They were known as the Slaughter Fiends, feared by all in the Central Plains, regardless of whether they belonged to the Orthodox or Unorthodox factions.
So how could this young whelp, barely out of his youth, naturally exude a killing intent that overwhelmed their own—men who had made a living out of murder?
‘It’s like facing a great demon lord.’
‘How can anyone look at him and think he’s part of the Orthodox faction?’
The moment the Hwamyeong Duo’s attention was diverted to Mujin, Great Monk Hyeon-u made his move.
“Be careful!”
-Pang! Pang! Pang!
The red-eyed, hideous-faced man, the one skilled in the Fiery Bandit Palm, was startled by the sudden bursts of energy aimed at his chest and knees, and he quickly retreated.
Had he been a moment slower, the major acupoints on his knees and chest would have been struck.
Mujin shook his head as he watched Great Monk Hyeon-u, who announced his surprise attack even as he launched it.
Despite the warning, the hideous-faced man’s red eyes wavered after being hit by Great Monk Hyeon-u’s attack.
‘The Hundred-Pace Divine Fist?’
It wasn’t just a fist energy that traveled through the air to strike; it exploded into being beyond the empty space. Astonished by this divine skill, he hurriedly dispersed the remaining energy and moved his hands and feet in a flurry.
“You damn monk! Come play with me!”
Seeing his friend of thirty years, who was like a brother to him, in trouble, Cho Gae-ak, the master of the Soul-Stealing Palm, lunged toward Great Monk Hyeon-u.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
Abbess Jinhwa drew her sword and charged at Cho Gae-ak.
A frosty aura emanated from her blade, targeting Cho Gae-ak’s vital points.
“My dear friend will take care of you, woman!”
-Clang!
With a metallic clang that was hard to believe came from a sword striking a hand, Abbess Jinhwa was pushed back.
Abbess Jinhwa was greatly flustered by Cho Gae-ak’s move. Not only had he blocked her sword—a blade filled with internal energy and radiating sword ki—with his bare hand, but he had also shaken the energy within her sword and caused it to flow backward. She shouted.
“Be careful! He’s using a wicked palm technique!”
At her cry, Great Monk Hyeon-u gave a slight nod and moved his hand through the air.
-Pop! Pop! Pop!
Cho Gae-ak swiftly blocked the strikes exploding from thin air, just as his friend had experienced, and smiled.
“So it’s not the Hundred-Pace Divine Fist! This damn monk was just imitating it!”
He shouted loudly.
After receiving a few of Great Monk Hyeon-u’s attacks, Cho Gae-ak immediately realized his Hundred-Pace Divine Fist was imperfect.
In a single exchange, he had astutely identified that the impact points of the fists crossing the void were slightly off.
It was a skill befitting a master who had made a notorious name for himself in the Central Plains.
The hideous-faced man, who had been flustered by the sudden attack, regained his initial composure at his friend Cho Gae-ak’s words and slowly began to deal with Abbess Jinhwa.
Mujin watched the black-clad masters closing in and forming a formation, then spoke.
“You’re slow to prepare. If you won’t come to me, I’ll go to you.”
Mujin was well aware that the enemies were taking their positions to create a perfect formation.
The reason he waited for them was because he was confident he could break their formation.
He had experienced countless one-versus-many battles in his past life, to the point of being sick of them.
In a one-versus-many fight, momentum is the most important thing.
Either kill the strongest enemy quickly and brutally, or shatter their most confident strength head-on, completely breaking their will to fight.
This was the surefire method for winning one-versus-many battles that he had learned through real combat.
‘If I can combine the principles of the Army-Annihilating Form and the Void-Shattering Form, I can break their formation.’
He had never tried it before.
Yet, he had a feeling it was possible.
It was a thought that would never have occurred to him if he hadn’t taken the Minor Azure Pill gifted by the Pungyang Merchant Guild.
Some might dismiss it as a mere Minor Azure Pill, but for Mujin, whose internal energy was absurdly low compared to masters of his level, the elixir was a great boon, like rain in a drought.
It had instantly increased Mujin’s internal energy from less than twenty years’ worth to nearly fifty, more than doubling his power.
He had cursed his body for having a Heavenly Martial Body, but seeing it absorb every last speck of the Minor Azure Pill’s energy into his dantian, he felt satisfied with his physical vessel for the first time.
As Mujin stepped forward and extended his sword, three men in black simultaneously thrust their own swords to block his.
-Kaang!
The iron sword, which had paused for a mere instant, unleashed a tremendous force, instantly pushing back the three swords and advancing. One of the men in black shouted.
-Six moves, seven attacks! Vacate the *hwajeom* and surround the *somok*!
Mujin frowned, seeing the man shout the command aloud instead of using telepathy, even though he was clearly within earshot.
‘*Hwajeom*? *Somok*? A Grand Game Formation? They must really be underestimating me.’
Mujin, who had made his first move with the Vanguard Form, changed his stance and began to unleash a flurry of swift sword techniques, shifting from heavy sword to fast sword.
-Fifth Form. Army-Annihilating Form.
As the only principle of swiftness within the Nine Swords of Dugu began to unfold, the charging men in black were instantly pushed back, and their formation started to crumble.
‘To swing… to swing that large sword so fast…’
The man in black coordinating the formation widened his eyes in disbelief.
Even if their opponent was a peak master, a Simple Lock Formation deployed with this much manpower could easily hold them for 300 exchanges.
But he couldn’t help but be flustered by the opponent’s swift swordplay, which had shaken the entire formation just a few breaths into the fight.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
Whether they were defending or attacking, any warrior who crossed swords with him would stumble and retreat, making it difficult to maintain the formation.
-Twelve defending, fifteen attacking!
The man in black pulled more men from the outer perimeter, who were maintaining the formation’s activation, and threw them into the offense and defense.
Only after a situation developed where twelve men in black were blocking Mujin’s attacks and fifteen were attacking him from all sides was Mujin’s advance finally halted.
“Hoo.”
The man in black let out a breath of relief, raising his internal energy to gradually strengthen the formation’s power.
If it hadn’t been the Simple Lock Formation, those who crossed swords with Mujin would have been slaughtered long ago.
‘So far, it’s going as expected.’
Looking at the thirty first-rate masters, Mujin had already anticipated that his enemies would have prepared a formation.
If the numbers were small, it would be a different story, but with thirty first-rate masters, even a simple Six Harmonies Formation would be enough to hold a decent peak master for a hundred exchanges.
Of course, a renowned Unorthodox sect belonging to the Samu-cheon wouldn’t show up with something as trivial as a Six Harmonies Formation, so he had expected it would be difficult to break their formation easily.
Finally, Mujin began to move his sword just as he had first envisioned.
-Third Form. Void-Shattering Form.
The Void-Shattering Form contained the principle of Severing Ki, which could physically cut through even the most formidable internal energy.
It was a principle whose very concept had never existed in the Central Plains.
It was a principle Mujin himself had come to understand while mastering the Nine Swords of Dugu.
As he began to mix the principle of Severing Ki with the swift swordplay of the Army-Annihilating Form, Mujin’s fast-moving sword began to slow slightly.
There was no way masters of the first-rate level would fail to notice the difference.
In a standoff where neither side gave an inch, the enemy’s sword speed suddenly dropped, so naturally, swords flew in to exploit the opening.
-Swish. Swish. Swish.
-Young Master!!
-Hold your positions!
As Mujin’s robes began to get sliced in various places, a startled No-sak looked ready to jump in at any moment, but Mujin only shouted for him to hold his position.
Not just No-sak, but even Abbess Jinhwa took several steps from her post.
“Martial Aunt!”
“…I know.”
At her junior sisters’ words, she bit her lip hard and returned to her original position.
‘A little more… just a little more…’
The number of cuts on his robes increased, and finally, his skin was shallowly grazed, his clothes beginning to stain red.
The men in black pushed their internal energy even harder, sharing the formation’s power with those on offense and defense to press Mujin.
Mujin, who seemed to be on the verge of having his vital points struck yet skillfully avoided fatal wounds with a unique movement technique, began to look like a fish about to be caught.
Just as the men in black’s belief that they had Mujin cornered reached its peak.
‘Now!’
An intense spirit filled Mujin’s eyes as his sword swiftly sliced through a single point in the air.
-Shweek!
In that instant, their formation was exquisitely severed, so subtly that not even those who formed the Simple Lock Formation noticed.
The fifteen men in black, unaware that the formation had been broken by that single, instantaneous move, pressed forward with their swords.
-Kakang! Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shk!
Mujin, who had thrown himself into the path of the enemy’s swords and wielded his own, weaved through their midst and passed by.
The moment Mujin’s sword slipped through the charging enemies like a snake, the warriors on the scene stared blankly, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
-Psh! Psh! Psh!
“Gack!”
“Guh!”
“Kuh…”
A moment after Mujin passed, fountains of blood erupted from the vital points of the warriors he had moved past. One by one, they collapsed with death rattles.
Only after the fifteen men in black who had been attacking Mujin fell to the ground did the others realize their Simple Lock Formation had been broken.
When the formation that shared and exchanged all their internal energy was severed, every warrior who had formed it staggered back, their faces pale.
The warriors coughed up blood from their internal injuries and the backlash.
But Mujin had no obligation to wait for them to finish vomiting blood.
-S-stop him!
The man in black who had been coordinating the formation also shouted while spewing blood.
The moment he tightened his grip on his sword, watching his subordinate step forward to block the charging Mujin.
-Shwaaaak!
As he saw Mujin cleave his subordinate’s body vertically in two and thrust his sword through the gap, the man’s life flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.
The moment the flashback ended, the tip of the brutally large iron sword was right before his eyes.
-Sguk!
Witnessing the bizarre sight of a man’s head being split open like an apple, the remaining men in black were frozen in place.
“Sloppy.”
At Mujin’s words—spoken while he was drenched in dark red blood and exuding a thick, disgusting killing intent that was unpleasant even to describe—the men in black felt an extreme terror for the first time in their lives.
The experience of their bodies stiffening and their limbs refusing to obey was a truly unfamiliar sensation for warriors.
-Puhak! Seogeok! Kwajik!
Mujin’s sword created a variety of sounds as it killed people in all sorts of ways.
Once the Simple Lock Formation was broken, the thirty warriors were killed off in a flash.
The blood shed by the brutally slain men in black overflowed on the main road and began to stream in all directions.
The mounted warriors who had been following Mujin’s carriage since Seochang, and were still surrounding it, felt as if their entire bodies had frozen just from meeting Mujin’s eyes, which glinted with murderous light.
“If you run, I will hunt you down and kill you.”
Leaving only those words behind, Mujin launched himself toward the Hwamyeong Duo.
-Kang!
“You heard the Family Head. Anyone who runs will be killed!”
No-sak shouted from atop the carriage, brandishing his iron staff.
Because Mujin had so quickly and overwhelmingly shattered a Simple Lock Formation deployed by thirty first-rate masters—a formation that could easily hold a peak master for 300 exchanges—the warriors of the Moon-Slaying Sword Sect, dispatched as the pursuit team, felt that things had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
But even in that state, there was nothing they could do.
Fights between peak masters are always fierce.
The realm of the peak was a world where competitors were separated by a skill gap that permitted not even a moment of carelessness.
A world of fine margins where even a master at the very pinnacle of the peak could lose their head to a newly ascended peak master if they let their guard down.
Naturally, the battle between the four was also intense, and it was difficult for anyone to look away from how Mujin fought.
They were simply focusing more on their opponents, believing they still had some leeway.
The tide of the battle was in favor of the Hwamyeong Duo, who had far more practical combat experience.
The Hwamyeong Duo had made a name for themselves in the secular world while the Emei and Shaolin sects had sealed their gates and remained secluded in the mountains. It was only natural that their combat instincts were far sharper than the two Buddhist disciples’.
Into this battlefield of peak masters, Mujin threw himself without hesitation.
!!!
The two masters were utterly startled as Mujin suddenly thrust his sword between Great Monk Hyeon-u and Cho Gae-ak, who were in the middle of an exchange.
Having jumped in without restraint, the edge of Mujin’s sword twisted sideways and flew toward Cho Gae-ak’s neck.
“Hwa, Family Head Hwa! Be careful! The Soul-Stealing Palm’s principles are different from ordinary martial arts!”
Great Monk Hyeon-u’s heart raced as he hastily unleashed his fists and feet, sticking close to Mujin’s side.
He thought that while Mujin’s spirit and courage were worthy of a hundred praises, the recklessness of carelessly jumping into a fight between masters was exceedingly dangerous.
For a lesser fighter to carelessly intervene in a battle decided by a paper-thin margin, where a head could be severed or a fatal wound sustained in an instant, was reckless beyond measure.
‘Soul-Stealing Palm?’
The moment he had that thought.
Cho Gae-ak twisted his body to dodge Mujin’s sword and swiftly extended his hand toward the flat of the blade.
“Let go of the sword!”
A startled Great Monk Hyeon-u hastily shouted and tried to attack, but Cho Gae-ak simply turned to the side and pushed him away with one hand.
‘Telling a swordsman to let go of his sword. He’s insane.’
He would rather have his arm cut off; he had never learned to let go of his sword and retreat.
Finally, Cho Gae-ak’s palm touched the flat of Mujin’s sword, and his Soul-Stealing Palm sent a wave through the blade.
A wave of internal energy shook the power filling Mujin’s sword and instantly traveled through his hand to his shoulder.
As his meridians, which were connected to his ki pathways, swelled from the influx of his own energy, Mujin’s eyes widened.
‘A vibration technique?’
Mujin quickly relaxed his shoulder and shook it violently.
He transferred the rotation from his shoulder down his back and waist to his legs, then stomped on the ground.
-Thump!
His movement, similar to the Tai Chi performed by a Wudang Daoist, caused the road to crack and crumble.
!!!
At that one move, both Great Monk Hyeon-u and Cho Gae-ak widened their eyes in astonishment and stared at Mujin.
