The woman clutched her broken sword while breathing heavily.
Her desolate and frozen gaze remained the same, but her breathing was growing rougher by the moment from her severe injuries.
Even before facing Bu Eunseol she had already taken all sorts of wounds, and her stamina was spent as well.
Furthermore, she had no way to answer the martial arts of the Martial Emperor... she was cornered in spirit too.
Ziiiing.
At that moment, the somewhat youthful faces of the two of them gradually began to return to their original forms.
As the firmness of their spirits collapsed, the phenomenon of the Dual Formation Realm of Destruction vanished completely.
'So a barrier was ultimately a structure tied to the caster's mind and body.'
Earlier, the woman had torn her own body to bring down the framework of the barrier.
Even so, the energy of the Dual Formation Realm of Destruction had not entirely dispersed, because her spirit had held its firmness.
But once even that collapsed, the power of the Dual Formation Realm of Destruction vanished cleanly.
'I wondered how the figures of the Baekri Family could handle that tremendous barrier alone.'
It turned out that it was deployed on the caster's own flesh and spirit as its nourishment.
Swoooosh.
As the energy of the Dual Formation Realm of Destruction disappeared completely, a brilliant light lingered on the woman's body for a moment, as if the Profound Divine Technique Qi were returning.
He did not intend to kill her.
Otherwise he would have used the power of the Void Extreme Realm to bind her strength again.
Vwooong.
She began to spread a pure white radiance over her whole body, as if trying to heal herself with the Profound Divine Technique Qi.
Strangely, however, her body did not recover easily.
'So that was it.'
Watching her, Bu Eunseol realized something important.
A wound taken within the domain of the Void Extreme Realm is bound to the state of the body and the level of internal power at that moment.
Therefore, even if the domain is released and one regains transcendent power, the wound remains measured against the diminished ability of that time.
And a wound taken while one's power was utterly suppressed inside the Void Extreme Realm?
Even after leaving the domain and recovering one's original strength, healing it.
Would demand a vast amount of power, several times what it would normally take.
Clench.
Having grasped the greatness of the Void Extreme Realm, Bu Eunseol could not hide his inward excitement.
'Inside the domain of the Void Extreme Realm, there are no exceptions.'
That held true even for the Heavenly Demon Emperor.
Within the domain of the Void Extreme Realm he was nothing more than an ordinary old man, and he would have to fight with pure martial technique alone.
And what if he took a mortal wound here?
Even after leaving the domain, it would not heal easily.
'The need for spiritual medicine is going to become urgent.'
On reaching the Supreme Heavenly Realm, the body has already come to its limit, and ordinary spiritual medicines have little effect.
But a wound taken in the Void Extreme Realm was another matter.
Because it is engraved by the standard of an ordinary body, spiritual medicine would be an effective means of treatment.
'A new rule, a new principle of martial arts, has been created in the martial world.'
―'Whatever happens in a space where the power of the Void Extreme Realm is exerted is absolutely bound by it.'
Even after the domain is released it stays fixed exactly as it was, and no transcendent power can undo it.
A law that shattered the existing martial logic had been created.
"Thanks to you, I have gained a good realization."
His thoughts in order, Bu Eunseol's face brightened.
It was thanks to that Baekri Branch Family woman's relentless attacks.
He had come to understand a principle that even he, who had opened that path, had not worked out.
"It will not heal easily, so go somewhere and convalesce."
Bu Eunseol worried over her circumstances with good grace and slowly turned to leave.
"You cannot escape."
The woman did not give up, and blocked his way once again.
"If you want to go, kill me."
Bu Eunseol wore a look mixed with contempt.
"Are your ears stopped up, that you cannot hear what others say?"
Because of the truth the Wooden Buddha had told him, his disillusionment with the Baekri house had still not settled.
Yet she kept forcing the issue.
Now he was reaching the point of loathing the figures of the Baekri Family as well.
Jab, jab!
Bu Eunseol sealed her Ququan acupoint and her Huantiao acupoint, paralyzing both her legs.
He could have sealed her paralysis acupoint instead.
But then she might be killed by the experts of the True Demon Palace who could be in pursuit.
Both her hands were unharmed, so she would be able to release her own acupoints in any case.
It was unspoken pressure to stop chasing him.
"I have no need of your half-hearted charity."
Jab, jab.
In the end the woman released her acupoints at once and took up the broken sword again.
"You cannot escape."
Bu Eunseol went past anger, and a hollow laugh burst out of him.
"Why is the Baekri Family this arrogant, this quick to look down on people?"
"..."
"I can hardly be the only one wronged by hidebound people like you."
He wore a solemn expression.
"And since the Baekri Family behaves this way, it has come to coveting the knowledge of the True Demon."
At those words, the woman's eyes went wide.
That was one of the greatest secrets of the Baekri Family, unknown even to the senior figures of the main family.
Yet how did this man know?
How could he speak of it so casually, as if recounting a story from a teahouse in the market?
"Have you not gone about killing innocent people as you pleased until now, as though you had become gods?"
Bu Eunseol spoke with a look of nausea.
"If it is ever revealed that you have killed even one innocent person."
A blood light surfaced in his eyes.
"I will cut the heads from every guilty person of the Baekri Family, and not you alone."
From anyone else it would have been a remark to snort at.
But when Bu Eunseol said those words, she had a premonition that such a thing really could come to pass.
Pat.
In the meantime, Bu Eunseol deployed his movement technique and left the forest.
The woman stood motionless as a stone statue, her head lowered.
* * *
Bu Eunseol's eyes grew heavy as he deployed his movement technique and swiftly put the area behind him.
'The martial arts of the Baekri Family are formidable indeed.'
Drip.
A thread of blood had spread at the corner of his mouth as well.
He had not let it show all along.
Clashing with the Baekri Family martial arts the woman deployed, he too had taken an internal injury.
'I will have to be more careful from now on.'
He had reached the Void Extreme Realm.
Since then, most injuries had healed on their own without his even needing to raise the Prajna Great Power.
But a wound taken in the domain of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction did not mend easily, just as it would not have before he ever learned martial arts.
'A double-edged sword, then.'
This was what he had wanted for so long.
He could settle matters with martial arts alone, but it meant staking his life every single time.
'Even so.'
A smile spread across his lips.
'...I am enjoying this.'
Since coming out into the martial world, he had walked a road of blood, repeating battles in which flesh and blood burned.
Because the only time he felt alive was in a desperate struggle with everything on the line.
Before he knew it, he had become like Ak Muryeong.
Finding true joy in the midst of a fight, grasping the essence of life on a battlefield... he was pursuing the Extreme Martial Way.
'Let us rest a while.'
Slow though it was, he had brought the internal injury under some control with the Prajna Great Power and the Endless Heavenly Light Art.
But what he needed right now was rest at the root of it.
The Void Extreme Realm was not some convenient supernatural power that stripped away his enemy's strength and his own only when he wanted it.
The deeper the realm went.
The more his body would hold overwhelming power and yet gradually keep to its primordial state.
"But that is not growing weaker. It is growing stronger."
For now, power that shook the heavens and split mountains might look more formidable.
But if he completed the Void Extreme Realm... he would become a being close to nature, and no one would be able to harm him.
Fwooosh.
Bu Eunseol ran through the empty air, parting cloud and mist, crossing mountain range after mountain range.
Then, all at once, a curious sight came into view.
Was that pale steam rising from one side of a mountain slope spread out far in the distance?
Unlike the dense forest around it, that one place had a mist-like vapor welling up without pause.
Like a dragon breathing out, white steam surged into the sky as if swimming through the evening glow.
Without hesitation Bu Eunseol turned his movement technique toward it.
The closer he came, the more a gentle warmth brushed his skin.
Utterly unlike the cold mountain wind cutting into him, a damp, soft heat began to wrap around his body.
'A hot spring.'
The view spread out beneath his feet grew clearer and clearer.
Clear water had pooled among the rocks, and steam rose endlessly from its surface.
The stones and grass around it were wet with moisture and glistening, and though it was autumn, green moss grew thick.
'A better place to rest could not be found.'
When he set down where the hot spring water flowed, a dense pine forest stood around it like a folding screen.
Among the pines, maples and bamboo grew intermingled.
Moss-covered rocks were arranged naturally around the spring, and on several of them weathering had left marks as clear as the engraving of time.
The water was a clear, translucent blue-green, and the steam rising from it was as dreamlike as the mist of a fairyland.
"Someone made this place a long time ago."
At the center of the spring, a great standing stone as tall as a man rose up.
On its surface, the characters Well of Heavenly Blessing (天佑之井) were faintly cut in an old seal script.
The smaller rocks around it were set out like natural seats, so it seemed someone had shaped the place by hand.
At one side of the water's edge, a few rotted wooden pillars remained.
A pavilion seemed to have stood there once.
Now, crushed under the weight of the years, it kept only its shape as it returned to nature.
Bu Eunseol took off his clothes, bent carefully, and set a foot on the edge of the spring.
Warm ripples wrapped around his skin.
The muscles that had stiffened over the long journey slowly began to loosen.
The bluestone underfoot held a gentle warmth, and a faint smell of sulfur reached his nose.
Blub, blub, blub.
With his body fully submerged, he sat cross-legged and circulated his energy.
He had stepped over the threshold of the Path of Nature.
As he sat cross-legged and sank into meditation, his presence vanished utterly, as though he had deployed the Turtle Breath Great Method, and he melted into nature.
He was sinking into that state of selflessness.
Tap.
A sharp sound of tearing air rang across the silent hot spring, and a small shadow landed on the ground.
Her clothes were torn, and through the gaps showed skin covered in red bloodstains.
It was the woman of the Baekri Branch Family who had fought a desperate struggle with Bu Eunseol not long before.
She scanned her surroundings for a moment.
Her sharp gaze swept the area around the spring, but she sensed no one.
She too had been searching for somewhere to rest.
Spotting the rising steam, she had come down here.
Ssk.
As she took off her clothes, her body was laid bare under the evening glow.
In that moment a chilling sight unfolded.
Her entire left arm gave off a cold metallic sheen.
Every single finger could move.
From elbow to fingertip, exquisitely made joints were densely linked together.
Fine patterns were engraved on its surface, and the patterns shifted with the angle of its movement.
Her wrist had been unharmed even though the Silent Tiger Soul Sword had cut at it that day.
So Bu Eunseol had assumed she wore a metal wrist guard, like the Dragon-Phoenix Ring he wore himself.
In truth, her whole left arm was an exquisite prosthetic made of metal.
At the boundary where prosthetic met flesh, it was fixed firmly with leather straps and metal rings.
And the scar of the severed surface, visible through that seam, had faded pale with age.
The Baekri Family.
They had inherited the knowledge of the True Demon.
And so they had made a transcendent prosthetic that the martial world of today could never produce.
Clack.
With an expressionless face, the woman began to undo the fastenings.
When she detached the prosthetic and set it on the ground, her left arm could be seen ending above the elbow.
The sight of the woman, slender-bodied and short one limb, was pitiable and somehow grim.
But what was more shocking still were the wounds and scars all over her body.
Her right shoulder bore a deep laceration that laid the bone open.
The white shoulder blade showed through the torn flesh, and dark red blood had clotted around it.
Livid bruises ran in a line along her ribs, and on her abdomen the mark of a puncture wound as thick as a finger stood out clearly.
Skin had split open in places, and the muscle beneath was crushed.
There was a deep gash on her right thigh as well, and blood seeped from it with every step.
Those were not wounds from the battle with Bu Eunseol; they had been there before it.
Ordinarily she could have healed injuries like these without difficulty.
But the Void Extreme Realm had left her unable to exert transcendent power when Bu Eunseol attacked her.
Unable to close her wounds quickly, she had been reduced to a battered wreck.
Yet there was not the slightest trace of pain on the woman's face.
It was as though the body were not her own.
As though she had lost the very capacity for emotion, her eyes were empty.
Her lips were pressed tight, and she did not so much as furrow her brow.
It was a chilling insensibility, as if she were not a person but an exquisitely made machine.
Stagger.
The woman staggered slowly toward the hot spring.
Each step she took was unsteady, yet she went forward without wavering.
Reaching the edge of the spring, she carefully lowered her body into the water.
Sloosh.
The warm spring water wrapped around her wound-covered body.
The blood seeping into it stained the clear water a pale red, and the steam gathered around her pale face.
Sunk to her neck, the woman slowly closed her eyes.
Bloop, bloop.
Only her face floated above the surface, while beneath the water her scarred body swayed.
The sunset was reflecting off the spring water, staining her pale face red.
Ssssk.
A long shadow formed in front of her.
It was Bu Eunseol, who had been sitting in meditation beneath the water.
"..."
The moment their eyes met.
Not the sound of the wind, not a bird's call, not a single sound could be heard.
Only the bubbling of the hot spring water filled the stillness.
Splash.
The woman burst out of the spring in one motion and snatched up her prosthetic without even the time to cover herself.
But Bu Eunseol, eyes still closed, spoke at his leisure.
"Did you not come here to rest?"
"..."
"We both came to rest injuries, so let us pretend not to know each other, at least while we are here."
The woman ignored those words and fitted the prosthetic back on.
Bu Eunseol paid her no mind and closed his eyes again.
"Come out."
said the woman, who had hastily thrown her clothes on.
At that, Bu Eunseol, eyes still shut, furrowed his brow.
"Are you telling me to fight naked?"
"Put your clothes on."
"I would rather not."
Eyes closed, he did not stir an inch.
If he were attacked in this state he would have to leap out naked, so he had judged she would not attack.
But she was no ordinary woman of the martial world.
Splash!
As she swung the half-broken sword, the water parted and a sharp sword aura shot out.
"Now that is going too far."
Rushhh!
He controlled the water with the Crystal Divine Energy.
Wreathed in the shape of a dragon, Bu Eunseol's eyes shone with a solemn light.
'There is no more need to make allowances for a woman as headstrong as this.'
Someday she would seize another innocent person the way she had seized him.
Paaat!
As Bu Eunseol released the Crystal Divine Energy wrapped around his body, the Silent Tiger Soul Sword that had fallen to the ground was already in his hand.
Srrk.
As Bu Eunseol's eyes were dyed black,
Screeeech!
A ghostly wail that seemed to tear the eardrums burst from the Silent Tiger Soul Sword.
Swooosh!
At the same time, sharp blade energy tore the air and spread in every direction.
He had already grasped the woman's way of fighting from their earlier desperate struggle.
To take her life at once, without dragging things out any longer, he unleashed the Seven Blood Tear Forms.
Slaaash!
Seven streams of ink-black light drove into the woman's heart, her neck, and her four limbs, each a beat apart.
It was a variation of the third form of the Seven Blood Tear Forms, the Half-Life, Half-Death Form.
Whirl!
She saw that the timing of the blade energy Bu Eunseol had released was not only exquisite but impossible to defend against.
So instead she cast her life aside and charged straight in.
Whoooosh!
The broken sword spun like a whirlpool and struck away three of the streams of blade energy.
But she could not avoid the remaining four, which grazed her shoulder and thigh and sent blood spurting.
Clatter!
In the end the woman rolled across the ground in an ungainly sprawl.
When she rose again, her whole body was covered in blood.
Tap!
But she paid it no mind and drove in right under Bu Eunseol's chin once more.
Swooosh!
From close range, she unleashed a half-moon of sword aura toward Bu Eunseol's heart.
Claaank!
A loud metallic clash rang out.
The confident sword aura she had unleashed vanished in an instant, sadly for her, against the black haze flowing over Bu Eunseol's body.
"You think you do not fear death."
A black mist was spreading from Bu Eunseol's whole body, and his eyes were dyed black.
"But the body is honest."
Tremble.
The woman shuddered in spite of herself.
Bu Eunseol, dyed black, felt like the grim reaper.
No, like the very law that governs death.
Sssst.
Meanwhile a black haze like thick ink rose from the Silent Tiger Soul Sword.
Shaaaa.
At the same time, it rose from beneath the woman's feet as well.
A black mist like a living creature wound around the woman's ankles, blotted out her sight, and bound her whole body.
A prison built from the blade energy of death had unfolded.
"Nngh!"
Her airway closed, and it felt as though she would suffocate.
Whoomph!
In the end the woman detonated the internal power of her entire body along with the Profound Divine Technique Qi to drive the black mist back.
No, she had to drive it back.
Drop.
Every scrap of her power vanished without a trace.
At the same time, a helplessness and a bleakness like sinking deep underwater dug into her mind.
She had tried to pour out her power.
But in that instant Bu Eunseol deployed the domain of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction and extinguished all of it.
Shaaaa.
Even so, the black mist did not disappear.
It was blade energy created through the profoundest principles of martial arts.
The blade energy of the Seven Blood Tear Forms still rolled in like waves and began to eat away at the space around the woman's body without pause.
"..."
In the end the woman was trapped in a pitch-black mist of blade energy where she could not see an inch ahead.
It was an endless space with no sense of direction and no sense of distance.
In that instant, a loneliness and terror worse than death came over her.
Relying on her senses, the woman tried endlessly to cut away the blade energy of death seeping in from every side.
"Uu, uuu..."
The more she cut it away, the thicker the mist grew, with no end in sight.
Death was nothing to fear.
Yet tears ran from her eyes against her will.
She could feel no fear.
So why could she not stay composed?
Glint.
Then, in the deep darkness, something appeared.
A shining white flash stood before her eyes.
Hope returning, she pushed away the black mist choking her breath and ran for it in haste.
But it was not a light of salvation.
Screeeeech!
It was honed sharp as the claws of a demon that tears everything apart.
It was the fifth form of the Seven Blood Tear Forms, the Death Without Closing Eyes Form.
Flash!
Sensing death, the woman reflexively raised the broken sword to block.
Claaang.
Along with a bursting sound that tore the eardrums, a shockwave strong enough to sweep the darkness away exploded outward.
She barely held out against the shock hammering her whole body.
Vwoom, vwoom, vwoom.
A terrible vibration spread out from that overwhelming force.
The vibration born of the destructive blade energy of the Seven Blood Tear Forms ran up the hand gripping the sword and through her entire body.
Zzzzt, zzzzt, zzzzt... Thud.
In the end, unable to withstand the ceaseless shaking, the prosthetic of her left hand came away at the joint and tumbled to the ground.
The mist cleared.
The woman stood in a broken posture, her whole body paralyzed, gasping for breath.
Swoosh!
In that instant the black-dyed Silent Tiger Soul Sword split the air and took her neck.
No, it was about to.
Halt.
The Silent Tiger Soul Sword had stopped a single hair's breadth from her neck.
Tremble, tremble.
The corners of Bu Eunseol's eyes trembled.
He had seen that the cut surface of the woman's severed arm was as cleanly parted as glass.
It matched perfectly the wounds where his grandfather's two arms had been severed.
'I have found it.'
The masked monster who had once given him the clue about the Eighteen Souls of Light had used a sword art like this too.
But its mastery came nowhere near the culprit who had killed his grandfather.
Whereas the mark left where the woman's arm was cut was as cleanly severed as glass, near enough to be its equal.
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