The barrier of the Baekri Family severed space.
The Realm of Destruction and Extinction of the Void Extreme Realm blocked all unnatural supernatural powers.
Both were ultimately the result of applying the concept of a realm.
A realm was not simply a compartment.
It was an element that constituted the world, and also a principle that distinguished the characteristics and perceptions of existence through discernment.
But now the boundary of the Void Extreme Realm that Bu Eunseol had newly devised and the barrier of the Baekri Family overlapped.
The existence of 'I' grew faint.
And the existences of the two people inside became entangled.
The woman was clearly holding a broken sword, yet standing before her eyes was someone wearing her own face.
Before Bu Eunseol as well stood the exact same figure of himself.
'This is.'
Bu Eunseol looked down at his own body.
His body was clearly unchanged, yet strangely it looked as if it overlapped with the woman's.
When two realms overlapped in one space, each tore down the boundary of the other's existence.
The phenomenon of the Dual Formation Realm of Destruction had occurred.
This would later become a vital method for resolving Bu Eunseol's predicament, but...
For now there was no way to grasp the phenomenon clearly, and he was simply greatly bewildered.
Riiip.
But at that moment, a tearing sound came, and the woman began to dig into her own body with the broken sword.
She had sensed that something had covered the barrier and caused this phenomenon, and tried to release it at once.
When that did not work, she was tearing her own body to release the barrier by force.
This was because a barrier deployed alone was fused with the caster's physical body, frame and all.
Thrum.
Only after she had torn a handful of flesh from her gaunt body did the surrounding barrier come undone.
Shudder.
Then Bu Eunseol's body and hers trembled lightly once again.
Mixed with the barrier, the power of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction had grown even more intense, and the bodies of the two of them regressed somewhat.
Their features turned younger, and their internal power was left at a level of only thirty years.
Even though the power inside her body had all but vanished, the woman showed no alarm.
Shwaaak!
As if bent on mutual destruction, she closed the distance with Bu Eunseol and began to scatter sword blossoms once again.
Flap, flap.
In an instant, the Silent Tiger Soul Sword began to thrash on its own like a freshly caught carp.
Clang, clang, clang, clang!
It began to deflect the sword strikes pouring down on him.
His martial arts and internal power had grown too high.
The Phantom Sword Form, which had hardly ever activated, was deployed once again.
Pat, pat!
To break through the Phantom Sword Form, the woman began to close the distance recklessly.
Her flesh tore until the bone showed, but she paid it no mind and unleashed a killing technique once again.
Clang, clang, clang.
All the while the Phantom Sword Form kept deploying.
Bu Eunseol watched her sword strikes closely, unraveling their mysteries one by one.
'Is there anyone among the figures of the Baekri Family this proficient in martial arts and killing techniques?'
When the Void Extreme Realm, which made all power disappear, was manifested, any expert would inevitably turn pale with shock.
And unaccustomed to battles fought with martial arts alone, they would find it hard to display the skill they had.
This woman, however, was like an assassin who had honed the Hundred Killing Secret Techniques alongside martial arts from long ago.
Without internal power or Profound Divine Technique Qi, she carried the fight on skillfully and fiercely.
Pat!
Closing the distance once more, the woman slashed her broken blade across with all her strength.
Swoosh!
At the same time, a sharp needle drove straight at Bu Eunseol's eyes.
She had deliberately swung the sword wide to fix his gaze on the weapon.
Then she deployed the move of the Tongue-Bottom Flying Needle, shooting out a sharp poison needle hidden in her mouth.
In close combat, the smallest movement was fatal.
Fine needles shot from the mouth like this were difficult to guard against and highly effective.
But his opponent was a master of practical martial arts who, long ago, had spat needles instead of hidden weapons in close combat.
Bu Eunseol did not bother moving his head to dodge the fine needle; he blew out a single stream of qi art and sent it back to her.
Fwooosh!
The woman hurriedly swung her sleeve to knock the fine needle down, and in doing so she exposed a momentary opening.
Clamp.
Bu Eunseol laid the Silent Tiger Soul Sword against her neck and spoke coldly.
"Stop this now..."
Pew, pew!
But before the words had left his mouth, two streaks of black shot out from her broken sword.
A hidden weapon device had been fitted to the broken sword as well.
"What a wicked method."
Even the opening she had exposed when the fine needle was sent back had been bait.
As Bu Eunseol realized it had been meant to lure him into carelessness, his gaze turned cold.
It was true of every method the woman deployed.
They not only disregarded life, but carried the secret killing techniques that only vicious assassins would use.
"Just how did the Baekri Branch Family train them, to make them hold the lives of their own members this cheap?"
He muttered lowly.
Swirl!
Then he deployed Return to Origin, striking down the hidden weapons the woman poured out, and her arm with them.
But as if she had anticipated Bu Eunseol's move, she slipped aside and kicked at his flank.
Sizzle!
In that instant, sparks flew from Bu Eunseol's left wrist, which was guarding his neck.
The kick to the flank had been a feint.
The woman had slashed at Bu Eunseol's neck with a fast sword like lightning.
But Bu Eunseol had noticed the attack, and he blocked the strike with the Dragon-Phoenix Ring, which had changed into a wrist guard.
'Impressive.'
It was no exaggeration to say that Bu Eunseol's level of martial arts had entered the ranks of the Three Demons.
Yet the woman was predicting, in her own way, the moves and motions Bu Eunseol would deploy, and instantly producing variations to counter them.
Above all, she gave no thought to her own life.
At the slightest chance she went for mutual destruction, which made her difficult to handle.
However high his martial arts, he was for now a martial artist with only about thirty years of internal power.
Should he grow careless and slip even once, he would take a fatal wound.
Pat!
When her confident strike went wide, the woman drew back for a moment.
She was just as startled as he was.
It was said she had been demoted to the Baekri Branch Family for some reason.
But she had cultivated martial arts systematically under her father since childhood.
And later she had been chosen by the Twelve Elders Council, one of the core organizations of the Baekri Family.
Its purpose was to deal with the experts of the True Demon Palace, who might bring harm to the martial world again at any time.
She was one of the elites it had selected and raised with heart and soul.
Yet her opponent was not an expert of the True Demon Palace at all, but a man who deployed the martial arts of the martial world.
And to face him she had to unleash every martial art she had polished until now?
Swooosh!
Just then Bu Eunseol's fist changed into a hand blade and drove into the woman's lower abdomen.
He had not put much internal power into it, yet its might was formidable, and his sleeve swelled taut.
Watching Bu Eunseol, the woman flew back in a leap and poured out three kicks in succession to block the attack.
"Impressive."
Bu Eunseol let out an exclamation of admiration as well.
The martial arts the woman deployed were so vast and profound that the origin of her martial learning could not be guessed at all.
And every move shifted through a thousand changes and ten thousand variations, which made them hard to block.
'Good.'
His blood up, Bu Eunseol leaped into her blind spot.
He used a variation of the Extreme Lightning Chaos Form to pierce deep into her Jianjing acupoint.
The woman swung her half-broken sword wide, trying to open the distance and evade it.
Clamp.
In the end her shoulder went numb, and her left arm hung limp.
Had this been a fight between ordinary figures of the martial world? It would have ended here, with no more staking of lives.
Crack, crack.
The woman forced her left arm back into place and stared hard at the tip of the Silent Tiger Soul Sword with a sharp gaze.
At the same time, a strange light flowed from her pupils, black against clear white.
Sizzle.
The Silent Tiger Soul Sword glowed red hot, then suddenly leaped up into the air.
'What?'
Bu Eunseol let out an exclamation.
He had faced countless formidable enemies until now, but no one had ever knocked the sword from his hand.
Granted, the power of the Void Extreme Realm had left him with almost no internal power, and even his body had grown somewhat younger.
But to knock a sword up into the air merely by placing her gaze on it?
'To think such a martial art exists.'
He had no time even to voice his admiration.
Following that, the tip of the woman's thrusting foot drove into Bu Eunseol's right kneecap.
Never dreaming her forms could shift this fast, Bu Eunseol thrust out his left fist on reflex and blocked the kick.
Thump. Sizzle.
Along with a shock that shook his body, Bu Eunseol was driven three steps back in that posture.
Her foot had barely touched his fist.
Yet as if she had exerted divine power, the fierce kick twisted space and landed on his flank.
Fortunately Bu Eunseol used the mystery of Grafting Flowers onto Jade to let most of that force flow away.
Even so, he felt a severe pain where he had been kicked, and a numbing shock spread through his whole body.
Squelch.
Meanwhile the Silent Tiger Soul Sword, which had leaped into the air, buried itself in the ground between the two of them.
Silence flowed for a moment.
The martial art just now, combined with a pupil technique, was a new method that had never appeared in the martial world.
Bu Eunseol turned its mystery over in his mind for a long while.
"What is so amusing?"
Just then the woman raised an eyebrow and asked in a low voice.
'Amusing?'
Only then did Bu Eunseol realize that he was carried away, wearing an elated expression.
He had longed then for desperate struggles, the kind where blood evaporated and the whole body burned to ash.
And now he was seized by the feeling of having returned to those early days in the martial world, when he had thirsted for a fight.
"Because it is a new martial art."
"What?"
"So this is the true worth of the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars."
Bu Eunseol had been thinking for a long while.
At last he grasped what that move had been, the one the woman used to send his Silent Tiger Soul Sword flying into the air, heated red hot.
It was an absolute technique that had originated in the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars.
"So that is why the Three Realms tried to restore them."
The Three Realms had tried to restore the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars, cultivating Human Flowers and even using the dead experts of past generations.
Each was a martial art with its own distinct character.
But they could be fused into one.
And the Three Realms must already have known that such a fusion could exert power beyond imagination.
"Hmph!"
Just then the woman's broken blade swept toward Bu Eunseol's neck once again.
Claaang!
Bu Eunseol used the Void Grasp, seizing the fallen Silent Tiger Soul Sword in an instant to take the attack.
Ziiiing.
Then suddenly his pulse seemed to slacken, and a tingling ran through his right arm as if it were paralyzed.
'This too must be a mystery of the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars.'
A move that fused the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars was flawless indeed.
It showed its true worth even in a contest of pure martial arts like this one.
"You're... smiling?"
At the sight of Bu Eunseol smiling like a child playing tag... the woman was enraged to the top of her head.
Shwaaak!
She began to deploy not only the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars, but impromptu killing moves mixed in among them.
She poured out a sharp finger technique that stabbed at both eyes, then a kick that seemed to snap his waist, and a palm technique that drove into his heart.
Every time Bu Eunseol blocked an attack, he was pushed back four or five steps.
And every time he breathed out, a hot heat surged up his throat as if he had drunk strong liquor.
'This is... not the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars, but the pure martial arts of the Baekri Family.'
The martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars had been made for the figures of the Three Realms, who could not use the power of the Baekri Family.
They had been created by converting Profound Divine Technique Qi into the form of the martial world's martial arts.
But the figures of the Baekri Family could fuse such methods into one from the start...
So they could only overwhelm every martial art of the current martial world.
'Is that why she told me to leave the martial world?'
What if he had not reached the Void Extreme Realm?
He would have had to face the martial arts of the Baekri Family, laden with Profound Divine Technique Qi, while trapped inside the barrier.
His body might have been torn dozens of times over at that woman's hands, or taken a mortal wound.
But the serendipity of the Nine Heavens Cloud Splendor Pearl had changed that.
Through it he had finally been able to define the realm of martial arts he had never been aware of.
And now the power of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction was at work.
The martial arts of the Baekri Family could sever heaven and earth.
They could turn a human body to powder in a single breath.
Yet they had fallen to a power that was merely fine to look at and curious.
'Dali.'
The face of his first love, whom he missed, came to mind.
She had urged him again and again to leave the martial world.
It was not because she thought little of him.
The experts of the Baekri Family and the True Demon Palace would soon appear in force.
And she must have known that against them neither the existing martial arts of the martial world nor the power of supernatural powers would work.
Paaat!
In that span, Bu Eunseol and the woman traded more than three hundred exchanges.
Once the woman set her mind to deploying the martial arts of the Baekri Family, he could not defend against them perfectly.
In the end, wounds large and small opened all over his body.
But this was the woman's mistake.
She should simply have left when Bu Eunseol deployed the Void Extreme Realm.
Ak Muryeong aside, he was the Nangyang Pavilion's greatest master of practical martial arts.
Wounding his body was the same as engraving the mysteries of martial arts into it without end.
'Ten.'
A flash of light passed through Bu Eunseol's pupils as he traded blows with the woman.
Because he had clashed until now with the experts of the Three Realms who used the martial arts of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars, he could make out their origins to some degree.
Astonishingly, the mysteries the woman used held nothing of the Martial Emperor's martial arts.
'Of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars, the Baekri Family created only ten.'
In other words, the martial arts of the Martial Emperor did not belong to the Baekri Family's origins.
Clash, clash, clash!
The exchange of blows went on.
Even so, thoughts kept rising in Bu Eunseol's mind.
Four hundred years ago, the Eight Emperors and Three Stars had appeared.
With them, it was said, the martial arts of the martial world developed rapidly.
In other words, the Baekri Family founded ten origins and laid the groundwork for the development of the martial world's martial arts as they stood now.
In the midst of that, a genius called the Martial Emperor appeared.
He devised martial arts fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Seven Emperors and Three Stars.
It was just like the Nangyang Pavilion, which had appeared like a comet seven hundred years ago and established practical martial arts.
'If so.'
Swoosh! Swoosh!
Sharp force whirled like a whirlpool over Bu Eunseol's whole body.
He had deployed the Martial Emperor's Thirteen Guiding Energies.
His martial arts had grown beyond comparison with the past, and even with thirty years of internal power he brought out three strands of force.
Swoosh!
The sharp force, like a storm, pierced the woman's swordsmanship and drove into her wrist.
Sizzle!
Sparks flew and her sleeve tore away, but there was not a single wound on her wrist.
A faint glimmer of silver light flashed there.
Judging by that, she seemed to be wearing a metal guard much like the Dragon-Phoenix Ring that Bu Eunseol wore.
Swoosh! Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!
Bu Eunseol had broken her swordsmanship in a single stroke.
So the woman threw out a winning move, pouring out ten martial arts of different natures all at once.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
But the three strands of Thirteen Guiding Energies circling Bu Eunseol's body cancelled the martial arts moves she deployed one by one.
This was not Bu Eunseol's doing; the force of the Thirteen Guiding Energies shifted to match them on its own.
'So this was its real ability.'
All this while, the Thirteen Guiding Energies had seemed somewhat lacking in might for the Martial Emperor's fame.
But its true worth lay elsewhere.
It was a martial art made against the Baekri Family.
'The Martial Emperor was an enemy of the Baekri Family.'
Bu Eunseol felt dizzy.
To think that the martial arts of the Martial Emperor, called the foremost of the righteous path in his day, had been devised to break the martial arts of the Baekri Family in particular?
'Did he come to know of the Baekri Family through the Three Realms?'
It had come to light that in his last years the Martial Emperor was a double spy who crossed between the righteous and demonic paths.
And he suddenly left the martial world and vanished without a trace.
But he could not bring the truth to light, and in the end he left behind a writing that told of the injustice done to him.
Then he threw himself from the Ten Thousand Jang Cliff and ascended to immortality.
And such a man had devised martial arts that were the polar opposite of the Baekri Family's?
'The Martial Emperor too must have glimpsed the abyss of the Baekri Family.'
Bu Eunseol felt it by instinct.
The Martial Emperor.
That sage, like his father Baekri Muha, had seen through the abyss of the Baekri Family.
And in the end he was a man who had tried to stand against it.
Shwaaak!
Just then, along with a sound like the sky tearing, the broken sword was already thrusting at his neck.
Sunk deep in thought, he had let an opening show.
Twang!
But the broken sword suddenly bounced up into the sky.
Sizzle.
And the woman was pushed a full jang backwards by the reactive force.
Swoosh, swoosh!
The Thirteen Guiding Energies coiled about Bu Eunseol's body as if guarding him, blocking her attacks.
Swoop.
The woman suddenly sprang up into the air.
Bu Eunseol had deployed the martial arts of the Martial Emperor, which could contend with her as an equal.
So she swooped down at a slant and unleashed a confident strike.
Shudder, shudder.
The tip of the broken sword shook without pause.
She launched an attack that gave no clue where it would strike or what move would pour out.
Swooosh!
At the same time, a sharp dagger shot out from inside her sleeve.
It was a clever killing move that blended swordsmanship with flying dagger art.
Whirl! Pat, pat, pat.
Bu Eunseol deployed the Jade-Shattering Fist and the Eighteen Iron Nail Kicks at once, blocking the sword and the flying dagger.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
He poured three strands of Thirteen Guiding Energies into the woman's Quepen acupoint.
Spurrrrt!
The moment the woman landed, she staggered and spat out a gout of crimson, clotted blood.
She had mastered martial arts founded on Profound Divine Technique Qi.
But the Martial Emperor's peerless divine art was made to break the martial arts of the Baekri Family in particular.
She could not withstand the Thirteen Guiding Energies, and took an internal injury.
He had only to wield the martial arts of the Martial Emperor.
With that, the martial arts of the Baekri Family... were no longer mysterious or threatening to Bu Eunseol.
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