WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 132

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The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 4

An invisible blade struck at Jiseon. Clang. Five rings scraped across the edge one after another and knocked the sword path aside. Using Skywarbler's speed, the regressor went straight for Jiseon's neck, but instead of blocking or dodging, Jiseon merely tilted her head and threw a fist in return.

A duel of sword and fist. If each side traded one move, the sword should normally have the advantage, but normal logic did not apply in a fight that had stepped beyond common sense.

The premise itself was different.

With rings hooked into the sword path, Jiseon vented bullet-deflecting energy strong enough to shove even the wind away. In that case, a slash from Skywarbler thrown from an unstable stance could do no more than leave a scratch on her neck.

On the other hand, even if the regressor wrapped herself in protective energy, one hit from that fist would still deliver the full impact.

She was the one holding the sword, yet she was the one taking the loss.

"Tch!"

Instead of going for the neck, the regressor yanked Skywarbler back and sliced Jiseon's arm. A long cut opened across the ringless left arm. For an instant, blood flashed there.

"Hup!"

But Jiseon simply tensed, and the wound closed.

No, closed was not quite right. She had only compressed it instantly with full-body muscle control and energy. In practice, it was almost the same thing.

Jiseon's fist collected payment for that scratch without mercy. Her hardened hand drove straight through the regressor. The regressor brought Skywarbler up in a hurry to block, but Jiseon's fierce punch could not be stopped by one sword alone.

"Urgh...!"

Even after opening up Skywarbler's reserved space, the shock would not fade, and the regressor's body lifted backward.

Watching her fly, Jiseon opened her hand again. If the regressor mindlessly stepped on the ceiling again, Jiseon intended to crush her this time. If she dropped to the ground instead, Jiseon would attack through vibration.

But the regressor chose neither ceiling nor floor.

Celestial Sword Qi, Stormcloud.

Starting at the hilt, Skywarbler slowly turned white. The sky was a vast space that held longing and wind. Rising heat tangled with free air and climbed upward.

That was how clouds, drifting proudly across the heavens, were born.

Celestial Sword Qi, Stepping Cloud.

She scattered the whitened blade. The fluttering sword tip formed a shape in midair. It was a cloud, white and dense. As if a chunk had been torn from the sky and compressed whole, a bright white mass like a brick floated there.

The regressor spun once in midair and planted both feet on the Stepping Cloud. By texture alone, her legs should have sunk right through, but the Stepping Cloud held her weight as firmly as if it were the earth itself.

"Haa...."

She stepped on the cloud and bent her knees.

Geon and Gon flipped.

Upside down, the regressor curled her body and set her stance. Skywarbler flashed.

She wrapped her body.

She loaded power.

As the pure white Stepping Cloud stored force, it darkened little by little. Like an immortal painting in one bold stroke from an ink-wet brush, it grew blacker and blacker.

Clouds roaming the sky were not always white.

On storm days, when the sky was angry, clouds sometimes wore a wicked expression and roared at the earth. When a white cloud darkened to black, it was a sign the sky was full of power.

By creating her own foothold and standing on it, the regressor stole Jiseon's response timing. Jiseon hurriedly cast earthcraft and pulled at the concrete wall, but she was a little late.

Celestial Sword Qi, Thunderhawk.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The greatest late drumbeat in the world filled the Abyss.

Lightning was the road linking heaven and earth. First that force descended, then a startled trumpeter announced its march through thunder half a beat late. By the time thunder was heard, heaven's punishment had already passed judgment on the sinner.

That was why thunder was the sky's late drumbeat. Once you heard it, it was already too late.

The regressor's figure, which had blurred away, appeared behind Jiseon. Traces of lightning followed.

Crackle, crackle. The air jolted in rhythm. The path of current springing through empty space faintly showed how she had moved.

With sharp crackling sounds all around her, static wrapped her body and lifted her hair. The regressor exhaled shortly and turned.

Kwagagag!!

Lightning erupted between Stormcloud and the regressor. The slash appeared a beat later, flashing in the shape of a lightning strike. The concrete shielding Jiseon dried instantly and split apart. The cracks looked exactly like lightning forks.

Swift, razor-fast swordplay. At the same time, an unavoidable strike loaded with lightning.

And yet.

"That... tingles... nicely!"

Jiseon sent her energy down beneath her feet and curled up one corner of her mouth.

Since the beginning of time, the earth had endured countless lightning strikes. Endured was not even the right word. It had held lightning itself inside its body.

It was the strongest attack the regressor could use, but it was not enough to reach Jiseon's heart.

A thin line of blood ran from Jiseon's mouth from the aftershock, but only that. One ring shattered, and cuts were carved into her arm and shoulder, but only that.

She let the lightning energy on the blade flow away, locked her muscles with inhaled energy, and the wounds sealed as if they had never existed.

Yes, like Mother Earth's body, split countless times yet healed in the end.

"Tch."

Ignoring the warning from her aching wrist, the regressor raised Skywarbler.

The path was already connected. Skywarbler was here, and the cloud was on the opposite side, so she only had to connect them again. Lightning flowed along the regressor's body, and the floating Stormcloud rumbled ominously in midair.

Just before those lightning-laden steps touched the ground.

"Earth Dragon."

Gon at its extreme took command of the earth.

As Jiseon raised her hand, dust rose from the concrete. Impossible. The concrete was hard and not even ground down, so how could it throw up dust?

But Jiseon could do it.

The concrete forming the ceiling, the concrete making up the tilted Tantalus, began to swirl on its own. Creak, grind. Colliding and scraping together, it instantly turned into soil and dust. Jiseon pulled that concrete, returned to its primal form, in one sweep.

Twisted concrete rose like a coiled snake, and clouds of soil and dust wrapped around it.

The authority of earth that appeared that way looked exactly like a dragon rising from the ground. The Earth Dragon of dust and dirt swallowed the Stormcloud in one bite.

The Stormcloud, hovering too close to the ground, vanished just like that.

'Tch. Earth Dragon. Luckily... it's much smaller right now.'

Before regression, when Jiseon had walked the earth with Jizan in hand, she had wrapped a massive temple with two Earth Dragons. In that state, she had even bitten people out from inside one by one.

Jiseon advancing while controlling two Earth Dragons had been a true earth serpent dreaming of defying heaven. An unstoppable nightmare that approached to demand the Sanctum's sins.

Compared to that, this Earth Dragon was only one, and only big enough to barely crush one person.

'Of course... whether I can endure it is another matter.'

If anything, being smaller might make it even more troublesome.

The Earth Dragon coiled around Jiseon. Sand swirled as if guarding her.

Against that, the regressor whipped Skywarbler. A cloud wrapped in lightning circled her body. Her hair shot out wildly.

"I am coming."

"Come."

A brief exchange too short to call conversation, but it was enough.

The regressor dashed forward and swung her sword. Jiseon answered by lifting both hands.

The Earth Dragon opened its jaws.

This was not ordinary earthcraft. It was flowing ground that moved in sync with Jiseon's fistwork, like a snake. Jiseon lightly punched forward, and the concrete dragon surged like a wave and lunged at the regressor.

In response, the regressor bounced her light body and ran along the Earth Dragon itself.

It was a stunt possible only with a light body, superb movement art, and energy mastery at the highest level. Without fighting the wave, she rode it at a slant, scraping forward with Skywarbler at a slant.

Jiseon admired it inwardly and threw another punch.

Sword and fist collided.

An invisible blade cut the air. A sword too fast to track cut the rings, slipped past fist and kick, and gnawed at flesh little by little.

But wrapped in the Earth Dragon, Jiseon no longer took hits as easily as before. She wore it like armor, and the attacks would not land cleanly. As the regressor clicked her tongue,

the Earth Dragon, which had been waiting for an opening, opened its jaws and shot out. Its speed was like a coiled snake striking. The instant the coil twitched, the dragon's head had already launched.

The regressor barely dodged it with Heavenly Mirror.

'Thank god I at least have Heavenly Mirror...!'

Relieved for a moment, she cut the exposed neck of the Earth Dragon. The headless Earth Dragon focused on defense until a new head rose again.

A grinding war of attrition continued, dull and exhausting, eating away at stamina and focus. The side at a clear disadvantage was the regressor.

'If she were at least a fast opponent, I'd use Heavenly Mirror for a speed battle, but...!'

Her opponent stood firm like the earth. The title Jiseon was no empty name. On top of that, her body was hard as rock from decades of training, so even when the blade landed, it felt like scraping shell.

But one solid hit on the regressor would be fatal. Especially now, in the early stage after regression, when she was weaker than ever.

A hand sweeping wide on a diagonal. It barely looked like an attack, yet even that was dangerous if it connected. Letting it slide off her blade, the regressor complained inwardly.

'What's the point of training after regression? My body's still the same! Tch, do I have to use that...?'

"You jumped," Jiseon said as she clenched her fist. The regressor moved to respond, but by bad luck both feet were slightly off the ground at that exact moment.

'Damn!'

The distance had not even opened yet, and while receiving the attack, the recoil had lifted her body. She had let her guard slip.

And Jiseon, who had kept her feet planted firm, sensed that through the vibrations traveling over the corpses and prepared her move.

"Spatial Dust."

Crash.

A window-shattering sound rang out from empty air. Strangely warped energy seized the world by space itself.

'Spatial Dust?! You can use that... with your body too?!'

In the previous cycle, it had been the ultimate art that twisted the world to catch enemies fleeing while deflecting incoming arrows and bullets.

'So this could be used in direct combat too?!'

It should not have touched her, yet the regressor's body was dragged in.

Geon and Gon pushed to their limits. Enormous power gathered in Jiseon's right arm. The intact rings and broken rings resonated and began to tremble together. The sound of rings striking rings was like cicadas crying.

It was only adhesive energy thrust forward with her whole body. That alone. But the airborne regressor could not resist and was pulled in.

She could have shaken it off, sure, but by then it would be too late. Already caught in the technique, all the regressor could do was grit her teeth.

Above that, the Earth Dragon twisted like a braid and fired all its power.

"If you are sturdy."

Jiseon punched once into empty air. The Earth Dragon burst out as her body uncoiled in one motion and bit into the regressor.

"Kya... agh!"

A sound like her lungs were being wrung out. Something snapped. Swept by the Earth Dragon, the regressor was flung far away and slammed down.

Amid the corpses, a shape that looked like just another corpse rolled over.

"Then you will survive," Jiseon said, wiping the blood from her cheek. As if answering those words, the regressor let out a scream mixed with pain from below.

"Ghk, ghhhuuugh...!"

"...You are sturdy. Even so, you are already in tatters. You can no longer keep fighting."

Jiseon finished her assessment in one line and turned, about to head for the top.

The regressor slowly pushed herself up.

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