The Great Heavenly Sword Emperor - Chapter 43

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#043. Dark Schemes Seeping Into Danae Valley (3)

Cheon Mujgyeol’s eyes hardened.
Songpung Moon’s warriors descended rapidly along both cliff faces, all within his field of vision at once.
A few of the more reckless ones kicked off the cliff and launched themselves skyward, driving their blades straight down toward him.
‘Madness! Why now?’
Jang Cheol-un, watching from a distance, felt his stomach drop.
Songpung Moon’s involvement was supposed to come much later.
The plan had been to lure the two of them deeper into Danae Valley first, then cut off their flanks and escape routes — that had been Songpung Moon’s role.
Yet here they were, making their move far ahead of schedule.
‘Ju Hando, you fool!’
Jang Cheol-un ground his teeth together.
He knew exactly what had driven this premature aggression — Ju Hando’s hunger to claim the credit for himself.
“Deal with the one in front of us first! Pin him down! There’s only one of him! Surround him!”
Jang Cheol-un barked the order, watching Bukgung Danya struggle against overwhelming odds.
But Bukgung Danya held his ground with unwavering resolve, facing the Hyeonmu Gwan warriors head-on alone.
As time wore on, his stamina grew harder to maintain, yet the roots beneath his feet seemed to dig deeper and deeper into the earth with each passing moment.
Cheon Mujgyeol glanced back briefly, taking in the torrent of Songpung Moon warriors cascading down from both sides.
Satisfied that Bukgung Danya was holding firm, he entrusted the rear to his companion and turned his full attention to Songpung Moon.
That was when it began.
Cheon Mujgyeol’s form started to dance.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
One after another, the shriek of blades cutting through air rang out.
Yet not a single strike found Cheon Mujgyeol’s body.
Slip.
What seemed like a penetrating hit dissolved slowly as Cheon Mujgyeol’s form faded.
They had stabbed nothing but an afterimage.
“Arrrgh!”
The first scream tore from the completely opposite direction.
The eyes of the Songpung Moon warrior who had struck the afterimage trembled violently.
How? When did he—?
Confusion flooded his mind.
Cheon Mujgyeol’s movements defied all logic, and his consciousness half-scattered in disbelief.
But this was only the beginning.
It was precisely situations like this where the Cheonun Muae Bo revealed its true brilliance.
His movements were like those of a phantom.
Even as Songpung Moon’s assault pressed in like a surging tide, Cheon Mujgyeol’s expression did not so much as flicker.
Whissh!
Cheon Mujgyeol’s form appeared and vanished in endless succession.
All that followed in his wake were the screams and groans of Songpung Moon warriors.
“Kyyyyaaahhh!”
“Gaghk!”
Shouts of agony erupted from all corners in chaotic profusion.
Cheon Mujgyeol wielded the Cheonun Muae Bo with perfect mastery, tearing through their ranks like a man possessed.
Despite the crowded space offering him nowhere to hide, he flowed in and out of view like smoke itself.
And woven through it all, the techniques of the Paun Jeolmaek cut their formation apart with surgical precision.
“What are you doing?! There is only one of him! Do not give him space! Close the gap!”
Ju Hando, watching the battle unfold, shouted in fury and frustration.
Yet beneath his rage lay his own bewilderment.
‘How does a man move like that?’
A speed that defied the eye’s ability to track.
Movements that paid no heed whatsoever to the space they already controlled, cutting through it at will.
And layered beneath it all, a pattern so erratic and unpredictable that no rhythm could be found.
None of it seemed human.
‘Can we truly capture such a man?’
Suddenly, the contents of a certain letter came back to him — the one claiming that if the three sects united, they could seize him.
He began to doubt whether the letter had been sent by someone who truly understood Cheon Mujgyeol.
Now that circumstances had unfolded this way, he resented the mysterious person who had written it.
And he resented himself as well—for being blinded by the promise of merit, for trusting only the letter’s contents before rushing forward.
But what could be done about it now?
The water had already been spilled.
Ju Hando could only grit his teeth and push his disciples harder.
Yet as time wore on, the warriors of Songpung Moon were losing focus entirely.
Thwack!
“Ugh!”
A comrade standing beside him staggered and froze mid-motion with a gasp of pain.
But the one responsible for putting him in that state was nowhere to be seen.
This was happening everywhere at once.
Blind blades multiplied—wild swings made from nothing but guesswork.
And blind blades, by their nature, knew no difference between friend and foe.
Whoosh!
“Damn!”
A Songpung Moon warrior lunging with his blade saw only a blurred shadow of Cheon Mujgyeol and found empty air instead.
The comrade he’d struck down moments before appeared now, staggering forward along the path of his own thrust—thrown there by Cheon Mujgyeol’s blow.
He couldn’t stop the blade.
At this rate, he would pierce his comrade, not Cheon Mujgyeol.
The Songpung Moon warrior had no choice but to clench his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut.
Yet a moment later, he cracked them open again.
His comrade—the one who should have been run through—was gone from before his eyes.
Confused, he glanced around and saw the same situation repeating itself nearby.
Only then did he understand.
Why his blade hadn’t pierced his comrade.
Cheon Mujgyeol, weaving through the enemy ranks with the Cheonun Muae Bo and Paun Jeolmaek, had suddenly appeared and moved his empty hand.
Tap.
Just a tap—that was all it was.
Cheon Mujgyeol had nudged the staggering figure aside with his fingertip, and the blade meant for him had pierced only empty space.
‘Is he… letting them live?’
At this unbelievable sight, the eyes of the Songpung Moon disciple wavered.
But why?
Even as that thought crossed his mind, he looked around and realized something.
There were many groaning and fallen, but not a single corpse.
Like himself, in a melee like this, one could easily die by a comrade’s blade.
And there was only one enemy.
With so many allied blades and so few from the enemy, even a glancing blow was possible.
Yet there wasn’t a single such casualty.
Were the Songpung Moon disciples simply that skilled?
No.
All this while, as Cheon Mujgyeol laid the Songpung Moon warriors low, he had been taking every precaution to ensure that blind blades wouldn’t kill any of them.
‘Why?’
The question kept surfacing in his mind.

* * *

Cheon Mujgyeol’s breathing remained steady, and his expression hadn’t shifted once.
There was no grand reason behind his saving the lives of Songpung Moon warriors who should have fallen.
After all, this was the same Cheon Mujgyeol who had once told Bukgung Danya that if your opponent died, so be it.
Such a man wouldn’t concern himself with whether his opponent lived or died.
And yet he was saving them—because of a single distinction: whose blade dealt the killing blow.
If they die by my blade, I bear that responsibility.
But I won’t take responsibility for them killing each other by accident.
That was all Cheon Mujgyeol’s reasoning amounted to.
Still, even for Cheon Mujgyeol, there were limits to fighting in a place like Danae Valley without killing anyone and while actively saving lives.
His gaze deepened.
As if searching for another way, he began to move faster, more deftly than before.
Clatter-clatter-clack! Tap-tap-tap!
A sound that hadn’t been heard until now was added to the chaos.
Sounds that hadn’t been heard before layered atop one another, and now a sight unseen before unfolded.
Every time Cheon Mujgyeol swept past, the swords of Songpung Moon’s warriors shot upward into empty air.
It was as though they had deliberately hurled their blades away.
Cheon Mujgyeol, having moved swiftly through the Songpung Moon warriors, came to a halt.
The Songpung Moon warriors who had been struck by the Paun Jeolmaek technique couldn’t so much as breathe properly, much less rush at him.
Cheon Mujgyeol gazed at the swords that had shot up into the void.
Then, with his empty hand—the one without a sword—he raised it and began moving his fingers rapidly as though playing an instrument in empty space.
Ping-ping-ping!
Vital Energy extended from his fingertips as they moved without pause.
And that energy struck the floating swords with perfect precision.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!
The swords, deflected by the technique of the Cheoheo Jiin method, flew into the cliff faces on either side, embedding themselves.
Crash-crash-crash-crash-bang!
Despite the stone being solid rock, the swords didn’t snap—they simply drove deep into it.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
As dozens of swords lodged themselves, even stone as hard as this could not help but groan.
The cliff trembled with violent shaking, and soon it could no longer hold, beginning to shower down fragments.
“Ahhhhh! Fall back! Fall back now!”
Ju Hando cried out urgently.
What had begun as a collapse of small fragments swelled into a cascade of massive boulders tumbling down.
The Songpung Moon warriors left exposed beneath scrambled urgently backward.
Then it happened.
A swift motion.
Cheon Mujgyeol twisted his body and drew his Cheonshin Geom back as though preparing for a strike.
“Ha!”
With a shout, Cheon Mujgyeol swung his blade in a powerful horizontal arc.
It was the form of the Heogong Danwol technique.
A formidable horizontal slash that seemed to cut through space itself.
But what shot forth from the blade’s edge was not Sword Qi.
Before the rocks could fall, what passed rapidly through the space beneath them was Sword Pressure condensed to such density that it could not be resisted.
“Uhhhhh!”
The force of the Sword Pressure that Cheon Mujgyeol unleashed was tremendous.
The Songpung Moon warriors, standing in layers, could not withstand it and were helplessly swept backward by the wave.
Cheon Mujgyeol straightened his posture and turned his body.
Despite displaying such overwhelming power, his expression remained unchanging—that characteristic coolness of Cheon Mujgyeol’s grew all the more pronounced.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-bang!
Behind Cheon Mujgyeol as he walked forward with measured steps, boulders fallen from the collapsed cliff cascaded down, raising a cloud of black dust.
A perfect barrier.
Cheon Mujgyeol had saved every one of the Songpung Moon warriors while completely cutting off their interference.
“How remarkable!”
The Songpung Moon warriors, pushed back by Cheon Mujgyeol’s Sword Pressure, stared at the massive boulder that now blocked their path and gasped in astonishment.
Had it not been for Cheon Mujgyeol, they would surely have been crushed to death beneath the rocks.
The eyes of the Songpung Moon warriors, who had thus been spared, wavered greatly.

* * *

With the rear thoroughly secured, Cheon Mujgyeol’s gaze fell upon Bukgung Danya, who stood resolute yet barely holding his ground against the forces of Hyeonmu Gwan.
Cheon Mujgyeol moved forward with deliberate steps.
And so naturally, so indifferently, he slipped into the midst of the fierce battlefield.
It was a sight that felt strangely out of place.
Bukgung Danya’s desperate struggle, and the fierce pressure of Hyeonmu Gwan.
Within it, Cheon Mujgyeol’s composed gait seemed like that of someone belonging to an entirely different world.
Whoosh!
Indifferent, Cheon Mujgyeol slipped into the battlefield and indifferently swung his sword.
Again, not Sword Qi but Sword Pressure shot forth, and Hyeonmu Gwan too was helplessly driven backward.
“Gasp! Gasp!”
Only then could Bukgung Danya, weary, allow his body to rest.
As Bukgung Danya, gasping roughly and on the verge of collapse, tried to steady himself, Cheon Mujgyeol passed by him.
“You’ve done well.”
At Cheon Mujgyeol’s words, Bukgung Danya painfully raised his head and gazed at the back of Cheon Mujgyeol, who had moved forward beyond him into the fray.
Hiss!
Bukgung Danya smiled.
The back of Cheon Mujgyeol, now visible before him, seemed more reliable than anything else in the world.
And with just those few words from Cheon Mujgyeol—that he’d endured hardship—everything felt repaid in full.
Cheon Mujgyeol stood regarding the Hyeonmu Gwan warriors with an unflinching gaze.
The Hyeonmu Gwan fighters, driven back at a distance, watched the figure of Cheon Mujgyeol and the devastation behind him with barely concealed tension.
A man had toppled a cliff face.
Cheon Mujgyeol’s composure—having just displayed such overwhelming prowess without so much as a tremor—was nothing short of horrifying.
And now this monster was looking at them.
Gulp.
Someone swallowed hard.
That sound spoke for every warrior of Hyeonmu Gwan facing Cheon Mujgyeol.
‘Damn it all!’
Jang Cheol-un’s face twisted with frustration.

* * *

Han Mujin and the Baekun Geommun warriors waited in the rear, as planned, holding position for the final strike.
Han Mujin’s expression, watching the unfolding battle, was no different from Jang Cheol-un’s.
‘If he monopolizes everything, we lose it all. This won’t do!’
Han Mujin rose to his feet.
He had come to understand that this was the moment to abandon all personal greed.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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