The air within the Hero's Sect came to a standstill.
Jin Hagyeong stood frozen, unable to lower his outstretched arms.
He remained in the same stance he had taken to shield those behind him; his sleeves fluttered once in the wind, then stilled.
He had not stepped back into his spot, nor had he even decided to stand his ground.
His body had simply frozen in place.
A dozen zhang ahead, the two were still facing each other.
The Sword Aura that had enveloped Yeop Bihwa's Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle was slowly receding from the blade, being drawn into a single point at its tip.
The gathering Sword Aura did not remain still.
As it converged into a single point, it began to pull the surrounding Qi towards itself.
The air around the sword tip could not escape, instead bending and flowing into that one point.
Jin Hagyeong clearly saw a fallen leaf on the ground roll for a moment before defying the wind and being dragged toward the sword tip.
Sunlight naturally passed over that point, yet the light could not reach that one spot.
Or rather, it reached it but could not escape.
It was neither reflection nor absorption.
It was a convergence into a single point in the middle of the scenery.
The Sword Aura continued to be whittled down.
The thick Sword Aura that had covered the entire blade was now being compressed into a single chi at the tip.
The compression showed no signs of stopping.
It continued until it became a point invisible to the eye, and even that point was whittled down further into itself.
For a moment, the roof tiles of the Hero's Sect, the walls, the lines of the distant tree branches—all seemed to bend toward that single point.
It was not an illusion on Jin Hagyeong's retina; the air itself had warped.
The moment that point is unleashed.
"One Point Whittling Aura…"
A sound escaped Jin Hagyeong's lips, indistinguishable between a lament and a warning.
Even for someone like Kim Rae-won, this would be dangerous.
So Jin Hagyeong thought.
Though it was barely known in the Jianghu, this was the reason why the Vast Heaven Infinite Sword Sect was not overly concerned, despite being attacked and pushed back by the Dark Rakshasa Way recently.
One Point Whittling Aura.
A move that condensed a lifetime of the sword into a single point by shrinking the 'One Line' into 'One Point'—the 'One Point Flash'.
That was the new type of Sword Aura the Iron-Faced Lady had finally perfected in recent years to realize this technique.
It was a Sword Principle so powerful that the Sword Venerate, after witnessing it, had remarked, "This has rewritten the very definition of the sword. From this moment on, any sword that dares to oppose Vast Heaven, whatever it may be, shall be erased."
But Kim Rae-won still stood with the green sword woven from leaves hanging loosely at his side.
His arms were relaxed, his shoulders were relaxed.
Even as the lifelong sword of Yeop Bihwa, the greatest sword master of Vast Heaven, was aimed at him, his posture held not a sliver of tension.
"Sect Leader! That sword is…!"
Jin Hagyeong's cry was cut short.
The sound certainly vibrated the air as it moved forward, across the center of the training ground, toward the back of the unmoving man.
But the shout never reached the man's ears.
It was not that there was no time for it to reach him; in the process of reaching its destination, the sound waves were distorted, torn apart, and disintegrated in the air.
By Yeop Bihwa's sword art…
Naturally, Kim Rae-won did not turn his head.
The green sword hanging at his side, the slope of his shoulders, the direction of his toes—all remained unchanged.
Yeop Bihwa, staring intently at such a Kim Rae-won, took a long breath.
Whoo—.
The long exhale could not travel straight through the air.
As soon as she breathed out, the space seemed to tilt, and her breath was sucked toward the tip of her sword.
The breath she exhaled was returning to her own sword.
Ssssk.
Yeop Bihwa's two hands, resting on the hilt, were not gripping the sword but were being held by it.
The single chi at the sword's tip was pulling on her elbows, her shoulders, her waist, all the way down to the soles of her feet.
Tuk, tuk.
The dirt on the ground rolled in fine particles toward that single point on the sword tip.
A strand of hair that had been stuck to her cheek floated up into the air, but instead of settling back down, it remained tilted toward the sword tip, frozen.
Everything in the vicinity gathered into that single point at the sword's tip.
Yeop Bihwa finished her exhale.
The moment that final breath ended.
The tip of the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle moved forward first.
The blade followed behind it.
Goooooooh—.
Where the sword passed, no path was left.
The very space where a path should have been had vanished.
The air of the training ground, the morning sunlight, even a speck of dust drifting before the wall—all were erased along that line.
The Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle had not cut through anything.
There was no mark of being cut.
Space itself was missing where it had passed.
A thin line, the thickness of a finger, was embedded in the middle of the scenery, black.
No.
It wasn't even black.
For black to exist, space must first exist.
There was no space there.
In the place where something should have been, nothingness resided.
It was a type of sword strike never seen before.
No, it wasn't even a strike.
It was not in the form of hitting something.
Huduk.
Along that line, at a single point at its end, somewhere in front of Kim Rae-won, sound momentarily gathered.
Yeop Bihwa's footsteps, the breathing of everyone in the Hero's Sect, including herself, and the rustling of tree branches in the wind outside the training ground.
All the sounds rising from all directions pulled themselves in and were sucked into that single point.
And then.
"..."
"..."
The sound vanished.
All the sounds of the world were trapped in that one point.
All that remained in Yeop Bihwa's ears was every kind of pulse from her own body.
Her heart, various organs, her pulse, and the minute tremors of her skin.
But even those were sounds that resonated from deep within her body, heard not from the outside but only from within.
One beat.
Two beats.
Swaaaaa—.
All the trapped sounds were released at once.
The sound of the wind, the tree branches, the distant cry of a bird, someone's breath, another's breath.
The sounds returning simultaneously from all directions collided with each other, tearing the air.
It was a world that had arrived a fraction of a second late.
But in the space before Kim Rae-won, that 'nothingness' was still embedded.
Kim Rae-won moved his wrist ever so slightly.
His arm remained hanging at his side, and his elbow didn't move.
Just a flick of the wrist.
That was all.
But as his wrist moved, a layer of the training ground's air moved with it.
The hanging green sword rose about a chi from his side.
The sword's trajectory was slow, but wherever that slow trajectory passed, the air minutely receded.
Only the speed was slow.
The sword tip was tilting toward a single, precise direction.
Toward the very point where the end of the line from Yeop Bihwa's One Point Whittling Aura—that 'Nothingness'—was embedded.
As the leaf sword drew closer to that point, the sword's appearance began to look strange.
The green of the leaves was slowly draining from the tip of the sword.
A deep green still remained near the hilt, but the color faded toward the tip.
A navy blue was overlaid on the green, and a darker shade covered the navy blue.
It was the same sword, yet it bore different colors in different places.
That wasn't all.
The sword's length seemed a little longer.
Yeop Bihwa couldn't tell if it had actually grown longer or if it just appeared that way because the surrounding air was subtly warped around the sword.
The line of the wall behind the sword bent once near the sword before straightening again.
The wall should still have been standing in its place.
But to Yeop Bihwa's eyes, the wall seemed to tremble slightly where the sword passed.
And the sword's movement became even slower.
The closer the sword tip got to the point, the more its speed decreased compared to when it first started to tilt.
It was as if that single point was stealing the movement itself, layer by layer.
Yeop Bihwa felt the interval of her own breath growing longer than the remaining distance to the sword tip.
One chi.
Half a chi.
That half chi was not shrinking.
It felt as if the sword would never reach that point.
Before that illusion could end.
The leaf sword touched the 'Nothingness'.
"..."
Nothing happened at the point of contact.
No sparks flew, no explosion sounded, the air did not tremble.
In the place where two objects should have met and exchanged something, the exchange itself did not exist.
However.
The leaf sword, which had been floating a chi from his wrist, vanished.
The green sword, woven from dozens of leaves, disappeared without leaving a single leaf vein or a speck of ash. It simply ceased to exist.
It was there, and then it was not.
A single breath before, a sword had clearly been in that spot; a single breath later, it had been erased from the world.
The very evidence that the sword had been there was erased along with it.
Kim Rae-won's hand was now gripping empty air.
"Interesting, very interesting. You've certainly brought an interesting move, you have."
Kim Rae-won's empty hand clenched lightly once.
There was nothing to grip.
His fingers simply wrapped around the air.
Yet, the moment his fingers closed, a sword appeared in his hand.
What had not existed a moment ago now 'existed'.
There was no time in between.
There was no stance of drawing a sword, no sound of cutting the air, no place where a scabbard should have been.
Yeop Bihwa's pupils trembled.
The light turned strange for a moment.
Even though the morning sun was descending, no sunlight rested on that sword.
It wasn't that it landed and slid off.
The moment it touched, it disappeared.
It wasn't that the blade didn't reflect the light; the sword ate the light.
The sword was dark, and dark, and darker still.
A material never seen before.
No iron from any mine in the entire Murim was cloaked in such darkness.
Like adding pitch blackness to something already pitch black…
A line of weight from the sword pressed down on the air.
It was a completely different weight from the green sword woven from leaves.
The air in the training ground sank a layer, centering on the sword.
Yeop Bihwa heard a silent pressure drop from the spot where the sword had appeared.
And that sword was held upright toward the space where Yeop Bihwa's One Point Whittling Aura still held, unraveled—toward the edge of that 'Nothingness'.
The jet-black sword, held upright towards the edge of the 'Nothingness', began to spin.
It wasn't his hand that turned it.
Kim Rae-won's wrist was still in the pose of gripping the hilt, and his elbow and shoulder remained still.
The sword itself was spinning.
The hilt and blade, acting as a single axis, began to rotate on their own within his palm.
At first, she could see it.
The flat of the blade was visible for a moment, and the next moment, the thin line of the cutting edge was visible.
Then the flat side again, then the thin line again.
Each time the sword completed a full rotation, it presented a different face to Yeop Bihwa's eyes.
She could see it.
She could still see it.
She could not see it.
At some point, the rotation surpassed the speed her eyes could follow.
The flat side and the thin line chased each other, chased each other, and finally swallowed one another.
The shape of the sword blade dissolved.
The dissolved shape spread into the air as an afterimage.
The afterimages overlapped, and a single mass began to take shape in the air.
What had been a sword now left a single shape in the air.
A long, vertical, gray pillar that spanned from top to bottom the length of the sword, and extended beyond its width.
That gray pillar stood embedded in Kim Rae-won's hand.
Kim Rae-won did not move. He did not raise the sword, nor did he lift his arm, nor did he shift his feet.
He was simply holding what was in his hand.
But what extended up from his hand had already become something other than a sword.
In some ways, it looked similar to her own One Point Whittling Aura…
That thought had not even finished forming in Yeop Bihwa's mind.
The 'Nothingness' gathered at the tip of the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle touched the edge of the gray pillar.
It was drawn in.
Her One Point Whittling Aura was not reflected, nor was it deflected or neutralized.
The single point that touched the surface of the pillar was sucked into the pillar's interior.
The single move she had forged through a lifetime of training was simply swallowed by something much larger.
A brief vibration.
That vibration traveled back up Yeop Bihwa's hilt.
It was the sensation of the sword she had unleashed returning to her own hand.
However, nowhere in that sensation was there any trace of the 'Nothingness' she had just released.
Hwiiiiryuuuuruuuu—.
The rotation of the gray pillar… stopped.
The afterimage dissipated, and the dissolved shape found its place again.
The flat side and the thin line separated once more.
The vertically long pillar standing in the air disappeared, and in its place stood the original jet-black sword.
There was not a single mark on the blade.
No cut marks, no scrapes, not even a sign that something had touched it.
As if nothing had happened at all.
The culmination of the Sword Principle Yeop Bihwa had polished her entire life was gone without a trace.
"...Hah, hah."
It was then.
A light spread from Kim Rae-won, who stood with his sword lowered.
The air itself brightened as if something had descended from the heavens.
The texture of the surrounding air shifted towards the light with a rush, so Yeop Bihwa, panting, didn't even need to raise her head.
That light spread towards Yeop Bihwa.
Swaaaaaaaah-.
The light soon reached the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle.
The moment it touched, Yeop Bihwa felt the energy that should have been coating her sword dissipate.
Even the faint remnants of Sword Aura on the sword were swept away by the light.
It wasn't a feeling of being attacked, but of something that was there being cleared away.
The next thing, naturally…
The light touched Yeop Bihwa's body.
The light seeped into her empty Inner Core Root, which had been depleted from unleashing the One Point Whittling Aura.
It was not an infiltration.
It wasn't breaking through.
Like an empty vessel being filled with water, she had the illusion that a space that should be filled was being filled.
It was warm.
It was an attack, yet it was warm.
It touched her, but it didn't hurt.
It seeped in, but she couldn't push it out.
'...What is this?'
Yeop Bihwa's breath caught in her throat.
It was not an attack, nor was it a normal infiltration of martial arts.
'It's not a Sword Principle either.'
Before long, the light that had assaulted her body disappeared into her.
It wasn't that the light outside diminished, but the light that had entered her dispersed from within.
It was at that moment.
Behind Kim Rae-won, over his shoulder, the light formed a great, round circle.
A circular pattern of light spreading through the morning dust, looking like the sun, yet not the sun.
A single-layered halo that seemed to support Kim Rae-won's head and shoulders from behind.
It wasn't just Yeop Bihwa.
Everyone in the training ground witnessed it clearly.
But the sphere of light vanished even faster than it had appeared, like a mirage.
In its place, there was only sunlight and dust.
'The light....'
Yeop Bihwa could not put a name to what that light was.
All that remained in the center of her chest was the sensation that just a moment ago, something round had been there.