WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 51: In April, All the Flowers of the World Have Faded (22)
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The White Dragon Gang and Heavenly Road Mountain bandits shouted.
"Hold the line! No matter what, hold the line! We only wavered for a moment! Get through this, and we'll have the upper hand again!"
Windflow Martial Academy and the Severing Sword Sect screamed back.
"Push them! Now! We have to finish this now!"
In that hell of flying blood and flesh, everyone darted their eyes around.
To win.
To survive.
'The right can hold! I need to support the left!'
'That bandit bastard!? Follow him and hit them from behind!'
'Ah! Danger! I need to push the one in front of me back and go help!'
Plans collided and overturned one another.
The chaotic battlefield was like countless snakes tangled together, writhing in a knot.
Then Yi Yubaek's gaze fell on a young man.
A young man who had appeared with a white robe fluttering around him.
He stood some distance away, staring straight at them.
'Sowol!'
He had come after all.
Though Yi Yubaek had hoped he would not.
Part of him was glad. This was the kind of fight that made a man willing to accept help from anyone.
Yet his worry was greater.
What could a single second-rate martial artist do in such a desperate battle? He feared that bright child would only be hurt for nothing.
As Yi Yubaek unconsciously shook his head,
Whoosh!
Yeon Sowol vanished from where he stood.
Only his white robe, apparently discarded at some point, fluttered through the air before falling to the ground.
'What?!'
Yi Yubaek nearly screamed.
'Where did he go?'
He could not believe it.
'Even if I'm not in perfect condition...'
Yeon Sowol should still have been a martial artist at the Breathing Smoke into Clouds stage.
'...I lost him?'
Yi Yubaek hastily swept his gaze around, searching for Yeon Sowol.
Thud.
But Yeon Sowol was nowhere to be seen. All he saw was a White Dragon Gang member collapsing as if his strings had been cut.
The Windflow Martial Academy inner disciple who had been fighting him looked equally startled.
'Where is Sowol?'
Yi Yubaek turned his head again.
Thud. Thud.
Bandits fell one after another, like puppets with severed strings.
Yeon Sowol was still nowhere in sight.
The melee was fierce.
Everyone had already dragged out every last scrap of strength after fighting for so long. Their qi senses had dulled to the point of uselessness. They could only focus on the blades flashing before their eyes, with no room left to watch for anything else.
Only then did Yi Yubaek realize it and let out a sigh.
That meant...
'What he learned from Miss Eun-yeong...!'
This was the perfect condition for an assassin to run wild.
* * *
Stage of maturity.
The stage of maturity was important.
The moment he stepped on the ground, he adjusted his stage of maturity to increase his weight. Yet he never did so abruptly.
Like compressing a spring, he gradually increased his weight and pressed into the ground to build force. Then, at the instant he kicked off, he altered his stage of maturity again and made himself lighter instead.
As light as possible.
But he could not simply make himself light without thought.
A sheet of paper, no matter how hard it was thrown, only fluttered uselessly through the air. If he only made himself lighter, his speed would fall instead.
The key was to keep the center of his body heavy while making its outer parts as light as possible.
It required extraordinarily delicate control of his stage of maturity.
It was immensely difficult, but the result was sweet.
When he kicked off with his center of gravity packed tight and his body angled as far forward as possible,
Whoosh!
The sound vanished from his footsteps.
He was not producing True Flame to harmonize his qi, yet his steps made no sound as though he had worked some kind of sorcery.
Yeon Sowol had already thrown off his robe. He wore close-fitting martial travel clothes now, so there was not even the rustle of fabric.
He cut through the wind.
Sometimes, he received the wind with his entire body.
When he made himself as light as possible and spread his arms, his body embraced the wind like a sail. It was taut like an inflated balloon, its surface slick as ice. Leaning into the wind, he changed direction as if skating.
His eyes constantly checked the enemy.
His qi sense swept through his surroundings like a tidal wave.
'Where are the enemies' thoughts directed?'
'Where is the place no one's attention reaches?'
He listened again.
To the beating of their hearts.
To their muscles contracting, their breath filling and emptying with the wind.
What did all those sounds tell him?
They were all rhythm.
Like blinking, they formed beats between one movement and the next.
Yeon Sowol moved offbeat. He slipped into the unexpected instant between those beats.
'Here. Here. Hit, turn, take that one.'
'Blocked? Then take this side first and circle back there...'
He mapped out a route.
When a variable arose, he revised it and mapped it again.
Then revised it again.
At every moment, he took the optimal path.
A path that let him brush past everyone without a single person noticing him.
Sometimes he leaned into the wind, sometimes he pierced through it, sometimes he slid along its current as he traced that route.
Thud. Thud.
Enemies collapsed.
'Take down the weak ones first. Hang Inwoo comes last.'
His goal was to remain unnoticed until the very end.
Hiding the power of the Heaven-Killing Star?
He did not care about that.
The spectators had all fled long ago.
The enemies were going to die anyway.
Only allies would remain, and if he could not trust the people who had fought beside him here, what could he possibly do?
He willingly used the Heaven-Killing Star's power.
It made him more discreet.
It made him faster.
If he killed people as he passed without even the sound of a blade cutting through the air, he truly was no different from a passing breeze.
Kill even one more person, faster.
Save even one more person.
That was all he focused on.
Whoooosh!
Making his entire body light in an instant, catching the wind like a kite, Yeon Sowol sharply changed direction.
Someone's gaze landed on the place where he had just been, but no one was there anymore.
* * *
A ghost was moving through the battlefield.
A ghost called Yeon Sowol.
'Uh...?'
'Huh...?'
People noticed the strangeness a little too late.
'He's dead?'
A Severing Sword Sect disciple who had circled around to strike a bandit from behind found his target already dead.
He had only looked elsewhere for a moment.
Yet the bandit had died in that time.
Goosebumps rose across his skin.
Elsewhere,
"Ghk!"
A Heavenly Road Mountain bandit with a sword buried in his side was puzzled even through his terrible pain.
'How? Our side was holding this area!'
As he collapsed, he saw a fellow bandit who had been fighting magnificently only moments ago lying cold and dead.
There was not even a visible wound.
A chill ran down his spine.
'What the hell is this...?'
Everything happened in an instant.
Blink once, and Heavenly Road Mountain and the White Dragon Gang's battle line had collapsed. Look this way, then that way, and it had collapsed somewhere else too.
'Wait. Wait a second.'
A bandit who sensed something was wrong looked around, then abruptly crumpled to the ground.
Yeon Sowol's movements were so discreet and extraordinary that many still could not grasp what was happening, even after watching an enemy die right before their eyes.
Someone swung their sword with all their strength to knock away an enemy's heavy downward slash.
Clang!
Yet the enemy's blade sailed weakly through empty air.
The sword that had looked so heavy contained no force at all. When they widened their eyes in alarm, a pale shadow slipped past them, and the enemy in front of them slowly sank to the ground.
"W-What was that?"
Startled cries erupted all over the battlefield.
Not everyone missed him, though.
Even Yeon Sowol could not deceive the eyes and ears of every ally in a situation like this. Nor did he need to. Those with keen skill caught glimpses of him here and there.
Mo Cheong was one of them.
'Yeon Sowol?'
Whoosh!
A tall man gliding on the wind slipped through his vision.
Whenever Yeon Sowol made a sharp turn, his half-tied hair scattered through the air.
The red silk sword cord at his waist drew a half-circle as its tassels fluttered.
Everywhere Yeon Sowol lightly brushed past, an enemy collapsed without fail.
Mo Cheong swallowed hard.
Could people really die so easily?
Not a drop of blood flew.
Not a single sound of air being cut could be heard.
He did not even put force into a technique.
There was not even the slightest jolt that came from striking someone with all one's strength and shoving their body back.
Could a person really keep dropping dead simply because someone passed by them?
Was that allowed?
Goosebumps rose all over Mo Cheong's skin.
Yeon Sowol ran alone through the thick of the melee like a drifting phantom.
Without a drop of blood on him.
He carved away the Heavenly Road Mountain bandits and White Dragon Gang members like stripping meat from a long-boiled bone.
"Y-You bastard!!!"
At last, Hang Inwoo noticed something was wrong.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
'When did this happen...?'
He had been watching the flow of battle the whole time.
Yet in the briefest moment, the battlefield had completely fallen apart.
Everywhere he looked, there were corpses.
He could not even guess how many had died.
He spun his qi sense wildly, scouring every inch of the area.
Then he saw him.
Thud. Thud.
Yeon Sowol made two more White Dragon Gang members collapse at that very moment.
Yeon Sowol swept through the battlefield like the wind, killing two or three people in a single breath before passing on.
"H-How is that bastard...!"
Hang Inwoo's bristling beard trembled with shock and fury.
Wooooong!
His broad saber let out a long cry.
"That's far enough!!!"
Boom!
He stomped the ground and charged Yeon Sowol like a tiger.
Whoosh!
Defying the laws of nature through the harmony of qi, his body accelerated without end.
Yeon Sowol had just brought down an enemy. Before he even had time to react, Hang Inwoo closed the distance as though folding space itself and brought down his broad saber.
A strike no second-rate martial artist could ever block.
Yet somehow,
Crack!
"What?"
Yeon Sowol did not even draw his sword.
He simply caught it in his bare hand and shattered it.
'He broke my saber with his bare hand? A second-rate martial artist...?'
Impossible.
But Hang Inwoo reacted swiftly.
He released the now-empty hilt, kicked off the ground once more, drove deep inside Yeon Sowol's guard, and thrust out his right hand.
Killing intent gleamed in his eyes.
"Now that I think about it, this was all because of you! If it weren't for you! If you hadn't been here!"
Wooooong!
His clothes swelled.
A heat haze warped the air.
In the instant it took to divide one breath into a quarter, Yeon Sowol was focused on breaking Hang Inwoo's saber and had no time to make another move.
Through that opening came a palm containing monstrous force projection, enough to turn Yeon Sowol's innards to mush.
Yet Yeon Sowol's eyes remained quietly still.
His gaze never left the palm rushing toward him.
He saw the whole world, Hang Inwoo especially, as though it were a flat sheet of paper. He clearly saw the threads rising from Hang Inwoo.
Crunch!
Hang Inwoo's palm drove into Yeon Sowol's chest.
Stagger.
At that moment, Hang Inwoo's knees dipped slightly.
Life and strength drained from his body.
Booom!
Yeon Sowol was flung backward by the terrifying force within the palm strike.
Even then, he finally drew and threw his sword.
The blade shot straight from its scabbard, flew against the air, and buried itself between Hang Inwoo's brows.
Thud! Slaaash!
Yeon Sowol flew more than five zhang, bounced hard across the ground once, and slid to a stop.
Everyone's gaze was fixed on Yeon Sowol.
That was why they noticed it late.
Thud.
Hang Inwoo swayed with a sword embedded between his brows, then fell.
"...Hang Inwoo is dead?"
"In a single move?"
"What kind of technique was that...?"
Everything had happened too suddenly and too discreetly for anyone to see the exchange clearly.
In truth, Hang Inwoo had died the moment his palm strike landed on Yeon Sowol, killed by the power of the Heaven-Killing Star.
But Yeon Sowol had deliberately thrown his sword even as he was sent flying, to mislead them.
The effect was certain.
No one could be sure how Hang Inwoo had died.
Only the result was certain.
Hang Inwoo had died at Yeon Sowol's hands.
"T-That's impossible..."
The surviving White Dragon Gang members and Heavenly Road Mountain bandits staggered backward in terror.
"Uwaaaah!"
The disciples of Windflow Martial Academy and the Severing Sword Sect let out triumphant cries from the depths of their dantians and charged the remaining stragglers.
"Aah... Aah!"
The enemies, crushed in spirit, could not even flee properly. Like people swept up by a tidal wave, they were overwhelmed, torn apart, and killed.
Their desperate final screams rang out.
Soon, they fell silent.
* * *
"..."
Yeon Sowol unsteadily pushed himself to his feet.
A shrill ringing whistled through his ears.
His vision was dark, as if a curtain had been drawn across it.
He looked over the battlefield.
After blinking hard enough to see, he found that things seemed to be mostly settled.
Hang Inwoo had caught him before he could deal with all the lesser enemies as planned, but thankfully, the result was not bad.
'Thankfully... is that right?'
Just as Yeon Sowol began to feel relieved, he turned his head and forgot what he had meant to say.
He had landed beside Jeon Taegwang.
Jeon Taegwang, dead with his eyes open.
"..."
Yeon Sowol could not speak for a while.
He stumbled toward him and fell to his knees before him.
"Brother Taegwang."
He called his name in a phlegm-clogged voice.
He had thought that perhaps they could become friends.
Though perhaps that had only been his own misunderstanding.
Yeon Sowol slowly raised a heavy hand and closed Jeon Taegwang's eyes.
"Rest."
For some reason, all strength left him, and he sank down onto the ground.
He was dizzy.
The sky.
The earth.
This damned Jianghu.
Hang Inwoo, who was supposed to be Yi Yubaek's sworn brother through life and death, had betrayed him.
Eun-yeong, who had taught Yeon Sowol how to walk quietly and use his qi sense, had died at Seo Muryang's hands.
Jeon Taegwang, who had helped him immensely as they traded blows and learned Willow Leaf Steps, had died here.
Yeon Sowol alone survived, used every trick he had learned from them, and killed Hang Inwoo.
What was he supposed to say?
Memories rewound in a disordered mess, with no regard for time.
The day he first learned a lightness skill.
The cup of wine he had shared with Yi Yubaek on that rooftop.
The filthy, foul-smelling streets of the Central Plains and the people in them.
The satisfying sensation of knocking Resentful Dog down.
The man who had run to bring him news, soaked in sweat and reeking.
Eun-yeong's small hand smacking the back of his head.
The tens of thousands of lanterns floating over the sky and the river.
"It really was... a wonderful world."
Then again,
There were those senseless, rude people.
People who did nothing but betray others.
Jianghu people for whom hypocrisy was a way of life.
Here and now, on this battlefield where countless people lay dead.
The White Dragon Gang had been utterly destroyed, and how many people from the Severing Sword Sect and Windflow Martial Academy had died?
Why did it have to be this way?
"...It was damned awful too."
What was meant to be left behind in these dazzling rivers and lakes, in this damned Jianghu, dizzying and dazzling enough to leave his eyes blurry and wet?
Yeon Sowol swayed to his feet again.
As the ringing in his ears slowly subsided, he finally heard the murmuring around him.
"Muhyeok! Muhyeok!!!"
Yi Yubaek was shouting.
Yeon Sowol snapped alert as though he had been slapped.
"Ah, Father!"
Kang Muhyeok lay where he rushed to, unconscious and pouring blood.
Yi Yubaek's eldest disciple.
The Windflow Young Lord.
Kang Muhyeok, now also called the One-Smiling Sword.
Yeon Sowol hurriedly held a hand beneath his nose.
His breathing was faint, but he was alive.
"I'll take him to a physician."
Yeon Sowol searched his clothes.
He took out the Golden Wound Medicine Chu Jinhyeok had given him before, practically poured it out over every wound, then hoisted Kang Muhyeok onto his back.
"No, Sowol. I..."
As Yi Yubaek staggered to his feet, Yeon Sowol was already driving Windborne Drift and Willow Leaf Steps to their utmost.
This time, he did not need to worry about making noise, so he was even faster.
Baaang!
Yeon Sowol shot off, tearing through the air and disappearing into the distance in an instant.
At least for now, no one there was in any condition to follow him.
Yi Yubaek had started to hurry after him, but he only stood dazed and muttered.
"His stage of maturity is already like that... It was the same earlier."
Was that how an immortal descended from heaven would look?
A hellish battle where most of them would have died even in victory had been turned around in a single moment.
All because one second-rate martial artist, Yeon Sowol, had joined the fight.
'What kind of blessing brought that child into my life?'
Yi Yubaek let out a long breath and sat down.
"Master."
"Master."
Seon Jehun and Mo Cheong, both covered in blood, approached him.
Yi Yubaek spoke in a weary voice.
"Thankfully, it does not look like Sowol will be late. So we should... clean up the battlefield first."
With bitter eyes, he looked toward Shin Jae-eon and Jeon Taegwang's bodies.
The Great Severing Sword, Middle Severing Sword, and Lesser Severing Sword were gathered there, weeping.
"..."
Yi Yubaek clenched his teeth.
So many had died.
The Black Path forces of Shinheung County had already been destroyed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the remaining sixty percent of Shinheung County's martial world had died here as well.
Red.
The air reeked.
On the last day of April, petals continued to fall over earth soaked in blood.
Footnotes:
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