⌜The Yacha Blood Gate’s Gate Lord has moved.

I killed.

That girl you told me to protect, yeah……

Eunsong really did bring back someone worth bringing.

I’m chasing.

Looks like she’s headed to the Shandong Ak Family.

If there’s anything else worth passing along, I’ll contact you.⌟

Zhuge Yeon handed the letter she was holding to Jang Yul.

She still hadn’t entered Transcendent Apex, so she couldn’t conjure a samadhi true flame.

A blue-green flame bloomed from Jang Yul’s fingertips.

The paper turned to ash in an instant and crumbled away.

“Shandong Ak Family……”

“What are you so hung up on, Young Miss?”

“……Uncle Yul.”

Zhuge Yeon pushed her lips out in a pout.

Even though she’d called him “uncle” unlike usual, Jang Yul only snickered.

Well, he was fifty-five.

He’d long since stopped feeling awkward about being called “uncle.”

“Since you’re calling me uncle, it feels even friendlier. I like it.”

“This won’t do. I should call you something stiffer.”

“Even when you look solemn, Young Miss, it’s quite a sight.”

“Please. I can’t win.”

She let out a deep sigh and shook her head side to side.

Jang Yul looked at Zhuge Yeon and shrugged.

Then he started sweeping the small courtyard again with his broom.

This was the Zhuge Household.

And within it, the inner hall where the youngest daughter, Zhuge Yeon, stayed.

And Jang Yul was her sole cook, sole bodyguard, and sole attendant.

“You make me have you clean here, and cook here. Doesn’t it hurt your pride as a martial artist?”

“Not at all, Young Miss.”

A question she’d already asked several times.

And the answer that always came back the same.

But repetition like that steadied people.

“……Cheon Soyak, was it. That was her name.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think, Uncle Yul?”

“About what?”

“Her talent.”

Jang Yul, sweeping the yard in front of the inner hall, paused his broom for a moment.

Then he quietly mulled it over in his head.

The last thing he remembered was her sparring with Namgung Seon.

“She’s a monster.”

“A monster. What do you mean?”

Zhuge Yeon narrowed her eyes.

Monster.

That was never a good word.

Aside from the Demonic Cult’s deranged Demonic Humans, Jang Yul didn’t call anyone a “monster.”

Zhuge Yeon knew that well.

“She’s too different to judge inside the frame of ‘human.’”

“……The frame of ‘human.’”

“Yes. The Demonic Cult bastards did abandon being human, sure, but……”

Jang Yul hooked the broom lightly over his shoulder.

As if he were slinging a sword over it.

“They don’t step outside the human track from birth.”

“……I don’t really know. To me, she’s just a talented little girl.”

Zhuge Yeon narrowed her eyes again.

Jang Yul gave a soft snort of laughter and shrugged.

“It’s the gut feeling sword-swinging types have.”

“A gut feeling.”

“Yes. How should I put it—she feels like the kind of friend who’ll surpass me soon…… something like that.”

Jang Yul chuckled and tossed out words that could’ve been a joke or could’ve been serious.

Zhuge Yeon stared at him with round, rabbit-like eyes.

“……Really?”

“I don’t have eyes as sharp as Eunsong, but I can tell who has better potential than me.”

Once you were around Transcendent Apex, you usually had an epithet.

He was called the Vertical-Split Execution Sword, because he split people’s heads from crown to chin.

If someone like him said, “She’ll surpass me soon”……

About a fourteen-year-old girl?

“……She’ll break through the wall of Transcendent Apex, won’t she?”

“Maybe she already did by now.”

This time, it was unmistakably a joking tone.

Enough that even Zhuge Yeon laughed.

*****

The night before the expedition.

Ash no longer drifted through the Shandong Ak Family.

They’d poured money into it and cleaned it all away.

Family Head Ak Taegyu’s resolve to rebuild the family as quickly as possible was fierce.

He hired almost every lowborn laborer in Dongpyeong County to level the grounds again.

In just half a day.

A considerable amount of silver had flowed out, but he didn’t care.

Burned houses that had collapsed into char were dismantled and hauled away.

All that remained were the foundation stones.

Stone didn’t burn.

Even so, because they hadn’t scrubbed everything completely clean, soot still clung to a few of the stones.

Moonlight poured down.

A full moon hung in the night sky.

Soyak quietly lifted her gaze to the moon shining down on her.

“What are you doing?”

It was Cheonjeong’s voice.

Soyak didn’t turn around, only let out a faint snort of amusement.

Cheonjeong tilted his head, not knowing why she was laughing.

“……Why are you laughing?”

“Are you that worried about me, Head Senior?”

“That’s an obvious question.”

He must’ve searched all over the Ak estate looking for her.

And only now, after finding her, he spoke in a deliberately calm voice.

As if he’d “found her by chance.”

That was the kind of person he was.

“You asked what I’m doing.”

“……Yes.”

“I’m looking at the moon.”

Cheonjeong blanked for a moment.

That wasn’t what he’d meant to ask.

But he couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t an answer, either.

“……The moon.”

“Yes.”

“Is it alright if I look with you?”

“It’s fine.”

A cold night breeze swept in.

Clouds hung across the sky.

Each time a cloud lightly veiled the moon, a pale halo spread out around it.

Soyak watched it in silence.

“Head Senior.”

“Why are you calling me.”

“If it were you, Head Senior… what do you think you’d do?”

Cheonjeong didn’t understand her meaning at once.

He had no choice but to ask back.

“What do you mean.”

“If you were the Gate Lord of the Yacha Blood Gate, or the commander of the Sura Unit……”

Soyak slowly drew her gaze down from the sky to the ground.

Her head dipped slightly, and her hair covered her small, snow-white cheek.

“Would you wait until the Ak Family comes to strike you.”

“……Then you……”

“I’m anxious, Head Senior.”

Soyak rose from the foundation stone.

Moonlight poured down and shattered across her.

Across her glossy, jet-black hair, and across the snow-white martial robe wrapped around her small body.

“If it were me, if it were me…… I think I’d aim for now.”

“Soyak.”

“I’d attack the people who only just finished cleaning up and trying to steady their hearts, and smash them apart.”

The young junior sister clenched her small fist tight.

So tight the back of her hand turned pale.

Grinding her teeth, Soyak wrestled with the vicious schemes rolling through her mind.

But no matter how she thought about it—

If she were the Demonic Cult.

Or if she were the Gate Lord of those unorthodox bastards……

That’s what she would do.

“I’m a little scared.”

“What are you so scared of.”

“The fact that I’m thinking the same way they would…… that’s what.”

“They haven’t really come tonight yet, have they.”

Cheonjeong stood up, trying to soothe her.

But Soyak shook her head.

She set her left hand quietly on the hilt of Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

Then she stared far ahead, toward the Ak Family’s main entrance.

“No. They’ll come.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

If she closed her eyes, a faint scent of blood clung to the tip of her nose.

It wasn’t that the scent of blood was actually spreading.

It was a blood intuition possessed only by the Heavenly Killing Star.

A kind of “premonition,” refined into the form of sensation.

“……I can smell blood.”

“What are you talking about, Soyak.”

Her skin stung.

Overwhelming killing intent.

Soyak drew her sword halfway from its scabbard.

—CLANG!!

A sharp throwing knife slammed in.

A throwing knife with poison even smeared on its tip.

Soyak shouted in a high, sharp voice.

“Head Senior!”

“Ah—okay!”

Cheonjeong sprinted toward the annex, using Lightness Arts.

Soyak stayed nailed to the spot as she drew her sword fully.

Sword Qi rose like heat haze along Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

Whether it was the Sura Unit or the Yacha Blood Gate—

That wasn’t what mattered right now.

If she narrowed her eyes, her vision blurred and her other senses sharpened to a razor.

In the end, eyes had blind spots.

Someone who held a sword had to survive by seeing even the blade flying in from behind their head.

More than anything, Soyak had been born the Heavenly Killing Star.

When it came to sensing blood, slaughter, and murderous intent, she was more sensitive than anyone.

—SKREEE! CLANG! SHRRRK!!

Two throwing knives, and one meteor hammer.

Soyak lightly hooked the chain wrapped around her blade with her sword tip and flung it back behind her.

Applause rang out from the darkness.

A man with a crimson Great Curved Blade strapped across his back emerged, chuckling as he stepped out of the shadows.

He was Ju Heung-a, the Night Ghost—Blood Sword Commander of the Yacha Blood Gate.

“I only picked up throwing knives to kill time. Didn’t even come close, huh.”

“State your affiliation.”

“Don’t want to.”

He drew the massive Great Curved Blade from his back.

A vicious, blood-red saber body flashed under the moonlight.

It looked as if it had been lacquered in blood, but that was its natural color.

Thick killing intent billowed off the blade.

“……An unorthodox bastard.”

“You catch on quick, girls.”

“I only didn’t call you Demonic Cult because I don’t sense demonic energy.”

Ju Heung-a was starting to feel irritated at the girl in front of him.

Fine, she was calm for no reason.

But what was that black, empty, emotionless gaze?

She didn’t even flinch when he pulled out the Great Curved Blade and let his murderous intent pour out.

As if she wasn’t afraid at all.

Most of all—

He couldn’t measure what realm this girl had reached.

There were only three possibilities.

She hadn’t learned martial arts at all, she was above him, or……

It meant she was the same as him.

‘……That can’t be.’

Unfortunately, the Yacha Blood Gate’s information network wasn’t as fast and accurate as the Beggar Union’s.

Chapter 78

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