WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈

Chapter 84: Hell's Entrance Exam: Gate ‘II’

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Back when I was in the Sojeong Unit, I saw the sea for the first time while fleeing demonic martial artists.

It was larger and vaster than the Yangtze River, so salty it was impossible to drink, as if someone had mixed in an enormous amount of precious salt.

We had been running for our lives from the Demonic Cult’s pursuers, yet we forgot all about them as we ventured farther out, closer to the sea, just to see it.

The sticky mud that swallowed our ankles was bothersome, but the overwhelming, wondrous sight of nature before us made us forget even that.

Then, after we had stood there for a long time, blankly watching the sea...

The tide began to rise.

At first, the seawater merely brushed our ankles. By the time we came to our senses, it had risen to our chests. When we desperately tried to reach dry land, the sea had already swallowed us whole.

The sea had inspired a terror far greater than being chased by demonic martial artists.

Right now, it felt as if we had been submerged in that same sea.

“Huff... Huff... It’s getting harder to breathe, Senior Brother.”

Killing intent flooded in from every direction, squeezing around us as though seawater had risen over our heads.

The boys’ faces gradually turned pale.

Dongryong, who wore the Demon-Subduing Prayer Beads, seemed to be holding up well. Still, I couldn’t give the beads to Geumpyo or Eunho.

The moment Dongryong took them off, his killing nature might awaken amid this thick killing intent.

“We’re going higher.”

Those who had cast the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web from the foot of Mount Makgan continued pouring out killing intent, as though they intended to fill the entire mountain with it.

The Huang Sword Sect and the Cheongdo Fellowship had formed groups of five to cast the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web. The other sects had formed larger groups of ten to fifteen.

They were making up for differences in martial skill with numbers.

As we ran farther up the mountain, a commotion below made me turn my head.

Flutter, flutter!

Birds that had hidden under the crushing killing intent burst from the forest all at once.

Rustle, rustle!

There was no wind, yet the forest shook.

Then beasts poured from the woods and raced down the mountain in a chaotic mass, regardless of species, as though they had encountered a predator.

Roar!

Grrr!

At the rear of the stampede were bears and tigers. Even those fierce beasts drooled heavily and cried out in desperation, as though they had met their natural enemy.

“Fire!”

At someone’s shout, flying swords and arrows rained down from every direction.

Grrr.

Roar!

The smallest rabbits, followed by deer, boars, roe deer, and countless others, were struck by the hidden weapons flying in from all sides. Their bodies became pincushions and collapsed in mangled heaps.

The bears and tigers kept running despite several arrows striking them, but the martial artists forming the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web leaped in together and slaughtered them in an instant.

The beasts that had ruled Mount Makgan fell like reeds.

All of it ended within a single breath.

Gulp.

Geumpyo, Eunho, and Dongryong swallowed hard, as though they had just seen their own future.

“We don’t have time to waste. Move.”

“...Y-yes!”

“Yes!”

The three brothers came to their senses and hurried onward, trying not to suffocate in the killing intent again.

Yet just as seawater rises faster once it has passed the ankles and reached the chest, the killing intent now swelled far more quickly.

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

It had reached the point where even qi circulation could no longer withstand it.

The mountain summit.

There was nowhere higher to climb to escape the killing intent.

“Listen carefully. Hold this place for thirty minutes.”

“What?”

Eunho murmured, his eyes wide.

“...By then, I think I’ll be missing an arm.”

“Don’t worry. I know the secret teaching of the Lone-Handed Flying Sword as well. If you lose an arm, I’ll teach it to you.”

“...I’ll try to hold on.”

Then I immediately threw myself over the sheer cliff.

“...”

The amusement vanished from Eunho’s face, which stiffened at once.

Geumpyo and Dongryong, still unable to grasp the situation, looked at Eunho.

“What was that? What did you talk about with Senior Brother beforehand?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why did you agree when you didn’t even know what he meant?”

Eunho stared steadily at Geumpyo.

“Do you think Eldest Senior Brother would abandon us?”

Geumpyo was about to ask what nonsense that was, but after a blank pause, he answered.

“No.”

“Then isn’t that enough? Even if he did abandon us, we came prepared for that, didn’t we?”

“...Trying to act cool, are you?”

Geumpyo drew his sword and stepped forward two paces.

He took the front position of the White Tiger Sword Formation.

It was Geumpyo’s stance, showing his firm resolve not to retreat no matter who stood before him.

Eunho moved to the left flank.

After hesitating, Dongryong took the right.

“Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes! Don’t lose any arms or legs.”

At Geumpyo’s words, the two brothers shouted the chant they used whenever they practiced the sword formation.

“Let’s go!”

“Let’s go!”

──────

As I fell freely down the cliff, I spotted the cave described in the report, as though two stone slabs had overlapped to form it. I fired the Flying Dragon Claw and swung myself inside.

After walking through the narrow cave, I found a small spring with the damp smell recorded in the report. Beyond it, a fishy stench filled the cave as though I had entered a swamp.

“Is it hibernating?”

Golden objects resembling roof tiles clung here and there to the walls of the cavern, which was large enough for three or four people to stand inside.

Yet they did not shine with a brilliant golden light. They were a dull yellow, like dried mud.

“It has quite an appetite.”

A huge mound of bones lay piled in one corner of the cave, apparently left behind by the creature’s meals.

There were bones from small animals like roe deer and rabbits, as well as bones that appeared to belong to bears and tigers.

“Don’t snakes usually swallow their prey whole?”

Screeeech!

Had it awakened after hearing me speak?

Or did creatures that surpassed the laws of nature not hibernate in the first place?

The sound of metal scraping against metal pierced my eardrums as it echoed through the cave.

Then two red eyes flashed in the darkness.

“So you’re the old master of Mount Makgan.”

A head as large as an ox.

Golden scales covering its entire body.

It was a Golden-Scaled Azure Thread Serpent that had lived for two hundred years.

──────

Three hundred... No, maybe five hundred?

Dongryong recalled the feast held when every disciple of the Taeul Sect had gathered together.

That had been fun.

Ah.

This wasn’t the time to be distracted.

Geumpyo and Eunho’s faces were pale.

After dodging the arrows and flying swords pouring in from every direction, martial artists approached through the killing intent.

Their movements were slow, as though they were swinging swords underwater.

They seemed incomparably slower than during sword formation practice.

If they moved that slowly, something terrible would happen...

Still, he couldn’t move carelessly.

That would break the sword formation.

Dongryong knew.

His brothers had not become slower.

Their enemies did not seem particularly fast either.

That was why they somehow managed to block the attacks.

But wounds soon began to appear.

Can we hold on like this?

Eldest Senior Brother had said they only needed to endure for thirty minutes, but Dongryong could see no chance of that happening.

He simply knew it by instinct.

Ah, my brothers will die soon.

Things he had never understood before came to him instinctively.

And he saw them.

The countless corpses he had seen so many times.

Geumpyo and Eunho lay among them.

Even if Eldest Senior Brother returned after thirty minutes, there would be no way to fix this.

No, it had been impossible from the start.

Dongryong had never experienced the thing Eldest Senior Brother called the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web before, but he understood this by instinct too.

It was a method for hunting people like wild beasts.

Even if Eldest Senior Brother were here, nothing would change.

And there were frightening people here too.

The martial artists standing beside Jong Seogang of the Huang Sword Sect.

They were very frightening people.

None of them could stand against Eldest Senior Brother alone, but if they joined together and formed a sword formation like ours, even Eldest Senior Brother could do little.

And among the martial artists forming the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web were people like them.

Because of me...

Dongryong knew he was holding back his brothers and Eldest Senior Brother.

Still, he wanted to stay with them.

He hated being left behind alone.

He couldn’t accept that he was no help by himself.

This was the result of his stubbornness.

Would Geumpyo and Eunho have returned too if I had gone back?

Then they might not have to die here.

“Dongryong!”

Geumpyo blocked the sword of a slowly moving martial artist for him.

Even though he knew I was faster now, Geumpyo always did that.

“Geumpyo!”

Eunho guarded Geumpyo’s back. The sword formation broke apart again.

It was always like this.

I kept holding my brothers back like this.

“Reform the sword formation!”

Just as the formation was about to come together, two martial artists squeezed between Geumpyo and Eunho.

We were split apart in an instant, each of us facing enemies alone.

Geumpyo and Eunho’s movements fell out of sync.

Though their wounds continued to multiply, both their gazes remained fixed on me.

“Eunho!”

I quickly cut down the martial artists who had exposed their backs to me, then rushed toward my brothers.

This wouldn’t work.

At this rate, we would all die.

“Dongryong! Stand behind me!”

Geumpyo and Eunho’s faces had begun to turn black. Ignoring the sword formation, they placed me behind them.

That wasn’t why I had come here.

“Brothers...”

“Don’t worry! We’ll make sure you get out of here alive!”

“Fuck. Geumpyo, if one of us has to lose an arm, I’d be the better choice, wouldn’t I?”

“No! I would! You can take over the mill instead!”

“Why are we suddenly talking about succession?”

Sinister enemies stood right before them, pouring out killing intent, yet his brothers still wouldn’t stop trading jokes.

Dongryong let out a quiet laugh without realizing it.

Eunho grinned.

“That’s right, Dongryong. It’s nothing. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.”

No, it doesn’t look like it will.

Eunho was telling an obvious lie.

Dongryong wanted to hear his brother’s silly jokes for a little longer.

...

The thought he had hesitated over until now settled in his mind.

Then he removed the Demon-Subduing Prayer Beads from around his neck.

“Dongryong! I told you not to take that off!”

Vitality burst through his entire body. Something hot pounded in his chest, as though his body, which had seemed ready to collapse, had fully recovered.

“Brothers... Let’s all go back safely.”

Now Dongryong told an obvious lie too, just like Eunho.

Thump, thump.

His racing heart settled.

Instead, his eyes grew hot enough to burn.

One, two, three.

Sword forms took shape in his mind.

Dongryong lightly fitted himself into those images.

“Argh!”

“Ghk!”

“Urgh!”

Three enemies fell in an instant.

Five, six... nine.

One person with every breath.

As though he had forgotten all fear of his first kill, his body moved naturally and took his opponents’ lives.

He was afraid.

No, he wasn’t afraid.

What he truly feared was Geumpyo, Eunho, and Eldest Senior Brother dying here.

To escape that fear, he swung his sword wildly.

...If he kept swinging it like this, the only corpse left here would be his own.

“Damn it! You can’t even handle one little brat!”

His sharpened hearing picked out Jong Seogang’s voice.

Then a terrifying man beside him charged forward.

A frightening person.

He was different from the others.

The images of a fight against this man kept breaking apart.

That likely meant Dongryong’s death.

But he didn’t stop.

Clang, clang, clang!

After they exchanged three moves in an instant, the man’s eyes widened, and he swallowed a groan.

“Hmph.”

The images formed again.

This time, they looked about half complete.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!

After they exchanged ten moves in an instant, the front of the terrifying man’s robe had been cut away.

“You... Who are you?”

The image forming again was complete. He could win. At the end of it, the terrifying man bled.

Just as Dongryong was about to strike with his sword...

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!

Two more terrifying men rushed in.

Now no image formed at all.

“Killing nature... That brat has killing nature!”

“The Heavenly Killing Star?”

“That monster?”

Scornful gazes flew toward him.

It hurt.

No, it didn’t hurt.

Even if he was a monster, as long as he could save his brothers and Eldest Senior Brother...

Dongryong threw himself forward again to form another image.

Geumpyo and Eunho tried to intervene, but other martial artists blocked them.

Don’t come...

Without these people, at least Eldest Senior Brother and my brothers could survive.

Please, don’t come...

Red paint splashed between the broken images.

An image he had never seen before.

The image painted in red continued without interruption.

It was an image in which Dongryong could defeat his enemies, just as he wanted.

But at the end of it, Dongryong fell as well.

A miracle created by the endless craving to kill people and the stubborn obsession to do so, even at the cost of his own life.

-Dongryong! Come to your senses!

-If you keep this up, we’re leaving you behind!

His brothers’ voices from Mount Cheonmok echoed faintly in his ears. Their desperate voices had barely brought him back to his senses then.

For some reason, recalling their voices swept away even the last fear he had of death.

“He must be killed!”

“A Heavenly Killing Star...”

As his fear of death vanished, even more vitality surged through his body.

He drew on the Taeul True Scripture beyond the level he had originally mastered.

Like a gourmet savoring a feast to the fullest, like a calligrapher writing the finest characters.

To deliver one final, perfect kill, the Heavenly Killing Star drew out every bit of Dongryong’s potential.

Is this as far as I go?

Will I not be able to play with my brothers anymore or see Eldest Senior Brother enter the Martial Arts Academy?

What a shame.

If only I could play with my brothers and Eldest Senior Brother again.

If only I could see Eldest Senior Brother proudly enter the Martial Arts Academy...

But he decided not to be greedy anymore. If he could save his brothers, that alone would be enough.

Following the red image that ended with his death, he threw himself forward.

Just as Eldest Senior Brother had calmly thrown himself into a deadly situation in the past.

Dongryong threw himself forward as calmly as he could.

Then...

“Aren’t you adults ashamed? Ganging up on a child?”

His ears perked up.

No way.

Already?

Forgetting even that enemies stood before him, Dongryong turned his head.

Eldest Senior Brother stood there.

“Eldest...”

Dongryong’s mouth fell open.

The enemies who had been attacking Dongryong with their swords flinched and stopped too.

Eldest Senior Brother was running toward them with a golden serpent as large as a bandit stronghold chasing after him.

A curse burst from Gam Cheoljin’s solemn mouth.

“What the fuck is that?!”

Footnotes:

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