WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈
Chapter 419: The Price of Fate (7)
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I thought of Moyong Gang from my previous life.
Despite using martial arts so tyrannical that he was called the Wind-Splitting Sword, he had never tired or fallen first, even when facing the Demonic Cult at a numerical disadvantage.
Looking back on this life, it was truly strange.
He used martial arts far more explosive and draining than the Taeul Sword Art, so how had he fought day and night with less than five gapja of internal energy?
‘That, too, had been one of the things I was most curious about.’
I raised my head and looked ahead once more.
Nearly a hundred Wudang disciples charged at me with grim intent.
They were not the half-trained fools I had faced so far, charging in only because they held the advantage in numbers.
They were the elite among elites.
Martial artists already nearing completion.
In the past, the pressure would have made my heart race and heat rise to my head.
Yet I felt as calm as ever.
One step, then another.
I watched the enemies closing in before me.
Normally, my mind would have been busy recalling how my opponents had been in my previous life and seeking ways to counter them. Now, it was quieter than it had ever been.
Then, in that still silence, a line from the Taeul True Scripture crossed my mind.
Where the truth of all creation resides, limitless restraints are futile.
That chance recollection sent a shudder through my entire body.
The battle had not even begun, yet I felt neither fear nor dread.
“Attack!”
“Chaah!”
The Returning Cloud Sword, unleashed by three disciples, thrust toward me at once.
Their sword art did not stem from Taiji Fist, so I could not see through it with Shattering Form. Still, my hand moved without hesitation.
Snow Flower, drawn from the Flowing Cloud Divine Art, unfolded.
The three disciples who had thrust their swords at me were twisted against their will and slammed straight into the ground.
“Wha?”
They tried to force their bodies in another direction, but they had already been caught in the flow. They toppled over, and the arms gripping their swords bent in directions they should never have bent.
“Urgh!”
“Argh!”
One had fainted from the agony. I kicked the other two away with Phantom Shadow Kick.
Thud!
Crash!
The two slammed into the manor’s stone wall amid a cloud of acrid dust.
Then seven disciples rushed in again.
Lesser Heaven Sword Art.
Breaking Strike Form.
The Scarlet Radiance Sword, thick with killing intent, struck only the most dangerous vital acupoints and tore them apart.
Slash, slash, slash.
One had a long gash across the chest. Another dropped a sword after having their tendons severed. Others stared in horror at the sword wounds running from shoulder to back. All of them spewed blood and twisted in agony.
“Urgh!”
“Argh!”
Myriad Blossoms Invincible Fist immediately fell upon them.
Bangbangbangbangbangbang!
Before they could even examine their wounds, arms broke, faces caved in, and ribs shattered as they were flung in every direction.
“...”
“...”
The Wudang disciples hesitated as it all unfolded in an instant.
Caught off guard, they looked like puppies searching for their owner.
“You idiots!”
The Hall Master roared, his face even redder than before.
“What are you doing?!”
The fear etched into their memories moved their bodies on its own, and the Wudang disciples charged while failing to hide their terror.
If there was one thing I had learned after experiencing countless wars, it was that ingrained actions were useful on the battlefield only from a broad perspective.
In a one-against-many fight, they only wasted strength.
Crack.
A martial artist whose spirit had broken spent all the strength needed for rational thought trying to erase their fear.
Crack, crack.
Leaving behind martial artists with broken arms, legs, and shins scattered across the ground, I moved forward.
The injured piled up in one place like a mound of sand. They were nothing more or less than obstacles that restricted movement.
Swoosh!
Red sword qi burst wildly from the Scarlet Radiance Sword and swept over the Wudang disciples.
“Block it!”
Boomboomboom!
The sword qi was not particularly threatening to the Wudang disciples, but it had never been meant to be.
As the dust kicked up by the explosions settled, someone shouted.
"Up there!"
Blossoms of illusion swords descended over their heads.
Sharararararar!
Dozens, hundreds of illusion sword blossoms bloomed, scattering blades in every direction like petals.
“Don’t be fooled by the crude tricks of an illusion sword user!”
A disciple of a prestigious great sect shouted calmly.
“Argh!”
Yet that very martial artist, who had told everyone to stay calm, was the first to take a sword wound to the chest and spray blood.
“Argh!”
“Ghk!”
“M-my eyes! My eyes!”
Blood sprayed everywhere as illusion swords and Changing Sword whirled through the air.
The formation collapsed even faster under the compounded confusion, and more people fell after suffering wounds.
Rumble.
Then an ominous tremor shook the air.
Mad Heaven Divine Palm.
Palm force like thunder engulfed the confused Wudang disciples.
Craaaaaash!
The palm force, bent at subtle angles, violently tore through the ground. The marble spread across the Grand Training Ground became sharp fragments that flew toward the Wudang disciples.
“Fuck!”
“Argh!”
The shattered stones came from every direction without any pattern. They made even Taoists who had accumulated Taoist cultivation curse like common thugs, and everyone caught in the marble bombardment bled amid the chaos.
‘It doesn’t tire me out.’
A massive illusion sword attack, followed by the Mad Heaven Divine Palm.
Even after pouring out so much internal energy, I did not feel the slightest strain.
No, it felt as though my body had loosened up and become more energetic.
Was this how Moyong Gang felt when he seemed to gain more strength every time he fought?
I had no master, no one to teach me, so I had tried to find my own answer to the problem of always collapsing from exhaustion after battle.
That answer had been spiritual medicine and qi circulation.
Even while feeling the limits of my body, I had kept turning away from reality.
Believing this was the only right path.
Then, through the threat of death, I realized it.
I had been walking the wrong path.
Elixir pellets and qi circulation were the easy road for me.
But I had to walk the right road, not the easy one.
The right road was always painful and difficult, so people naturally turned toward the easy road instead.
‘Just like these people.’
The Wudang disciples surrounding me looked at me as though I were an enemy they could not share the sky with.
Even for Taoists who had accumulated Taoist cultivation, admitting their sins and repenting was not easy.
It was only natural that they sought the easy road.
‘That’s why I have to make them understand.’
Wudang was the root of the Taoist martial world.
Unless I intended to tear out that root and change the entire martial world, I had to heal it.
They had to understand that walking the right road was the true path they claimed to uphold.
It would be painful, but it was the only way to prevent ruin and disaster.
Just as I had faced reality this time and overcome the pain between life and death.
“So say it with me. You’re all fucking dead!”
Boomboomboom!
Illusion swords and sword qi ran wild, smashing the Wudang Sect members apart one by one.
Some idiots threw away all understanding of Taiji and charged in like fools, but did they really think that would work?
The amount of internal energy we possessed was different from the start.
Crack.
“Argh!”
An arm bent where it should not have bent, accompanied by a pained scream.
Great Yang Fist struck the abdomen and sent blood pouring out.
They would need a long recovery before they could use martial arts again.
Thud.
I slammed another bastard into the manor’s stone wall, then turned to deal with the next one.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
Nine people landed around me.
Clackclackclack!
Then twenty-seven more formed a circle outside them.
‘Nine Palaces Sword Formation![1]’
The Wudang Sect members formed the Nine Palaces Sword Formation and activated it.
Rumble.
A massive pressure rose from the center of the formation and spread in every direction.
Sharararak.
The martial artists in the outer formation and those in the inner formation rotated in opposite directions, gathering and releasing their energy with force.
Boomboomboom!
Sword qi poured out at once like a storm.
Following the principles of the Nine Palaces, it occupied all eight directions as the final force rushed over my entire body.
Sharararararak.
Through the blades of the Nine Palaces Divine Movement wielded by the nine, the Nine Palaces Chain Sword unleashed by the twenty-seven stabbed in without warning.
There was nowhere to evade or escape.
In the past, I would have panicked badly, but...
‘If I can’t escape, I just have to break it!’
A foot-long sword force rose from the Scarlet Radiance Sword.
It was pathetically short compared to before, but I did not feel afraid or discouraged.
Instead, I was certain.
This would be enough.
At the same time, a line from the martial arts taught to me by the Sword Demon... no, Baek Haegwang, crossed my mind.
Even while defending, break your opponent. That is a Perfect Wall of defense.
Three White Moon Heaven-Subduing Forms.
Second Form.
Extreme Strength.
Countless red sword forces crashed into the sword qi like waves.
Wudang’s sword qi, filled with the power of the Nine Palaces Sword Formation, was said to be no weaker than sword force.
The sword qi of the Nine Palaces blocked the sword force spreading in all directions.
‘The greatest strength and weakness of a sword formation is that many people wield it together.’
Unless they had trained together for decades or understood one another completely like the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Brothers, every sword formation would always have cracks.
As long as I had enough patience to endure the pressure of the formation, I could exploit those cracks and shatter it.
One man standing in the outer formation grimaced.
‘It’s you!’
He furrowed his brow deeply, finding it difficult to hold on by force.
I immediately poured internal energy into that point and widened the crack.
Crack!
Starting from that small fracture, one strand of sword qi broke apart.
The people around him tried to reinforce it with more strength, but I was one step faster.
Boom!
Sword force exploded, and the Wudang Sect members were swept into a storm of qi. The perfectly maintained Nine Palaces Sword Formation shook violently.
A sword formation that could not make use of the Nine Palaces was no different from a chaotic melee.
And a chaotic melee was...
“Come on in, you bastards.”
My specialty.
I broke the sword formation with sword force, then detonated sword qi to force an even more chaotic melee.
“W-what is this?!”
“I can’t see!”
“Where is he?!”
I twisted my sword and swung the Lesser Heaven Sword Art mercilessly with the flat of the blade.
Thud! Crack!
Wham! Snap!
I thoroughly broke arms, thighs, shins, ribs, and every other part of their bodies.
For those hesitating in the rear, I stopped at breaking bones or leaving wounds.
For those at the front who radiated killing intent, I made sure to sever tendons and injure their dantians.
“Urgh!”
“Ghk!”
“Bleurgh!”
Those with the will to recover would recover. Those without it would disappear like this.
Either way, it did not matter.
‘It wouldn’t be bad to weed them out while I’m at it.’
The enemy we would eventually face was clear.
To face that enemy, everyone had to unite.
The process of filtering out impurities was essential.
If they overcame this and returned, fine. If they failed to return, that was fine too.
When there was nothing to lose, there was even less reason to hold back.
Whamwhamwham!
Crunch.
More than half of the Wudang Sect members had been incapacitated, and fewer than thirty remained standing.
I turned my gaze toward one of them.
“Hey, Hall Master.”
The Hall Master who had given the order had gone pale.
“Your sectmates are dropping like flies. How about you come down and fight too?”
The Hall Master trembled all over as though he had seen a ghost.
“Y-you... what... what are you...?”
Well, I would have been shocked too.
He could not have expected the me who helped Dam Ak escape and the me now to be this different.
“I-I only meant to make you withdraw your testimony. How did this...?”
The Hall Master looked at me as though he could not grasp the current situation.
“C-can you bear this... after doing something like this to Wudang?”
“Fuck, anyone listening would think I started this.”
“Started it?”
“If you’re going to sit there uselessly like an idiot, at least cheer them on.”
Swoosh!
Sword qi cut through the air and shot toward the Hall Master like a ray of light.
“Urgh!”
The Hall Master reacted too late and hurriedly drew his sword to defend.
“Ghk!”
Perhaps because the attack had caught him off guard, he spat blood.
“What a fucking joke.”
A Hall Master who fled from reality while his fellow disciples were being beaten into pulp.
For some reason, it reminded me of the worthless superiors from my previous life, making me even more irritated.
“Fuck, if you’re in a position with enough responsibility to give orders, you should have been ready to suffer the most!”
I fired the fist force of Myriad Blossoms Invincible Fist.
The fist force shot toward nine vital points and the dantian.
I had no idea how Wudang would respond to this, but I could not hold back any longer.
‘Fuck it. I’ll figure something out.’
Just as ten fist strikes descended upon the Hall Master’s body, a white wind blew.
Whoooosh.
No, it only felt that way.
A flawless white martial robe without a speck of dust.
A man wearing that robe appeared before the Hall Master like the wind and gently swung his sword.
The fist force flying with grim power changed direction as though carried by a stream, spreading in every direction before exploding.
Boomboomboom!
The man in white stood with his sword held behind him as though nothing had happened.
“Yong Soa.”
Yong Soa looked down at the miserable state of his sect’s people with indifferent eyes.
Then his gaze shifted to me.
“Jin Sowoon. As I thought, you...”
Even his voice rang out calmly, without the slightest emotion.
“You are someone who must disappear.”
[1] Nine Palaces: a traditional Chinese nine-part cosmological grid, used here as the formation’s organizing principle.
Footnotes:
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