Sword Demon (2)

A black flash flew in.

Lee Dojin felt the clear malice contained in that black sword path.

What could it be?

The identity of the numerous fears and angers permeating this sword path.

The Reverse Heaven Divine Technique boiled in his dantian.

The blood throughout his entire body pulsed rapidly.

It’s an apology to Mistilteinn, but he had never once felt the need for advice during battle.

So even when he heard the advice notification that it couldn’t calculate the attack trajectory, he didn’t care at all.

The only thing he believed in was the time he put into martial arts.

The eye for seeing sword paths learned from Sword Emperor Dan Cheonwoo.

The instinctive fighting style learned from Fist King Hwangbo Seryeong.

The qi sense awakened by the hands of his blind swordsman classmate Ryu Jia.

And the sword he had swung over ten thousand times. That time.

Lee Dojin swung his right arm holding the wooden sword to his neck at a right angle.

It was a defensive posture.

Clang!

The clear black flash stopped abruptly just before slicing Lee Dojin’s neck.

A change appeared in Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha’s eyes.

He hadn’t intended to kill. Because it was a person brought by a subordinate he cherished.

He had only intended to show a brush with death.

But the sword stopped before he voluntarily stopped his sword path.

Jung Yong-ha glanced at Sword Empress Yoo Seol-ah.

Her face was stiff as if tense, but she didn’t seem to intend to intervene.

She was just holding her sword to intervene in case of an unexpected situation.

‘She was confident that this guy would withstand my attack.’

Jung Yong-ha slightly raised the corner of his wrinkled mouth.

It was because of the sharp aura flowing from Student Lee Dojin’s body.

Colorless sword energy flowed on the wooden sword.

Like flames.

Whoosh!

And those colorless flames bloomed, overlapping countless times.

The colorless began to take on color.

The color of radiance.

The 3-star Reverse Heaven Divine Technique resonated throughout his entire body.

Thwack!

Lee Dojin stepped on the ground.

Black waves filled the forest.

Something began to wedge into those waves.

A single streak of light bored in.

Reverse Heaven Sword First Form

Soul Pursuit

The Sword Demon faced the white light shooting out like a pillar.

Black light concentrated on Jung Yong-ha’s longsword.

A black crescent moon bloomed on the blade of the longsword.

Like a single brush stroke drawn on white paper.

Two swords forming the extremes of light and darkness flashed their blades towards each other.

The pillar of radiance began to shatter helplessly.

Kwang!

The swords of the two swordsmen with their feet planted on the ground met.

Kigigik!

The sound of the two sword energies colliding rang out chillingly.

Dust drew concentric circles.

The superiority of martial arts.

Lee Dojin acknowledged that Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha was a strong person several steps above him.

That’s why there could be no hesitation in his movements.

White heat rose throughout Lee Dojin’s entire body.

Thud!

He stepped hard on the ground to create distance backwards.

And then he stepped on the ground once more while utilizing his divine technique to the extreme.

White flames were still burning in Lee Dojin’s right hand.

His right hand moved at high speed.

The white light, in which even the original form of the wooden sword couldn’t be recognized, emitted dozens of light streams.

Lee Dojin felt his entire body screaming. However, if not to this extent, he couldn’t reach.

Even to the waist of that monster called the Sword Demon.

An ultra-high-speed horizontal slash.

Reverse Heaven Sword Second Form

Waning Moon

The atmosphere distorted.

The resistance of the atmosphere. The resistance of the air. It was the light of Reverse Heaven that went against everything in creation.

An extreme killing sword solely to cut the opponent’s lifeline.

Waning Moon sliced through space.

The atmosphere in that space was annihilated.

Rumble-

Two trees behind Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha tilted, cut in half.

Two giant trees were completely cut off.

The two trees fell to the ground.

The cut surfaces formed a perfect horizontal line without an inch of error.

A faint earthquake shook the forest.

Flap flap flap-

The birds that had been motionless, pressed down by the Sword Demon’s killing intent, finally came to their senses and all moved from the forest at once.

Flapping their wings filled with fear.

Silence fell.

Lee Dojin let out a hollow laugh. Though the area around Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha had become a wasteland,

The Sword Demon himself only had a single wound on his left arm.

A quite deep sword wound, enough for blood to drip.

However, the Sword Demon didn’t mind and cauterized the wound by heating the qi concentrated on his index finger.

Black energy currents continued to shimmer on Jung Yong-ha’s body.

Sword.

Lee Dojin felt that the person called the Sword Demon himself was like a single sword.

Waning Moon had failed to cut that sword.

“More.”

Jung Yong-ha’s hoarse voice dug into his ears.

“You must go further. To climb the tower.”

The old monster’s voice continued.

“If your growth stops here, you can never reach the 21st floor. Your current level is just about the 16th floor.”

A cold evaluation followed.

“I lost everything. About 30 subordinates who called me commander died without even leaving corpses.”

What followed was anger at something.

“I still see them. They always ripple in my mind even when I’m stuck in that capsule.”

Step-

It was a heavy footstep.

“They don’t scream.”

He laughed.

In Jung Yong-ha’s mind, the illusory subordinates materialized in his vision all smiled.

Not a vulgar sneer.

But a smile of relief that at least you, at least the commander survived.

A smile as comrades sincerely happy for their comrade’s survival.

“They keep smiling like that. About 30 of them staring at me. I see the illusions behind you even now.”

Lee Dojin looked behind.

There was nothing.

“It must be an illusion created by my weakness. I know. They weren’t the type of guys to be sentimental enough to become ghosts after dying.”

Like all those invited to the tower,

They were either filled with desire for strength or full of heroism.

They were all overflowing with self-consciousness.

Those warriors still smiling and faintly grinning at him now.

“You shouldn’t become like me. Junior.”

The old man whose life was tied to the tower,

Spoke thus to the very young blood-clot junior who would soon have to climb that tower.

Lee Dojin vaguely seemed to understand what the fear and anger contained in the Sword Demon’s sword path stemmed from.

“Show me everything.”

Crack!

The air screamed and expanded.

Pushed by the terrible killing intent starting from the Sword Demon’s toes.

The black killing intent raised heat haze. About a hundred strands of heat haze.

And those black stems began to take form.

The form of swords.

Formless swords.

About a hundred black swords ascended behind the Sword Demon’s back.

The realm of the infinite where one can change the form of qi according to will.

And about a hundred black swords created by that power were flashing their blades towards a single man.

The world unfolding from the Sword Demon’s dantian tinged Lee Dojin’s spine with chills.

Despite the killing intent binding his body, and seeing the hundred swords floating in the air,

Lee Dojin took a step forward.

“It’s an incomplete sword.”

Incomplete.

A sword not yet completed.

Lee Dojin decided to bring out a form that was not yet fully completed.

The Sword Demon smiled.

Because it was the words of a swordsman trying to surpass his limits.

The radiance that had scattered after unleashing Waning Moon blooms again on the wooden sword.

Even brighter.

The shape of the wooden sword dulls, and only a white sword remains in the world.

White light flashed.

Lee Dojin’s body rushed forward.

The muscles throughout his entire body screamed.

Most of the 3-star inner power in his dantian was depleted.

The Sword Demon narrowed his brow.

The sword path itself looked identical to the first form, Soul Pursuit.

But what came after was different. At the end of the thrust white pillar,

About a hundred light streams bloomed in the shape of swords.

Flowers of swords.

The petals were blades.

Lee Dojin’s right arm, gripping the wooden sword as if to crush it, moved endlessly.

Reverse Heaven Sword Third Form

Hundred Eight Sword Thunders

One hundred and eight sword strikes.

Those sword strikes faced the black swords falling like heavy rain.

There was not a single wasted move.

Every single strike contained the same wholehearted effort as Soul Pursuit and Waning Moon.

The thrusts were Soul Pursuit.

The slashes were Waning Moon.

The formless swords born from killing intent began to shatter.

Countless white lights drove away the ascended darkness.

The killing intent permeating the forest completely evaporated.

Blood vessels had burst and were flowing in various places on Lee Dojin’s right arm.

Faint sword marks left by the black swords remained all over his body. He was literally covered in blood.

But he didn’t stop his sword path.

Though all hundred swords had disappeared,

The one sword that had created those swords, Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha, was still standing perfectly fine.

He couldn’t even feel the pain filling his entire body.

He had entered a state of no-self.

The wooden sword advanced in a straight line, scattering white light.

A single longsword met the sword path of white light.

Clang!

And the white light scattered.

Sprinkling light like glass fragments.

Lee Dojin knelt on his right knee while holding the wooden sword.

He tried to stand up again but his body wouldn’t listen.

“……”

Numbness. His body didn’t feel like his own.

Only then did he realize.

That his entire body had already been broken.

The Sword Demon’s body wasn’t normal either.

Blood was flowing on Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha’s upper body.

A deeply gouged diagonal wound from his left shoulder to his right waist.

It was clearly a serious injury.

But the Sword Demon could still move perfectly fine.

He was in a position where he could behead Lee Dojin if he wanted to.

The victor was decided.

Lee Dojin barely opened his mouth.

“I have lost.”

It was Lee Dojin’s defeat, unable to stand up.

The Sword Demon’s laughter spread through the forest.

“Yes, you lost. However, 10 years ago. If you had been by my side 10 years ago.”

He could still see them.

The ghosts of the tower.

The dear comrades visible only to his eyes.

“I might have been looking at them breathing.”

The Sword Demon acknowledged Lee Dojin as a strong person.

While facing the thirty gazes still smiling.

“I’ll teach you my sword. It will only add killing intent to your excellent swordsmanship, but what can we do? That’s what the tower is like.”

He acknowledged Lee Dojin as his successor.

Sword Demon Jung Yong-ha sheathed his longsword at his waist. Only then did the ghosts scatter.

They would appear again soon anyway.

“In 2-3 years, there won’t be many swordsmen stronger than you in this land. By then, I’ll be dead anyway.”

Jung Yong-ha supported Lee Dojin.

“Let’s treat this guy first. Seol-ah.”

“Yes, elder!”

Sword Empress Yoo Seol-ah quickly ran over. And she piggybacked Lee Dojin.

“You’re not as heavy as I thought, Student Dojin.”

“…I’m sorry.”

The Sword Demon laughed while clicking his tongue.