The moment Dong Bong-soo's figure kicked off the round table and came flying in, Eom Bi-ryeong reflexively deployed a suppression formation.
Nine Bindings.
The most basic formation of the Mountain Formation Division closed in around Dong Bong-soo's upper body in an instant.
At least, that was how it should have gone.
Sliiiide.
The nine strands of Formation Energy rope created by the formation, the moment they wrapped around Dong Bong-soo's body, slipped on something. Like thread placed on oil, the Formation Energy slid off without catching hold of its target.
Super True Energy Field.
The invisible domain of energy enveloping Dong Bong-soo's body pulsed and automatically repelled Eom Bi-ryeong's Formation Energy.
The Mountain Formation Division's method of deploying formations was to weave lines of Formation Energy to control space. Without the rope binding, there was no formation.
'Again!?'
Eom Bi-ryeong's eyes widened, but her response was swift.
She was a Formation Taoist, but she was also a martial artist.
Wham—!
She replaced the Formation Energy rope released from her left hand with her right fist. A direct punch aimed at Dong Bong-soo's face.
A single blow overlaying the Mountain attribute onto the Mountain Trigram's characteristic unyielding strength.
Dong Bong-soo's head tilted half an inch diagonally.
It grazed past him, but where the fist had passed, a whirlwind of air spun furiously.
Clang—!
Simultaneously, the Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword summoned from Inventory came up diagonally from below, aiming for beneath Eom Bi-ryeong's jaw.
Formation Energy surged into one of Eom Bi-ryeong's hands and wove an impromptu defensive barrier.
One layer.
A single layer of Energy Membrane inserted itself between the blade and her jaw.
Clang—!
The clash of metal and Energy Membrane.
Eom Bi-ryeong's body was immediately pushed back about three meters as the floor was scraped away.
The floorboards of the Main Hall cracked sharply beneath her feet.
That impact transferred directly to the pillars.
Thud.
"Tch. Looks like I'll owe Ra-hwa an apology."
While Dong Bong-soo glanced up at the ceiling.
Whoom—
The quality of the air changed.
Not temperature. Not humidity. A change in the space itself.
The air beneath their feet began to twist. An invisible force coiled the air currents around Dong Bong-soo, attempting to restrict his movement.
This time it was Myo Jin-heo.
With his fan half-open, he was drawing a small circle in the air with one hand. The Vortex Formation unique to the Thunder Formation Division. Whereas the Mountain Formation Division wove strands of Formation Energy to bind, the Thunder Formation Division's method was to alter the very properties of space itself. A strand is visible, but a field is not.
Dong Bong-soo did not react differently.
Because it didn't work.
The Super True Energy Field was directly nullifying the vortex field right beneath his feet. As if standing in the eye of a typhoon, only directly beneath Dong Bong-soo's feet was the air still.
One of Myo Jin-heo's eyes narrowed. That eye where the blood had not yet fully dried.
As if he had anticipated this, not a single tremor showed in his pupils. But the fact that things had gone as anticipated was an even worse sign. The opponent had dismantled his Soul-Reading Eyes without care, and this time too had blocked things from the very root using something that was neither Formation Energy nor Rigid Energy.
An opponent whose foundation was somehow different.
'I didn't want to make this bigger...'
Right then.
Crash!
A pillar collapsed.
At nearly the same instant, all three people burst through the wall and leaped outside.
The Founding Ceremony decorations that Jeon Ra-hwa had hung with such care scattered into pieces, crumbling down together with the wreckage.
***
Creak.
Jeon Ra-hwa's head turned.
She had been in the middle of drilling the children on fundamentals at one side of the Training Grounds. Hо-ae had been standing before the younger ones, demonstrating a horse stance.
Creak… creak— snap!
The pillars of the Main Hall, whose scent of fresh wood had not yet even faded, toppled sideways.
It was not just one pillar. The beams shifted, the roof was pushed to one side, and the walls began to crack. Through those gaps, a bizarre vibration was wringing the entire building.
"Haa... again?"
Jeon Ra-hwa's expression went flat.
"I asked and asked you not to, you idiot."
Real suffering, absolutely real suffering. She had personally selected every single plank of wood, personally hammered every single nail... Rae-won, who had promised to help build it, had been out wandering every single day, and in the end Jeon Ra-hwa had recruited the workers, even the children, and completed it while struggling away.
Two days. It had been only two days.
Boom!
The Main Hall collapsed.
Dust rose, and tearing through that dust, three silhouettes crossed each other in midair.
"Eeeek!?"
Hо-ae screamed, but even that didn't reach Jeon Ra-hwa's ears.
Three people landing side by side atop the crumbled wreckage.
Dong Bong-soo on one side.
That woman and the fan-holding man on the opposite side.
The aura radiating from those two was so immense that the children's bodies shrank of their own accord.
Jeon Ra-hwa swiftly stepped in front of the children. Cold energy from the Snow Snow Yin Cold Art rose from her fingertips. While taking up a firm guard stance, her eyes were fixed on Dong Bong-soo.
―Ugh, seriously!
Jeon Ra-hwa's Sound Transmission carried her irritation mixed right in.
Dong Bong-soo glanced at Jeon Ra-hwa indifferently.
Their gazes crossed for just an instant.
At that, Jeon Ra-hwa let out one more sigh and bit her lip.
"Ugh, what's he got to be grinning about, all bright-eyed, while tearing down his own house."
She set aside her worry for now.
Although it was a fight, it was not an atmosphere overflowing with killing intent.
Shaking her head, she led the children back to a corner of the Training Grounds.
"Is the Guild Master fighting?"
"It's fine, it's fine."
"Shouldn't we help?"
"No."
Jeon Ra-hwa waved her hand dismissively, crossed her arms, and smiled brightly.
"If you helped, you'd actually get scolded."
She confirmed Rae-won's eyes once more.
Some would call it expressionless, a blank face—but Jeon Ra-hwa knew better now.
There are many kinds of expressionlessness.
That was the smile of someone delighted out of their mind.
Well, in a way, it was perfect timing.
She'd make the one who broke it rebuild it, and he'd have to help now.
Just then, that distinctive [Sound Transmission] of Dong Bong-soo's alone reached her mind.
[Don't worry.]
"Tch."
Who said anything about worrying.
"Auntie, why are you smiling?"
"Who said I was smiling! And I'm not an auntie!"
***
Training Grounds.
A wide open space with morning sunlight slanting across it.
Dong Bong-soo stood with the wreckage of the Main Hall at his back, and some ten steps ahead, Eom Bi-ryeong and Myo Jin-heo stood side by side.
In Eom Bi-ryeong's hand was, at some point, a single club. It was not an original weapon but a rafter splinter pulled from the Main Hall debris—yet once Trigram Leader-grade Formation Energy was loaded into it, it became no different from an iron sword.
A wood piece reinforced with Formation Energy.
It was an improvisation applying the Mountain Formation Division's martial arts method. The Formation Taoist's habit had seeped into combat itself—sublimating nearby objects into makeshift weapons on the spot.
On the other hand.
Click—
Dong Bong-soo rested the Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword on his shoulder.
"Let's see how far you'll go."
An obvious provocation.
"Shut up."
Eom Bi-ryeong was the type to react to provocations straightforwardly. A predictable emotional pattern.
Whoosh—!
Lightness Arts erupted. Eom Bi-ryeong's figure shot forward like an arrow.
Fast.
A speed that far surpassed an ordinary peak-level martial artist.
Even as a Formation Taoist, she appeared to be unusually skilled in martial arts.
But.
Dong Bong-soo's sharp eyes were already reading her trajectory.
Without lowering the sword from his shoulder, he stepped half a pace to the side. Minimum movement.
Swish!
Eom Bi-ryeong's wood piece sliced through empty air. The Training Grounds' earthen floor split in a straight line from the aftermath of the missed strike.
Heavy. Certainly heavy.
It was a heavy blow loaded with an absurd amount of inner power, beyond anything one could ever attribute to a Formation Taoist. Even just grazing it would chill one to the bone.
But heavy is merely heavy.
In some respects, it was also the worst possible weakness—something that emerged only by nearly abandoning all other advantages.
Clang!
The Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword struck precisely the side of the wood piece. Not receiving the Formation Energy head-on, but twisting and deflecting its flow at an angle.
Windless Sword Method.
A single move inserted without sound or wind delayed Eom Bi-ryeong's follow-up attack by approximately 0.01 seconds.
Of course, to Dong Bong-soo, it was more than enough time.
Thud—!
Half a step forward. He bored in to within one sword's gap.
Eom Bi-ryeong's eyes widened. Close range. An interval where elbow would connect before sword.
She immediately pivoted with her left foot as axis and detonated Formation Energy packed beneath her soles.
Wind Corner Formation. An application of Mountain Formation Division formation arts—a close-range defense technique that engraves Formation Energy patterns into the ground beneath one's feet during a pivot to push the opponent back.
He should have been pushed back.
But.
"...Huh!?"
He wasn't pushed back.
Dong Bong-soo's feet were planted into the ground. The Super True Energy Field was neutralizing in real time the Formation Energy radiation transmitted through the soles of his feet.
Shing!
A horizontal slash launched without being pushed back.
[Three Talents Sword Technique First Form Sweeping Away a Thousand Soldiers].
A single horizontally drawn cut aimed at Eom Bi-ryeong's abdomen. It was not loaded with a great deal of Formation Energy. The Sword Energy was extremely thin—but precise.
Clang—!
Eom Bi-ryeong just barely blocked it by lowering the wood piece downward.
But a crack appeared in the wood piece. The improvised weapon reinforced with Formation Energy ropes was split after only two exchanges.
"...!"
Her face contorted, bewilderment piling on top of anger.
'Who is this man?'
Not particularly well-known within Formation Tower, but she herself had come from one of the Ten Great Sects. And not as a branch family member, but from the main family line. That was why she was overwhelmingly stronger in close combat compared to other Formation Taoists.
By her own estimation, if she were to rank herself outside Formation Tower by the Martial World's standards, she figured she'd be in the top 100 at the very least...
To be pushed back by the Guild Master of some backwater sect she'd never even heard of—one that could barely be called a proper Martial World sect.
"Why? Is something—"
Slice—
"—strange?"
Dong Bong-soo's attack came at a completely unexpected beat and left a thin scratch on her right forearm.
"You coward...!"
The enraged Eom Bi-ryeong launched herself again, swinging the reinforced wood piece.
But Dong Bong-soo neutralized her attack with a mere half step of movement.
"Cowardly? Where's the cowardice in a fight?"
Dong Bong-soo's sword strikes, which appeared nonchalant yet each one weighted and deliberate, kept pushing Eom Bi-ryeong backward one after another.
The occasional counterattacks from Eom Bi-ryeong were blocked in a manner too anticlimactic.
Either deflected, evaded, or withdrawn before they could even be fully deployed due to the opponent's own attack.
"If you don't want to die, fight dirty."
Dong Bong-soo had already perfectly grasped Eom Bi-ryeong's combat habits from the first couple of exchanges. More precisely, it was likely the common weakness of all martial artists who originated from Formation Taoists.
Eom Bi-ryeong had a habit of first extending Formation Energy onto something—whether the ground, the air, or some part of her own body—before deploying her inner power.
A faint flow of Formation Energy extended out just before each attack, and it was detected by the Super True Energy Field first. The fact that Formation Energy always moved before the fist, before the sword, inevitably exposed a fatal weakness.
A telegraphed attack.
To Dong Bong-soo, every single attack from Eom Bi-ryeong was nothing more than a telegraph announcing the future 0.01 seconds ahead. If only she had operated her Formation Energy and inner power separately, the fight could have become quite fascinating.
One more time.
Clang!
This time, Direct Strike at the Yellow Dragon's thrust targeted precisely the crack in the wood piece.
Snap—!
The Formation Energy-reinforced rafter split in two.
"Urgh!"
Eom Bi-ryeong lost her makeshift weapon and was pushed back all the way to the wall, leaving two deep furrows in the Training Grounds' earth.
But Dong Bong-soo did not follow up.
Because.
Tingle.
At first it was only that. The sensation of every hair on the skin standing straight up simultaneously.
The next instant, a small spark flew from the Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword. At the same time, the base of a training wooden sword propped against one side of the Training Grounds glowed blue.
That was not all.
The metal fittings scattered throughout the collapsed Main Hall debris all began rattling with a zzzzt sound.
Every piece of metal in the vicinity was reacting.
The air had not grown heavier. The air had changed.
Myo Jin-heo stood at the opposite end of the Training Grounds with his fan fully spread open.
The Thunder Formation Division's main formation.
It was of an entirely different dimension from the Vortex Formation inside the Main Hall earlier. If the Vortex Formation was a minor trick of twisting air currents, this was rewriting the very laws of space itself.
There were no patterns on the ground. No Formation Energy ropes were visible. The atmosphere of the entire Training Grounds had simply been placed beneath the Thunder Formation Division's field.
Only the results were visible to the eye.
Sparks flying from metal, static electricity crawling across skin, and thin threads of lightning splitting intermittently through the air.
"...I apologize, Guild Master Kim."
Sincerity was buried in Myo Jin-heo's voice.
"As this Trigram Leader's duty, this cannot be helped."
Thunder Seal Absolute Ring.
The Thunder Trigram Thunder Formation Division's primary sealing formation.
It perfectly locks down any target trapped within the ring.
Joints, nerves, inner power, and all other energies—it misfires them all with the power of lightning.
Because it is invisible, it cannot be dodged, and once caught, one is already inside.
[An unidentified domain has been deployed around you.]
[Conditions have been met, and 'Shield of Faith Lv.2' automatically activates.]
An extremely faint light was layered over Dong Bong-soo's entire body. A membrane so thin as to be invisible to the eye.
The Super True Energy Field repelled the physical interference of Formation Energy, and the Shield of Faith rejected the intrusion of the formation field itself.
Dual defense.
The muscles did not contract. The joints were free. The nerves remained Dong Bong-soo's own.
The flow of inner power continued naturally.
And yet.
The Thunder Seal Absolute Ring did not stop there.
Whiiiiiiiiiiiii—!
The density of the atmosphere rose by one more degree. The air above the Training Grounds shimmered visibly. It was not a heat mirage. Space itself was vibrating.
Myo Jin-heo swept his fan once in a large arc.
Thwip.
With that single sweep, the density of the field doubled.
Invisible lightning struck at the outer walls of the Super True Energy Field without pause.
It struck, and struck again.
Zzit. Zziz-zit. Zziz-ziz-zit—!
The Super True Energy Field that Dong Bong-soo had formed began to vibrate faintly for the first time.
It was different from the Vortex Formation before. The difference between something improvised on the spot and something properly deployed.
This was the moment the true weight of the Formation Taoist called Myo Jin-heo was finally felt.
Through the flickering light of surging lightning, Myo Jin-heo's eyes were visible.
One eye where the blood had not yet dried. The other eye calm and settled.
Those eyes were saying:
'Whatever kind of existence you are, this Trigram Leader will most certainly find out.'
Energy Field versus Formation Field.
The Thunder Seal Absolute Ring pressed past the Super True Energy Field, closing in around Dong Bong-soo.