“Has everyone been well? Nothing happened while I was gone?”

Eunsong came in jokingly and sat down.

Everyone’s eyes were full of curiosity about the outcome.

“Don’t worry, Cheonju. The talk ended well.”

“Just how—what did you do, for that to…….”

“Soyak. This master of yours will ask just one favor.”

Eunsong quietly beckoned Soyak over with his large hand.

Without a word, Soyak went and stood before him.

“Three moves, Soyak.”

“…Yes?”

“It means you must not use more than three moves to defeat Cheonhwa.”

Only then did everyone gathered there catch on.

He had made a wager.

With disciples as the stakes.

“Wait, Master, is that even allowed?”

Cheongu was the first to shoot his hand up and object.

Eunsong instead burst out laughing.

“As long as there is greed in this world, what deal can’t be made?”

“Then right now, Master, you’ve just bet on whether Cheonhwa can or cannot withstand three of Soyak’s moves……”

Even Cheonjeong was appalled.

It would have been shocking enough if Senior Eun Byeok had been the one to thrust out such a wager.

But he had gone himself and staked it?

“…What will you do if Master Eun Byeok says nothing of the sort ever happened?”

Cheonju muttered in an anxious voice.

There was no way Eunsong would miss the unease behind that.

“That’s why I had it notarized.”

“…You had this kind of bet notarized—by whom, exactly?”

“My grandmaster. I asked Grandmaster Jeonggang.”

For a moment, everyone there froze.

When one said Jeonggang, they meant Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor.

Elder of the Great Mount Hua Sect, and one of the “Three Emperors” among the One Sovereign, Three Emperors, and Seven Lords.

Only Soyak tilted her head.

To Soyak, he was just a kindly, good-natured old man.

Because of her inborn star and karmic burden, she had met Elder Jeonggang early.

The other Third Generation disciples had never even had the chance to speak with someone of the elder rank alone.

“He…accepted it? That request?”

Even Cheonjeong stared at Eunsong in dazed bewilderment.

Eunsong simply smiled faintly.

“You still don’t understand Grandmaster.”

“We’ve hardly even had the chance to meet him, and we’ve never spoken with him, so all the more……”

“He is more than I am.”

Eunsong quietly stroked Soyak’s head.

“When I brought Soyak here, the Sect Leader opposed it.”

“For what reason?”

Cheonjeong cocked his head.

He couldn’t understand it.

If anything, bringing back someone with talent of this level should have earned him praise.

Eunsong quietly looked at Soyak.

Soyak simply nodded.

It meant she didn’t mind him saying it out loud.

“Because our Soyak was born under the Heavenly Killing Star……”

Everyone fell silent.

No one said a word.

Because they had no answer for how they ought to react.

The Heavenly Killing Star brings blood calamity upon the martial world.

It is a fate born to overturn the world and tear the realm asunder.

A fate filled with blood, screams, and tears…

A fate like that.

In that moment, Cheonjeong was the first to nod.

“…The Heavenly Killing Star, then.”

“Yes. The Heavenly Killing Star.”

Eunsong looked down at Cheonju, whose pupils were still trembling from shock.

The light in his eyes now was not the gentle, kind gaze he usually wore.

These were the eyes that had pressed Eun Byeok and forced him into a deal.

The eyes that had proposed to Soyak that they take the Sword Sovereign’s life.

The chilling, flashing gaze of one who dreams of toppling heaven.

“Soyak.”

“Yes, Master.”

“How many moves do you need to bring Cheonhwa down?”

Eunsong asked Soyak while looking only at Cheonju.

It meant: do not even think of backing out now.

After quietly thinking it over, Soyak gave her answer.

“If I do my best, one move is enough.”

“Then I’ll permit you only that one move.”

“I will do so.”

Soon, a trumpet sounded in the distance.

The break was over.

It was time to step onto the Sparring Stage.

“If you win within three moves, Cheonhwa and Cheonju will come into our arms. You understand what that means.”

The Heaven-Toppling grand design.

Eunsong intended to seize Mount Hua first, and with Mount Hua’s strength, aim for the Sword Sovereign.

He himself would be the vanguard and the tip of the blade…

But without Mount Hua behind him, he would be nothing more than an arrow that loses strength mid-flight and falls.

“Master.”

“Yes.”

“One move is enough.”

With those as her last words, Soyak—

Took Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge in hand and stepped out of the tent.

****

At the same time, in Eun Byeok’s tent.

Cheonhwa was shaking with fear.

“You understand well enough, don’t you, Cheonhwa.”

“Y-yes, yes, Grandmaster……”

“You may kill her. You must not lose. If you lose, I will break your and your senior brother’s arms and legs.”

Myungjeok was there.

One of the Seven Lords among the One Sovereign, Three Emperors, Seven Lords.

Plum Blossom Sword Lord Myungjeok.

An absolute master who had reached the wall of Transcendent Apex and was peering toward the Transformation Realm.

Someone whose force and power were more than enough to break the arms and legs of two young Third Generation disciples and bury the matter.

“Good. Then go.”

Myungjeok pressed into Cheonhwa’s hand the half-Black-Iron sword that Cheonju used.

With that, it would not be cut even by Sword Light.

So long as she could draw out even a decent level of Sword Cry.

That was the capacity possessed by treasured swords and masterwork blades.

When she stepped out of the tent, Cheon Soyak was already standing on the Sparring Stage.

In her left hand, she held a long sword they had not seen before.

Something longer and slimmer than a standard-issue longsword.

‘…What is that?’

Cheonhwa quickly shook her head and cast off her idle thoughts.

Eunsong’s side was poor.

They had never even been given proper development funds in the first place.

There was no way that thing was any kind of masterwork or treasure sword.

Strength welled in her grip.

Among the Third Generation, the only female disciples were that girl and Cheonhwa herself.

There was no reason to be afraid.

She had learned the sword at Mount Hua longer than the other girl had.

Even if it was just Sprouting Flower Sword instead of Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, she knew it better.

There was no way some one-month disciple from who-knew-where could defeat her.

More than anything, she had even been taught Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

Even if only the first three moves.

In subtlety and softness, she might lose to Senior Brother Cheonju…

But in strength and firmness, even Plum Blossom Sword Lord Myungjeok himself had acknowledged that she was superior.

She was a prodigy.

She and Senior Brother Cheonju were talents whom even the Mount Hua Sect Leader had searched out with burning eyes.

They had received the very best training and education, along with monthly Hair-Cutting and Marrow-Washing.

Yes, by any reasonable standard, there was no way she would lose.

By any reasonable standard.

Only after reassuring herself for quite some time did the wild glint return to Cheonhwa’s eyes.

The confidence that she could win.

The conviction that there was no way she would lose to that flimsy, puny little girl with the empty, hollow black eyes.

“Allow me to introduce them! The two Third Generation disciples of Mount Hua Sect who have surged all the way to the semifinals in unstoppable fashion!”

The crowd’s cheers flared rough and loud, then quickly died down.

Every gaze turned to the Sparring Stage.

“Young Hero Cheonhwa and Young Hero Cheon Soyak!!!!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the two of them assumed the Banner-Form.

Cheonhwa’s dark, half-Black-Iron sword.

And Soyak’s pitch-black Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge, emitting a subtle five-colored radiance.

The two blades aimed at one another.

Both of them were certain of victory.

You could tell just by looking into each other’s eyes.

In Cheonhwa’s eyes burned a flashing wildness.

Soyak acknowledged it.

Cheonhwa was indeed a prodigy.

So was Cheonju, but the direction the two faced was different.

On the surface, she acted playful.

But Cheonju had within him a calm, gentle, and flexible heart.

Cheonhwa possessed an agitated wildness that craved victory and surged straight ahead.

However, in the end, both of them were nothing more than humans standing on the ground.

The opponent she had to kill was the sky.

The head of humans standing on the highest mountain.

A being she could only kill if she left humanity behind and called something from above the sky down to her sword tip.

She could not be broken here.

There was no way she could let herself be tripped up by someone who had not even reached the realm of Apex.

KIIIIIIING—!!!!

Cheonhwa’s sword let out its cry first.

A rough, beast-like sound.

A resonance so intense that any sword not mixed with Black Iron would have shattered into pieces.

In contrast, Cheon Soyak’s sword remained silent.

With her eyes half closed, she awakened the black qilin in her core.

Inner power that had the capacity to kill and extinguish immortality and indestructibility filled her whole body.

And in that moment, in those black eyes that had been empty like the void between stars—

A single point of light flashed.

The Heavenly Killing Star.

A star that could kill even the heavens themselves and make them bleed.

“…Senior Sister Cheonhwa.”

At the quiet end of her call, the constellation of the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions engraved into Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge all at once burst into radiance.

Even the once pitch-black blade, filled to the brim with boundless inner power, ended up emitting light.

Sword Light of a far-off realm.

It was far brighter and more dazzling than anything she had shown until now.

That meant Soyak’s realm was no longer the same as it had been just the day before.

One who had collided with the wall of Apex.

A martial artist standing before the gate that led toward Transcendent Apex.

A swordswoman challenging the realm of grasping Sword Qi in her hand and making the very notion of distance meaningless.

“…That’s impossible.”

“I hope you’ll understand that this is for you.”

“What are you talking about……?”

Her pupils trembled.

Even so, even if her opponent’s realm was far higher than her own—

Cheonhwa too had a reason she could not lose.

All her life, she had lived only by borrowing from Senior Brother Cheonju.

If he had to face a horrific fate because of her defeat……

She would go mad from guilt.

****

Far off in the distance, Sect Leader Jeongyang watched the spar and smiled.

As he watched the child struggle in the horrific life he had pushed her into…

Like a boy delighting in twisting off a dragonfly’s wings.

Chapter 31

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