“What are you doing...!”

Cheon Hyein’s voice shot upward. The mask she had barely been holding together shattered to pieces, and she shouted.

“Pick up your sword right now. What do you think you’re doing?”

Frost clung to her voice. It was dense enough to make the air turn cold in an instant.

Maybe she had been swept up by her emotions. Inner qi had seeped into her voice, making it ring out even louder.

Even in the face of that reaction, Dohyeong only lowered the sword in his hand a little.

“Hey—!”

Cheon Hyein flared again at the sight, but—

“I lost.”

Dohyeong’s answer did not change. There was no wavering in what he said so quietly.

Everyone was baffled.

“What?”

“...He was clearly ahead, wasn’t he? Then why?”

Even to those of lower realms, it had looked like Cheon Hyein was being pushed back.

So in a situation like that, why would Dohyeong need to give up?

No one could understand it, but—

“...Are you truly forfeiting?”

He had already made his decision. At the judge’s words, Dohyeong nodded.

At that point, there was only one thing the judge could do.

“The bout... Cheon Hyein wins.”

He raised a hand and declared the result. At those words, Cheon Hyein’s face twisted hideously.

“Don’t talk nonsense...!”

Woooong—! Blue Sword Aura roared up. Teeth clenched, Cheon Hyein moved to thrust her sword—

[Enough.]

“...!”

Moon Immortal Sword subdued Cheon Hyein with a languid gaze. No, subdued was too strong a word. He merely spoke a single sentence. That alone was enough to make her body go rigid.

[That is enough. The bout is over. Step down.]

“...”

Crack.

Cheon Hyein ground her teeth, then whipped around.

Hmm.

Watching, I tilted my head.

Why had he really stopped the bout?

Why bother?

Had he run out of energy? No. Had something gone wrong?

I couldn’t understand why Dohyeong had deliberately stopped.

Hmmm.

I looked at Dohyeong as he stood there breathing hard. His breathing was rough, but not to any serious degree.

Which meant he could have kept going. Then why had he acknowledged defeat?

As I stared at him in confusion—

Tug.

“Hm?”

Someone pulled on my sleeve.

I turned to the ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) side.

“...What?”

A beauty with a lovely face, though she looked somehow tired.

Yu Yeon of Mount Hua’s Sword Peak was standing beside me.

“...How are you here?”

Were outsiders even allowed into the Azure Wolf Festival?

My brows knitted the moment I saw Yu Yeon standing there.

Slide.

Yu Yeon pointed somewhere with her finger. It was Moon Immortal Sword.

“What about him? The Sect Leader—... wait, don’t tell me you got permission from the Sect Leader?”

At my words, Yu Yeon nodded.

Hah.

Weren’t outsiders forbidden?

Just because she was staying inside the sect grounds didn’t mean she should have been able to come to the Azure Wolf Festival.

...Moon Immortal Sword allowed this.

That was strange. Well, could that happen? Maybe it could.

It wasn’t particularly important.

So—

“Why?”

Why had she grabbed me?

At that, Yu Yeon pointed at Dohyeong again with the tip of her finger.

“What?”

Was she saying Dohyeong had done something?

I had no idea what she meant.

“...”

Apparently frustrated that I wasn’t getting it, Yu Yeon suddenly pulled something out.

To my surprise, what came out of her robes was a stick.

Just an ordinary, clean-looking tree branch.

What was she planning to do with that?

Before I could even finish the thought—

Whish-whish—!

Yu Yeon suddenly swung the stick through empty air.

What was she doing?

...What is this all of a sudden?

I stared at her in puzzlement.

Then—

Oh.

She wasn’t just waving it around.

That was—

A sword path.

Yu Yeon was executing a sword path.

I kept watching, wondering why she was doing that, and then—

Stop—!

Right in the middle of the motion, Yu Yeon abruptly froze.

“What? Why’d you stop?”

She had been doing it just fine, so why stop now?

At my question, Yu Yeon bent down and wrote on the ground.

The word she wrote was: failure.

Failure?

I wondered what she meant for a moment.

Then, not long after, it came to me.

“Ah.”

Could it be—

“...You mean Senior Dohyeong’s sword path failed?”

At my words, Yu Yeon nodded.

His sword path failed?

It had looked perfectly fine.

She was saying he had failed to maintain the sword path?

So that’s why he admitted defeat in the bout?

From the outside, it had looked like he was completely pressuring Cheon Hyein.

...Where did she see that?

What part of it had let Yu Yeon realize that?

Not just me—even the people around us hadn’t noticed a thing.

Is it the difference in eyes?

The difference in talent Yucheon Gil had spoken of.

Those eyes that bastard Young Cult Leader had, and the eyes Yu Yeon possessed too—whatever they were called.

Even after opening Moon Eye, was there still a gap in this?

Or else—

Is it the difference in the Heaven-Slaying Star?

Yu Yeon had it. That bastard had it too. Maybe the difference came from that.

Either way—

She saw it, and I didn’t.

If it mattered, then that was what mattered.

Hmmm.

In any case.

The bout was over in the end. Both Cheon Hyein and Dohyeong had been wounded—not deeply, but enough to need treatment—so they left to be tended.

And so the bout ended with Cheon Hyein’s victory.

Though she didn’t look satisfied in the slightest.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen Lady Cheon that angry.”

“Maybe she really hated how that bout went?”

“If she hated it, does that mean she starts shouting like that? That doesn’t suit Lady Cheon at all.”

Because Cheon Hyein’s mask had broken, the martial artists began whispering among themselves.

They seemed quite shocked.

That was mild, if anything.

I already knew what Cheon Hyein was really like, so a sight like that wasn’t especially surprising to me.

And on top of that—

“I didn’t expect Unit Member Do to push her that far. Was he always that strong?”

“I heard he received an epithet, but still. At that level...”

“He’s far above the level of the bottom rank.”

“Moon Hero too... the Lesser Moon Unit really is...”

The martial artists seemed just as shocked by Dohyeong’s new face.

From the look of it, that interested them even more than Cheon Hyein’s outburst.

...Hm.

Dohyeong had gotten stronger. He had.

It had been the kind of daily schedule that would make that inevitable.

What’s strange is...

Dohyeong didn’t seem interested in the bout at all.

No interest. No attachment.

Not in the bout with Cheon Hyein.

Not in the Azure Wolf Festival bouts themselves.

What is he?

He looked like a man with no interest in anything.

As if his whole life consisted of nothing but swinging a sword.

If anything, he’s the least suited person in the Azure Moon Sect.

Aside from me, that is.

In a place where every last one of them is battle-crazed, how could someone that wooden ever fit in?

I found myself wondering how Dohyeong had ended up entering the Azure Moon Sect in the first place.

And then—

That guardian spirit.

The guardian spirit that had been circling Dohyeong like mad.

I had no idea why it had been reacting so violently.

It had always been so calm before.

No matter what crisis came, that guardian spirit had always stayed quiet.

So why?

Why had it suddenly gone wild during a bout?

...And one of mountain-god class, at that.

Honestly, it bothered me.

If a guardian spirit at that level started rampaging...

Nothing good could come of it.

Besides, every now and then—very rarely, but still—

Guardian spirits can fall.

There were cases where a guardian spirit fell and became an evil god.

Usually, when that happened—

It was when the one the guardian spirit protected died.

Guardian spirits were, in the end, beings that had chosen to remain in the mortal world in order to protect an existence.

Which meant the ones they protected were precious to them.

So if that existence met disaster, something even the guardian spirit could not bear—

It could become an evil god.

There were cases where they fell on their own and turned everything into utter chaos.

...And that’s even more troublesome.

When those who had nothing left to protect ran wild, their rampages were fiercer than those of other evil gods.

I knew that better than most, because I had dealt with it myself.

Damn. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up.

Cold sweat almost broke out on me.

That memory was that foul.

...Guardian spirits really are useful.

But in many ways, they were a double-edged sword.

And Senior Dohyeong’s guardian spirit is strange.

To me, at least.

Because it was the first guardian spirit with that kind of nature I had ever seen, it nagged at me all the more.

“I don’t know.”

I stopped thinking about it.

Dohyeong seemed like the sort of person who had his own circumstances too.

And digging any deeper than this...

I had too many other things to worry about right now.

Clang—!!!

The sound of swords colliding rang out. The Azure Wolf Festival’s third bout had begun.

And once again, blue lines began to link together languidly.

Then—

“...”

I felt a gaze and looked forward.

The narrow-eyed man.

Silver Moon Sword was waving at me.

“...”

That rank, coppery energy I could feel behind his back.

At the sight of another being’s spiritual energy, I faltered for a moment.

Still—

He’s an unsettling man.

For some reason, he was a man who made me uncomfortable.

*****

Clang—!!! Clatter—!

The swords crashed together and one fell to the ground.

“Urgh...”

Its owner groaned, and seeing that, the judge immediately halted the bout.

“Biyeon wins!”

Biyeon, the fourth in the Lesser Moon Unit’s order, won the bout.

He wiped away sweat and let out a long breath.

And with that bout over, the time for the final bout finally arrived.

“...Silver Moon Sword.”

“So he really returned from that mission after three years, did he? I wonder how much he’s changed.”

“I heard he had some friction with Moon Hero?”

“Ah, yes. I heard that too.”

As they talked, they suddenly glanced my way.

Apparently they were watching my reaction.

I faced forward and pretended not to hear.

“Senior Brother... I, well... I don’t really know much, so... is Senior Uncle Yu Yul very strong?”

A third-generation disciple asked his senior brother.

At that, the young man tipped his head.

“...He is strong.”

It was phrased almost like a question.

“He must be strong. If he’s the Sect Leader’s disciple, then naturally. But I’ve never actually seen it.”

“What?”

“Senior Uncle has never once had a proper bout.”

“...What do you mean by that?”

My ears pricked up at the conversation.

He’s never had a proper bout?

He had never once had a proper bout while staying in the Azure Moon Sect?

And yet—

He’s already in the Lesser Moon Unit.

The way one entered the Lesser Moon Unit—there had to be a bout against a martial artist already in the unit, followed by recognition.

And if Silver Moon Sword belonged to the Lesser Moon Unit, then his skill had obviously been acknowledged.

But outside of that, he’s never fought?

Was that possible?

For a moment I thought maybe he simply didn’t have much of a fighting spirit, but—

Then why with me?

I remembered the incident where he had picked a fight with me.

What is he?

What kind of man is he supposed to be?

I had already disliked those narrow eyes of his, and not knowing what kind of person he even was made it worse.

What’s his objective?

Cheon Hyein said he was a spy for Bow Ghost and the Death King.

And that unpleasant spiritual energy clinging to him made her words feel slightly more believable.

“Prepare for the bout.”

At the judge’s words, both men gripped their swords.

His opponent was—

The second in the Lesser Moon Unit’s order.

The one positioned directly behind the man I had fought.

He was a large man with sharply masculine features.

His name was probably—

Jeon Sowoo, was it?

I think that was right.

“Hooo—!”

Fighting spirit exploded from him. Inner qi was mixed into Jeon Sowoo’s breath.

He’s strong.

Strong. I could tell just from the pressure of that inner qi.

On the other hand—

I don’t feel anything from him.

Silver Moon Sword only smiled at Jeon Sowoo.

I couldn’t sense any force from him at all.

Just as I was noticing that—

Ssssss.

Hm?

Suddenly, the spiritual energy behind Silver Moon Sword reacted.

It rose slowly like a shadow.

Then—

Sliiide—!

“...!”

An eye appeared.

A single eye opened and began to look around.

What the hell.

I recoiled inwardly at the sight.

I was staring at it in alarm when—

Slide—!

The eye turned toward me.

And then that eye met mine.