Black and White Martial Emperor

“Hah! Hah!”

Yeon Jipyeong was so haggard that he could not even be compared to how he had looked a dozen days ago.

It was impossible to tell when he had last washed. Dark streaks of grime ran down his body, and his loose, disheveled hair covered his entire face. Perhaps because he had continued training past all reason, dried blood crusted the corner of his mouth beneath that curtain of hair.

Even the martial attire he wore was torn in places and stained with dried blood, making him look wretched.

Drip. Drip.

Blood ran from the palm gripping his sword. The web of his hand had split open, yet he had kept swinging regardless.

“Hoo. Hoo.”

His breathing gradually settled.

Yeon Jipyeong bent slightly at the waist, his arms hanging naturally at his sides. His eyes burned red.

“...”

At last, his breathing fell quiet.

Where is this?

As he stared blankly at a shattered boulder, a sharp pain suddenly pricked his lips.

Trickle.

His dried lips split open again, fresh blood running over the places where old blood had hardened.

Yeon Jipyeong thought,

When did I last eat?

No, before that, he could not even remember when he had last drunk water. It had surely been more than three days. It was strange that he was still standing.

Of course, the fact that he was still standing meant nothing to him.

When did I start swinging my sword?

He did not know. He could not remember.

He could not even remember how he had swung it. He thought he had practiced the clan’s secret sword arts on the first day, but after that, he had no memory of what training he had done.

Is this really all right?

It was training that bordered on self-abuse.

The method of one’s effort and training naturally changed according to the goal one sought. Swinging a sword blindly like this would only ruin his body.

No one knew that better than Yeon Jipyeong himself. His senses were exceptional, and he could instinctively grasp the direction his efforts needed to take.

But now?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

WHOOOM.

The wind stung his skin.

All five of his senses had become extraordinarily sharp. His unfocused eyes could see even the tiny holes in the fractured face of the boulder. His nose caught every scent of the natural world. He could hear an ant crawling through the distant forest. His mouth was filled with the salty taste of blood and the sweetness of the air.

It hurts.

His senses had become so active that even the slightest stimulus made his body twitch.

Then—

...?

Someone was coming. Stealthily. Carefully.

His expression remained vacant, but his senses had caught the presence of someone approaching in secret.

There’s no hostility. And...

A faint light rose in his clear eyes.

It isn’t one person. There are two.

At that moment—

PAAAAANG!

One of the approaching figures charged straight at him.

The flow of the air changed. Before he even heard a sound, he knew from the shift in air brushing against his skin.

Fast.

The speed was incredible. Even if he drew every bit of strength from his body and exploded forward, he doubted he could match even half that velocity.

A fierce fighting spirit radiated from the person rushing at him.

And that fighting spirit was aimed at him.

Who is it? Why all of a sudden? But can I react?

At that moment, Yeon Jipyeong felt something strange.

Then why am I so relaxed?

This was no time to be relaxed. There was no Killing Intent, but the charge alone was threatening. In his current condition, one poorly placed punch could put his life at risk.

And there was one more thing.

It’s fast... but it doesn’t feel that fast.

Considering that monstrous speed and acceleration, he should have been struck before he could even think this much.

Yet he was thinking, and thinking again. He was searching for a way to respond to the unknown master rushing at him with lightning speed.

How was this possible?

WHOOSH!

A frightening light flashed in Yeon Jipyeong’s eyes.

It felt as though he had been wandering through a hazy dream, only to suddenly be dropped into the waking world. The sharp sensations that had seemed capable of slicing his flesh had already gone dull.

No!

Yeon Jipyeong instinctively swung his sword.

JJEOOOOOEONG!

It was an impossibly clean sound.

Sharp metal snapped, giving off a fierce resonance.

Yeon Jipyeong looked blankly down at his sword.

The blade of his three-foot longsword had been cut cleanly in half, leaving him with a sword just over two feet long.

My sword was cut...

It had not broken. It had been sliced away with a perfectly clean cut.

Even more astonishing was that his opponent had not countered with a particularly refined strike. The sharpness had certainly been remarkable, but the reason an intact longsword had become a half-sword was the cleaving force created through explosive speed and power.

Yeon Jipyeong raised his head.

Before him stood Yeon Hojeong, frozen in the exact posture of a diagonal downward chop with the Black Dragon Axe.

“Remarkable.”

Yeon Hojeong relaxed his stance and smiled in satisfaction.

“I could feel your qi honed to a terrifying edge. It was an extreme rise in perception unlike anything I had ever seen from you. I decided to test it and poured the power of a single cleave into that strike, yet you responded properly.”

“...Brother?”

“Well done. To condense your True Qi to that extent... Even if it lasted only a short time, it must have been an extraordinarily grueling ordeal.”

“What?”

Yeon Jipyeong could not understand a word Yeon Hojeong was saying.

Then Gangryang, standing behind Yeon Hojeong with his arms crossed, spoke.

“This is truly absurd. Should I call it a difference in talent, or a difference in concentration?”

Yeon Hojeong answered him.

“It is not talent. It is concentration. But it was far too dangerous. Had I arrived even an hour later, Jipyeong’s life would have been in danger.”

“To rain down such a brutal axe blow on a younger brother in that condition... You are quite ruthless too, Brother.”

“Ruthless? He’s my brother. Of course I trusted him that much.”

Smiling, Yeon Hojeong gently patted Yeon Jipyeong’s shoulder.

“You fool. No matter what, do not train this dangerously again.”

“What? Dangerous training?”

Gangryang clicked his tongue.

“You do not even know what kind of training you were doing.”

Yeon Jipyeong stared at Gangryang with a bewildered expression.

Shaking his head, Gangryang said,

“I do not know what shock you suffered or how badly it shook you, but you forgot time altogether and kept swinging until you could no longer move with your mind, body, and qi wholly contained within the sword’s flow.”

“...?!”

“It could be called a state of self-forgetfulness, but what you went through cannot be described by that alone. Whether you hypnotized yourself or something else, you went beyond becoming one with the sword. You completely bound yourself to it.”

“...!!”

“Sword-Self Unity. You seeped into the sword, so your True Qi naturally changed as well, becoming grand and sharp like your sword art. That is why you could react to Brother’s attack immediately.”

Yeon Jipyeong looked at Yeon Hojeong with trembling eyes.

Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“Having this experience will not suddenly improve your martial arts. But the difference between someone who has walked that path once and someone who has not is enormous. It will surely be of great help to your future growth.”

“Ah!”

“You have suffered greatly. Still, you should refrain from this kind of training in the future. I cannot help but admire the effort it took for you to focus that deeply in such a short time, but you must be able to control immersion freely before even a minimum level of safety can be guaranteed. Immersion that makes you forget yourself can offer a great gift, but it carries danger in equal measure.”

Yeon Jipyeong was flustered. He had never heard of such martial principles before.

Yeon Hojeong said,

“Did I tell you this before? If not, I will tell you now. A martial artist who has learned qi arts is someone who knows how to handle qi. Qi is rooted in the mind. If your mind is unstable, your qi will be unstable. If your mind is steady, your qi will be steady.”

“I-I know that.”

“The problem is that the reverse is also possible. Qi can freely change its form and nature according to intent, but if you grow careless in controlling it, then someday that unruly qi will drag your mind along with it.”

“...!!”

“The demonic arts people commonly speak of are precisely that kind of martial art. They say that those who learn demonic arts lose the harmony between mind and body, become tainted by madness, and kill as casually as they eat. There are not many martial arts with that kind of instability these days, but such things truly can happen.”

Yeon Hojeong pointed at Yeon Jipyeong’s chest with his forefinger.

“The mind is the root. Qi is merely the warhorse you command. Inner Qi that you cannot control is not yours. If something goes wrong, even after learning an orthodox art, you can become a slave to your own True Qi and lose yourself.”

“...!”

“And that is the first sign of qi deviation. Uncontrolled qi runs wild and harms its owner. If I had not stopped your training just now, your life would have been endangered by qi deviation.”

As he taught his younger brother, Yeon Hojeong came to a realization as well.

Why his martial arts had not grown as rapidly as before.

Why, despite having a clear goal and putting in the effort, he had been unable to enter the next stage.

I, too, nearly fell into qi deviation.

His efforts had been real. Yet he had clung to the realm he had once attained as the Dark Emperor.

He could not help it.

The road lay plain before him, and it was a road he had already walked. As long as he retraced it properly, he was certain that he could regain the Dark Emperor’s realm within a few years.

I was wrong.

That was right.

He had been wrong.

Yeon Hojeong was no longer the Dark Emperor. He was the eldest son of the Yeon Clan, the Green Mountain Tiger Commander and the greatest younger-generation master under heaven, the Supreme Commander of the Righteous Justice Corps—the Martial Alliance’s strongest field-force unit—and the Commander of the Evil-Smiting Corps.

There was no longer any place for the Dark Emperor among those things.

He could use the Dark Emperor’s experience, but the road forward as the Dark Emperor had closed. He was opening a new path, and it was entirely different from the path he had once walked while growing into the Dark Emperor.

If the mind guided qi, then what guided that mind was clear reason and self-reflection. And it was qi that allowed reason and self-reflection to flourish as well, while qi itself was rooted in the mind.

An insight that turned in circles.

Without realizing it, Yeon Hojeong had stepped away from that endless staircase and gone astray.

I will not wander anymore.

Unlike the days when he had grown on the foundation of Hongcheon Qi as the Dark Emperor, he was now growing after forming the Yeon Clan Divine Core.

He understood the difference with his mind, but he had not felt it in his heart.

He would not show such a pathetic side again.

CLINK.

Yeon Hojeong secured the Black-White Twin Dragon Axes at his waist, picked up Mad Dragon from where he had set it aside, and turned around.

“Before departing on this mission, I stopped by to see how you were doing. If you were all right, I had wondered whether you might join us for this one.”

Yeon Hojeong did not look back at Yeon Jipyeong again. He simply walked toward the entrance of the forest.

Without stopping, Yeon Hojeong asked,

“Will you come with us?”

Yeon Jipyeong’s eyes shone.

PRRRRR!

Far beyond the entrance to the forest, more warhorses and battle-hardened veterans than he could count watched this place with cold, hard eyes.

That is where it is.

That was the world where Brother lived—the world those people inhabited.

And Gangryang had been chosen for the road leading into that world.

Then what about him?

“I will go.”

SHIIING!

Yeon Jipyeong sheathed his half-sword and staggered after Yeon Hojeong.

“I will not keep doing nothing but worrying and waiting.”

Even before anyone chose him, he had already prepared himself.

Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“Keep yourself alive.”