Wudang Sacred Scriptures

Chapter 208

From the air, Chwi Dugae looked like a lone black bear swatting down a pack of wolves.

—Vwoooong!

Each time he swung the Tagu Staff, the fiends could do nothing but stumble backward.

Small wonder: two of them were already sprawled at his feet—one with his skull smashed, another with his waist bent at a grotesque angle.

They had rushed in without recognizing the terrifying power carried in that staff—and were crushed for it.

Even if they belonged to the Demonic Eight Divisions, there was no way they could look on that brutal display without feeling fear.

—Bwaaang! Kwang!

“Aaagh!”

One fool who had charged for Chwi Dugae’s back took the Tagu Staff squarely and was hurled far away.

—Shiii! Thud!

Watching the pulp of a man sail off, Kwak Yeon recalled the Tagu Staff’s fearsome power from their bout at the Guandi Shrine in Agyang.

If I’d taken even one wrong hit then...

Kwak Yeon gave a small shake of the head and, at the mass of fiends waiting below his feet, unleashed the Heavenly Pound Stance.

—Shaa!

Using Floating Cloud, Leaping Shadow—a step within the Cloud-Movement Body Technique—Kwak Yeon, who had been hanging in the air, suddenly dove. The fiends below him all thrust their blades up at once.

In that instant, Kwak Yeon swept the Cheonggang Sword in a great arc.

—Paaang!

With a ripping roar, a white radiance wrapped the blade of the Cheonggang Sword and flared up a full zhang.

Sword-qi condensed into Gang!

Even for one at the Fire Realm, dropping into the heart of a knife-mountain, sword-forest of ten-odd blades packed with sword-qi was peril in the extreme.

There was no reason to risk being skewered by blind steel just to “save” inner true energy.

—Sssssss!

Catching the torchlight, the crimson-tinged sword-gang tore through like rending iron plate and swept the forest of blades.

—Jjeo-oong!

Blades laden with sword-qi were lopped off in chunks and scattered in every direction.

“Ghh!”

“Guhk!”

The severed fragments fell like hail and nailed into the fiends’ bodies.

It was the result of Kwak Yeon taking the blades he had shorn with sword-gang and whipping them back with the Second Sword Form of the Falling Star Nine Swords—Falling Star Returning Flow.

To manifest sword-qi into gang and then unfold the Second Sword Form—its power was astonishing. The drain on inner true energy was equally immense.

The Falling Star Nine Swords alone demanded great inner strength; adding sword-qi condensed into gang made the cost inevitable.

Kwak Yeon remembered stuffing a hearth full of firewood for Steward Jang Noya before returning to the training hall’s dormitory.

Cough! You’ve crammed that hearth awfully tight, boy. Cough! That won’t make the fire hotter. It’ll only choke it out.

Just then, under the sting of the smoke, Jang Noya had scolded him with a smile.

Same as then—I just dumped a whole hearth’s worth of fuel into one fire.

Resolving that when he unfolded the Falling Star Nine Swords he should hold back from manifesting sword-gang, Kwak Yeon dropped into the temple court.

Most of the nearby fiends had already collapsed, skewered by their own blades. But their number was still far from small, and a black tide rushed at Kwak Yeon the moment his feet touched earth.

—Dudududu!

He landed and, at once, plunged into the swarm of fiends charging like moths to flame.

Not for a moment did the rain of sword thrusts from all eight directions threaten him.

His External Spirit Boundary showed him the precise tracks of those incoming blades.

Had he not awakened the External Spirit Boundary in his duel with the Clan Master of the Sangwan Clan, he would have been forced to deal with these fiends by qi-sense alone.

Predictive mirroring of an opponent’s movement is useful in a one-on-one duel, but in a melee this chaotic it’s worth far less.

With the External Spirit Boundary letting him see the fiends’ motions as if traced on air, the matching sword forms came to his hands of their own accord.

Without turning his eyes, he also saw—clear as day through the External Spirit Boundary—Chwi Dugae overwhelming his foes with a ferocious staff method.

Those facing Chwi Dugae were down to four or five.

He had known Chwi Dugae’s martial level well enough that worry never truly entered into it, but the fact freed him to focus all the more lightly on the fiends.

—Fweeeet!

Ghosting between four stabbing blades with the body skill of Treading Clouds and Shifting Body, Kwak Yeon cut the four in succession with the Taiji Sword Method: Azure Dragon Eight Seas.

—Shuk! Shuk! Shuk! Shuat!

Arms or legs went flying, or torsos were hewn through; the fiends crumpled onto the packed earth.

He had left them with crippling wounds so they could no longer move.

As Kwak Yeon went on reaping fiends like chaff, a sense of wrongness struck him.

Compared to the peak-tier qi they were manifesting to produce sword-qi, the fiends’ base martial level was far beneath it.

It was like handling a child with nothing but raw strength. Which was why subduing them proved easier than he had first expected.

It was truly strange, but for now he spurred his lightness skill harder, intending to finish the rest and think after.

Not one fiend turned and ran. There was no need to give chase.

Whether out of pride as fiends of the Demonic Eight Divisions or sheer obedience to orders, it was fortunate for Kwak Yeon either way.

He could not leave the Blood-Chant Demon Monk, the ringleader, to chase small fry.

Even as he cut down fiends, Kwak Yeon kept steady watch on the Blood-Chant Demon Monk atop the stone terrace of the Great Hall.

He wondered if, seeing the tide turn, the demon monk would bolt.

If that happened, he would leave these temple grounds to Chwi Dugae and run the demon monk down himself.

To find the Sage Taoist and the others, he could not possibly let the ringleader slip away.

Yet the Blood-Chant Demon Monk, though his underlings were falling in rows, stood fixed atop the Great Hall’s terrace, watching in perfect composure.

He’s certainly kept some other scheme tucked away!

—Shaa!

Kwak Yeon cleanly took the head from the last fiend still on his feet.

—Thud!

The headless body flopped backward, and with that, the battle in the temple court ended.

All across the court, some forty fiends lay scattered like sheaves on a field after harvest.

“Ggghhh!”

“Ggghk!”

“Ggghrk!”

A good number of them twitched and groaned—mortally wounded, dying in pain.

From start to finish, the whole thing had taken less than a single刻.

—Chwararak!

Kwak Yeon flicked the blood from the Cheonggang Sword and lifted his gaze to the Great Hall’s stone terrace.

Rolling a one-hundred-eight-bead Red-Blood Rosary through his fingers, the Blood-Chant Demon Monk looked down at him.

There was a hint of surprise in the demon monk’s eyes, but no trace of fear.

It was a reaction one could not show without something solid to rely on. Curiosity was natural.

What exactly have you laid in place?

There was no reason to ask first. Kwak Yeon simply stared at him in silence.

—Step. Step.

Chwi Dugae came to stand at Kwak Yeon’s side, his own gaze fixed on the Blood-Chant Demon Monk.

“Kwak, that ended too fast. Ruined the feel in my hands.”

Grumbling with regret, Chwi Dugae called up to the demon monk.

“Old fiend, don’t tell me the ‘trap’ you prepared amounts to nothing but this?”

He, too, had sensed something off while trading blows with the fiends.

“If that were so, you’d have already bolted.”

The Blood-Chant Demon Monk nodded readily.

“But of course. One cannot treat the Beggar Clan’s foremost sub-branch master under heaven and Wudang’s Dark Cavern Taoist with shabby hospitality.”

Chwi Dugae snorted.

“Then bring them all out at once. What’s this penny-pinching play? The Gathering Demons Division is supposed to be the most hot-blooded of the Demonic Eight Divisions—and you’re its head, the venerable demon, so they say.”

The demon monk’s brow creased.

“You beggar bastard! Shut your mouth and hold your tongue. Your offering table is already set.”

“Old fiend, what nonsense is that? If you’ve got people stashed in the Great Hall behind you, I’ll go up there and crack them myself.”

“No need for you to come up. The preparations are underneath.”

The Blood-Chant Demon Monk snapped his gaze from Chwi Dugae back to Kwak Yeon.

“Dark Cavern Taoist, I did not expect you to have climbed to the point of manifesting gang. That makes it all the more a pity.”

“Old fiend, is that pity because you couldn’t make me a Human Offering like my senior brother, the Sage Taoist?”

“Sharp as they come. And that is why you chased us all the way here.”

With a low sound of admiration, the demon monk nodded and went on.

“In any case, I had meant to take you with your breaths still attached, but that plan is wrecked. Along with it, our business here is ruined. So as a last courtesy I’ll set the offering table for you—and then be gone.”

Chwi Dugae barked in outrage.

“Old man! Has being shut up in an underground prison turned your brain to mush? What’s all this ‘offering table’ you’ve been spouting, and what do you mean, leave without our say-so?”

“Beggar whelp, you’ll soon be too busy eating funerary rice to spare me a thought. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“You old cur! Where have you set this supposed offering table? I’ll make today your death day first—hm?”

Chwi Dugae tensed to leap up onto the terrace and seize the demon monk—but Kwak Yeon caught his arm.

“Kwak, why?”

Following Kwak Yeon’s ominous gaze, Chwi Dugae’s eyes flew wide.

Across the temple court, the fiends strewn everywhere were rising to their feet one by one.

“Keheheh.”

“Kkhhkh!”

As they stood, they let out warped laughter, fresh blood sluicing through their teeth.

Blood ran from their noses; the veins in their eyes had all burst, reddening their sclera until blood leaked at the corners.

Grotesque as they looked, the fact that they were standing at all was the greater shock.

Missing arms and legs were the least of it.

One stood with his waist kinked at a bizarre angle. Another’s belly was torn open, entrails dangling—and still he rose.

The most hideous of them had his neck half severed, a flood of bright blood soaking his upper body. He managed only to stand before toppling and moving no more—that, at least, was a mercy (of a sort).

One and all had suffered mortal wounds and were dying; now they creaked upright. Even Chwi Dugae, with the stoutest nerves, could not help a start.

“What in the hell is this? They were all as good as dead—how...?”

Almost every one of those bodies had already set one foot—no, reached the midway point—on the road to the afterlife.

They should have struggled even to groan—yet they rose with ease.

And then—

Huff! Huff!

Their breaths came rough and hot, over and over, and their movements began to quicken.

“Old fiend, you son of a dog! What is all this?”

At Chwi Dugae’s urgent curse, the Blood-Chant Demon Monk only smiled in satisfaction.

“They exist because you failed to finish them cleanly. So you can untie the knot you tied.”

“...?”

As he slipped quietly back a step, the Blood-Chant Demon Monk finished:

“This is the offering table I prepared for you.”