WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
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◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 12: What It Means to Live as a Wanderer (4)
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At the same time, the massive Nine-Ring Saber tore through the air, and the ultimate technique of the Soul-Chasing Three-Ring Saber poured down like a torrential rain.
Clatterrring!
The nine iron rings gave off a bizarre sound that rang in his ears. It was an unpleasant noise that scraped at his nerves.
It was not powerful enough to count as a sound art, but it was certainly distracting.
Yet Cheon Hwi did not so much as blink.
If anything, that warning now felt like a signal telling him how to move next.
Tap!
Cheon Hwi's lead foot slid through the blood-pooled mud beneath him.
It was a path he had read in blood and committed to memory. There was no way he could be wrong.
Fierce saber winds closed in from all sides. Each was not powerful enough to slice through his body like a blade, of course, but they carried enough pressure to halt him in his tracks.
Murderous intent bore down on him as though massive chunks of iron were falling upon his crown from the front and both sides.
Any martial artist facing this technique for the first time would have been overwhelmed by its force, stepping back or making a useless move.
Cheon Hwi had been the same at first. It was a bizarre sensation and pressure that froze him in place like a mouse before a snake.
‘Not anymore.’
At this point, Gyu Pae was the one startled.
‘I've never seen such a fearless bastard!’
Gyu Pae had never met anyone like this in his life.
Even when he had faced martial artists raised as assassins from childhood, men prepared to take their own lives at a single command, it had not been like this.
‘It's like he's charging in to die!’
When Cheon Hwi showed no sign of wavering after the first two moves, Gyu Pae was the one taken aback.
“You!”
There was no such thing as a perfect martial art in this world. No matter how magnificent or strange an ultimate technique might be, if one had faced its trajectory dozens of times while blood and flesh were carved away, one could learn its weaknesses and how best to exploit them.
Against a martial art whose weaknesses he knew and had experienced, he could gain an advantage, if only for a moment.
Cheon Hwi grotesquely twisted his upper body, using footwork meant for survival. At the same time, he slipped into the middle of the onrushing saber winds.
“W-What?!”
Gyu Pae's pupils shook as Cheon Hwi completely ignored his feint and charged inside his guard. In a life-or-death battle, a martial artist's wavering eyes were no different from a wavering hand gripping a weapon or a wavering blade tip.
Startled, Gyu Pae hurriedly twisted his waist and poured power into his saber.
The first two moves had only been groundwork to ensure the third strike did not miss.
This was the real attack, and Cheon Hwi had read it.
‘Here it comes!’
Carrying Gyu Pae's weight and inner energy, the saber cleaved through Cheon Hwi's blind spot with two phantom afterimages, aiming for his neck.
Cheon Hwi sank his lower body heavily, then kicked off the ground.
Third-rate or second-rate, it made no difference. If a blade sank into flesh and pierced the heart, death was the same for anyone.
If every martial formula could be reduced to a single truth, it would be this: keep the enemy's blade from striking you while driving your own blade into their vital point.
In other words.
More important than the difference in realm was who drove their blade into the other's vital point first.
Slash!
Cheon Hwi's sword cut through the air, leaving a silver afterimage.
Scattering the feints thrown out by the saber, the linked strikes of the Three Powers Swift Sword rained down like lightning.
‘Reach him!’
Before Gyu Pae's massive Nine-Ring Saber could complete its trajectory, Cheon Hwi's thrust slipped through a thread-thin gap in Gyu Pae's defense.
The sword tip found the most precise opening and pierced Gyu Pae's neck and chest in succession.
Thrust! Spurt! Slash!
At the same time, Cheon Hwi slid out to the side, putting distance between himself and the saber Gyu Pae swung with his last desperate strength.
Gyu Pae's massive body stood frozen in the air, trembling.
The raised Nine-Ring Saber lost its master's strength and sagged weakly toward the ground.
Even so, Gyu Pae turned his body and gaze toward Cheon Hwi. One step. Then two.
The pupils of the man coughing up blood lost focus.
Splat.
Covered in blood, Cheon Hwi lowered his sword, blood dripping from its tip, and clenched his fist.
“I did it.”
It was the first time he had killed Gyu Pae.
Though Cheon Hwi's right thigh had been badly cut while he avoided Gyu Pae's attack, his joy outweighed the pain.
For now, he was simply satisfied that he had defeated the Gyu Pae before him.
Thud.
A late second-rate expert.
The vice leader of the Blood Serpent Gang.
Gyu Pae, the Soul-Chasing Saber, had been cut down by Cheon Hwi, a third-rate wanderer, and collapsed into the mud.
Cheon Hwi slowly lowered his sword as he gasped for breath. Only now did a burning agony surge from his thigh wound.
The vice leader of the Blood Serpent Gang had met a futile end beneath the sword of a mere young martial artist.
‘At last. I crossed it.’
He had climbed over the wall that had seemed impossible to overcome, crawling through blood and death until he finally crossed it.
He was happy, but Cheon Hwi could not fully smile.
Beyond Gyu Pae's huge body, he could see the corpses of fallen wanderers among the reeds.
Cheon Hwi lightly flicked his wrist. Blood gathered at the tip of his sword scattered over the surrounding reeds.
The area was silent as a grave.
“V-Vice Leader...!”
“No way! He was cut down in one blow by that bloody brat?”
“H-How?!”
The eyes of the Blood Serpent Gang members waiting in the reed field for victory filled with shock.
The man who had boasted the absolute martial power of a late second-rate expert had lost his life to the sword of an unknown greenhorn.
Before that overwhelming reality, the fighting spirit of the once-arrogant assassins melted away like snow.
Clang!
Someone dropped their sword to the ground.
As if that sound were a signal, the remaining men fled in blind panic beyond the reed field.
Cheon Hwi did not pursue them. His leg wound made pursuit difficult, and he was too busy catching his breath with his bloodied sword hanging at his side.
The battle was over.
The Blood Serpent Gang had been defeated, and they had protected only the cart's worthless decoy cargo.
Too many had died to protect something so worthless.
Cheon Hwi looked around as he breathed heavily.
It was dreadful.
Hardly anyone had survived intact.
Even the ox that had pulled the cart had its belly split open, its innards spilling out.
‘A massacre that ends with everyone dead. Is this really the end?’
Only Cheon Hwi remained alive in the blood-soaked reed field.
‘Am I... the only one who survived?’
It was half a victory.
No, it was no different from a miserable defeat.
Cheon Hwi's gaze fell to his right leg. As the price for failing to completely avoid Gyu Pae's final struggle, his thigh had been carved deeply open.
It was a grave wound, deep enough for muscle to be severed and bone to show. It would not have been strange for him to collapse from blood loss at once.
‘Do I have to wait here to bleed to death? How horrible.’
Rather than having his mind fade amid agony, dying instantly seemed a hundred or a thousand times better.
Even if he survived and returned to Changchun City pulling the apothecary's cart, this leg would leave him a crippled martial artist, unable to walk the jianghu for the rest of his life.
‘This won't do.’
Just as Cheon Hwi was seriously considering taking his own life.
Rustle!
A Blood Serpent Gang member hiding beneath a pile of corpses behind Cheon Hwi sprang out with a terrified scream. Unable to find a path of escape, the man lunged at Cheon Hwi's back with a sword, driven mad with fear.
“Die! Just die!”
It was a clumsy attack that Cheon Hwi could easily have avoided.
Instead, he turned his bloodied body and opened his chest wide to the sword tip.
Thrust!
The blade pierced Cheon Hwi's left chest, straight through his heart, and burst out his back.
Even the gang member who had attacked him sucked in a breath. Just as the man tried to release the sword hilt with trembling hands.
Grab.
Cheon Hwi's bloodless hand tightly seized the man's collar.
“Eek!”
“...Thank you.”
Hot blood poured from Cheon Hwi's mouth.
Yet the corners of his mouth formed a strange curve despite his pierced heart.
At those words of thanks, the gang member let go of the sword and staggered back, trembling.
“Y-You lunatic!”
Cheon Hwi would not be satisfied with a victory like this.
This time, he had killed Gyu Pae. Next time, he would kill him without being injured. The time after that, he would survive while protecting as many people as possible.
It felt possible.
His vision turned dark red, and the boundary between sky and earth collapsed.
At death's threshold, where every sensation faded far away, Cheon Hwi had no time to groan in pain. He was too busy thinking about how he should move.
[Quarter-Hour Return activates.]
Jingle. Jingle.
Cheon Hwi's eyes flew open.
The familiar sound of the cowbell. The damp scent of yellow earth stinging his nose. The quiet stillness before the signal arrow shot into the sky.
Cheon Hwi drew his sword and shouted.
Unlike before, he did not rush straight at Gyu Pae.
“Ambush!”
“An ambush?!”
“Did he say ambush?!”
“What nonsense is some brat who rolled in from nowhere talking about...!”
Then.
Wheee!
As the signal arrow flew up and the signs of an ambush became clear, the martial artists all drew their swords.
Shing! Shing! Shing!
Cheon Hwi drew his sword like lightning and shouted toward the reed field.
“Three on the left! Get down!”
The escort wanderers' shoulders flinched at the sudden shout. But Cheon Hwi was not finished.
“Hidden weapons!”
“Hidden weapons?”
Then hidden weapons came flying in at once.
The prepared wanderers quickly threw themselves aside or knocked them away with their weapons.
“Class B Token Holder! Hold the front! They're coming from the left!”
Then hell opened.
“Attack!”
“Kill them all!”
The reed field shook as masked Blood Serpent Gang members poured out.
But their response had completely changed because of Cheon Hwi.
The first to leap out were the three Cheon Hwi had pointed to in the reeds ahead.
Normally, they would have jumped out from the brush and killed two C-rank wanderers before they could do anything.
But the one blocking them this time was a B-rank wanderer, not someone so easily overcome.
Whoosh! Clang!
A long spear that flew through the thick reeds was barely deflected by the flat of a sword.
“C-Crazy. There really was a spear coming from the front...!”
As Cheon Hwi's words came true like a prophecy, the wanderers' eyes shook wildly.
At this point, anyone who did not believe him was a fool.
“Left side! They're coming!”
That was not all.
Strange visions overlapped Cheon Hwi's eyes as they rapidly swept across the area.
Bloody traces of past deaths.
In those red reeds, a C-rank wanderer's head had flown off. Beside that cart wheel, the arm of a wanderer forced onto the defensive had been cut away.
And in the muddy puddle between those reeds, Cheon Hwi had slipped twice and been torn apart by Gyu Pae's saber.
The places death had passed became a path.
He saw countless versions of himself dying, along with the nearby wanderers.
A map of the battlefield carved into his mind as his body had been sliced apart dozens of times.
Following that map, Cheon Hwi continued making the best choices.
He could not save everyone. Cheon Hwi knew that as well.
Whenever Cheon Hwi opened his mouth, the wanderers focused on his words and moved like beasts responding to instinct.
Slash! Clang! Thrust!
The wanderers who would normally have died miserably to hidden weapons before they could even draw their swords began fighting back against the black-path fighters.
“W-What is this...?!”
The advantage of surprise was completely gone.
The Blood Serpent Gang now had only their numbers.
Into the center of that bizarre scene stepped a huge man, trampling through the reeds.
Gyu Pae, vice leader of the Blood Serpent Gang and the Soul-Chasing Saber.
“Well, well?”
Gyu Pae's scarred face, which always wore an arrogant smile, tightened sharply around the brow.
“Who are you?”
A mere greenhorn was responding as though he had seen through the encirclement laid out by dozens of men.
Gyu Pae gripped the hilt of his Nine-Ring Saber and growled.
“You... did you know about this ambush in the valley beforehand?”
Along with intense killing intent, an inexplicable unease filled his question.
Cheon Hwi merely flicked the blood from his sword tip and gave a broad grin in reply.
Gyu Pae no longer looked like a towering wall.
That was so delightful to Cheon Hwi that he smiled.
“Gyu Pae, the Soul-Chasing Saber. Don't you seem a little smaller than before, sir?”
“...You even know my name. Have we met before? No, that can't be... Hngh!”
Instead of answering, Cheon Hwi charged in like a mad dog, closing the distance.
.
.
.
Flick.
Cheon Hwi gasped for breath as he flicked the blood from Gyu Pae's neck onto the reeds.
Thud.
Gyu Pae fell forward with a hollow look, his eyes still open.
Even in death, Gyu Pae's eyes continued to follow Cheon Hwi. They were eyes that could not understand his own death.
“We almost became friends fighting, you bastard.”
How many hours had he spent face-to-face with this man in actual time?
Cheon Hwi looked around.
Quite a few wanderers had survived and were holding their ground.
With Gyu Pae's death, the remaining men were busy fleeing as fast as they could.
Of course, he had neither wished for nor expected everyone to survive.
Still, this was not a bad result.
As Cheon Hwi let out a long breath, the wanderers looked at him one by one and asked.
“Young Hero... what exactly are you?”
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