They had expected there to be two Transcendent Apex masters.

One was the Family Head, Ak Taegyu.

The other, they had assumed, would be someone the Hwangbo Household sent.

Because they would never want half of Shandong to fall into the hands of the unorthodox sects or the Demonic Cult.

But they had never expected there to be three.

No matter how many times someone said they had seen it with their own eyes, they had refused to believe it.

Because she was only a girl of fourteen.

At best, they had thought whoever saw it had mistaken the trail of Sword Light.

“That’s impossible…”

But what flowed along that sword was unmistakably Sword Qi.

It had not yet hardened completely, but still.

That child was unmistakably a master at the entrance to the Transcendent Apex.

“All of you, reform the sword formation!”

One of them shouted at the top of his lungs.

The one with the red band tied around his head, unlike the others.

Soyak instinctively knew that man was the Deputy Commander.

The moment Soyak took a single step forward, thirty-six of the forty-some still remaining gathered at once.

A sword formation woven from thirty-six swords.

It was the second, and deadliest, formation the Sword Ghost had passed down to them.

“…It’s the Shura Thirty-Six Sword Formation. This time, it won’t break so easily.”

And it was exactly as he said.

The number of people had changed from five to thirty-six.

That meant the variations and feints had multiplied by just as much.

Whether they had trained hard or not, the thirty-six of them began moving like some mechanical device.

“Young Hero Soyak.”

“Yes, Family Head.”

“Leave this to me.”

Ak Taegyu had addressed Cheon Soyak as a young hero.

Not with some form of address that meant “young lady.”

It meant that the head of the Shandong Ak Family recognized Soyak as one martial artist among others.

Soyak obediently stepped a few paces back.

Then she glanced up at Hwangbo Gyeong, who was staring at her.

A look asking why she was looking at him like that.

But instead of answering, Hwangbo Gyeong only turned his eyes away for no reason.

“Soyak. Are you all right?”

Cheonjeong’s voice came from behind her.

It seemed he had followed after her with Cheongak.

“Yes, Head Senior. I’m not hurt.”

“Don’t push yourself. Didn’t you end up bedridden last time too?”

“…I’m all right.”

Soyak glanced back.

Cheongak’s eyes were shaking a little.

Well, of course.

He had never truly faced killing intent before.

And it looked like Cheonjeong had coaxed and pushed him carefully until he made it this far.

“Are you all right, Head Senior?”

“What do you mean?”

“We may be fighting unorthodox sects… but we came here to kill people.”

Cheonjeong smiled quietly.

Then he patted Cheongak on the back a few times.

“This one, I think, really is facing killing intent for the first time.”

“W-What! Have you ever killed anyone, Head Senior?”

“I’ve never killed a person…”

Cheonjeong trailed off, then met Soyak’s eyes.

He had been about to hide his own past, but a faint smile slipped out instead.

That child had trusted him enough to bare her own heart.

“I have nearly been killed by one.”

“What? What kind of nonsense is that?”

“This isn’t the time to talk about that. Right now, let’s focus on making it back alive.”

Right around then, an explosive crack rang out from the front.

KWA-BOOOOM—!!!

It was the sound of Family Head Ak Taegyu’s Demon-Warding Halberd smashing into the thirty-six blades.

“Th-That’s insane!”

“What kind of strength is that?!”

Along with those almost scream-like complaints, the thirty-six men staggered several steps backward.

And for good reason…

Seven of their blades had already been shattered.

“Come on, then, you hedgehog bastards.”

When your body shakes, naturally your sword shakes too.

And the sight of them looked no more than frightened hedgehogs curled in on themselves.

What did it matter if the Shura Thirty-Six Sword Formation was some peerless sword formation the Demonic Cult had once prided itself on?

Not a single one of those swords could properly raise even Sword Light.

He was a Transcendent Apex master who wielded Sword Qi.

Even if thirty-six ordinary steel swords gathered together, they were no more than the needles of vermin.

And seven of them were already broken.

To begin with, a formation was the method the weak used against the strong.

But even that required, at the very least, the premise that their weapons would not break.

In other words, it only worked against someone about one realm above them at most.

Facing a Transcendent Apex master with a sword formation made up mostly of First-Rate martial artists?

Martial arts were precisely what let one overcome being outnumbered and wield superhuman strength.

If sheer numbers alone were enough to win…

then why would anyone attach some grand title like “Transcendent Apex” to it in the first place?

“Block him! Open a gap! I’ll kill him!”

At that moment, the Deputy Commander shouted.

Then he raised his sword.

A shining blade filled with Sword Light.

At that sight, the Blood Sword Unit members roared in time with the surge in their momentum.

It was an interesting thing.

Even if they wrapped themselves in Sword Light, at best it should only have been enough to keep their swords from breaking.

But it seemed they truly believed it.

That if they formed their Five-Strike Formation, they could create an opening wide enough to kill even a mid-stage Transcendent Apex master.

But belief created momentum.

And momentum became force and rolled outward in waves.

Even if they were going to die, they could still burn.

“Go!”

“The Deputy Commander is with us! Once we kill that bastard, the Gate Lord will deal with the Family Head bastard himself!”

“HYAAAHHHHHH!!”

The Five-Strike Formation made up of First-Rate martial artists began giving off different resonant tones.

Sword Resonance.

Among them, one or two even went beyond resonance and raised a faint trace of Sword Light.

“…Good. Come, then. I’ll break every last one of your necks.”

In response, Ak Taegyu also poured a tremendous amount of internal energy into his spear.

Then the two sides collided.

A savage wind whipped up like a storm.

And within that swirling cloud of dusty haze…

Soyak saw it.

Chance, taking shape.

A chance born from blood.

“HAAAHHH!!!”

Two or three of them threw away their lives.

They willingly hurled their bodies into the spear thrust driving through the gaps between the broken blades.

They grabbed the shaft embedded in their own bodies and clung to it.

“Y-You bastards!!”

If it had been one person, that would have been one thing.

It was three.

Three people clinging to the spear shaft, courting death.

The spear had pierced through the bodies of all three, and with the shaft trapped like that, there was no way it could still be used.

And in that opening…

a sword filled with crimson Sword Light shot straight for Ak Taegyu’s throat.

It was the Deputy Commander’s blade.

“For the Commander’s vengeance!!!”

But in that instant—

Soyak’s pitch-black blade knocked the crimson sword aside.

“…When did she?”

It was the question both the Deputy Commander and Ak Taegyu found themselves asking.

To Soyak, it was not especially surprising.

It was not because her footwork and movement techniques had reached some impossible height.

It was because she had seen it.

She had seen the Deputy Commander’s blood-red blade flowing along a sudden blood line.

The red line that had appeared the instant Ak Taegyu’s Demon-Warding Halberd was seized.

The next moment, the Deputy Commander’s sword came flying in precisely along it.

It had been no more than a fleeting instant.

But to a swordsman who had reached that realm, a fleeting instant was opportunity.

Soyak had moved the moment the Demon-Warding Halberd was caught.

There had been only one gap.

And the path the sword would take had already revealed itself.

Driving her own sword into that place first and knocking it aside was not difficult.

“The one you want vengeance for was me.”

Amid the chaos of turning blades,

Soyak’s Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge pierced craftily through the gap between them.

THRUK.

The Deputy Commander’s right wrist was skewered by the black tip of her blade.

“KRAAAAGH!”

“This is the end.”

Soyak swung her sword with calm indifference.

And just like that, his wrist was severed on a diagonal.

Thud—the sword fell.

The ownerless blade lost even its gleam.

“Young Hero Soyak.”

“You were in danger.”

A few men who had finally recovered from their shock thrust their swords at her.

Soyak calmly knocked those swords aside and slipped past them.

“How… how did you know?”

“Because I could see it. More importantly, shouldn’t you deal with the situation first—”

“…Understood.”

Ak Taegyu withdrew the questioning look he had been giving Soyak.

Soyak blinked, nodded, and stepped aside.

Because she had seen the immense internal energy gathering in his right hand.

Just to the side of Soyak, who had moved out of the diagonal line with perfect precision,

the first move of the Ak Family Spear Art unfolded.

Ak Family Spear Art, First Form.

Break the Ranks in One Thrust.

One thrust to shatter a group.

Just as the name said, it was a strike that shattered a group with a single thrust.

A single fierce, overbearing stab.

KWA-BOOOOM—!!!

Once again, a sound like a heavenly thunderclap exploded outward.

At the same time, the thirty-six men were all hurled backward in a line.

Staggering like fallen leaves swept about in an autumn wind.

“Strike them all down!”

And the Family Head did not miss the timing.

The instant the sword formation broke under the force that drove them back, he slammed men into the opening.

Around twenty hired martial vagrants burst forward and began cutting into them.

“KRAAAGH! My arm, my arm!!”

“AAAGH! Spare me!”

“KRAAAAAAGH!!!”

A field of slaughter.

The fierce stench of blood spreading through the air.

Soyak slowly drew it deep into her lungs.

…It was still sweet.

She raised her internal energy again and cast the wicked ghostly force trying to boil up inside her into the black qilin as food.

And every time she did, Auspicious Energy flowed from her body.

Her hair and sleeves fluttered in the internal force leaking out from her.

“…Haa.”

But some among them quickly turned their vicious minds to another plan.

They raised their swords and charged at Cheongak and Cheonjeong.

They had calculated that surely those children could not be Transcendent Apex too.

It was the right choice.

What they had misjudged was thinking Cheon Soyak, standing in front of them, would simply let them pass.

SHHK. FWOOOSH—.

Soyak’s Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge, wrapped in Sword Qi, sliced straight through the man’s body.

It split his upper half from his lower half.

He lost control of himself in midair and fell in two separate directions before dying.

And Cheongak saw that sight…

in all its naked clarity.

“…Uh, th-that, uh…”

“Senior Brother Cheongak. Steady your heart.”

“…Yeah, uh, right.”

Soyak wiped away the droplets of blood splashed across her cheek.

Then, with her sword still leveled, she leaped into the crush between the martial vagrants and the Blood Sword Unit.

Each time that long, pitch-black sword swept through the air, a red arc embroidered itself across the empty space.

Like plum blossoms.

Like the blood-red plum blossoms she made bloom herself.

Chapter 84

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