The swordsman was a complete wreck.
Bloodstained clothes, ragged wounds, even the mysterious gash left across his chest.
Anyone who saw him would have been forced to say the same thing. Like a tattered rag too ruined even to be worth patching, the old man’s body had long since fallen into utter disrepair.
And yet, why was it?
A single blood-soaked swordsman overwhelmed everything in the vicinity. The presence of the blade wielder, looming like the shadow of a mountain, was enough to choke the breath from one’s lungs the instant it was perceived.
Thus, the silence was instinctive.
Stillness settled like petals drifting through the spring air. Even the sound of breathing felt dangerous, and those present could only break out in cold sweat as they cautiously watched the old man.
And then they saw it.
The flame within his pupils.
Amid that battered body, the eyes burning an especially vivid blue formed a stark contrast. So intense that one’s gaze was drawn into them as though entranced.
And at last, everyone instinctively understood.
That was his soul.
“On my way up the mountain, I heard quite a commotion and came to see…… and there happens to be a familiar face here.”
Those softly spoken words were the signal.
The scenery abruptly regained its vitality.
As though the old man had rewound the spring of a clock that had come to a stop.
The first to move was Instructor Mu.
The woman who had been pinned beneath her daughter jolted upright. Sweating profusely as she respectfully clasped her hands before herself, the reaction was closer to a spinal reflex than conscious thought.
“G-Granduncle…….”
It could hardly be helped.
Was the man before her not the ‘Sword Duke’?
A great elder of the Imperial Family and the…