Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time

The master of Heavenly Extreme Sect dragged the completely shattered front brim of his bamboo hat down his back.

A soft swish echoed eerily through the forest, as the shredded remnants of straw scattered at the feet of the blind man.

“That’s far too ruthless to be called the Sword of Wisdom…”

He murmured.

Meanwhile, Jeong Yeon-shin evaluated his opponent’s nature based on the technique he had just unleashed.

‘If I had aimed for his head, he would have dodged. There was enough of a gap for that.’

The Supreme Blade of the Unorthodox Path possessed an insight no lesser than Jeong Yeon-shin’s own technique of Seeing Through the Base. The master of Heavenly Extreme Sect had instantly realized that Yeon-shin’s strike had been aimed at his bamboo hat.

And yet, he hadn’t so much as tilted his head, deliberately experiencing the sword’s edge from up close. The difference between an inch and a yard was immeasurable. It was a boldness that only those obsessed with the sword could possess.

This man was different.

Jeong Yeon-shin thought. He could not dismiss him as a mere monkey or a stone. The wall of martial skill that the master of Heavenly Extreme Sect had built was too high.

His very soul seemed to have been wholly poured into the study of the sword. A man called the one who cleaves through the principles of the world itself. A madman no less than the Seventh Apostle.

“Regardless.”

Suddenly, the master of Heavenly Extreme Sect grinned.

“I must apologize for my rudeness.”

“What?”

“The time you hold is ten times denser than the fleeting years that common men let slip by. Like the leaves that play upon the wind before falling.”

“……”

“Because of you, my heart feels at ease.”

His gentle voice blended into the autumn breeze. At the end of summer, the crisp air of fall carried the scent of the season, as crimson leaves fluttered down between the two men.

Brushing past the long and spindly branches of a maple tree.

Rustle—

According to the master of Heavenly Extreme Sect, that tree was the ordinary people, and the reddish leaves were Jeong Yeon-shin. Ephemeral foliage, destined to wither and become nutrients, unlike the tree, which would live for decades more.

Like an ox stepping backward and catching a mouse, he had struck the truth. Since the moment Yeon-shin had achieved Threefold Internal Harmony, no one had been able to see through his lifespan.

—We are fated to vanish as stepping stones of history.

The dry voice of the Invincible One of So Cheon whispered in Yeon-shin’s mind. Words of the Lord of the Bright Sect, who claimed to have grasped the will of the heavens.

Jeong Yeon-shin, who had maintained a calm composure ever since acquiring the Song Moon Ancient Sword, furrowed his brow.

“Damn you.”

“Hmm? What’s wrong?”

It was meant as a rare and genuine compliment—so thought the master of Heavenly Extreme Sect as his words drifted into the autumn wind.

With that, his assessment of Jeong Yeon-shin’s technique was concluded, and the blind man, now missing his bamboo hat, once more lowered his sword.

Jeong Yeon-shin observed both the falling leaves and the master of Heavenly Extreme Sect, as he sensed the now-distant presence of the fleeing commoners.

Amid the descent of red leaves.

He began to replay in his mind the sword techniques of the Supreme Blade of the Unorthodox Path that had pushed him into a corner. It was an instinctive process within his overheated mind.

The luminous traces of the sword’s trajectory split apart the acupoint atop his crown. A tingling sensation in the back of his head, akin to enduring a months-long closed-door meditation.