WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
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◈ Cultivating Underground ◈
Chapter 27
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About a day had passed since Yi Hyeon left Ungyeong.
He was crossing a mountain range in the northwest of the Untaek Kingdom.
It was a route he had traveled countless times over the past ten-odd years.
He slid swiftly along a mountainside with the Reclining Escape Art until he reached a broad stretch of gray bedrock.
Beyond it, the mountains were covered in deep soil again. Normally, he would have crossed without a second thought.
'...What’s this?'
Something felt wrong.
He cast the Sound-Listening Spell and Earth-Sensing Spell. One by one, even the signs of tiny creatures hiding in cracks in the rock entered his awareness.
'There are far fewer insects than usual...'
It happened then.
Paang!
Roots burst from the cracks beneath his feet in a flash of blue-green spiritlight. They rose like snakes and coiled around his ankles.
At the same time, fierce waves of spiritual power erupted from three directions.
A flying sword glowing an eerie blue rushed at his nape from the front.
Claaang!
A translucent Spiritlight Shield appeared and knocked it away.
Crack!
A thin crack spread across the shield’s center upon impact.
The blue flying sword bounced back, revealing a blade densely covered in tiny patterns.
'A magical implement!'
His spiritual sense picked up the auras of three people who had been hiding.
The middle-aged man in front was at the sixth layer of the Qi Refining stage. The skinny man on his right was at the fifth layer, while the young man on his left, who had cast the Wood-Binding Spell, was at the third.
The sunlight overhead disappeared.
A black square seal more than a jang across was falling toward him, ready to crush him.
“Bind him!”
“Now!”
The three Qi Refining stage cultivators had sealed off every direction.
In front, the deflected flying sword changed course and twisted back toward him. The black seal fell from above, while the tough roots of the Wood-Binding Spell held his ankles.
As Yi Hyeon realized that they truly meant to kill him, anger and killing intent stirred within him.
Boom!
The Spherical Qi Barrier burst outward from his entire body. It drove the air out in every direction and shattered the roots around his ankles. At the same instant, he used the Square-Inch Step.
His figure vanished like a ghost.
Boooom!
The black seal smashed down over the entire spot where he had just stood.
“How is he that fast...?”
The attackers were startled, but they kept attacking.
The skinny man scattered black awls in every direction to block his escape. The young man tore two talismans, creating a huge curtain of flame and a wall of wind.
The sixth-layer cultivator in front changed his hand seals, splitting the blue flying sword into three illusory blades that targeted vital points all over Yi Hyeon’s body.
A dazzling white orb rose above Yi Hyeon’s palm in answer.
The three men recoiled at its tremendous waves of spiritual power.
“Dodge!”
Booooom!
The fireball Yi Hyeon threw struck the curtain of flame blocking his way and caused a massive explosion. The curtain of flame and wall of wind collapsed from within. The flying sword, awls, and black seal were caught in the blast and flung in every direction.
Light flashed!
The entire stretch of bedrock turned white, and the blast struck the three cultivators as though it would swallow them whole.
Boom!
The skinny man hastily pulled the black seal back to block the blast. Even so, the violent impact drove him back more than ten chi, his feet scraping across the rock. Wrapped in a golden barrier, the young man was thrown into the air and slammed into a boulder.
Amid the smoke, an ordinary iron sword slid from Yi Hyeon’s waist.
Shiiing.
Terrifying waves of spiritual power poured from the iron sword. Then spirit force, glowing with a mysterious light, took shape around it.
The middle-aged man’s pupils shrank sharply.
“Stay away from him!”
Thump.
Yi Hyeon used the Square-Inch Step, and his forward rush suddenly bent at an angle. The skinny man hastily sent his black seal and awls to block the way, but Yi Hyeon slipped through the gap before the two attacks closed together.
By the time the skinny man’s eyes widened in disbelief, Yi Hyeon was already right in front of the young man, who had surrounded himself with a bronze shield and layers of talisman defenses.
“Eek!”
With a scream, the young man wrapped himself in two golden barriers and raised the bronze shield to block him.
But Yi Hyeon’s sword did not hesitate.
Light flashed!
Booom!
The first barrier tore apart helplessly, and even the second cracked. Immediately afterward, the spirit force around the iron sword gathered into a single point at its tip. Instead of breaking through the bronze shield head-on, the sword light of Single-Pole Six Swords skimmed its edge, tracing a fleeting arc.
Splurt!
“Aaagh!”
The young man’s left arm was severed at the shoulder, spraying blood into the air. The arm, still clutching a talisman, tumbled across the ground.
A gap opened in the three men’s solid formation.
“So-baek! You bastard...!”
Enraged, the skinny man dropped the black seal toward Yi Hyeon’s head and drove an awl at him. The middle-aged man also concentrated his blue flying sword’s power and sent it slashing at Yi Hyeon’s nape.
But Yi Hyeon willed his power into motion without even looking back.
Vmmm! Vmm! Vmm!
Sparing none of his primordial unity true qi, he formed twelve Spiritlight Shields at once. Three layers of shields slipped precisely into the path of each incoming weapon: the flying sword, the awl, and the seal. The remaining shields spun rapidly around him, covering the gaps.
The three magical implements struck the Spiritlight Shields one after another, but not a single shield broke.
'That’s a Spiritlight Shield?'
Paeng Ja-ryang felt as though a ghost had bewitched him. A defensive spell formed by gathering spiritual power was normally weaker than a physical magical implement. Yet the Spiritlight Shields before him were stopping even mid-grade magical implements with ease.
The strength of the shields this independent cultivator at the Qi Refining stage had created was simply unbelievable.
Before his shock could fade, an iron nail shot from Yi Hyeon’s sleeve.
It was the Spirit-Breaking Nail Wang So had given him long ago.
Launched with the Divine Finger Flick technique, the nail carried an enormous amount of spiritual power as it struck Paeng Ja-ryang’s enchanted robe head-on.
Craack!
The Spirit-Breaking Nail pierced the robe’s restrictions and buried itself deep in his shoulder. Immediately afterward, cracks spread through the nail, which could not withstand the tremendous primordial unity true qi.
Crack!
The nail shattered, leaving fragments embedded inside his shoulder.
'How could this trash, worse than even a low-grade magical implement, pierce my robe?'
As he staggered and struggled to steady himself, Yi Hyeon closed the distance in one rush.
'No...'
Thud.
Sword light pierced the space between Paeng Ja-ryang’s eyebrows. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed without even a scream.
“Senior Brother Paeng!”
Han So-baek screamed, clutching his bleeding shoulder.
The situation had reversed in an instant. In just a few breaths, one of them had lost an arm and another had become a corpse.
Wi Mun-do’s face turned deathly pale.
'Is this man really an independent cultivator at the third layer of the Qi Refining stage?'
Without hesitation, Wi Mun-do bit the tip of his tongue and spat crimson blood essence onto the blue flying sword.
Sss.
The sword turned blood-red and swelled, giving off an ominous light.
Whooooosh!
It tore through the air toward Yi Hyeon’s chest. Sharp sword qi shredded the surrounding bedrock.
But Yi Hyeon remained calm.
Vmmm! Vmm!
As though answering his will, layers of Spiritlight Shields filled the air.
The blood-red flying sword pierced three shields in succession.
Crack! Craack!
But more shields waited behind them. Every time the sword pierced one, another Spiritlight Shield formed in its path.
Clink.
At last, the flying sword lost its power and fell to the ground.
“That can’t...”
Wi Mun-do coughed up blood, unable to finish.
He had poured his very blood into that mid-grade magical implement, only to have it stopped by mere Spiritlight Shields. It felt as though all his years of cultivation had been denied.
Boom!
Yi Hyeon opened his palm. A massive wave from the Spherical Qi Barrier struck Wi Mun-do and Han So-baek together, sending them rolling across the ground with screams.
Realizing that he had no chance of winning, Wi Mun-do tapped his storage pouch and took out a blue flying boat.
Whirrr.
He raised the boat and tried to take to the air, but Yi Hyeon had already drawn the Earthspade Sword and leaped upward.
Slash! Crunch!
Sword light from the Azure Steel Sword Art descended, smashing the side of the boat to pieces. The boat spun as though screaming and plunged toward the ground.
Boooom!
Thrown from the boat, Wi Mun-do landed on his knees on the bedrock.
Before he could recover his stance, four streaks from Yi Hyeon’s Seventh-Stem Metal Art pierced the acupoints in his limbs with perfect accuracy.
Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
“Urgh!”
Wi Mun-do collapsed, all strength draining from his limbs.
...
The only sound in the mountains was the faint trickle of stone dust rolling down the slope.
Yi Hyeon quietly looked down at the three fallen men.
The skinny man was dead. The middle-aged man was coughing up blood, his limbs disabled. The young man trembled in terror, his left arm gone.
The terrified young man suddenly seemed to come to his senses. He began striking his head against the ground as he begged.
“We were wrong! Please spare our lives!”
Yi Hyeon stared at him without a word.
“We’re just poor independent cultivators too! We have no sect and wander from place to place to cultivate. That fellow cultivator over there has a wife and children, and I have an elderly mother back home. We won’t breathe a word about what happened today.”
“...”
“Take all our storage pouches and magical implements. We don’t need anything. Please...”
The young man’s voice trembled pitifully.
“First, let me ask you something. Why did you attack me?”
“Th-the pill formula. We thought you’d obtained the Barrier-Breaking Pill formula from the Heaven-Serving Directorate... We got greedy.”
“How did you know about that?”
“We knew you’d been saving merit points for a long time. And after you left the Court Retainers’ Hall, we saw you visiting Earthfire Cave for over a month. That’s really all!”
Yi Hyeon watched him in silence.
The Barrier-Breaking Pill formula was certainly something independent cultivators at the Qi Refining stage would covet.
Now that the fight was over, the killing intent that had raged within him was slowly fading.
If these men truly were independent cultivators with no one behind them, he could consider taking their belongings and driving them far away.
By the time he emerged from hiding in his underground home again, they would have died of old age anyway.
He was not afraid of a grudge held by independent cultivators at the Qi Refining stage. The world was so vast that finding him would be difficult, let alone taking revenge.
After a moment’s thought, Yi Hyeon was about to speak when a blue pattern caught the edge of his vision.
'Hm?'
The explosion had torn the dead skinny man’s robe, exposing a pattern embroidered on the inside.
A blue cloud.
Yi Hyeon’s gaze stopped.
'That’s...'
He had seen it somewhere before.
As he searched his memories, a scene from hundreds of years ago rose in his mind.
Back when he had lived as a woodcutter in Baengmok Village in the western Daeyeon Kingdom, before setting foot on the path to immortality, he had seen an immortal’s ship flying across the sky.
A blue cloud had been painted on its white sail. The villagers had called its passengers immortal masters of the Cheongun Sect and rushed to bow to them.
“...”
'The Cheongun Sect?'
After checking the pattern once more, Yi Hyeon looked at the young man and asked casually, “You said you were independent cultivators?”
“That’s right! The three of us have traveled together for a long time.”
Yi Hyeon gave a slight nod.
“How strange. Your spells looked quite familiar, so I thought you were Cheongun Sect disciples. A cultivator from the Cheongun Sect helped me greatly in the past. If you were its disciples, I might have spared you for the sake of that connection. But if you aren’t, there’s no particular reason to.”
The young man’s eyes widened.
“Wait! We are Cheongun Sect disciples!”
“So-baek!”
The middle-aged man shouted, coughing up blood.
“You idiot...!”
He forced his injured body upward, only to slump back down.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Don’t try to bluff by daring to impersonate a Cheongun Sect cultivator! We’re independent cultivators!”
“Ah...”
The young man called So-baek went white in an instant. Only then did he realize what he had said.
The middle-aged man squeezed his eyes shut.
It was already too late.
Yi Hyeon’s silence stretched on.
If they truly had been independent cultivators, he might have made a different choice. Killing people felt awful, and he wanted to avoid it if possible.
But if they were disciples of a cultivation sect, that changed everything.
He knew almost nothing about the Cheongun Sect.
Still, it was a sect that freely equipped its Qi Refining stage disciples with fine magical implements and talismans. Hundreds of years ago, it had sent people even to remote Baengmok Village in the Daeyeon Kingdom to recruit disciples. Now he could see that its disciples were active in the Untaek Kingdom too.
At the very least, it was not a force he could handle.
That meant he, a mere independent cultivator at the third layer of the Qi Refining stage, had killed one disciple of a major sect and seriously injured two others.
What would happen if he let the remaining two go?
“...”
Major cultivation sects placed great importance on their reputation. Even if the two surviving disciples did not want revenge, the Cheongun Sect would never leave him alone.
Now that things had come to this, he had to kill the two before him as well. Only without witnesses would he have any chance of surviving.
“F-fellow cultivator.”
The young man spoke in a trembling voice.
“I have no choice. You brought this on yourselves.”
“What?”
Thud.
A small hole appeared between the young man’s eyebrows. The life slowly faded from his wide-open eyes.
Thump.
Finally, Yi Hyeon looked at the middle-aged man. He seemed to know that nothing he said would help.
The man closed his eyes without another protest.
“Kill me.”
Thud.
His body went limp.
Yi Hyeon let out a short breath.
'I need to clear away the traces. Quickly.'
...
Yi Hyeon cast several detection spells and checked his surroundings. He sensed no sign of mortals or other cultivators.
Using the Soil-Turning Spell and the Earthspade Sword’s Soil Softening Art, he first covered the traces of the battle. He softened several cracked sections of bedrock and collapsed them. Most of the rocks scorched by the Fireball Spell, the marks left by the flying sword, and the footprints and bloodstains disappeared beneath the fallen rubble.
Before long, the rocky area looked less like a place where cultivators had fought and more like the site of a small landslide.
Yi Hyeon stripped everything from the bodies, including their storage pouches and identity tokens. He also gathered the magical implements and other items scattered nearby into one place.
Then he temporarily hid the bodies beneath a boulder and entered the ground with the Earth Escape Spell. He used the Earth-Sensing Spell to examine the surrounding layers of earth over a wide area. Deep below, he detected several natural cracks and small cavities connected through the bedrock.
He chose three deep cracks that did not connect to any watercourses.
Returning to the surface, he dragged the bodies underground one at a time. He pushed each deep into a different crack, then collapsed the entrances.
Rrrumble.
He did not think he had erased every trace perfectly.
But this was all he could do for now.
Next, he had to sort through their belongings.
...
Yi Hyeon found a natural underground cavity far from the battle site and entered it.
He spread a cloth on the floor and emptied the three men’s storage pouches one after another.
First, he set aside the three Heaven-Serving Directorate external court retainer tokens he had taken from their bodies.
Then came three white jade tokens. A blue cloud was carved on the front of each, and a name was written on the back.
Wi Mun-do.
Paeng Ja-ryang.
Han So-baek.
“As I thought...”
They certainly appeared to be Cheongun Sect identity tokens.
He pushed them aside.
Next came the magical implements.
Wi Mun-do’s blue flying sword and half-wrecked flying boat.
Paeng Ja-ryang’s black square seal and three awls.
Han So-baek’s bronze shield.
There were also a black dagger and several thin, needle-shaped magical implements that they had not used during the battle.
Yi Hyeon first picked up the blue flying sword and examined it closely.
“This is... wood.”
During the fight, its powerful blows had made him assume it was metal.
On closer inspection, the entire blade had been carved from a spirit tree. Tiny spirit patterns (靈紋) that formed its restrictions covered the surface without a gap.
It was the finest magical implement he had ever seen.
'It’s a shame, but...'
Yi Hyeon let go of his attachment.
He did not know what restrictions were inside the sword.
There was no way to tell whether it could report its location to the sect when its owner died, whether someone from the sect could sense its location through particular hand seals, or whether someone had already placed a hidden mark on it.
There was no guarantee that the other magical implements were safe either.
'I’ll get rid of all the magical implements.'
However valuable they were, they could not be worth more than his life.
He also pushed items of uncertain identity or function into the dangerous pile, including two gray beads, a black copper token, and the enchanted robes bearing the Cheongun Sect’s cloud emblem.
On the other hand, he could keep ordinary items that were widely available and difficult to trace to a particular source.
First came the low-grade spirit stones.
“One, two...”
A long while later, Yi Hyeon set down the last spirit stone, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly.
“Three hundred and ninety.”
Together with the twelve he already had, that made 402.
'I won’t need to worry about spirit stones for a while.'
Next were the talismans.
The three men had several dozen unused talismans. Among them was a yellow one with denser spiritual qi and a more complex pattern than the others.
He kept all the types that came in multiple copies, since they were likely meant for common uses.
Any talisman that had no duplicates or looked particularly unusual went straight into the dangerous pile without hesitation.
He kept all the bottles of alchemical pills.
Some bottles had names on them, while he could not identify the contents of others. Still, since cultivators swallowed the pills, he doubted they would have any tracking function.
Finally, he checked the storage pouches.
The three men had owned five in total.
After emptying them completely, he examined them one by one with the Qi-Observing Spell. They were ordinary storage pouches of a common kind, with no sect markings either inside or out.
At least, as far as Yi Hyeon could tell with his current knowledge, there was nothing unusual about them.
He decided to keep the empty pouches.
Together with the two he already used, he now had seven storage pouches.
There were also several books and documents.
An illustrated guide to demonic beasts.
A book on basic talisman crafting.
Instructions for using several spells.
Records the three men had kept during their cultivation.
There were several jade slips too, but those made him uneasy.
He would have to send his spiritual sense into them to check their contents. A third-layer Qi Refining stage cultivator’s spiritual sense was too weak to deal properly with any traps they might contain.
'I’ll get rid of these too.'
He kept the paper books, since he could leaf through them.
Among them, a map made his hand pause.
Rustle.
It unfolded to reveal the vast territory of the Gon Kingdom and its surrounding regions.
It roughly showed the borders and major cities of the mortal kingdoms, along with great mountain ranges and rivers.
And in the north of the map, at the northeastern edge of the Daeyeon Kingdom, three characters were written in blue.
Cheongun Sect.
'About thirty-six thousand li from here. It’s not close, but it still bothers me...'
...
That night, Yi Hyeon buried the items he considered dangerous in several places spread over dozens of li.
He did not leave the blue flying sword, black seal, half-wrecked flying boat, Cheongun Sect identity tokens, Heaven-Serving Directorate court retainer tokens, enchanted robes, unknown jade slips, and unusual talismans together in one place. For some, he softened the bedrock with the Soil Softening Art, pushed them deep inside, and collapsed the surrounding rock.
Even after disposing of the last item, he did not return directly to the surface.
He traveled underground for a long time with the Earth Escape Spell. Only after putting enough distance behind him did he emerge in the mountains. Even then, whenever the terrain was unfavorable or he sensed someone nearby, he changed direction or hid underground again.
Breaking his trail as thoroughly as possible, he headed toward Underground Hideout No. 1.
...
A day later.
Underground Hideout No. 1.
Shhhk.
Yi Hyeon’s head emerged through the soil.
“Phew...”
Just as his tension began to ease, he heard a familiar buzzing.
Bzz-bzz-bzz.
Several Fuzzbees flew over from the spirit field.
As soon as they spotted Yi Hyeon, they flew straight above his head as though pleased to see him.
Plip.
One landed on his shoulder and immediately pooped.
The tiny white lump was stopped by his Spherical Qi Barrier. It slid down the transparent barrier and fell to the floor.
Tap.
“...”
Normally, he would have asked whether it had pooped on him again. This time, Yi Hyeon did not even look at it.
He stood in the middle of the cultivation room without moving for a long time.
'I’ve done almost everything I can...'
The unease in a corner of his heart would not go away.
'What if there’s a method I don’t know about?'
The spells he knew were only a tiny fraction of those in the cultivation world. It would hardly be strange if a secret art existed that could track a killer through nothing more than a corpse or some blood.
And something else troubled him even more.
Yesterday’s ambush had not been a chance encounter.
The three men had known the route he often used.
They had taken up positions in the rocky area beforehand, choosing a place where escape would be difficult, and waited.
'They can’t have seen me just once or twice.'
They might have watched him for days, perhaps much longer.
If so, there could be traces left at the Heaven-Serving Directorate too.
Three Cheongun Sect cultivators had suddenly disappeared in the Untaek Kingdom.
All three had also been external court retainers of the Heaven-Serving Directorate. Someone around them was bound to remember their last movements.
An investigation might turn up the name of a court retainer called Yi Dong-il, who had left Ungyeong around the same time.
If they dug deeper, they might discover that he had been taking leave and traveling in the same direction for the past ten-odd years.
Then, even if they did not know the exact location of Underground Hideout No. 1, they could narrow the search considerably.
“...”
Underground Hideout No. 1, which had felt familiar and safe until recently, now looked entirely different.
Yi Hyeon closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.
There was no reason to think about it any longer.
“Time to move.”
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