ground.

We exhaled long breaths simultaneously and withdrew our hands.

The fight had not been easy, but the result was always this simple.

Because this is death.

Geomma asked us.

“Is he dead?”

Saekma answered.

“Yes, Master.”

Geomma let out a low sigh and sat down wearily, crossing his legs into a lotus position. As he slowly closed his eyes, those uncomfortably black pupils were covered by his eyelids as well.

I spoke to Geomma.

“You should circulate your qi.”

Geomma shook his head and exhaled black smoke from his half-open mouth. Without stepping back even a single step, I sat down and looked at him.

“Hmm.”

Gwima and Saekma also sat right in the sticky blood and stared at Geomma.

Suddenly, Geomma shook his head back and forth and asked, caressing his ears with both hands.

“Disciple.”

“Yes.”

“Can you hear the Ghostly Wail?”

Saekma answered.

“We cannot hear it, Master.”

Geomma nodded.

“I see.”

What was Geomma seeing, and what sounds was he hearing? He looked like a man who had fallen into hell alone. The fact that he could still converse with us in that hell seemed like his only hope. Since he was not a man who ever groaned or showed weakness, it was impossible to guess his condition through imagination alone.

Suddenly, when Geomma tilted his head back and then lowered it, a nosebleed and bloody tears poured out simultaneously.

Geomma took a deep breath and spoke.

“The Gwangmyeong Sword is, in common terms, a sword haunted by ghosts. A sword that has no need to exist in this world. I caught the attention of the previous Sword Demon of the old Main Headquarters and was forcibly bound to it. At the time, I survived the life-and-death struggle among those qualified to receive the Gwangmyeong Sword. Perhaps there was never a way to undo the bond from the beginning, or perhaps it will only end when I die. He, too, only handed the Gwangmyeong Sword over to me when his death drew near. I remember how he looked. He was someone who should have died long before. The moment he passed the Gwangmyeong Sword to me, he aged rapidly. What state do you think I am in now?”

The Lust Demon answered.

“Master, you are unchanged.”

“If I absorb spirits with the Gwangmyeong Sword, then engrave that spirit sword qi back into my body as demonic script, I too will reach a state of imperviousness to blades like Sado. If there is something gained, there must also be something lost. I do not know what that side effect is. I only thought there was no point in becoming stronger that way. My pride would not allow it.”

I gazed silently at the Sword Demon.

It sounded as if he were debating whether or not to accept the spirits now clinging to him. In truth, he looked as though he had no choice but to accept them.

How could one live with spirits attached to them?

If that state continued, living would not be living at all. After all, he was hearing ghostly wails that we could not hear.

I pondered and worried over the Sword Demon’s condition as if it were my own body, then said,

“Even demonic arts cannot overcome one’s true nature.”

The Sword Demon answered with his eyes closed.

“What do you mean by that?”

I spoke, somewhat incoherently, of what I had felt while watching the man called the Sword Demon.

“Eldest Brother, if you had been born into a good family or clan, or had become the disciple of a prestigious sect, by now you would have been a sect leader or an expert of the orthodox path. Demonic arts did not change your dignified temperament or your true nature. You might as well accept the spirits. If possible…”

“……”

“Can you engrave the demonic script onto one arm, or confine it there?”

It was advice I had uttered myself, but it made no sense at all.

The Sword Demon asked me,

“Do you mean the hand that holds the sword?”

I answered in an even tone.

“Not that side. You are a swordsman.”

“……”

“The opposite hand. Can you do it?”

The Sword Demon raised his left hand and remained still for a moment before asking,

“…In this hand?”

I nodded.

“Sword Demon in the left hand, swordsman in the right. Gather the spirits in the left hand, and hold the sword with the right.”

I did not know whether that made any sense.

To begin with, I did not know much about demonic arts. Since I was giving advice about something I did not know, there was no telling what the result would be.

However, to a martial artist of the jianghu, the hands were the most important parts of the body after the dantian, and for that very reason, they were also the body parts that had to be controlled most skillfully.

That was why there were so many palm arts among martial arts.

The palm was the most efficient intermediary for transmitting inner power, and it was a body part capable of far more than we knew. Even people who had never learned martial arts instinctively placed a hand on their stomach when they had a stomachache. That was because they knew, even without inner power, that the palm transmitted heat most efficiently.

It seemed better for the spirits to be trapped in his left arm than to erode the Sword Demon’s mind or entire body. I was not advising him because I understood demonic arts well. It was simply intuition.

As the Sword Demon held up his left hand, sunk in thought, the Lust Demon looked at Sado’s mangled corpse and said,

“About Sado. It seems he mastered a martial art that used overwhelming inner power to make specific parts of his body impervious to blades. In other words, it was nothing more than a method of momentarily wrapping himself in palm force to knock away a sword, extended over his entire body. It sounds like wordplay, but in reality, I do not think he was truly impervious to blades. The flow of his inner power changed quite blatantly.”

The Sword Demon gave a slight nod at his disciple’s words.

In other words, the Lust Demon was suggesting that he might be able to adopt Sado’s method and bind the spirits to his left arm.

With the left hand in question, the Sword Demon wiped away the blood running down his face. It looked like the profane act of a priest preaching some ominous religion, offering up red blood first. But the Sword Demon had already left the Cult, and even after stepping onto a wrong path, he was a man trying to walk toward the light.

The Sword Demon clenched and unclenched his hand with a weary expression, then muttered,

“…Take my arm. This is my final warning.”

A pitch-black energy began gathering in the Sword Demon’s left hand like palm force manifested from external qi. The black mass of light unraveled into threads and began eroding his left hand, its color darkening little by little as if ink were seeping into his veins.

The black energy that began in his palm stretched outward like a spiderweb, then advanced up the Sword Demon’s left arm.

On the other hand, the aura of death that had been clinging to the Sword Demon here and there grew faint, and as if balancing it out, the color of his left arm grew darker and darker.

Before long, the Sword Demon opened his pitch-black eyes and looked at his left arm.

When the color of his eyes gradually returned to that of a human’s, the traces of the spirits engraved on his left arm spread like demonic script, then were inscribed in purple patterns up to the nape of his neck.

Like a person who had been holding his breath returning to his natural complexion, the Sword Demon’s face also gradually brightened.

How on earth had he done it?

We looked at the Sword Demon without saying a word.

His face was still expressionless, so I could not tell whether I was looking at a swordsman or a demon.

The Sword Demon stared at the hand he had been clenching and unclenching, then touched the left side of his neck and said,

“…If it spreads any farther, I will have to cut off my left arm.”

At those terrifying words about cutting off his left arm, the three of us laughed. I said to Eldest Brother,

“A one-armed swordsman is far cooler than a demon consumed by spirits. It is actually better. Want me to cut it off for you?”

The Sword Demon, hearing my words, grinned.

“Not now.”

The Lust Demon asked,

“Master, are you all right?”

The Sword Demon nodded.

“It feels as though I have taken about half of the Gwangmyeong Sword’s hardness. It is uncomfortable, but this much is enough.”

The Ghost Demon said to the three of us,

“Let us go wash ourselves. The smell of blood is overwhelming.”

When we looked at one another, we realized anew that we were covered in blood. The Lust Demon rose first and helped the Sword Demon to his feet. The matter of the spirits had been resolved for now, but the Sword Demon was exhausted, like a man who had escaped from a pit of fire.

We matched the Sword Demon’s slow steps as we crossed over the corpses and headed toward the lake. Baeksa Island had become such a mess that no one would be able to live there for a while. But there did not seem to be any major problem. Once rain fell and the wind blew, it would regain its original appearance.

The four of us immersed ourselves in the lake.

The red blood washed away.

As I washed off the bloody water, my eyes half-closed. Looking around, I saw a corpse with a severed arm lying face down by the water’s edge. It looked as if he had died while trying to escape by boat.

As I found myself looking at the intact boats, the spoils seemed quite considerable.

If we took the hired boatmen who had fled to Baeksa Island first and made them boatmen again to go around Dong Lake, we would likely be able to recover the wealth Sado had accumulated. But this was not something we could do ourselves. It would take a long time, and it would be troublesome.

I forgot about thoughts of the aftermath and, for the moment, lay down on the water.

Sleep came pouring over me, and I could not withstand it.

If I fell asleep like this, I felt I would be dragged under by the water demon, so I barely managed to move onto land and sprawled out flat on my back.

With my eyes closed, I said to the Four Great Evildoers,

“I am going to sleep for a while.”

The voices of the Ghost Demon, the Lust Demon, and the Sword Demon followed one after another.

“Get some sleep.”

“Sleep.”

“Lie still. We’ll light a campfire nearby.”

A campfire…….

Just imagining it made me feel warmth.