Chapter 411. The Suffering of Heavy Weight Under Cheonak.
I knew full well that the Blood Cult Leader was strong, but my gaze remained on the Ghost Demon. He had taken his stance with the Six Harmonies Sword made for him by the Muk family in hand, and there was something strange about the feeling he gave off.
He had always used a defensive sword art, but perhaps because Cheonak’s torment had been added to it, rather than simply feeling solid, he gave the impression of being steadfast.
He was not the greatest mountain under heaven.
But the Ghost Demon’s back now looked like a single towering mountain.
Even the Blood Cult Leader, who had been about to mock the Ghost Demon as he faced him, merely stood there with his eyes wide open, probing him, and the confrontation continued.
If the Blood Cult Leader was recalling the Ghost Demon he had seen at Tongcheonbang,
then the current atmosphere must have felt all the stranger.
Oddly enough, the Blood Cult Leader’s gaze, though his opponent stood before him, shifted and turned toward Cheonak.
“……”
Perhaps he had naturally looked that way because he suspected Cheonak was the one who had brought about this change, but…
The Ghost Demon, while the Blood Cult Leader was distracted, launched the first attack without mercy. In an instant, the sparring began, and wind raised dust all around.
What I especially liked about Cheonak’s training and martial studies was…
that he obsessed over the body’s innate potential and the fundamental training that most martial artists would be liable to overlook.
Why was that excellent?
Because it was enough simply to apply it to the martial arts one was already training in. Moreover, the goal to pursue was clear as well.
The goal was the explosion created by the combination of inner and outer cultivation.
Training with tremendous difficulty to make the most effective point of impact one’s own in each passing instant—that, in the end, was Cheonak’s martial study.
I remembered Cheonak’s expression as he looked down at me from above while I was holding a heavy lump of iron.
It had seemed as though the strength in my muscles was already exhausted…
Yet Cheonak had glared at me as if he would beat me to death at any moment.
Where on earth had strength surged up from again?
Perhaps the terror that I might die had dragged up even the laziest strength hidden at the very bottom of my muscles. In the same way, the fact that Cheonak’s martial study had been added to the sword art the Ghost Demon originally knew was clear enough just from the exchange unfolding now.
The problem was the depth of internal energy…
Against the palm force the Blood Cult Leader extended, the Ghost Demon responded with a stubborn downward strike. His posture was impressive. The Ghost Demon’s upper body tilted ever so slightly forward, and his left foot struck the ground.
As the palm force and sword collided, the Ghost Demon was naturally pushed far back according to the difference in their internal energy.
But the Blood Cult Leader’s expression after he had sent the Ghost Demon flying back was truly worth seeing.
“…What a bizarre method.”
I watched the ground.
The sole of the Ghost Demon’s left foot had dragged along the earth, drawing a straight line. It was proof that he had blocked the Blood Cult Leader’s palm force with exceptional efficiency.
The Ghost Demon looked at the Blood Cult Leader in the exact same stance as before.
The connection between still and dynamic movements was harmonious. The Blood Cult Leader had now entered a phase where he had to face a single steadfast mountain and smash it apart.
The Blood Cult Leader asked,
“…You may be severely injured. Are you fine with that? Your training must have been harsh, since you have far surpassed my expectations.”
The Ghost Demon answered,
“We should both do our best.”
“That is exactly what I am saying. You may die, you see.”
“Have you had a change of heart? I appreciate your concern, but I know better than anyone that you were originally superior to me, so I have no room to hold back. And if you were to lose to a man weaker than yourself, how unfair would that be? Only if we both do our best will no regrets remain.”
The Blood Cult Leader nodded, then looked at me.
“Did you hear that? Your sworn brother volunteered for this himself.”
I said to the Blood Cult Leader,
“If you were minding us, that would be an insult to my second brother. Fight to your heart’s content.”
This time, the Blood Cult Leader said to the Demonic Cult Leader,
“Lend me the Great Cloud Sword.”
Did the Demonic Cult Leader have the Great Cloud Sword on him? Apparently not, for the Demonic Cult Leader spoke toward the carriage.
“Pass it over.”
“Yes, Cult Leader.”
The coachman rose from the driver’s seat, pulled back the covering on the roof, and took out a red sword. Then, with the Great Cloud Sword in hand, the coachman looked toward us. Only one of the coachman’s eyes remained, and without even getting down from the driver’s seat, he flung the Great Cloud Sword.
The Blood Cult Leader snatched the Great Cloud Sword as it flew swiftly in a straight line and glared at the coachman.
“…Where did you learn such manners?”
“……”
The one-eyed coachman sat back down in the driver’s seat without answering. Since this was not the time to pay attention to the coachman, the Blood Cult Leader immediately drew the Great Cloud Sword and said to the Ghost Demon,
“Let us begin.”
I looked again at the coachman and carriage, which were not easy to see clearly. It did not seem as though only the Great Cloud Sword was on the roof. That meant the Ilsal Blade that had been taken back from me was also being stored on the carriage roof.
Before I knew it, the sound of colliding swords burst out, and I focused once more on my second brother’s fight.
Earlier, the Blood Cult Leader had grown sick of it, saying, Another swordsman?
But watching him like this, the Blood Cult Leader’s own identity was that of a swordsman as well. Perhaps he had wanted a contest of swordsmen with the Ghost Demon. His martial arts had already reached a level where he was not bound to the sword.
Had bringing out the Great Cloud Sword been the right move?
It was too early to know.
When the Blood Cult Leader attacked with a sword in hand, the Ghost Demon actually became even more defensive. He did not look like a man moving fiercely for the sake of a fight he meant to win, but rather a man struggling with utter thoroughness so he would not be taken down easily.
His opponent’s internal energy was deeper?
The Ghost Demon was fighting while acknowledging that.
His opponent’s level was higher?
That was why the Ghost Demon increased the weight of his defense even more. However, the movements he made in the instant of defense had become far higher in level than what I had known before.
Here and there, the footprints left by the Ghost Demon’s footwork gradually increased.
The explosive power of the Middle Finger Flick Art I used could sometimes be glimpsed in the Ghost Demon’s sword as it knocked away the Blood Cult Leader’s sword.
In that instant, with a buk— sound, the back of the long robe the Ghost Demon wore split open in a straight line that surged upward.
As soon as he saw it, the White-Clad Scholar hurriedly covered his mouth and stifled a laugh.
Curious as to why the White-Clad Scholar was laughing, I asked while keeping my eyes fixed on the sparring.
“Why are you laughing?”
The White-Clad Scholar said as he watched the sparring,
“Liuhe went through a great deal of hardship. The traces of it are tearing through his clothes, so how could I not laugh?”
If the White-Clad Scholar was laughing like this, then it seemed he really had endured hardship close to death.
But hearing him speak, it meant that Cheonak had not been the only one tormenting the Ghost Demon. The White-Clad Scholar himself, who loved to meddle and was originally deeply learned in martial studies, must have remembered that he too had tormented the Ghost Demon, causing the laughter to burst out.
Moreover, the White-Clad Scholar was originally an extremely harsh man toward those who learned.
As most had expected, the Blood Cult Leader pressed the Ghost Demon hard with the Great Cloud Sword in hand. Yet the sight resembled a sword striking down upon a solid mountain, so the sparring was quite entertaining to watch.
The White-Clad Scholar also seemed curious about the outcome of the fight, for he raised his head and watched closely before saying,
“He is enduring well.”
It sounded as if he were saying, So my test subject has grown.
At one moment, when their left palms collided fiercely, the Ghost Demon’s form rose into the air and spun away, whirling round and round, before he used that rotational force to pour down a sword wind like a thunderbolt. The Blood Cult Leader, who had been about to pursue and finish him off, moved his left hand in a swatting motion to block the sword wind.
Thwack!
When the Ghost Demon, who had been spinning in midair, landed on the ground, his ash-gray changshan was completely torn. The Ghost Demon grabbed the robe with his left hand and stripped it off as if ripping it away. Only then did I see that something was written on the back of the white martial attire he wore underneath.
Under Heavenly Evil (天惡下).
There was something written beneath it as well, but the two immediately clashed again, so I could not read it all.
It looked like the White-Clad Scholar’s handwriting, so I had no choice but to ask.
“Under Heavenly Evil? What does that mean?”
The White-Clad Scholar said with a smile.
“Just something I wrote to tease Six Harmonies. It doesn’t mean much.”
Just what kind of hell had the Ghost Demon gone through at Heavenly Evil’s villa?
The White-Clad Scholar continued.
“It means he felt the suffering of weight while Heavenly Evil watched from above. The Weight-Suffering Under Heavenly Evil (天惡下重量苦).”
After hearing that, I looked carefully at the Ghost Demon’s back and saw that the phrase the White-Clad Scholar had mentioned was written there exactly as he said.
The White-Clad Scholar said.
“As his alias suggests, Six Harmonies used the Six Harmonies Sword Art. It was a sword art that could not be completed. Because there was no such thing as perfection in it, it was a martial art that required endless training. Heavenly Evil gave him advice. If he was going to train in a martial art that was difficult to complete anyway, he might as well raise the standard of completion as high as the boundless heavens and train toward that. Thanks to that, Six Harmonies’ directions expanded into thirty-six harmonies. Therefore, the name of the sword art Six Harmonies is now displaying is……”
“……”
“The Thirty-Six Harmonies Sword of Weight-Suffering Under Heavenly Evil, I suppose.”
Come to think of it, the White-Clad Scholar had never had any talent for naming things, then or now.
“Where in the world is there a sword art with a name that long? Shorten it. Make it the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven (天下三十六劍).”
“The name doesn’t matter. Look. With an unfinishable sword art, he is holding out remarkably well against the Blood Cult Leader. His suffering is finally bearing fruit.”
If he had increased the directions of Six Harmonies into thirty-six harmonies under Heavenly Evil…….
The fact that the Ghost Demon had returned alive from Heavenly Evil’s villa could be called a kind of miracle in itself. I knew that well, because I too had lifted weights under Heavenly Evil.
Even though I was quite patient myself, that pain had been truly dreadful.
Moreover, when Heavenly Evil looked down at you from close enough that you could feel the wind of his breath, as if he would beat you to death at any moment, even strength you never had would spring forth. It was then that I learned external arts could be wrung out from the very bottom of the muscles.
Just what was fate?
I had learned from Heavenly Evil, but the Ghost Demon had also learned a great deal from him. This fight was the proof.
If I had failed to overcome my rage in the Black Cat Gang and killed Six Harmonies…….
Then today’s fight would not have stirred my heart like this.
The Ghost Demon, visible only in fleeting glimpses, kept his mouth firmly shut and maintained his breathing as he parried and dispelled the Blood Cult Leader’s various attacks, and whenever he barely seized an opportunity, he thrust out his sword and even counterattacked.
The moment countless strands of blood energy that looked like spider legs stretched out from the Blood Cult Leader’s body, which had at some point turned entirely crimson, and surged over him like a wave…….
The Ghost Demon stomped down with his left foot.
And with a Single Stroke Severing in Two, unleashed without the slightest hesitation, he smashed the blood-colored wall that had formed before him into two pieces.
That was also the sword art Im Sobaek had displayed at Dongho.
When the curtain of blood energy that had blocked the space between the two scattered in an instant…….
The Blood Cult Leader, who had retreated far back to avoid the Ghost Demon’s sword energy and was waiting there, also stood silently for a moment with his mouth closed.
Even in my life, there had only been a handful of martial duels this magnificent. Without realizing it, a short word slipped out toward Teacher Six Harmonies, the Ghost Demon of my previous life.
“……Good.”
Following my words, Eldest Brother uttered the same word with force.
“Good.”
The Pants-Shitter, who had been sitting and watching, slapped his own knee and shouted as if screaming.
“Second Brother, good!”
It was good as well that, through this duel, we had come to understand perfectly just what sort of hell Second Brother had endured.
In truth, because of Yoran, we could no longer live like the villains of yesterday. And so, to my eyes, it looked as though a single righteous hero who had returned from training was struggling alone against the Blood Cult Leader.
The Blood Cult Leader lifted one corner of his lips and said with a smile.
“Six Harmonies, you have grown astonishingly strong. You are not tired, I hope?”
The Ghost Demon nodded.
“I am still far from tired.”
Heavenly Evil, who had been watching in silence until now, smiled faintly and spoke a single word.
“As you should be.”
The Ghost Demon rolled his wrist several times, then took his original stance again and asked us while keeping his eyes on the Blood Cult Leader.
“Do I seem stronger than before?”
Since it was not a question directed at anyone in particular, I stepped forward.
“……Of course. Much stronger.”
The Ghost Demon nodded.
“Then that is enough.”
The second phase of the fight, which lasted far longer than we had expected, was opened by the Ghost Demon’s charge.
Now…….
When the Ghost Demon attacked, my heart surged with him.
When the Ghost Demon defended, my heart became as firm as a mountain.
What did it matter if he was not the greatest under heaven?
We had grown stronger than yesterday.
The Ghost Demon was showing me that victory and defeat meant nothing at all.