WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Damned Transmigration ◈
Chapter 147: Kang Yu 4
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Cloud Dragon manifested senses outside his body through an inscrutable mystery that Tang Yu-shin could not tell was martial art or magic. Those unknown senses were sharp enough to pinpoint a gaze from far away.
Their range had shrunk considerably from before.
A martial artist who had opened the Upper Dantian could keenly sense the flow of qi. Tang Yu-shin had seen through Cloud Dragon's ability to convert inner power into lightning qi and weave it together. It felt like a spiderweb spread out with Cloud Dragon at its center.
‘It is impossible to avoid every thread once inside it.’
That space was now entirely Cloud Dragon's domain. Within it, Cloud Dragon held the advantage in reading his opponent.
Of course, how one dealt with what they had read was another matter. Tang Yu-shin could press him before he could react, or sweep away the entire web with overwhelming force.
It was an excellent ability, but Cloud Dragon himself was still not strong enough to claim a clear advantage over a Martial Apex Venerable.
But then.
‘Those eyes...’
That clinging gaze.
Tang Yu-shin was moving while completely erasing his presence. Even a martial artist of equal standing would not easily see through his stealth.
If it could be seen through so easily, Tang Yu-shin would never have earned the alias Dark King.
‘Can he see me?’
Those eyes were more astonishing than the senses he had manifested outside his body. Tang Yu-shin was currently on the reverse side of the world. His footwork moved between reality and its reverse side, making him entirely absent from this world.
No matter how keen one's senses were, they should not have been able to see him. Yet the gaze, like needles pricking into him, never left. Cloud Dragon was looking directly at where Tang Yu-shin stood.
‘Senses spread throughout the area, and eyes that can see through Other Side Ghost Walk...’
Even among Martial Apex Venerables, not many could accurately see through Other Side Ghost Walk. Those eyes were more remarkable than the external senses.
‘Another reason to kill him.’
Tang Yu-shin had already sensed that, if left alone, Cloud Dragon had the potential to someday become a Martial Apex Venerable. Seeing those eyes made him feel that he had to kill him here and now.
It was fortunate that he had encountered someone who had learned an ability that countered his own before it had fully blossomed.
Tang Yu-shin's fingers gripped a clear disc as transparent as glass. The moment he returned to reality through Other Side Ghost Walk, the disc left his hand.
Whirr!
The spinning disc swept toward Yuri in a smooth arc.
The instant it touched the lightning qi, Sealing Thunder at the Gate of Death relayed the disc's path directly into Yuri's mind.
But this was the Dark King's concealed weapon. It did not end with a simple throw. The weapon was filled with inner power and Intent.
The inner power and Intent scattering in every direction along with its rotation tore Sealing Thunder at the Gate of Death to pieces.
His senses became disordered, but Transcendent Sight did not waver. Yuri's eyes did not lose track of the fast-moving concealed weapon.
The thinly spread lightning qi changed form.
Krrrrooom!
A thick bolt of lightning slammed into the concealed weapon. At the same time, Yuri's palm fired a vortex.
Tang Yu-shin did not use Other Side Ghost Walk again. He simply walked forward at an unhurried pace. A dagger had already appeared in his hand.
His hand rose over his shoulder. The space around the dagger looked distorted by the Intent he had poured into it without restraint.
Boom!
The vortex was shredded. The incoming dagger pierced through Sealing Thunder at the Gate of Death in an instant and reached Yuri.
It was so fast that even though he sensed and saw it first, his reaction was too slow. Yuri gritted his teeth and twisted his body in midair.
The force carried by the dagger was tremendous. It did not merely shave away his protective force aura. It ripped chunks out of it. And that was not the end. Daggers fired one after another rushed at Yuri like bullets from a machine gun.
Yuri's body danced along the line of death. Every dagger barely grazed his protective force aura, but none left a wound on his body.
That displeased Tang Yu-shin. He had thrown daggers to kill, yet failed to kill. Those eyes and senses were irritating after all. Tang Yu-shin clicked his tongue and swept out an arm.
Boom!
Gold flashed, followed by an explosion. It was Estor's Light Sword. Unlike Yuri, Estor did not have the skill to narrowly evade the daggers. But the Light Sword cut through everything.
Thoom!
The moment Estor's foot crushed the ground, he was already within arm's reach of Tang Yu-shin.
Assassins were not limited to throwing concealed weapons from afar and launching ambushes. Any assassin who had reached a high level naturally had methods for close combat. Tang Yu-shin, who had earned the alias Dark King, was no exception.
Two daggers were already in his hands. Tang Yu-shin did not clash directly with the Light Sword. Nor did he try to deflect it. Though his body was right in front of Estor, it wavered like smoke and slipped free of the sword strike.
Stab! Stab!
Blood burst from Estor's chest where the daggers had flashed through him in an instant. His protective force aura had been pierced far too easily.
That did not make defending meaningless. The purity of inner power determined the strength of protective force aura. If it had not absorbed some of the impact, his heart would have been pierced in a single blow.
Though his entire body was gradually being covered in blood, Estor did not let out a single groan. With wide eyes, he swung the Light Sword at Tang Yu-shin's waist while forming the Formless Sword with Intent.
The Formless Sword Estor sought was an Intent blade that created a slash wherever he looked and wished, a blade that did not exist until the moment it cut.
Estor's Orsia Sword Saint Form was still unable to stand against the Dark King head-on. No matter how he swung his sword, the Light Sword's radiance could not reach the Dark King, and even facing those short daggers was difficult.
But the Formless Sword was different.
Thud!
‘Did it catch on bone?’
He had aimed precisely between the ribs, but Estor's movements were fairly good. Or had his attack lacked sharpness? A dagger capable of tearing even bone apart had been stopped. Were the bones of this masterpiece of Orsia blood so hard as well?
Tang Yu-shin twisted the dagger embedded in Estor's chest, and his lips twisted with it.
Crack!
He was about to drive it in deeper, but Tang Yu-shin sprang backward. A chilling instinct had warned him.
Slash!
Only after Tang Yu-shin leaped away did the manifested slash carve a line through space.
‘He saw through it.’
It was because Estor was still immature. The Formless Sword was a technique of manifesting Intent into reality, something a sixth-tier martial artist could not use freely.
Estor spat out blood. Rather than pull out the dagger still embedded in his chest, he snapped off only its hilt and left the blade in place.
‘An Intent slash?’
It was not an ability possible at that level. Tang Yu-shin could not continue the thought.
Yuri had arrived at his side.
He had sharp senses and bright eyes, and he was a martial artist who refused to die easily.
No problem.
Bright red clouds rose from Yuri's arms. The Dance of Wind and Cloud from the Fist of the Rending Cloud. Clouds followed his fists and billowed in wild disarray. Tang Yu-shin faced him directly without using Other Side Ghost Walk.
The clouds were torn apart one after another. Dagger blades barely grazed his protective force aura. The clouds gathered again and hid his fists. Yuri struck, but could not reach him.
Tang Yu-shin's footwork let him evade every attack Yuri launched by a gap no wider than a sheet of paper.
Tang Yu-shin could not land a proper cut either.
Cloud Dragon's movements could not possibly belong to a sixth-tier martial artist. He immediately caught and responded to hidden attacks. He sensed even invisible attacks through other senses.
Tang Yu-shin was certain. In five years, the Fist King would have to yield that title to a junior far beneath him.
‘He will not thank me.’
The Fist King would not be grateful even if Tang Yu-shin killed Cloud Dragon here.
What did it matter? Tang Yu-shin had no intention of bragging to the world about the killings he committed today. The Three Heroes had climbed the Rift of Kang Yu, but they had not come back down. That would be the end of it.
Whoosh!
A crimson line passed before Tang Yu-shin's eyes. Not a fist, but Yuri's foot.
Tang Yu-shin snorted and crossed his arms.
They were too close to throw concealed weapons. This was close combat range. That did not matter to Tang Yu-shin. Concealed weapon arts were not limited to throwing weapons.
A concealed weapon art was, in the end, a technique for handling concealed weapons, and concealed weapons were not limited to daggers. They meant hidden weapons.
Tang Yu-shin crossed his arms. Instead of firing, the daggers between his fingers raked out like an animal's claws. Yuri slipped beneath them and tried to seize Tang Yu-shin's body.
Tang Yu-shin's toes moved slightly. Poisoned needles sprang from the ends of his shoes. He had not even swung a kick, yet the needles shot upward from below. It was not the force of a mechanism, but the manipulation of inner power and Intent.
What Transcendent Sight saw was the flow of qi. It could not reveal how many concealed weapons Tang Yu-shin had hidden on his body.
But Yuri immediately understood that, in a different sense from a martial artist, the Dark King's entire body was a weapon.
His fluttering sleeve went taut, then swung at him like an axe blade.
Snip!
Severed hair scattered through the air.
He thought he had evaded it, but a real blade fell from inside the sleeve as though to split his head in two.
He had not evaded cleanly. The cut protective force aura vanished like sparks, and blood sprayed from his burning cheek.
Yuri took a step back. A reverse-gripped dagger aimed for his body. He reached out to knock it away, but needles fired from Tang Yu-shin's waist grazed his neck.
Thud!
The dagger he had failed to fully knock away grazed his chest.
The wound was not deep. But Yuri felt Poison Qi spreading through it. That was fine. Unless it was a poison art directly used by a Martial Apex Venerable, it was ultimately just poison applied to a weapon.
The Burning Flame Suppression Lock kept his mind from growing clouded, and Gebra's flames burned away the poison on concealed weapons.
‘Does he not practice poison arts?’
Yuri was right. Tang Yu-shin did not practice poison arts. The only martial art he had learned was concealed weapon arts. His father was the greatest Poison Human in the Dang Family's history, so Tang Yu-shin had learned only concealed weapon arts instead of poison arts.
Even so, every poison applied to his concealed weapons was lethally potent. Tang Yu-shin found it strange that Yuri did not even stagger.
Poison resistance? Or was he hiding another countermeasure? Tang Yu-shin was puzzled, but did not stop attacking.
His hand brushed over his waist, and a thin, transparent flexible sword rose like a snake and cut into Yuri's abdomen.
The battle was becoming increasingly one-sided. If that attack had reached his organs, there would have been nothing more to see. But at the moment the blade bit in, Yuri's right hand drove toward Tang Yu-shin.
Flames ignited.
Tang Yu-shin's cheek stiffened. As he stepped to the left, his body spun around once.
The flames did not explode. They merely covered Yuri's fist. Yet Tang Yu-shin had felt more danger from that fist than from the Formless Sword.
‘What is that?’
They were truly strange men. How could attacks from sixth-tier martial artists make a Martial Apex Venerable feel this much danger?
Crackle!
Yuri's left hand, held behind his waist, wrapped itself in flame and lightning qi.
Thunder Orb.
Tang Yu-shin frowned and swept out his right hand.
Boom!
Ten concealed weapons flicked out with a single motion collided with the Thunder Orb, but not one of them pierced it. They all vanished on the spot.
The Thunder Orb continued rushing toward Tang Yu-shin.
“What the...”
Tang Yu-shin swung his arm with a bewildered expression. This time, the Thunder Orb could advance no farther and exploded in place, but the lightning qi that burst outward became hundreds of arrows and poured down.
Every lightning arrow was shot down by concealed weapons, but Tang Yu-shin let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
“Impressive.”
The blade cutting at his waist was impressive as well. The figure cut by the Light Sword collapsed into a faint afterimage.
Yuri and Estor attacked Tang Yu-shin from different directions and in different ways.
That was when Tang Yu-shin's broad robe opened wide, revealing the concealed weapons packed without a gap inside.
They were tiny, handleless blades about two finger joints long. Packed so densely that the robe's lining could not be seen, they resembled metal scales.
‘To think they would make me use even this.’
Tang Yu-shin's hands turned black. The overflowing darkness became hundreds, then thousands, of threads, connecting to the scales inside his robe.
Whirr!
Tang Yu-shin swept his hands, and thousands of threads pulled thousands of scales, creating thousands of slashes. Even seen directly with both eyes, it was an absurd attack.
Yuri swallowed his shock and unleashed the Blood Wheel Soul-Locking Palm, while Estor swung his fully amplified Light Sword.
Boom!
Yuri and Estor swallowed the blood forcing its way past their lips and prepared for the next attack.
But no further attack followed. The thousands of scales Tang Yu-shin had swung were nowhere to be seen either.
Had they all vanished in that clash? Impossible.
A chilling sensation ran through Yuri. He looked up.
At the center of the Rift's gray sky was a mass of black clouds. They were no ordinary clouds. It was a phenomenon formed by Tang Yu-shin's immense inner power condensing together. Within it, thousands of scales stood motionless.
“Myriad Heavenly Flower Rain.”
Tang Yu-shin spoke in an indifferent voice.
The ultimate technique of the Dang Family's concealed weapon arts did not send down a lovely rain of flowers, despite its name.
Shhhhh...
A black rain of death poured down. Thousands of concealed weapons filled with force aura descended, every one carrying deadly power.
Estor looked up at the sky with a pale face and amplified the Light Sword. Yuri wrapped both arms in the vortices of the Blood Wheel Soul-Locking Palm.
.
.
Shhhhh...
At the sound of falling rain, Haryeong opened her eyes. She had fainted after enduring such horrific pain, but no trace of it remained. That made it even more chilling.
Haryeong quickly came to her senses and immediately rose.
“...Ah.”
Shhhhh...
The rain did not stop.
It fell, rose back up, then fell again.
The pattern repeated. That rain of death would not end until it completely killed its target.
That was the Dang Family's Myriad Heavenly Flower Rain. And Tang Yu-shin was the one who wielded the most terrible and persistent Myriad Heavenly Flower Rain among all their successive heads. That Myriad Heavenly Flower Rain was also bound to Tang Yu-shin's Conceptual Apotheosis.
“N... No.”
Haryeong stammered.
She could see Yuri and Estor within the black downpour. Even as their entire bodies were being carved apart, they continued struggling desperately.
Estor's Light Sword was losing its radiance within the rainstorm, and Yuri's flames trembled as though they might go out at any moment.
Beyond the rainstorm stood Tang Yu-shin with his hands behind his back. He watched Yuri and Estor die with indifferent eyes.
“You are awake.”
Tang Yu-shin's gaze turned to Haryeong. Before she could even feel the chill in that gaze, her exploding emotions spurred her forward.
“AAAAARGH!”
Haryeong gripped a dagger in each hand and rushed at Tang Yu-shin with a scream. As though he had expected it, the Yang Gu was already resting in Tang Yu-shin's hand.
When his fingers pressed down on the Yang Gu, the Yin Gu planted within Haryeong immediately unleashed pain.
Her running body reeled as though she would fall. But she did not fall. She endured the unbearable pain.
This was all because of her.
That thought filled Haryeong's mind.
If she had not refused at Gwangseo and followed her nieces and nephews, Yuri and Estor would never have met Tang Yu-shin. So all the pain those two were suffering now was because of her. If they died, if they really died...
“Hah.”
That scream was not caused by pain. That bitch was running at him while enduring the pain of the Yin-Yang Twin Gu.
The Yin-Yang Twin Gu could read negative emotions such as hostility, killing intent, and rebellious intent. Haryeong was currently giving off all such emotions.
Tang Yu-shin let out a hollow laugh and pressed the Yang Gu again, but Haryeong did not stop running even as she staggered.
In the end, she reached him. Tears of blood streamed from Haryeong's reddened eyes as she thrust her daggers at Tang Yu-shin.
She was forcibly enduring immense pain. There was no way the trembling blades could reach their mark properly. Tang Yu-shin used the Seizing Hand Art to catch and twist Haryeong's wrist, then slapped her with his other hand.
Shhhhh...
Perhaps because he had lost too much blood, his head spun. Blood had filled his eyes as well, turning the world red.
In that red world, beyond the pouring rain, he saw Haryeong collapse.
He saw a foot coming down as though to crush an insect.
His ears could hear nothing but the rain, yet Haryeong's scream from earlier still rang in them.
Yuri staggered forward one step.
A bright red flag came into view.
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