Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time - Chapter 350

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time ◈

Episode 350: Enemies in the Same Boat (6)

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A dozen or so people in the hall stirred.

There was not a single weak martial artist in the Golden-Wing Hall.

Only those leading the hunt for the spiritual beast had gathered in this great hall. Before their unification under the Golden-Wing Sect, each had ruled as the head of a sect within the Dragon-Slaying Alliance.

They first gripped their weapons and frowned.

Some carried unusual weapons, such as pitch-black harpoons and chained hook blades, while others wore sabers or swords. Yet all of them withstood the suction force that seemed capable of tearing apart even the ceiling through the sheer weight of their auras. Every one of them bore themselves proudly.

"A secret divine art of the Tang Sect...?"

"No way!"

"Could the Tang Family Head possibly be here?"

"Where are you looking? Over there. That man."

Their voices were swallowed by the roar.

At the seat of honor in the gathering hall, the hand of the young man standing behind the Golden-Wing Sect Master created a vortex.

A translucent whirlwind surged along his arm, stretched diagonally upward. Fragments of the ceiling were ripped free and spun through the air with a deafening roar.

It was unmistakably Full Heaven Flower Rain.

Jeong Yeon-shin had unleashed it.

The moment the Successor Beggar of the Beggars’ Sect mentioned the Supreme Family Head and the Twin Dragons and Phoenixes of Poison, a certain insight had flashed through the upper dantian in his mind.

He had not intended it.

A passing image in his mind had simply manifested as it was.

He had thought he needed to smash the ceiling and stop the Successor Beggar from speaking. Three Flowers Gather at the Crown, nearing completion, had caused trouble through an astonishing attainment.

It had happened right after he realized that the Golden-Wing Sect required a mastered Full Heaven Flower Rain.

Meanwhile.

'This much?'

Yeon-shin was inwardly startled. The power of Full Heaven Flower Rain had exceeded his expectations.

The energy used to unleash the Tang Sect's secret art was not Light Wheel qi at its peak, but the qi of the Jeong Family Youth Technique permeating his entire body.

At the root of his anger lay concern for his seniors and the need to keep his identity hidden. He was not fighting at full strength.

Naturally, he had not expected the roof to collapse.

The forces of release and suction ground against one another like flint, multiplying their power at a pace unlike before.

Even his physical strength, which endured the recoil, could not be compared to what it had been before Marrow Cleansing and Bone Reforging.

"Elders! I'll stop it! That bastard, at once...!"

"Don't act rashly. The Sect Master is looking him in the eye from right beside him. The wind is pleasantly cool."

"Why are you smiling?"

"This is Full Heaven Flower Rain. A treasure has rolled right into our laps."

"No, at this rate..."

"Has the Tang Sect been raising such a weapon? He seems to be from a collateral branch."

Grrrrr!

Young martial artists with shallow inner power groaned.

Several elderly people and elves with youthful appearances remained seated amid the storm, clicking their tongues at the younger martial artists.

"You have neglected your training. How did you ever claim to understand the essentials of the Thousand-Pound Hammer?"

"It was easier to refine the image of a thousand pounds than to uncover the principles of connection."

"Look at that one clutching the armrest. The ancestors of the Crabapple Sword lineage must be sighing. How will he endure even a flood dragon's snort at this rate?"

The Golden-Wing Sect was a major faction between orthodox and unorthodox.

Amid the joking remarks of several old masters, more and more people struggled to avoid being dragged away by the suction force that had even pulled down the roof. Groans rose from all around.

Those who had firmly connected their feet to the ground with inner energy looked toward the Golden-Wing Sect Master's seat.

Under shafts of white sunlight, the peerlessly handsome young man's features stood out all the more.

Perhaps it was because the sun had made its presence known.

His firm yet narrow jaw was so finely shaped that it seemed one with the sunlight. His deep, abyss-like pupils carried the air of a martial artist.

His flawless skin, exposed beneath the glaring sun, blended with his high nose to create an almost dreamlike impression. He seemed to exist alone in the world.

An age when one's bloodline bloomed.

He was Pan Yue incarnate. Having increased his food intake over the years, the young man had blossomed from the seed his parents had given him, whether he wished to or not.

He was utterly different from the boy he had been before Marrow Cleansing and Bone Reforging. Ak Su-rim had once said the difference was like that between a tadpole and a frog.

Not even the Tang siblings or the Successor Beggar, who likely possessed eye techniques ranking among the best of the orthodox sects' younger generation, recognized Jeong Yeon-shin.

The Twin Dragons and Phoenixes of Poison could only stare back and forth between the roof and Yeon-shin, their faces filled with shock.

"What... is that? That's the real thing."

"Sis, did Father have a child he hid from us?"

"I don't know!"

"Poison Phoenix and Poison Dragon, stop pretending and tell us! Had you truly never heard of him?"

"No wonder the Sect Master took him on as an attendant. That isn't a face so much as inspiration given form."

"Perhaps the Heaven-Turning Dragon-Slaying Form will gain another move..."

Chaos filled the space beneath the seat of honor. People with all manner of interests and agendas chattered noisily in the Golden-Wing Sect Master's presence.

Only Full Heaven Flower Rain unleashed at its peak could shake the martial world of Purple Uniform.

Without lowering his raised hand, Yeon-shin met the Golden-Wing Sect Master's gaze.

Terrifyingly violent qi flickered in her light brown eyes.

The muscles beneath her seemingly delicate shoulders looked as though they had been woven entirely from inner power.

That much was clear from the way they pulsed beneath the crimson-gold long robe, faintly yet with a strange sense of transcendence.

Nothing else mattered.

Not her small head, proportionate to her frame, nor her sharply defined features and seemingly emotionless face.

Yeon-shin calculated without thinking.

'Thirty percent...?'

Could he win three times out of ten?

He did not know yet. He would need to see even a little of the Heaven-Governing Dragon-Slaying Art and Heaven-Turning Dragon-Slaying Form, her signature arts, before he could judge accurately.

Still, the feeling she gave him was unmistakably overwhelming.

This was the world of major faction leaders.

How vast had the realm of Black Uniform been? There was an immense gap between the Mangwol Light Halberd of the Ten Perfect Sect, whose face had already faded from memory, and the Black Uniform Three Pillars of Desolate Fortress.

It was the difference between when he had first created the Record of the Dharma Light Wheel and just after he had devised Dragon Fan Treading Flowers.

'Purple Uniform must be even greater.'

In that brief thought, a question suddenly arose in Yeon-shin's mind.

Was the Ming Cult's Young Sect Master, who had lived only about three years longer than he had, truly his equal? Could that cynical, sly expression possibly be the face of a corpse?

'Someone who should already be dead, or is about to die...'

Even then, Yeon-shin deliberately did not withdraw Full Heaven Flower Rain. He let it run wild according to the mnemonic formula's nature, no, according to his own far-reaching calculations.

Then someone shouted.

"After all that, you still won't lower your hand! Where do you think you are?!"

A sharp shockwave rose beside Yeon-shin and pushed at his robe.

It was Wanyang.

The man posing as his senior attendant extended a hand blade toward Yeon-shin.

Craaaash!

The energy gathered around his hand blade was tremendous. It tore through the storm of Full Heaven Flower Rain without slowing, accompanied by a roar like paper being ripped apart.

At the same time, it felt as though an invisible layer of clothing peeled away from Wanyang's body. His blunt-looking ears abruptly lengthened.

His features had seemed rather human, but he was an elf. The appearance and aura he had concealed with some sorcery art had been exposed when he attacked.

'The Golden-Wing Sect's Right Protector, Molten-Spirit Divine Fist.'

Yeon-shin inferred it from the colorless force wave that coiled around the hand blade like a sharp weapon.

He was one of the Golden-Wing Sect's two protectors, an old master who had long hunted and killed spiritual beasts of the martial world, creatures as destructive as natural disasters. His epithet was renowned, but few knew his face.

He was said to be a master of fist and leg arts who could destroy a hill with one punch.

In Desolate Fortress terms, he was comparable to a veteran Squad Leader.

They had deceived one another.

Yeon-shin instinctively realized that the martial world he belonged to was entering a realm of mystery.

'Light Wheel.'

In an instant, he compressed the Record of the Dharma Light Wheel to its utmost in the minor meridians of one arm, then wrapped it in the energy of the Jeong Family Youth Technique.

It was the image of wood wrapped around an iron core. Without pause, he swept his other arm upward to the side, just as he had while unleashing Full Heaven Flower Rain.

Boooom!

A fierce wave spread out. The vortex winding through the hall shook once.

'So this works.'

Yeon-shin sensed Molten-Spirit Divine Fist being flung far away and marveled. He had borrowed part of the mnemonic formula for Radiant River and concentrated on driving his opponent back. It had succeeded exactly as intended.

The state of Unity of essence, qi, and spirit was truly extraordinary.

He had not even reached complete stability, yet he had knocked away one of the Golden-Wing Sect's two great protectors while maintaining Full Heaven Flower Rain.

The implications were immense. He had improvised a way to shake off a strike from Molten-Spirit Divine Fist, a figure who had become a natural enemy of beings with mystical energy and whose attack surely held the power to slay dragons.

'Her attack will be different again.'

Yeon-shin met the gaze of the Golden-Wing Sect Master, who was quietly watching him.

What was she thinking? It was difficult to read those light brown eyes, which held such strange transcendence.

Then Wanyang let out a roar like Lion's Roar.

[You wretch!]

As he stamped down fiercely once more, he carried the momentum of a tiger. Paving stones around his legs shattered and flew upward amid translucent waves of inner power.

His fury seemed to have reached its peak over what had happened in the heart of the Golden-Wing Sect.

'Bullshit.'

Yeon-shin was angry too. He simply did not show it, maintaining the calm that had become a habit from counting his age backward.

The Sichuan martial factions entangled around the inscrutable Young Sect Master and the flood dragon.

His seniors, who had vanished somewhere among them, leaving no trace of what had happened to them.

The truth about the Tang Sect twins, thrust into his mind by the upper dantian's power. Their constitutions had been eerily modeled after Yeon-shin's body.

And the Successor Beggar's mouth, which had tried to use that truth for some purpose.

'That damned jaw...'

Jeong Yeon-shin put aside the fact that he had entered Sichuan's greatest major faction.

"What do you two siblings think of him? Isn't he far too formidable to be from a collateral Tang branch? Could Poison Commander have secretly taken in a new disciple...?"

He aimed the palm directing Full Heaven Flower Rain at the Successor Beggar, who was watching the scene with an intrigued expression.

In his mind, he marked down the debt he now owed the Golden-Wing Sect Master.

At the same time.

"Stop."

A dry voice left the Golden-Wing Sect Master's lips. It was nearly a whisper.

Yeon-shin did not listen.

He adjusted the qi of the Shaofu acupoint and Laogong acupoint in his palm, above and below.

At the same time, the vortex that had completely shattered the ceiling gave a tremendous peal of thunder as it carried countless fragments. It began to refine itself into a sharp pillar aimed straight down.

Like a waterspout.

"Hm?"

The change came like a ray of light. The Successor Beggar reacted a beat too late.

"What...?"

Whooosh!

The Successor Beggar slightly raised their head just as the vortex of Full Heaven Flower Rain was about to plunge into their forehead like an awl.

"I told you to stop."

A slender arm rose toward Yeon-shin's palm.

A massive roar rang out in that instant.

Sparks of pale light flew from the Golden-Wing Sect Master's hand, which had blocked the source of Full Heaven Flower Rain before anyone knew it.

Her arm was now wrapped in an energy that seemed capable of pushing away all things. It was as though she wore thousands of invisible lightning bolts.

Yeon-shin immediately made his upper dantian blaze white-hot and entered the slow world.

The flow of air touching his fingertips became as clear as a stream, and the shocked exhale of the Successor Beggar beyond the Golden-Wing Sect Master's shoulder became unimaginably long.

'Heaven-Governing Dragon-Slaying Art.'

The crimson-gold sleeve of the Golden-Wing Sect Master did not flutter even as it faced Full Heaven Flower Rain. It felt as if a transparent giant overlapped her body.

The Golden-Wing Sect Master moved to interlock her fingers with Yeon-shin's. It was a complete seal. The qi in each of Yeon-shin's finger joints began to unravel.

She had read every trajectory of his five fingers, each moving differently.

Slowly.

A sharp gleam entered Yeon-shin's eyes. To lose in a contest of techniques? Impossible.

Before the Golden-Wing Sect Master's hand could seize him, he lowered his index finger at an angle. He gathered the flow of Full Heaven Flower Rain at his fingertip and sent it forward.

Thud.

The Successor Beggar's body was finally struck by the vortex and fell over. The sound rang out terribly slowly.

The Golden-Wing Sect Master's eyes dimmed slightly.

Perhaps it was more accurate to say they brightened.

The faint, fine shadows formed by her eyelashes had lifted a little.

Within the realm of supreme transcendence, her lips moved slowly.

"Are you married?"

A question passed through Yeon-shin's eyes. Was he the only peerless master with both intact comprehension and character?

"I'm not."

He answered calmly, just as he had once made clear to the Ming Cult's Young Sect Master.

The Golden-Wing Sect Master spoke again, as if issuing an order.

"Become my weapon."