“You bastard!”
Yong Hoe immediately poured the swirling Wind-Cloud Divine Qi toward Bu Eunseol.
It was an attack that swallowed every direction of heaven and earth, so there was no way to avoid it.
Shwaaaak!
Bu Eunseol swiftly swung his Silent Tiger Soul Sword to deploy a defensive form, but his internal energy was insufficient and the sword curtain never manifested.
In the end, the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi that slipped through the gaps in his sword form carved bloody streaks across Bu Eunseol’s body.
Pat! Pat!
Bu Eunseol moved at high speed while Yong Hoe stood rooted in place, relentlessly unleashing Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
Yet the leisurely expression on Yong Hoe’s face gradually stiffened.
It was because, at every critical moment, Bu Eunseol’s body would blur and evade the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
“What a bizarre technique. You worm-like trash.”
Wind-Cloud Divine Qi was a formless power unaffected by physical force, launched at such ultra-high speed that it was invisible to the eye. Moreover, it could read an enemy’s movements in advance through the wind, making evasion almost impossible.
Yet Bu Eunseol was somehow dodging and blocking that very Wind-Cloud Divine Qi with nothing but a single sword.
Enraged, Yong Hoe concealed lethal, razor-sharp strikes within the storm-like winds and stabbed and slashed Bu Eunseol dozens of times. But those attacks failed to pierce his body; they merely tore the skin before scattering apart.
‘Is that guy a ghost?’
As Bu Eunseol stubbornly endured with his eerie technique, Yong Hoe’s eyes flashed.
“Let’s see if you can withstand this!”
Whoosh.
Yong Hoe floated roughly three zhang into the air.
Swoosh swoosh swoosh swoosh!
Hundreds of strands of wind began pouring down on Bu Eunseol like rain.
He was firing Wind-Cloud Divine Qi like hidden weapons, preventing Bu Eunseol from attacking at all.
‘Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.’
Even as he faced the downpour of Wind-Cloud Divine Qi, Bu Eunseol felt a strange sensation.
There was something wrong with Yong Hoe’s Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
He could not pinpoint the reason, but he instinctively sensed that Yong Hoe was not using true Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
‘It’s as if he failed to merge it with his original true qi.’
Swoosh swoosh swoosh!
Even while lost in deep thought, Bu Eunseol evaded Yong Hoe’s attacks with ease.
The incoming Wind-Cloud Divine Qi seemed to expand his senses instead, replacing the lost instincts of the Beast Blade Path he had once possessed.
“You bastard!”
As if his fury had peaked, Yong Hoe descended to the ground once more and swung his sword like a madman while pouring out Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
The powerful force of the Wind God disrupted Bu Eunseol’s movements and forced him in the direction Yong Hoe desired.
Not only that—Yong Hoe vanished into the wind and reappeared in an instant, unleashing attacks from every blind spot.
Yet at every decisive moment, Bu Eunseol slipped free of the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi’s influence.
He was even using the pouring force itself to evade!
‘He is utterly impossible to predict.’
Only then did Yong Hoe finally understand why the leaders of the Three Realms had praised Bu Eunseol so highly and feared him so deeply.
The man grew stronger even while fighting and possessed unpredictable techniques and abilities.
“He is impressive, I’ll give him that.” Yong Hoe clenched his fists tightly, eyes flashing. “But that alone is nowhere near enough!”
Continued evasion was pointless.
If he swept away even the space to dodge, it would all be over.
With a sharp whistling sound, a colossal wind gathered above Yong Hoe’s head.
It was as though the Wind God had seized every breeze scattered across the world and concentrated it into a single destructive force.
Kwaaaaaah!
Before long the wind had taken the form of a massive white dragon and white tiger.
By exerting the maximum power of Wind-Cloud Divine Qi, he intended to annihilate the very space where Bu Eunseol stood.
“Begone!”
The Wind God’s power had no distance limit.
The instant Yong Hoe roared like thunder, a violent wind wave instantly swallowed Bu Eunseol.
Kwaaaaaaaaah!
Unpredictable Wind-Cloud Divine Qi imbued with the fury of nature.
It became tens of millions of wind blades that tore the earth apart and ground even the grand training platform into dust.
As the gale that seemed capable of blowing the entire world away slowly spread in every direction,
Hwaaaak.
The wind vanished, leaving only a barren plain where the training platform had once stood.
At that moment, both Hyeok Sojin and Zhuge Seoun widened their eyes in shock.
Bu Eunseol had vanished without a trace.
“Brother Bu!”
“Hahaha!”
The moment Bu Eunseol completely disappeared, Yong Hoe threw his head back and laughed uproariously toward the heavens.
“He finally turned to dust and vanished.”
The corner of Zhuge Seoun’s eye, who had been watching the fight with an expressionless face, twitched faintly.
The Wind-Cloud Divine Qi Yong Hoe had just unleashed clearly possessed power beyond the bounds of ordinary martial arts.
Four Divine Energies.
This mysterious power passed down through the generations of the martial world was equivalent to reaching the supreme-heaven realm or higher simply by possessing it.
“Huu.”
Smiling from ear to ear, Yong Hoe turned to Hyeok Sojin and Zhuge Seoun and spoke coldly.
“I’ll wipe you two out in one breath as well.”
Murmur, murmur.
But something was strange.
All the disciples of the Wind God Palace in the distance were staring up at the sky with their mouths agape.
“What is it? What are you looking at?”
Yong Hoe followed their gazes and looked up.
“…!”
He, too, could not close his mouth and stared with eyes wide open.
At some point Bu Eunseol had risen dozens of zhang into the sky and was looking down at him.
Bu Eunseol himself, floating in mid-air, wore a dazed expression as he looked down.
‘What is this?’
What was wrapped around his body?
It was the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi that Yong Hoe had fired.
‘Why is Yong Hoe’s Wind-Cloud Divine Qi inside my body?’
In that instant, the forms of wind engraved along the Wind God Passage and their whispering voices flashed through Bu Eunseol’s mind.
“Wind-Cloud Divine Qi possesses the perfect form of nature, so no one can detect its presence…”
Shuuk.
The moment he unconsciously murmured the law phrase that had been absorbed into his mind, Bu Eunseol’s figure instantly turned transparent.
“…and it can let any force flow away…”
Kwaaa.
The winds of Wind-Cloud Divine Qi wrapped around his body brushed past him in an instant and vanished into the distant sky.
“…becoming a blade that can sever the principles of all things in the world.”
Bu Eunseol lightly swept one hand downward.
Chiiiik!
A single line was drawn from sky to earth, splitting the ground cleanly in two.
Kurrrr!
The earth, sliced neatly as if by a blade, stopped exactly at the tip of Yong Hoe’s toes.
“So that’s how it was.”
Bu Eunseol finally understood why the place where poison accumulated had been named the Wind God Passage—the Path the Wind God Takes—and why mysterious winds had blown there.
It was the secret ground that accepted Wind-Cloud Divine Qi and transformed the body into the Wind Spirit Physique, allowing one to become the next-generation Wind God.
‘Handling Wind-Cloud Divine Qi required enormous internal energy.’
Just now, by unleashing a sword wind that split the earth, Bu Eunseol had instantly exhausted the full jiazi of internal energy that remained inside him.
To wield such techniques freely, one had to reach a realm where internal energy was infinite and never ran dry.
But internal cultivation methods and spiritual medicines had their limits in increasing internal energy.
Therefore the previous Wind Gods had used the secret of obtaining immense internal energy through poison.
‘I want to descend again.’
Bu Eunseol looked awkwardly at his own body floating in the air.
He had obtained Wind-Cloud Divine Qi through the Wind God Passage, but the law phrases explaining how to use it had been injected into his unconscious mind while passing through the path’s gates.
Thus he could not activate them at will.
“How dare you!”
At that moment Yong Hoe spread Wind-Cloud Divine Qi around his body.
Goooooo!
A bizarre sound that shook heaven and earth rang out as a razor-sharp gale wrapped around Bu Eunseol.
‘Ah, so that’s how it’s done.’
Watching Yong Hoe’s movements, Bu Eunseol instantly grasped the method of operating Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
‘Not by controlling the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi inside the body, but by commanding the wind outside.’
Shuuk.
As he descended back to the ground, mysterious winds swirled around him.
He had wrapped the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi Yong Hoe had just fired around his own body.
“How did you-!”
Realizing Bu Eunseol had obtained Wind-Cloud Divine Qi, Yong Hoe shouted at Elder Hyang.
“What happened? Why does Wind-Cloud Divine Qi dwell within that man?!”
Elder Hyang waved both hands in bewilderment.
“Our palace’s secret art has never been exposed to outsiders even once.”
“Lies! So his appearance at the Choseo Conference was part of your plan all along!”
Yong Hoe mistakenly believed Elder Hyang had deliberately summoned Bu Eunseol to ruin their scheme.
“Wind God Passage.”
Bu Eunseol spoke.
“The place you thought was a death trap and shoved me into—that was exactly where one obtains Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.”
“What…?”
“Any disciple of the Wind God Palace should know that, right?”
Yong Hoe glared at Elder Hyang.
“Is that true?”
“There is such a legend, but over a hundred years ago it was already…”
“Rather, this is perfect.”
Yong Hoe, deep in thought, clenched his teeth.
“To think the secret of obtaining Wind-Cloud Divine Qi lay there. Then I have performed the greatest service in this generation.”
“That will not happen.”
Bu Eunseol spoke indifferently.
“Because you will die here.”
Hweeeing.
At the same time, Bu Eunseol activated one of the law phrases recorded in the Wind God Passage:
Turning Wind into Merit, Wind Transformed into Qi.
Jjeojeojeojeok.
The Wind-Cloud Divine Qi inside Yong Hoe’s body began to be absorbed into Bu Eunseol in an instant.
Yong Hoe had merely obtained Wind-Cloud Divine Qi through the Harmony of Sun and Moon principle and did not possess the Wind God’s physique.
But Bu Eunseol, having passed through the Wind God Passage, had transcended the Wind Spirit Physique.
He had become the Wind God itself, able to command the wind even without Wind-Cloud Divine Qi…
Thus the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi Yong Hoe had obtained naturally returned to its rightful owner.
Paa! Kwaaaaa!
At that moment veins bulged across Bu Eunseol’s body, and pure white energy shot into the distant sky.
The instant the Wind-Cloud Divine Qi entered his body, the light energy that had constantly gnawed at him vanished in the blink of an eye.
Crack.
Simultaneously, his senses and internal energy began to recover.
With a cracking sound his skin split slightly, and pure white light flowed out.
Upon reaching the Limitless Realm one could obtain the Dharma-Heaven Golden-Heaven physique. But Bu Eunseol’s body was not one that had ever appeared or been named in the the martial world before.
As the Three Divine Energies harmonized within him, he transformed into an entirely new, unprecedented physique.
Kwaung. Kwaaaung.
When Bu Eunseol extended a finger, a bizarre piercing sound that chilled the marrow rang out.
Sseuk. Chiiiik.
The sound of metal being ground echoed,
Kwaaung!
A gale blew from behind Yong Hoe and Elder Hyang.
Thud. Kwoong. Kwoong.
At the same time, the successive sounds of huge trees toppling rang out.
When Yong Hoe turned around, the elite forces of the Three Realms standing in formation had all collapsed with their necks severed.
It was not that he had blown them away with Wind-Cloud Divine Qi in one strike.
Rather, razor-sharp wind blades had formed beneath each masked man’s feet and sliced through their necks.
Crack.
With the sound of bones, he turned his head and stared in utter disbelief.
The masked men he had brought possessed bodies as hard as diamond through a special great method.
Yet with a single move their necks had all been severed? How was such a thing possible?
Gulp.
Yong Hoe swallowed dryly.
Until now, as the Heartless Shadow of the Returning to One Realm, he had carried out countless missions and assassinated numerous experts. But he could declare with certainty that no one in the martial world could unleash wind with such power.
“Elder Hyang!”
Yong Hoe shouted as if something had just occurred to him.
“Summon the disciples!”
Although the sect’s prestige had waned in the absence of the Wind God, it was still a great faction whose scale surpassed the leading the martial world sects of the Central Plains by three or four times.
He pointed at Bu Eunseol and roared.
“Kill that man at once!”
No matter what, Yong Hoe had become the Great Duke of the Wind God Palace by betrothal to the Young Palace Lord.
If Bu Eunseol tried to kill him, they had to stop him even at the cost of their lives.
‘It cannot be helped.’
Elder Hyang, biting her lip, shouted loudly.
“All disciples of our palace, hear me!”
Then, pointing at Bu Eunseol, she cried out.
“That man has arbitrarily seized the Great Duke’s power! You must execute him without fail!”
White shadows rose from the distant sky as the disciples of the Wind God Palace swarmed out and began to surround Bu Eunseol.
Since the order had been given, they had no choice but to fight with their lives on the line.
In the end, because of the wicked Yong Hoe and Elder Hyang, Bu Eunseol would have to strike down the innocent disciples of the Wind God Palace.
“Haaap!”
Just as the disciples bravely charged at Bu Eunseol,
Clank.
Suddenly the mechanism of the grand training ground activated once more,
Kwaaaah!
A massive gale blew, sending dust flying in every direction.
At the same time a round sphere spun rapidly, pushing back the charging disciples,
Whoosh.
A woman wearing blood-stained outer garments slowly descended from the sky.
It was precisely the beauty who had been sleeping inside the crystal coffin that Bu Eunseol had seen in the final mechanism of the Wind God Passage.
“What is that?”
Elder Hyang’s eyes widened.
“Palace Lord Hae Yeon?”
To his astonishment, she was none other than the superior she had served in childhood—the previous previous generation Palace Lord, Hae Yeon, who had entered the Wind God Passage and suddenly vanished.
“You are… Gun-byeong.”
When Hae Yeon spoke to her in the exact same tone and expression as before, Elder Hyang’s mouth fell open.
‘It was real.’
Nearly a hundred years had passed since Palace Lord Hae Yeon’s disappearance.
Yet how could she still look like a twenty-year-old girl?
“Palace Lord.”
Elder Hyang asked in shock.
“Just how…?”
“Are you now ordering the disciples to attack this Palace Lord?”
At Hae Yeon’s words, Elder Hyang shouted to the armed disciples.
“Everyone, lower your weapons! That person is the forty-sixth-generation Palace Lord, Palace Lord Hae Yeon!”
The disciples stood frozen with dazed expressions.
How could the previous previous generation Palace Lord appear in the form of a twenty-year-old maiden?
They were so stunned they simply stood there like statues.
“Impudent fools. Still pointing your weapons.”
Hae Yeon lightly waved her hand.
Hweeeing! Papapak!
The weapons held by over a hundred disciples all plunged into the ground.
It was truly astonishing Wind-Cloud Divine Qi.
“Gun-byeong. Why have you joined hands with an outsider and committed such wicked acts?”
Having grasped the entire situation, Hae Yeon asked.
Elder Hyang answered hastily.
“After the Palace Lord entered the Wind God Passage, our palace’s lineage of Wind-Cloud Divine Qi was completely severed, was it not?”
At those words Hae Yeon shook her head with a tragic expression.
“Did this Palace Lord have any other choice at that time?”
At the time, the Wind God Palace Lord and his wife had been killed under mysterious circumstances, and the young Hae Yeon had ascended to the position of Palace Lord.
She had not inherited Wind-Cloud Divine Qi from the previous Palace Lord, and the Wind Spirit Physique lineage had been cut off… so Hae Yeon had no choice but to enter the Wind God Passage.
But in the end she failed to break through it, and every disciple who entered to rescue her was massacred.
The Wind God Palace mobilized large forces to enter the Wind God Passage, but they malfunctioned the mechanisms instead, sealing the exit forever.
The only way to enter was through the secret mechanism of the hidden cave.
A few high-ranking members bravely entered again, only to meet another tragic death.
In the end the Wind God Palace had no choice but to completely seal the Wind God Passage.
“It was all for the sake of our palace!”
Elder Hyang pointed at Bu Eunseol as if wronged.
“The previous Palace Lord was brutally murdered by that wicked greatest of the demonic path of his era, Sado Muryeong. And this man is his disciple.”
“So he is a demonic path practitioner?”
“Yes.”
Hae Yeon frowned as she looked at Bu Eunseol.
“His internal energy is extremely complex and contains various kinds of qi within his body… yet his mind has not entered the demonic path.”
She tilted her head.
“Moreover, the disciple of the greatest of the demonic path is a poison user? Then does that mean the Demon Emperor is the saint of poison?”
“What do you mean?”
“He saved this Palace Lord. He absorbed all the poison inside my body.”
‘So that’s what happened.’
Bu Eunseol, who had been listening, nodded faintly.
He had desperately sucked out the poison, thinking she had died when her heart stopped.
Fortunately her pulse had returned, and she had come back as a perfect Wind God.
Stumble. Stumble.
As the situation turned strange, Yong Hoe began stealthily slipping away.
Chiiiik!
At that moment, accompanied by a piercing sound that scraped the ground,
“Aaaack!”
Yong Hoe let out a miserable scream.
Before he knew it, Bu Eunseol had launched a light wind step of Wind-Cloud Divine Qi and severed the meridians in both his legs.
“Not only did he disturb the Wind God Palace, he is also a running dog of the wicked forces disturbing the entire martial world.”
Having grasped that Hae Yeon had been trapped inside the crystal coffin for a hundred years due to poison and was in fact the previous Wind God, Bu Eunseol spoke.
“And Elder Hyang joined hands with the wicked force called the Three Realms. An investigation will reveal the truth.”
Elder Hyang shouted as if vomiting blood.
“Yes, that’s right! But it’s all because of your master, Sado Muryeong! He killed our palace’s Palace Lord and Great Duke!”
Hae Yeon narrowed her eyes.
“Is that true?”
“I do not know whether the Demon Emperor harmed the previous Palace Lord. To be precise, there is not even a master-disciple relationship.”
Bu Eunseol declared boldly.
“But this body is the successor of Majeon, who leads the Demonic Path. If I must take responsibility for that, I will naturally do so.”
“You speak so lightly! What exactly are you going to take responsibility for?”
Elder Hyang, who had been shouting, suddenly froze.
A mysterious light had suddenly risen from Bu Eunseol’s pupils.
Merely meeting that gaze made his heart beat wildly as if being gripped, and a chilling sensation like being submerged in ice water ran down his spine.
‘Wh-what is this?’
Elder Hyang felt suffocated.
Bu Eunseol’s gaze seemed to penetrate his body and tear something out from the depths of his bones.
“I will even offer my life.”
“What?”
Bu Eunseol spoke calmly.
“From now on, let us examine the clear facts. If the Demon Emperor truly killed the Palace Lord, then I will take responsibility.”
Even Hyeok Sojin, hearing those words, was shocked and tried to stop Bu Eunseol.
“Brother Bu.”
No matter that he was Majeon’s successor, Bu Eunseol and the Demon Emperor were in fact hostile to each other.
So why would he suddenly offer even his life to prove the Demon Emperor’s innocence?
