CHIIIIIISS-!

The Glacier Priestess suppressed the flames burning through her martial robe sleeve with cold and glared at Jang Jinmyeong, who had turned into a flame giant.

“Hahahaha! It’s still hot! If your Profound Yin Art is this pathetic, no wonder you can’t even cool the heat in my body—!”

That was no longer something you could call a martial artist.

Following Jang Jinmyeong as he rampaged like a beast with nothing but instinct left, the flames coiling around him writhed as if alive, intent on destroying everything.

‘Where did it start going wrong...?’

Sun and Moon Gate had begun centuries ago as a sect that studied martial arts that handled yin and yang as one, but as martial artists gradually developed a tendency to focus on either the yin-cold lineage or the blazing-yang lineage, it naturally split into two factions.

The yin-cold lineage’s Profound Yin Art.

The blazing-yang lineage’s Blazing-Yang Art.

The two martial arts that represented Sun and Moon Gate each possessed power comparable to a divine art.

And because of that, the martial artists of the two factions had tremendous pride, and at some point they began to clash over everything, each convinced they were the best.

Jang Jinmyeong and Hyun Eunha were peers who entered Sun and Moon Gate together when that conflict had reached its extreme.

“Uahahahaha! Hot! It’s hot—hot enough to drive me crazy—!”

Every time the flame giant swung its fist, her breath choked off in her throat. Dozens of lashes of flame moved like whips, scorching the surroundings into wasteland.

FWOOSH!

After swallowing the Golden Winged Bird’s power, Jang Jinmyeong’s flames clearly held terrifying might. If she met him head-on with force, even the Glacier Priestess wouldn’t be able to endure it.

But the profound subtlety of techniques honed over decades, and talent said to be the greatest in Sun and Moon Gate’s history, made it possible for her to fight him evenly.

“Kahahahaha! The famed Glacier Priestess is putting on a little show in front of me!”

“Did your brain get cooked from playing with fire you can’t handle?”

Hyun Eunha had always been evaluated as at least a step above Jang Jinmyeong. It had been that way even before her epithet became Glacier Priestess.

Sun and Moon Gate’s greatest rising star.

The youngest elder in Sun and Moon Gate’s history.

The youngest Grand Elder, and one of the Ten Great Experts of Korea.

Hyun Eunha took every one of those titles.

Jang Jinmyeong had only one thing: sitting in the sect leader’s seat of Sun and Moon Gate, as scheduled for his generation.

If it weren’t for Sun and Moon Gate’s tradition of alternating the sect leader position between the two factions, even that would have been taken from him.

—If only you, if only you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be treated like this!

Once, when he was dead drunk, Jang Jinmyeong had come looking for her and raged like that.

Ever since their days as rising stars, he’d been compared to her everywhere he went, so in his own way he might have felt miserable.

But understanding that didn’t mean she could forgive him.

“You idiot. You learned something like Demonic Void Art over a pathetic little inferiority complex?”

“Shuuuut uuuup—!”

As if she’d hit the bullseye, Jang Jinmyeong screamed and blasted flames from his entire body.

FWOOSH!

But even as the flames surged up like exploding lava, the Glacier Priestess’s expression only turned colder.

“...I wondered, and it really was true. Leaving an irredeemably stupid fool like this as sect leader—no wonder the sect fell under a curse.”

In a voice like ice, the Glacier Priestess struck out hard with both palms. Cold honed to a razor’s edge split the rampaging flames.

SHAAAAK— KRRRRAAACK!

Under the concentrated cold, the flames rolled and split left and right in an instant. The Glacier Priestess sprinted with all her strength into the opened path.

‘End it as fast as possible.’

A dreadful cold stormed around her body.

From the start, she had no intention of dragging this fight out. She meant to decide it before the Eight Great Sects’ elites noticed and swarmed in.

In raw firepower for an instant, Jang Jinmyeong’s flames were far fiercer, but the Glacier Priestess had the sharpness he had lost—along with the advantage of knowing him better than anyone.

CHIIIIIISS...!

Of course, the process wasn’t easy.

Each time she struck aside the flames the flame giant poured out, blisters rose on her palms, and burn marks were carved into parts of her body the flames had never dared to invade before. It was pain like forcing her way through molten lava.

“......”

Even so, the Glacier Priestess closed the distance without letting out a single groan. She protected her body with only the minimum of her strength, and used everything else to dismantle the flames blocking her path.

‘I won’t leave your end to someone else.’

The bare minimum respect for the sect leader of her sect—and someone who had once been her friend—and the responsibility she had to bear as Sun and Moon Gate’s Grand Elder.

A moment later, the Glacier Priestess finally split the flame giant in two. And inside it, she faced Jang Jinmyeong, writhing in agony.

“Hot—so hot—so hot I can’t stand it—!”

He was already a wreck. The wounds he’d suffered shaking off the pursuit of the Eight Great Sects’ elites, tangled together with the Golden Winged Bird’s energy that was eroding his mind, bound him in place.

And with his mind half gone, it looked like even if she left him alone, he wouldn’t last long before being swallowed by the Golden Winged Bird’s flames.

“Someone—someone, please put the fire out... Hyun Eunha? Eunha!”

Clutching his head in pain, Jang Jinmyeong suddenly smiled brightly at the Glacier Priestess and started to walk toward her, one step at a time.

At the sight of the sect leader driven to the peak of deviated cultivation madness, the Glacier Priestess barely held back her fury as she asked,

“Who are you?”

“Can you put out the fire stuck to my body? Yeah? Please, Eunha...”

“Say it. Who was the one who handed you Demonic Void Art and told you to learn it!”

From the distant days when they were rising stars, by choice and by force, they’d been at each other’s throats and at each other’s side their whole lives.

The Glacier Priestess prided herself on knowing Sun and Moon Gate’s sect leader, Jang Jinmyeong, better than anyone.

She had been the first to sense he’d learned Demonic Void Art, and she’d been investigating the suspicious things he’d been doing from some point onward.

But the Jang Jinmyeong she knew—no matter how greedy he was beyond his station—was not a man with the guts to lay hands on Demonic Void Art.

“Who inflated your timid little lungs? Another sect leader from the Eight Great Sects? One of the unorthodox factions? Speak. Hurry. Only then can I take revenge or do whatever needs doing!”

But even as he suffered in the searing flames, Jang Jinmyeong started to giggle, vacant-eyed.

“Hyun Eunha. When we were kids, we weren’t on bad terms, you know? We got along pretty well. Back then, people even teased us, asking if we were dating...”

“So? Now you want me to spare you because you’re thinking of old times?”

In that moment, Jang Jinmyeong’s face—smiling like an innocent boy—twisted again into something hideous, like a wicked spirit.

“Honestly, I wanted to kill you from back then. No matter what I did, everyone praised only you. But I pretended to be close. I wanted to step on you one day and climb up, and make you drown in betrayal. Heh.”

The Glacier Priestess’s expression turned colder still.

KRRRRAAACK—!

When she extended her hand to the side, ice grew long in midair like an icicle, becoming a single spear.

“Right. I figured I wouldn’t get a proper answer anyway. Let’s end it.”

Then Jang Jinmyeong, who had been laughing with a creepy “Khehehe,” suddenly dropped to his knees in front of her with a thud.

“But listen. I don’t want to die.”

“......”

“Eunha. We promised we’d make Sun and Moon Gate the number one sect under heaven together. You’d become the Grand Elder, I’d become the sect leader, and we’d have nothing to fear. We promised we’d work well together. We said once our generation came, we could resolve the conflict between the two factions...”

“Jang Jinmyeong, you were the one who broke that promise first.”

Biting her lip hard, the Glacier Priestess leveled the ice spear at his heart. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

If she simply thrust it in, she could execute the worst sect leader in Sun and Moon Gate’s history—and a horrific criminal.

It would be the best choice for the sect, stained in disgrace.

So there was no reason to hesitate.

“I... I just wanted to get strong. I wanted to get strong enough to be equal to you. I only wanted to become a sect leader worthy of a sect that’s number one under heaven...”

Tears were running down Jang Jinmyeong’s cheeks.

The moisture dried instantly in the terrible heat, then flowed again, again and again.

“So when Black Swallow brought back the dying Golden Winged Bird... when I saw that blazing-yang qi... I couldn’t control my desire...”

A grown man turned into rags, bawling and begging, looked utterly miserable and shabby.

But the Glacier Priestess didn’t stop her hand because of how pathetic he looked—she stopped because of the name she’d just heard.

“...Who is Black Swallow?”

“My confidant. The subordinate who always follows me like a shadow. A guy like a brother—someone I trained martial arts with since we were kids...”

“What kind of bullshit are you spouting!”

The Glacier Priestess swept the ice spear aside, grabbed Jang Jinmyeong by the collar, and yanked him up until their eyes were level.

“As far as I know, there is no martial artist in Sun and Moon Gate with the epithet Black Swallow. You trained together since you were kids? He follows you like a shadow? Then where the hell is that bastard right now!”

At the Glacier Priestess’s roar, Jang Jinmyeong asked back with a bewildered expression.

“Black Swallow... isn’t a Sun and Moon Gate person?”

The moment she saw that wavering gaze, the Glacier Priestess became certain that a being called Black Swallow was involved behind all of this.

“You stupid bastard. What the hell did someone do to you!”

A fleeting disturbance—pity blooming in a heart that had been hard as ten-thousand-year ice.

But between top experts, it was enough time to divide life and death.

‘Too late.’

There wasn’t even a sound. The Glacier Priestess saw the condensed flame gathered on the fingertip that had lunged in front of her, and beyond it, she met a vicious face shining with exhilaration.

‘So I’ll die with this trash.’

Sensing her end, the Glacier Priestess thrust out the ice spear.

At the very least, she meant to take him with her. She couldn’t let this trash who had inflicted such horrific harm on the sect escape.

CHIIIIIISS-.

A deep burn was carved into the cheek the finger brushed past. It would probably remain a scar that would never fade for the rest of her life.

But.

“Cough.”

From Jang Jinmyeong’s mouth—where he should have been laughing in triumph—blood poured down in thick drops.

He tilted his head, staring at the sword tip protruding from his chest.

The Glacier Priestess’s ice spear, which had pierced his abdomen, lost its power after only breaking the surface and melted away.

If that were all, he could have killed the Glacier Priestess and fled.

“Who...?”

If not for the single sword that had pierced his heart from behind.

“Tsk. I was going to watch, if possible, but you’re filthy to the very end.”

A strange voice reached Jang Jinmyeong’s ear.

When he barely turned his eyes, a man wearing a yaksha mask was clicking his tongue.

“I thought, just maybe, you were finally repenting... but sure. A beast is a beast to the very end.”

“And who are you?”

Choi Geon removed his mask, as if to show off, and revealed his face.

“Sword Demon Choi Geon. The name of the man who will send you to the underworld.”

“...I remember you. An annoying old man. Did you wait to take revenge on me?”

“Revenge? Hardly. But if you want to call it slaughter, maybe.”

Sssrkk.

As Choi Geon pulled the sword out, Jang Jinmyeong staggered weakly.

But the Golden Winged Bird’s flames that had already seized his body did not go out.

Rather, as if devouring a body that life had fled, they burned even more fiercely.

With his entire body wrapped in flames, Jang Jinmyeong twisted and groaned in agony.

“the Cult... Right. Black Swallow was someone the Cult sent. I remember now.”

Was it a final flash of clarity? In Jang Jinmyeong’s eyes, which had been dull and unfocused the whole time, sharpness returned.

“the Cult? Just now—did you say the Cult!”

“Y-you...!”

Staring at Choi Geon, who had widened his eyes at the word the Cult, and at the Glacier Priestess, whose gaze looked down on him with contempt, Jang Jinmyeong spat out a curse.

“Do you think you’ll be any different from me? No one can handle them. In the end, you’ll all either die at their hands, or fall to your knees and beg them to spare you!”

FWOOSH!

Jang Jinmyeong, engulfed by the fire demon, roared out a lion’s roar with all the strength he had left.

“Enjoy yourselves while you still can, before ruin arrives! Hwahahahahahahaha—!”

A moment later, all that remained in that place was a handful of ashes.