WeTried Translations
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◈ Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time ◈
Episode 174: Sword of Autumn (2)
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Baek Seo-gun, the Spirit Sky Sword Ghost, was from Xinye County in Henan Province.
She had worked as a maid for the martial family known as Jeong Family Manor.
Her treatment had not been poor.
Having lost her parents early, she had received kindness from the Jeong Family Head and his wife, who pitied her circumstances.
Baek Seo-gun was assigned to serve Jeong Family Manor's eldest legitimate son. He was a boy born ten years after her.
Her young master was more often called Ban-ak than Jeong Dae-myung.
Even as a child, he had been an exceptionally handsome young nobleman. He was generous with his silver and never stingy with it.
Flower Prince Jeong Dae-myung, or Jeong Ban-ak.
The young master formed connections with many women, and Baek Seo-gun played no small part in it.
She delivered Jeong Dae-myung's love letters to young ladies in neighboring villages and returned with their replies.
The payment was always generous. Baek Seo-gun received a substantial allowance, all in silver.
Baek Seo-gun herself possessed rare beauty, but Jeong Dae-myung had never seen her as a woman.
He saw her as a young nursemaid. That was enough for Baek Seo-gun as well.
Occasionally, replies came back rejecting him and souring the young master's mood. Even on those days, she received an allowance.
From a young age, the nobleman Jeong Dae-myung held a strange superstition, something close to obstinacy.
One of his beliefs as the heir to a great landowner was that misfortune followed if he made people work without compensation.
Few servants disliked the young master.
Nor did she often need to worry about his reaction to the love letters. His looks were so extraordinary that even the word peerless suited him.
The young master's face and features were unrealistically outstanding.
Once, he joked that he would seduce a woman of Desolate Fortress someday. None of his friends or servants laughed it off as an empty boast.
He had only just turned thirteen at the time. He possessed both family standing and looks.
Baek Seo-gun had not envied him much.
Around then, she had been secretly learning martial arts.
It was her tenth year of training. Jeong Family Manor was a third-rate martial family and had failed to detect any trace of her Divine Technique.
She had obtained a peerless secret manual and spent the years training with it. It was a fortunate encounter unlikely to come twice in a lifetime.
She had found it in a cave after mistakenly stepping into a gorge formed by the battles of strange beings during the late Yuan Dynasty and falling in.
A book lay before the corpse of one of the elven race, seated cross-legged.
Neither the body nor the secret manual had decayed. It was a strange domain.
The instant Baek Seo-gun met the elf's eyes, spirituality was engraved into her dantian.
It felt as if she held a handful of the sun. A mysterious sensation filled her lower abdomen.
‘I am meant to race across the world.’
She had encountered the incomprehensible. She could only take it as Heaven's mandate.
Her life had not been meant to end in Xinye County. Her path stretched out toward the martial world.
‘I will train here, then devote myself to a major faction.’
After making that vow and embracing grand ambitions, her personality became livelier.
She got along well with the young master Jeong Dae-myung. The ten-year-old young master had even taught the twenty-year-old maid how to play Go.
That was when she learned the Go Ten Precepts.
“Don't ‘sacrifice stones to seize initiative’ and ‘do not seek victory greedily’ contradict each other? One tells you to give up stones and take the initiative, while the other tells you not to be greedy.”
“You fool. How do those contradict each other? It means you should relax and take the initiative. Even if you give up a few stones, don't become impatient.”
It was good teaching. She thought that if the young master ever had children, he would raise them very well.
Though Baek Seo-gun secretly cultivated inner energy, she never neglected the young master.
She remained that way until the night clouds covered the moon, when she secretly left Jeong Family Manor.
“Thank you for raising me.”
She clasped her hands toward the enormous manor. The Eight Illusions Divine Art had reached its fourth level.
She cultivated it with talent beyond anyone else's. In Xinye County, she believed there was no martial talent capable of matching her.
She had been right.
Her martial arts held up even across the world.
No wandering martial artist could withstand a single strike from her. It had been that way even when she was still inexperienced in real combat.
By the time she encountered the masters of the Heart Martial Union, the Eight Illusions Divine Art had reached its sixth level.
Every sect wanted to receive her as an honorary elder or protector.
She rejected every offer and crossed the threshold of the Heart Martial Union. It was a Demonic Sect faction supported by a Feudal Prince.
As befitted a faction formed under circumstances almost impossible to assemble, its wealth and power were immense.
She enjoyed them for a long time.
Like the other elders of the Thirteen Heavens, Baek Seo-gun gradually became a monster of the martial world.
Wealth and dominance had made her so. Before she knew it, she had become a supreme master tempered through decades of training.
She established herself as someone who could readily grasp even the affairs of the martial world's highest ranks.
Then, one day.
She heard rumors that a rising master had emerged from Desolate Fortress, along with news of Geom Ye-hwa's death.
Only then did she learn that Jeong Family Manor had been destroyed. She felt a small measure of regret, but also found it strange.
‘The Tyrant Sword Sect Master spared Seom-ye? Because he was impressed by the boy's spirit and talent? He isn't the sort to do that. He clearly has an aim. The collapse of Desolate Fortress may be his lifelong wish.’
She had wanted to see Jeong Dae-myung's son at least once. It was not a particularly strong desire.
In some parts of Henan, she was called the Sword Venerable instead of the Sword Ghost.
Baek Seo-gun's life, after gaining the epithet Spirit Sky Sword Ghost, had long since drifted far from the third-rate Jeong Family Manor.
“So that was what I thought, yet he became the Leader of Demon Wings.”
The notices posted throughout the Central Plains stirred her interest.
Seom-ye Jeong Yeon-shin's name had been inscribed among the masters invited to the Martial Alliance's grand founding ceremony.
To relieve her boredom, she asked the Alliance Leader for permission to travel to Shaanxi.
It was readily granted. Famine was no ordinary matter even for a major faction supported by a Feudal Prince.
If they wished to maintain a martial force with ease, they had to obtain supplies from outside.
That meant the plundering in Hanzhong had begun with Seom-ye.
‘I wonder how much our young master knows about the Tyrant Sword Sect Master.’
Baek Seo-gun smiled as she looked over the gorge.
Her face bore a smile as deep as her inner energy. Her gray-white hair resembled a lion's mane.
It flowed thickly down to her shoulders, suiting her perfectly.
The Eight Illusions Divine Art bore deep traces of the elven race, and after she turned thirty, time had stopped on her face as though she had cultivated a face-preserving art.
The same was true of the muscles throughout her body, which wielded illusion swords.
Every day was the height of her prime.
Thud.
She stood atop the steep rocky mountains of Sevenfold Gorge. The wind slipping through her fingers howled.
Stone peaks stretching in every direction filled her vision as though they would pierce it.
She had stationed her first disciple on West Peak Road and been playing Go when she suddenly wished to see the gorge's scenery, so she came here.
She did not know why. Perhaps it was because the fortunate encounter she found in Xinye County had suddenly come to mind.
They said that once one reached her age, the upper dantian communicated with Heaven.
There was also a saying about knowing Heaven's mandate. Some destiny might have led her here, so Baek Seo-gun stepped forward without giving it much thought.
A supreme master like her was free anywhere across the Nine Provinces and Eight Wastelands.
Those fools who remained bound to Desolate Fortress as Black Uniforms were the mad ones. Chivalry? What a laughable virtue in a famine.
“I am rather curious about his martial ability. He could not have learned Jeong Family Manor's third-rate martial arts.”
She was an eccentric of the martial world. It did not seem strange for her to mutter to herself.
She had lived a life where no one dared say anything even when she freely voiced every thought that came to mind. Humming to herself, she walked on.
Then Baek Seo-gun spotted a group at the edge of Sevenfold Gorge, surrounded by subordinates.
She sensed powerful blazing yang qi and refined killing intent. The eyes of the Sword Ghost, the Sword Venerable, could not help but show interest.
Soon, unfamiliar voices reached her.
“Do these bastards think of Hanzhong as their own backyard? I didn't expect them to get caught like this.”
The one with powerful yang qi spoke as he held off seven martial artists alone.
He struck with both hands shrouded in blazing, formless heat, yet not one of them could properly withstand even a single exchange.
He seemed to be the Huangbo Family's Languid Flame Dragon, renowned for terrifying talent and a short lifespan.
Just as the intelligence had said, he was traveling with Seom-ye Jeong Yeon-shin.
There was another who unleashed strange sword strikes, as though an assassin had learned an orthodox sword art.
Unlike his lively Body Movement Scripture, the eyes beneath his hero’s headband were calm. He looked fairly taciturn.
He seemed to have a story that could breathe interest into Baek Seo-gun's boring martial world.
‘Now that I look at them, treasures have walked here on their own.’
The sight of a young girl darting through the gorge with lightning-like thrusts also drew her attention.
The sword qi refined to the utmost limit of her ability was outstanding, and her hair fluttering like ebony did not seem like a flaw in a martial artist.
She was as beautiful as Baek Seo-gun herself.
“Interesting. Even Jeomchang's sword that shoots down the sun.”
Baek Seo-gun smiled and muttered. The remaining two were not bad either. They appeared to carry the martial lineages of the Gongsun Family and Moyong Family.
Flap!
Her gray long robe rustled loudly. After taking one step, her next landed three zhang ahead.
It was Body Movement Scripture so swift that ignorant commoners might mistake it for an art that shrank the earth. With her hands behind her back, she advanced as though skipping through space.
At the same time, she drew her sword and threw it.
Kwoooooong!
It sounded as if the air had been torn apart. Above the heads of the younger generation of the orthodox sects, a brilliant sword trail was carved into the sky.
It flickered with white light. Spirit Sky, one could truly say it swam through the heavens. It was the art of the one who had gained the title Sword Ghost as an elder of the Heart Martial Union.
Baek Seo-gun brought together the index and middle fingers of her empty hand. It was the widely known sword-seal fingers.
The moment her two fingers shot out like a dagger, a wave of power stirred from the sword hilt overhead.
Its terrifying presence seemed capable of crushing even the wind.
“Sword Venerable!”
“The Sword Venerable? The Spirit Sky Sword Ghost...!”
Joy and shock crossed their faces.
A single move from Baek Seo-gun, the Spirit Sky Sword Ghost, descended without care.
The force wave extending from the sword in the air shattered and unraveled every attack within the battlefield.
A gale fiercer than the gorge's wind swept through. The sword edge had not even touched them. It was a strike difficult to understand by ordinary standards.
A supreme master.
A being who looked down upon countless masters from a higher realm.
It was a level that could discuss the world through martial arts alone. She could stand against a Black Uniform of Desolate Fortress and impose her will.
A martial artist free from the oppression of imperial factions, she looked at the younger generation as one of the Thirteen Heavens' hidden swords.
Gongsun Min and Moyong Myeong-jun flinched beneath her steady gaze.
The corners of Baek Seo-gun's mouth rose. It was a somewhat weary smile.
“Follow me. I will not kill you while you entertain me. Eat and drink, then reveal your martial learning to me. Once even that no longer amuses me, I will cut off your heads.”
“You think the martial world is in your hand? If we refuse, you'll attack us like those soldiers, won't you?”
Languid Flame Dragon replied. He studied Baek Seo-gun with a peculiar gaze. She knew that look well.
It was the gaze of insight that only geniuses of all ages could possess.
They skipped the process of understanding martial learning through intuition, easily attaining martial strength beyond the limits of their age.
Baek Seo-gun herself had been like that. So had the Young Sect Master of the Ming Cult, who had visited the Heart Martial Union's main branch around three years ago.
‘It makes no sense. How could a scion of Jeong Family Manor lead a youth like that? It would be difficult if even a trace of Jeong Dae-myung's blood ran through him.’
She turned away without hesitation as she thought.
Tap.
The sword that had roamed through the sky returned by itself and slid into Baek Seo-gun's scabbard. The boy from the Gongsun Family drew a sharp breath.
The others did not look well either. They had been taken hostage without any chance to resist.
If the Spirit Sky Sword Ghost had not possessed such an eccentric personality, it would not have been strange for their heads to fly here.
“I should've cut their numbers down faster. If not for your subordinates, I might've tried to escape.”
Only Languid Flame Dragon remained calm. Perhaps because he had lived accepting his short life, even his deliberately bitter expression looked relaxed.
“I'll get lectured by that young Squad Leader again. He'll say I'm incompetent.”
“By young Squad Leader, do you mean Seom-ye?”
Baek Seo-gun asked without turning around.
The encirclement moved with her steps. Languid Flame Dragon's group had no choice but to follow her.
“That is right. Do not try anything foolish.”
“Anything foolish?”
“If you plan to use us as hostages against the Squad Leader, I'll kill all of them and then kill myself. I was, after all, the eldest son of Shandong's foremost clan. I have my pride.”
Languid Flame Dragon spoke softly. Beside him, Hyeon Won-chang muttered something about insubordination.
Baek Seo-gun laughed as if it were absurd, but she did not lay a hand on anyone for two days.
As a supreme master of a major Demonic Sect faction, she focused on filling the heart that had grown bored after enjoying so much and having everything.
Just as she had when she left Jeong Family Manor in search of a new world.
She confined them in the largest tent among the camps established in Sevenfold Gorge.
Whenever she felt like it, she took them out one by one. She made sport of the martial learning of great sects displayed by the young martial artists.
She pressured them as though dealing with animals caged in a pen. When Languid Flame Dragon's fiery qi gave her a small burn, she only smiled.
“No matter how I look at it, I cannot believe it. How could a scion of Jeong Family Manor take in someone like you?”
“You'll understand as soon as you see him.”
It was when Languid Flame Dragon answered lazily.
Kwoooooong!
A deafening roar rang out.
Over the peak, overwhelming aura surged upward. It was strangely auspicious. In that instant, a strange light entered Baek Seo-gun's eyes.
It was a cultivation art that revealed a divine nature outwardly. An old memory surfaced.
The spirituality granted by the elven race master in the cave that had left behind the Eight Illusions Divine Art had been just like that.
“Ah, I really will get an earful.”
“Is that the Leader of Demon Wings?”
She asked Languid Flame Dragon, who was muttering with a faint grin.
“Can't you tell the moment you feel it?”
“Let us go.”
A great movement began. The Heart Martial Union's martial forces that had built the camps moved.
Baek Seo-gun, called the Sword Venerable here, vanished first. Languid Flame Dragon, Hyeon Won-chang, and the Martial Alliance martial artists followed after her.
Thanks to Baek Seo-gun's eccentric nature, they had been free to move from the beginning. No one stopped them.
It was not far. Following behind Baek Seo-gun, Languid Flame Dragon reached the source of the roar.
He saw the young Squad Leader facing a woman in splendid scarlet martial clothes.
How long had he run? His completely disheveled hair exposed his smooth forehead.
The black hair of the newly appointed Leader of Demon Wings, falling to his shoulders, suited his pitch-black long robe perfectly.
Jeong Yeon-shin, who had been steadily watching Baek Seo-gun, shifted his gaze. His eyes met Languid Flame Dragon's over her shoulder.
“You incompetent fool.”
The boy spoke at once. Languid Flame Dragon sighed.
“I have nothing to say.”
“As you should.”
Little Sword Empress arrived next. Her steps, moving as though she were flying with the Body Movement Scripture, stopped when she saw Jeong Yeon-shin.
With the Heart Martial Union's martial soldiers surrounding the area, her lips moved.
“If I become a burden, I'll kill myself.”
Little Sword Empress Chwi So-ok was no ordinary person either. As a promising swordswoman of the Jeomchang Sect, she valued honor more than her life.
It was the character of an orthodox martial artist praised by storytellers. She was a martial artist suited to the spirit of the age.
“I know what shame is, too. I am glad to see the life-and-death duel between the Squad Leader and that old monster, but...”
She spoke of dignity with a vacant face. Jeong Yeon-shin slowly nodded.
“I'll avenge you.”
“That's the first time you've said something so warm to me. I'm rather happy.”
Little Sword Empress smiled brightly.
Then.
“You did not cultivate the Jeong Style Divine Sword, did you? It seems you have reached a level that cannot be attained through miscellaneous sword arts.”
Baek Seo-gun suddenly asked. She had stared at Jeong Yeon-shin with a strange expression for some time.
“The Jeong Style Divine Sword?”
The boy's brow narrowed slightly. It was a name he had not heard in a very long time. Jeong Family Manor's sword art.
They said his paternal grandfather had reorganized the sword art he learned from the Zhongnan Sect as a lay disciple. It was a third-rate sword art with only a grand name.
“You know Jeong Family Manor?”
“Your informal speech annoys me. Arrogant brat. I must see whether you are worthy.”
Baek Seo-gun raised her sword-seal fingers and moved her hand. Her joined index and middle fingers brushed the sword hilt at her waist.
At the same time, the sword rose on its own, scattering pure white sword light. It was an art many martial artists took to be qi sword control.
By then, Jeong Yeon-shin had already raised the Northern Light Sword above his head.
Swish.
His black sleeve slipped below his shoulder, exposing his right arm. Muscles, honed firm from the back of his hand to his biceps, came into view.
The sword trembled. It sounded as though it was crying on its own. He had achieved unity of sword and self with the blade held straight above him.
High guard stance.
His aura was calm. That made it all the more chilling.
‘What is that?’
Languid Flame Dragon's eyes widened slightly at the unfamiliar opening stance.
Fwaaa!
The sword held by the young Leader of Demon Wings released an invisible force wave.
Its density was incredible. Though unseen, it felt as though translucent wind had wrapped around the battlefield.
Baek Seo-gun's sword, which had been advancing through the air, faltered. The art of a supreme master had stopped in an instant.
Anyone could see it was not by her will. The pressure spreading around them was immense.
It was enough to make those shallow in inner energy drop to their knees before receiving even one move.
Then, without warning.
Whoosh!
The boy and Baek Seo-gun crossed paths. Their positions changed in an instant.
Step.
The Leader of Demon Wings, who had achieved extreme speed through Force Projection across his entire body, lowered his sword. A pure white sword trail flickered a moment later.
A long arc twisted behind him. Baek Seo-gun, standing to one side, was also holding her sword before anyone noticed.
It was an exchange between supreme masters that had happened without warning. The Heart Martial Union martial artists, who had not dared interfere, groaned.
Neither appeared to have suffered a fatal injury. Only Baek Seo-gun's appearance had changed.
Her signature gray-white hair drifted down. The ends of the hair that had fallen long like a lion's mane scattered like feathers.
Carried by the relentless gale sweeping through the gorge, they blended into the glow of the setting sun.
The young Leader of Demon Wings turned his body, still holding his lowered sword.
He glanced at the drifting strands of hair, tilted his head slightly, and slowly opened his mouth.
“Short hair suits you.”
The boy spoke.
Footnotes:
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