This was not the turn of events he had hoped for, but what did it matter?
After all, he had chased after this girl because he admired her martial skill and wished to cross hands with her, so in the end, it was not a bad situation.
Still, Wi Pungso wanted to tell the girl in advance.
That he was not someone after the bounty, and that he did not want a life-or-death duel—only a spar to test each other’s skills.
But before he could explain any of that, the fight had already begun.
It was true that this girl’s temper was fierce and hasty, but he could hardly blame her.
She was a wanted woman, and just moments ago she had even faced people who were after her head.
In the midst of that, an unknown man had chased her all the way into these mountains. How could she not be wary?
‘This is my fault.’
Even if he won, he would hold back and not take her life.
That was what Wi Pungso thought.
He was certain of his victory.
A moment ago, when O Gyo had rushed at him with her flying knives, her movements had indeed been sharp and swift, but in the end, that was all.
Crude, straightforward movements left to instinct.
It was the blade path of a novice who had never been taught proper external arts.
Of course, to put it another way, despite having learned nothing, the girl’s physical abilities were outstanding enough to threaten his life in an instant.
If she learned proper swordsmanship, just how far would her realm rise?
It was enough to make him feel jealous.
“But that is all.”
The moment Wi Pungso drew up the internal energy he had been concealing, the atmosphere changed at once.
This man was narrow-minded and short-sighted, and was always a source of worry to his master Jin Mugyeong, but even so, he was still Jin Mugyeong’s disciple.
Sangak Jin Mugyeong was an exceptional master, enough to have his name listed among the Ten Great Experts.
How could such a man take someone with no talent as his disciple? Why had he never thought to expel his disciple, even while outwardly telling him time and again that he was lacking?
It was because this man’s talent was outstanding.
In the end, quite apart from his character, among the three rising talents of the Namhae Sword Sect, Wi Pungso was currently the most exceptional.
Frivolous and impatient by nature, he had arbitrarily altered the heart method his master had taught him in order to end the tedious internal energy training more quickly, and in only three years had made the principles of the Daehai Muryanggong大海無量功 his own—principles that ordinary people would find difficult to comprehend even after more than a decade of training.
Moreover, the martial art Wi Pungso used was the Namhae Thirty-Six Swords, said to be the most difficult of the Namhae Sword Sect’s arts to master.
Of course, he had not yet achieved great completion in this art either, but the fact that he could wield it at all was already remarkable enough.
‘Earlier, I lost the initiative, so this time I should be the one to move first.’
Wi Pungso kicked off the ground and rushed toward O Gyo, who was atop a tree branch.
In most martial arts, the first form is the most fundamental movement and serves as a pillar that can connect into many other forms.
The more a martial artist has trained through the proper process, the more likely they are to open a fight with the first form.
That is because it is easy to gauge the opponent’s ability, and no matter how the opponent responds, one can react flexibly.
However, over the past three years, Wi Pungso had roamed the jianghu, accumulated no small amount of real combat experience, and had finally realized something.
Fights came in many forms.
Spars between people of the jianghu, exchanging forms as though playing a game of go, were not the entirety of battle.
No matter how outstanding the master one had studied under, if one could not respond to irregular situations, one would die an unnatural death before ever properly displaying one’s true skill.
One must never be careless, and an attack must always be accompanied by the momentum to overwhelm the opponent.
To first extend a simple form in order to gauge one’s opponent—just how confident in one’s skill did one have to be to show such leisure in actual combat?
For a coward like him, that was impossible.
At the same time Wi Pungso leapt up, he swung his sword upward from below with all his strength.
Baengnang Docheon白浪滔天.
As the name suggested, the image of white waves rising so high they seemed to touch the heavens appeared through his sword.
A thick tree branch was sliced away like a sheet of paper, and Wi Pungso’s sword rushed toward O Gyo, who had been sitting atop it.
He had no intention of taking her life, but she was not an opponent he could simply go easy on either.
‘Dodge. If you fail to dodge, your arm will be cut off!’
O Gyo twisted her body in an instant and let the incoming sword slide past.
Then she kicked off the falling branch and moved to another tree.
At the same time, two flying knives shot toward Wi Pungso, but he knocked them away with ease.
Hidden weapons reveal their true value when they are hidden.
They would not work on Wi Pungso, who had already grasped his opponent’s tactics.
“Show me your real skill, not these petty tricks. The martial art you showed back on the street.”
Wi Pungso had seen through the fact that the girl’s true weapon was the thread connected to her flying knives.
O Gyo’s eyes widened as if in surprise.
“So you were secretly watching. You shady bastard.”
“……I wasn’t watching with bad intentions.”
“How am I supposed to believe that? You filthy lecher!”
“L-lecher? What do you mean, lecher! Don’t say things people might misunderstand if they overhear! You mustn’t recklessly damage another person’s reputation!”
Because Wi Pungso did have something to feel guilty about, he reacted somewhat oversensitively.
He had deliberately waited until O Gyo was attacked in order to save her in a dramatic situation, so he had indeed been unspeakably scheming.
O Gyo loosened the thread connected to the flying knives, then cast the end of the thread toward the ground.
Wi Pungso, thinking she was attacking, was startled and fixed his gaze on the ground, but that was a misunderstanding.
O Gyo controlled the end of the thread and skillfully retrieved the two hidden weapons that had just fallen to the ground.
It was a feat that drew admiration on its own.
‘She’s directly controlling the thread with internal energy. Its movements are like a living snake. If she applies that to an attack, it won’t be easy to deal with.’
Wi Pungso held his sword horizontally and took a defensive stance.
‘So this is where the real thing begins.’
Seeing her opponent on guard, O Gyo could not help but tense as well.
Fighting an opponent who knew about her was bound to be difficult.
Especially because she used hidden weapons, the presence or absence of information was all the more important.
If he had watched the fight on the street, then he would also know how she made use of her thread.
In fact, when she retrieved the flying knives, Wi Pungso avoided the surprise attack aimed at his rear.
As he had said, petty tricks would not work.
She had to face him in earnest.
O Gyo drew up her internal energy and sent it flowing to the end of the thread.
Then the thread began to be dyed red.
The red thread slipped into O Gyo’s sleeves and pulled out every flying knife hidden on her body.
The spool inside her bracer spun wildly.
The long-unwound thread encircled O Gyo like a coiled serpent, and along that thread, numerous flying knives stood here and there like thorns growing from a plant stem.
Because the red thread was extremely thin, at a glance it looked as if dozens of flying knives were floating in the air, surrounding O Gyo.
That feat alone was already astonishing.
Wi Pungso stared blankly at the sight, forgetting that he was in the middle of a fight.
“Incredible.”
“……Hmph.”
“I’m not just flattering you. I’m truly amazed.”
Seeing Wi Pungso’s eyes shining like a child’s, O Gyo somehow felt embarrassed.
—Yohwa’s thread is red. It’s pretty.
In the past, she herself had reacted to Yohwa like that.
She had pestered her for days to teach her, and in the end, unable to withstand her insistence, Yohwa had passed this martial art on to her.
Back then, her martial art had no name.
Yohwa was not someone who fought with others, and this martial art was not meant to harm others either.
She had merely used internal energy to control thread and wield it like her own limbs.
But O Gyo was different.
O Gyo had a mortal enemy she wanted to defeat, had to defeat.
The greatest swordsman of the Jinyiwei, Yang Uisin.
After hearing O Gyo’s story, Yohwa had pondered it together with her, and in the end, the two of them combined their thoughts and came to create a new martial art.
Yes, this martial art had been created to face the greatest swordsman under heaven.
Yohwa was a bond bestowed by the heavens.
And her bond with her had begun from red blood, like this thread.
A bond tied by red thread.
Thus this martial art was named Yeonnyeon Hyeollak緣連血絡.
“……At the foot of the Qilian Mountains lives a strange serpent, with a red body and black markings.”
O Gyo lowered her stance as far as she could and leaned forward, preparing to leap.
“Grass and trees wither at its mere touch; once bitten, there is no cure.”
She kicked off the ground.
At the same time, as she swung her left hand, the red serpent shot forward as though it possessed a will of its own.
Wi Pungso, who had been about to raise his sword to block, hurriedly changed his judgment.
Dozens of flying knives were woven into the thread, making it difficult to block with a single sword.
The best course was to get out of its path.
Forgetting his dignity, he quickly rolled to the side, and the red serpent struck the place where he had been standing moments earlier.
The ground was gouged out, and the underbrush was shattered and scattered.
It was hard to believe that such thin thread could produce this much pressure.
He followed O Gyo’s position with his eyes.
She was leaping into the darkness of the forest.
Why had his opponent moved?
If she could swing that thread like a whip, she could simply stand in place and attack.
He learned the answer to his question in the very next instant.
The girl moved separately from the thread.
A strange footwork that seemed to crawl along the ground.
It was like a snake pushing through grass and climbing over rocks.
Jangsa Yuhaeng長蛇遊行.
It was the lightness skill of the Miaojiang Five Poisons Cult, which ruled the rugged mountainous terrain of Yunnan.
The girl swam through these mountains full of obstacles as freely as a fish.
She hid herself behind trees and rocks, then suddenly reappeared outside his field of vision.
At the same time, the girl pulled her left hand and applied new force to the thread.
Then the red thread moved in a completely different direction from before, aiming for Wi Pungso’s blind spot.
Only then did he understand.
Throwing the thread forward was the first move.
Then changing position and pulling the thread again to aim at the opponent’s rear or flank was the second move.
Once the thread was pulled taut enough, she used the recoil to swing it forward again.
The thread was swept horizontally like a whip, and the flying knives woven into it came hurtling in like a rain of arrows.
The attacks were fast, and their trajectories were hard to predict.
The flying knives were coated in poison, and judging from what he could tell, the thread imbued with this girl’s internal energy was dangerous as well.
‘This is…… truly troublesome to deal with!’
He somehow avoided the attack that came as the thread was pulled, but there was no way to avoid the subsequent swing.
A whip was long and flexible, so it could not be blocked with a single sword.
Even if he blocked, the thread would wrap around his body and the flying knives would pierce him all over.
In that case, he had no choice but to unleash sword strikes from his side as well and cancel out its force.
Clang, clang!
As Wi Pungso swung his sword wide at an angle and knocked away the incoming flying knives, sparks flew in the air.
He had hoped this would create an opening, but O Gyo controlled the thread as if nothing had happened and launched another attack.
The sword strike he had used to block had been too weak.
He had failed to completely cut off the movement of that thread.
That meant his opponent’s attack had been heavier.
The whip swung again, and Wi Pungso desperately swung his sword and somehow managed to block it this time as well.
His arms trembled with numbness, and his body staggered as he was forced backward.
Far from creating an opening in his opponent, his own stance was collapsing.
Only after exchanging five moves like that did O Gyo fully withdraw the thread once.
To prepare for her next attack, she disappeared into the darkness once more.
He had to pursue her, but he had no strength to spare.
His breath was growing short.
But if he simply stood there like this, he would only become a target again.
Wi Pungso jumped into the underbrush to chase O Gyo, but he could hardly even step on her shadow.
It was not that his lightness skill was lacking.
It was a matter of terrain.
That girl’s footwork fit this vicious terrain perfectly, while Wi Pungso found it difficult to display his true ability.
This place was advantageous to that girl.
But he could not dare complain.
After all, not every fight in the world took place only in a wide, clean training ground.
In the end, Wi Pungso lost O Gyo.
Having vanished from his sight, she appeared behind him a moment later and began attacking again.
Once an attack began, all he could do was block from where he stood.
His opponent swung the thread with the bare minimum of strength, so she showed no sign of fatigue at all, whereas Wi Pungso’s face was already drenched in sweat.
The more time passed, the more unfavorable the situation would become.
If he wanted to overturn this state of affairs, he had to do something.
If he unleashed his ultimate technique with all his might, could he create an opening?
But even if an opening appeared in his opponent, he himself would need a brief instant to regain his stance after using his ultimate technique.
If his opponent retreated into the darkness again during that gap, everything would be in vain.
Because he could not chase her.
There was no way.
Wi Pungso realized it.
He had lost.
“Stop!”
Before O Gyo could swing the whip again, Wi Pungso quickly shouted.
It was a reckless act.
If his opponent were an enemy aiming for his life, would she obediently stop upon hearing that?
However, that naive girl hurriedly caught the flying knives and suppressed the movement of the thread.
“Why?”
And then she asked that with a calm face.
A hollow laugh escaped Wi Pungso’s mouth.
He had not merely lost.
This was a complete defeat.
“Heroine, you have won. Please spare my life.”
Wi Pungso immediately threw his sword to the ground and lay flat on his stomach.
If his master Jin Mugyeong saw this, he would pound the ground in lamentation, but to Wi Pungso, his one life was more precious than the honor of his sect.