"...Haa."
A single breath wasn't enough.
"Haa, haa."
Yeop Bihwa continued to steady her breathing, her hand still gripping the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle tightly.
The place where her Sword Aura should have been was, of course, empty.
The remnants of the light from just a moment ago shimmered in that empty space.
Yeop Bihwa's eyes cautiously lifted.
Kim Rae-won remained in the same stance, holding his jet-black sword.
Beyond him, everyone who had crowded near the main gate was frozen.
Jin Hagyeong had yet to lower his outstretched arms, and the Vast Heaven warriors lined up behind him were the same.
The members of the Hero's Sect gathered inside, all the way to the training ground beyond the wall—not a single person was moving.
Faces that had inhaled but couldn't seem to exhale were just standing there, surrounding both sides of the main gate in several layers.
Her eyes returned to Kim Rae-won.
Beyond his shoulder, where the sphere of light had been, the morning sun was already shining down, and in that sunlight, only a few specks of dust floated.
'Was it an illusion?'
To dismiss it as such, the sensation in the center of her chest, like a remnant of that light, was too vivid.
Her eyes lowered.
It was a gaze that Yeop Bihwa herself did not realize where it was directed.
It seemed she had meant to look at her chest, or perhaps the ground.
But there was a place where her gaze stopped.
Her own hand.
The hand gripping the hilt of the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle.
The hand that had walked with her throughout her entire life.
Her fingers were trembling.
It wasn't a large tremor.
Her five fingers were just shaking minutely and individually on the leather-wrapped hilt.
Even when she strained her fingers to stop the trembling, it did not cease.
This time, she squeezed again with enough force to break the hilt.
Yet the trembling continued beneath that grip, as if a thin membrane was wedged between her hand and the hilt.
It was not something that could be suppressed with strength.
In her entire life, they had never trembled like this...
A drop of sweat trickled down from her forehead.
But the sensation of that single drop passing over her body had never felt so alien.
The tip of her sword was lowering.
It wasn't her lowering it.
Her wrist was still, her elbow and shoulder were still.
The sword, on its own, was slowly tilting downwards.
Even though she put strength into the hand gripping the hilt, the sword continued to descend.
The tip of the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle finally pointed toward the ground.
Her head remained lifted.
Her chin was still, and her gaze was fixed forward.
But the sword had bowed first.
In the hierarchy of a swordsman, that was a matter heavier than bowing one's head... She had lost.
A complete and utter defeat.
She didn't know what it was, but that man, in terms of enlightenment as a swordsman, was someone who had already surpassed several walls she could never cross.
"...You are."
Though she felt she had to say something, her half-opened mouth neither closed nor opened further, frozen in place.
A gust of wind swept past the front gate.
A clump of dirt fell from a roof tile on the wall.
From somewhere far in the sky, a bird chirped briefly and flew past.
Even in that interval, not a single person moved.
Then, Kim Rae-won's head moved toward the sky.
What he was looking at, where in the sky his gaze was fixed, Yeop Bihwa could not tell.
That was all.
Without much change in his expression, his head returned to a level position.
Then, with a faint smile, he said.
"Thanks."
"Thanks... for what?"
"Thanks to you, I broke through a small wall."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. I hope the same was true for you."
"..."
Yeop Bihwa's gaze finally turned toward herself.
The chest area of her martial robes was split open in a long line.
When she had pushed the Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle all the way up, in that one moment when the condensation of the One Point Whittling Aura extended beyond the sword, the front of her robes must have been grazed by the sword's trajectory.
A single thin layer of her undergarment was exposed directly to the outside air.
Her hand slowly swept over the spot once.
She did not bother to fix it.
Kim Rae-won lowered his sword lightly.
"Shall we take a walk then?"
It was a tone more like he was dropping the words somewhere beside him rather than addressing Yeop Bihwa.
"...Where to?"
Yeop Bihwa's voice leaked out faintly.
Kim Rae-won shrugged his shoulders once.
"Anywhere."
That sentence felt familiar somewhere.
A point that had long resided somewhere inside her was gently prodded.
Kim Rae-won began to walk first.
A step, and then another, toward the outside of the Hero's Sect's main gate.
It was an unremarkable stride and an unremarkable speed.
However, he did not turn to call Yeop Bihwa or look back to see if she was following.
Yeop Bihwa began to walk after him, a step behind.
A gap of two or three steps.
The man's stride was larger than Yeop Bihwa's, and the weight of his body was different, yet their walking speed was strangely the same.
It was a speed where it was impossible to tell who was matching whom, or perhaps neither was matching the other.
Yeop Bihwa turned her head once.
The pillars of the Hero's Sect were there.
The members lined up inside the main gate, Jin Hagyeong, and the warriors of Vast Heaven.
Dozens of pairs of eyes were watching her back in silence.
Her gaze did not linger on any of those eyes.
It was more like she had swept over the scenery once.
She faced forward again.
The wind blew once more.
A leaf fell from a tree in front of the gate and lightly settled on Yeop Bihwa's shoulder.
It had no connection to the leaves that had just been woven into a green sword and then erased from the world; just a single leaf that had fallen from some random tree of this season.
She did not brush the leaf off.
The backs of the two people slowly grew distant outside the main gate.
● ● ●
Hwiiiiiiiiiiii—
From some distant direction, a strange gust of wind reached this mountain path.
It was less a wind and more like the grain of the wind had curved once toward the south before returning to its place.
A horse standing at the rear of the group snorted briefly, and a few blades of grass by the road were swept southward once before standing straight again.
And a faint trace of energy carried on the tail of that wind swept over the bodies of the forty-odd shadows.
The old man, Unseok, an elder of the Sword Forest of the Vast Heaven Infinite Sword Sect, stopped walking.
He took one step but did not take a second.
The middle-aged man following beside him, the First Corps Leader of the Outer Hall, Chang Munjin, stopped as well.
While the group behind them stopped one by one following the halt in front, Unseok was still staring at a point in the empty southern sky.
"How odd."
The voice barely came out.
Chang Munjin dared not ask and waited.
Unseok placed a hand on his left chest.
It was a spot only those who have handled a sword for a long time possess.
A single grain had brushed past that spot.
It was too faint to be a tremor, too thin to be a vibration.
But it was definitely there.
Something had definitely passed by.
It was the Qi of a sword, or the grain of a sword.
"Did you feel it?"
"Yes."
Munjin had also just felt something brush past a Qi vein in his body.
The sensation of a massive concentration exploding from afar, sucking in the surrounding Qi once before releasing it and passing by.
And after that, there was another thread of a sword's grain that flowed.
Unseok's hand could not leave his chest.
"It feels like the Qi of an Immortal... What do you think?"
Chang Munjin looked back at Unseok.
"I hate to admit it, but from what I see... there seems to be no other possibility."
Neither of the two men continued speaking.
The southern horizon remained empty, and the grain that had just brushed past had already faded into the air.
But the hands of the two men gripping their swords clenched and unclenched once, each in their own way.
It was quite some time later that the group began to move south again.
However, right after they started moving again, Unseok's stride was much faster than before.
● ● ●
Swiiiiiiiiish—
A gust of air rushing from the west crossed the grassy field on the ridge and flowed eastward.
A few dewdrops fell in a line, and the tips of the grass blades all bowed to the east before standing straight again.
The morning sun was thinly slicing through the edge of the mountain ridge.
Beyond the ridge, three shadows were lying prostrate.
"Did... everyone feel that just now?"
Myo Jinheo, who was holding a folded fan to his chin, asked without turning his head.
Yan Bilyeong, who had lowered her body even further a hand's breadth from his side, spoke first.
"Felt it. But isn't that to the west? The opposite of our reconnaissance direction, right?"
"Since what just passed came from the west, that's how it is."
Myo Jinheo pulled out his fan and opened it about half a span.
It was a habit of his when reading the grain of the air.
But this time, it stopped at half a span.
The ribs of the not-fully-opened fan trembled faintly along Myo Jinheo's left fingers.
"...What is this?"
The end of Myo Jinheo's words, holding the fan, was unsettled, unlike usual.
Dongmun Mutoe, who had been lying low and staring east, finally turned his head this way.
One of his eyebrows was slightly raised.
"It's the west, alright. The distance is... Ah? I think this came from where the Hero's Sect is?"
Dongmun Mutoe muttered as if to himself and placed a palm on the ground.
It was the posture for reading the vibrations rising from the earth.
But he soon removed his hand.
"It wasn't carried by the ground. Only through the air. This is... interesting."
Even while using the word 'interesting,' Dongmun Mutoe's tone was not its usual curious one.
The lightness at the end of his sentence was thinner than usual.
"Hey, hey, you said the Hero's Sect? Is the word 'interesting' appropriate in this situation, huh?"
Yan Bilyeong shot back in a low voice.
She, too, had turned to look west.
Beyond the ridge, a thin layer of gray mist was spread, but nothing was visible.
"Two, no, three strange Qis?"
Myo Jinheo said as he finished opening his fan.
It was the signal of his shift from observation to judgment.
"Two are sword grains. And they're not the conventional grains we know of... but the other thread that came along with them is of a form I can't even begin to guess."
Dongmun Mutoe let out a low whistle.
"It's that man again, isn't it?"
"Huh?"
Yan Bilyeong turned halfway.
Dongmun Mutoe was still staring west.
"I'm talking about the Hero's Sect Leader. I don't know about the first two sword grains, but that Qi that came after, that one. A grain of a kind we've never experienced before just poured down from the sky like that. Who else could it be but the Hero's Sect Leader?"
"...Ah, it's that fellow again?"
Yan Bilyeong muttered in a low, disbelieving tone.
"He's human, right...?"
While she chuckled, somewhat hollowly, Myo Jinheo's fan remained still in the air.
"But say. Isn't our original business in the east?"
At that, Yan Bilyeong immediately corrected her posture.
Myo Jinheo's fan also opened on its own once before closing again.
With Dongmun Mutoe joining in, the gazes of the three simultaneously fell below the eastern ridge.
And there they froze.
The 'spectacle' they had been observing until just a moment ago had become far more serious.
About three li ahead, below a distant ocher hill, the marching formation arranged in rows had already begun to swell in size while the three had briefly turned their attention to the west.
"Are they... really the Dark Rakshasa Way?"
Myo Jinheo's voice lowered.
The spreading of his fan had also completely stopped.
"Probably."
Yan Bilyeong's reply was also quiet.
Her eyes were tracing the far end of the eastern horizon.
Behind the enemy's vanguard, a long line of low dust was rising.
The width of the dust cloud was several times wider than that of the vanguard in front.
"The main force... perhaps?"
There was almost no time lag.
The vanguard and the main force were practically moving south as a single mass, and that mass was now slowly pushing toward the River Capital.
"Just how many of them have come?"
Dongmun Mutoe muttered without taking his eyes off that direction.
His fingers unconsciously began to tap on his knee.
"Two hundred? No, looking over there, it seems to be over five hundred? Not quite eight hundred... No. Crazy!"
It was his habit when drawing up a formation.
"There are a hell of a lot more in the rear? At least... fifteen hundred!"
It meant it could be over two thousand.
But the real reason the three Trigram Masters' faces hardened was not simply due to the numbers.
A mass of Qi was embedded in the center of the main force.
It felt as if the weight of that single mass would exceed the combined weight of all the remaining troops; Qis of an entirely different stratum were being detected.
Myo Jinheo folded his fan.
"That... is."
It was the motion Myo Jinheo always showed when moving from observation to judgment.
But this time, even after judging, his voice couldn't come out.
Instead.
"That's not on the level of the Eight Rakshasas, is it?"
Yan Bilyeong continued.
Her tone had completely lost its usual sharpness.
"Is it the Upper Four Rakshasas...? No, it seems to be beyond that, too?"
"No, the Upper Four Rakshasas are definitely there. I don't know how many, but it's not just one. But there's more. Beyond the Upper Four Rakshasas, damn it."
Even Dongmun Mutoe spoke, stripped of his usual academic playfulness.
Indeed, as he said, deeper than the Upper Four Rakshasas, at the very back, was a separate Qi that he could not possibly measure.
A level that stood a step... no, several steps above the Qi of the Upper Four Rakshasas.
Dongmun Mutoe immediately took out a Thousand-Li Mirror from his pouch and checked the flag.
A single crimson banner erected at the far end of the main force.
"What does it say?"
"...Blood."
"Blood?"
Blood.
Myo Jinheo's folded fan made a sharp 'tak' sound in his hand.
"The Blood Rakshasa...?!"
The Left Guardian.
The position directly below the 17th leader of the Dark Rakshasa Way, the Dark Rakshasa Great Venerate.
A man who commanded all twelve Rakshasas and sat in a position where the direction of thousands of Rakshasa monks' blades changed with his single word.
Across all seven great demonic sects, it was hard to name more than three who were of the same stature as him.
In the past decade or so, the Left Guardian had never personally moved outside of Nirvanic Extinction Mountain.
Such a person had come here, to the mere backwater River Capital, and on an expedition accompanied by several of the Upper Four Rakshasas at that.
A Qi that suppressed the air for dozens of zhang in all directions just by appearing.
The air around that single person was so completely different from the air of the other troops that, even to the senses of the three Trigram Masters, the main force appeared to be divided into two layers.
One layer woven from the Qi of the troops, and another layer shouldered by the Left Guardian at its center.
In the days that had passed since the annihilation of the Rakshasa Monk Corps.
The three members of the reconnaissance team were now seeing with their own eyes the decision Nirvanic Extinction Mountain had made during those ten days.
The army of nearly two thousand was the sheer volume.
The several Upper Four Rakshasas were the variable.
And...
The Blood Rakshasa himself was the final answer to how Nirvanic Extinction Mountain had defined the Hero's Sect.
A Calamity.
The Dark Rakshasa Way had decided to neatly deal with this Calamity as their own.