Chapter 342. Resting at Home
After emerging from meditation, Youngwoo simply lay back where he was.
He had thought circulating the Small Heavenly Cycle would wash away his fatigue, but his body was still heavy.
He had killed many people.
Muscular exhaustion could be eased through breathing, but the weariness soaked into the soul did not settle so easily.
Lying on his back and looking upward, he noticed that even the ceiling had been carefully paneled.
This was a wealthy household.
The pillars and beams fit together solidly, and every ceiling board showed signs of careful workmanship.
Youngwoo drew in a long breath and slowly released it.
After repeating the breathing several times, even the old sadness buried deep within him seemed to sink away.
He fell asleep just like that.
Deoki entered carefully.
He stood at a distance and watched Youngwoo for a moment, then approached without making a sound and covered him with a blanket.
"The floor must be cold…"
He murmured softly, but Youngwoo did not move at all.
Deoki tucked the edge of the blanket around him and muttered again,
"At this rate, your face will freeze crooked."
Still, Youngwoo remained buried in deep sleep.
Deoki stood beside him for a long while.
The sleeping face before him overlapped with the face he had seen inside the city the night before.
Deoki had witnessed the battle from very close by.
He had gone into battle as part of Go Hoewon's escort, so he had not been in a position to remain safely behind the fighting.
From barely more than ten jang away, he had watched Yi Youngwoo carve a road toward the southern gate.
People did not call him a master of the Realm of Transformation for nothing.
He was not actually at the Realm of Transformation, but people called him that.
It was not empty praise.
Deoki had seen it with his own eyes.
For the first time in his life, he had witnessed the moment when a person's martial arts seemed to become something beyond what could ordinarily be called martial arts.
The road inside the southern gate had been packed with enemy soldiers.
Torches shook in the wind, while smoke and dust hung low over the stone pavement.
The city's defenders surged outward amid screams and shouted commands.
Spearpoints appeared first.
Shields came behind them.
Men with swords filled the narrow street.
Youngwoo stood before them.
In his hand was a single hwando, not particularly long.
It was a short blade.
Yet the moment it entered his hand, it became something entirely different.
When the sword moved lightly at shoulder height, Deoki could already sense that the motion contained the next cut within it.
Youngwoo took his first step.
It was not hurried.
Yet the spear thrust at him had already struck empty air, and Youngwoo's body had slipped alongside the shaft.
The hwando flashed briefly.
The wrist of the spearman twisted away.
The next flash passed across the back of his neck.
After that, Deoki could barely follow what happened with his eyes.
Youngwoo never stopped after cutting down one man.
The moment his sword struck an enemy's arm, his foot was already entering beside the next man's flank.
While his body turned, the back of the blade smashed another man's jaw.
Cutting, thrusting, and driving forward were not separate actions.
They flowed together within a single breath.
Three enemy soldiers rushed him at once.
The man in front raised a shield.
The two behind him thrust spears over it.
Youngwoo did not evade the shield.
He closed in directly.
The pommel of his hwando struck the upper edge of the shield while his knee drove into the lower part at the same time.
The shield-bearer staggered backward.
In that instant, Youngwoo's blade slipped between the two spear shafts.
One man collapsed while clutching his throat.
Another stumbled back with his shoulder split open.
The shield-bearer lost his balance and fell, and Youngwoo's foot was already stepping over him into the next rank.
Deoki realized he had stopped breathing.
It looked less like a man fighting than a sword method brought to life.
The forms Youngwoo practiced repeatedly in the courtyard were unfolding exactly as they had been trained, only now amid blood and firelight.
The blade rose horizontally as though in the Pyeongdaese form, opening a road.
His waist twisted like the Sayose form, cutting diagonally through an enemy.
Then the sword lifted overhead like the Geojeongse form and came crashing down in the next instant, sending a helmeted soldier collapsing to the ground.
But there was no leisure of practice in those movements.
They carried the speed of battle and the pressure of death.
If he was slow once, he would be stabbed.
If he swung too broadly once, he would be surrounded.
Youngwoo moved as though he already knew every narrow opening before entering it.
He decided where the blade would land first.
His body followed afterward.
At first, the enemy soldiers charged with shouts.
Soon, those shouts changed.
When the men rushing forward with swords began disappearing one after another before Youngwoo, the soldiers behind them stopped first.
Even those who had been pushing forward despite the collapse of the front ranks scattered as though they had reached an invisible wall.
Youngwoo did not miss the opening.
He stepped forward again.
The hwando swept in a long line from left to right, then his wrist reversed and brought the blade upward from below.
The steel flashed silver in the torchlight, then darkened as blood coated it.
Wherever he passed, enemy soldiers fell.
To Deoki's eyes, it looked as though a road was being created.
Bodies overlapped across the stone pavement.
Blood flowed between them.
Youngwoo advanced by making that road.
The Balhae soldiers behind him surged into the openings he created.
When one man tore open the head of the formation, the troops behind widened the breach.
One enemy soldier suddenly burst from a side alley and aimed for Youngwoo's waist.
Deoki nearly shouted without realizing it.
But Youngwoo's body had already turned halfway.
His sword hand dropped low.
His elbow bent briefly and extended.
The point of the blade struck the man in the chest and withdrew.
The thrust was so quick and precise that the man took another full step before collapsing.
Another enemy came from behind.
Without even looking back, Youngwoo stepped backward and lowered his body.
The enemy blade passed over his head.
At that same instant, Youngwoo's hwando rose from below and opened the man's side.
While the enemy staggered and fell, Youngwoo had already turned forward again.
One sword stroke was enough.
He never used more than necessary.
That was when Deoki saw Youngwoo's face.
There was no obvious anger on it.
No excitement.
No pride.
His eyes were cold and settled.
His lips remained firmly closed.
The hand wielding the sword was fierce, but the man himself was strangely calm.
That calmness was more frightening than anything else.
It was not drunken courage.
It was not madness intoxicated by blood.
He moved like a man walking a road he knew, like someone carrying out work he already understood.
Only then did Deoki feel he understood a little of what people meant when they spoke of the Realm of Transformation.
If the heart wavers before the sword, the sword becomes slow.
Youngwoo's heart had settled into a single point.
The blade simply followed it.
At last, the enemy soldiers blocking the road became afraid.
They still held their swords toward Youngwoo, but their eyes were already searching the side roads and the rear.
Some threw away their shields and ran.
Others tripped over the bodies of their comrades.
When the Balhae soldiers roared and pushed forward, the formation inside the southern gate shook violently.
Deoki had watched all of it from barely more than ten jang away.
It had been close.
So close that he could hear the sound of blood spraying.
The dull impact of blades striking bone.
Helmets rolling across stone.
The sound of breath being cut off in the night air.
And yet Youngwoo's steps alone had remained steady.
He advanced as though practicing the sword forms.
But that sword practice left countless enemies dead.
Deoki saw a long line of bodies stretching behind him.
That road reached toward the southern gate.
And at the end of that road, the gate opened.
The blood of those who opened the hidden gate, the charge of the Balhae soldiers, and Yi Youngwoo's martial power tearing open the front by himself had all met in one place.
If even one of those elements had been a little slower, many more men would have died before the southern gate.
Now Youngwoo lay asleep on the wooden floor.
Deoki pulled the blanket once more and covered his shoulder.
On the battlefield, this was the man who had carved through dozens with a single sword.
Now he slept with nothing more than the quiet sound of his breathing.