A land where a nation and the martial world are one—the North.
There was no such thing as civil-military nonintervention here. Unlike Ming China, where the governnt and the martial world were separate, this was a completely different reality.
To beco the enemy of the northern martial world ant opposing the empire of the vast northern lands. That was why the northern martial world was so powerful.
Southern-Facing Sovereign.
The battlefield where the Northern King’s “Moon-Slaying Martial Art” unfolded looked, on the surface, like any other stretch of ground.
Thin frost had ford in the cracked crevices, and from the edges of the slightly sunken ground, the faint sound of falling sand rustled quietly.
At the center stood five people.
Yong Hui-myeong and Jeong Yeon-shin, surrounded front and back by Namje and the Northern King, and off to the side, Tae Yeom-ryong, still suspended in midair, casually waving a hand toward Yong Hui-myeong.
“So he’s still alive?”
Yong Hui-myeong murmured in a neutral tone. Then, surprised at himself, he waved a hand with a sheepish smile.
“That wasn’t a jab at your constitution—just a comnt on your character.”
“Senior, it’s good to see you.”
“That’s insubordination.”
Yong Hui-myeong didn’t seem bothered by Tae Yeom-ryong’s form of address, and with a backward toss of his voice, he called out to Jeong Yeon-shin.
“Young one.”
“Have you been well?”
Jeong Yeon-shin asked calmly, and Yong Hui-myeong responded with a faint lift of his lips.
“The North, huh. It certainly looks the part...”
His voice trailed off.
anwhile, Jeong Yeon-shin glanced to the side, near his leg. Because they were standing back-to-back, the Divine Sword jutted out slightly.
The symbol of the Sect Master.
Even the scabbard looked like a work of art.
Intricate patterns resembling branches were engraved into it, and even the hundreds of scratches around it gave the sense of deliberate embellishnt.
They were scars of the battlefield—ornate, ancient. At this mont, they caught the light and scattered it brilliantly.
Now that he was this close, it felt farther than ever.
‘Transcendence...’
He wasn’t admiring it out of desire. It was simply a fleeting thought: did he truly have the stature to call himself the Sect Master of the Divine Sword Sect?
Not yet.
At least for now, it still felt far away.
After everything from the Great Ipwang War to the battles in the North, could he really say he had led his sect flawlessly?
“Young one, the details can wait.”
Yong Hui-myeong spoke again.
By now, he was already standing face to face with the Northern King.
Thud—
To the side, the world’s largest warhorse was staggering, bleeding profusely, yet Yong Hui-myeong only chuckled lightly, as if unimpressed by the beast’s sheer presence.
“You wrapped a lowly creature in a body-guarding force.”
[Three.]
“So you’re the Northern King.”
[The sword strike that wounded was impressive. Seeing you here now, I can believe you deserve the title of Southern Master of the Blade.]
“Southern Master? My sights are on the highest under heaven.”
Yong Hui-myeong answered with nonchalance, but his body wavered intermittently like a cloud caught in the wind.
Jeong Yeon-shin imdiately recognized the truth—and felt a sharp pang of regret.
‘The technique didn’t complete properly.’
It was extrely unstable.
It should have been sealed and stabilized using the caster’s inner energy.
And so, in terms of spell martial technique, Yong Hui-myeong’s root still lay beyond the veil.
His presence had been forcibly pulled through and barely held in place by his overwhelming internal energy.
Flicker—
He appeared like a flickering fla above the frosty earth. As if he might vanish at any mont.
Jeong Yeon-shin asked quietly.
“Are you all right?”
Yong Hui-myeong chuckled without turning around.
“I’m fine. Worry about yourself for now.”
A senior said to have been born from an egg.
At this mont, he was defying the natural order.
Once, Ma Yeon-jeok had described Yong Hui-myeong tearing the night sky apart with his Moon-Slaying Martial Art. This level of transcendent energy placed him among the completed—those who had reached the summit.
Each Sect Master of the Divine Sword had perfected sothing different.
At the sa ti, Yong Hui-myeong’s silent ssage slipped into Jeong Yeon-shin’s ear.
—This technique was never ant to be activated by a single person’s inner energy. Summoning soone like a Sect Master from beyond the veil, to exactly where and when they’re needed... how ridiculous is that?
—Then...?
—Then what do you think? A certain elder, less energetic than we youthful types, is working quite hard on my behalf. From within the veil.
He explained it with dry humor.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
But the ssage didn’t last long. Namje had already arrived before Jeong Yeon-shin.
Yong Hui-myeong took a step just as he sent out a faint ripple of sound, and Namje reached out with a hand wreathed in black clouds.
“Don’t bother.”
Namje’s internal energy pulsed through the short phrase—
Wuuuuung—!
A heavy ripple burst from the Northern King’s leg, and in a blink, that energy wave ford into the lower half of a translucent steed.
“......!”
Jeong Yeon-shin didn’t need to look back to understand.
The technique the Northern King had just activated had reached the sa level as Abbot Beomha’s golden-arm manifestation.
With his head lowered beneath a wide-brimd hat, the Northern King took an even higher position. Every spear thrust he unleashed would fall from above as if on horseback.
A perfected mounted martial art.
From his half-man, half-horse stance, a terrifying level of leg strength radiated. His body was forged from peak internal energy.
[Stay clear.]
As the warhorse, blood-soaked and staggering, slowly stepped back as if it understood its master’s order—
Bang!
Yong Hui-myeong’s elbow, pulled back to strike at the Northern King, smashed into Jeong Yeon-shin’s shoulder blade, and with explosive force, Jeong Yeon-shin’s left hand shot forward like lightning, eting Namje’s right palm.
A straight-line thrust.
CRASH!
Jeong Yeon-shin was blasted backward from the clash with Namje’s strike.
He slamd straight into Yong Hui-myeong’s back—just as Yong Hui-myeong swung the Divine Sword upward to clash with the Northern King’s crescent blade.
The impact between their weapons created a storm-like ripple.
BOOM!
The ground collapsed under the strikes of the four peerless warriors.
“Fighting monsters—damn it!”
Freed from the Northern King’s pressure, Tae Yeom-ryong cursed aloud.
He now faced the tightening encirclent of Mun Gok’s forces. The winter air behind him twisted and distorted with his shifting presence.
This would be rembered as Cheonggwang Plain’s final battle.
In an instant, the battlefield split into two sides as a hazy storm engulfed the land.
A chaotic lee broke out.
The Mun Gok forces, unable to intrude upon the storm of peerless warriors, clashed instead with Tae Yeom-ryong—while Namje of the South and the Northern King faced off against the two Divine Sword Sect Masters.
‘Killing Shin Tu alone would’ve been enough to count as a whole day’s rit, but the acting master’s condition is just...!’
Tae Yeom-ryong glanced back.
In that mont, Jeong Yeon-shin’s voice struck his ear like a club.
—Worry about yourself.
—Even when I’m concerned for you...!
The initial skirmish triggered by the appearance of Northern King Yaryul had escalated beyond reason.
No one could predict how today’s battle would end—if it even would. Nor could anyone foresee how the world’s balance would shift after this great war.
‘The acting master’s preparations are thorough, sure... but those two northern monsters aren’t going to back down quietly.’
Tae Yeom-ryong thought.
Boom!
He intercepted two incoming spear thrusts with the palms of his hands.
The blades, glowing red-hot, crumpled as if they'd been forged in a furnace for days. With a hiss, molten tal leaked through the gaps between his fingers.
“Hrrgh...!”
“H-hah!”
The sound of the spear-wielders gasping.
Mounted warriors of the Yozoku.
They didn’t even have ti to react before the spears lted into slag within their own hands. The sheer destructive transmission of Tae Yeom-ryong’s internal energy had traveled up the shaft and ruptured their weapons.
He was a once-in-an-era genius.
Blessed and cursed by heaven, the eldest son of the Hwangbo family had grown bored of life itself.
As the wick of life burns toward its end, paradoxically, the Solar ridian’s blazing Yang Qi only grows stronger.
Just like Jeong Yeon-shin’s senses and instincts, which had grown sharper year by year with battle.
‘Hm...?’
Even as searing pain tore through his body more violently than ever before, Tae Yeom-ryong suddenly felt curious.
Why was the acting master...?
But even that thought would have to wait until the fighting was over.
Rumble...!
An overwhelming martial aura surged in, making it hard to even breathe.
The thunder of hooves disrupted his balance, while the countless Qi ripples from the Celestial Armored forces twisted # Nоvеlight # in different arcs and trajectories.
He slapped aside axes fired like shooting stars with bare hands, and casually smiled as sunlight fractured off the dozens of crescent blades flying toward him.
It was a death match.
But then again—when had it not been?
Bang!
A fragnt from an axe exploded off Tae Yeom-ryong’s hand, flinging high into the sky.
The small shard traced a long arc across the sun before falling toward the other side of the battlefield.
There, it landed beside the hem of Jeong Yeon-shin’s robe.
The edge of his violet garnt was stained black-red with dried blood.
A mark left from having fought both the Six Liu Yuan Star Lords and the world’s fastest swordsman.
After all, he had killed the King of the Dream Demon Physique and returned.
This was why Namje now sought to kill Jeong Yeon-shin above all.
Separate from Tae Yeom-ryong’s fight with the Mun Gok army, the peerless warriors’ battlefield had already turned into a wasteland, like a lightning storm had raked through it.
Crash! Crash! Crackle—!
Within the Southern-Facing Sovereign’s Moon-Slaying Martial Art domain—
Explosions rang through as the wind dared to press in and was instantly torn apart.
Dark energy swirled wildly in every direction.
And within it, the distorted silhouette of a figure.
Namje’s body.
Trapping Jeong Yeon-shin in a massive arc of movent, he continuously hamred down strikes with his augnted fists, so fast they paradoxically appeared slow.
Boom! Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
Even the sound of his attacks broke into segnted shockwaves each ti he landed a clean hit.
The Northern King was both a master of martial arts and of spell techniques.
A peerless martial artist whose combat techniques were backed by extrely practical spell arts. The Ming imperial army had already concluded long ago: he had no weakness.
Even at full strength, Jeong Yeon-shin would have difficulty calculating any real odds of winning. In his current battered state, there was no way to dominate.
The very fact that he was enduring this assault at all was shocking.
He had already killed Shin Tu—and now he was holding off Namje. From within the swirling black mist ca a voice of admiration from the Northern King.
“Incredible. So this is the Sect Master of the Divine Sword Sect.”
He spoke while striking with a blade hand that could slice clean through a mountainside.
Suddenly, the ground next to Jeong Yeon-shin cracked open with a deep, black crevice.
A sheer cliff had ford. Judging by the trembling at his feet, it had to be dozens of ters deep.
But even that was only one step in the sequence.
Namje’s hand, now shrouded in thick black cloud, was already reaching toward his face. In response, Jeong Yeon-shin—launched by Yong Hui-myeong’s backward kick—unleashed “Nine Eralds Forming a River,” the Guillotine Thunderstyle’s Sword of Judgnt.
Fwosh! RUMBLE—!
The built-up force tore through Namje’s black mist.
But the sword form wasn’t complete, and the backlash of the clash reverberated through every ridian in Jeong Yeon-shin’s body.
He was holding on by sheer will.
How could such feats be possible with depleted Qi?
Because of the interdiate movents Yong Hui-myeong executed every ti he struck at the Northern King. All of them passed through Jeong Yeon-shin’s back.
An elbow that twisted just before swinging the blade.
A wrist that rotated while stepping, sending weight through the sword hilt.
Violet sleeves heavy with internal force, spiraling through the air.
The shock of their backs colliding when Yong Hui-myeong, montarily distant, returned in a blink.
Jeong Yeon-shin absorbed all that strength through his sense of refined emptiness and redirected it toward Namje.
The Jeong Family’s Total Body Displacent Skill. A mystical art that converted every external shock—its shape and direction—into divine martial movent within the body.
It was Yong Hui-myeong who made it possible.
As if he knew the flow of every muscle and ridian in Jeong Yeon-shin’s body, he applied just the right pressure at the right ti, syncing with the Northern King’s rhythm.
This was no longer human-level technique.
Fwaaash!
Two violet coats intertwined and surged in the darkening dusk air. A spectacle of stunning precision and beauty.
‘I’m amazed myself.’
Jeong Yeon-shin had no ti to look back.
Yet in his mind, he could see Yong Hui-myeong—smiling gently, dancing a dazzling sword dance.
As twilight drained into the distant horizon—
The two sunsets on earth were dancing with blades.
They had not yet set.
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