Chapter 574: Chapter 574

Two figures stood amidst a sea of pure white clouds.

A gaunt old swordsman and a towering young woman faced each other, both stepping across the air as if walking on clouds.

One was Han, the other Yao.

The Yao woman’s face was rugged—like the worn grip of a weapon battered by endless battle. But her ash-gray skin brimmed with vitality.

Unlike the old swordsman, her face had firmness and life. There wasn’t even a hint of decline in her skills.

The old swordsman spoke.

“Tiring... You’re far too young.”

A way of saying she was far too vigorous for her apparent age.

Even the polearm in her hand spoke of that. A massive crescent moon blade with a long shaft dyed in brilliant red, at the end of which sat an unusually large ferrule that scattered sunlight like a prism.

A weapon forged in a style that blended the brute force emphasis of northern smithing with the elegant casting of Ming artisanship.

In contrast, the old man’s sword was aged like its owner. Simple in form, with no flourish to speak of—rusted in places, its teeth chipped and broken.

The northern woman clicked her tongue, as if pitiful at the sight of the old sword and the swordsman.

“How tragic. You’ve taken the brunt of raging time. I’ve lived nearly the same span as you, yet I can feel the strength in your grip slipping. If only you’d been Yao—how much longer you could’ve entertained me...”

“How many things you find tragic. In this rough world, we age, wrinkles form on our faces, stains mar our hilts.”

The old man appeared relaxed.

But whether his aged muscle lines and long-worn pressure points were holding up the same was another matter.

Around them, the landscape was surreal.

A sea of clouds shredded like down, jagged and white. Only the brilliant sunlight shimmered quietly upon them.

A result of the countless waves of footwork energy.

Their battle had long since passed a thousand exchanges. It had erupted even before Jeong Yeon-shin clashed with Mun Gok and the God of Battle below.

The Sword Saint, Hyeon So-baek, and Liu Yuan Star Lord, Yeom Jeong.

Even in all the martial world, such a duel was rare—yet the two still had room to breathe.

So much so that they vanished and reappeared in rhythm, using their internal breaths as conversation.

“You look pathetic. An old fool satisfied just by keeping me occupied, knowing nothing!”

“Such a sharp tongue.”

The clash came in an instant.

A shockwave like a typhoon erupted above, sending the featherlike clouds flying outward in a perfect circle.

Yeom Jeong’s “Tenfold Tower Binding” against the Sword Saint’s signature technique, the Mura Sword.

Both their hands blurred into indistinct movements.

The crescent moon blade and the sword distorted the sunlight with their sweeping arcs. Their weapons clashed in a storm of constant impact.

With their empty hands, they cast supreme palm arts—dozens of translucent windblades shot out, disrupting each other's sword paths and sparking against their protective energy.

They were both martial transcendents—neither yielded an inch.

With each exchange, massive shockwaves trailed one after another through the sky, as if an earthquake galloped across the heavens.

“Old man, you really think the Southern Emperor’s schemes escaped me? Do you think I’d just stand by and let someone like Yaryul rise unchecked?!”

“Schemes? Must I know them?”

“I am a swordsman, and so is my king. ‘Schemes’... how unbecoming of a Yao.”

For a swordsman born a wanderer, provocation and biting wit were second nature. Yeom Jeong’s brow furrowed violently.

“You still play at being a grand warrior?!”

At once, she spun her crescent blade in a wide arc—and just from that, pale shockwaves burst forth, slicing toward the battered sword.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

The blade scraped up along the old sword’s chipped body with a shrill scream.

A preemptive move of the Tenfold Binding Art—striking upward to shatter the enemy’s weapon. The surrounding clouds split like white waves beneath and above them.

But the sword didn’t break.

The Sword Saint spun midair like a ribbon caught in a stormwind, turning somersaults on a beam of rising wind—manipulating the opponent’s strike to his own ends with masterful technique.

In the next instant, his thin leg rocketed up like a comet toward Yeom Jeong’s chin.

A pale shockwave rippled like a lakeshore tremor, and the white threads of cloud along his kick path were sucked up like smoke.

A wildly violent vacuum force. The air had been momentarily emptied.

Yeom Jeong flipped upside down, white showing in her eyes as she burst into crazed laughter.

“You won’t hold me long! You know nothing but swordplay!”

From her chest, a pale gray pill leapt into her mouth.

The moment she bit down with a crunch, the skin on her face glowed with an even deeper vitality.

A pill forged from distilled innate energy extracted from living humans—a technique possible only in the North, where corpses piled like towers. A secret taught by the Queen of the Mongyo Bloodline, the Divine Warrior of the World.

The warriors of the northern martial world.

Yao warriors were born with naturally enlarged energy cores, and supreme masters among them were invariably transcendents of completeness.

She was nothing like the Sword Saint, who knew only the sword.

“I’ve heard that the Southern Emperor is considered the true strongest in the North. Then do you know the exact nature of this ‘scheme’ of his?”

Yeom Jeong continued, her upturned eyes still blazing white.

“But it’s no use. Unlike your Ming lands, we have nothing to lose. So we try everything ourselves. Naturally, our methods for controlling ‘the Gate’ are far more advanced. You can’t even dream of it. The Southern Emperor is colluding with the Western Champion to resurrect the God of Battle on this very land—Yaryul’s land!”

The Sword Saint shook his sword clean and took a long breath.

“If you strike the Celestial Heaven Point just right, even a transcendent will become disoriented and blurt out secrets. No exceptions.”

He hadn’t bothered wasting sword strikes on the Skyforge Battle Armor. It was more effective to smash large internal shocks into the body, just like now.

Yeom Jeong’s inner energy barrier was as sinister and aggressive as she was. That’s what the Sword Saint had sensed.

She had a way of absorbing the enemy’s kinetic force and unleashing it without warning.

The old man had nearly died twice already.

Yet he remained composed.

Yeom Jeong was the embodiment of “seasoned danger,” but the Martial Alliance Leader, Hyeon So-baek, had already once tasted death—at the hands of none other than the madman Dark Heaven Emperor who sought to challenge the legendary Sambong Zhenren.

He muttered it like a mantra.

And for a brief moment, he recalled another madwoman who once claimed, out of boredom and pride, to be Jeong Yeon-shin’s nanny.

The Youngcheon Sword Demon of Simmu-ryeon.

‘She was practically dead then... I wonder what became of her.’

But he put the thought aside.

The clouds trampled under Yeom Jeong’s feet spat rain down to the earth with a screech.

She was in full battle form.

Her pupils had returned to their deep obsidian black.

The Skyforge Battle Armor reshaped its lattice, crackling with friction, while the ominous force of the Tenfold Binding Art bled into the white mist.

The massive woman shifted her crescent moon blade behind her back—its size eclipsing even her own towering form.

Utterly composed. As if she'd never raged just moments before.

“You must die here. I now see you're even more dangerous than Yaryul.”

At her words, the Sword Saint smiled.

“Do you even know who Yaryul is to speak so?”

Moisture—not just soft but wet—began to bead on their skin. The pale, hazy clouds were flattening beneath them, forming a floor-like surface.

In that fleeting moment, the old swordsman raised his head slightly and saw three things:

A dreamlike pond of clouds, a slightly faded violet long coat, and within it, a divine sword gleaming in white.

They looked like loyal retainers, quietly waiting for their master’s command. The Sword Saint lowered his gaze, pretending not to notice—so Yeom Jeong wouldn’t turn her eyes that way.

But the direction in which he looked was a mistake in itself.

Yeom Jeong had caught that very glance—and the corner of her lips curled ever so slightly.

She began to speak slowly, drawing out her words. It wasn’t just the Sword Saint who was skilled at provocation.

“Worried? Looks like you’ve got quite a few battlefields to think about. Some are dealing with Mun Gok and those seven, others with Mun Gok’s army and the Ice Emperor’s mistress. There’s your own forces against the Chi Geuk Army. And that over there... those troops must be from Yeokluseong. The ones being chased by the Lord of Hocheonseong, the Demon Annihilation Blade... are those southerners?”

Their appearance seems quite noble. Perhaps you know them.

Just as she finished that sentence—

A brief silence passed, then both fell downward at once. More accurately, the Sword Saint reacted to Yeom Jeong’s movement.

Half a breath, and half a step behind.

Sunlight, pure and white, mixed with a raging wind, sweeping across all directions. The howling gusts crashed chaotically through the sky.

Where their descending bodies landed in a diagonal trajectory, eight figures awaited. One giant and seven figures in black ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) robes.

That is—the strategist of the God of Battle, and the seven Commanders under the Divine Sword Corps.

Juemun, Nokjon, Mun Gok, Yeom Jeong, Mun Gok, Pah Gun—

All six star-lords of the Northern Dipper, excluding only the supreme Tamlang.

Mun Gok was the third among them.

In the vast northern territories, said to be even broader than the Ming Empire, to be third-ranked meant he had transcended.

A walking volcanic eruption, burning with will.

To Yeom Jeong, anyone capable of holding him back in coordinated battle was a threat that had to be crushed now, before they could grow.

A booming laugh exploded.

A thunderous voice—Yeom Jeong’s battle cry.

“The old sword-wielder sticks so well! Looks like I chose the right one!”

Her words, still in perfect Han tongue, made the chill even worse.

Perhaps it was simply her nature.

She never left an opening behind.

A pale ripple began to spread from her crescent moon blade, pointed toward the earth.

That mysterious, subtle resonance.

When a supreme martial master channels their essence, energy, and spirit, it manifests as a single strike—containing the entirety of their life’s experience. Along with an overwhelmingly dense martial intent.

[Pillar-Rising Genesis.]

Yeom Jeong’s Combat Domain technique.

From her weapon, a transparent hemispherical sphere began to rise—expanding rapidly in all directions.

It threatened to engulf not only Yeom Jeong and the Sword Saint, but the entire battlefield below. Including the seven Commanders and Mun Gok.

The Sword Saint’s eyes widened.

The former leader of the Martial Alliance recognized each and every face among the seventeen black swordsmen.

Time froze, dragged inward by his sensory pathway.

One scene burned into his vision:

Wuji Commander—her limbs torn off by Mun Gok, held in each of his massive hands.

Cheonrim Commander—leapt high with Wind Body Technique, drove her fist into Mun Gok’s eye, and yanked it out.

Yun So-yu, whose ankle was stomped into the ground by Mun Gok, reversed her grip and stabbed her sword into his massive calf.

Heavenly Dragon Commander, blood pouring from her mouth as she wrapped a rope around Mun Gok’s shoulders and neck—holding him down, if only briefly, with the full force of her body.

At the same time, Bukgung Ah, Lord of Yeouicheon, dashed across Mun Gok’s back with Wingstep, and the black-blue flames of the Skyforge Battle Armor split to the sides with a thunderous rumble.

The ripped fabric of her trousers steamed, blood and moisture vaporizing into smoke.

Shattered fragments of black robes, torn from the Annihilation Commander who had blocked Mun Gok’s kick with both hands, scattered through the air.

The leg technique unleashed by Mun Gok’s Nine Pool Devil Step had dislocated Shin Hwang’s arms.

Others barely stood upright—some looked dead already.

If not for the faint pale glow of Unification of Martial Light, anyone would’ve assumed they were corpses.

A massive shadow loomed over them all.

Yeom Jeong’s hemispherical strike, forged from footwork force—its ability unknown, its effect unimaginable.

The Sword Saint didn’t hesitate—he summoned his life-saving technique.

A faint sword cry rang out from his worn blade.

But the voice wasn’t his own. It was the sword’s metallic whisper—like an echo forged of steel.

Yet before his One Sword could fully materialize—Mun Gok laughed softly from the battlefield below.

[Steadfast as Mencius.]

Combat Domain. Combat Domain. Another Combat Domain.

Only absolute masters with perfect internal breath could wield them. Only those who could measure battle rhythms in real-time.

Each technique unfolding successfully.

And within that chaos—there stood the Swordmaster of Ipwang Fortress, Lord of the One Sword for Peace.

His form blurred in and out of vision beneath the pressure that none could individually withstand.

Suddenly, something tore through the core of it all—a flagpole, flying straight through the air, crashing into Mun Gok’s back.

It pierced straight through—a devastating impalement.

A voice cold and eerie enough to freeze the sky resounded—alongside a fluttering flag bearing the words:

“Divine Sword Corps — Divine Sword Squadron.”

The final Combat Domain.

The unshakable right hand of Gwangya Ilmyeol.

The Southern Emperor of the Divine Sword Corps.

In that instant, five Domains expanded like mist—then fused into one unified space.