Just before the carriage exploded.
Bu Eunseol, gazing out the window, was deep in thought.
The Buddha Venerable.
Thanks to the picture book left behind by Dam Jeung, abbot of Blood Shaolin, Bu Eunseol knew the Buddha Venerable's ugly true face well.
He knew that the mask of a holy monk had been manufactured from the very beginning, and that he had been a monster fallen to the demonic path since his youth.
―'There is no chance he took up the office of Lord of the Phoenix out of goodwill.'
A sinister figure who raised countless shadows and contrived every kind of vicious scheme, becoming Lord of the Phoenix to lead the righteous martial world?
It was an idea so laughable that even a passing dog would snort at it.
―'The same goes for Baek Museong, who had become Alliance Leader.'
From the moment he realized he could never have Gongsun Dankyung, his goodness vanished, and in the end, he chose the path of evil.
Those two had stepped forward to save the Martial Alliance, and just then the forces from beyond the border invaded the Central Plains?
Then there must surely be another conspiracy behind it.
Bu Eunseol tried to uncover that conspiracy, but quickly realized there wasn't enough time.
Before long, he came up with an uncanny plan.
He would use the identity of Society Leader Seolso.
He would become the bait to upend the board they had laid.
―'Every reinforcement, every fighting man, is desperately needed, and yet you cast aside help.'
―'You must feel quite confident about this fight.'
At Bu Eunseol's words, Baek Museong had no choice but to accept him, however bitter the pill.
If he refused the Martial Soul Society's help even after hearing such a declaration?
It could give the impression that the invasion from beyond the border was not so pressing after all.
The trouble was that the higher the position a man rose to, the more necessary it was for him to have undergone a proper background and preparation.
This was especially true of becoming the head who leads a large-scale alliance.
Inevitably, one needed a period of belonging to a great sect and grasping how its systems were run.
Bukgung Ryeong, too, had stood peerless beneath the heavens his whole life.
But because he had served for a time as an elder of the Martial Alliance, he had been able to grasp how an alliance was run.
And that was why he could later accept Bu Eunseol's proposal that he become Leader of the Azure Sky Alliance.
But as for Seolso's history, there was nothing beyond his days as a wandering mercenary.
No matter how elite a mercenary he was, he lacked the background and training expected of an alliance leader.
A risk factor.
If men whose pasts left no clear trace like this were to join a faction or an organization carrying out a grand design?
They could only act as an extremely unsettling risk factor.
Baek Museong in particular had witnessed the Martial Venerable's failure, so that unease would have grown all the greater.
Once matters had come this far, one thing followed.
Baek Museong had to kill Society Leader Seolso without fail, by whatever means.
―'Unusual movements have been detected within the Martial Alliance!'
He threw down the bait, and at last a response came.
Barely any time after Society Leader Seolso entered the Orthodox Path Alliance, covert movements by an organization inside the Martial Alliance were detected.
The Death Spirit Corps pursued it doggedly.
They learned that these were secret organizations receiving special training within the Martial Alliance.
And that they were investigating the movements of the righteous path's heads.
―'They are plotting assassinations.'
Taking in the Death Spirit Corps' intelligence, Bu Eunseol saw that Baek Museong was putting an assassination plan into action.
―'He will surely use the forces from beyond the border that raised the invasion.'
Baek Museong was no fool.
He would not do anything so mad as to send the Martial Alliance's own elite.
He would move small assassination units made up of outstanding warriors from beyond the border, men certain to be able to dispose of each head.
Bu Eunseol predicted he would not only evade the detection nets of every intelligence organization in the Central Plains, but would arrange matters so that even failure left no aftermath.
―'I must identify the targets other than the Society Leader.'
Bu Eunseol moved the Death Spirit Corps again.
He tried to identify the assassination targets clearly.
―'Beyond the fact that the Clan Master of the Sichuan Tang Clan is among those being tracked... we could learn nothing at all.'
After enormous hardship, the Death Spirit Corps had grasped only that one of the men under their watch was Tang Gon, Clan Master of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
They could obtain nothing beyond that.
―'I see.'
But Bu Eunseol managed it all the same.
From the single report that Tang Gon was among those under investigation, he could guess the assassination targets Baek Museong had designated.
Baek Museong belonged to the abyssal forces.
And he harbored hatred and a sense of rivalry toward the Martial Soul Command Lord, who had become the Martial Alliance's benefactor despite having ruined the investiture ceremony.
―'They mean to dispose of the heads of the Azure Sky Alliance, the Sichuan Tang Clan, the Southern Palace, and the Wudang Sect, along with Society Leader Seolso.'
All of them were upright in character and held the will to block the martial world's abyssal forces.
They were also people directly connected to Bu Eunseol, or who had shown him goodwill.
―'They will have some hidden means certain to dispose of their targets.'
Baek Museong had sent assassins at the scale of a small unit.
Bu Eunseol sensed that they surely held the means to break each head's weakness, or else their martial arts.
And so to Bukgung Ryeong and Tang Gon, whom he could trust, he sent letters directly and told them as much.
With Namgung Jeong and Yeong Cheongja, there was a risk that the information would leak.
So he had quietly made contact instead with Namgung Un and Song Ak, who could save them.
―'I had better make every preparation myself.'
There was only one reason this assassination plan had been set in motion.
It was the sudden appearance of the Society Leader, barging into the founding of the Orthodox Path Alliance.
―'Which means that even if the sky itself came down, they would still try to kill Seolso above all.'
From Baek Museong's standpoint, this was how it stood.
Whatever became of the others, Society Leader Seolso in particular had to die...
So he might send an unpredictable powerhouse. Perhaps even the Buddha Venerable.
* * *
"So it begins."
A faint smell of gunpowder brushed the tip of his nose.
Waking from his thoughts, Bu Eunseol tore through the carriage roof in one motion and shot up into the sky.
Boooom!
With a roar that shook heaven and earth, the carriage exploded, and Bu Eunseol landed again on the ground at his leisure.
Whooosh.
A figure revealed itself within the thick smoke.
It was a masked man wearing a long sword at his back and another at his waist.
"You are late."
Bu Eunseol spoke in a voice of the utmost ease.
"I've been waiting so long my eyes were starting to grow sore."
Crick.
The situation must have been unexpected.
The masked man tilted his neck to one side and narrowed his eyes.
"You came all on your own?"
Bu Eunseol had thought Baek Museong or the Buddha Venerable would come to strike him in person.
The Society Leader's assassination had to succeed without fail.
But the only thing he could feel within three hundred jang was the masked man before him.
"Then you must have skill the Buddha Venerable or Alliance Leader Baek trusts a great deal."
He mentioned the Buddha Venerable and Baek Museong deliberately, to provoke him, but the masked man still gave no reaction.
'Strange.'
Bu Eunseol's eyes narrowed and kept narrowing.
He had faced a great many powerful men until now.
Like a possessed shaman, he could gauge an enemy's skill at a single glance from nothing but the distinctive aura the man radiated.
But from the masked man before him, he could feel neither color nor form.
He stood somewhat apart even from the colors of the scenery around him, as though he had no presence at all.
Shring.
The masked man drew not the sword on his back but the one at his waist.
Clack.
The sword he drew had an abnormally broad blade.
Between the hilt and the blade there was no round guard to keep the hand from sliding down onto the edge. It was a strangely shaped sword.
Shhhhh.
The air around them seemed to evaporate in an instant, and everything grew darker still.
Bu Eunseol's gaze changed.
It happened the moment the masked man drew his sword.
The masked man, from whom no aura at all had been felt, had turned into an entirely different being.
It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, one he had never once felt before.
'He is strong.'
It felt as though a monster that ought not to exist had pulled on a human hide and taken up a sword.
"Heh."
The masked man made a strange laughing sound, his exposed eyes glinting like a snake's, and took a step toward Bu Eunseol.
Walking is an utterly natural motion for a human being.
But the masked man's gait looked like that of a four-legged beast forcing itself to walk upright.
'Was there anyone this strong in the Martial Alliance?'
He had not grasped the Martial Alliance's secret organizations completely.
But he had held a senior seat in the Martial Alliance for a long time under Seon Woojin's identity, so he had a rough sense of the skill of the warriors who belonged there.
This masked man was another matter.
He radiated a sinister, alien aura that sent a chill down Bu Eunseol's spine, unlike anything he had felt before.
It was not simply the pressure of a master who had risen to overwhelming martial prowess. It was the strangeness of looking at a new species of creature.
'This is not a man who would be under the Buddha Venerable or Baek Museong.'
Bu Eunseol sensed it.
This man had moved in the darkness and butchered countless lives.
And he would never be a man serving under the Buddha Venerable or Baek Museong.
Clack.
Just then, the masked man twisted his grip on the strangely shaped sword so its flat face showed, and his form vanished in an instant.
No, it had not vanished.
It raised the illusion that space itself was twisting, and then the sword was already stabbing swiftly at Bu Eunseol's throat.
Bu Eunseol did not hesitate. He used the vacuum fist art of Society Leader Seolso.
The Seven Heavenly Light Forms, First Form. He unfolded Solar Brilliance.
The forces the two masters put out collided in midair.
Booom!
The shockwave tore the surrounding trees up by the roots and gouged deep into the earth.
'To put out power like this in a single light stroke.'
It was a level of strength far beyond what he had expected.
If Bu Eunseol had taken him lightly and put out the Seven Heavenly Light Forms carelessly?
He would have suffered a deep internal injury in one stroke.
Clack.
This time, the masked man stayed where he stood and thrust the strangely shaped sword forward.
Paaang!
The trees and stones around Bu Eunseol turned to powder in an instant and scattered in the wind.
The masked man was unleashing forms of terrible power with ease, forms that twisted space and reversed the direction of force.
Pat!
But Bu Eunseol had predicted the attack and had already lifted his body into the air.
Pat, pat, pat, pat!
Hundreds of sword shadows covered his body in an instant.
The masked man had predicted Bu Eunseol's movement as well, and unleashed an explosive swordsmanship into the sky.
Thooom.
Bu Eunseol executed the Thousand-Pound Drop technique and landed on the ground in an instant.
As though he had been waiting, the masked man charged Bu Eunseol and unleashed thirty-six sword energies at once.
Bu Eunseol had mastered the essence of martial learning through real combat.
That held true from the instant an enemy's swordsmanship began to unfold.
He could predict, to some degree, how those forms would develop.
But the masked man's swordsmanship unfolded without a sign of warning, and its momentum spread at the speed of a lightning strike.
Pat, pat, pat, pat!
What was more, the more Bu Eunseol evaded, the more precise and swift the masked man's swordsmanship grew.
It reached a level no ordinary movement technique of the righteous path could handle.
'If this is not the Buddha Venerable or Baek Museong come in person.'
Bu Eunseol's eyes flashed, and he deliberately collided his fist force with the masked man's sword aura.
'Then there is no need to face him at all.'
Bang!
A shockwave spread in concentric rings and flung Bu Eunseol back, and he used that very force to shoot up into the sky.
Rather than settle the contest, he meant to get clear and then investigate the masked man's identity down to the last detail.
Bzzt.
But the moment he shot skyward, a transparent wall appeared along with a pure white flash.
'He unfolded a formation I could not detect?'
Shwaaak!
The masked man did not miss the instant his concentration scattered, and fired a half-moon sword aura at Bu Eunseol's throat.
He blocked it with the Silent Tiger Soul Sword, but he could not overcome the counterforce, and Bu Eunseol crashed to the ground with a bang.
Rumble.
Bu Eunseol rose slowly from among the collapsed heap of stone, and his gaze turned cold as a North Sea glacier.
"Let us settle it, then."
Bob.
The shattered pebbles rose slowly into the air.
Paaaat!
They spread out in every direction, and the sky began to turn gradually transparent.
Bu Eunseol had realized that ordinary martial arts could not bring the masked man down.
So, he unfolded the Vast Heaven Tablet Hundred Gates Formation, a masterwork of the Golden Lock Formation Studiess that completely obscured the interior from outside eyes.
"Heut."
He seemed to guess that Bu Eunseol had resolved to unfold the Vacuum.
The masked man looked at the sky staining transparent and burst into a grotesque laugh.
He looked as though he were inviting Bu Eunseol to try anything at all.
'I must not expose Seolso's Vacuum Supreme Art to the outside any further.'
While tracing this assassination plan, he had learned something.
The Martial Alliance's secret organization had not only pushed spies into the Nine Great Sects and the Eight Great Families.
It was also studying the Vacuum Supreme Arts of the Great Grandmasters who ranged across the martial world.
From now on, he would have to do the same whether he unfolded a Vacuum Supreme Art as the Martial Soul Command Lord or as the Society Leader.
He had to cut off every trace and every exposure of it perfectly.
Ssk.
Bu Eunseol's mild eyes shifted slightly, and an air flowed out of him cold enough to carve flesh and bone.
Through all his encounters with powerful men, his attainment in the true martial arts as the Martial Soul Command Lord had deepened without end.
But he had faced powerful men only a few times in the identity of the Society Leader, so his attainment in the Seven Heavenly Light Forms was little different from when he first learned it.
The secret art of darkness, in particular, changed not only his features but the very shape of his body, down to the qualities of his spirit...
So Seolso's identity itself became a constraint.
'Then, like channeling water into a parched field, I must supplement what is lacking from another source.'
Ziiiing.
Bu Eunseol's pupils gradually stained pure white, and a black haze began to rise from his whole body.
Shhhhh.
At the same time, a stale wind began to blow toward the masked man.
The Poison Saint.
He was using a terrifying poison to dull the masked man's heightened senses and physical reflexes.
Ziiiing.
Sensing something wrong with his body, the masked man raised protective astral energy and unfolded his swordsmanship again.
But the gentle breeze had already become a fierce gale.
The masked man's breathing closed up, and he felt a pain like a sharp knife slicing his skin.
Pat, pat, pat, pat!
He had to hold back the spreading poison energy.
The masked man swung the strangely shaped sword like a madman, throwing a net-shaped sword aura over Bu Eunseol.
Shoook!
From among those countless sword energies, a single sharp point of light popped out.
Shwaaak!
In an instant it bored toward Bu Eunseol's throat.
A sword form like that was so bizarre and singular that its match would be hard to find under heaven, and however great a master might be, it was hard to guard against.
Under ordinary circumstances, it was a sword technique that never missed.
Whish!
Bu Eunseol threw his body back swiftly and evaded that scrap of light.
"..."
The corners of the masked man's eyes shot upward.
He realized that his cherished ultimate form had failed because his own bodily reactions had slowed.
"Take off the veil even now and name your allegiance, and I will spare your life at least."
Bu Eunseol put out his hand at his leisure.
"I already know you came on the orders of the Buddha Venerable and Alliance Leader Baek."
The Poison Saint's power he had attained was without precedent or successor in the history of the martial world. Not only could he create poison to suit the circumstances around him, but its nature was so singular that the moment it penetrated the body, internal energy could not push it out.
"You would rather not, it seems."
When the masked man did not answer, Bu Eunseol unfolded the Seven Heavenly Light Forms again.
"Do not come to regret this!"
The masked man unfolded his swordsmanship again and again to block it, but unlike before, he could not seize the advantage.
No. As time passed, Bu Eunseol's Seven Heavenly Light Forms began to gradually overwhelm him.
Chk, chk, chk!
His pride must have been wounded, for the masked man drew his power up more fiercely still and unfolded his swordsmanship.
As the two masters' true martial arts collided without cease, the forest came down and the earth was gouged deep.
Within that fierce exchange, Bu Eunseol was analyzing the masked man's martial arts.
'This is not a martial art of the Central Plains.'
Like the Celestial Emperor's martial arts that So Okrim used, the masked man was using a swordsmanship of tremendous power that consumed a great deal of internal force.
'So the poison took effect after all.'
The martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars were just that powerful.
It was like carrying a weapon inside one's own body that could harm its bearer until it was unleashed.
The masked man was using swordsmanship of that kind as well.
So merely having his body's reactions slowed a little by the poison left him unable to bring out its proper power.
Paat! Krrung!
All the while, Bu Eunseol moved like a phantom and poured out the Seven Heavenly Light Forms.
At this rate, it seemed he would be able to subdue the masked man easily.
Ziiiing.
In that instant, a sharp killing intent burst from the masked man's whole body, as though to pierce the sky.
Vwoooong!
The air on all sides shook, and the masked man's energy amplified explosively.
Tok.
He suddenly threw down the strangely shaped sword in his hand and drew the sword slung across his back.
It was three ja longer than the strangely shaped sword he had thrown to the ground, and extremely narrow.
Its blade was so long that from a distance he looked as though he were holding a short spear.
Clack.
The moment he gripped the new sword, the masked man's aura changed completely.
Trickle.
A sharp energy flowed along the blade and spread through his whole body.
Ssssk.
His body began slowly to grow thinner.
Thinner and thinner, sharper and sharper.
Before long, his very existence had transformed into a single line dividing heaven and earth.
Bu Eunseol could spot an ant several li away, yet no matter how he sharpened his sight, all he could see before him was a single slender line.
A human being of blood and flesh, suddenly becoming a single sharp line joining sky and earth?
Pat!
In that instant, the line vanished.
It had not merely vanished from before his eyes. It had been extinguished entirely from the region Bu Eunseol could sense.
It was no more than an instant, but in a fight between masters, an instant could be the moment that divided life from death.
Shwaaak!
The man returned to his veiled form and appeared before Bu Eunseol's eyes.
He fired a sharp sword aura toward Bu Eunseol's knees.
If he failed to block it properly, his legs would be severed outright.
Without needing to think, Bu Eunseol unfolded the fourth form of the Seven Heavenly Light Forms, Jade Shining on the Moon.
He rolled the drilling sword aura up in a circle and flung it into the sky.
Stretchhh.
But that had been a feint.
With a sickening sound, the masked man's arm elongated unnaturally.
Shwaaak!
And it was drilling sharply into Bu Eunseol's throat.
'Kh.'
It was so swift that all Bu Eunseol could manage was to throw his head back and barely evade it.
But that too had been a feint.
The true form came from below, rising.
It was a sword form of appalling cruelty, one that severed both of an opponent's arms in a single stroke.
Claaang!
With a ring of metal that seemed to resound through the whole world, the masked man's sharp blade was caught between Bu Eunseol's two palms.
He had accomplished the feat of catching a bare blade barehanded—a move said to be nearly impossible in a fight between top masters.
No. It could not have failed.
Bu Eunseol knew the changes in the swordsmanship the masked man unfolded.
He could have caught them with his eyes closed.
"You."
In that instant, Bu Eunseol's pupils were stained red as blood.
The blood in his whole body ran cold, and rage poured black waves of true energy out of him.
How long had he searched for the man who used this sword form!
It was the same cruel swordsmanship for which he had found no clues since encountering that elder at the Southern Palace long ago.
At last, he had found once more the man who used the sword form that had brutally murdered his grandfather.
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