WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 159: The Rear Waves of the Yangtze Push the Front Waves (33)
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Daaang!
Kweeeeng!
The bell was deafening.
It seemed to grow louder by the moment.
If they pushed just a little harder, they could crush the enemy completely and shatter that bell.
Only one step remained.
Yet that one step remained stubbornly out of reach.
“Huuuu.”
Moyong Hyeok drew in a deep breath.
He quietly recalled the words of Moyong Jun, the young family head who had sent him here.
‘Ha said it. The fiendish demon hiding in Dongting Lake is not something humans can approach. Uncle, Young Lord Yeon is a benefactor of the Moyong Family. Even now, he is seeking revenge for Ha. No matter how difficult the family’s circumstances are, we cannot leave someone like him to die.’
Moyong Hyeok immediately understood what Moyong Jun had left unsaid.
A fiendish demon beyond human reach.
A young martial artist rushing toward it like a moth to a flame.
Respect his wishes, but do not let him die.
No matter how difficult the family’s circumstances were.
So...
‘This time, I may die.’
Even if it cost him his life, he had to save Yeon Sowol.
That was the mission entrusted to him.
‘The young family head has made up his mind.’
Moyong Hyeok was a master who stood as a pillar of the Moyong Family.
Though he came from a collateral branch, peak-realm masters of his caliber were rare even within the family. Moreover, he had been far from the main house during the Moyong Family’s calamity and had not eaten the fruit.
If he died, that was the end.
He would not return to life.
Moyong Hyeok considered that fortunate.
Could those who died and returned to life truly be considered the same people as before?
No. Were they even human?
Moyong Hyeok’s answer was clear.
No.
In any case, there was no second chance for him. He did not even have the sliver of hope that he might return to life in some form, then try to resolve it afterward.
Even so, he did not hesitate.
For Moyong.
Bearing the Moyong name.
He had willingly sought out a place to die.
But...
‘At this rate, I might return alive.’
What could be better than avoiding death?
It would be good for him and good for the family.
Moyong Hyeok’s eyes shone.
Beyond the Patrol Guards making their final desperate stand, a Daoist priest madly struck the bronze bell.
‘He must be calling that fiendish demon.’
The monster Moyong Ha had declared beyond human reach.
‘If I can cut that bastard down before he summons it...’
Woooooong!
Moyong Hyeok’s sword let out a majestic cry.
For an instant, it drowned out even the bronze ringing that seemed capable of shaking the whole world.
Flutter, flutter!
His robes swelled.
The wind blew.
Veins bulged across his forehead, neck, and forearms, all the way to the backs of his hands.
A scorching haze rose across a three-step radius around where he stood. Mist and air swirled, warping Moyong Hyeok’s figure within the vortex.
His life’s work.
Everything he could give until his final breath.
As though he had lived for this single moment.
Boom!
Moyong Hyeok vanished.
Crash!
Before anyone could find him again, the first thing that entered their sight was the chopped-up bodies of the Patrol Guards.
The Patrol Guards’ formation of long spears was no more than a field of reeds, while Moyong Hyeok racing through them was an invisible wolf.
Crack! Slash! Crunch! Snap!
Spears, armor, torsos, and limbs were severed.
Moyong Hyeok’s sword was like a beast, savage yet nimble. At times, it rode the energy of nature. At times, it slipped aside. At times, it vanished within it.
The Patrol Guards’ final resistance was ripped to pieces before that blood-soaked slaughter.
Even Won Huiseung, who had fallen back to catch his breath and recover even a little true qi, could only stare.
“Wow...”
He could not take his eyes off that display.
It felt as though the whole world were shaking.
As though only that place had been enlarged.
The essence of martial arts forged by a single family blazed with brilliant light.
* * *
Jang Gilho, head of the Silver Hundred Guild, was exhilarated.
“As expected of Moyong!”
Moyong Hyeok had overturned a battle that had stalled just before victory.
What martial artist would not feel his blood boil at that sight?
And it was not over.
When Jang Gilho glanced back, he saw Yang Hoeam collapsing.
The root of this entire disaster.
If Yang Hoeam had escaped, it would have become a heart demon that haunted him for years. Seeing him caught on Yeon Sowol’s blade and cut to pieces was deeply satisfying.
Everyone had heard Yang Hoeam’s shouts as he fled, making it all the more satisfying.
“Can you see it? Humans are not insignificant! You are the insignificant ones!”
Jang Gilho drew his sword and broke through the scattered Patrol Guards.
“You cannot even endure being human! You flee down the path of the inhuman! You are the wretched ones! How could people like you withstand a human sword? How could you possibly withstand me?!”
Jang Gilho was the head of the Silver Hundred Guild, Yuezhou’s Gatekeeper.
That meant he led the most powerful martial faction in Yuezhou.
Though Yeon Sowol had kept him from earning a place among Hunan’s Three Greats during the martial arts tournament, he was still one of Hunan’s foremost masters.
When such a man charged in at full force, the already collapsing Patrol Guards could only break apart and scatter.
“Huff. Huff... I’m counting on you, Guild Head Jang.”
“Leave it to me!”
Moyong Hyeok stopped to settle his surging true qi, and Jang Gilho sprang forward as though taking his place.
Despair filled the eyes of the Daoist priest striking the bronze bell.
“Th-this...!”
Before he could do anything else...
Slash!
The Daoist priest’s right arm flew through the air, still clutching its hammer.
“No...!”
Yet he did not stop.
Without tending to his severed arm, he rushed forward and slammed his head into the bell.
Daaang!
“This lunatic?”
“It is coming! It is coming! After devouring five hundred pure boys and girls, the god who will finally ascend to heaven is coming!”
Blood streamed from his split forehead, yet the Daoist priest threw himself back and rammed the bell again.
Kweeeeng!
Slash!
In that brief gap, Jang Gilho’s sword cut through the Daoist priest’s neck.
The head spun through the air.
“AAAAAH!”
It screamed.
A head separated from its body should not have been able to make a sound.
It had no lungs to provide air, yet as it spun through the sky, it screamed loud enough to shake the world.
“AAAAAAAH!”
As though it had been wronged.
As though it was filled with resentment.
The members of the White-Robed League and the renowned Hunan martial artists, who had been finishing off the fallen Patrol Guards one by one, flinched and stared at the head.
For some reason, they could not look away.
The head seemed strangely enlarged.
It felt as though the time it spent spinning in the air had been stretched out.
Slowly blinking eyelids.
A mouth hanging wide open.
A trembling uvula within.
Goosebumps rose all over their bodies.
Crunch!
Jang Gilho drove his sword into the Daoist priest’s head.
As though performing a trick, he thrust the blade through its open mouth, mashed the inside of its forehead to pulp, and pulled the tip out through the crown of its skull.
“Ghk...”
The Daoist priest’s scream stopped.
Bloody tears streamed from its wide-open eyes.
“Hah. What in the world...”
Jang Gilho shuddered, shaking off the chill, then dropped the sword-pierced head to the ground.
Daaang!
?!
At that very moment, the bell rang again.
“What?”
He had definitely killed him.
Jang Gilho spun around in alarm and saw an arm falling away after striking the bell.
The arm holding the hammer.
The one he had cut off first.
His gaze fixed on the long, thin hand-like shape growing from the arm’s severed end.
“The severed arm moved on its own?”
What was this?
It was not even a beast.
As an unknown chill ran through his body...
KABOOM!
The bell rang once more.
No.
This was not the sound of a bell.
Something had burst.
Something had broken.
Something rose.
Beyond the mist.
From the bottom of Dongting Lake.
Pushing aside the crushing weight of the deep water.
Breaking through the surface in a single motion.
Like a colossal mountain, it raised its head.
Shhhhhhh!
Rain fell.
The waters of Dongting Lake, erupting like a volcano, came crashing down in a torrential downpour.
Water mist thickened like clouds.
The entire world melted into rain, and they could not see even an inch ahead.
“...”
Jang Gilho lost his voice.
Everyone did.
The Patrol Guards, completely broken as they fled and died.
The Jianghu martial artists pursuing them.
They all stared upward blankly.
Then they slowly collapsed.
Fwoosh!
Two balls of fire rose from within the mist.
The blazing flames, burning like lighthouses, seemed to glance this way.
The moment they did, everyone’s vision turned white.
Light and shadow.
White before their eyes, black within their minds.
An instant and an eternity.
A moment that would be engraved and preserved forever.
Neither beginning nor end.
Moving, yet fundamentally still.
!!!!!
The fleeting things evaporated.
The weak things evaporated.
KABOOM!
KRRRRRUMBLE!
That towering existence crashed down on them in a belated wave of realization.
BOOM! CRACK!
A roar that tore apart even the eardrums of first-rate masters.
The sky screamed.
It went mad.
Fwoosh! Fwoooosh!
Flames erupted from the earth.
Wheeeee!
A wound-like wind swept between heaven and earth.
Then they were gone.
Jang Gilho, who had stood at the front.
The Patrol Guards who had been scattered behind him.
Several martial artists who had pursued those Patrol Guards from closest behind.
Gone.
Only acrid smoke and the stench of burning remained.
“...”
“...”
“...”
None of the survivors could move.
They had collapsed.
The foul smell of urine filled the air.
‘Lightning? Was that lightning?’
Yeon Sowol was the same.
He did not know when he had collapsed, but the buttocks pressed against the ground tingled painfully. Every hair on his body stood on end in the raging electromagnetic field, and light flashed behind his eyes.
His ears felt plugged as though submerged in water, as if his temples might split apart.
His nose smelled of blood.
Something kept dripping.
He was completely stiff.
Unable to turn even his head, he barely lifted his eyes.
A shape flickered through the mist.
What had suddenly risen from the bottom of Dongting Lake was endlessly large and long.
It arched into the sky like a rainbow. He had to crane his neck far back just to see its end.
A pair of fireballs burned fiercely at its tip, dyeing the mist like sunset as they looked down upon the tiny creatures on the ground.
‘Are those... eyes?’
If so, it was absurd.
‘Something like that... exists?’
This was too much.
Even if martial artists wielded power beyond human limits.
Even if this world had an unjust class system determined by birth.
He had believed it could be done.
By learning martial arts.
By setting his purpose right.
Even in a place like this, he had thought he could live like a human being.
He had thought it was possible.
But.
But something like that...
‘It’s impossible if something like that exists...’
It was impossible.
Yeon Sowol had gone completely rigid.
Behind him, Moyong Hyeok looked at Yeon Sowol.
‘I have to... save Young Lord Yeon.’
A peak-realm master, he bit down so hard on his lips that they tore, then tried with all his might to take one step.
‘Move. Move! There is nothing wrong with your body!’
His essence was fine.
His qi was fine.
Only his spirit had been crushed.
Before that terrifying existence, his heart had frozen.
He could not even dare form the intent to take a step forward.
Step.
Moyong Hyeok walked anyway.
To complete the mission his family head had given him.
He moved slowly.
Yet it was still too absurd.
He had heard that it was a fiendish demon beyond human reach.
‘It was a Flood Dragon?’
A Flood Dragon.
An imugi.
A dragon that had yet to ascend to heaven.
Did such a thing truly exist in the world?
No.
‘Is it even really a Flood Dragon?’
It was too large.
And it wielded lightning.
If that was a Flood Dragon, was it one on the verge of ascending to heaven?
Only then did Moyong Hyeok fully understand what had been happening here.
‘Yang Hoeam and the Demonic Path followers were trying to help the Flood Dragon ascend. In exchange, they wanted their wishes granted.’
Had Yang Hoeam and the Daoist priest turned monstrous because they drank the Flood Dragon’s blood?
He understood.
But that did not help.
Thud...
Moyong Hyeok’s body, which had been inching forward, stopped.
It only trembled.
He had to complete his mission.
Young Lord Yeon was right there...
A man passed by his frozen side.
Step.
Step.
Step.
He dragged his feet.
Yet he was not slow.
His entire body squeezed and writhed as he moved, steadily advancing one step at a time.
Moyong Hyeok watched his back.
The young martial artist who had led the charge against the Patrol Guards at the beginning of the battle.
Though only first-rate, he had displayed skill that did not fall behind a peak-realm master.
A disciple of the Zhongnan Sect.
Won Huiseung.
Step! Step-step!
Step-step-step!
Unlike Moyong Hyeok, who had slowed the farther he went, the man’s steps grew faster as he advanced.
A faint sound of breathing came from his back.
Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.
As though crying.
As though laughing.
He muttered,
“A dragon.”
Won Huiseung, the Dragon-Seeking Wanderer, passed Moyong Hyeok.
He passed Yeon Sowol.
Heh heh heh.
Heh heh heh.
At last, he stood alone before the burning mist.
Footnotes:
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