WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 10: What It Means to Live as a Wanderer (2)
──────
Fweee!
The instant the whistling arrow tore through the air and shot into the sky, reeds taller than a person swayed like waves on every side.
“Attack!”
“Kill them all! Just take the medicine chests!”
With bloodthirsty shouts, some fifteen masked martial artists poured down like a rainstorm.
They were black-path fighters from the Blood Serpent Gang, a faction infamous throughout the area.
Thunk!
“Aaargh!”
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Slash!
The guide leading the cart was pierced through the neck in an instant. The C-rank wanderers, reduced to shields, were carved apart like meat by the shower of hidden weapons and blades before they could even draw their swords. Blood sprayed across the reeds, and screams rose from all directions.
In a Third Rate fight, flesh was taken the instant blades touched.
With the advantage of an ambush, the Blood Serpent Gang fighters mercilessly cut down several men at once. They charged in with the force of crashing waves. One panicked wanderer awkwardly drew his sword, only to have his head taken.
“Kill every last one!”
At the center of the chaos, Cheon Hwi quietly composed his breathing.
If he had believed he only had one life, he might have been struck down in confusion like the other wanderers. Yet Cheon Hwi could remain colder than them.
He had already died many times.
Unlike the other C-rank wanderers, who loosened their grips in helplessness, he tightened his. The thought that death was not the end gave him strength.
One Step, One Breath.
Tense.
As he lowered his energy into his dantian, Cheon Hwi shot forward.
The will to survive naturally set his heart ablaze.
His heart pounded wildly. Blood rushed to his fingertips, and his soles crushed the earth. The millet grain-sized inner qi gathered beneath his dantian seemed to stir with every breath.
His heated body answered its master's call to survive.
As though responding to that heat, his internal energy manifested as inner qi and spread through his body and legs.
It was an instinctive circulation of energy.
Whoosh.
Cheon Hwi had yet to open his acupoints, so he could not fully sense it. Still, it was not difficult to tell that his body was gathering every sense it possessed in order to survive.
Tense.
When Cheon Hwi planted his foot and put strength into his lower body, his body carried a different springiness than before.
His rear leg drew taut like the string of a bow waiting to be released.
Rustle.
Two martial artists approached him.
They were spread to either side, yet he could see their movements.
He could read them.
He knew how he should extend his sword.
‘First Form of the Three Powers Swift Sword Forms.’
Cheon Hwi's Three Powers Swift Sword had advanced from the principles of a sword art confined to forms into sword forms suited for actual combat.
It had broken past the limitations that had kept it bound to principles alone, taking shape as true forms.
Shing!
Cheon Hwi's sword split the air in a flash, swift as a whistle.
The sword tip shot out so fast the eye followed behind it, slicing through the throats of two unsuspecting Blood Serpent Gang fighters in succession.
Slash! Thunk!
Before either man could extend a blade, Cheon Hwi had already stepped in and charged forward. His sword passed through both of them as if it had cut them down in a single stroke.
The two slashes came so quickly that they might as well have been one.
When a skilled swift sword suddenly appeared and cut down two gang fighters, every gaze turned toward him.
‘B-rank...!’
A surviving C-rank wanderer approached with a trembling sword.
At first, Cheon Hwi's swordsmanship might have been little more than deceptive feints meant to fool the eye.
But he improved with every passing day.
Even in Yi Mu-gwang's eyes, his daily growth far exceeded what was normal for a Third Rate martial artist.
Swift swordsmanship was difficult for weaker fighters to react to.
Cheon Hwi coolly surveyed the formation.
One B-rank wanderer was dead. That left Cheon Hwi and one other B-rank wanderer, along with three C-rank men.
Meanwhile, there were around fifteen black-path fighters surrounding them.
But that meager advantage ended there.
The man leading the gang fighters had finally revealed himself after seeing Cheon Hwi.
“Using such worthless tricks.”
A giant of a man, as large as a house, strode out through the reeds.
The metal rings on the enormous Nine-Ring Saber strapped to his back clashed with a chilling sound.
He was Gyu Pae, the Soul-Chasing Saber, deputy leader of the Blood Serpent Gang and a late Second Rate master.
In the time it took Cheon Hwi to blink once, the massive saber that had been strapped to Gyu Pae's back was in his hand.
‘Fast!’
Before Cheon Hwi could prepare himself, Gyu Pae lightly flicked his wrist and swept the Nine-Ring Saber sideways.
Boom!
Cheon Hwi wondered if he could dodge, but there was no time.
As he tried to extend his swift sword in a counterattack, his blade was effortlessly broken in two. The enormous mass of metal cut straight through his waist.
Heaven and earth flipped over, and his vision went black as ink.
[Quarter-Hour Return has activated.]
Jingle. Jingle.
Once again, the bell around the cart ox's neck rang lazily.
Before the signal arrow was even fired, Cheon Hwi had already gripped his sword hilt.
“Ambush! The reeds on both sides!”
“An ambush?!”
“Where are they?!”
At Cheon Hwi's words, the other escort wanderers drew their swords and watched every direction.
Shing! Shing!
Then the signal arrow announcing the start of the attack flew up.
The Blood Serpent Gang fighters hidden in the reeds faltered for an instant. Having expected to take their targets by surprise, they could not help being rattled.
But Gyu Pae, a late Second Rate master, was different.
“Attack!”
Fweee!
‘Will I have to hear that chilling whistle of a signal arrow before this regression ends?’
Was it better to have his head cleanly cut off than to die in agony with his organs spilling out?
“May you roam the martial world freely like a whistle, Hwi.”
His father's voice echoed in his mind as Cheon Hwi looked briefly at the sky.
Then he charged straight at the enemy.
Hidden weapons, daggers, and hand axes rained down from every direction, just as before.
But this time, no one was helplessly struck down.
The others rolled away from the incoming hidden weapons or knocked them aside.
His second regression.
The same men burst from the reeds. Ignoring the weaker fighters, Cheon Hwi rushed directly toward Gyu Pae.
If he defeated that man, the other gang fighters would likely flee on their own.
‘Only by taking that giant's head can I escape this death trap.’
Cheon Hwi kicked off the ground and charged.
The weapons of the Blood Serpent Gang fighters blocking his path flew at him, but Cheon Hwi slipped through their openings with the thrusts of the Three Powers Swift Sword and broke through the encirclement in an instant.
His mad charge was aimed only at Gyu Pae.
Gyu Pae's eyes gleamed.
He had spotted him and charged directly at him? He could acknowledge that spirit, but the brat was at least ten years too early.
“You fearless little pup!”
This time, Cheon Hwi rolled across the ground to avoid the horizontal sweep of the Nine-Ring Saber.
But the heavy kick that followed, reinforced with internal energy, caved in his chest and killed him instantly.
His third death.
He predicted the kick and twisted away, but the saber was withdrawn half a beat faster than expected and smashed his head apart.
His eighth death.
His fourteenth death.
His twentieth death.
An Avici Hell where it would not have been strange to go mad from helplessness and despair.
Yet Cheon Hwi's mind grew clearer with each repeated death.
First, sheer stubbornness held him up.
Second, he was utterly insane.
Cheon Hwi glared fiercely at the enemy's overwhelming martial skill.
Gyu Pae's heavy shifts in weight, the twist of his waist, the subtle angle of his shoulder when withdrawing his saber.
Paying the cruelest price of death, Cheon Hwi greedily stole the enemy's martial arts.
He paid in blood and death, swallowing pieces of Gyu Pae's saber art one after another.
“Hahahaha!”
Just before his twenty-eighth death, Cheon Hwi spat blood and burst into mad laughter.
Gyu Pae's eyes shook.
‘What could possibly be so amusing that he laughs at death's threshold?’
[Quarter-Hour Return has activated.]
His thirty-second regression.
Before the signal arrow could fly, Cheon Hwi announced the ambush and charged into the enemy formation.
He had already memorized where each enemy would emerge and how to deal with them.
One from the left, one from the right. He rolled to avoid the hidden weapons, cut down the man on his left as he rose, slipped inside the next man's guard, and turned aside the thrust aimed at him.
Even as he moved, Cheon Hwi continued practicing the Moving Art.
With every repeated death, he could feel his internal energy growing by the slightest amount.
A single drop accumulated before death remained even after he died.
He would have to end this mess to know for certain, but Cheon Hwi thought it was probably true.
Cheon Hwi no longer even looked at the weapons extended by the lesser fighters. He deflected or redirected them without thought, having memorized them after repeating the fight so many times.
He twisted his body just enough to let the killing intent pass by a hair's breadth and extended his sword straight toward Gyu Pae.
“You arrogant brat!”
Gyu Pae snorted and brought the Nine-Ring Saber down with brutal force.
It was the unavoidable path of an overwhelmingly heavy saber, one that had torn Cheon Hwi apart dozens of times.
It had become familiar to him.
Having offered up his flesh to Gyu Pae dozens of times, he overlaid the strength he had stolen and learned onto his own swift sword.
Was he afraid?
Yes.
His instincts told him he could not defeat that man.
But Cheon Hwi was ready to laugh at his own death.
He twisted his waist, bent his knees, and sank his weight heavily. At the same time, he snapped the spring in his wrist to its limit.
Clang!
Sparks scattered in every direction with a crash like thunder.
The sword that should have been sliced apart like a radish endured, redirecting the overwhelming force of the Nine-Ring Saber diagonally away.
Gyu Pae's eyes widened in shock at that deflection.
‘He redirected it?’
That was not all.
The redirected blade rose in return.
Cheon Hwi's sword rode along Gyu Pae's saber toward the underside of his chin.
Part of Gyu Pae's beard was cut away, and red drops of blood scattered through the air.
Silence.
The bloody slaughterhouse froze for an instant.
Even the Blood Serpent Gang fighters who had been charging in stared in shock as a sword grazed their deputy leader's face and blood spurted into the air.
Gyu Pae stepped back with wide eyes and swung his saber to open the distance.
‘Too shallow.’
Cheon Hwi bit his lip in disappointment.
That blade had clearly not been powerful enough to seriously harm Gyu Pae.
The deflection and counterattack may have been unexpected, but the sword Cheon Hwi had used to cut down the others had been a light, swift sword.
Yet the curve of force Gyu Pae felt when their blades met was eerily similar to the principles of the saber art he had cultivated for decades.
It was bewildering enough to make him wonder how such a thing was possible.
Gyu Pae shook his head roughly, like a horse snorting, then slapped his own cheeks.
Smack! Smack!
“So you didn't charge in merely intending to die.”
Gyu Pae slowly readjusted his grip on the Nine-Ring Saber.
“What is your name?”
Cheon Hwi's eyes did not fear death. His stance did not waver.
The question of his name also asked where he had learned his martial arts.
“A wanderer. Cheon Hwi.”
With that simple answer, he charged toward death once more.
For the first time, a fingernail-sized crack had appeared in the towering wall of death.
Footnotes:
Cheon Hwi's father plays on “Hwi,” which evokes the sound of a whistle and the image of roaming freely through the martial world.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried