“An interesting sparring match…”

What happened toward evening already felt far away.

Because there had been too much to think about.

So it was going to be an interesting match, he said.

She reached out and took hold of the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

If she drew it, the blade would shine with a subtle black radiance—different from the dull, muddy black of Black Iron.

What had been engraved upon it were all the constellations of the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions.

A sword that would not open.

Her father had spent his whole life trying to draw it.

He had cultivated the Harmonization Scripture, and still the sword would not come out.

You will fulfill my wish, Soyak.

He had pressed a worn book and a single sword into her arms.

How many times had that rough, warm hand stroked her head?

If she closed her eyes, she could feel that touch from that day.

She had not forgotten.

She could not forget.

Even now, whenever she closed her eyes to sleep, she saw her parents.

“…This isn’t interesting at all.”

Soyak bit her lower lip.

The black qilin that had answered her call rose from her dantian.

Following emotion, it raced through the eight extraordinary meridians and expelled vigor.

With a flash of its eyes, the radiance that could shake the whole mountain range was breathed into the sword.

“Not interesting in the least.”

The pitch-black blade did not emit radiance.

Yet the constellations—no one knew with what they had been inlaid—shone.

Upon that subtle black sheen.

As if true stars had been pressed into it.

“…Not at all.”

Tears were running down her cheeks.

Her eyes burned red, boundless as a sunset.

She still remembered with painful clarity.

She chewed it over every night in her dreams.

Her father, kneeling with his head severed.

Her mother, charred black, crumbling at a touch.

Toppling the Alliance is not something she did because she wanted to.

It was karmic work.

It was fate.

When waves strike, grains of sand are swept away.

When wind blows, clouds are driven off.

When you kill a person, resentment comes for you.

In that instant, Soyak’s consciousness snapped and went dark.

****

Water touched her cheek.

It wasn’t an unpleasant damp.

Kidnapped?

For a moment she thought so…

But when she lifted herself, a great black qilin was crouched, watching her.

Its eyes were sad.

“…You dragged me in here?”

An inner contemplation.

A gaze into the mindscape that generally only becomes possible upon entering a state of egoless absorption.

She had housed such a divine beast there.

That beast, the moment even a hint of the danger of deviation approached, would forcibly pull her in.

It would sever consciousness, govern her inner power, and then soothe its master.

It was the black qilin’s faculty.

Only then did Soyak feel the wetness at the corners of her eyes.

When she wiped her cheek, she realized it wasn’t tears.

It was…

Blood.

In the end, could she never escape the yoke of resentment?

Was revenge an unending chain?

Was she someone who could only be saved by those terrible, merciless notions—clemency and forgiveness?

“…If I kill the Alliance Leader, Namgung Seon will try to avenge him.”

The black qilin neither shook nor nodded its head.

It only looked at her with those sorrowful eyes.

It curled around her, pulled her into its embrace, and laid its head on the ground.

“…No one can rewrite the constellations.”

Inborn disposition.

The Heavenly Killing Star is not something one can do anything about.

She would call blood upon the whole world, a catastrophe of gore.

She had been born with the talent and strength and doom to do so.

Therefore she would do it.

It was only that the spirit within her heart worried about…

Something else.

It was not the world that it worried over.

“Even so.”

With a small hand she stroked the black qilin’s head.

It was a being too large to be held within her small, slender, meager body and life.

The natural enemy of all immortality.

The ferryman of all who cannot die.

A spirit symbolizing the inescapable final moment.

Her father’s legacy.

A relic buried on Mount Hua.

Long ago he had come to Mount Hua, foreseen such a future…

The Grand Patriarch’s arrangement.

“…In the midst of all that, I’ll try… not to let myself break.”

Only then did the black qilin purr as if satisfied.

It pressed its horn firmly into her cheek, then lunged and laid her small body down upon the ground.

And gently pressed its brow to hers.

At once, her consciousness shut off and her vision went black.

And then bright again.

What it showed her was…

A great pavilion collapsing, engulfed in demonic flames.

A left arm cut off and a left field of vision gone hazy from a deep slash.

Someone kneeling, and her own form—still slender—looking down on him.

“…That is…”

The one on his knees was a face she had seen not long ago.

He was cradling a corpse.

Though much time had passed, she could tell who the dead youth was.

An arrogant expression lingered even in death.

A restful smile as if he had laid everything down.

And, for some reason, tears brimming and flowing at the corners of his eyes.

It was Namgung Seon.

His father was holding him and wailing.

In that moment, from far off, a powerful sense pressed down over her whole body with tyrannical weight.

With her ruined body she could not resist.

One knee sank helplessly and her body crumpled.

“…Ah.”

Beyond the burning pavilion.

The Sword Sovereign, Namgung Ak, was striding down through the air.

In his eyes surged a blue light, clear as the high sky.

“You’re the one who cut down my eldest grandson.”

A quiet voice.

Yet packed within it was killing intent.

With inner power riding his words, blood leaked from her ears.

What came next, she heard nothing.

Only a single stroke, lifted.

At its tip she saw the whole sky gather, deep blue.

“…That is the Sword Sovereign’s sky.”

What Namgung Seon had said was true.

The sky of a commoner and that man’s sky are different.

Perhaps even from her own sky.

A sword she could not defeat even in a dream as she was now.

With a single downward hew, the world split in two.

In that instant when the slash approached…

Time stretched long as eternity.

In the instant just before death, her eyes opened.

To block that was no different from trying to hide the sky with the palm of one’s hand.

To cut that man was to say you’d split the sky in two with a blade.

To kill the Sword Sovereign…

Was like tearing out the throat of the undying.

In that instant, the sword in her right hand cried.

It poured out dazzling radiance.

The radiance seeped forth, becoming Sword Qi…

Then gathered at the tip, a single dazzling point of light that darkened all directions.

Martial arts belong to humans.

Humans are beasts of the earth.

But if among them there stands one who reigns as a king of the earth, whom earthly means cannot possibly overcome…

Humans lift their prayers to the stars.

At that moment on the end of a hundred-foot pole—

Soyak raised a sword with a star gathered at its tip.

A single point pouring forth brilliant light.

It shattered the Sword Sovereign’s mighty hardened sword-force like a dropped porcelain vase.

And then, with a feeble snap, went out.

The Sword Sovereign descended to the ground and set his feet upon the earth.

He said something to her.

The gaze he cast down was not merely that of an enemy or a fiend.

Those eyes were clearly…

Anxiety, relief, and envy.

She… read the shape of his mouth.

…Tsk, tsk. Had you awakened a mere seven days earlier, you would have cut me.

With those words last, her vision went black again.

****

“…Urk.”

A dream?

Or a mindscape?

A dream dreamt inside the mindscape?

When she woke, she was once more in the room where she had been.

The Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge was clenched in her right hand.

Its blade bore its usual subtle, many-hued, inky sheen, and the constellations of the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions shone as ever.

Quietly, Soyak slid the sword back into its scabbard.

Her whole body was slick with cold sweat.

Outside the window, far off, a faint red sunlight was seeping in.

The sun had risen.

“What did it mean?”

The black qilin had undoubtedly shown her something.

A spirit housed in the Harmonization Scripture by the Grand Patriarch’s arrangement…

Was it the future, or an appointed result?

But one thing it had clearly awakened in her and made her know:

That as she was now, it was impossible.

And how one might break a human who reigns.

The constellations of the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions engraved upon the blade.

The seven of the Big Dipper point to the four directions and form twenty-eight mansions.

A yut board has twenty-nine spaces; this signifies the Pole Star at the center and the twenty-eight mansions.

What had gathered at the very tip of the blade was…

Like starlight.

The last star of the Big Dipper.

It flashed like the light of the Army-Breaking Star that overturns the world.

Overturn the world.

Lay immortality down to sleep.

Bring about the tenth day of the eleven-day bloom.

Something that can judge the human who reigns upon the earth.

“…A star.”

As a dragon must gain a pearl,

A qilin must gain a star.

Only then did Soyak sheath the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge and rise.

A long, slender sword, two inches longer than the blade she carried.

Yet instinctively, now she knew.

The qilin curled in her dantian wanted this sword.

It wanted a blade black as the night sky.

“…Because stars rise in the night sky.”

After everything has fallen.

After even the plum blossoms have all dropped.

Only after all of a person’s efforts have become futile.

She had to go there.

Only after she had done everything a human could do…

The qilin would call a star and take it in its mouth.

Chapter 27

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