Free Web NovelYeon-a fixed her eyes on the demonic warriors.
They were spread out with the huge man at the center, four to his left and four to his right.
A faint crease formed between Yeon-a’s brows. It was because the spacing between them looked even.
'Are they trying to form a formation?'
Her grip on her sword tightened.
If the ones launching a joint assault had rules to their attacks, it could be difficult to face them alone. Once they formed a sword formation, they would not have to worry about cutting their own side in the tangle of blades, nor would they be limited in how they connected their techniques.
The only one allowed to make mistakes would be her.
If she yielded a single opening, the attacks coming in order could neutralize her.
Just then, the demonic warrior standing at the center suddenly appeared before her eyes.
Boom.
Yeon-a reflexively blocked the strike, but the demonic warrior began to press down on her sword with terrifying strength.
Creak.
A strange sound came from the blade.
The sword trembled dangerously, as if about to break, but Yeon-a did not retreat. On the contrary, she exerted her full strength to push back against the demonic warrior’s sword, as if trying to gauge his power.
Soon, Yeon-a’s eyes widened as she realized something.
Tap.
She immediately pulled her body back and blocked the demonic warriors rushing at her from both sides. When the ones who had been heading toward the tree roots found their path blocked, they leapt upward.
Thock.
Yeon-a pressed herself fully in front of the tree.
This was no time to be measuring their tactics or their strength or any such thing.
Their goal was the lives of the Tang Clan’s direct line.
She came after that. If they had a chance to reach the direct line, they would abandon her at any time and cut down the twins.
'...This might actually be better.'
It felt like she could draw them in and break up their formation.
Yeon-a glanced at the sword embedded in the ground before her. The demonic warrior’s sword was stuck in the earth about one zhang away.
It was a sword she had taken from a demonic warrior on her way here.
Yeon-a set a boundary for herself: she would not step beyond that sword.
Tap.
She sprang up into the tree and attacked the demonic warrior standing on the branch. When he sprang far away to another branch, Yeon-a immediately dropped back down and struck at the crown of the demonic warrior charging for the roots.
Clang.
Although he blocked with his sword so she did not cut him down, she was able to drive him far back.
The flustered demonic warrior retreated too much. He ended up farther away than the sword embedded in the ground.
Yeon-a leapt back into the tree and swung her sword at another demonic warrior who was waiting for a chance to descend. This time, before her blade could reach him, the demonic warrior drew back quickly.
Yeon-a dropped straight down again so the entrance would not be left exposed.
Tap.
The instant she landed, a sword flashed toward her from directly ahead. It was the warrior who looked to be the highest in rank.
Clang.
Yeon-a did not dodge; she met the demonic warrior’s strike head-on. But because she had blocked a blade that had already come so close, her sword’s spine grazed her cheek as it deflected it.
Pulling her upper body back, Yeon-a brought up her knee and kicked at the demonic warrior. He lightly twisted his body to avoid the leg technique, her toes cutting through empty air before finding the ground.
Clang.
He began swinging his sword like a madman, as if he no longer intended to hold back.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Yeon-a focused and blocked the torrent of strikes. They came from all directions in wild disorder, yet at an extremely high speed.
Even for Yeon-a, acknowledged as having a natural eye for seeing through things, it was hard to grasp his movements. This man’s swordsmanship was not at a level she could afford to underestimate.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The demonic warrior tried to cut Yeon-a down by bringing his sword down from all directions, and from time to time, he thrust straight in toward the center.
Fwoosh.
Each time, Yeon-a either tilted her body or spun to evade the sword. Because of that, her balance was shaken again and again.
Crack.
By a hair’s breadth, Yeon-a narrowly avoided a strike aimed at her shoulder. The sword that scraped the tree trunk left behind a deep scar.
Sizzle.
The gouged area began to rot inward. As if its life had been stripped away, the flesh of the wood around the wound turned black and crumbled to powder.
Yeon-a swallowed a curse in her heart.
This was why that spotless sword was so frightening.
On her way here, Yeon-a had run into a group of demonic warriors. A few of them had carried swords like that: pure white blades that left strange marks on flesh.
Not every demonic warrior could leave a wound like that.
It had not been enough time for her to be certain, but as far as she could tell, the ones whose blades were stained with blood merely cut flesh, while those with those spotless swords were able to infuse their blades with demonic energy.
Boom.
Yeon-a stepped to the side again and blocked the front of the roots.
The demonic warrior immediately brought his sword down.
Clang.
This time, the strike carried a power on an entirely different level. No—rather than just strength, energy was wrapped around his blade.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Each time their swords met, black sparks flew. It was demonic energy.
Yeon-a swallowed hard. Even a graze would make her body rot away.
Perhaps even the other demonic warriors found it unusual for him to be spending demonic energy so freely, because instead of closing in, they actually pulled back a little. Their attitude said they believed their superior would be the one to take care of her.
Boom. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The pounding force came at her fierce and fast.
Yeon-a herself could not tell how she was managing to block his strikes. Her hands simply moved reflexively, as if responding to the sound.
Whoosh.
When he thrust up the middle, she just barely twisted her body in time.
Creak.
Or she pushed with her sword and diverted his blade to the side.
Boom. Bang. Bang. Bang.
As she blocked the demonic warrior’s strikes, Yeon-a suddenly knit her brows. After dozens of exchanges, the sound drilling into her eardrums began to feel regular.
Boom. Bang. Boom. Bang.
'The center.'
Yeon-a held her sword horizontally and struck upward.
Clang.
The point of the demonic warrior’s sword, which had been driving for her chest, jolted upward.
He seemed taken aback, but immediately began swinging his sword again.
Boom. Clang. Clang. Clang.
Watching him once more unleash a steady, unshaken series of strikes, Yeon-a began silently counting in her head.
'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...'
Yeon-a twisted her body to the side and came back in, sweeping his sword away to the left.
Boom.
The sword that had been aiming for her heart was knocked aside.
'After eight cuts, he always thrust for the center.'
At a glance, it looked as if the demonic warrior were swinging his sword at random, but that was not it.
If you let your sword move however it pleased, its direction could get tangled. There were times in a fight when your mind might want to stab into an opening on the left, but your body had already moved to the right, so the direction of your muscles did not match.
In such cases, you did not just risk injuring yourself in the middle of battle; in the worst case, you could open yourself up to a clean hit from your opponent.
That was why the Taeguk Sword Sovereign had told Yeon-a not to lean on her talent, but to dedicate herself to memorizing sword arts.
If you cut apart the sword forms you had trained and unfolded them piece by piece, switching between different sword arts as you moved, you could drive your opponent back without tangling yourself.
Right now, Yeon-a was watching the teachings she had heard from the Sword Sovereign play out before her eyes. freёwebnovel.com
'...It’s a sequence of forms.'
It was a repetition of nine techniques. Once she recognized the number, time seemed to slow, and the movement of the sword began to come into view.
A sword that had been cutting up from below suddenly came down from the upper left, and a stroke drawn from the right was immediately followed by another stroke in the same direction just above it.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
'Center.'
Yeon-a knocked aside the sword that came into her middle gate.
Boom.
The deflected blade lunged in from the lower left with frightening speed.
Bang.
No sooner had she blocked it than it came in from the left again.
Boom.
Then, out of nowhere, it charged in from the lower right.
Bang.
Watching with a “surely not” feeling, Yeon-a was a little late in bringing her sword up to her forehead.
Sparks flew as the blade dropped down from above.
Moving her sword at once, Yeon-a drew the directions in her mind.
'Water, earth, thunder, wind.'
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sword carved the air around her.
'Then the center again.'
Boom.
As expected, the demonic warrior’s sword came in once more, straight for her heart.
It looked like a reckless tangle of sword strikes, yet there was a strict order.
When the technique ended in the “heaven” above, it began again from the “earth” below.
The strikes that poured in from the directions of water, earth, thunder, and wind gathered their energy toward the center, then swept through the directions of heaven, lake, mountain, and fire, scooping up the scattered energy and sealing off the top and bottom.
'Water, earth, thunder, wind, heaven, lake, mountain, fire.'
It was the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams.
The eight trigrams that explained the changes between heaven and earth had been built into this sword art.
The principles of the universe, which should not fit together with demonic arts that defied the natural order of all things.
'Who in the world made this kind of mongrel art?'
As a Wudang disciple who had received Daoist teachings, it was a combination Yeon-a could not accept.
With a chilled gaze, Yeon-a blocked the demonic warrior’s sword and waited for an opening.
In the instant his blade, which had gone down toward her lower right, clashed with her sword and was forced back—
She anticipated the next direction and, instead of lifting her sword to guard above, slashed horizontally left and right.
Slash.
The waist of the demonic warrior, whose arms had been raised high, was left completely exposed and was cut open.
“Guhk.”
Reaction speed was something that was hard to acquire through training, and Yeon-a was a talent whom heaven had gifted from birth with quick perception and reaction.
The demonic warrior brought his sword down immediately afterward, but since the next direction in the eight-trigram pattern was to the “water” position below, Yeon-a was able to react quickly.
She twisted her body and drove her sword into the left side of his waist.
Boom.
The flinching demonic warrior blocked Yeon-a’s strike right away, but he could no longer afford to act with the same ease as before.
Boom. Bang.
Having had his sword art broken, the demonic warrior was now barely managing to block Yeon-a’s attacks.
Their places had been reversed.
Now it was the demonic warrior who had to read her techniques.
But that was impossible.
From a young age, Yeon-a had watched countless martial artists, and once she saw something, she could usually imitate it. She might not understand what principles it contained or what kind of energy had to be added to strengthen it, but she could easily copy its outward form.
Boom. Clang. Clang.
So cutting sword arts apart, mixing them, and throwing her opponent into confusion was very easy for her.
Yeon-a swung her sword wildly, like a frenzied horse.
The blade that had flowed gracefully like a dragon suddenly scattered like falling petals from all directions, then slammed down as if carving out a path between heaven and earth.
Boom.
If one were to draw chaos with a sword, it would look like this.
Yeon-a suddenly thought that her very existence was chaos.
She did not know where she had come from, and she had no idea what she was supposed to live for. Since she had taken up the sword, she had wanted to become the best swordswoman under heaven, but it was not because she craved swordsmanship itself.
She had simply wanted to be of help to someone.
Even though, in order to help one person, she would have to cut down countless others, Yeon-a had taken that contradiction and made it the root of herself.
Clang. Clang.
In the middle of the disorderly chain of techniques, her sword cut through the demonic warrior’s neck.
Slash.
“Guh-heuk!”
The moment the blood sprayed, the energy surrounding them changed.
As the momentum reversed, the late-generation Wudang disciple began to overwhelm the demonic warriors.
They continued to swing their swords, but it was as if they had been bewitched by the sword dance before their eyes; they could not focus.
After their blades clashed several times, her sword tore big chunks of flesh from the demonic warrior’s body.
Slash.
The number of times her blade bit into flesh increased.
As more of her attacks landed, the enemy’s responses slowed rapidly.
Thud.
At last, the center opened.
“Urk.”
The demonic warrior whose dantian had been pierced by her sword let out a dying scream.
Slice.
When Yeon-a pulled her sword free, he pitched forward.
Thump.
Raising her blood-dripping sword upright, Yeon-a slowly lifted her gaze.
A strange silence fell.
Her vision, hazy as if she were drunk on something, took in the remaining demonic warriors.
At some point, four demonic warriors had encircled her. The other four were nowhere to be seen. It did not matter.
Yeon-a quietly raised her sword.
Whoosh.
A small sound of wind brushed the tense demonic warriors’ eardrums. Like an orthodox disciple reviewing what she had learned, she moved her sword.
The tip of the blade scribbled in the air, then fell from the sky to the ground.
One of the demonic warriors, recognizing it, twisted his expression.
It was the trigram of thunder.
Declaring that she had seen through their strategy, the Wudang disciple turned her body and thrust her sword.
Slash.
“Guhk!”
The upper body of the demonic warrior who had been charging in from behind the tree was ripped open helplessly.
