Wudang Sacred Scriptures

—KWAANG!

Seeing the Blood-Chant Demon Monk leap into the Great Hall and slam the doors, Chwi Dugae moved to give chase at once.

But on the side of the Great Hall’s stone terrace, fiends sprang up like bamboo shoots in the rains and blocked the way.

“Damn it!”

Chwi Dugae spat a curse as the lights within the Great Hall went dark.

“That old demonic cur’s clearly going to scoot out some back hole of the Great Hall. If I’d known, I should’ve killed him the moment I had him.”

“If killing him were the goal, I would have moved first.”

At Kwak Yeon’s words, Chwi Dugae nodded, deflated.

“True enough. I figured a man with not a pinch of inner true energy couldn’t get far anyway. Hah! Never thought he’d laid a freakish trick like this.”

It was plain now that the “trap” and “offering table” talk had been to buy time for the monstrosity unfolding before their eyes.

“Brother, we should focus on the thing in front of us. Their momentum isn’t normal.”

Chwi Dugae, too, felt how utterly different the changed fiends’ momentum had become.

It didn’t read as a display of martial realm or depth of inner power.

A warrior’s killing intent usually pricks like a needle. Now it felt as if someone were lifting the skin itself and stabbing straight underneath—foul and sickening.

They still wore human shapes, but the transformed fiends were monsters in all but name—and the force they breathed out no longer felt human.

Though every one of them bore grievous wounds, they seemed to feel no pain at all. And in those red eyes, showing no reason, there was only a glut of murder.

Huff! Huff! Huff! Huff!

It was a small relief that they were breathing, and roughly at that. They were, at least, still living beings.

Now that they looked, many fiends still lay scattered across the court—bodies split in two or skulls shattered.

Which meant the ones who had risen had not died and come back.

So they’re not jiangshi or some accursed revenants—then what are they?

While Chwi Dugae studied the slowly closing ring of fiends, Kwak Yeon asked, abruptly:

“Could they be Lost-Soul Men?”

Chwi Dugae shot him a surprised look.

“Kwak—how do you know of those?”

“I’ve heard there are evil arts that enthrall people and drive them as underlings.”

To gauge the nature of the baleful qi shrouding the world, Kwak Yeon had once asked the Hyeonhae Taoist about it.

Then he had heard a rough outline of the sorceries known in the martial world—Lost-Soul Men, jiangshi, illusion arts.

“Judging by their lack of reason and numbness to pain, it’s similar—yet I don’t think these are Lost-Soul Men.”

“...?”

“There’s no controller nearby to drive them, is there? The ringleader bolted in a rush. And besides, I’ve heard Lost-Soul Men don’t change this suddenly.”

Kwak Yeon also knew Lost-Soul Men were made over long spans of time.

Unable to recall any sorcery that matched what he was seeing, he had asked as much.

“Then what do you think they are?”

“I’ve nothing certain. Only that they’re no longer normal humans.”

“...?”

“Madmen—mad with blood. Which makes this worse.”

The Blood-Chant Demon Monk had fled the instant they stood; these madmen were doubtless gone enough to fail even at telling friend from foe.

“If they’re living beings, then there’s nothing else to worry about.”

“Hm?”

Shuuung!

Lifting sword-gang along the Cheonggang Sword, Kwak Yeon said:

“We only have to cut their breaths off.”

“That’s true, but...”

Chwi Dugae had heard it hammered into his skull by his master: those who don’t fear death are peril itself.

As the two gauged the madmen’s movements and tried to name what they faced—

“Graaah!”

One of the transformed fiends—closest to them both—flashed those bloodshot eyes and charged with a beastly scream.

—Fwiik!

His speed was nothing like before.

In a single bound from ten paces, his blade was already smashing down in their faces.

—Jjeo-oong! Splat!

Kwak Yeon’s Cheonggang Sword cut the madman’s blade and torso in one stroke.

Bright blood sprayed in the air; the two-halved corpse tumbled across the ground.

“As expected, they don’t get up again.”

Confirming the bisected madman lay still, Kwak Yeon nodded.

“In this fight, we make sure.”

“Don’t you worry.”

Chwi Dugae hefted the Tagu Staff and nodded back.

“I’ll smash their skulls to grit.”

When the madmen at last hurled themselves at the two in earnest, a blood-reeking melee exploded.

No sooner had they truly closed than Chwi Dugae found himself hard-pressed, for all his confident shout a moment before.

The madmen’s power was twice, thrice what it had been.

—Fwieee! THUD!

“Grrrk!”

The one before him now raised his sword and caught head-on a ten-thousand-catty smash from the Tagu Staff—and the arm holding that sword did not so much as snap.

—Jjeo-ong! Thud!

Of course, the surge of force that followed shattered the madman’s sword to pieces, and more than half his skull with it.

The problem was that to pack even that single move with a wave of crushing force, he had to haul his inner true energy to the maximum.

And when you chain techniques with your energy at full draw, the dantian empties that much faster.

Yet even if Chwi Dugae wanted to ease and press his inner energy in measured turns, he had no room.

For some reason, the longer the close fight went on, the faster the madmen moved.

And they flung themselves in from all sides with no care for death—expected, and braced for, but still—if he hesitated to link blows, he’d have a hole punched in his gut.

—Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Grk!”

“Kehek!”

He hammered four madmen charging front, back, left, and right with the Smoke Eighteen Staff Method—his palm on the staff stung.

Even so, he failed to pulp two of those four skulls.

One twisted his body at the instant the staff would have met the crown, and Chwi Dugae crushed a shoulder blade instead.

Another jerked back and slipped the staff’s path altogether—with a quickness like a Peak Master’s lightness art.

What devilry is this?

With no time to find an answer, Chwi Dugae had to swing again.

The one who had drawn back with lightning motion now stabbed in with the others.

Even the madman whose shoulder was powdered, half-collapsed, thrust his sword at Chwi Dugae’s groin—a sight to chill. A clean hit from the Tagu Staff should have smashed every joint nearby beyond movement—yet still he came.

The one small comfort: that madman’s motions had markedly slowed.

—Shiiiiing! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Chwi Dugae drove the Smoke Eighteen Staff Method like pounding nails.

—Thud!

This exchange, he only smashed a single skull.

As time passed, the gaps between waves of madmen shrank; he could no longer unfold every beat of the staff forms perfectly.

They moved so nimbly that landing a clean crown strike was no easy feat.

Unless you crushed the skull, no matter how many times you beat them down, the madmen would writhe up again and hurl themselves back.

The fortunate part was this: even if they felt no pain, the more they were struck, the slower they became.

Skulls of the sluggish were easy to break—but that didn’t make them harmless.

Without fear of death, they kept coming; while you were blowing one head apart, others closed the distance.

—KWAJIIK!

As Chwi Dugae brought a clean vertical smash down on a madman whose shoulder and head lay nearly level, a pack of them howled and rushed.

“Grrrr!”

“Grrruk!”

No more picking skulls—I can’t!

Chwi Dugae unleashed the Heaven-and-Earth Gambit, the supreme stroke of his staff art.

A world-dominating, all-or-nothing killing method—best for shattering a mass of foes that had pressed to arm’s length!

—BWAAAAANG!

With a tearing roar that rippled the temple court itself, the charging madmen snapped like dry reeds.

—Kwadangtangtang!

But the last of them seized the staff.

—TAK!

Though his waist crumpled under the blow, he did not fly away—he clamped on.

He had been farthest back, the force blunted by the bodies before him, and with a body that felt no pain, he could clamp down by brute instinct.

Either way, it put Chwi Dugae in a bind.

Dammit!

He tried to shake the clinger off, but the grip was no joke. Like a leech, the man wrapped around the staff, wedging it under his arm.

You rotten—!

As the Beggar Clan’s foremost sub-branch master, he could not release the Tagu Staff.

But...

In place of those hurled away by the smash, new madmen came on, blades raised.

In his haste he yanked his inner true energy to the edge—his dantian rang like a bell, and a bolt of agony flashed through him.

Overreaching with his reserves un-restored, he had taken an internal wound.

“Damn it!”

If he didn’t let go and dodge, he would be gutted in the next instant.

—PAAAAANG!

With a rending roar, white flares swept the space around Chwi Dugae.

—PAAK!

The skull of the madman gripping the staff burst like a firework in the white light.

Those white flares blossomed in the bodies of the charging madmen as well; holes punched clean through their torsos, and they fell like sheaves.

—Fwirik!

Only when Kwak Yeon’s figure landed before him did Chwi Dugae grasp what the white flares were.

Kwak Yeon had cut the madmen with sword-qi condensed into gang—and saved him.

Even in gratitude and embarrassment, he could not help his astonishment.

By all that lives—he scattered sword-gang like a meteor shower?

It was a superlative martial art, scarcely believable even as he watched.

Kwak Yeon had unfolded the Third Sword Form of the Falling Star Nine Swords—Falling Star in Scattering Powder—with sword-qi condensed into gang.

Even as he hewed the madmen, Kwak Yeon kept surveying the grounds through the External Spirit Boundary.

The ferocity of their explosive assault had been ill-omened; he had feared Chwi Dugae might be pressed.

When Chwi Dugae, whose fight had been going smoothly, was suddenly driven into peril, Kwak Yeon vaulted over the madmen’s heads and unleashed the Third Sword Form.

To unfold the Third Sword Form alone demanded the inner true energy of an entire jiazi—and he had done it while maintaining sword-gang.

Kwak Yeon felt his qi and blood surge from the massive drain.

The external meridians rose like rime and steadied the rampaging channels; the dantian, too, began to draw inner true energy back to its center, calming the boil.

Seeing Chwi Dugae’s bloodless face, Kwak Yeon decided they could not let this melee drag on.