Had he truly been this strong? (4)
A curse burst from Jo Geol’s lips as he sustained a long gash beneath his eye.
“These damn bastards…!”
“Calm down, you idiot!”
Jo Geol bit down on his lip until it nearly split, then twisted his sword as he watched demonic cultists approach.
‘They’re different.’
They were incomparably stronger than Sapaeryeon’s bastards. It was only natural. The Demonic Cult was fundamentally different from the Evil Sects, who had gathered everyone indiscriminately, regardless of their worth.
Besides, their very mindset was different too. Demonic Cultists had cast everything away for one thing alone: their faith in the Heavenly Demon. Having filled their lives with fanaticism and endured long years of hardship, they had grown even more vicious and ruthless.
There was no way they could be compared to those Saparyeon bastards, who had relied on nothing but their numbers.
‘I already knew that.’
Jo Geol had never mistaken them for Sapaeryeon. He had known they would be far stronger and far more brutal. Hadn’t he already known that and steeled himself for it?
But the problem Jo Geol faced now differed somewhat from what he had prepared himself for.
Instinctively, he felt at his face. A filthy sensation, difficult to put into words, lingered at his fingertips.
“Damn it.”
“First, draw up your inner energy and suppress it!”
“I’m doing that!”
Jo Geol lowered his gaze for a moment. But there was no way for him to see his own face.
In fact, it might be better not to see it. No matter how fearless Jo Geol was, if he saw the black flower spreading across his face with his own eyes, he would not be able to remain as calm as he was now.
“Demonic Flower [마화(魔花)] or whatever the hell it’s called…”
The flower of the demon. The symbol of the Demonic Cult, which had once shrouded the world in terror.
The devil’s flower [악마의 꽃] must be spreading across his face now. The pain radiating from the wound, and the strange, unpleasant sensation that his energy was somehow no longer flowing properly, left him certain of it.
‘If this gets worse… will the wound begin to rot? Then it’s practically poison, isn’t it?’
A deadly poison. Worse yet, a deadly poison with no antidote.
He knew of the Demonic Flower in theory. However, there was a very simple reason Jo Geol had overlooked it.
“Damn it. It definitely wasn’t like this in Hangzhou..”
Even then, he had suffered from the suffocating stickiness unique to demonic energy and the pressure bearing down on his entire body, but the Demonic Flower had never interfered with his ability to fight.
But these bastards were different.
It was still unclear whether the reason lay in the difference in their levels or in the fact that the demonic arts they had learned were fundamentally different. But one thing was certain: the wounds inflicted by their demonic energy invariably led to Demonic Flowers blooming.
A flicker of anxiety passed through Jo Geol’s eyes.
The most serious injury at the moment was the wound on his right wrist. It would be no exaggeration to say that his martial arts lost nearly half their power if they lost their speed. Moreover, a swift sword was, in other words, also a sword that demanded the utmost precision.
But because of the pitch-black flowers etched into his damned wrist, his energy would not circulate through it properly. At this rate, wasn’t it fair to say that thirty percent of his martial prowess had already gone down the drain?
‘First, I need to circulate my energy…’
At that moment, demonic cultists charged at him again. Jo Geol reflexively thrust his sword at them. The instant he sent the energy he had drawn up into his sword and twisted his wrist, the Plum Blossom Sword twisted in a direction he had not intended.
Of course, the deviation was not particularly great. But when stopping five demonic cultists forcing their way in with brute force, even an error of half a chi proved fatal.
Crack.
One of Jo Geol’s sword shadows pierced a demonic cultist through the shoulder instead of the chest. Naturally, the cultist did not so much as glance at his wound and continued charging forward as if to crush Jo Geol’s skull.
Jo Geol gritted his teeth as he watched the demonic energy flying towards his head.
Shrraaaak!
A white sword shot out like lightning and split apart in an instant. Then it formed an iron wall, blocking the demonic energy pouring towards Jo Geol’s head.
“Watch out!”
Fwoosh!
Yoon Jong swung his sword repeatedly, carving a long gash across the demonic cultist’s neck. As the cultist toppled backward, blood gushing from his mouth, Yoon Jong stepped in front of Jo Geol as if to shield him.
“Are you all right?”
“…..Yes.”
Jo Geol bit down hard on his lip. If only his arm weren’t injured, he could handle bastards like those…
“Huh?”
At that moment, Jo Geol’s eyes widened slightly. There was a long slash across Yoon Jong’s side.
Of course, he had no intention of making a fuss over a wound that minor on a battlefield. The wound itself was not the problem. It was the area surrounding it.
The injured flesh was visible through the torn fabric, but there was no Demonic Flower blooming around it. Even though the wound looked far deeper than the one on Jo Geol’s arm.
“H-How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Your side. It’s perfectly fine!”
“…Have you been stabbed in the eyes in the meantime? Does this look fine to you?”
“No, that’s not what I mean!”
Jo Geol pounded his chest in frustration as he asked. In his urgency, the words came out much faster than usual.
“The Demonic Flower! There’s no sign of it being tainted by demonic energy! How did you do that?”
“Huh?”
Yoon Jong carefully examined the Demonic Flowers blooming across Jo Geol’s face and arm. Then his already narrow eyes narrowed even further.
“I was just fine?”
“….What?”
“No, I didn’t really do anything…”
Yoon Jong tilted his head.
He had not done anything in particular to stop the Demonic Flower in the first place. He had simply been wounded, and the Demonic Flower had not bloomed. That was all Yoon Jong knew.
“Hmm… perhaps it’s because your internal energy is weak?”
“What are you talking about! I have more internal energy than you do, Sahyeong.”
“Then perhaps it lacks purity?”
“Seriously, Sahyeong.”
It seemed Yoon Jong genuinely did not know the reason.
‘What is it? What’s different?’
Was the demonic art of the cultist who cut Yoon Jong unusually weak? No, that couldn’t be. If he had been that weak, he would never have been able to leave so much as a scratch on Yoon Jong’s body.
‘Don’t look for the reason in the enemy.’
If there was a reason, it certainly lay within Jo Geol himself. There had to be something different. Something Yoon Jong possessed that Jo Geol did not…
“Huh?”
Just then, Jo Geol’s senses, sharpened to their utmost, detected something strange.
Yoon Jong’s side. Just as Jo Geol thought he faintly sensed the presence of demonic energy in a spot he had concentrated all his attention on, another energy soon enveloped it.
‘What was that? That just now… it felt somehow familiar.’
It was unfamiliar, yet familiar. And yet it was a sensation difficult to put into words.
“Sahyeong, what was that energy just now?”
“Huh?”
Yoon Jong frowned as if Jo Geol had asked the most obvious question in the world, then answered with an incredulous expression.
“What are you talking about? It’s immortal energy [선기(仙氣)].”
“……Immortal energy?”
“That’s right, immortal energy. What kind of Taoist makes such a fuss over immortal energy?”
“Uh….”
Jo Geol blinked blankly, as though his soul had left his body.
Immortal energy.
Like the Buddhist power [불력(佛力)] of Buddhism and the demonic energy [마기(魔氣)] of the Demonic Cult, it referred to the distinctive energy possessed by those who practiced the martial arts of the Taoist path.
“So immortal energy definitely has the power to Purge Evil [파사(破邪)] and… Subdue Demons [항마(降魔)]?”
An energy that resists demonic forces. Yes, he had been told that immortal energy was precisely that.
“Huh? Then that means I have less immortal energy than you… Oh, I suppose that makes sense. Nothing I can do about that.”
“Why are you getting shocked and then convincing yourself all on your own?”
“….No, well, it really can’t be helped.”
Immortal energy did not automatically increase simply because one’s martial arts reached a higher level. It varied according to one’s enlightenment and cultivation. Unlike martial arts, it was an energy created through pure spiritual cultivation.
Jo Geol pressed his lips together.
There was no denying that Yoon Jong was far more of a Taoist than he was. Anyone in the world would give the same answer if asked.
Jo Geol himself felt neither dissatisfaction nor any sense of rivalry over it. Even by his own estimation, he was closer to a martial artist than a Taoist.
But he had never imagined that this difference would come back to hinder him so severely now.
“Sahyeong. How… how do I increase my immortal energy?”
Yoon Jong stared at Jo Geol for a moment, as though he had been rendered speechless.
How to increase immortal energy? Cultivate yourself, attain enlightenment, maintain a mind as clear and still as a polished mirror…
‘There’s no way such obvious advice would help Geol right now.’
Of course, if they had enough time, following the proper path would be a hundred times better. But they had no time to grow stronger through training.
That left only one possible answer.
“I don’t know.”
“…”
Yoon Jong spoke firmly.
“It’s not the kind of energy you can forcibly increase. You know that too.”
A look of despair briefly crossed Jo Geol’s face.
It wasn’t that he could not fight simply because he lacked immortal energy. After all, not everyone who had fought against the Demonic Cult had possessed energy that could dispel evil.
But Jo Geol was experiencing it firsthand now, wasn’t he?
Whether or not he possessed enough immortal energy to resist the Demonic Flower was a far more significant factor than he had expected. Significant enough to immediately make him understand how Hwasan had been able to fight the Demonic Cult from the front lines.
And Jo Geol was lacking precisely that immortal energy now. It was as if he had been deprived of his greatest weapon for fighting the Demonic Cult.
As he struggled not to show how heavily his heart had sunk, Yoon Jong, who had been quietly watching him, spoke.
“So…”
Then he gathered as much of the immortal energy flowing through his body as he could.
Immortal energy was, by nature, an unbound energy, so it was nearly impossible to consciously draw it out. As a result, the amount he managed to gather was no more than a fingernail’s worth.
Yoon Jong forced that painstakingly gathered immortal energy into Jo Geol’s injured arm.
“Feel it with your body.”
Jo Geol flinched and looked at Yoon Jong. Yoon Jong spoke with conviction.
“It’s not that you have none. There is definitely immortal energy within you as well. You can’t possibly be lacking it. You’re a disciple of Hwasan too.”
“…”
“So feel it and become conscious of it. Awaken it. That will be enough.”
When he finished speaking, Yoon Jong gripped his sword tightly and stood firmly beside Jo Geol.
“There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll help you until then. Just as I always have.”
For a while, Jo Geol could only look at Yoon Jong without saying a word. Then he clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
It is within him. Immortal energy that he could not possibly lack. Those words would not leave his ears.
Yoon Jong believed in Jo Geol more than Jo Geol believed in himself. How could he possibly show weakness in the face of such faith in him?
“…All right, Sahyeong.”
Jo Geol bit down hard on his lip, his eyes blazing with determination.
“That’s what I should do! My Sahyeong, who possesses the greatest immortal energy in Hwasan, says he’ll help me. Of course I’ll do it.”
“Uh, not exactly.”
“Huh?”
When Jo Geol whipped his head around, Yoon Jong smiled brightly and shrugged.
“I’m certainly better off than you, but I’m not the person with the most immortal energy in Hwasan.”
“What? You’re not, Sahyeong?”
Strange. If you asked which of them was the most like a Taoist, anyone would point to Yoon Jong.
“Then who is it?”
“We’d have to count Chung Myung as an exception, so leaving him out… well, it would be that person.”
“That person?”
Jo Geol blinked.
⠀
With a sound akin to a sharp needle scraping across silk, a sword imbued with chilling sword energy cleaved through the demonic energy.
Shraaaaaak!
Wherever the sword swept, the demonic energy withered helplessly, like flames cast into a vast sea. Even the demonic energy beyond the sword’s reach was driven back precariously, flickering like candlelight.
“What….”
Even the cultists, who cared about nothing but tearing their enemies apart, widened their eyes and faltered.
Before they could fully comprehend what was happening, the sword came flying again as if in a dream. Its sharp edge swept lightly across the demonic cultists’ throats.
Slice.
Heads shot into the sky.
Beneath the rain of blood [피의 비(血雨)], Yu Iseol’s sword traced a beautiful arc, resembling the moon hanging in the sky.
At its tip lingered an unmistakably vivid immortal energy.
________
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