Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint - Chapter 132

WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Chapter 132: The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 4

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An invisible sword attacked Jiseon.

Clang.

Five rings scraped across the blade in succession, knocking its trajectory aside. Using Skywarbler's speed, the regressor aimed straight for Jiseon's throat.

Rather than block or evade, Jiseon merely tilted her head slightly and threw out a fist.

A clash between blade and fist. Normally, if they exchanged one move each, the sword should have held the advantage. Ordinary calculations did not apply in a duel beyond common sense. Their very premises were different.

Jiseon held an earring in the sword's path and unleashed her qi. The repelling force was strong enough to push back the wind. In that case, even if Skywarbler struck from such an unstable stance, it could do no more than leave a scratch on Jiseon's neck.

In return, even if the regressor wrapped herself in protective aura, she would still take the full impact of that fist.

She held the sword, yet she was the one at a disadvantage.

"Tch!"

The regressor pulled Skywarbler away from Jiseon's neck and slashed at her arm instead. A long cut opened along Jiseon's left arm, the one without rings. Blood flashed from the wound for an instant.

"Hup!"

Yet Jiseon simply tensed, and the wound closed.

It was not quite healing. She had compressed it shut at once with the muscles and aura throughout her body. There was little practical difference.

Jiseon's fist mercilessly collected payment for the scratch on her arm. Her hardened hand punched through the regressor's guard. She blocked it with Skywarbler, hurriedly drawn back, but Jiseon's fierce fist was too much to stop with Skywarbler alone.

"Urgh...!"

Even after releasing the space stored in Skywarbler, the impact did not fade. The regressor was flung backward.

Seeing her sent flying, Jiseon spread her hand again. If the regressor tried to step on the ceiling again without learning her lesson, Jiseon intended to crush her for good this time. And if she fell to the ground, she would attack with vibrations.

The regressor chose neither the ceiling nor the floor.

Heavenly Sword Technique, Dark Clouds.

Starting from the hilt, Skywarbler slowly turned white.

The sky was a vast space that held longing and wind. Heat intertwined with free-flowing air and rose toward the heavens.

That was how clouds drifting proudly through the open sky came to be.

Heavenly Sword Technique, Stepping Cloud.

She swept the white sword through the air. Its tip fluttered like butterfly wings and formed a shape in midair. A white cloud, hard enough to seem solid. A pure-white mass rose into the air, shaped like a brick, as though someone had torn off a piece of cloud and compressed it whole.

The regressor spun in midair, then stepped onto Stepping Cloud with both feet. Its texture made it seem as though her legs should sink straight into it, but Stepping Cloud firmly supported her body as though it had replaced the earth itself.

"Haa..."

She stepped on the cloud and bent her knees.

Heaven and earth reversed.

Upside down, the regressor curled her body and settled into position. Skywarbler flashed.

She coiled her body.

She gathered strength.

As the pure-white Stepping Cloud stored power, it gradually darkened. It was as if an immortal had taken up a brush dipped in ink and painted across the cloud in one sweeping stroke. Blacker and blacker, growing deeper by the moment.

Clouds that roamed the sky did not always show white faces.

On stormy days, when the heavens were enraged, clouds sometimes wore wicked expressions and roared toward the ground. When white clouds turned pitch-black, it was a sign that the sky was brimming with power.

By creating a foothold for herself, the regressor made Jiseon miss her chance to react. Jiseon hurriedly used earth arts to pull a concrete wall toward herself.

She was a little too late.

Heavenly Sword Technique, Thunderhawk.

Lightning flashed.

Thunder roared.

The world's grandest belated drumbeat filled the Abyss.

Lightning was the path that linked heaven and earth. Once its power descended, a startled herald sounded the thunder half a beat later to announce its march. Yet by the time the thunder was heard, heaven's punishment had already passed judgment upon the sinner.

That was why thunder was the sky's belated fanfare. By the time you heard it, it was already too late.

The regressor's blurred figure appeared behind Jiseon. Traces of lightning followed her.

Crackle, crackle.

The air pulsed in rhythm. The faint trail of electricity leaping through empty air revealed how she had moved.

Her hair stirred in the threatening crackle of static surrounding her. The regressor exhaled sharply and turned.

Krrraash!!

Lightning flared between the dark cloud and the regressor. The slash revealed itself a moment later in the form of lightning. The concrete protecting Jiseon dried out and split apart with a sharp crack. Its fractures looked exactly like bolts of lightning.

A swift, dazzling sword stroke. An unavoidable blow carrying a lightning strike.

Yet.

"Quite electrifying...!"

Jiseon sent her energy down beneath her feet and smiled.

Since the beginning of time, countless bolts of lightning had struck the earth. It was not even a matter of enduring them: the earth had taken lightning into its body.

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

A line of blood ran from Jiseon's mouth from the aftermath of the lightning strike, but that was all. One ring shattered, and sword marks were carved into her arm and shoulder, but that was all.

She let the sword's lightning flow through her body, then used suction aura to clamp down with her muscles. Her wounds closed as if they had never existed.

Yes, like the body of Mother Earth, which eventually healed no matter how many times it split apart.

"Tch."

Ignoring the warning pulsing through her aching wrist, the regressor raised Skywarbler.

The path was already connected. Skywarbler was here, and the cloud was on the other side. She only had to link them again. Lightning ran along the regressor's body while the dark cloud floating in the air rumbled ominously.

Just before her lightning-filled step reached the ground.

"Earth Dragon."

Earth Qi Art, brought to its pinnacle, commanded the ground.

When Jiseon lifted her hand, dust rose from the concrete. It was impossible. The hard concrete had not been ground down, so how could it produce dust?

But Jiseon, the Earth Immortal, could.

The concrete making up the ceiling of slanted Tantalus began to churn on its own. Crunch, grind. Concrete that collided and rubbed against itself transformed into earth and dust in an instant. Jiseon pulled the concrete, returned to its primordial form, toward herself at once.

Twisted concrete rose like a coiled serpent, while clouds of soil and dust covered its surroundings.

The authority of earth that appeared that way looked exactly like a dragon born from the ground. The Earth Dragon made of dust swallowed the dark cloud in one gulp.

The dark cloud that had hung too close to the ground vanished like that.

'Tch. Earth Dragon. Fortunately... it's still rather small right now.'

Before this regression, Jiseon had walked the earth with Jizan and surrounded a huge temple with two Earth Dragons. She had even plucked out the people inside one by one with the dragons' jaws.

Leading two Earth Dragons as she advanced, Jiseon had been an earth serpent dreaming of defying heaven. An unstoppable nightmare approaching the Sanctum to demand answers for its sins.

Compared to that, the current Earth Dragon was only one creature, barely large enough to constrict a single person.

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

Its smaller size might make it even more troublesome.

The Earth Dragon wrapped around Jiseon. Sand swirled around her as though guarding her.

The regressor answered by swinging Skywarbler. Clouds wreathed in lightning surrounded her. Her hair stood wildly on end.

"I'm coming."

"Come."

It was too short to call a conversation. Still, that was enough.

The regressor rushed forward and swung her sword. Jiseon raised both hands to meet her.

The Earth Dragon opened its jaws.

This was not ordinary earth arts. It was flowing earth that moved like a serpent in concert with Jiseon's fists and kicks. When Jiseon lightly threw out a fist, the concrete dragon surged like a wave and crashed down on the regressor.

In response, the regressor lightly bounced through the air...

And ran along the Earth Dragon.

It was a feat possible only with a light body, exceptional movement arts, and aura that had reached a high realm. Rather than resisting the wave, she rode it at an angle, scraping diagonally with Skywarbler as she slid forward.

Jiseon admired her inwardly and drove out a fist.

Sword and fist collided.

An invisible blade cut through the air. A sword whose trajectory could not be followed cut the rings, slipped past Jiseon's strikes, and gnawed little by little at her flesh.

Still, Jiseon, protected by the Earth Dragon, did not take the attacks as easily as before. It wrapped around her like armor, and the blows could not properly reach her. Just as the regressor clicked her tongue.

The Earth Dragon, which had been patiently watching for an opening, opened its jaws and lunged. Its speed resembled that of a coiled snake. The instant its coils twitched, its head had already shot forward.

The regressor barely dodged it with the Heaven-Reversing Boundary.

'Thank goodness I have the Heaven-Reversing Boundary...!'

Relieved inwardly, she cut at the Earth Dragon's exposed neck. The headless Earth Dragon focused on defense until a new head rose in its place.

The tedious battle of attrition, draining stamina and concentration, continued. The regressor was clearly at a disadvantage.

'If my opponent were fast, I could compete in speed using the Heaven-Reversing Boundary, but...!'

Her opponent was as steadfast as the earth. The title Earth Immortal was not for show. Jiseon's body, tough as a rock honed over decades, gave no satisfying sense of cutting even when struck. It felt as though the blade only scratched its outer shell.

The regressor, on the other hand, would suffer a fatal wound from even one clean hit. Especially now, in the early days of her regression, when she was more fragile than ever.

Jiseon's hand swept broadly in a diagonal motion. It did not look like an attack, but getting hit by it would still be a problem. Deflecting it with her blade, the regressor complained inwardly.

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

"You're airborne."

As Jiseon said that, she clenched her fist. The regressor tried to respond, but both her feet happened to be slightly off the ground at that moment.

'Oh no!'

The distance between them had not even widened yet. While blocking the attack, the recoil had lifted her body into the air. She had let her guard down.

Jiseon, whose feet were firmly planted, detected it through the vibrations running across the corpses and prepared her attack.

"Spatial Dust."

Crash.

The sound of a glass window shattering rang out in the empty air. Strangely warped aura seized the world along with space itself.

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

It was the ultimate technique that had warped the world to knock aside incoming arrows and bullets, and seize fleeing enemies in the previous cycle.

'It could be used in a fight against a person too!'

She had not been touched, yet the regressor's body was dragged in.

Heaven and Earth Qi Arts had reached their pinnacle. Immense energy gathered in Jiseon's right arm. Intact rings and shattered rings resonated with one another and began to tremble. The sound of rings striking each other was like cicadas crying.

It was only suction aura extending from Jiseon's entire body. Yet the airborne regressor could not resist and was pulled in.

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

Above her, the Earth Dragon twisted itself like a rope and unleashed all its strength.

"If you're truly sturdy."

Jiseon threw a short punch into the air. The Earth Dragon, suddenly uncoiled and released, tore into the regressor.

"Kya...ah!"

It was a sound like her lungs were being crushed. Something snapped.

The regressor was swept away by the Earth Dragon and slammed far into the distance.

A figure shaped almost like a corpse rolled among the corpses.

"You will survive."

Jiseon muttered as she wiped the blood from her cheek. As if answering her, the regressor let out a pain-filled cry below.

"Ugh, uuuugh...!"