Chapter 63: First Young Master of Green Mountain (3)

“Gasp!”

“W-what was that? A tiger?!”

At the sudden, terrifying roar, people jumped out of their skins.

No one could tell where it came from, but it was unmistakably a tiger’s roar.

Only, it was far too loud. It rolled out in every direction like thunder; just hearing it made knees go numb.

Half the people moving through Kaifeng’s main district collapsed where they stood. Their legs simply gave out.

“A tiger—there’s a tiger!”

“Get back!”

“Aaah! Move!”

The commotion swelled in a rush. In every age, tiger scourges were feared as much as smallpox.

In an instant the street became a madhouse. Shopkeepers hurried to shutter their doors; people on the thoroughfare fled without a backward glance.

Even streets far from the bamboo grove were in turmoil. Such was the overpowering roar.

“No.”

Yet from the top floor of an elegant wine house in Kaifeng, a young man sipping tea was certain: this was not a tiger’s roar.

“This is no mere tiger.”

Astonishment crossed the youth’s face.

“Such an energy?!”

A tremendous force rode that bursting sound.

He had never felt anything like it. Infinite frenzy that could shake heaven and earth, coexisting with a mysterious majesty.

A sound like a tiger’s bellow—yet a presence beyond any Tiger Roar.

“Uncle?!”

No doubt. The source of this energy spread from the bamboo grove his uncle—who led the Hall of Guarding the Ming—had headed toward.

But neither his uncle nor the Hall’s warriors exuded anything like this.

Pak!

The youth vaulted out the window.

****

Boom!

Taking the brunt of a savage strike, Ming Chisan slid backward.

“Damn!”

His face had gone pale.

The faces of the fallen Hall warriors were worse—beyond pale to bluish, washed over with fear.

One of them was even foaming at the mouth. The colossal roar detonated at point-blank range had rattled his mind.

Ssssshhhh!

The wind rose and rose.

A gale slammed the bamboo grove that moments ago had only a breeze. Dozens of tall stalks swayed as if about to snap.

Drip.

Ming Chisan looked down at the hand gripping his hilt with trembling eyes.

His tiger’s mouth had split; blood seeped out. Even the hand guarded by the Ming Clan’s Eastern Heaven Skill hadn’t dispersed the shock of that blow.

“Monstrous.”

Power, suddenly amplified.

He looked to Yeon Hojeong.

Fwoooooo!!

With his head dipped and planted, a mad wind hammered around Yeon Hojeong.

Gale and whirl. Leaves on the ground spiraled up around him and climbed skyward.

And that wind—

Invisible to the eye, yet somehow it seemed to carry a pure white sheen.

“Hup!”

Yeon Hojeong drew a great breath; thick veins stood out across his body and settled, then stood out again.

Exultation touched his face.

“Done.”

The breath he took in carried a far richer energy than before.

His lungs had surged awake. The cardiopulmonary capacity honed by brutal training was transforming toward the ideal.

It was as if the lungs alone had been reborn. Hardened beyond comparison to before, they filled him with the confidence that one mouthful of air could drive him ten li.

Wiiiiing—

White True Qi filled his lungs.

“White Tiger Qi!”

White Tiger.

Of the Four Spirit Arts, the White Tiger is the metal god of Gengyin and the sign of autumn. It governs the lungs among the organs and maintains bodily robustness.

Different from the Black Tortoise. Where the Black Tortoise expels turbidity, the White Tiger magnifies what the lungs take in and spreads it through the body.

Crack, crackle!

It felt as if bone and sinew were changing.

Breathe wrong and flesh and bone are harmed. Let breath flourish, and the quality of flesh and bone rises.

That is the White Tiger—pursuing offense and advance through extreme stamina and vigorous breathing.

It was why Yeon Hojeong had tempered his body so mercilessly. Without a firm physical base, White Tiger Qi is hard to summon.

Guardian of the Western Heaven. Master of wind.

The manifestation of the White Tiger, Great Emperor of the West.

“You cur!”

Ming Chisan barked,

“What heretical art is that?!”

Thoom!

He stamped and rushed Yeon Hojeong. He’d seen an opening in that stillness.

Bang!

His eyes widened.

He stamped, set the next step—and Yeon Hojeong was already on him.

“What—!”

Too fast. And strong. The force transmitted through the earth—Stamping Step—was like a mountain shaking.

The axe swept on a diagonal.

Clang!

“Kh!”

Brute force.

This was power of a different order than before—density beyond imagining.

Driven back under the pressure, Ming Chisan hurried to mount an attack.

Too late again.

Bang! Bang!

A terrifying advance.

He hammered the ground as he came on. Explosive stamina, an overwhelming charge. A killing will like a great tiger leaping.

This was the true martial of Yeon Hojeong. The martial of the Dark Emperor whose ruinous offense and refusal to retreat had made his name infamous.

The axe, once tinged blue, was now infused with pure White Tiger Qi.

Clang! Claaang!

Each blow birthed a brutal shockwave. Ming Chisan’s heavy saber warped and sprang back as if to break.

“Too strong!”

Qi bursting off the axe °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° face crashed in violent waves.

Unmanageable. The storming momentum the axe raised looked ready to sweep heaven and earth.

Bang! Thooooom!

And that footwork—

He seemed to spare no thought for evasion or counters. Only advance, and advance again. He maximized the Stamping Step’s force, doubling and tripling the axe’s power.

Light revived in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.

“Good.”

White Tiger footwork: the White Tiger Lord’s Step.

A different track than the Black Tortoise’s Unmoving Pillar. In the White Tiger’s martial, there was no retreat, no defense.

And the weapon art—

Clang-clang-clang! Boom!

“Khauk!”

At last a cry tore from Ming Chisan’s throat.

“What martial is this?!”

Not spear. Not saber.

Yet it was stronger—far stronger, far finer, far more savage than what he’d used before summoning that uncanny wind.

Fueled by the White Tiger Lord’s Step, it was the Tiger King’s Nine Thunderclap Stances. The root from which the Beast Spear Method later grew—yet on a plane the Beast Spear can’t touch, a supreme offensive art.

Crunch! Crackle! Thoom!

Ming Chisan yielded ground again and again.

He couldn’t shake free. Gales from every quarter bound his body, and the relentless bull-charge drove him back without end.

But he couldn’t yield forever. Keep this up and his head would go to the axe without a single counter.

He roared,

“Uraaah!”

Booom!

Yeon Hojeong’s axe checked.

A secret of the Thousand-View Divine Saber under the Eastern Heaven Skill. In that briefest instant, he had somehow drawn a secret and slipped the noose.

“You cur!”

Free of the assault—now his turn. Ming Chisan’s blade all but said it.

Fwaaaam!

Fast and ferocious, the Thousand-View Divine Saber crashed toward Yeon Hojeong’s whole frame.

So fast, so rough. He’d managed to draw it out, but the White Tiger Qi hadn’t fully settled. It would be hard to block cleanly—

In that instant, the Black Tortoise Qi surged.

Vwoom! Clang-clang-clang-clang!

“Kh!”

Shock lanced Ming Chisan’s wrist as if to snap it.

“W-what?!”

From Yeon Hojeong’s body, which had been calling up a blue-white wind, a dark blue-black shimmer rose.

An invincible defense—the Northern Heaven Twelve Walls. Absolute defense following explosive offense.

The White Tiger handles the press-forward and attack in close battle.

The Black Tortoise smothers threats with fortress-like guard.

Offense and defense as one. He had won an iron shield—and now, at last, a divine weapon to match the shield in worth.

Whooom!

Defense gave way to offense. He stepped once more and swept the axe face toward the reeling Ming Chisan.

Wham!

Blood burst from Ming Chisan’s nose and mouth.

Internal damage. He had blocked the attack, but the shock rattled him stem to stern.

Yeon Hojeong did not stop.

Step by step in the White Tiger’s dominion, he unleashed the Tiger King’s Nine Thunderclap Stances like a man possessed.

Bang! Kwarung! Boom!

Bamboo toppled in showers. Blood spewed thicker from Ming Chisan.

“I’m... losing...”

The match reversed in a heartbeat.

“There’s a man like this?”

Instinct bought him answers to the blows, but his strength bled away.

His foe’s martial, by contrast, grew only stronger. As if he were slipping into clothes that hadn’t fit—his attacks sharpened at a fearful pace.

“...?!”

At some point, Ming Chisan saw a vision.

Behind his opponent’s back, a white tiger god seemed to rise like heat-haze.

“A monster?!”

Four legs thicker than palace pillars, a tail broader than rafters, a long neck and a beast’s face—an unprecedented creature.

Black stripes ran over snow-white fur like mountain ranges from a painter’s brush. Blue eyes burned like foxfire, and the gently curving fangs were steel swords.

Like a tiger, yet strangely unlike; far more mysterious and majestic—the lord of the West bent down to look upon him.

The White Tiger of the Four Spirit Arts.

“Aaaah!”

Vomiting blood, Ming Chisan brought his saber down at Yeon Hojeong’s crown.

The axe rose from low to high.

Fwooosh! Kraaang!

From right thigh to left shoulder, a line split wide. The heavy saber in his hand snapped clean at mid-blade.

Yeon Hojeong, having lifted the axe high, chopped straight down.

Ming Chisan’s eyes went empty.

The great axe plunging down was the White Tiger’s claw.

Thud!

The blow that shattered his skull drove on into his solar plexus.

Decision.

Pssssss.

“Huuup.”

Drawing breath, Yeon Hojeong wrenched the axe free of Ming Chisan’s body and looked down on him with cold eyes.

“A strong one.”

Ming Chisan was of a kind with his father—a martial adept who had mastered offense and defense beyond mere realms.

Because he was such a foe, the White Tiger was easier to call than expected. An enemy to be thanked.

Yeon Hojeong looked back.

Nearly a hundred bamboo stalks lay downed—the line of his straight drive that had hounded Ming Chisan.

And beyond that, one Hall warrior still on his feet.

“Th-this can’t be.”

Ming Chisan, exemplar among the Pure-White Martial Corps—

A master like that cut down by a rising talent not yet twenty. An impossible thing had happened.

Yeon Hojeong walked up and stopped three zhang away.

He leveled the axe at the man.

“Are you a Ming?”

The man shook his head before he knew it. It felt like the only way to live.

Yeon Hojeong nodded—then suddenly swung the axe.

Boom!

A blast ripped from a particularly dense stand of bamboo.

His voice went cold.

“Come out.”

“...Bone-chilling.”

From behind the shattered culms stepped a young man who looked to be in his late twenties.

The youth—Ming Gangnim—asked with a stiff face,

“Just what are you?”

Yeon Hojeong smiled brightly.

“A Ming after all.”