WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time ◈
Episode 351: Enemies in the Same Boat (7)
──────
Disposition, speech, eyes.
Ever since childhood, Jeong Yeon-shin had been skilled at discerning what others truly felt.
There had been no shortage of times when he had needed to read the room beforehand.
Like when his eldest brother had invited him to play with the village children, only for him to find a crudely planted sign at the agreed-upon clearing instead of the children. It read, “The bastard who killed his mother.”
What about now, with the Baihui acupoint in his head opened to its utmost limit?
The innermost thoughts of an absolute master of the martial world, said to be close to divine, flowed into him. At least a fragment of her heart.
‘She doesn’t see me as a person.’
He sensed utter emptiness in the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s eyes.
A disposition that refused to acknowledge equals. She seemed to regard Jeong Yeon-shin not as a person, but as some precious object.
A divine weapon or rare artifact that would be key to pursuing the flood dragon. A net Heaven had woven into a pleasing shape.
Her question about marriage had likely been nothing more than a way to check whether he had a partner who might obstruct her purpose.
A sword meant to be gripped and wielded as needed should not remain in its sheath. There was a life he could not easily fathom behind the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s strange words and actions.
Jeong Yeon-shin watched her in silence before speaking.
“Let it go.”
He fully subdued the power of Full Heaven Flower Rain gathered in his grip. The secret art had already become unusable, sealed by the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s interlocked fingers.
Kugung!
Splintered wood and broken roof tiles scattered across the area with a loud crash, but he paid them no mind.
Instead, he focused on the sensation between their hands.
The aura of Heaven-Governing Dragon-Slaying Art surrounding the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s arm.
Like invisible lightning, its overwhelming repulsive force continuously stimulated the Light Wheel qi hidden deep within his minor meridians. It came with a recoil that sliced through the air with a low hum.
If she made up her mind and truly struck here, he would have to sacrifice one hand. Just as the Heart Martial Union Leader had lost an arm to Jeong Yeon-shin’s maternal grandfather, Ma Yeon-jeok.
‘Just as the rumors said. Inner power that annihilates spiritual energy.’
Just as the dharma power of Light Wheel qi displayed some opposing force against unorthodox arts, demonic arts, and tyrannical arts, Heaven-Governing Dragon-Slaying Art held its deepest principle in shattering every auspicious energy under Heaven.
That meant he could not face her without a thorough analysis.
His main martial arts were Sihwa Boundless Hand and Thunderclap Flash-Ridge Sword Art, both arts specialized for using Light Wheel qi.
He could not fill them with another kind of qi. A peerless master was not someone he could approach with such mixed tricks.
‘If I block energy itself from approaching...’
Jeong Yeon-shin was recalling the Moyong Family Head’s Heavenly Demon Divine Armor when the Golden-Wing Sect Master withdrew her hand and spoke flatly.
“You had no reason to come as a spy.”
As though someone who had mastered Full Heaven Flower Rain to that extent had gone through needless trouble.
She had been like that from the moment their eyes met. No martial artist grew angry at a weapon.
She had shown no hostility from start to finish. It suited the leader of such a strange sect.
“Your name?”
The Golden-Wing Sect Master asked.
She was small. Even with her head slightly raised, she barely reached Jeong Yeon-shin’s chest. Yet there was nothing delicate about the way she looked up at him.
A transcendent. A peerless master. Draped in a lavish reddish-gold long robe like phoenix feathers, she possessed only one notable quality: a presence that demanded silence from everyone around her.
“Dang Man-yeon.”
Jeong Yeon-shin answered.
He had decided to pose as a rising expert of the Tang Sect.
His appearance was far removed from that of the current Leader of Demon Wings, and he had inherited Blood Guard Squad Leader Jin Myeong-jo’s divine art, concealing every trace of Light Wheel qi.
Even if someone recalled Seom-ye, the Leader of Demon Wings, and grew suspicious, it would be fine. He had already seen through the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s temperament and her indifference toward everything.
‘It won’t take long.’
The master of Full Heaven Flower Rain decided to walk a tightrope until he met his seniors.
* * *
An unknown rising talent.
The Heavenly Net that would restrain the flood dragon’s struggles had manifested in human form. It could not help becoming the talk of the sect.
All manner of people spoke freely in the main hall, beside the walls, and along the roads.
Even three days after the incident, the excitement had not faded. Too many people came and went.
“They say the Right Protector got humiliated?”
“Good. Then that precious spiritual medicine won’t be wasted on the Poison Commander.”
“How strong was this Dang Man-yeon fellow?”
“Go to the Golden-Wing Hall and see. Look at what he did with Full Heaven Flower Rain.”
“That’s why orthodox sect bastards are so tiresome. Whether it’s an ancient master of a previous generation or a successor carrying on someone’s mantle, something always keeps appearing.”
“They say his looks are even more remarkable than his martial arts.”
“I heard the Sect Master is keeping him close. I’d like to see him.”
“Forget it. They say the Right Protector is glaring outside the Sect Master’s residence.”
A martial force that stood between orthodox and unorthodox factions.
The Golden-Wing Sect was a sect of madmen obsessed with dragon slaying. Their temperaments differed even from demonic martial artists who cultivated demonic arts.
Each had devoted their martial path to killing spiritual beasts, driven by strange personal histories, goals, and grand ambitions.
No one asked about Jeong Yeon-shin’s origins. No one tried to discern his intentions.
They only gave him a front room near where the Golden-Wing Sect Master resided, watching him to ensure he could not act rashly.
Everyone except one person.
The Golden-Wing Sect’s Right Protector, Molten-Spirit Divine Fist. A man who deceived guests while posing as an attendant named Wanyang.
“Have we truly never met?”
“...Yes.”
“That’s what we said.”
At an open space beside the Sect Master’s residence, the short Tang Sect twins faced Wanyang’s questioning with little concern, their arms crossed.
Even as the chilling aura unique to the Golden-Wing Sect’s Right Protector shredded and crushed the dirt and stones scattered at their feet, the boy and girl in green silk robes did not bother meeting Wanyang’s eyes.
They had been born noble. Direct descendants of Sichuan’s foremost martial nobility. The family might be collapsing, but that did not mean their bodies and minds had been wholly subdued.
“You’re saying there was a successor of the Poison Commander who mastered Full Heaven Flower Rain without your knowledge? Does that make any sense?”
“We never knew anything. Not that Grandfather, the Supreme Family Head, joined hands with the Blood Flame Sect Master, nor that the Golden-Wing Sect would go so mad it would commit acts even the Ming Cult would not.”
Poison Phoenix spoke while tossing a stone fragment into the air and catching it. Poison Dragon, seated carelessly beside her, snorted.
Wanyang’s brow twitched.
“Silence.”
Crack!
The stone fragment Poison Phoenix had been toying with crumbled in midair.
Harming others with intent. A realm where supreme masters of Three Flowers Gather at the Crown could injure others with inner energy without any warning.
Even those belonging to great sects would find such a sight incomprehensible.
Only then did faint tension appear on the twins’ faces.
“Could it be that Seom-ye of Desolate Fortress worked some strange trick with that Full Heaven Flower Rain and came as a spy? No one here is unaware of the Tang Sect’s disgrace.
“Didn’t you make that brat from Demon Wings your family’s teacher? Speak truthfully, or you’ll pay dearly.”
Wanyang spoke in a low voice. Poison Phoenix forced the corners of her lips upward.
“There’s a limit to spitting in your own face.”
“What did you say?”
“Isn’t the Golden-Wing Sect Master also well versed in sorcery arts? This damned Golden-Wing Sect is crawling with people who could recognize a human-skin mask. How could anyone deceive your eyes, enter this place, and pretend to be someone who doesn’t exist?”
“We’re the ones who really want to know.”
Poison Dragon added as though tossing out a casual remark.
There was no martial artist from a faction between orthodox and unorthodox who would calmly accept a valid point. Martial artists met with a cutting remark usually drew their swords instead of continuing the conversation.
Wanyang was no different.
A master of fist-and-kick techniques, he revealed translucent energy outside his body. In an instant, the air rippled as though invisible fire had flared up.
“You’ll speak properly after suffering tendon-rending and bone-dislocating. The flood dragon will care more for your energy than your pathetic flesh and bones anyway.”
“Right Protector, stop. The great undertaking is close at hand. We should be hoping for auspicious signs, not creating ill omens for no reason.”
An old man with a saber strapped to his back spoke. He was the Left Protector, Helmet-Cleaving Divine Saber.
Wanyang and the Twin Dragons and Phoenixes of Poison were not the only ones gathered in the wide open space beside the Sect Master’s residence.
Nearly three hundred people had gathered there: veteran masters and young martial artists who formed most of the Golden-Wing Sect’s strength, along with Ten Perfect Sect experts clad in armor and armed with eighteen kinds of weapons.
Beneath the open ground they stood on were stakes and boulders driven in every direction, along with indecipherable characters from ancient times. Together, they formed a massive circular formation.
A sorcery formation for human sacrifice.
It was a formation meant to open the world where the flood dragon hid.
Golden-Wing Sect and Ten Perfect Sect experts filled the edges of the formation. At its center stood dozens of internal-arts masters, including the Tang twins, surrounded by the forces of two Thirteen Heavens factions.
They could not resist. Their acupoints had already been thoroughly sealed, leaving them unable to raise their inner power.
Wanyang relaxed his shoulders and withdrew his aura.
“True enough. Even if that fellow is the Leader of Demon Wings, what does it matter? He has stepped into a death ground.”
“With strength like this, we could attack Desolate Fortress rather than hunt a flood dragon.”
One Golden-Wing Sect expert joked. The Tang twins swept her with cold gazes.
“Have you not heard the rumors? They say the Dark King Among Flowers beheaded the Zhuge Family Head.”
Poison Dragon spoke.
“It’s obviously nonsense. Do you know how far Shanxi is from here? If rumors are snowballs, the truth is no more than a single stone hidden inside. It didn’t even happen nearby.”
“They’re still young, so they believe every rumor in the martial world.”
When the Golden-Wing Sect expert replied with a smirk, laughter broke out around the area.
A flood dragon hunt.
They were about to undertake a grand task without equal in ages. Some calmed their nerves through meditation, while others traded jokes.
“Let it go. At least the Right Protector has to believe that. He lost to Dang Man-yeon in every way, martial arts and looks alike.”
Poison Phoenix lightly patted Poison Dragon’s shoulder.
Swoosh.
A supreme master’s rage rose without a sound. Wearing an indifferent expression, Wanyang extended both hands toward the twins.
A faint haze shimmered at his fingertips. It was the aftermath of Force Projection condensed to the extreme.
His arms shot forward as though they would tear space apart, only for a large hand in a white glove to seize each of them in turn.
Thud.
“How dare...!”
Wanyang began to curse, then shut his mouth.
The person who had stopped an attack from one of the Golden-Wing Sect’s most powerful Protectors was a middle-aged man in white light armor, wearing a faint smile.
“Enough. You’ll taint the great undertaking.”
Boom!
A suppressed shockwave burst into the air from their hands. The ground shook violently, but the sorcery formation remained unaffected.
The flow of inner energy, refined to the limit, forcibly stripped the power from Wanyang’s grip and dispersed it overhead.
The middle-aged man who had displayed a skill beyond human limits emitted no aura at all. He had suppressed one of the Golden-Wing Sect’s two great Protectors through martial principle alone.
He was the Ten Perfect Sect Master.
Master of the Ten Perfect Sect, one of the Thirteen Heavens.
A peerless master who had once been the Grand General of the North before returning home to found his sect.
The man who, despite being ambushed by the Blood Flame Sect Master, counterattacked and allowed the Tyrant Hero to perish together with the Blood Flame Sect Master.
‘They said he had declined...’
Wanyang swallowed a groan.
The Ten Perfect Sect Master’s enormous frame dwarfed Wanyang. One of his ears had been sliced off as though by a sword, yet he gave off the air of an undefeated commander rather than looking grotesque.
Without revealing his inner power, he carved a terrifying presence into the air.
His eyes, on the other hand, looked kind. Only his pupils, like those of an ox, held a strangely chilling light.
Wanyang stepped back in silence. The Tang twins maintained their usual arrogant posture as they glanced toward the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s residence.
“...”
They waited for the Golden-Wing Sect Master in silence.
After one meal’s time, a woman in a reddish-gold long robe emerged with an incomparably handsome young man at her side.
The Golden-Wing Sect Master and Jeong Yeon-shin.
“We begin.”
The moment the tip of her embroidered shoe stepped onto the edge of the sorcery formation, thunder rumbled beneath the ground.
The formation’s patterns slowly began to rotate amid the sound of earth grinding apart.
It was mystery at its peak.
They were entering an entirely different martial world.
Yet rather than feeling any excitement, Jeong Yeon-shin asked once more about what he had confirmed over the past few days.
“The people offered as sacrifices will not lose their lives, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Only until they fall into the flood dragon’s jaws.”
The Golden-Wing Sect Master’s dry voice and Laughing Heaven Unrivaled’s sound transmission rang out at the same time.
The Golden-Wing Sect Master left it at that.
The Ming Cult’s Young Sect Master, on the other hand, added one more sentence.
“You can do it, right? Even though you’ve done it before at the Blood Flame Sect’s main altar...”
Jeong Yeon-shin did not answer.
What Laughing Heaven Unrivaled said from somewhere far away was of no importance. More important was this: if he failed to find his seniors alive there once the formation opened...
‘My Protective Qi Technique must be even more tyrannical than Heavenly Demon Divine Armor...’
Forcing down the thought, he glanced at the Golden-Wing Sect Master standing on the formation. She was a strange person.
For three days, she had not spoken a single word to Jeong Yeon-shin. They had only shared meals. He had been treated wholly as something to look at and as a weapon. The Golden-Wing Sect Master did not guard against him in the slightest.
Three things had invited that carelessness.
His sudden Marrow Cleansing and Bone Reforging, the Divine Blood Extreme Demon whose very existence was a treasure of Desolate Fortress, and the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s martial prowess, nearly invincible on this land.
“West River, Eastern Tianzhu, grandeur of hidden cries, forbidden sight below...”
The Golden-Wing Sect Master’s voice rang out clear as song.
A sorcery mantra spoken through Six Directions Voice Transmission. The formation’s patterns spun faster and faster in place. The Ten Perfect Sect Master stood guard at her side.
Jeong Yeon-shin closed his eyes.
He recalled the Lord of Desolate Fortress. He considered the profound principles of Heart Sword that had been passed down through her whispers.
At the same time, his awareness seized every trace of the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s aura spreading in all directions.
Wooooong!
Sunlike radiance flickered from the Baihui acupoint in his head.
He interpreted every mnemonic formula and intent within the sorcery formation, drawing them into his mind.
Where qi had to be redirected, to which axis inner energy had to be anchored to obtain which effect, and what intent should move inner power to achieve the desired result.
His consciousness raced like lightning.
He did not try to understand the parts beyond his comprehension. There was only one thing he needed to take from this.
To identify the people who would accompany him through the flood dragon’s formation. That alone was enough. He had no need to understand the entire formation.
His upper dantian blazed. His talent, which let him live a day as ten years, swept across the vast sorcery formation.
Turning the Golden-Wing Sect Master’s centuries into meaningless ash.
Piiik!
At that moment, above their heads.
A white swallow flew in from the distant sky, then hovered in place.
A single scroll, casually tied to its slender leg, fluttered as it blocked the sun from side to side.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
