The moonlight had gone dim behind the clouds.
A splendid carriage built for long journeys, drawn by jade-white frost horses, was running swiftly through the night air.
To all appearances, it looked like a carriage belonging to one of the great merchant guilds.
In truth, it carried Namgung Jeong, Palace Master of the Southern Palace, returning to Huangshan now that the Martial Alliance's banquet was over.
Four warriors followed the carriage as it cut through the darkness, guarding it front and back with qinggong.
The one in front was a veteran with a heavy longsword slung across his back, and the one at the rear was a young man with a sharp gaze.
The veteran ahead read the darkness in advance and checked the road, and now and then his fingertips brushed the sword hilt at his waist.
That was no mere habit. It was a covert signal to the others.
If anything happened, the four were ready to unfold the Four Directions Formation around the carriage at once.
The coachman too was plainly dressed, but his eyes alone were keen—missing nothing in the woods, not even the faintest tremble of a blade of grass.
In fact, he was Namgung Gwang, the Thousand-Li Threshold, Hall Master of the Southern Palace's Great Expansion Hall.
Inside the carriage, Namgung Jeong sat with his eyes closed, quietly ordering his breathing.
But his spiritual perception caught every energy outside.
The hoofbeats, the run of the wind, even the breathing of his warriors—he felt it all as a single heartbeat.
'This much is just right.'
The heads who represented a sect or school traveled with formal ceremonial escorts for the sake of prestige, safety, and security.
The Southern Palace in particular was shadowed on long journeys by the Azure Firmament Corps, the guard unit where its finest were gathered.
Not long ago, however, Namgung Jeong had folded the Azure Firmament Corps into an intelligence unit.
The martial world's fight was now a war of information.
While having those elites shadow him at all hours was important, he judged it far better for the Southern Palace's survival that they become intelligence agents, watching the movements between factions and handling secrets.
And so the Azure Firmament Corps had become a shadow that guarded the Southern Palace with eyes and ears.
That fact was a secret, so no one knew of it, and even had they known, no one would lay a hand on the Palace Master of the Southern Palace, first seat among the Eight Great Families.
Clack, clack.
Outside the carriage running along the moonlit highway, the scenery was still, and the wind was cold.
"The Buddha Venerable cannot be called a holy monk."
Namgung Jeong's brows drew together as he chewed over the thoughts pouring through him.
In truth, he knew perfectly well that this invasion from beyond the border and the rising of the Four Great Demonic Lands were a farce staged by the Martial Alliance for the sake of its own cohesion.
The forces from beyond the border did not stir unnoticed.
Not only the Martial Alliance, but every kind of intelligence organization would have caught the signs of it beforehand.
Even supposing they had perfectly deceived the eyes and ears of those organizations and invaded regardless—for the Martial Alliance, chaotic and only barely healed of its split, to move as though waiting, found the Orthodox Path Alliance at once, form eight route armies, and lay a perfect plan to crush them...
That would have been impossible even had Zhuge Liang himself returned to life.
"There is no choice but to know the truth yet pretend ignorance."
The affair of the Martial Venerable, the false Alliance Leader.
It was a disgrace without precedent in the history of the righteous Martial Alliance, unheard of in any age.
Because of that affair, the people of the righteous path could no longer trust the Martial Alliance.
And Baek Museong, chosen as the new Alliance Leader, was in a position where he could barely maintain his authority.
What if that chaos could not be settled in a single stroke?
Then the Martial Alliance, the center of the righteous martial world, would collapse in an instant.
So Baek Museong invoked the Phoenix Token, which had never once been invoked before.
He drew out the legend of the righteous path, the Buddha Venerable.
And at the same time as he invested him as Lord of the Phoenix, he pulled strings with the foreign forces he had secretly maintained ties with, and drew them into invading.
Then he founded the Orthodox Path Alliance at once, making an occasion to gather the people of the righteous path.
And he brought back to life a Martial Alliance everyone had thought beyond saving.
"There was nothing else he could have done."
Had Namgung Jeong stood in Baek Museong's place, he would have made exactly the same choice.
There was simply no other way.
Nothing else could have restored the Martial Alliance's prestige, fallen to the very bottom, or settled the state of a body splintered into factions.
That was why the heads of the righteous path, Namgung Jeong among them, had acted as they did.
They saw plainly that all of it was one well-built play.
But as people of the righteous path they could not stand by and watch the center of the righteous path collapse.
And so, knowing, they entered the Orthodox Path Alliance.
"No. It was a flawless stroke of resurrection. Too flawless to be called a well-built play."
However one looked at it, the forces from beyond the border had genuinely invaded.
The Buddha Venerable, the legend of the righteous path, had become Lord of the Phoenix and founded the Orthodox Path Alliance, and Alliance Leader Baek Museong had commanded flawlessly.
There was no one else in the whole of the righteous path.
No other could have revived the Martial Alliance as perfectly as this.
"And yet..."
There were three reasons Namgung Jeong could not shake his unease.
"With the Buddha Venerable's renown, he could have quieted the turmoil inside the Martial Alliance by taking his time over it, without going to the trouble of mobilizing the forces from beyond the border."
He was called a living legend for more than strong martial arts and a long life.
It was because he had solved countless problems as the elder of the righteous path, and had led people rightly.
On top of that, he had become Lord of the Phoenix, inheriting the Alliance Leader's full authority.
Given time, he could have sealed the Martial Alliance's fractures perfectly.
"Even if Alliance Leader Baek had made such a proposal, the normal thing would have been to refuse it."
The Buddha Venerable was known for his mercy.
Such a man had no reason to agree to a plan that quieted the turmoil at a stroke by mobilizing the forces from beyond the border.
"And besides..."
Several forces from beyond the border had been moved simultaneously and drawn into invading the Central Plains.
Judging by that, Baek Museong, or rather the Martial Alliance, must have maintained secret contacts with them for a long time.
Then there must surely have been some far-reaching plan, and yet to squander those assets so pointlessly on nothing more than mending the Martial Alliance's split?
"Does that mean the plan changed partway? But why?"
Namgung Jeong was sunk deep in thought.
Rummmble.
A tremor like the shaking of the earth's axis rang out from the distant sky.
[What is happening?]
Namgung Jeong sent the sound transmission.
The Corps Leader of the Heavenly Wind Corps, running along the carriage's left flank and guarding it, answered at once.
[I will confirm it immediately.]
Then he shot up into the air in one motion and left the formation in an instant.
But a long while passed, and he did not return.
And not only that. The presences of the warriors guarding the carriage were vanishing, one after another.
"Haah."
He let out a deep sigh and spoke to Namgung Gwang in a low voice.
"Stop the carriage."
The carriage, running hard, came to a stop at once. Namgung Jeong opened the door, stepped out, and looked around him.
The night sky had turned a livid blue, and a transparent membrane enclosed everything around them.
Something had certainly gone wrong.
"Leave the carriage and get out ahead of me. Go to the city and invoke the Boundless Command at once."
"Palace Master."
"Go."
At Namgung Jeong's stern command, Namgung Gwang had no choice but to salute. Leaving the empty carriage behind, he unfolded his movement technique and swiftly cleared the forest.
Ssssk.
In that moment, the sky seemed to turn over, his vision twisted, and the ground became a blue-white plane shining like ice.
Across from Namgung Jeong, a masked man revealed himself in an instant, as though shooting up out of the earth.
"A curious thing."
Namgung Jeong was hardly startled by the masked man's arrival and asked in a leisurely manner instead.
"An assassination attempt the very moment I leave Henan? Is that not showing your identity far too openly?"
He had come at the Martial Alliance's invitation, so the Martial Alliance bore responsibility for his escort as far as Henan.
That an ambush had been attempted the instant he left Henan meant one thing.
His movements had been tracked perfectly from the Martial Alliance itself, and the ambush laid on that footing.
In other words, the odds were high that the Martial Alliance had done this.
Thup.
The masked man abruptly put out his right hand.
It showed his intent to attack without wasting words.
"That suits me."
Namgung Jeong placed one hand behind his back and extended the other.
"Make your move at once."
His soft, unhurried motion showed plainly the bearing of a grandmaster of his generation, one who had reached the pinnacle of mastery.
Ssk.
But the masked man did not launch an attack. He took a strange posture instead.
Rather than drawing a weapon to strike him, he used his left hand to grip the wrist of his outstretched right hand.
And then something strange happened.
Crunch.
The outstretched right hand was turning slowly, round and round, like a cartwheel.
"So you mean to use sorcery."
Sensing that the masked man was working some strange sorcery, Namgung Jeong at once unfolded a sword of energy and cut through that wrist.
Ziiiing.
But the instant the sword energy touched the wrist, an unknowable resonance rang out in every direction.
In that moment, his vision went black, and the scenery around him disappeared.
Knowing he could not face Namgung Jeong head-on, the masked man had prepared his uncanny method from the very start.
"Whatever it is, destroying it settles the matter."
Namgung Jeong snorted coldly and drew the Golden Needle Sword at his waist.
His Emperor Sword Form had reached the twelfth level of mastery, and could destroy every martial art under heaven.
It could subdue even the force of sorcery and supernatural power.
Vwoooom.
The Golden Needle Sword, raised to middle guard, was drawing in all the air for some ten jang around.
The Southern Palace's supreme art from beyond the heavens was about to show itself at last.
"Husband."
A beloved voice he could not have forgotten even in dreams rang out behind Namgung Jeong.
He turned his head slightly, and at a sight he could not possibly believe, the corners of his eyes began to tremble.
His wife, who had gone on before him unable to survive her labor, Seol Ran, whom he had longed so much to see, was standing there.
Namgung Jeong had never lost his caution, resting on a firm spirit won through long cultivation.
But this was the wife he had missed and loved so tenderly for decades.
When she appeared before his eyes in a form no different from reality, his composure finally shattered.
"Ran!"
Namgung Jeong threw dignity aside and ran to her in haste.
His swordsmanship, sunk into the way of the sword for decades, had reached the pinnacle of mastery, a realm where his composure would not break in any situation.
But his deep love and tenderness for his wife had not faded with the passing years.
If anything, twenty years after her death, those feelings remained unchanged and had only grown deeper.
It went so far that Namgung Un, a genius from childhood, had turned crooked and played the wastrel.
Had that not come about because Namgung Jeong hid his deep love for his wife, hid the truth of it?
Those who knew of this were few.
Only Namgung Un, who learned it late, and a handful of the Southern Palace's elders.
"Ran!"
"Husband."
Seol Ran looked at Namgung Jeong with a sorrowful expression.
"I asked it of you so earnestly. Why do you still torment yourself, unable to forget me?"
"How could I..."
Namgung Jeong wept hot tears like a child.
"How could I ever forget you?"
He had missed her so much.
Yet at some point she had stopped appearing even in his dreams.
Namgung Un had known nothing of his father's heart.
When he was acting out as a rebellious youth, he had secretly broken a vase his mother had treasured.
Each time, Namgung Jeong pieced the broken shards together one by one and wept with a longing that pierced him.
And now that wife had come back before his eyes like this?
"I only ever bring you pain."
"Do not say such things."
At his wife's gentle voice, Namgung Jeong pressed down his grief and smiled.
"I could not follow you, thinking I had to raise Un properly. But Un has grown now, and this house is settled, so..."
Namgung Un had not only been born with the finest gifts in the Southern Palace's history, but he also resembled his beloved wife far too closely.
And so, with the single thought of helping Namgung Un reach his full potential... Namgung Jeong had kept pressing down the wish to follow his wife.
But facing his wife again like this, the longing he had held down all that while burst open.
"Now I have no regrets left."
Without hesitation, he turned the Golden Needle Sword against his own throat.
Living had been far too painful.
His wife had been everything to him, and the reason he lived.
Breathing, eating, honing his martial arts... all of it had been only to live happily with his wife.
From the moment she failed to survive her labor and breathed her last, his world had collapsed entirely.
Ziiiing.
But at that moment, the surroundings shook and a hazy fog spread out.
At the same time, a faint ring of metal and a shout came from somewhere.
Namgung Jeong did not even spare it a thought.
In truth, he had known from the very start that this place was a Mind World.
Even so, he had chosen not to resist it.
Seeing his wife's face clearly, no different from the real thing, had made him realize how long he had been forcing himself to endure.
"Ran. Let us meet again in the next world."
Namgung Jeong gripped the Golden Needle Sword tight.
Even if the sky were to fall, his resolve would not change.
But that was the moment.
―'Do not lay a hand on the Palace Master!'
A shout like a thunderbolt came down from the distant sky.
Namgung Jeong's pupils shook.
Clang, clang, clang! Claaang!
After that, along with the ring of metal, the scenery around him began to shake without pause.
When he turned his head, far off in the fog, a man in blue robes was locked in a death struggle with masked men.
Each time the slender sword moved, the empty air tore, and the sword's path was left behind as a blue trail.
He could not see his face, but Namgung Jeong knew it was Namgung Un.
'That is right.'
He had forgotten for a moment.
It was his wife's last request.
His wife, sensing her death, had sensed too that if she breathed her last, Namgung Jeong would surely be unable to bear the pain and might take his own life.
So she had told the midwife this.
―'Tell him to do for this child everything he did for me.'
'With the hand that combed my hair, let him comb this child's hair.'
'Let him sing to this child the songs he sang to me, and take this child's hand as he took mine.'
'Then, instead of choosing death out of longing for me, my husband will be able to live on, feeling me through this child.'
By having Namgung Jeong shower upon the child every affection and habit he had poured out on her.
Seol Ran had hoped that her husband's pure and absolute love would pass over to the child intact.
Every moment of caring for the child, every memory of it, would remain as love rather than as grief.
It was a plea of love, sorrowful and wise, that Namgung Jeong might go on living steadfastly.
But at some point Namgung Jeong forgot that dying wish.
He wanted only to teach the boy sternly, make him Palace Master of the Southern Palace as soon as he could, and go to meet his wife in the next world.
But at the sight of Namgung Un appearing so suddenly, that dying wish came back to him anew.
'I have not yet passed Ran's love on to Un.'
He could not leave things as they were.
In the next world, he would have no right to face his wife.
Flash!
Namgung Jeong regained his clarity at last, and divine light flashed in both his eyes.
And the scenery abruptly changed.
"This is..."
His beloved wife's form had vanished without a trace, and in its place hideous, grotesque tree trunks had sprouted and were coiling around his body.
And beside them, the masked man who had been turning his wrist round and round was staring at Namgung Jeong with alarm in his eyes.
"To break a Mind World of the fifth level of Phase Essence, and by yourself..."
The wife he had seen until now was no ordinary illusion.
It had been a high-phase Mind World, no different from the real world.
"I did not break it myself."
Namgung Jeong said it with a sigh.
"Had it not been for Un, I would never have woken."
Namgung Un was the last light his beloved wife had left behind.
He alone could light Namgung Jeong's clouded heart and lead it back to where it belonged.
"You die either way!"
The masked man drew the sword slung across his back, a savage look in his eyes.
The tree trunks had bored into his vital points, so Namgung Jeong could not move.
Fwsh!
But something unbelievable happened.
A red line of blood was suddenly drawn across the masked man's neck.
He had created a new strike from residual force.
Namgung Jeong, his vital points pinned by the branches, had done this.
He did so with the momentum left faintly behind by the Emperor Sword Form he had raised a moment before.
He had generated a fresh sword move and raised it again.
It was the Heaven-Severing Sword Art, which only one who had honed the Emperor Sword Form to the realm of Great Perfection could unfold.
"A sword art... close to a divine skill."
Having spat out that one line, the masked man's head fell away and he breathed his last.
Patter.
When the masked man died, the branches withered like cut rope and fell to the ground.
"A sorcerer of the Black Forest Cult."
Namgung Jeong sighed.
"What a cunning scheme."
That the beaten remnants of the forces from beyond the border had plotted this assassination out of spite and a thirst for revenge was something no one would doubt.
"And the trail will have been perfectly fabricated."
The ambush might well fail.
Even so, no harm would come to the standing or the face of the Buddha Venerable and Baek Museong.
If anything, they could denounce the vicious methods of the forces from beyond the border and make of it a pretext to keep the Orthodox Path Alliance standing.
"That aside."
Though his bound body was free now, Namgung Jeong folded his arms with a leisurely expression.
It was because Namgung Un was fighting the masked men far too well.
"When did he reach such a level in swordsmanship?"
Thanks to the tassel he had received from the old man of the Essence Three Realms, Namgung Un had been able to learn the many and varied sword arts scattered across the world.
And before long he had reached the realm of No-Sword, able to put out the same power whether he held a sword or not.
Pat, pat, pak!
Fwshhh!
Namgung Un cut down twenty masked men at a stroke and came running breathlessly to where Namgung Jeong stood.
"Father!"
Namgung Jeong looked at his son who had come running, and wore a pleased smile.
"Your swordsmanship has come a long way since I last saw it."
Then he looked around him and asked.
"What in the world happened here?"
"My sworn brother..."
"I see."
The moment the words 'sworn brother' left his son's mouth, Namgung Jeong grasped the whole situation at once and sighed.
The Martial Soul Command Lord, Bu Eunseol.
He was known as a cold-blooded Great Grandmaster of the demonic path, but in truth he was manipulating the entire board.
And he looked after his own people ceaselessly and with care.
Namgung Jeong was the head of the Southern Palace.
Until now he had never once been in anyone's debt, and yet already he was twice in this man's debt.
"But why did you come alone?"
Namgung Jeong asked with a puzzled expression.
If an ambush like this had been foreseen, he should normally have come with the Southern Palace's formidable Sword Corps.
Why had Namgung Un come all alone?
"Well, that is..."
Namgung Un hesitated.
Shhhhh.
The fog that had settled over the forest thinned, and some two hundred masked men appeared, holding sharp sickles.
They had sent an assassination unit as a follow-up, in case the Mind World was broken.
"He said it would be a good experience for me and for the Palace Master both."
"What?"
"He said these men would be certain to use a method that was covert and swift... one that could kill the Palace Master with only a small number of men."
Namgung Jeong nodded.
Mobilizing a large force would risk exposing the movement to any number of intelligence organizations beforehand.
And even if the ambush succeeded, the trail could be uncovered in later days.
"And so?"
When he pressed again, Namgung Un lowered his head as though embarrassed.
"He said that if you had completed the Emperor Sword Form, you wouldn't die in an ambush. He also said you should use this opportunity to break through the wall holding you back due to a lack of real combat experience."
Thunk.
Namgung Jeong's mouth fell open wide enough to unhinge his jaw.
He had already guessed that his son's martial learning had climbed to a formidable realm and now surpassed his own.
But the gap between them was immense.
To think the boy had guessed even that he was blocked by a thick wall and failing at his breakthrough?
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