Dong Bongsu had no time to hesitate.
When his sword strike finally hit Dong Bongsu's body, Gosan Gong must have thought he had seized victory, for he unleashed the final form of the Heavenly Wind Sword Art, Heavenly Wind Opens the Heavens.
Whoosh-.
As if the heavens were opening at the call of the wind, dozens of sword strikes rained down on Dong Bongsu with air-rending sounds.
Despite being a heavy sword, it was fast and had many variations.
It seemed that even if Dong Bongsu tried to dodge, he couldn't avoid being hit in one or two places.
Indeed, the sword lightly grazed Dong Bongsu's leg, chest, and arm, drawing blood.
However.
At this moment, when he should have been dodging, Dong Bongsu instead raised his sword and unleashed the Piercing Yellow Dragon form, thrusting towards Gosan Gong's eye.
Ignoring all defense, his entire body was full of openings, and naturally, the wounds from Gosan Gong's sword strikes increased exponentially.
Psh-sh-shk!
Blood splattered and flesh tore, but Dong Bongsu's sword continued to press forward.
'Is this Mutual Destruction?'
Gosan Gong judged it so, seeing Dong Bongsu charge forward without regard for his own body.
He sneered at the action with a smirk.
To attempt Mutual Destruction, one had to use a suitable form.
Something like the Cold Yin Annihilation of the Cold Yin Asura Palm Art, or the Heartless Sword Art, which consists solely of mutual destruction techniques, could be called a true mutual destruction method.
'To think he's using a mere Piercing Yellow Dragon.'
Gosan Gong retracted the Heavenly Wind Opens the Heavens form and unleashed the horizontal strike, Heavenly Wind Flowing Cloud.
His sword slashed sideways in a long arc, cleanly severing Dong Bongsu's arm that was reaching for him.
Swish!
Dong Bongsu's right arm, still clutching the sword, flew high into the air before falling into Chao Lake.
Plop.
“Not yet!”
Although his opponent had become one-armed in a near-suicidal state, Gosan Gong did not let his guard down.
He already knew from their previous clashes that Dong Bongsu used strange, unorthodox arts.
This time, a sword would surely emerge from his left arm to attack again.
Psh-shk!
Gosan Gong's sword swung once more, flying towards Dong Bongsu's left arm.
Just as he predicted, a sword shot out from Dong Bongsu's left arm, and with the same momentum he had used with his right hand, he tried to unleash Piercing Yellow Dragon again with his left.
However, the two were already too close for Piercing Yellow Dragon to be fully effective.
Not only that.
Gosan Gong had already predicted all of it.
To any observer, the battle already seemed decided.
Thwack!
Thunk!
Gosan Gong's sword cleanly cut off Dong Bongsu's left arm as well.
Dong Bongsu was now in a position where he could no longer attack.
No, that should have been the case.
However.
If only Dong Bongsu's left arm had been cut off, the slicing sound should have ended with a single 'thwack'.
A sound.
Yes, there was another sound.
Thunk.
A simple but clear sound of penetration.
“…..”
What in the world had happened?
A Beginner's Sword was embedded in Gosan Gong's eye.
Grind, grind.
Dong Bongsu's teeth were clenched tightly around the sword's hilt, pushing it forward with the momentum from his charge.
Moving two objects in and out.
The card Dong Bongsu played at the last moment was the technique of pulling out two items from his Inventory at the same time.
Gosan Gong, who had been focused only on the left and right hands, must have thought it was over the moment he cut off both arms.
But it wasn't actually over.
Dong Bongsu had pulled out swords from his left hand and his mouth simultaneously.
The real attack among them was the Beginner's Sword from his mouth.
It worked beautifully, and Gosan Gong's life came to an end.
Gosan Gong's wish, that a real man should cut off another's neck, drink their blood, and sing a song, was fulfilled at the very moment he lost his life.
Except for the fact that the blood was his own, and the song he sang was just a single note, 'Guk.
' Otherwise, his wish was granted exactly as he wanted.
Thud-!
Such was the power of Dong Bongsu's death-defying charge that the Beginner's Sword pierced through Gosan Gong's eye, through his skull, and protruded from the back of his head.
Huff, huff.
Gasping for breath, he finally collapsed onto the deck.
The sacrifice to kill Gosan Gong had been too great.
He had been crippled.
Both his arms were severed, blood poured endlessly from the cuts all over his body, and he had suffered severe internal injuries.
If left like this for just a few more seconds, he would die.
However.
Setting aside the overwhelming pain, even in this situation where he was about to die, the smile on Dong Bongsu's lips grew wider.
The reason was.
Flash! Flash! Flash!
It was because he knew very well that he would soon recover.
The moment Gosan Gong's corpse fell onto the deck, three consecutive strange and mysterious flashes of light erupted from Dong Bongsu's body.
The moment of Evolution had arrived once again.
And it was three times in a row.
By killing Gosan Gong, Dong Bongsu reached Level 10.
At the same time, his lost arms regenerated, and all his wounds were healed.
The Sacred Light generated by Dong Bongsu's Level Up spread beyond the ship's deck to every corner of the Namgung Family.
Just like the brightness of midday.
At the very same time, the Namgung Family was being illuminated by the light from Dong Bongsu's body, the Danri Family in Soaring Sun was also as bright as day.
The only difference was that the Danri Family was not just bright, but the entire estate was engulfed in flames.
“Gaaah!”
Buildings here and there were collapsing in flames, and black-clad men in black masks were indiscriminately slaughtering the family members.
To stop them, the family's sole military force, the Heavenly Sword Cross Corps, was dispatched, but each time the black-clad men's swords moved, the necks of the Heavenly Sword Cross Corps members were severed.
By the time Danri Cheonwoo woke up to the sounds of screams and clashing swords, the name of the Heavenly Sword Cross Corps had already been erased from the Murim.
The Danri Family, which was everything to Danri Cheonwoo, was burning, and its members were being horribly killed, but he couldn't say or do anything.
No, he couldn't even think straight.
'Why? Who on earth is doing this?'
He should have been having such thoughts, but the overwhelming difference in power made his body go limp.
Before long, he was the only one left in the family estate.
He was holding a drawn sword, but he hadn't managed to cut down a single one of the black-clad men.
No, he couldn't even swing his sword.
He could only tremble.
Crack-crack.
Thud-thud, crack-crack.
Piercing through the sound of the burning Danri Family, the thudding of footsteps could be heard.
It was the black-clad men who had created this tragedy.
They soon stopped three zhang away from Danri Cheonwoo.
There were only five of them.
Although the Black Crow Corps had left, to think the Danri Family would fall so helplessly to just five men.
Danri Cheonwoo couldn't believe it.
“Who are you?”
With a lost expression, Danri Cheonwoo stared blankly at the black-clad man standing at the very front.
The black-clad man's intensely cold gaze quickly devoured Danri Cheonwoo's unfocused eyes.
Just as the flames were now erasing the Danri Family from the world.
The black-clad man silently approached Danri Cheonwoo.
Thud.
The black-clad man stopped again one zhang in front of Danri Cheonwoo.
Danri Cheonwoo's lips twitched before he finally spat out the same words as before.
“...Who are you?”
The black-clad man slightly raised his head and said in a cold, arrogant voice, “Is that important?”
Danri Cheonwoo's lips trembled once more.
He probably wanted to say something, but felt too empty to speak.
Only after biting his tongue slightly was he able to finally get out the words he wanted to say.
“...W-what is the reason?”
Shing.
He asked, but there was no answer.
No, there was one.
It just wasn't in words.
The black-clad man's sword slashed diagonally upwards from below.
That was the end.
Danri Cheonwoo's upper body, sliced from his lower right waist to his left shoulder, slid smoothly off his cleanly severed lower body and onto the ground.
Plop, plop.
Through the neatly severed lower part of his torso, shredded pieces of his internal organs spilled out.
Even then, Danri Cheonwoo's mouth remained frozen in the shape it had been when asking, 'What is the reason?
'.
Thump!
The black-clad man's foot crushed that mouth.
Only then did Danri Cheonwoo receive an answer that was not an answer.
“Stop asking useless questions. It's something the likes of you have no need to know.”
He was the Family Head of Soaring Sun's greatest family, but to the black-clad man, Gwang Woon, he was merely 'the likes of you'.
The Danri Family vanished from the world in vain.
If there was any solace for Danri Cheonwoo, it was the fact that Danri Ganghae and Danri Hui had left the Danri Family and escaped this disaster.
However……….
The misfortune was… that the disaster had not struck here alone.
For if a thick 'Cloud' had settled here, a deep 'Shadow' was cast over the southern region of Anhui, and Danri Hui had already stepped into that Shadow's domain.
Ascending Dragon Mountain.
It is a small mountain rising on the northern edge of Hefei.
In truth, judging by its height and scale, it was more of a hill, difficult to even call a mountain.
Nevertheless, a mountain is a mountain, and from its peak, one could see the entire panorama of Hefei, and even appreciate the water mist rising from Chao Lake in the distance.
Naturally, from the summit of [color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]Ascending Dragon Mountain[/color], the Namgung Family's manor, located adjacent to Chao Lake, could also be observed at a glance.
The reason this mountain was called by the grand name of [color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]Ascending Dragon Mountain[/color], unfitting for its scale, was because the rocks connected along its ridge resembled the shape of an ascending dragon.
“Ack! S-stop! Aahk!”
Right now, atop the peak rock corresponding to the head of the ascending dragon, a hot wind was raging, strong enough to drive away the cold night air.
A man was roughly moving his lower body behind a prostrated woman, and the woman, forcibly taken from behind, was sobbing with her head down.
Strangely, the man's body glowed silver in the moonlight.
This was a typical phenomenon for one who had mastered the Mysterious Art, the Silver Yin Lust Art.
In the current Murim, only one person had mastered this martial art.
The protagonist of this scene, continuing the assault with a vile smile, was none other than…….
Thump, thump.
“Aah!”
It was Pa Gahyeol, the Silver Lust Demon, vice-leader of the Heavenly Demon Castle's Anhui Branch.
Pa Gahyeol grabbed the back of the woman's head, pulling it back as he thrust his hips forward even more roughly.
In response, the woman convulsed, feeling an ecstatic pleasure once again.
But even as he moved so vigorously, Pa Gahyeol's eyes were not on the woman.
The Namgung Family.
His eyes were fixed solely on the distant, shimmering sight of the Namgung Family.