My understanding of the Thunder Heaven Divine Art is sufficient. Even if restoring it to its original form is difficult, dismantling it and refitting it to suit me is something I can do right now.

Normally, it would be faster to learn the given forms as they are…

But the current Thunder Heaven Divine Art is an incomplete art that requires restoration.

And that is the conclusion I reached after considering my somewhat deformed talent, learning others’ arts as I please and taking them apart as I please.

“Then I will ask it of you.”

“Leave it to This One. If anything happens, This One will wake you at once.”

Seo Mun-Hwarin thumped her chest with a dependable look. Only after giving her a nod did I sit cross-legged and close my eyes.

My vision darkened. In the thick earthen cave, all that could be heard were the faint breaths of me and Seo Mun-Hwarin.

At the tip of my nose lingered the damp smell of earth and wood. Yet through that mustiness, a single current of freshness could be felt. It was probably Seo Mun-Hwarin’s body scent.

A body that has undergone Rejuvenation does not become dirty easily. A flesh that has even defied time should not bow to mere mud and stench, that is only natural.

So even though many things have changed, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s scent is no different from before my regression.

With my eyes closed at this close distance, at times the boundary between the two of us crumbles.

Just what I wanted.

My consciousness sinks inward. Amid senses that are settling, all kinds of memories rise like foam and burst, over and over.

From among them I pull up the memory that hurt the most, yet was the warmest.

Before regression. Back when I was still called Blood Wolf and rampaged, drunk on my own excellence, Seo Mun-Hwarin willingly became my teacher.

She taught me how to live in the world when I knew nothing but swinging a sword, taught the ignoramus me how to read and write, and even handed over a portion of her own martial arts.

And in the end, she taught me through loss that I too could hold someone in my heart.

If at the time it was only a vague gratitude, as time passed its weight only grew.

What martial artist in this world puts in such effort without special recompense to teach a subordinate this and that, even supervising their martial arts?

Neither I nor Seo Mun-Hwarin said it out loud, but back then we were something like master and disciple.

And it is only natural for a disciple to follow a teacher with their eyes.

As long years passed, I forgot many of the conversations I shared with Seo Mun-Hwarin before regression…

But her end, and the fragments of martial arts Seo Mun-Hwarin showed me while alive, I remember them clearly.

Quiet breathing soon becomes a roar like thunder, and from small limbs extends a fearsome might.

Yes. At that time Seo Mun-Hwarin had already made the Seo Mun Clan’s secret arts entirely her own.

I do not know whether she fully restored the sword art, the Thunder Heaven Divine Art, but at the very least there is no doubt that she had infused the Thunder Heaven Divine Art’s principles into her own arts.

What I have read and understood of the Thunder Heaven Divine Art, into that vague enlightenment I melt the embodied principles that Seo Mun-Hwarin before regression showed me.

Countless combinations of forms float up over the heartscape. Among those haphazard postures, anything lacking even a little in speed or ferocity is discarded.

Even after one round of culling, there are not few forms left, but using the figure of Seo Mun-Hwarin in my memory as a signpost, I filter out the lacking ones once more.

Thus what remains at the very end is a single form. I swing it without rest within the heartscape.

Tens. Hundreds. Thousands of times, it does not matter. I simply shave away, and shave away again, the unnecessary parts.

It is a tedious and arduous task, like setting the edge of a dull blade.

What is fortunate is that, having reached the realm of Divine Sword Unity, even without swinging it in reality I can reproduce the sword within the heartscape as is.

I forget the existence of the Baekak Mountain King, of the King of Assassins, of Seo Mun-Hwarin who must be guarding me as a protector, of the Thunder Heaven Divine Art I have restored thus far, even the presence of the Heavenly Demon, who will be standing at the end of all this.

The sword in my hand. And the single ideal sword path I must draw by swinging it.

At this moment, that alone is all that exists to me.

How many times did I swing like that. Before I knew it, I realized there was nothing left to pare away from the sword I was swinging.

The moment I became aware of it.

KRA-BOOM!

With the familiar roar, a dazzling bolt of lightning was engraved upon the heartscape.

It is time to wake.

***

Hoo…

I opened the eyes I had closed and drew in a deep breath. Because I had engaged in heartscape training rather tightly, there was a bit of dizziness, but in the meantime the poison seemed to have been completely detoxified, my body felt refreshed.

As I blinked a couple of times and adjusted to the view, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s admiring voice came.

“Hoh. For a moment, divine light dwelt in your eyes. Did you come upon some enlightenment?”

“Yes. Because I had a good teacher.”

“A teacher?”

Seo Mun-Hwarin tilted her head, then soon realized it meant herself and shrugged her shoulders.

“What sweet words to hear. However, it seems unfortunate that we will not be able to savor this aftertaste for long.”

“No way?”

“Right. At the edge of This One’s Qi sense, This One can feel the presence of the Baekak Mountain King. We erased our traces to some degree, yet seeing how cleanly they are tracking us…”

“High chance they have joined with the King of Assassins, who excels at tracking.”

Seo Mun-Hwarin’s Qi sense covers a much wider range than mine, but in return its sensitivity is lower than mine.

If the King of Assassins is already in hiding, it is natural that she would not notice those traces.

I lightly loosened my shoulders and rose to my feet.

“Then we should go finish the unresolved bout.”

“So readily you say it?”

“We have come this far, there is no avoiding it by trying to avoid it. And…”

After straightening my clothes for a moment, I lightly tapped the sword at my waist and grinned.

“Right now is perfect.”

My senses are vivid, my body light, and the sword strikes I had been swinging just before feel almost within my grasp.

There will be no better time than now.

“Ah, even so, after fasting for a day, I am a bit hungry. Let us finish quickly and eat something tasty.”

At my words Seo Mun-Hwarin looked dumbfounded for a moment, then soon snorted and nodded.

“Since there is no one else, let us secretly buy something expensive and delicious just between us.”

With those words, she cleared away the debris that had been blocking the entrance.

As we headed outside, a bit of glare pricked my eyes. Right after, even my Qi sense began to feel the presence of the Baekak Mountain King.

I also felt a faint sense of disharmony approaching to our flank from much farther away, as we sensed them, over there they must have sensed us as well, for the Baekak Mountain King rapidly closed in.

Conversely, the faint presence of the King of Assassins narrowed the distance with caution. Keeping my focus so as not to miss it, I spoke.

“Please take that side.”

“Then This One will entrust This One’s back of the head to you.”

We nodded to each other and kicked off the ground toward our respective opponents.

At the same time, the thunder unique to Thunder Roar Step, the Thunderclap Step, rang out. Before I knew it, my Thunder Roar Step and Seo Mun-Hwarin’s had come to resemble each other.

Leaving the Baekak Mountain King to Seo Mun-Hwarin should be fine. It will become a contest of strength against strength, but I have never seen Seo Mun-Hwarin be overpowered anywhere.

So for now I focus only on the King of Assassins.

Again, when I dashed straight toward the direction he was confident in, perhaps startled, the King of Assassins swiftly changed his trajectory.

He must have paid much more attention to concealment than before, I did not know his exact position, but I could tell his general direction.

With my Qi sense sharpened to the extreme, I swung my sword toward the intermittent breaks in the flow of the wind inside it.

Hrrmph!

A sword Qi that stretches long. It was a strike that reaches what cannot be reached and cuts what cannot be cut.

The ground touched by the trajectory flipped, and broken trees bared their innards with neat cross-sections.

The slashes ran out long. I unleashed them without rest, so that the lines drawn by the sword would become a plane. And,

Shhk..

If it were only his own body he might have avoided it, but the Qi veil he wore over his body could not escape the sword path, and the King of Assassins revealed himself.

Perhaps because it had already happened once before, even though the concealment he had so carefully taken lost all meaning in an instant, he impassively narrowed the distance.

Had he concluded that concealment using a Qi veil does not work on me?

Without even attempting to hide his body again, he focused only on footwork.

Even though I was clearly watching, his form wavered like a heat haze.

Though he stamped the ground so quickly, there was no sound, and though he drew his sword, it reflected no light.

Even without a Qi veil, his movements were sufficiently stealthy. The sinister threat that a dagger would be at my throat if I let my focus slip even for a moment, that was surely the King of Assassins’ true weapon.

Drawing back the sword Qi I had inflated greatly to fire off slashes, I concentrated it to a point again and mixed Ghost Shadow Step, into my footwork as I rushed the King of Assassins.

It was not as stealthy as the King of Assassins, but it was irregular enough to rival it. An unusual light rose in that sullen fellow’s eyes.

Then, with the arm that did not hold a sword, the King of Assassins flicked his sleeve broadly toward me.

Like his sword, the hidden weapons had been painted black to kill their presence, and they poured out.

Tch!

It was a high-level hidden weapon technique, but it cannot be compared to the Tang Family’s. He too must know this much will not work.

Even so, I cannot just let the flying hidden weapons hit me, so I began to bat them all away with a sword that had somehow turned white.

The hidden weapons were all cut away, unable to endure the White Sword’s edge. The moment I cleaved a dagger whose handle was especially thick.

POOMPF!

With a smell of something burning, smoke burst out from within.

The scent had a strangely piquant note, it must have been poison smoke with toxicity imbued. It did not even sting for me, it seems it does not work on me.

But what mattered was not that I inhaled poison smoke, but that the dense smoke obscured my vision.

Indeed.

If a Qi veil is seen through, then rather than a Qi veil, block the vision with smoke, is that it?

The King of Assassins’ presence was faint as it was. If he covers his body with dense smoke, it will be far from possible to pinpoint his exact location. It is like fighting with my eyes closed.

I do not feel any pride unique to martial artists from him, but I cannot deny that it is rational.

Against the current King of Assassins, the most ideal move I could take would be to wrap myself tight in protective gangqi, and somehow endure against an enemy I cannot see or feel, advancing my Qi sense step by step.

However, that smacks of a blatant arrangement. I have already decided I will not follow it.

Far from wrapping myself in protective gangqi, I even reclaimed all the energy I had unconsciously been wearing.

So that I could pour all the energy that remained into the sword.

Vmmmmm-

Spewing a sword’s hum, the blade grew incandescent, more violent by a degree.

There is no need to exchange several passes. There is no need to struggle to find an unseen opponent.

There is likewise no need to leave leeway with the future in mind.

One sword.

A single sword is enough.

In any case, that single sword is everything to me.

I relaxed every muscle in my body, letting the sword hang loosely. The sword that had taken root in my palm was already a part of my flesh, and the sword strike that had just been engraved upon my heartscape was something I could not forget even if I wanted to.

My senses sharpened like a single blade. My breathing stopped, and in the stillness where all I heard was my heartbeat, death pressed in.

At the edge of my vision, a sword shot through the poison smoke.

When had he changed direction in between. Though he had been coming straight on, the King of Assassins’ sword appeared from the side, aiming exactly for my neck.

It was too late to react now. It was not a distance easy to avoid, and even if I blocked, I would not be able to put proper strength into it.

That is what he will think.

Only after confirming the King of Assassins’ sword with my eyes as it came in did I move my body.

One foot turned to the side, toes skimming the ground as if sliding.

In time with my heartbeat, I detonated my inner energy through my whole body, like unfolding Thunder Roar Step through the whole body.

KRA-BOOM!

The heartbeat that should have been audible only to me had already become thunder, noisily shaking heaven and earth.

And as ever, lightning precedes thunder by a step.

The sword that had been drooping toward the ground had already been swung.

From the ground up toward the sky, the white heavenly thunder stretched, becoming a pillar that linked heaven and earth, and it cleaved the King of Assassins’ body along with his sword.

It happened in the split second when the King of Assassins’ sword touched my nape.

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