Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 221 - Mixed Blood (1)
Chapter 221 – Mixed Blood (1)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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“Would the picture of an Embroidered Uniform Guard Thousand-Household Commander killing all his subordinates and the attendants and fleeing be better? Or should I peel off your face skins and make use of them instead?”
-Flinch!
At that casually delivered proposal dripping with chilling malice, the blue eyes inside the mask wavered.
Who in the world was this man?
Who was he, to attack them and speak such threats?
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard’s mind grew tangled, and he hesitated over what to do.
Now that his back had been taken, there was a high chance he would be dealt with before he could even strike the vital points.
It was at that moment.
-Creeeak!
“Is something happening outside?”
The carriage door opened, and Song-ah, the artisan’s daughter, appeared.
Seeing Mok Gyeong-un, his face covered, standing behind the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard, Song-ah stared in confusion and said,
“W-who?”
“Hmm. I was wondering who you were talking with, and it turns out it was a young lady. Judging by your clothes and your scent, you do not seem to be one of the Embroidered Uniform Guard gentlemen, but rather connected to the Hongbong Meat slaughterhouse… Ah! There it is.”
Mok Gyeong-un spotted the leather pouch inside the opened carriage.
At that very moment, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard rapidly struck his own key points.
-Tatatak!
Realizing from the sound alone that the other had aimed for the instant he turned his head, Mok Gyeong-un moved to chop the back of his neck.
It was then.
-Srrk!
Mok Gyeong-un’s hand sliced through empty air.
The faint wind felt at the tips of his fingers.
‘!?’
And with that, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard vanished.
Then, before long, a presence was felt behind him.
-Suk!
And then came the sharp edge at his neck.
Feeling that sharpness, Mok Gyeong-un said,
“…….Your movement skill is extremely fast.”
He was sincere.
Ever since Great Young Master Na Yul-ryang, this was the first time someone had moved faster than him by means of movement skill.
At those words from Mok Gyeong-un, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard, who had already seized the rear position, pressed the blade closer to his neck and said,
“You. What is your identity?”
“I do not really have any special identity.”
“You seem to be in the mood for wordplay. Do you want to die like this?”
-Press!
The Embroidered Uniform Guard pressed the blade against Mok Gyeong-un’s neck.
No matter how sharp an edge was, one had to draw it in order to cut.
So his flesh was only being pressed by the blade.
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard said to Mok Gyeong-un in a murderous voice,
“If I cut like this, your body and head will part. So you would do well to speak properly.”
“You say that, and it really is frightening.”
Mok Gyeong-un shrugged and spoke as if it were nothing.
At Mok Gyeong-un’s calm attitude, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard frowned.
Even in a situation where his life was being threatened, he showed no fear at all.
What in the world was this bastard?
‘Even after releasing the qi gates, the energy I feel is only the extreme of Peak Realm.’
Naturally, that level of ability was enough to subdue four Hundred-Household Commanders of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the attendants.
But the oppressive pressure he had felt from behind just before this had gone beyond that.
Had he mistaken it?
‘Did I act rashly for nothing?’
Because of that sense of strangeness, he had opened the qi gates he had sealed.
But if the opponent was merely at the extreme of Peak Realm, he had not really needed to reveal his hidden strength.
Then Song-ah’s voice was heard.
“Could it be that the Manor Master sent you?”
“The Manor Master?”
At those words from her, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard suddenly recalled what Mok Gyeong-un had said.
[You do not seem to be one of the Embroidered Uniform Guard gentlemen, but rather connected to the Hongbong Meat slaughterhouse… Ah! There it is.]
He had said that upon seeing the leather pouch inside the carriage.
If so, then as she said, he might have been sent by the Manor Master of Hongbong Meat.
If it was that man, who was famous as the hidden artisan of human skin masks, then he would certainly have ties to skilled murim men.
At that, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard pressed the blade even harder and said,
-Press!
“Is it true that Hongbong Meat sent you?”
To that question, Mok Gyeong-un answered,
“Now that I have found the leather pouch as well, the latter option does not seem bad.”
“What?”
“Peeling off your face skin and making use of it seems like it might not be bad either.”
“What are you saying ri…”
-Whip!
At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un moved his neck in the direction opposite the blade that had been touching it.
At the same time, he quickly caught hold of the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s blade.
-Pak!
‘This bastard!’
The Embroidered Uniform Guard tried to wrench the blade from Mok Gyeong-un’s hand.
However,
-Chaengang!
Before he could even pull it free, the blade held in Mok Gyeong-un’s hand broke in half.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard could not help but be inwardly shocked.
It was not astral qi, but his sword was still considered a precious sword, and he had even loaded sharp force into it, so it could not be broken by ordinary strength.
For it to be broken by sheer power to that degree meant,
‘So that strange feeling really was…’
-Srrk!
At that moment Mok Gyeong-un’s figure blurred, and immediately his kick came flying toward the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s jaw.
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard at once put force into the Yongquan points in both feet and kicked off the ground.
-Paak!
Mok Gyeong-un’s foot cut through empty air.
Again, wind brushed through the place it had only just missed, and the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard vanished.
He was the possessor of astonishingly fast movement skill.
At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un’s pupils moved rapidly from side to side.
Then,
-Srrk!
Mok Gyeong-un too vanished.
He had unfolded Bright Manifest Water-Crossing Step, a movement art of ultra-high-speed displacement.
The moment he unfolded Bright Manifest Water-Crossing Step, he saw that the vanished masked Embroidered Uniform Guard was moving left and right, trying to take his rear position.
But Mok Gyeong-un was not the only one who saw it.
‘This fellow?’
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard had never seen anyone, apart from his master, enter the same domain as himself when using movement skill.
It was the phenomenon in which, at ultra-high-speed movement, one’s axis misaligned from that of other people.
It was like the phenomenon where, while riding a horse, if one looked to the side, everything appeared still.
And yet someone other than himself had stepped into that domain.
‘How?’
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard could not hide his astonishment.
In that very instant, Mok Gyeong-un pursued him and stabbed toward his chest with sword-finger force.
The masked Embroidered Uniform Guard twisted his body to the side and at the same time unfolded a fist technique toward Mok Gyeong-un’s face.
‘Terrain Fist Category, sixth move, Rock-Shattering Explosive Fist.’
From the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s fist arose a fist force.
Since both of them were moving at high speed and Mok Gyeong-un was stabbing with sword-finger force, there was no way to evade.
So Mok Gyeong-un blocked the fist force aimed at his face with his left hand.
-Paaang!
However,
‘Rock-Shattering Explosive Fist does not end there.’
It was a fist move in which five bursts of fist force came one after another and could shatter even rock.
At the series of fist blows that seemed ready to pierce through his palm, Mok Gyeong-un’s figure was driven backward.
-Paaang! Paaang! Paaang!
-Chwarrrrr!
-Paaang!
And at the fourth fist blast, Mok Gyeong-un’s hand flew upward.
At once, as though he had been waiting for that, the Embroidered Uniform Guard launched the final fist blast toward Mok Gyeong-un’s jaw.
-Peok!
Mok Gyeong-un’s head snapped upward as he was struck in the jaw.
At that instant, the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard drew both hands back to his waist and then fired them like lightning toward Mok Gyeong-un’s chest.
‘Cloud-Sending Palm Category, fourth move, Cloud Division Two Palms!’
-Paaaaang!
Ripples spread through the cloth over his chest, and Mok Gyeong-un’s figure, having taken the twin palm strike, was flung backward.
But the place he was flung toward was,
‘Damn it!’
the place where the carriage stood.
There stood Song-ah, the real daughter of the artisan of Hongbong Meat.
At that moment, Song-ah, the real artisan’s daughter of Hongbong Meat, who had been shoved over by the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard, widened her eyes.
That was because of the face revealed when the mask cracked apart.
It was only half, but starting from the blue eyes, the high nose, and that exotic face, it was the sort of face anyone would say was closer to that of a Westerner than a man of the Central Plains.
“Sir….”
Without realizing it, she called out to the masked Embroidered Uniform Guard, no, to the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard.
At that, the man, covering his own face with his hand, rebuked her.
“Do not look!”
At that instant, she lowered her head without even realizing it.
Even if he had only shouted, she would have been startled, but when a master of that level shouted with murderous aura mixed in, as an ordinary woman she could not help but feel her heart jolt.
-Grit!
Yet even at her reaction, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard became even more tense.
He had always been someone who was extremely wary of his face being exposed.
[Blue eyes?]
[Why is a bastard who should be in the Western Regions here?]
[Damn foreign bastard!]
Those were the words he had heard from before he could even take his first steps.
The countless acts of discrimination he had suffered merely for being different had tormented the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard and made him psychologically withdrawn.
If he had not met his master, his life might have twisted into the very worst shape.
But even now he still did not want to show his face to anyone.
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard, still covering the exposed part of his face with his hand, glared at Mok Gyeong-un, the one who had shattered his mask like this.
But then,
“Why are you so embarrassed?”
“What?”
“There is nothing wrong with your face, so why are you hiding it like that?”
At those words, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard’s expression distorted fearfully.
Was this bastard making fun of him now?
His face had already been exposed and he was sensitive enough as it was, so his blood surged in reverse.
‘You, at least!’
-Papak!
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard kicked off the ground twice.
With that, his figure scattered like an afterimage and split in two, and the two shapes rushed at Mok Gyeong-un simultaneously.
The two divided figures unfolded moves at the same time.
‘Cloud-Sending Palm Category, sixth move, Secret Distant Swift Soft!’
‘Terrain Fist Category, fourth move, Easily Shattering Grip Form!’
The left-side figure unfolded a palm move that came softly at a bizarre angle that made its distance hard to gauge, while the right-side figure unfolded an overbearing fist move filled with weight.
‘A soft palm and a heavy fist?’
-Papak!
At that, Mok Gyeong-un too stamped the ground twice.
Then, just like the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard, his figure split into two together with an afterimage.
Seeing that, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard’s eyes sharpened.
‘It is certain.’
He found it absurd.
He had still retained a trace of doubt, but this bastard was unfolding the same movement method as himself.
How in the world could such a thing be possible?
To begin with, the movement method of a movement skill was not something one could imitate simply by watching.
One had to know the exact qi-circulation method and mnemonic formulas to perform it.
But that was not what mattered right now.
‘I must stay calm.’
Even if this bastard had only imitated his movement skill superficially, he judged that he could not possibly have grasped its full depth.
Then the two divided figures of the two men collided.
-Papapapapak!
Their afterimages tangled together, and a bizarre form of battle unfolded.
Certainly, the movements of the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard’s two afterimages, being the original user of the art, were incomparably more natural.
But Mok Gyeong-un countered it by unfolding different moves with each hand.
‘Again?’
This way of unfolding different moves with both hands was even more troublesome to deal with than a split body divided in two.
That was because, somehow, though he could not understand how, the moves being separately unfolded by both hands all possessed their full power.
-Papapapak!
‘Kuh!’
Because of that, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard was naturally forced back.
He did not know what sort of being this bastard was.
Already the moment his figure had split in two through movement skill, it was no different from his thoughts themselves having split in two, yet on top of that he was unfolding different moves with both hands.
‘He is a monstrous bastard.’
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard had been confident that, aside from his master and those two within the imperial palace, no one within Kaifeng could stand against him in pure martial skill.
Yet he had never imagined he would be overwhelmed in the clash of techniques.
-Papapapapak!
In the end, unable to endure in the struggle of forms, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard was the first to widen the distance.
-Pat!
Naturally, Mok Gyeong-un had no intention of letting him go.
He moved to pursue him immediately.
The gaze of the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard, who glared at Mok Gyeong-un, grew solemn.
At this rate, he could not defeat this man.
Then he would have to unfold the secret art that could be called the whole of his strength.
[Without completely grasping the true essence of this martial art, the limit of what you can properly handle is the Second Category. But if you truly face an utterly unforeseen situation, then for only a single move I will pass on to you the secret that will let you unfold even the Fourth Category.]
This was precisely his greatest secret art, transmitted to him by his master.
He was certain that even this monstrous bastard would not be able to block it.
As he widened the distance by hurling his figure backward, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard set his feet against the ground and bent his knees.
Then,
-Boom!
he kicked fiercely off the ground, and
-Swaaaaaaa!
with that, together with a violent gale, a strange thing occurred.
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard’s figure split into four.
‘Four?’
A strange light entered Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes.
He had thought splitting into two afterimages was the limit, and had not expected it to split all the way into four.
However, unlike before, the method of qi circulation was completely different, so this was not a move one could reproduce in a single glance merely by seeing it.
The four divided blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard figures rushed at Mok Gyeong-un.
“Haap!”
Moves unfolded together with a fierce shout.
-Papapapapapapa!
It was made up of four entirely different schools of martial arts: fist, palm, leg, and claw.
Yet those martial arts were linked with extreme ingenuity.
For that reason, their power was on a completely different level from when the afterimages had split only into two.
Their momentum was truly like a storm.
-Pat!
At that, Mok Gyeong-un, who had been pursuing the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard, immediately widened the distance by throwing his figure backward.
Seeing that, the blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard shouted at him,
“Do you think you can evade it?”
-Papapapapapak!
For even a monster like that bastard to retreat backward meant that he had failed to find a way to break this secret art.
He could not miss such a perfect opportunity.
It was right then.
“If it is at this level, then even if it is not yet complete, it seems worth testing once.”
-Srrng!
Mok Gyeong-un drew the Evil-Answering Sword from the scabbard hanging at his back.
As the Evil-Answering Sword emerged from the scabbard, it emitted a strong sharp aura together with the cry of the sword.
‘That is no ordinary sword.’
Rather than simply a treasured sword, it even felt ominous.
But the sword was not the problem.
The instant Mok Gyeong-un raised the sword and took a starting stance, the atmosphere changed.
Something like a huge sense of strangeness swelled greatly, like a volcano just before eruption.
‘What is this?’
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard had been certain of his victory from the moment he had unfolded his secret art.
Yet, for some reason, this strange sensation rising from Mok Gyeong-un did not heighten his fighting spirit, but instead stirred up wariness.
It was at that very moment.
-Pat!
Mok Gyeong-un, who had taken the starting stance, swung the sword toward him.
The first sword form was not particularly strong.
It was utterly ordinary.
‘Was my concern needless?’
At this level, perhaps the wariness he had felt had been unnecessary.
Did he think he could counter the Fourth Category, a secret art, with a move composed of such ordinary sword forms?
-Papak!
And so the Fourth Category collided with Mok Gyeong-un’s sword move.
The force of the Fourth Category, which surged like a storm as though four masters were attacking together, was truly like splitting bamboo.
‘I will settle this decisively.’
The blue-eyed Embroidered Uniform Guard could have protected his hands and feet sufficiently with sharp qi alone, but he compressed his power even further and converted it into astral qi.
Blue light flickered over both his hands and both his feet.