WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Asakusa

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◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈

Chapter 21: The Heavens Have No End to Their Killing Principle (1)

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“Even if I have to die and come back thousands of times, I’ll save you, Master.”

“Cut the nonsense.”

Yi Mu-gwang was smiling faintly as he said it.

Cut the nonsense. Just standing here with my pudao in hand is already my limit. If you hadn’t come, I’d have collapsed long ago and waited to die.

Yi Mu-gwang’s vision wavered. The lantern light split by that bastard’s sword seemed to scatter in every direction. Though it held none of the subtleties of an illusion sword, the blade appeared to multiply, dancing and spinning before his eyes.

Fresh blood trickled from between Yi Mu-gwang’s lips. He looked as though he could collapse at any moment, but his hands still gripped the pudao with iron strength.

The resolve to die. Throwing oneself toward death meant exactly that.

The corners of Blood Serpent Sword Gwak Do-mun’s mouth curled upward.

What a thrilling experience. Nothing had been this entertaining lately, when everything had been so dull.

“So master and disciple are both charging in to get bloodied.”

Before he had even finished speaking, Gwak Do-mun’s body tore through the air.

He was fast.

The flexible sword swept in a half-moon arc toward Yi Mu-gwang’s neck. A strike meant to cut off his breath.

It was like a living serpent slicing through the air.

Gwak Do-mun leaped up and swung his sword in every direction in an instant. A barrage of linked strikes came pouring forth even as he defended.

Swordsmanship as fast as lightning, with paths that could not be read one by one.

It was fortunate that he was holding back because he wanted to enjoy this fight. If he had used proper techniques, the two of them would already have been carved apart and shredded to pieces.

Stones flew in all directions, wooden tables shattered, and wounds appeared across Cheon Hwi and Yi Mu-gwang’s arms, legs, heads, and torsos.

It was impossible to deflect them all.

Thud!

“Urgh...!”

A kick from Gwak Do-mun, who had casually ended his midair assault, landed squarely in Cheon Hwi’s chest.

Crack.

With the sound of ribs breaking, Cheon Hwi was hurled into a heap of shattered tables. No inner force had gone into it, nor was it any formal kicking technique. It had been an ordinary kick, yet he flew through the air and slammed into a table.

A searing pain followed, as if his insides had burst.

“Cough!”

Drip, drip.

Cheon Hwi spat out the blood that had pooled in his mouth and staggered to his feet.

His chest felt caved in with pain. Yet the energy of the Black-Shell Softshell Turtle Elixir pouring out from his dantian numbed the pain and forcibly protected his qi channels as though it were protective qi.

“Oh... You got back up? You can take a beating, I see.”

The more you got hit, the better you became at taking hits. And once you went beyond getting beaten and died over and over, your body was bound to become tougher by force.

Gwak Do-mun dusted off his crumpled robe. That mocking smile remained on his face.

Instead, Yi Mu-gwang charged at him.

He meant to use his own body as a shield and make an opening for Cheon Hwi. Squeezing out every last bit of his remaining inner power, he raised his pudao vertically.

Clang!

Sparks flew with a metallic crash that tore at the ears.

Having received head-on a slash carrying the inner qi of a first-rate master, Yi Mu-gwang vomited a mouthful of dark blood. He had suffered internal injuries.

The web between the index finger and thumb holding his pudao had split open, exposing bone. Yet he forcibly dragged down the flexible sword’s trajectory and pinned it against the floor.

“Now!”

Yi Mu-gwang’s desperate cry, mixed with bloody foam, echoed through the inn.

Cheon Hwi did not miss that instant.

Remembering Yi Mu-gwang’s advice, he lowered his gaze. He saw the shift in the weight centered on Gwak Do-mun’s lower body and the slight twist in the wrist holding the sword.

The pure inner qi of the Black-Shell Softshell Turtle Elixir burst from his dantian and struck the Yongquan acupoints in the hollows of his feet.

As though groundwater were rising, Cheon Hwi’s body sank heavily before shooting forward like a drawn bowstring.

“Well, look at you?”

Gwak Do-mun tried to forcibly twist his flexible sword free from beneath Yi Mu-gwang’s pudao.

The old saber wielder who had spent his entire life living by the blade made one vicious final struggle. He was smiling through the pain.

Yi Mu-gwang swallowed the agony of his shoulder being sliced by the flexible sword and pressed down even harder with his full weight.

“Insolent bastard!”

Yi Mu-gwang’s pudao bent and clung stubbornly to the serpent’s body, refusing to let go.

Saber and sword clashed without pause, and Yi Mu-gwang’s blood splattered across Gwak Do-mun’s face.

Using the opening Yi Mu-gwang had made, Cheon Hwi’s longsword thrust into Gwak Do-mun’s guard.

Its target was the solar plexus.

But the wall of first-rate mastery was far too high.

Gwak Do-mun gave up on wrenching free the flexible sword. Instead, he used the springiness of the pinned blade to twist his body at an unnatural angle.

Slash!

Cheon Hwi’s sword tore Gwak Do-mun’s robe at the side. It was a shallow cut.

Having evaded it while widening the distance, Gwak Do-mun slowly lowered a hand and touched his side.

Blood stained his fingers.

I was cut? By a brat who has barely reached second-rate and still looks like a third-rate fighter? Me?

He looked down at the blood on his fingertips, then slowly licked it away.

He was smiling.

Perhaps this was the expression of someone whose hand had been scratched bloody by a stray cat they had been fondly petting. Or perhaps he was laughing as he considered how long it had been since he had last bled.

In that brief opening, Cheon Hwi adjusted his grip on his sword.

His breathing was ragged. He had already reached his limit.

Was it too shallow?

The price of giving him one shallow wound was Cheon Hwi’s heart being pierced. Some wound he had not even noticed had already gone through his heart.

Cheon Hwi smiled as he coughed up blood, then let his body fall.

Thump.

His vision went dark.

Now, he knew all too well that there was peace in death. The pain was brief, and the peace was long. If that itself was an enlightenment, then so be it.

Perhaps not fearing death meant that something inside him was breaking. If he grew this close to death, perhaps a day would come when death felt more familiar than life. Or perhaps he would reach an entirely different enlightenment.

His body floated lightly upward.

The wall of first-rate mastery. The few martial artists called masters. It was high, unimaginably high. So high that there seemed to be no way to face it.

He wanted strength so badly that, if someone offered to teach him a demonic art that demanded death as its price, he would consider learning it.

But it was impossible for now. He had to make full use of what he had and what he had seen to overcome this situation.

Even so, there was one comfort.

My sword reached a first-rate master.

How thrilling was that?

Only a few days ago, had he not been no different from a third-rate fighter in the marketplace?

That one fact alone gave Cheon Hwi hope.

What would his father say if he heard him say such a thing?

Cheon Hwi smiled faintly at the thought. Strength naturally filled his clenched fist.

In the darkness of his vision, Cheon Hwi reviewed the fight before opening his eyes.

What should he do? How could he turn that bastard’s leisure and carelessness against him?

He could not win. But that bastard could not afford to drag things out, either. Having caused a killing ordeal, he would want to leave Jilin quickly.

He had a long journey ahead, and he might have to prepare to fight pursuers. In other words, he would not want to be injured.

And the fact that he was enjoying this fight made it worth trying.

What if, after dying again and again, Cheon Hwi could bring out unexpected strength in an opening like before?

There was more than simple inner power in Gwak Do-mun’s sword.

His sword paths and cultivation method meshed as one, granting his energy a serpentine nature. Cheon Hwi instinctively realized that it was called true qi.

It was energy refined one step further than inner qi. Energy that seemed to grant peculiar properties suited to a sword art and cultivation method.

It was still a distant realm, but he understood that his own sword needed such a quality as well.

If he could kindle inner energy into inner qi, then build that inner qi into pure true qi, then perhaps his thrust could reach him.

.

.

.

[Quarter-Hour Return activates.]

His vision brightened once more.

The point to which he had returned was the middle of the battle.

The very moment Gwak Do-mun was enjoying himself as he piled this wound and that wound onto their bodies and arms.

It was regrettable for Cheon Hwi, but there was nothing he could do. This damned Quarter-Hour Return set its checkpoints however it pleased.

What mattered was Yi Mu-gwang’s condition.

When Cheon Hwi glanced to the side, he saw Yi Mu-gwang staggering. He was already seriously injured.

Blood poured from his shoulder. But something was strange. The blood flowing from the wound was dark red to the point that it had begun spreading murkily like ink.

It was not difficult to guess that poison was the cause.

Cheon Hwi’s brows trembled slightly.

“...Master.”

“Watch... ahead of you.”

Yi Mu-gwang raised his pudao again. His fingertips trembled slightly.

“It’s... not over yet.”

And so Cheon Hwi began dying again, dozens of times over.

He died and died again. At some point, counting became meaningless.

He died in countless ways.

Each death taught him Gwak Do-mun’s sword paths. His habits. The first signs of his movements. Even the techniques that followed.

Every time, the changing expression on Gwak Do-mun’s face was a sight to behold.

At first, he delighted in the unexpectedness. Then he enjoyed it. Before long, he began to feel genuine astonishment. And eventually, he saw a fragment of the legendary Heavenly Martial Body in Cheon Hwi.

“Well, that will do. It’s about time I left. Consider this payment for my final amusement, and a spectacle to enjoy on your road to the underworld.”

The moment Gwak Do-mun’s resonant voice filled the inn, his body wavered into three or four forms like phantoms.

Serpent-Shadow Step, Gwak Do-mun’s personal footwork.

The three or four wavering shadows closed in on Cheon Hwi and Yi Mu-gwang’s throats from different directions. The flexible sword tore through the darkness with a grotesque scraping sound.

The ultimate technique of the Blood Serpent Secret Sword burst forth.

Shraaaak!

The opening three of the Blood Serpent Secret Sword’s eight forms poured down with lightning speed. It was as if swarms of blue serpents had opened their jaws and rushed in from every direction.

Its speed was impossible to follow with the eye, and its trajectories were unnatural.

Instead, relying on Gwak Do-mun’s sword paths carved into his bones in the immediately preceding death, Cheon Hwi raised his old longsword diagonally toward the one opening engraved through death after death.

All the inner qi in his body gathered to withstand the strike.

Before Yi Mu-gwang throws himself in, I’ll enter that opening first.

Fearlessly, Cheon Hwi’s body plunged into the curtain of flexible swords pouring down like a swarm of serpents.

“Ho? Offering up your own neck...”

Gwak Do-mun sneered.

But then.

Clang!

Cheon Hwi’s old longsword cut through the air and struck aside the one real flexible sword among the dozens of phantoms, the one secretly aimed at Yi Mu-gwang’s vitals.

“...!”

Gwak Do-mun’s eyes shook.

What?

He saw through this?

Gwak Do-mun swallowed his alarm and hurriedly tried to withdraw his flexible sword. But using the recoil from knocking it away, Cheon Hwi’s sword instead slid along Gwak Do-mun’s blade like a serpent.

Without his realizing it, the principles of the Blood Serpent Secret Sword he had learned through death had blended into Cheon Hwi’s fast swordsmanship.

Slice!

Cheon Hwi’s longsword tore a long gash through Gwak Do-mun’s sleeve and left a shallow wound on his forearm.

Before Gwak Do-mun’s sword could extend again, Cheon Hwi thrust his fast sword into the blind spot where Serpent-Shadow Step was about to unfold.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

An astonishing sight unfolded.

A raw fighter who had just stepped into the second-rate realm was cutting off every path through which Gwak Do-mun, a first-rate master, could unleash his ultimate techniques.

No matter how ultimate a technique was, it needed a posture and preparatory movements to be performed. But Cheon Hwi was severing the vital links in that chain one step before they could connect.

But even knowing this, he was too late.

His sword tip reached him, but there was not enough strength in his wrist.

He only needed to hold on for one more breath, but the inner power of a first-rate master did not allow even that.

By this point, Gwak Do-mun had been about to simply cut him down, but his interest left him speechless.

What is this bastard?

It was too much for coincidence that he received his sword so well. It was as though he had studied Gwak Do-mun’s sword for a long time.

Beyond that, it even felt as though he was imitating his martial arts.

To see through and imitate martial arts at a glance? It was beyond common sense.

Is this... what it means to be born with it? It cannot be understood merely as talent bestowed by the heavens, as calling someone a genius.

One phrase flashed through Gwak Do-mun’s mind.

The aptitude to become the greatest master under heaven, passed down through the Martial World like a legend. The single term for one who could understand the essence of any martial art upon seeing its form and technique, someone possessing an aptitude that exceeded even that of a great grandmaster.

Could this bastard be that legend...

The Heavenly Martial Body...?

When Gwak Do-mun twisted his sword to the right, Cheon Hwi’s sword was already waiting. When he aimed low, Cheon Hwi’s toes were already there, prepared for Gwak Do-mun’s own.

And even that bastard’s footwork. It seemed to imitate Serpent-Shadow Step, which moved as though gliding over the earth.

Understanding an opponent’s martial arts while fighting, then creating a version suited to oneself. It could only be the aptitude of the Heavenly Martial Body.

Cold sweat and a shiver ran down Gwak Do-mun’s spine.

He had never seen talent like this.

Just moments ago, this had been a third-rate wanderer charging in stupidly like a beast. Yet now, his sword moved as if it knew the Blood Serpent Secret Sword inside and out. No, it was as if it had absorbed Gwak Do-mun’s sword paths whole and was mimicking them.

“You. Have you ever seen my Blood Serpent Secret Sword somewhere? No, that can’t be. Everyone who has seen my sword is dead!”

Startled, Gwak Do-mun unconsciously stepped back to widen the distance.

It was the first time he had ever widened the distance from Cheon Hwi and Yi Mu-gwang.

Behind him, Yi Mu-gwang was also staring at Cheon Hwi with his mouth hanging open in shock.

Perhaps... this bastard has the talent to advance the Blood Serpent Secret Sword, the sword art I have devoted my life to attaining, all the way to the principles of illusion sword.

The leader of the Blood Serpent Gang had begun to covet Cheon Hwi.

His Blood Serpent Secret Sword was still incomplete.

It was a secret sword art that needed not only the principles of transforming sword and fast sword, but also the principles of illusion sword, all three forming a single whole.

Reaching the realm of the complete Blood Serpent Secret Sword, where the three principles fused into one, had seemed distant. Gwak Do-mun had always felt something was missing, forever running into a wall.

If he could fill in that final missing principle of illusion sword, he could break through the wall of first-rate mastery and spread his name throughout the Martial World.

The leader of the Blood Serpent Gang withdrew his sword from Cheon Hwi.

But while fighting this mad brat in a life-or-death duel, the thought crossed his mind that he might be able to complete his unfinished sword art.

“Cheon Hwi, was it?”

“...”

“What do you say? Follow me and join the Blood Serpent Gang. I’ll raise you to deputy leader of the Blood Serpent Gang. You may even devour me and grow beyond me one day. Every day, I’ll give you a chance to try to kill me with a real sword.”

Cheon Hwi was not particularly surprised by the question.

From roughly ten regressions ago, that bastard had been spouting the same bullshit.

Every time he died, died again, and died hundreds more times.

But throughout those endless repeated regressions, Cheon Hwi’s answer had never changed.

There was always only one answer.

I may be called unorthodox trash, but I will not be called Black Path.

Shing.

Instead of answering, he raised his sword.

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