So Okrim's eyes flew wide open.
Surely not, she had told herself. Surely not.
Without an inch of hesitation, to lean in so boldly and take hold of her?
"Kyaak."
Just as she squeezed her eyes shut in a fear that felt fit to burst,
Crack, crack, crack.
Suddenly Bu Eunseol's body stretched out subtly, like taffy, and began to go limp and pliant like a supple silk sash.
Swish.
At the same time, that thin, elongated body began to wind itself around every part of So Okrim.
Then all the many energies and breaths Bu Eunseol carried, and even his hot pulse, flowed down her spine and into her body.
According to the method of the Sacred Fire Secret Transmission, there were two ways to draw out its maximum power.
Either amplify the affection between the two of them through intimate contact or open expression.
Or force the area of skin contact wider, even by brute means, so that the flow of energy was shared on a greater scale.
Bu Eunseol, then, had not used the way that amplified affection, such as a kiss.
He had chosen the crudely simple route of widening the skin contact to transmit the power.
"What are you doing right now?"
When So Okrim demanded it with her eyes wide, Bu Eunseol answered with his flattened face.
"It is the Twelve Supple Muscles Art, similar to the Tianzhu Confucian Fist."
"Does it sound like I'm asking for the name of the martial art right now?"
So Okrim looked down with terrified eyes at Bu Eunseol, coiled tight around her body.
'He's throwing away a heaven-sent opportunity like this?'
She had known that Bu Eunseol was somewhat ignorant about relations between men and women, and about affection.
But to think he was a man who could read neither a hint nor a mood to this extent?
'A simple kiss would have done it!'
Vwoooong!
Regardless of how So Okrim felt.
Bu Eunseol's body stretched on and on without pause, rapidly increasing the area of contact.
And with it, a powerful force gradually began to accumulate in So Okrim's body as well.
"Are you broken?"
At So Okrim's shout, full of anger.
Bu Eunseol worked his lips with effort, his face stretched out like rubber.
"I do hear that... fairly often."
"Don't answer every single thing with your face drooping like taffy."
So Okrim wanted to cry.
The first reason was the frustration boiling in her because of that tactless man.
The second was that as the area of contact grew.
An immense energy was driven in through her skin, and a power surged up from within her strong enough to feel like it would shatter her body.
Crack, crack, crack.
As the power filled her to the point of her body collapsing.
The power of the Heavenly Martial Star was exerted once again, and her physical body gradually turned massive.
No, beyond any comparison with before: her clothes tore, and her height too was climbing toward nine cheok.
'My body feels like it's going to burst!'
"Kahaha!"
In the meantime, the monster had completed a massive blade hundreds of jang long, one that would bring the whole world to ruin.
"Instructor So, now!"
As Bu Eunseol's shout burst out, an irritable glint flashed through So Okrim's eyes.
That block of wood of a man paid no mind whatsoever to her turmoil.
His eyes were red with nothing but the thought of cutting down the enemy?
'This wood-and-stone lump, without a mustard seed's worth of tact!'
Filled with anger, she drew up her internal energy.
And as if spewing out the resentment that filled her whole body, she unfolded the Dual-Severed Galaxy Strike once again.
Booooom!
The erupting radiance soon began to change its shape into a brilliant Five-Colored Dragon.
The Profound Divine Technique Qi latent in Bu Eunseol, and the power of the Heavenly-Mandate Star as well, had been mixed into the Dual-Severed Galaxy Strike and sent out with it.
Shooooosh!
The Five-Colored Dragon, which had been galloping and scoring the earth as it went, contracted into an ever smaller and sharper form,
Swish, swish, swish!
And pierced through the black barrier the monster had made in a single breath.
Thoom!
The cluster of light that came through the barrier soon writhed like a small dragon, and every one of its five-colored scales turned into a saw blade.
Clamp.
It coiled precisely around the wrist, the very source of the monster's power, and began to spin.
Screeeeech!
A terrible grinding sound of flesh being cut and bone being ground away tore through the air.
The monster resisted violently, but the streaks of light, now saw blades, spun on fiercely without pausing for even a moment.
Slash!
With a savage severing sound, the wrist was at last cut clean through and tumbled to the ground.
Strangely, only a single drop of blood fell, and its color faded little by little the instant it touched the floor.
And from the severed cross-section came not blood but a black powder like ash, crumbling away and scattering on the air.
Thud, shudder, shudder.
The fallen wrist twitched a few times, as if wringing out the strength it had left.
Srrrk.
Then it hardened cold, like a statue that had lost its life, and turned a blackish gray.
―'Aaaaaaagh!'
Suddenly a horrifying shriek that scraped at the soul, as if hundreds of vengeful spirits were tangled together and wailing, spread out into the distant sky.
The monster too opened its mouth,
"Wooo!"
And began to release a bizarre howl that no one could believe came from a human mouth.
Crackle.
The monster's whole body split like a parched desert and began to harden like a stone statue.
What followed was a sight that was impossible to believe.
As the shriek died away, cracks like the shell of a turtle spread everywhere across the monster's skin.
From head to toe... was it not slowly drying up like a mummy?
But the truly bizarre phenomenon began after that.
Rumble.
The ground split open, red mist rose from it, and out of those crevices the forms of demons began to crawl.
Kikiki.
Those things, with gaunt outstretched hands and red eyes soaked in greed.
Rummaged through the monster's head and reached toward something hidden inside it.
The moment the demons' fingertips touched it.
Craaack.
A faint form of light was dragged out of the split crown of the head, as if an intangible thread were being drawn from it.
Rip.
Amidst a bizarre noise of screams and laughter mixed together, the demons bit and tore that light from one another, sharing it out like starving beasts, and soon vanished into the ground.
Sizzle.
At the same time, flames rose from the man in black's corpse along with a faint smoke.
"Since it looks like it's all over now."
Seeing this, So Okrim wore an expression of the utmost ferocity as she spoke to Bu Eunseol, still wrapped about her lower abdomen.
"Get off my body. Right now!"
In the meantime she had returned to her lovely form.
"Understood."
Bu Eunseol met that savage expression of hers.
And hurriedly, in a scramble, unwound the body he had coiled around and embraced with the Twelve Supple Muscles Art.
"Did you see it just now?"
"See what?"
When So Okrim snapped back irritably, Bu Eunseol pointed at the ground where the forms of the demons had come out.
"The ones that came out of the ground."
"Came out of the ground? What did?"
Unlike Bu Eunseol.
She had not seen the demons that came out of the split ground at all.
'Was I imagining it?'
"What are you talking about?"
When she asked again, Bu Eunseol shook his head.
It was a sight hard to believe even for him, and he had witnessed it with his own two eyes.
"No, it is nothing."
"Groan."
With her body freed, So Okrim stepped back and gasped for breath.
It had not even been his full power.
She had been handed only a portion of it, and still it had felt as if her bones would snap and her muscles burst.
If the monster had held on just a little longer?
Her body would have been smashed apart from the inside.
"Just what on earth have you been eating, to keep energies like that in your belly?"
Being the Heavenly Martial Star, it was no exaggeration to say she possessed the sturdiest body under heaven.
And yet taking in a portion of his power had nearly made her burst?
"I roamed the martial world and went through this and that, and it turned out like this."
To look at it, it was a body of ordinary bone and sinew and constitution, with nothing special about it at all.
Even so, powers of entirely different lineages were mixed within him, and they held a balance that was perfect to an uncanny degree.
Its foundation, of course, was owed to the base his grandfather, Bu Zhanyang, had laid for him.
But what completed this mysterious body was owed to Bu Eunseol's own effort as well.
He had faced strong enemies without end and studied the martial arts.
And he had awakened new methods and tuned the energies within his body into balance.
Tap, tap, tap.
Just then, something was glittering amidst the ashes of the corpse as it scattered into powder.
It was the severed wrist of the man in black.
The blackish-gray wrist had, at some point in the flames, turned into a transparent thing like a brilliant crystal.
"Oh?"
So Okrim's eyes narrowed.
Because all sorts of energies were spreading out from the severed wrist.
Among them was a silver current, and that was the power of the Sacred Fire Secret Transmission she had poured out only moments ago.
"Power gets stored in the wrist?"
Only then did she understand how that monster had been able to display such formidable strength.
"A scrap of a wrist, hoarding every sort of energy like it was a money pouch..."
So Okrim gazed at the transparent wrist for a long while.
Ziiiing.
Then, with something bewitched in her eyes, she began to walk slowly toward that wrist lodged in the ashes.
'Something is wrong.'
Her instinct sounded an alarm, but her body would not stop.
If anything, she was being drawn there more strongly than before.
It was the energy seeping from the transparent wrist.
It whispered, as if it saw straight through to the deepest place in So Okrim, to the emptiness and the craving she had never revealed to a soul.
―'You knew you weren't enough, and you looked away from it.'
The voice burrowed directly into her mind and shook her heart.
―'You know, don't you? Even if you find the one who killed your grandfathers, with your skill you couldn't take revenge on him.'
Inwardly, she had known.
That revenge was not something she could even dream of.
The killer who had destroyed her grandfathers' home.
Was a mighty expert she would not dare to face even if she honed her martial arts for ten years.
―'If you make me yours, all of it will come true.'
In that instant, a vision bloomed before her eyes.
In it she broke through her limit, and broke through it again.
Until at last she seized absolute power and took her revenge in one glorious stroke.
Gulp.
She swallowed dry.
A burning thirst and longing were rising in her.
The wrist lay atop the ash heap.
It was like a spirit of fire, feeding on the flames to give off a light of its own.
And from it came a whispering that never stopped.
―'Take me.'
―'Become mine.'
If only she had that.
If only she could get hold of that wrist.
Every thirst in her would be slaked in an instant.
Before she knew it her reason had vanished into the blazing flames, and a primal urge to possess had seized her mind and body completely.
The moment she possessed it.
Everything would be fulfilled.
And the world she had dreamed of would open before her.
Swish.
As Void Grasp was unfolded.
The transparent wrist that had lain on the blazing ashes was quietly drawn into So Okrim's hand.
"Haa."
The moment she reached out, her breath ragged, to lay her hand on that transparent wrist,
"Instructor So."
Bu Eunseol's voice reached her.
"It would be best not to touch that."
"Why, do you want it all for yourself?"
In an instant So Okrim's eyes turned vicious.
And words she could not account for even to herself began to pour out of her mouth.
"You always talk as though you know everything."
So Okrim glared at Bu Eunseol with a knifelike stare.
"But is there anything you actually know? You run the Death Spirit Corps ragged, and you still can't find the one enemy who killed your grandfather, can you?"
They were words like a dagger driven into the heart.
"And with that blunt face of yours, you always put on a show of quietly looking out for women. But do you know what you are?"
So Okrim shouted at Bu Eunseol with eyes that looked ready to pour out cold.
"You charm women to death and lure them in, and then when they finally come to you, you pretend to be flustered..."
"Instructor So."
"You're nothing but a deranged, cold-blooded man who enjoys refusing what people feel for you!"
'It is that wrist.'
Bu Eunseol was certain of it.
The transparent wrist, left behind after losing its owner, was trying to seize control of So Okrim's mind.
And if she were to possess it?
A great witch would be born, one whose power the monster from before could not begin to compare with.
'I must take that demonic creature without provoking her.'
"You are right."
Having settled his thoughts, Bu Eunseol nodded without offering an excuse.
"There is not one thing Instructor So has said that is wrong."
"Don't call me Instructor! How long are you going to keep using a title from ages ago?"
Her eyes had gone red with rage.
Bu Eunseol carefully took another step closer and opened his mouth.
"I am sorry. Young Lady So."
"My name is Okrim!"
"You are right. Okrim."
He took one more step closer, keeping that gentle expression all the while.
"I have always thought it was a pretty name."
"What?"
So Okrim's face wavered for a moment, and then she ground her teeth and shouted.
"Don't lie! You don't even like me!"
And she shouted loud enough to tear the sky open.
"You were thinking this, weren't you!"
Booom!
She unleashed a fist at Bu Eunseol's chest.
She struck so hard that a fierce vibration wave passed through his body and out behind his back.
Gush.
Blood rose in Bu Eunseol's throat, and he forced it back down.
"That house-sized woman has a burly body and a filthy temper to match!"
Booom!
"I don't want to go anywhere near her!"
Boooom!
"Like that!"
It was after she learned the martial arts of the Essence Three Realms.
That So Okrim lost her peerless beauty and her body turned into a beast's.
She had never once let it show, and had acted brighter and bolder than ever.
But inside, her heart had been festering badly.
Trickle.
Blood ran from the corner of Bu Eunseol's mouth after three straight punches.
"That is... not so."
He spoke in a voice that was calm, but sincere.
"To speak honestly, I always thought that although you act roughly on the outside, you are in truth as pure as a child."
"Don't spout nonsense!"
"And when I learned that you regularly look after orphaned children and provide for them, I understood as well that your heart is as fine and tender as silk."
Bu Eunseol looked straight into So Okrim's eyes.
"I also knew that you carried on so wildly all this time to hide a wounded heart, because of the body that had grown so large."
They were words without a single speck of falsehood mixed into them.
And sincerity is a thing that pierces any false energy.
It is bound to reach the deepest place in the heart of every living creature.
"What would someone like you know?"
"It is because it is me that I can know."
Bu Eunseol walked one step closer and said.
"Have we not shared hardship and ease together, coming through crisis after crisis side by side?"
That he had solved so many things together with that wild woman.
That they had been able to trust each other and come through danger.
Was because he had faith in So Okrim.
And because inwardly Bu Eunseol had enjoyed being with her.
"There were many times you flustered me, but it was always a pleasure. Being with you."
Stagger.
Bu Eunseol, who had finally come within a breath of So Okrim, swayed for a moment.
Thump.
Then a pair of white hands took hold of his staggering shoulders and steadied him.
They were So Okrim's hands.
Hearing Bu Eunseol's sincerity, without a single falsehood in it, she had come back to her senses.
"I'm sorry."
Trickle.
"It was hard, but I couldn't let it show."
Pearl-like teardrops began to fall from her large eyes.
"Because of my body, the way it changed after I learned martial arts... it was my grandfathers who ended up feeling sorry and suffering for it. None of them knew the power of the Heavenly Martial Star would show itself this way."
Not even the eccentrics of the Essence Three Realms.
Had foreseen that So Okrim's body would change as the power of the Heavenly Martial Star she was born with manifested in her flesh.
And So Okrim.
Could not let her own pain show.
If she grieved and suffered, her grandfathers would only suffer more.
So she acted bright on purpose.
And became a rowdy, madcap girl.
"So that was it."
Bu Eunseol came right up close to So Okrim.
"You have endured much."
And he threw the transparent wrist she was holding to the ground and gently took her into his arms.
"All this time you have held it in, without letting your hurt show even once."
"Uwaah."
Held in Bu Eunseol's arms, So Okrim cried like a child.
"My lot has been so hard to bear."
Into that weeping went every bit of the pain she had endured and all those years of regret she could never speak of to anyone.
"Pour out every hurt feeling. All of it."
In truth, Bu Eunseol was not simply offering her words of comfort.
When he had used Connecting Qi as One Body just before, in order to unfold the Sacred Fire Secret Transmission, he had been linked not only to her body but to her emotions.
And so, in So Okrim's meridians.
He had been able to sense something extremely hard and knotted.
Bu Eunseol had grasped what they were: lumps of resentment pressed down in her heart all this time.
Never released outward, hidden away in the depths of her.
And if they could not be drawn out of her body? In time she could fall gravely ill, or her lifespan could be cut short.
So when that wrist drew the darkness in her heart to the surface.
Bu Eunseol had turned it to his own use instead.
He had made her spit out the resentment and anguish piled up in her spirit, and so let the knot come loose.
Illusion Upon Illusion.
For he was the one and only successor to have mastered the spirit secret art of Ak Muryeong, who had reached the foremost Mind-Seizing Secret Art under heaven.
"My grandfathers were building up their sect in the Western Regions, and they were attacked by intruders again and again. They took internal injuries. They were always on medicine."
She wept bitterly.
"But they never let me see it, and they always treated me warmly."
"So that was it."
"And when night came they all went outside to sleep. In case their groaning woke me. In case I found out they were hurt."
So Okrim wailed aloud again as she spoke.
"So how could I ever have whined about my own body getting a little bigger?"
She kept her head buried.
Watching her weep aloud, Bu Eunseol felt tears gather in his eyes as well.
He had guessed that she had a complicated past of her own, but to think it was a story this painful?
"You have suffered far too much."
Bu Eunseol warmly held the sobbing So Okrim.
For a long while her teardrops showed no sign of stopping.
When a good deal of time had passed like that.
So Okrim, seeming somewhat calmer now, wiped her tears and spoke like a child.
"Sorry. I made a fool of myself."
"Not at all. Instru..."
Bu Eunseol, who had been about to call her Instructor, spoke again.
"Young Lady So."
"Young lady, my foot. Just talk to me the way you always do."
So Okrim smiled as she wiped her tears.
"Young lady sounds awkward."
On an ordinary day it would have felt like teasing.
But he knew the whole of it now.
And so even that bright smile felt like she was on the verge of tears.
"Okrim."
"Hm?"
"...May I call you that?"
Bu Eunseol smiled brightly, showing his teeth.
"Are we not of the same school, and am I not your senior brother?"
In an instant So Okrim's face turned red.
―'Then should I call you senior brother? Senior brother, Okrim is hungry.'
Because she thought Bu Eunseol was needling her by throwing her own joke back at her.
"Now that I see it, you're quite the tease. You are."
So Okrim said, giving him a deliberate sidelong glare.
"Are you seducing me?"
"Seducing, you say."
Bu Eunseol answered with a deliberately solemn expression.
"I am sincere. Without a single speck of falsehood."
'After what happened with Chief Steward Gongsun, I swore that I would never turn away from a woman's heart.'
It was only with So Okrim that he had no choice but to be careful.
Because she had never once expressed genuine interest or affection toward him.
But now he knew.
That all the playing and the coquetry she had always shown him had been sincere.
And that inwardly it must have hurt her deeply.
"There is no telling how a relationship between a man and a woman will turn out, is there?"
"A man and a woman... a relationship?"
"That is so."
Bu Eunseol spoke with the utmost honesty.
"Two who part and meet again, and two who seem set to love forever and then part."
Bu Eunseol was a man, and So Okrim was a woman.
Like any ordinary young man and woman.
He meant that they would face each other without restraining or hiding their feelings any longer.
Catching his meaning, So Okrim smiled brightly again, showing her white teeth.
That smile was the most honest and beautiful of all the smiles she had shown until now.
"What do you think you are..."
In that instant the corners of So Okrim's brightly smiling eyes tore upward toward the sky, and a pure white gale howled from her fist.
"The Emperor!"
Thwack.
Her fist drove deep into Bu Eunseol's lower abdomen.
"Are you in the middle of vetting candidates for your harem?"
"That is not what I meant."
"Argh!"
So Okrim planted another fist, loaded with her grievance.
Was it because a woman's bitterness was packed into it?
His body, which did not so much as flinch at ordinary blows, reeled hard, and a pain like his innards being wound into a coil spread through him.
"I seem to have spoken poorly."
Bu Eunseol hurriedly waved his hands.
"Please just forget it."
"Hmph."
So Okrim looked down at him with her arms folded.
She had regained her original appearance, beautiful and resplendent beyond compare.
And yet in Bu Eunseol's eyes she still looked like nothing so much as Guan Yunchang, standing tall with his long hair streaming.
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