IBGVMW~08

~CHAPTER 08~

“Wow, how brilliant,”

Yeongho said in a tone that was anything but admiring.

“You’ve managed to figure out something so obvious that even an idiot could see it.”

He even added a note of mockery, but Woohee decided she had better things to do than pay attention to that noisy brat.

Turning her head, she swept her gaze over the black-clad men with bored indifference.

It was now completely dark in the mountains, yet her eyes pierced through the night as if she were standing in broad daylight, scanning an open field with nothing in her way.

Something felt wrong.

Something dangerous was about to happen.

The leader of the black figures instinctively tensed his jaw. A chill of warning crawled up his spine, and before he could stop himself, he barked a sharp threat like a startled cat.

“You’ll not be leaving here alive!”

At that declaration, Woohee’s eyes went wide.

“Whoa…”

That couldn’t possibly be fear.

Her violet eyes sparkled like crystal under the darkness—filled not with terror, but with wild, uncontainable excitement.

Whipping her head toward Yeongho, she practically shouted in delight.

“Yeongho! This is it, right? That thing I heard about—the Mouth-Sealing Kill?!”

Mouth-Sealing Kill.

As the term implied, it meant silencing every witness so that no one could spread what they’d seen—a classic underworld practice of wiping out both lives and tongues.

In the Northern Seas, they treated a person’s life and their tongue as separate matters—kill the words, not the man—so Woohee had always assumed this Mouth-Sealing Kill was some peculiar Central Plains custom born of overcrowded lands.

Maybe that’s why her heart was pounding so fast now, standing on the brink of seeing it for the first time.

Her excitement was so intense it made Yeongho take an involuntary step back.

He looked at her with the weary eyes of a man who had given up on reason.

“Junior Sister,” he said quietly, “with all due respect, I’d like to add one more rule for surviving life in the Central Plains.”

“What rule? ‘Always face forward and don’t use drowsy light-step when sleepy’?”

“When someone mentions the Mouth-Sealing Kill, control your expression first. Don’t smile. And whatever you do, don’t look excited.”

“Why not? Am I not allowed to be happy now? Do I need your permission to get excited?”

Yeongho looked up at the night sky, as if pleading with the gods themselves.

He couldn’t understand why Heaven hadn’t recalled this troublesome creature yet.

“Enough!”

One of the black figures, unable to endure the nonsense any longer, roared with inner energy that shook the air.

“You dare mock us to our faces? Have you grown so bold you pray to die together?!”

Woohee frowned, glaring at him.

“Hey, Blackie, do I look like some monk from Shaolin? Why would I be chanting prayers? Do I look bald to you? Can’t you see this glorious hair?”

The black-clad man realized one thing clearly—there was no reasoning with her.

“Enough talk! Soon, corpses will need no words!”

A rare moment of wisdom—he abandoned the conversation and went straight for the sword.

Before his words even faded, his blade flashed. A swift, lethal strike—clean, balanced, and refined.

The technique was unmistakably orthodox.

Clang!

He was undoubtedly a master of high caliber, but his sword didn’t reach Woohee.

It didn’t even graze a single strand of her hair.

Instead—

“Oh, pretty fast, huh?”

She smiled brightly, almost playfully.

“But, Blackie, speed and haste are two very different things. When you draw a sword, you must never be hasty.”

The perfect flow of his strike suddenly faltered.

“The moment you rush, you’ve already lost.”

It was unbelievable.

Impossible.

“This can’t be happening!”

The black-clad master’s eyes burned with disbelief.

“Brat!”

He barked the word, the way a frightened dog barks to convince itself it isn’t afraid.

Woohee tilted her head.

“Oh, come on, Blackie. You’re really letting everyone know you’re new to the rivers and lakes, huh?”

No sane person in the martial world would dare speak like that to one of the top ten fastest swordsmen in the orthodox sects.

“Who started that nonsense anyway? The rumor that the young ones are the most dangerous—that you should never mess with kids?”

She sighed dramatically.

“People and their stupid proverbs…”

Ironically, her sarcasm wasn’t wrong.

The saying “beware of children, women, and the elderly” existed precisely because those underestimated faces had proven far too deadly, far too often.

“So, Blackie,” she asked with a grin, “how’s your first taste of fighting a ‘brat’?”

The man lunged again—swift, fierce, flawless—and missed once more.

Every line of attack was read before it even began.

Each time he moved, her sword was already there, blocking the perfect spot.

One second, two seconds, three… within moments, over a hundred exchanges had passed.

It was an all-out clash—yet terrifyingly brief.

Dozens of strikes traded in the blink of an eye.

“Open spot, open spot, weakness, gap!”

Clang, clang, slash, shraaak!

Each time Woohee cheerfully called out, her sword danced, batting away his strikes and carving neat lines of blood across his black robes.

He had resorted to killing strikes from the first move—too ruthless for one so young.

Then again, under these circumstances, what else could he do?

“Huh. So the orthodox sects aren’t that great after all,” she muttered.

But the man wasn’t afraid of dying.

What terrified him was who he was dying to.

“Another mistake, Blackie!”

Slash!

Blood sprayed again, crimson against the dark.

Though his body was a map of shallow cuts, not one wound went deep.

Not a single tendon severed.

It was deliberate.

Like a cat toying with a mouse.

He was being played with.

He bit down hard, grinding his teeth.

He was from one of the great sects, a swordsman famed for his lightning speed—and yet this?

Unbelievable.

No—unbearable.

He pushed his internal energy into his sword, flooding it with power.

If he was to die here, at least he would die fighting at full strength.

No more hiding. No more restraint.

“This ends now!”

And yet—

“Aw, don’t be like that,” Woohee said, smiling sweetly. “We were just starting to have fun.”

White mist began to coil around her blade, the light so pale it was almost luminous.

The black swordsman froze.

Cold energy?

No… something worse.

A chilling, unnatural frost that crept through the trees, coating the very air in ice.

And through it all, Woohee’s breathing remained steady and calm.

That kind of composure only belonged to masters beyond Transcendence.

“…I owe you an apology,” he said at last, his voice thick with dread and reluctant awe.

“I failed to recognize a true senior when I saw one. But—”

Clang!

Their blades collided with a flash, sending a shockwave bursting through the forest.

“Since you’ve glimpsed the secret arts of my sect, there’s no turning back. One of us must fall here.”

He knew, even as he said it, which side would fall.

His jaw tightened in grim acceptance.