WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 1: Dropped into Murim with an Instant-Kill Skill
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Rattle!
The bus lurched hard.
‘What was that?’
It was a strange jolt. There hadn't been a speed bump or anything outside the window.
Yeon Sowol finished replying to his mother's messages.
- Son, have you left already? I was going to drive you.
- I wanted to get there early and do some mental training.
- All right, son. You'll do well. Go take the test with an easy mind, okay?
- Yes. I'll get a perfect score and come back.
His mother didn't reply for a while.
‘She's writing something long again.’
Sure enough, after he stared out the window for a moment, a lengthy message arrived.
- You don't have to get a perfect score. It's okay. Sometimes the world plays tricks on people. There are times when things go strangely no matter how hard you work. But that's okay. A road that goes differently from what you planned can lead to another new road. No matter what happens, Mom will always be on your side. Sowol just needs to stay healthy.
- Yes. I'll definitely get a perfect score.
- All right. All right. I love you.
He was on his way to take the CSAT.
Yeon Sowol was aiming for Seoul National University.
‘Whew. Shall I get started?’
He turned off his phone.
Closed his eyes.
Then reviewed the EBS CSAT Korean language passages in his head.
The key concepts in literature and nonfiction. Question types. Questions he had gotten wrong.
From his concept notes to his error notes.
If everything was completely stored in his head, he could reduce the time it took to review it to an extreme degree.
Once he finished Korean, he would move on to math. Then English, Korean history, and his elective subjects.
He didn't know how other students studied, but Yeon Sowol had always studied like this.
As a result, he had earned perfect scores on three of the six mock exams he had taken during his senior year of high school.
‘This will be the fourth.’
By the time he had reviewed the entire test range, there were only three stops left.
Yeon Sowol relaxed his body and cooled his overheated mind.
Rattle!
Then the bus lurched strangely again.
It was worse than before.
‘What is this?’
A chill ran through him. It didn't feel like a natural jolt.
It felt as if the entire bus had been compressed and twisted. His head spun, and his nose suddenly clogged up.
Was he tired?
‘I got enough sleep, though?’
The instant he thought that,
"Hey! Hey! What's going on? Hey?"
The driver cried out in panic.
Bang!
The bus, which had been crossing an overpass, crashed into the guardrail.
A twenty-meter free fall.
Below was asphalt.
‘...What?’
Yeon Sowol felt more dumbfounded than afraid.
‘I'm dying like this?’
The heavy bus dipped its nose toward the black asphalt, and his body floated up from the seat.
‘This is insane...’
The bus fell.
Through the windshield,
the black asphalt rushed closer.
Crunch!
Like a pitch-black mouth, it ground away the front of the bus.
Crushing metal, seats ripped free and flung away, glass scattering like sugar, people dancing through the air.
The black ground rushed toward him.
‘Really? This is it? Really?’
What a funny joke.
Making him study for the CSAT his entire life, then dropping the bus on the day of the test.
His mother had said that sometimes the world played tricks on people.
But was it allowed to toy with someone this much?
He could almost hear her voice.
What had she said again?
‘But that's okay. A road that goes differently from what you planned can lead to another new road.’
Riiip!
That was when something sudden happened.
It sounded as if a thousand layers of thin silk had been stretched tight, then stabbed through the center with a blade and torn apart in one stroke. The deafening sound of something ripping filled his ears.
Before Yeon Sowol's eyes, to his left and right, the world tore apart.
It was as if the whole world had become a sheet of paper.
The black asphalt grinding through the bus ripped open to either side and fluttered. Even the people around him flapped like scraps of paper.
Time.
Space.
Events.
Information.
Everything that made up all things came undone around Yeon Sowol, scattering threads in every direction.
A crack in the world was opening before him.
‘A gate to another world?’
Yeon Sowol remembered the anime and novels he had loved until middle school.
Usually, getting hit by a truck sent you to another world. This was a bus crash.
‘This is insane...’
He had lived sensibly his whole life. Was the world really this senseless?
But he had no time to think.
Yeon Sowol wanted to live.
There was no time.
Whether that was a gate to another world or not, first of all...
"Arghhh!"
Yeon Sowol flailed his arms and legs wildly.
By luck, he kicked away a bus seat's headrest and managed to change the direction of his fall.
Toward the crack in the world. Precisely.
The world flattened like paper, and he plunged into a massive wave formed by the intertwining, fluttering threads.
Splash!
Neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.
He couldn't tell up from down, front from back.
He couldn't even guess whether he was falling or floating weightlessly.
‘Uuugh!’
Inside it, Yeon Sowol suffered terrible pain.
‘Was this hell, not another world?!’
Was this what it felt like to fall into a sea of hydrochloric acid?
Pain he had never even imagined.
It felt as if his entire body and mind were being broken down thread by thread.
Even through pain bad enough to make him pass out, Yeon Sowol gritted his teeth and forced himself to endure.
Because he wanted to live.
Because it was unfair.
‘Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake.’
It felt as if even his sense of self was being torn to pieces, so he kept reminding himself who he was.
He reviewed every memory he had ever made, constantly recognizing himself.
He didn't want to disappear like this. He didn't want to die like this.
It was the only resistance he could offer.
Riiip, rip, rip!
The sound of something continuously tearing came from somewhere. It was like peeling away the world's skin, a sound that raised goosebumps yet carried a strange thrill.
Riiiiiip!
Then, with the sound of a thick curtain tearing apart,
Whoosh!
A blue sky suddenly spread before him.
"Gah!"
The burning, tearing pain vanished all at once.
In its place came the dizzying sensation of falling.
Fierce wind battered both his ears without mercy.
Before Yeon Sowol could rejoice at being free of pain, he thrashed and screamed.
"Arghhhhh!"
What was this? Was he going to fall to his death in the end?
Zzzzzzt!
Then an odd sensation caught at his fingertips.
It felt as though he had touched a thin, taut string.
‘I have to grab it!’
Yeon Sowol instinctively clenched it tightly.
A thin white line appeared across the sky.
Like a loose thread being pulled from a cotton T-shirt, the sky stretched out long from Yeon Sowol's grip.
"Gah!"
The more he pulled at the sky's threads, the slower he fell. The wind that had painfully battered his entire body disappeared as well.
Yeon Sowol desperately snatched at the loose threads hanging in the air.
Riiip! Rip!
His descent gradually slowed.
Yeon Sowol felt hope.
Could he...
live?
He had just passed through the clouds when the ground began to come into clear view.
「 It is the Heaven-Killing Star. 」
「 The Heaven-Killing Star. 」
「 The Heaven-Killing Star has appeared. 」
"?!"
Suddenly, a damp voice sounded beside his ear.
「 Starlight falling from a torn sky. 」
「 A foreign fate that belongs to none of the Nine Heavens. 」
「 One who happened to overlap with the rift between heaven and earth. 」
「 Whether it is terrible fortune or terrible misfortune. 」
「 Having passed through torn principles, everything it touches meets its end. 」
「 It is the Heaven-Killing Star. 」
Voices crowded in like a swarm.
Yeon Sowol felt cold hands and breath against his arms and the back of his neck.
He still couldn't see anything.
‘Ghosts?’
Like when sleep paralysis had seized him while studying at dawn, he suddenly couldn't move even a fingertip.
The damp voices only grew louder and clearer.
「 Now. While it still straddles the world of the living and the world of the dead! 」
「 If we consume the Heaven-Killing Star, we may escape the cycle of the Nine Heavens! 」
「 What will the Heaven-Killing Star taste like? 」
「 That power! Give me that power! 」
Sliiide...
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Fishy, cold things burrowed into Yeon Sowol's nostrils, ears, and mouth.
He tried to struggle.
But his body would not move.
He was afraid.
Afraid.
Afraidafraidafraidafraid...
Unbearable terror and resentful rage finally tore through his throat.
"Arghhh! Die! Die, you ghost bastards!"
Snap!
Yeon Sowol felt several fishy threads that had been rummaging through his body break apart.
Whoosh!
His body immediately became lighter.
"Huh?"
A soft, dry breeze brushed his cheeks.
「 The Ghost Kings have vanished? 」
「 They are completely gone. 」
「 It is the Heaven-Killing Star. 」
「 The Heaven-Killing Star. 」
「 Its body has been soaked in the rift between heaven and earth. 」
「 Nothing it touches can survive. 」
The frightened voices lingered around his ears, then scattered.
"Urgh!"
Before he could wonder about it, Yeon Sowol felt a sharp headache.
Unfamiliar memories burrowed into his mind. Most were distorted beyond recognition, like damaged video files being forced to play.
Yet the portions where those memories overlapped came to him fairly clearly.
The language, for instance. The common sense of this world...
‘This language? These memories? Where is this? Ancient China? Jianghu? Martial arts? ...Was I really reincarnated into another world?’
They were the memories of the ghosts that had burrowed into his body and then vanished.
But Yeon Sowol had no time to think deeply about them.
The ground, now much closer, filled his vision.
"Arghhhhh!"
He reflexively grabbed at the sky's loose threads.
Threads of sky dragged after his flailing fingertips with a zzzzt, and his descent rapidly slowed.
Now came the impact.
Thud!
Yeon Sowol landed on his back in the dirt.
"Ghk!"
Stars burst before his eyes, and the impact made it feel as if his organs were about to shoot out of his throat.
"Ugh... Cough! Urk!"
As he rolled on the ground, dropped to his knees, and dry-heaved, a pair of black shoe tips entered his view.
"...?"
He looked up and saw an old man as gaunt as a skeleton.
The old man had neither beard nor hair. He was so dried out that he looked like skin draped over a skull, and he stared down at Yeon Sowol with stunned eyes.
Yeon Sowol almost felt overwhelming relief that he was alive, but then he saw another old man pinned beneath the first one's feet and closed his mouth.
He was an elderly monk.
One with a smooth-shaven head, white eyebrows, and a white beard.
If Yeon Sowol had run into him by chance on the street, his otherworldly bearing would have made him look twice.
But now his white beard and eyebrows were caked with dirt, and more importantly, his neck was being stepped on.
By the bald old man who looked like a skeleton.
"...Killing Demon. That child has nothing to do with this, does he not...? As a great senior of Jianghu, would it not be fitting to show mercy?"
The skeletal old man, Killing Demon, gave a simple answer.
"What utter bullshit."
Crunch!
The elderly monk's head snapped like a rag doll beneath his foot.
When Killing Demon lifted his foot, the monk's head flopped sideways.
Yeon Sowol swallowed his breath.
"At last. Shaolin's Greater Rejuvenation Pill is in my hands."
Killing Demon grinned grotesquely and searched through the monk's robes, pulling out a wooden box.
He opened it, closed it, and stroked it with delight, lingering in the afterglow for some time. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered something, he turned back to Yeon Sowol.
"But what is this?"
His eyes were far too large to be human, their black pupils gleaming.
* * *
Ironically,
Yeon Sowol only now had the chance to calmly look back on his situation.
At any rate, he was no longer falling.
He tried to make sense of what was happening.
First.
Where was this?
Keeping his eyes lowered, Yeon Sowol examined his surroundings.
A skeletal old man in a black robe.
An elderly monk in yellow robes, lying dead beneath his feet with a broken neck.
Judging by their clothes.
Judging by the way someone had killed a person by stepping on their neck.
This was definitely not Earth.
‘It really is another world...’
The ghosts' memories flashing through his mind confirmed it.
‘But the Heaven-Killing Star? What was that?’
The ghosts' damp voices still seemed to cling to his ears.
"A person falling from the sky. A strange occurrence indeed."
Then,
the skeletal old man called Killing Demon abruptly approached and grabbed Yeon Sowol by the wrist, pulling him to his feet. His grip was like an iron shackle.
"Clothes I have never seen in my life. Hair cut so short... Sniff, sniff. What is that scent? Does it come from your clothes? It is faint and pure. A fragrance I have never smelled before. So a person from the Immortal Realm has fallen to the earth. I have traveled Jianghu and seen all manner of strange occurrences, but this is among the strangest. Let us see..."
Killing Demon's fingers pressed into Yeon Sowol's pulse point.
"Ghk!"
Yeon Sowol shuddered.
Terrible pain surged from his wrist. It felt as if icy pincers were scraping at his muscles and tendons.
"Hmm? Hah..."
Killing Demon's brow furrowed.
"Why is your qi so impure? This is an immortal?"
As if he couldn't believe it, he forced his qi in even more roughly.
The chilling energy swept through every part of Yeon Sowol's body.
"Nngh!!"
It hurt so much that he couldn't even scream. Yeon Sowol could only tremble with his mouth hanging open.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
There was no way he could keep himself from cursing.
How many times had he nearly died in such a short span?
Cruel, unreasonable misfortune.
Deep helplessness.
After an agonizing stretch of pain, Killing Demon finally withdrew his qi.
Contempt filled his eyes.
"Not even a beggar who scavenges cold leftovers would possess qi and blood so muddy and blocked. How can a human who fell from the sky have such a filthy constitution?"
His gaze swept over Yeon Sowol as if he were looking at garbage.
"Even the Immortal Realm cast out this stagnant filth. What should I do with it? Should I take it back to our sect as a curiosity? Or should I simply kill it? Though even carrying it back would be a waste of effort."
Killing Demon's unusually large black eyes gleamed.
Yeon Sowol's shoulders shook.
His body, swept through by the old man's qi, ached with cold.
But worse than the pain was this.
‘I'm dying in the end?’
No. Wait.
He had fallen with the bus.
Then fallen from the sky again.
Somehow driven off ghosts.
And made it all the way here.
And now he was going to die?
Suddenly, time seemed to slow.
For the first time, Yeon Sowol experienced his life flashing before his eyes.
The bus crashing into the guardrail.
Space tearing like taut silk.
The endless fall.
The ghosts.
Every step that had brought him here passed through his mind vividly.
Among it all, one fact suddenly caught his attention.
‘...The Heaven-Killing Star!’
What the ghosts had said.
「 The Ghost Kings have vanished? 」
「 Having passed through torn principles, everything it touches meets its end. 」
「 Its body has been soaked in the rift between heaven and earth. 」
「 Nothing it touches can survive. 」
The words that had seemed like nonsense earlier returned with vivid meaning.
They said reincarnating into another world gave you a special ability.
Yeon Sowol had always thought that was just a convenient setting for authors, but today he realized it wasn't.
Dimensions.
Having crossed one himself, he knew they weren't ordinary.
‘In martial arts novels, people gain lucky opportunities just by falling off cliffs. If I fell across an entire dimension, of course I should get something out of it.’
That something seemed to be the Heaven-Killing Star.
A power that carried a dimensional rift and could kill anything it touched.
The moment he realized it, Yeon Sowol felt something strange.
It felt as though the entire world were made of threads.
Just as he had grabbed the threads of the sky earlier, it felt as if he could cut those threads simply by touching them.
The instant he felt it, Yeon Sowol moved on reflex.
He flipped his hand over and tightly grabbed the old man's gaunt hand, which was still clutching his wrist.
Then he wished with all his heart.
"Die."
Snap!
With the sensation of something invisible snapping,
Spin...
Killing Demon's huge pupils slid wildly, then rolled around inside his eyes once before staring up at the sky.
The bony hand gripping Yeon Sowol's wrist went limp.
The shriveled body suddenly collapsed, as if it had become a heavy water bag.
Thump.
Killing Demon's limbs sprawled at random against the ground. A warm, tingling fluid flowed from between his legs.
Footnotes:
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