WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈

Chapter 37: The Second-Rate Martial Artist Facing a Legend (2)

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[Taeul Sect? Was there even a sect like that?]

[You know, the sect that got into the One Hundred Eight Peaks by spreading lies.]

[Ah, the Taeul Sword Emperor. Wow. Do you think we'll get to learn a thing or two from the descendant of our Taeul Sword Emperor?]

[Be careful. There's a legend that nobody who stood against the Taeul Sword Emperor ever came through it intact.]

My ability to remember everything affected even my dreams.

The memories of the past came through so clearly that I always knew I was dreaming. On most days, that left me in a foul mood from morning to night.

This time, though, I couldn't blame my memory. The moment I realized I had been sucked into the Soul-Destroying Formation in my dream, I snapped out of it.

“...Damn it.”

A hazy mist blocked my vision in every direction.

-S-save me!

-Someone, help!

-Is anyone there?!

In this place where the boundaries of time and space had vanished, desperate cries rang in my ears. I couldn't tell whether they came from near or far.

They were probably the screams of those who had entered the Soul-Destroying Formation in search of a way through.

None of the voices I heard came from people gathered together.

Hundreds had entered the formation, yet every one of them had been cast into a different place.

“Do the twenty thousand formation paths separate everyone completely?”

Now I understood why the Mount Mao Sect's formation masters had refused to enter, even after figuring out the formation's structure.

I tried to enhance my vision, only to find my dantian empty.

“Did I lose my mind? I forgot I'd unleashed the Mad Heaven Divine Palm.”

It had happened so suddenly that even my absolute memory had failed me.

“That bastard is genuinely chilling.”

I could understand how he had overcome the Shattering Form so quickly, since he had done the same in my previous life. But seeing him divert even the Mad Heaven Divine Palm made it hard to believe my own eyes.

“And he threw me into the Soul-Destroying Formation. He was a sly bastard even as a child.”

In that brief moment, he had grasped the Mad Heaven Divine Palm's destructive power, decided I would interfere with his plans, and cast me into the Soul-Destroying Formation.

He was my enemy, but I had to admit that his mind worked with frightening speed.

He would use any means necessary to achieve his goal. He possessed both the strength and the forces to see those means through, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice the few for his greater cause.

Maybe that was why people followed him. They were drawn to that kind of strength.

“Come to think of it, he may be more dangerous than the Demonic Cult.”

Until now, I had thought all I needed to do was protect the Taeul Sect under the Martial Alliance's influence.

Yet that would mean nothing if the people controlling the Martial Alliance were the ones who eventually shoved us into hell.

‘Maybe I'll have to fight Yong Soa.’

No, the day would certainly come when I had to fight him. Just thinking about how he had thrown me into the Soul-Destroying Formation made me feel that even tearing off all four of his limbs would not ease my anger.

But how was I supposed to face a monster who could divert the Mad Heaven Divine Palm when I had only learned the Lesser Heaven Sword Art? The rage that had flared up like a wildfire suddenly died down.

“My life is just as impossible to see through as this Soul-Destroying Formation.”

The important thing was getting out of here.

If I couldn't leave, even a gapja of internal energy would be meaningless, and I would never have a chance to take revenge on Yong Soa.

As soon as I sat down and circulated my internal energy, I felt some of it return.

Yet in the short time my eyes had been closed, the formation had changed into an entirely different landscape.

The mist around me had vanished. Only pitch-black darkness remained.

The screams had disappeared as well.

Of the two hundred and ten thousand formation paths, I had memorized only one hundred and eighty thousand.

Had I memorized a little more, I could have found the formation's pattern. Instead, I had entered the Soul-Destroying Formation without that preparation, leaving thirty thousand paths that I had to fill in myself.

The bigger problem was that I had no idea which path I had started on.

To identify it, I needed either a method to calculate formations or an opened upper dantian.

I had neither.

“There'll be one more thing I can't tell my junior martial siblings.”

I couldn't come up with a calculation method on the spot, leaving me with only one choice.

I sat down again, crossed my legs, and began qi-regulating breathing.

Each time I completed a Minor Heavenly Circuit, the energies of the spiritual medicines dormant throughout my body began to awaken one by one.

A vigorous current burned away the remnants in my lesser meridians and surged through my acupoints. It moved from Zhongji Point to Zhiyang Point, passed through Shendao Point, and seemed to ask where it should go.

I began directing my internal energy toward Baihui Point.

Suddenly, I remembered what I had been told when I first learned an internal cultivation method.

-Jin Sowoon, never try to open your upper dantian. Never.

Even ordinary martial artists would never touch their upper dantian without an extraordinary reason.

Trying it inside the Soul-Destroying Formation was clearly madness.

Even the Demonic Cult's countless lunatics would shake their heads if they saw me now.

‘Still, I have to do it.’

Thanks to the Heart-Calming Pellet, I could prevent qi deviation once. That was the only reason I could attempt something this insane.

The internal energy that had been waiting cautiously began to move again.

It asked me again and again whether this was truly the right way. Whether it truly had to enter here.

I sent out my intent and pulled it upward in one burst.

Boom.

A thunderous crash exploded inside my head.

Boom.

My entire body trembled as if every nerve were burning. Pain surged over me like a tidal wave, enough to make my consciousness snap.

“Urgh.”

The shock that shook every acupoint ravaged my insides, and blood flowed from the corner of my mouth.

Boom.

Pain and suffocating pressure struck one after another, as if every pore in my body had been pierced with a needle. Then a strange sensation, neither agony nor ecstasy, flooded my head.

Shhhhhh.

The sound of rushing valley water echoed inside my skull. In an instant, the pain covering my body changed into a cool, refreshing sensation.

That chill raced through my body, opening the blocked acupoints.

At the same time, this tremendous force devoured every bit of energy remaining from the spiritual medicines, growing even stronger.

‘Stop. Stop.’

It felt good, but my internal energy was growing so rapidly that I feared I might no longer be able to control it.

A force even greater than the one that had opened my Baihui Point swept over me. It ignored my intent, raced through my body, widened pathways at will, and finally stopped at a certain point.

‘No way.’

As if it disliked the blocked middle dantian, my internal energy rammed against it again and again, trying to force a path through.

“Ghk!”

My organs twisted as I tried to break through the blockage by force, and blood poured from my mouth without stopping.

At this rate, qi deviation was inevitable.

‘I already opened my upper dantian, and I have the Heart-Calming Pellet... It's all or nothing.’

Boom.

As my intent aligned with the flow of internal energy, it seemed to grow excited and began forcing the middle dantian open.

Boom.

A tremendous shock made my entire body jerk. The middle dantian finally opened, and my internal energy rushed freely through every part of my body.

Only after the energy had roamed through every corner and settled in my dantian could I open my eyes.

“Whew...”

I now had roughly a hundred years' worth of internal energy in my dantian.

My upper and middle dantians had opened, and nothing obstructed the flow of my internal energy.

In an instant, I had reached the realm of Five Dragons Serving the Sage.

Everything I saw had become clearer, and the sensations entering through my five senses gave me an objective awareness of my surroundings.

Put simply, I had reached the level where masters could catch something flying in from a blind spot without even looking.

“Heaven's luck was with me.”

It had been a perilous gamble that I would never have considered without the Heart-Calming Pellet.

Thanks to it, I had opened my middle dantian and absorbed all the energy remaining from the spiritual medicines in my body.

Once my senses opened, I began to feel the formation's flow.

The paths shifted according to the Eight Trigrams, the Twelve Earthly Branches, the sexagenary cycle, and three hundred and sixty-five transformations.

As I felt those flows and compared them to the paths stored in my mind, I figured out where I was and where I needed to go.

The mist around me had turned red again.

And I became certain.

“I can do this.”

I stepped forward.

The red mist blocking my way swiftly receded, opening a path.

It meant I had chosen the right route.

I took another step.

The red mist turned yellow.

Proof that I had entered a different path.

One more step.

The mist swept away again, opening a path.

Then I encountered darkness.

This was a path the Mount Mao Sect's formation masters had not yet calculated.

Even so, I couldn't turn around or retreat as I had in the cave.

The paths would begin again, and I would eventually run into the same barrier.

“I need to complete the paths I couldn't fill in.”

The moment I sent internal energy to my upper dantian, I began recording every path of the Soul-Destroying Formation across one wall of the library in my mind.

Once I filled the entire endless wall, a space appeared in its lower left corner, large enough to hold thirty thousand paths.

It was a space that couldn't be filled through calculations alone.

I inferred the shared rules of the other paths and began memorizing new ones.

It was madness, without question. Yet I had the absurd feeling that it might work, and I couldn't stop.

Perhaps because I had opened my upper dantian, the missing numbers began to fill in according to each path's particular intricacies.

One path created another. Those two paths then created four more.

Empowered by my upper dantian, my brain forced itself into overload. My thin nasal passages could not contain the blood rushing into them, and streams of blood poured from my nose.

Just as I thought I could fill a small gourd with nothing but nosebleeds...

“It's done.”

Once all two hundred and twelve thousand four hundred paths were complete, the darkness before me no longer frightened me.

Tap.

The world suddenly brightened, and I sensed a brilliant halo.

When I took another step, the mist began to clear.

With every step, the mist grew thinner, and I began to see the bodies of the dead around me.

The moment I felt I had reached the end of the Soul-Destroying Formation, a white wall that stretched beyond sight rose before me.

I stepped onto one section of it.

Whoosh.

The white wall vanished, and I entered another dark cave.

“Haah... haah...”

Ice hung from the ceiling like stalactites, casting a blue glow that lit the cave.

“Mita Sacred Water...”

The moment the tension left me, I lost consciousness and collapsed.

#

When I awoke again, my body felt light, as though all my exhaustion had vanished.

My dantian was about half full of internal energy. Since I had not performed qi-regulating breathing, it was clear that opening my upper and middle dantians had greatly accelerated the natural accumulation of internal energy.

“Anyone who saw me would think I'd fought through a bloodbath.”

My blue martial robe was soaked with blood from my mouth and nose.

“Not like anyone's here to see it.”

Nobody else was in the cave.

Hundreds had entered the Soul-Destroying Formation of their own accord, but I was the only one who had reached this place.

“Haha, so it was real.”

The battle for the Mita Sacred Water had become controversial not only because five hundred people had died, but because the Mita Sacred Water was never found in the end.

Some even claimed that the Hao Sect had spread false information to throw the martial world into chaos.

“But here it is, right in front of me.”

The Mita Sacred Water stretched down from the ceiling, emitting light of its own.

I quickly took an awl from my clothes, held a specially made flask beneath it, and lightly struck the Mita Sacred Water.

Crack.

A piece of the Mita Sacred Water broke off and dropped into the flask. The awl immediately began to freeze over, so I hurriedly threw it away.

Its yin energy was so intense that the palm holding the awl had already frozen solid.

I drew up my internal energy, and my hand slowly thawed as water streamed down it.

It was a sight rarely seen in the mortal world.

“By the way, the Taeul Sword Emperor must have been sealed somewhere here as well.”

My original purpose had been to find traces of the Taeul Sword Emperor.

Everything that had happened since I entered the cave only deepened my suspicions.

“The Boundless Indestructible Soul-Destroying Formation, an absolute formation that can never be broken and never disappear.”

What could possibly require an absolute formation spanning thirty jang to seal it?

-The Masters of the Sun decided to separate Dark Heaven and Ten Thousand Swords from the mortal world.

The Soul-Destroying Formation could not be dispelled through powerful martial strength.

The fact that it had been deployed to separate even a soul from the mortal world meant that whatever had been sealed possessed an equally tremendous influence.

-Beside the Tray of Chu lies the hell where heaven and earth meet. At its end, Dark Heaven and Ten Thousand Swords were sealed. Thereafter, all under heaven knew peace.

The legend of the Taeul Sword Emperor had been true. The Boundless Indestructible Soul-Destroying Formation had been deployed to seal him.

“It has to be here. The traces of my Grand Patriarch.”

I stepped into the Soul-Destroying Formation on the opposite side of the path I had entered from.

Now, the mist and darkness that obscured my surroundings no longer frightened me. It was like walking through familiar alleys in my own neighborhood.

With every step, the mist was pushed far away.

The parted mist guided me to another white wall.

I forced my way through a gap in the wall, and a cavern filled with complete darkness appeared beyond it.

I closed my eyes briefly, drew up my internal energy, and enhanced my vision.

Within a space spanning ten jang in every direction, two figures sat at opposite ends.

One was an old man with white hair.

The other was a middle-aged man with black hair and a beard.

Drawn by an instinct I didn't understand, I approached the old man.

Dense writing covered the ground around him.

At the very top were eight characters carved deeper than all the rest.

Ten Thousand Swords Under Heaven.

Taeul Sword Emperor.

Something struck my abdomen, and a surge rose up inside me.

It was the sorrow buried within the five hundred years of humiliation endured by the Taeul Sect's forebears, across both my past life and this one.

My knees gave out, and I fell to them.

Before I could even wipe away my tears, I bowed deeply and spoke through a choked sob.

“Taeul Sect's eighteenth-generation disciple, Jin Sowoon, pays his respects to Grand Patriarch.”

Footnotes:

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