Season three of Return of the Blossoming Blade went live on April 14, 2026. Season two had finished on December 31, 2024, so readers waited more than a year for it. The webtoon is drawn by LICO from a web novel by Biga and started on Naver Webtoon on March 23, 2021. It belongs to the murim genre, Korean martial arts fiction set in a world of sword schools and internal energy. Cheong-Myeong, once the Plum Blossom Sword Saint of the Mount Hua Sect, dies fighting the leader of the Demonic Cult and wakes a hundred years later in the body of a boy. Mount Hua has collapsed into a name with almost nobody left to carry it, and the story is about rebuilding it from that starting point.
The record-setting numbers belong first to the novel. Bigaโs Return of the Blossoming Blade began as an exclusive on Naver Series in April 2019, and in February 2023 Naver announced that the novel alone had passed 40 billion won in cumulative revenue, the highest figure any title had reached on the platform. The same announcement counted 1,449 installments and 490 million cumulative downloads, and noted that a crowdfunded audio drama had raised 700 million won against an 80 million won goal, roughly nine times the target. For the webtoon, Naverโs April 2026 figures are about 3.9 million global subscribers and 2.1 billion cumulative views.
Two things changed with season three. The first is scheduling. English readers used to sit three weeks behind the Korean release; now Korean, English, French, and four other language editions go out on the same day. The second is the studio. Studio LICO, which produced seasons one and two, announced through its official account in January 2026 that season three would be handled by Studio ARCHE, a new subsidiary of Rough Media, with the core production team carried over. The series also won a Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism award in the comics category at the 2022 Korea Contents Awards, credited to LICO and Biga. As for animation, Naver Webtoonโs official channel hosts a promotional short that animates the first episode, but no anime series has been announced.
The English edition is on WEBTOON, and the Korean edition updates on Naver Webtoon every Wednesday. The novel was unlocked in full for a single day on April 22, 2026, and Naver said in the same announcement that the main serialization would resume at the end of May. If you have never read a murim story, this is an unusually easy way in: the jokes land early, the rules of the world are explained as Cheong-Myeong bullies his juniors into training, and by the time the Five Swords of Mount Hua come together the rest reads itself. (As of August 21, 2026)
