WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time ◈
Episode 336: Tyrant's Way
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Sunlight lay softly over the village.
The land was broad enough for a clear stream to run through its center, dividing it generously in two.
Dozens of corpses lay scattered along the creek bank, stained by the crimson dusk.
The waterway that might once have been called a jade-green stream was no longer green downstream.
Blood and muddy water mixed beneath hundreds of hooves. The snorting of fine horses rang out without pause.
“So much time has passed. The Leader of Demon Wings must be dead by now.”
A clear voice drifted through the blue sky.
It belonged to a handsome young nobleman with bold, distinct features.
He sat upright on a white horse fitted with an antique saddle, gazing toward the heart of the village. Among the mounted martial artists around him, none looked as composed as he did.
“What a shame.”
Though he had only muttered to himself, the hero’s headband embroidered in gold against black fabric fluttered behind him.
His qi storage was immense, enough for martial power to seep into his voice.
Vast Flower Duke Gun Yu-cheon, the eldest young master of the Heart Martial Union.
“Venerable, we can afford to take it easy now, can’t we?”
His ringing question carried inner energy.
After his voice passed over the heads of several fine horses and reached far to the side, a woman answered plainly, as though she were speaking right beside him.
“That is a foolish thing for the eldest young master to say. These losses are not something we can dismiss with empty bravado.”
“...”
Gun Yu-cheon’s eyes twitched. His toes pressed harder against the stirrups at his white horse’s flanks.
‘Without lifting a finger yourself.’
He deliberately did not turn toward the Light Blade Venerable.
It was a matter of pride.
He had come north from the main headquarters on an important task: a northern military supply mission. The powerful demon race had risen more fiercely amid the famine.
Delivering a martial army to the border alone would earn him great merit. It would also display the Heart Martial Union’s power.
Five hundred men should originally have been enough. Even that was an enormous force.
Still, Gun Yu-cheon had brought another five hundred because he wanted to be thorough. Only a martial-world warlord counted among the greatest in the land could have managed it.
‘It needed to be a thousand.’
A famine that made people take up plundering swords rather than carry full sacks of grain.
The Lord of Yeoryeong, attempting the absurd feat of gathering the Thirteen Heavens.
The martial world of Shanxi, turned into a wasteland.
The rising master who had taken the Zhuge Family Head’s life.
The appearance of the Moyong Family Head and the Heart Martial Union Leader.
Everything affected the surrounding situation. There was no knowing what variable might interfere with their military supply mission.
Perhaps supernatural figures called peerless masters roamed the nearby martial world.
People without an established base like the major factions, who crossed the martial world with power approaching that of a one-person sect...
A force of one thousand was necessary to handle unexpected situations.
‘It was hardly foresight.’
It had happened five days ago. When their camp’s rear was suddenly attacked, Gun Yu-cheon had been too busy assessing the enemy to admire his own preparations.
Before a famine, there was no distinction between orthodox sects and unorthodox sects. He had needed to learn their identity.
It was an Apostle of the Blood Flame Sect.
It was aggravating. He had been on the verge of avenging his fiancée and the Biyik Blood Venerable, whose lives the Leader of Demon Wings had taken.
Then he saw the Seventh Apostle herself and changed his mind.
‘I want her.’
A thought he could not say before his subordinates stirred within him. Just as he had heard, she possessed an appearance beautiful enough to enchant people and shocking talent.
If properly recruited, she would not merely be a Yang Guifei, but a martial artist who could become the most beautiful divine sword under heaven.
“She is an ultimate master we will absolutely need if we are to conquer the martial world. Even if we lose five hundred men here, capturing her would not only make up for it. It would be a profitable bargain.”
That was how he had justified himself to the Venerable.
It was sound reasoning, so naturally it had worked. The Blood Flame Sect’s main headquarters had just been wiped out.
As one of the Demonic Sect powers called the Thirteen Heavens, the Heart Martial Union had the breadth to embrace outsiders from other sects.
He had thought it fortunate. Even after losing over a hundred riders and horses, his view had not changed. The value of an ultimate master could not be measured in ordinary soldiers.
“As expected, she learned martial arts with an incomplete mnemonic formula. Is she arrogant, or simply foolish?”
The Venerable’s mutter had also greatly influenced his decision.
They had surrounded the Seventh Apostle in the emptied village.
She was visibly in no sound condition. Her eyes had no focus, and the sight of her standing alone in the devastated village seemed dangerously unstable.
Her balance shifted constantly. Flesh and blood clung in places to her ebony hair.
It was the result of holding back the martial army for five days with the Blood Flame Sect’s Graceful Body Method lightness skill.
“How many days has it been already? Will you keep watching like this? Wouldn’t it be better to kill her yourself?”
“The value of a Blood Flame Sect noble who has become a wandering martial artist cannot be measured in gold. This is the Seventh Apostle, who possesses the True Blood Physique. She will become a great strength to our union. Talent and martial power like hers cannot be found anywhere else.”
“Then...?”
“The eldest young master’s decision was not wrong. If we feed her gu poison, she will more than fill the Biyik Blood Venerable’s place. No, there is a good chance she will surpass that.”
“Yes.”
“I meant to conserve my strength for the northern campaign. If I had known this would happen, I should have fought her alone from the beginning.”
After speaking with one of her direct subordinates, the Venerable clicked her tongue.
“Stay still.”
She stroked her horse’s neck and began to dismount.
Step.
The footstep sounded strangely dreamlike.
It had not been hers.
The Venerable dismounted without even using a stirrup. A bizarre sight, as if from a dream, entered her eyes.
Afterimages like constellations remained imprinted upon her vision with each step.
A youth with unusually lean arms and pronounced muscles passed through the martial army’s formation, his somewhat short black robe fluttering behind him.
A pale glow followed beneath his feet. He moved at such extreme speed that only the Venerable could see it.
The youth naturally broke through the encirclement and stood before the Seventh Apostle the next moment.
“Stop.”
The Venerable commanded the mounted martial artists. She paid no heed to Gun Yu-cheon, who had stared in confusion before snapping his head up.
Even as the eldest young master shouted something, she only raised one hand and halted the army.
She had even drawn up the Layered Radiance Qi that had earned her the title Light Blade Venerable.
‘A master.’
The moment qi filled the minor meridians in her eyes, she felt the same suffocating pressure she had rarely encountered even in the north.
She hesitated to strike first. Her instincts told her that he was strong.
Gun Yu-cheon, standing at the head of the formation, had also fallen silent and narrowed his eyes.
Though a tiger father might have a dog for a son, he still carried the Heart Martial Union Leader’s blood. He could not deny the presence of the master before him. It was right to observe the person who had suddenly intruded, if only for a moment.
“Where did he come from?”
“The Venerable ordered us to stop. Is he one of our martial artists?”
“What kind of Body Movement Scripture was that?!”
Confusion spread among the mounted masters.
There was no great disturbance. An aura released from the Venerable’s hand swept over them, as though pressing them down for a moment.
They only showed bewilderment, curiosity, interest, and fear.
“How can he move so freely? Is he ignoring the aura of the Blood Arts?”
“That demon woman looks greatly exhausted, but isn’t it another matter to leave her for him to handle alone?”
“Eldest Young Master, is that person truly an ally?”
Soon, they all fell silent.
Even before an enemy, a martial artist had to maintain the attitude of a learner. It was how one improved in martial arts.
The confrontation before them was not one for lesser warriors to discuss.
Something unexpected had occurred, but since the eldest young master and the Venerable remained quiet, the lesser warriors had to learn if they wished to survive in the north.
At the center of the army’s encirclement was a village abandoned by all its commoners.
A man and woman faced each other. At a glance, they did not seem far apart in age.
Both had long black hair and features veiled by sunlight. They even looked similarly thin, as though neither had eaten properly for a long time.
“I’ve never seen you in such a state.”
The youth muttered.
No answer came. The Seventh Apostle only lowered her head slightly and let both hands hang at her sides. It was an opening stance that allowed her to freely use Hand Arts and Leg Arts.
She seemed to know him, yet could not recognize him. Qi deviation. The red eye on the side opposite her eyepatch gleamed crimson.
She was still trapped in madness. She only watched him as a master whose fighting range had been invaded would watch an opponent.
As the bloody mist surrounding the Seventh Apostle thickened,
Fwaaaash!
An intangible aura suddenly stirred around the youth’s entire body. His originally calm air was swept away in an instant.
Waves of martial power raked through the dirt like tangled blades. A demonic air that seemed capable of stealing souls wrapped around his body.
The army’s formation stirred.
His bearing seemed to change with his energy. His hands, hanging neatly beneath the hilt at his waist, carried a decadent air.
Whenever the invisible auras collided, a noise like a serpent’s hiss arose.
The youth slowly stepped forward.
Step.
The mist created by the Seventh Apostle’s martial power trembled. It could not stop his step for even a moment, as though it faced one of its own kind.
“...?”
Their auras were similar. Both were surrounded by irregularly spreading waves of martial power. Qi that was both demonic and elegant. The word noble suited them.
The youth who had appeared with such strange Body Movement Scripture now looked like a fellow senior disciple of the Seventh Apostle.
It would not have been strange if he addressed her as a junior or senior sister.
The Seventh Apostle made an odd expression.
It differed from before, when she had struggled to hold herself upright. Her ruby-like eyes lifted slightly, as though scanning the past.
“Mara, True Blood Art?”
She muttered in broken fragments, then drew a smooth curve with her bright red lips.
At the same time, her body blurred.
Clang!
Their palms met. Translucent concentric circles swept in every direction.
The aftermath of that strike was violent. The stream flowing behind them erupted upward with a roar.
It did not end with one exchange.
The man and woman began to trade moves. Along the faintly intertwining paths of their limbs, a storm of force waves raged.
The upper half of a thick old tree shattered with a crash, while the stream continued to surge into the air and fall like rain.
The youth did not draw the sword at his waist.
Barehanded, he freely extended his sturdy limbs along long and short paths. His Hand Arts and Leg Arts formed unobstructed straight lines and curves.
The martial army flinched whenever fragments of force waves flew like sparks. The ground split apart violently, yet they could not properly see the paths of the attacks.
Hundreds of trajectories were carved into the air before fading away, until the edge of the sunset dyed the youth’s and the Seventh Apostle’s clothes red.
Thud!
The base of an old tree as thick as a person was gouged out behind the youth’s shoulder.
Bark fragments crackled as they fell. Having driven him back, the Seventh Apostle gave a blood-red smile. The madness of qi deviation remained on her face.
“Young Grand Preceptor.”
She slowly looked the youth over. Her gaze seemed to tickle his skin. They stood close together. The Seventh Apostle’s crimson eyes filled his vision.
The red eye did not focus clearly. She was sensing him through aura rather than sight.
Strange heat stirred in her pale face and in the light of an ultimate master’s eyes. Her mind was wandering through the past.
As she had done when she treated the young Grand Preceptor with respect at the Blood Flame Sect’s main headquarters, the Seventh Apostle breathed smoothly and whispered.
“You are mine. You are my possession. Create my martial arts and let yourself be held in my eyes alone. Until you burn every bit of your talent and fade away.”
“...”
“No, that’s not right. Couldn’t you not fade away?”
She had spoken like a Blood Flame Sect noble before rambling incoherently.
The expression on her deathly pale face changed several times in a single breath.
Possessiveness filled her white face, then she suddenly looked frightened by something and took a step back. A moment later, she came close again with soft steps and gently stroked the back of the youth’s head.
“You will practice Leg Arts in the dead of night too.”
The youth spoke calmly.
Rustle.
The Seventh Apostle’s long fingertips brushed his collar, then softly closed around his neck.
Her lips moved.
“I will show you everything. Qi circulation, Force Projection, even each movement of the muscle fibers that create my Body Movement Scripture.”
She was completely trapped at a point in the past, acting strong as she always had.
Whoosh.
Red mist stirred beneath the Seventh Apostle’s feet again. It formed dozens of overlapping layers of Blood Arts aura.
It was a technique that bound an opponent who had entered one’s fighting range. At that moment, the youth’s fingers twitched.
A thunderous sound rang out, as though dozens of mirrors had shattered.
The mist was torn apart and scattered upward in reddish fragments. He penetrated the structure of the force waves and shattered the inner-energy technique at its root.
It was impossible unless he had completely seen through the origin of the martial arts she possessed.
At the same time.
Rustle.
It happened in an instant. The grain of their muscles collided, and colorless force waves of Harmonizing Force rose in streams between the folds of their touching clothes as they competed for control.
Their positions switched in a flash.
The Seventh Apostle’s back touched the tree.
When Jeong Yeon-shin lowered his head slightly, his lips came beside the Seventh Apostle’s ear. Breath without a trace of Light Wheel qi brushed the fine hairs on her skin.
“You are the lesser warrior.”
The youth spoke quietly.
Footnotes:
Yang Guifei: A famed historical beauty, invoked here to contrast beauty alone with exceptional martial talent.
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