Chapter 89
Deficiency (3)
“Deficient, you say?”
The Sword Corpse Demon’s brow twitched as he barely maintained his stance by pouring strength into his lower body.
He could not understand exactly what Namgung Jun meant by saying he was lacking.
But one thing was certain—it was not something that should be said by someone weaker than him.
“Don’t get cocky!”
Clang!
With a furious roar, the Sword Corpse Demon tried to rise.
Yet he could not move.
He attempted to twist his ankle and stand, but Namgung Jun subtly adjusted the angle of his sword and suppressed him once more.
The amplified sword force ruthlessly pressed down on his entire body.
Boom!
Instead, the Sword Corpse Demon suffered the humiliation of having one knee driven into the ground.
The impact was strong enough to make his knee throb.
Yet he barely felt the pain.
How?
He could not comprehend the situation.
No—his mind and body understood perfectly well.
Namgung Jun had read his center of gravity and bodily movement, seized the initiative, and forced him down again.
But emotionally, he could not accept it.
How could Namgung Jun, someone supposedly beneath him, accurately grasp his movements and intentions?
“Namgung Jun!”
The Sword Corpse Demon bellowed and explosively drew up the demonic energy throughout his body.
The aura released by a supreme expert at the level of Three Flowers Gather at the Crown was itself akin to an attack.
As the Sword Corpse Demon resisted with overwhelming force, Namgung Jun finally had no choice but to retreat.
But the situation itself did not change.
Namgung Jun steadied his sword with an unshakable posture, while the Sword Corpse Demon looked utterly disheveled.
The contrast between the two swordsmen was obvious at a glance.
Even to an observer, the Sword Corpse Demon was clearly at a disadvantage.
Neither he nor the demonic cultists fighting Lee Seha had expected this outcome.
By now, the Sword Corpse Demon should have subdued Namgung Jun.
Instead, far from suppressing him, he had been pushed back.
The entire plan had gone awry.
“The flow of battle is becoming strange!”
“The Sword Corpse Demon?”
Several demonic cultists who had been holding back Lee Seha stared at Namgung Jun and the Sword Corpse Demon with disbelief.
Some of the quicker thinkers subtly withdrew and focused their senses on Namgung Jun.
They intended to attack from behind and assist the Sword Corpse Demon.
At this rate, the battle will be reversed.
They were only barely holding back the Cloud-Chasing Wanderer through their numerical advantage and sword formation.
If anything happened to the Sword Corpse Demon now, the remaining cultists would be as good as dead.
A bolt of lightning struck the neck of one cultist who had let his attention drift toward Namgung Jun.
Puhak!
“Where do you think you're going?”
The cultist had only turned his gaze for a moment, yet a hole was instantly punched through his neck.
Even while dealing with the sword formation, Lee Seha had noticed and launched a swift attack.
“Stop her!”
“Focus on the Heavenly Sword Hall Master in front of you!”
“You idiots!”
The Myung Cult Guards, who formed the core of the sword formation while circling Lee Seha, shouted.
Was this truly the Cloud-Chasing Wanderer, a supreme expert?
Though they were pressuring her with a sword formation, merely enduring her attacks was already their limit.
Her martial prowess far exceeded expectations.
Only then did the cultists belatedly remember her age.
In the martial world, she would still be considered part of the younger generation.
An age where one's strength could increase dramatically from one day to the next.
For a moment, her title of Cloud-Chasing Wanderer and her status as the Heavenly Sword Hall Master had caused them to forget how young Lee Seha actually was.
Shrrrk!
Steel nets that had originally been prepared for Namgung Jun rained down one after another.
Made from steel mixed with special materials, they were specially crafted nets that even sword energy could not easily cut through.
They were tools designed to help weaker fighters deal with stronger experts.
Yet before Lee Seha’s fierce sword strikes, they proved completely useless.
The cultists’ faces darkened as they watched the nets being sliced apart before they could even fully cover her.
Originally intended to restrict movement, they could do little more than momentarily disrupt her breathing.
Crackle!
Wrapped in violently surging lightning qi, Lee Seha’s sword showed no sign of stopping.
The Heavenly Thunder True Yang Sword Art was a sword technique that fully embodied the domineering power unique to lightning qi.
The five Myung Cult Guards and twenty-five cultists maintaining the sword formation gradually became more intimidated.
This was a force capable of threatening even a supreme expert.
Perhaps not enough to kill one outright, but certainly enough to bind their movements and exhaust them.
Yet now that they were facing the Cloud-Chasing Wanderer directly, things were entirely different.
Her strength was far greater than the Sun Moon Demonic Cult’s analysis had suggested.
Crackle!
Magnificent lightning qi draped around her body like a silk palace robe.
“Why do you keep looking elsewhere? No one is getting to my disciple.”
As if she had been concealing her strength, the moment some of their attention shifted toward the Sword Corpse Demon, her attacks became even faster.
Her thrusts, already lightning-fast, grew even fiercer and pierced through the edge of the sword formation.
“Gah!”
A Myung Cult Guard who failed to react in time had a hole punched through his abdomen.
As Lee Seha’s martial prowess became increasingly overwhelming with every passing moment, the Myung Cult Guards grew flustered.
Was the Cloud-Chasing Wanderer really this strong?
She may be the youngest hall master, but her martial arts are this powerful?
Our calculations were completely wrong.
Boom!
Lee Seha’s stomping step shook the ground beneath the cultists’ feet.
Her entire body, cloaked in raging lightning qi, trembled violently with power.
“Don’t even think about interfering with my disciple.”
As Lee Seha bound the cultists even more fiercely, the Sword Corpse Demon and Namgung Jun clashed once again.
But unlike before, the Sword Corpse Demon no longer held the upper hand.
“Urgh.”
A faint groan escaped his lips as he blocked Namgung Jun’s heavy sword.
He had managed to break free from Namgung Jun’s suppression through his overwhelming internal energy, but he had paid a definite price.
His right shoulder had noticeably sunk.
It was the result of taking a direct hit from the Heavenly Thunder Palm Art that Namgung Jun had unleashed with his left hand.
Of course, he wielded his sword with his right hand, so it was not a crippling injury.
But it was far from insignificant.
The problem was that Namgung Jun deliberately kept targeting his left side.
Ordinarily, even if a weakness appeared, attacks aimed at it by someone weaker would be too obvious to pose much of a threat.
But Namgung Jun was different.
Not only did he alternate between five different sword arts, but every strike was laced with countless feints and psychological traps.
His responses were far too refined for someone who had not even reached twenty years of age.
It felt as though he were facing the subtle pressure of a seasoned veteran swordsman.
This brat... he's becoming more and more experienced.
Having completely lost control of the flow, the Sword Corpse Demon was gradually driven back.
Even the martial arts he had cultivated throughout his life to reach the rank of a Bright Mirror Master proved ineffective.
Namgung Jun was smoothly receiving every one of his attacks with elegant swordsmanship.
And that wasn't all.
As though testing them in actual combat, Namgung Jun was sequentially unleashing the various sword arts he had learned, refining both their forms and applications.
To be treated like a sparring dummy by a junior during a life-and-death battle—
For the Sword Corpse Demon, it was an unbearable humiliation.
Yet he had no room to complain.
A single mistake could cost him his life to those razor-sharp sword strikes.
“Haaah!”
The Sword Corpse Demon hastily retreated to evade a sweeping slash, but the Eternal Justice Sword seemed to lengthen as it relentlessly pursued him.
It was an astonishing sword skill.
He retreated once more, but his body felt sluggish.
Slash!
A sword strike slipped through a fleeting opening.
Namgung Jun's blade sliced open the Sword Corpse Demon's flank and dug even deeper.
Even his protective qi had been completely severed.
The heavy-sword techniques of the Heavenly Wind Sword Art were more than sufficient to break through protective qi.
Things are different from back then.
When he had fought the Reverse Karma Cult Leader, he lacked the raw power to shatter protective qi and had been forced to rely on technique.
Now, protective qi was little more than an annoyance.
He possessed more than enough power to destroy it outright.
“Gah! How dare you break my protective qi!”
“Protective qi is hardly invincible.”
After enduring over a dozen consecutive sword strikes, the Sword Corpse Demon felt his insides churn and was driven backward.
“Nine Yin Severed Meridians. Truly a talent beyond common sense.”
“You should have come sooner.”
The Eternal Justice Sword surged upward, releasing a razor-sharp aura.
The Sword Corpse Demon tried to respond, but it was already too late.
Having perfectly penetrated the rhythm of a supreme expert, Namgung Jun's sword had reached a point where it could no longer be avoided.
“You!”
Watching Namgung Jun's increasingly polished swordsmanship, the Sword Corpse Demon made a decision.
He had to admit that if things continued like this, he would die a meaningless death.
So he charged forward with the resolve of mutual destruction.
Gathering every last ounce of strength, he swung his sword.
The blade that had carved through the ground suddenly soared upward, aiming to split Namgung Jun's jaw.
Even in that single upward slash, the sword's trajectory transformed endlessly, like dozens of serpents writhing at once.
It was as though the very essence of the illusion swordsmanship he had cultivated his entire life had been condensed into a single strike.
“Jun!”
Even while dismantling the sword formation in the distance, Lee Seha saw the attack and cried out in alarm.
One glance was enough.
It was a final move cast with the determination to perish together with the enemy.
Even if she herself had been standing in front of it, she could not be certain she would receive it unscathed.
Perhaps Namgung Jun had anticipated even that.
His rear heel slid back gently.
Naturally widening the distance by three steps, he twisted the Eternal Justice Sword.
Following the rotation of his wrist, the blade traced a tiny circle.
That seemingly insignificant movement completely suppressed the Sword Corpse Demon's strike, which twisted seventeen times in an instant.
BOOM!
The sword strike shattered even the dozens of qi waves erupting from the transformed sword trajectory.
Then it cleanly severed the Sword Corpse Demon's sword in half.
“Your final move wasn't bad. It was a respectable sword.”
At the same moment, the Eternal Justice Sword, which had been pointing toward the earth, rose high once more and violently pierced through the Sword Corpse Demon's neck.
Puhak!
As the Sword Corpse Demon's severed head shot into the air, spraying blood, Lee Seha's eyes lit up.
“My disciple... you did it.”
The Sword Corpse Demon's aura vanished in an instant.
Because it had dominated the battlefield until now, the emptiness left behind felt all the greater.
The demonic cultists who had been pressuring Lee Seha with their sword formation stared blankly between the Sword Corpse Demon's corpse and Namgung Jun.
They had firmly believed that the Sword Corpse Demon would become the fourteenth Bright Mirror Master.
That was why his death came as such a shock.
Even more shocking was the fact that the swordsman who killed him was not Lee Seha, but Namgung Jun.
A young swordsman who had overcome the gap in cultivation and slain someone stronger than himself.
The cultists could only stare at him in stunned silence.
“Good heavens.”
“The Sword Corpse Demon... truly died?”
“To think he would fall to such a young boy...”
The expressions of the cultists restraining Lee Seha darkened before becoming filled with murderous resolve.
“The Sword Corpse Demon has returned to the Bright World. Nothing else matters now.”
“Let's all die here.”
“If we can at least take one of their arms with us, we'll earn the qualification to enter the Bright World.”
Wooooong!
The auras of the remaining cultists changed drastically.
The eyes of the Sun Moon Demonic Cult members began glowing crimson or azure, while the Myung Cult Guards emitted ominous dark-blue light from their eyes.
At the same time, their demonic energy swelled with sinister intensity.
Judging the sudden transformation in their auras, Namgung Jun immediately moved to Lee Seha's side.
“Master.”
“This has become troublesome. Though, when dealing with Sun Moon Demonic Cult bastards, it's a common occurrence.”
The Sun Moon Demonic Cult's Bright Whale Demonic Art.
A secret technique that devoured the user's lifespan in real time in exchange for multiplying their martial prowess several times over.
The cultists sought mutual destruction.
Since they were going to die anyway, they clearly intended to inflict as much damage as possible on master and disciple.
“You can still swing your sword, right?”
“Of course.”
“Even so, I'll take the lead. Support me.”
Just as master and disciple prepared to advance without any intention of retreating—
Swoooooosh!
Dozens of sharp sounds cutting through the air erupted high above.
Along with them came countless waves of qi rippling through the sky.
“Master!”
The moment Namgung Jun hurriedly stepped in front of Lee Seha—
A rain of arrows poured down from the heavens.
KWA-GA-GA-GANG!
Like a torrential storm, the arrow barrage swept across the entire area in an instant.