Seo Woojin made a low sound in his throat and spoke carefully.

“Ah — Lady Cheon?”

Cheon Suryeon did not react. Her blade hung loose at her side, and she seemed to be watching him warily.

Seo Woojin glanced behind him.

“You’ll be frightened, but please don’t move if you can help it. One misstep could put you in danger—”

But for the woman, it was evidently more terror than she could bear. She shook her head violently and screamed.

“Kyaaaah—!!”

And then she pushed herself up and fled off somewhere.

“W-wait—!”

Seo Woojin tried to go after her, but could not.

Whoooosh!

The sound of air tearing came with a chilling killing intent. Seo Woojin threw his sword up and across.

CLAAANG!

The blade rushing at his heart was forced aside. Cheon Suryeon rode the recoil into a full spin instead, the blood-sword tearing forward with force enough to cut him in two.

There was not a wasted motion in it.

Seo Woojin gritted his teeth, threw himself to the left, and set his sword.

CRAAASH!

The roar flung him a good distance. The wall he struck collapsed and buried him.

Scrape. Thud.

Pushing through the rubble to get up, Seo Woojin let out a dry laugh.

“That’s no joke at all.”

The hand holding his sword trembled from the shock. His mask had been torn off and carried away, and his black robes were ripped in a dozen places, showing blood beneath.

He had blocked the stroke, and the sword-pressure alone had opened him up.

“Is she truly out of her mind, then.”

To put it strongly, it brought to mind fighting the Crazed Fiend not long ago.

“Ssss. Haaah…”

Then he would have to fight at that level.

What state Cheon Suryeon was in he had no idea, but he pushed the question out of his head. The first thing was to subdue the half-mad killing machine in front of him.

Whoosh!

Seo Woojin kicked off the ground and rushed her.

She had watched at her leisure while he pulled himself out of the rubble. Now, as he closed fast, her sword began to whirl, and blood-colored sword-shadows filled the space between them.

Seo Woojin drew his blade back to its limit and cut across, fast.

Like a bolt of lightning.

CRAAASH!

The blood-colored shadows scattered, and the distance between them closed by that much.

He took another step and drove inside her guard. It was too close now to swing a blade. The distance was awkward for him — and just as hard for her to answer.

He meant to take her in the side with the pommel.

Shhk!

He only intended to see whether a blow would land at all.

Clatter! Whoooosh!

At the unfamiliar sound he broke off on instinct and threw himself forward instead, passing right by her.

BOOM!

He turned in haste, and a chill went down his spine.

Cheon Suryeon was slowly picking her sword up.

Which meant she had ignored the attack coming at her, thrown her sword away, and released palm force where she stood. The crater gouged in the ground was proof enough.

‘If I’d been a beat slower my head would have come off… Hah…’

Warriors do not let go of their weapons easily. It is a matter of pride, and pride weighs more than life.

But Cheon Suryeon was like a beast that moved to kill and nothing else — which was why the sword had gone without a second thought.

Seo Woojin swung his blade once and steadied himself. He kept his guard on her, and his mind kept working.

‘Do I have to stop the flow of corrupted qi, like with the Crazed Fiend? No. This isn’t the same as the Crazed Fiend.’

The Crazed Fiend’s madness had come from inner demons — a form of qi deviation.

Cheon Suryeon felt different. If he had to put it into words — swallowed by her own martial art.

‘If she ends up crippled that way, then it’s qi deviation after all — but she was perfectly sound until recently.’

So Cho Igyeom’s guess had been right. A side effect of the art was what brought her into these back alleys at intervals.

Did resolving it require the sight of blood? Or did she have to kill?

There were any number of questions, and he wiped them away deliberately, as before. No — there was no room for them now.

Perhaps she had grown bored when he did not come at her. This time Cheon Suryeon moved first.

Tatatat!

Gravel and dust flew up along the path of her charge. The stained blade whirled again, and the red trail of it dazzled the eye.

“…!!”

Seo Woojin had to give ground, step after step. Sword-energy was falling at him like lightning.

Boom! Boom! CRAAASH!

Every place he had been standing was gouged deep. One thing was certain — in raw force behind the blade, she had the better of him.

“Tch.”

Seo Woojin clicked his tongue and set the Lingering Heart Sword Art turning.

True qi spilled out of his dantian and turned fast, forming a vortex. It churned about inside him, straining to get out.

“Hhh—!”

He drew a full breath and spun.

Whirrrl!

RRRAAAWR!

Was it his imagination, that he heard a tiger’s roar?

Wind Flow Eighteen Swords. Wind Tiger Ravaging the Plains.

A tiger riding the wind tore forward and split the blood-colored lightning.

Kagagang! Kagang!

The sword-energy scattered as if it had been cut apart.

Her momentum flagged for it. She did not force it back, but gave two steps of ground — and then brought her blade down with force enough to cleave a man in two.

CRAAASH!

Seo Woojin had meant to follow her all the way, and the weight of the blade pressed him to a halt.

He did not mind. Blocked, he let it go.

He bent his knees, then straightened, cutting upward. Cheon Suryeon stepped to her upper left and cut for his abdomen. He recalled the rising blade and brought it down.

Exactly as expected.

CRASH!

Their blades collided. Hers carried internal energy as well, so it did not break.

But the flow of her true qi would have been cut for an instant, because his had driven into her steel. As expected, the force behind her stroke dropped noticeably.

She paid it no mind and swung again.

Seo Woojin’s sword moved slowly.

Tak!

For a moment it seemed to cling to hers—

Whirl!

—and then his blade moved smoothly and pushed hers away. As though a snake had wound itself around her sword and forced it off.

Wind Flow Eighteen Swords. Red Serpent Gliding Light.

It opened her guard wide.

And Seo Woojin’s sword changed again.

Wind Flow Eighteen Swords. Wind Forest Cold Flash.

As a frigid wind cuts through a wood, his blade went at her vital points one after another.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

The blunt sword struck three vital points precisely.

Tatak.

Cheon Suryeon gave ground, step after step.

“Kuh—!”

She staggered, coughing blood.

The blows looked light, but in truth his true qi had struck at her meridians. An attack that drives inside the body is not easily answered, however great the master.

He followed her all the way, refusing to lose his momentum.

Whoosh! Clang! Clang! Claang!

Cheon Suryeon gave ground and defended, but she swayed hard with every block.

Cutting the flow once had handed him the initiative outright.

“I’ll ask about the details once you’ve come back to yourself.”

For the final blow, a storm gathered in Seo Woojin’s sword.

Azure Dragon Ascending to Heaven.

His blade surged toward the sky.

Whish!

And cut only empty air.

“What?”

There was no time to make sense of it.

The instant the red light flashed in her eyes—

Whoosh! Tatatatat!

Cheon Suryeon had somehow already withdrawn to a distance, and now came tearing back. The noise was worse than before, the ground torn open where she passed.

“Guh!”

Airborne, she brought her sword straight down.

Whoooosh! CRAAAASH!

Seo Woojin tried to dodge, and for an instant could not move — the pressure was bearing down on him. He had no choice but to get his sword up.

The roar broke and his knees bent halfway.

She had already recovered the force of her blade.

‘She recovers this fast? Is that even possible…?’

The recoil of the downward stroke had left her still in the air. She spun there and scattered sword-energy in a red arc.

“Damn it!”

Clang! Kaklang! Kagagang!

Seo Woojin worked his blade in short movements and turned the energy aside. But his stance was unsteady, and he could not stop all of it.

No — that he avoided a fatal wound in the middle of it was the impressive part.

He gritted his teeth, straightened his knees, pulled back, and threw himself backward.

Cheon Suryeon kicked off the ground again, as if she had no intention of losing him.

Whip!

Flying backward, he twisted at the waist — and his right leg came around like a whip.

Fixed on him alone as she pursued, Cheon Suryeon never saw the leg falling from her blind side.

CRAAASH!

She got an arm up reflexively, but there was no helping how far the blow sent her.

Thump.

Landing, Seo Woojin got himself up in the interval and took his stance.

“Haah, haah.”

A brief exchange, that was all.

The sharpness of her blade was part of it — but the foul, crushing weight of that pressure was what had him gasping.

‘What is this force? It twists my insides, turns my stomach. It’s making me half a beat slow.’

He looked at Cheon Suryeon, who had already risen.

It was hard to tell whether the blood soaking her clothes belonged to the men she had butchered or to her. But her face was calm, as if nothing at all had happened.

“What kind of monster did the Cheon Clan make.”

Seo Woojin looked at the hand holding his sword. A fine tremor still ran through it; he had not shaken off the shock.

‘There’s room left in my dantian. But keeping the Lingering Heart Sword Art running is a strain.’

He had swallowed the blood down, but the internal injury was there.

It was better than it had been with the Crazed Fiend, and bearing that rough true qi for long was hard all the same.

“Right. I was too complacent.”

Subdue her, indeed.

Beating the Crazed Fiend had put his shoulders up, it seemed. Set beside anyone at all, he was a stripling with next to no experience.

A greenhorn barely past the threshold of the jianghu ought to act like one.

“Haaah…”

He breathed out deep.

With the resolve that if he did not kill, he would die.

Boooom.

A heavy resonance spread through him. The turn of his true qi came fiercer, and the vortex of it widened.

Perhaps she felt it. Cheon Suryeon lowered her stance and took an opening form, and the energy on her blade flushed a deeper red.

The two of them stared each other down.

A brief silence.

Whoosh!

They moved at the same instant.

Tatatat!

He let the noise of her charge go in one ear and out.

CRAAASH!

Their swords collided. It did not end at one exchange. They struck again and again, and the roar kept breaking out.

Boom! CRAAASH! Boom!

Not an inch given, on either side.

Until one of them fell. No — until one of them died.

CRAAAASH!

The break came soon enough. Cheon Suryeon’s movements began to slow, little by little.

Boom! CRAASH!

She was still following his blade, but her reactions were slowing, and she began to be driven back.

And then—

CRAAASH!

Whirl! Clatter!

Her sword was knocked far away.

By rights she would have released palm force even without a blade. Now there was no movement in her at all.

“Haah, haah…”

Seo Woojin shook out his sword and only then managed to breathe.

Had she held out a little longer, he would have been the one to go down.

“Kuh—!”

Seo Woojin brought up blood at last, and wiped his mouth.

“Damn. The Military Advisor’s going to nag me again.”

Having got the pointless remark out, he looked her over. She would not be moving easily.

Lingering Heart Sword Art. Fine Needle.

Seo Woojin had drawn his true qi thin as a needle and attacked her interior. It was less effective than striking directly, but the qi that went in through the blade had stabbed at her meridians.

Her own would have been cut through at intervals, and with the meridians struck, her body had gradually gone numb. However fast her recovery, moving now would be hard.

“Lady Cheon. See if you can come back to yourself.”

The red light was gone from her eyes, but she did not stir.

‘Still not lucid?’

The moment Seo Woojin took a step toward her, she slowly raised her head.

And Seo Woojin could only stare.

At the corners of her eyes—

Tears were running down.

“Lady… Cheon?”

Her lips worked, and then slowly parted.

“…me.”

“Sorry?”

“Kill… me… Please.”

“…!!”

With that, Cheon Suryeon’s body gave way.

Catch.

He caught hold of her in haste, and his thoughts stopped altogether in the confusion of it.

He was still trying to make sense of it when his head snapped around. Someone was approaching from a distance.

Seo Woojin looked at the unconscious Cheon Suryeon once.

“…”

Then he laid her on the ground and threw himself away, flattening himself on the roof of a low cottage.

And a moment later, a group came pouring in.

“Tsk. Lost consciousness again. She hasn’t done this since that time.”

“She’s hurt, too? Were those men too much for her?”

“Assessments later. First Squad, take the girl. Second Squad, erase the traces here.”

They exchanged a few words among themselves and moved in perfect coordination. Before long they were all gone.

Coming back down to where the fight had been, Seo Woojin found he had nothing to say.

The collapsed wall and the torn ground they had not been able to erase — but of the blood there was, impossibly, no sign. Some special preparation, most likely.

More startling than that was that they had handled the Cheon Clan’s own daughter like a piece of goods.

Seo Woojin kept his silence and walked on. He considered following them and decided there was no point. Men like those would throw their lives away the moment they judged a thing beyond them, and it would only put the other side on its guard.

Walking slowly on, Seo Woojin stopped.

In a heap of refuse lay a woman’s body. The one who had fled earlier.

Killed with a single thrust through the heart.

Killed, and then thrown there. As though back-alley thugs had done it. As though it happened all the time.

Seo Woojin lifted her out of the refuse and took her up in his arms. And walked on again.

Holding down a fury risen to the top of his head. Crushing down his hostility toward the Cheon Clan.

Perhaps that was why his feet looked heavier than they ever had.

(End of Chapter 40)