WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Episode 15: To the Northern Continent (1)

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Three shattered Golden Cores from Core Formation Realm great cultivators lay scattered at Woo Yu-hui's feet.

She had faced three great cultivators alone.

“Gwisu Temple?”

Ise could not answer.

Just recalling the devastated Gwisu Temple made it feel as though something deep in his chest was being crushed.

The Golden Core inside his robes weighed heavily against him.

A shadow fell across her youthful, handsome face.

For the first time, the bare face of the Core Formation Realm great cultivator took on a grim cast.

“You worked hard.”

As if she could guess how hard Ise had fought, Woo Yu-hui offered only that brief word of praise.

“The others...”

Instead of answering, Woo Yu-hui jerked her chin toward the far side of the warding barrier.

Inside, Winged Dragon Hall disciples were busily recovering the bodies and sorting the storage pouches and other resources taken as spoils.

Only then did Ise realize that he had not collected a single storage pouch during the battle.

It was only natural that he had not been in any state to think about spoils in the middle of all that, but this was the first time he had forgotten the very concept of spoils.

“You're back.”

Gwak Chan greeted him while wiping away blood.

His tone was as glib as ever, but the blood at the corner of his mouth had not been fully wiped away.

“I'm late.”

“What for? It's not like you went off to play around.”

Gwak Chan left it at that, as though there were no more words to add.

Ise looked past Gwak Chan's shoulder toward the front of the mine tunnel.

Winged Dragon Hall disciples moved busily, looking half dead themselves.

Beyond them, not a single cultivator of the Zheng Empire remained standing.

The battle here had ended in victory.

Around twenty Winged Dragon Hall disciples had died. The enemy dead numbered more than ten times that.

And if one counted the enemies Woo Yu-hui had dealt with alone, there was no telling how many had come crawling in here.

“This senior killed eight, no less. As long as they don't cowardly aim for the crotch, this senior is this capable. Hm?”

It seemed stranger to Ise that anyone would actually get hit just because the enemy aimed there, but he did not bother saying so.

In truth, he had already heard that rather than losing to the demon beast tamer, it was more accurate to say Gwak Chan had let the enemy escape.

It was another moment that drove home the Great Exorcist Order's strength.

* * *

In the end, the Great Exorcist Order won the full-scale war against the Zheng Empire.

But it was a victory covered in wounds, one that left a massive scar, so massive that the order might never recover its former might.

The Great Exorcist Order lost Dokkaebi Hall and the dokkaebi as allies, and countless Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators died.

Two factors shattered the balance of power that everyone had expected would be roughly even.

Cheoryang Thunder Gate's entry into the war, and traitors within.

Most of the pureblood cultivator lineages, including Black Tortoise Hall and Phoenix Hall, disabled the Heavenly Pearl Furnace, the Great Exorcist Order's divine artifact, betrayed the order as soon as the war broke out, looted the resources stored in its vaults, fled, seized Cheongsan City in Tabaro, and declared independence.

There were no casualties among them, but the Great Exorcist Order lost vast resources and saw cultivators desert, causing its strength to plummet exponentially.

The Great Exorcist Order lost control of Tabaro, the largest nation among the Three Peninsula Kingdoms, along with its Spiritual Stone mines and Cheongsan City.

But above all, the greatest loss was this.

The death of Chief Master Sugyeom.

* * *

“The Chief Master...”

After returning to the Great Exorcist Order, Ise heard the results of the war and could not finish his sentence.

One by one, the Mountain-Guarding Disciples of the inner halls returned, reduced by more than half, bearing every kind of wound and the marks of a brutal battle.

The war had not even lasted a full day.

The greatest battlefield had, in effect, been the clash between Haeil and Chief Master Sugyeom on one side, and the Zheng Empire's Nascent Soul Realm great cultivator and one hundred Core Formation Realm great cultivators on the other.

Haeil had won there.

Even though the Zheng Empire had charged in with a Nascent Soul Realm great cultivator leading one hundred Core Formation Realm great cultivators, in the end they still could not overcome the wall called Haeil.

The Nascent Soul Realm great cultivator fled after taking grievous injuries, and only a third of the Core Formation Realm cultivators survived to scatter.

In the process, Chief Master Sugyeom died while supporting Haeil from behind.

“The Order Lord made the wrong call. It was a blunder.”

Irang dismissed it in a single sentence.

Haeil had never been someone suited to be a leader.

He was valiant and headlong.

His temperament was fiery to the point of being aggressively combative.

He was the sort better suited to be the vanguard, the sharpest blade in someone's hand.

When the Winged Dragon Hall disciples rolled their eyes around as if they needed an explanation, Deputy Hall Master Irang added one.

“They should have narrowed the front and fought. Even if the other fronts had been pushed back somewhat, Order Lord Haeil was effectively the main force. If he had moved together with a few halls, the Chief Master would not have had to stick to him, Gwisu Temple would not have been left abandoned, and those vermin would not have been left free to betray us.”

Spreading the front wide was exactly what the Zheng Empire had wanted.

If the side with fewer numbers tried to defend too broad an area, there would inevitably be places where the defensive wall thinned out.

Even if it lost the main war, the Zheng Empire would still gain something, whether that was a major mine, a vast blessed grotto, or simply a reduction in the enemy's strength.

So even just to avoid giving the enemy what it wanted, the decision to narrow the front had been essential.

Still, it was true that it would have been a difficult fight even if they had done that.

Perhaps it was precisely because Hall Master Haeil threw himself into the thick of it, drew all eyes to himself, and fought a decisive battle against so many great cultivators that they had managed to win the larger war instead.

Haeil was hot-tempered, but he was not a fool.

More than anyone, he would have known that they could not win the war unless he stepped up and drew the enemy's attention.

It was the sort of problem that had an answer and yet did not.

That was how Irang put it.

“Is Order Lord Haeil all right?”

Ise asked.

His unauthorized departure had become as though it had never happened.

Headquarters was in no position to concern itself with each individual Mountain-Guarding Disciple.

“His injuries are recovering quickly. But they say the shock hit him hard, so he has shut himself away. Understandably so. Chief Master Sugyeom was someone the Order Lord personally chose, kept by his side, and raised. Their bond went back a very long way.”

Irang spoke, then let out a breath like a sigh.

“Still, they need to fill the Chief Master's vacant position quickly. The chaos at headquarters is beyond words.”

Losing the Chief Master meant losing the central figure who had overseen all the Great Exorcist Order's great cultivators and internal affairs up to this point.

The Mountain-Guarding Disciples, now reduced to the Seven Inner Halls, had to be reorganized, and since they had lost the divine artifact that managed the disciples' records, that too had to be replaced.

Cheongsan City, their cornucopia, had been taken, so they also had to decide how disciples would be raised from now on.

And what to do about the outer branch outposts now exposed to danger was another matter of great importance.

There were so many issues that needed to be resolved, yet the one person who held the authority to decide was still too shocked to pull free of it.

“Still, the Hall Masters are meeting for now, so let's wait a bit. Nothing will change just because we gossip among ourselves.”

The seven remaining Hall Masters were said to be holding an emergency council.

Though their strength had weakened, the remaining Hall Masters were people with deep loyalty and support for both the Great Exorcist Order and Haeil.

If anything, the unity between the inner halls would only grow stronger.

Ise could not help feeling that they had paid a steep price to cut away rotting flesh.

Around the time everyone was sorting out their thoughts while tending to their injured bodies, a Message Talisman arrived for Irang.

Irang checked its contents and nodded as if there could be no objection.

“They say the new Chief Master has been decided unanimously.”

“Who?”

“Hall Master Kang I-tae of Kirin Hall.”

“Ah.”

At Irang's answer, Gwak Chan accepted it at once.

Ise also knew the man well.

Kang I-tae was the overall head of the Cheongsan City Training Compound and another of Haeil's trusted right hands, famed for being fair, upright, and a thoroughgoing man of principle.

In this war, although the traitors' unexpected actions cost them Cheongsan City, Kang I-tae still brought his forces safely back to headquarters without losing a single life, and he had even saved White Tiger Hall in its moment of peril.

There could hardly have been a better person to put the chaotic Great Exorcist Order back in order.

“I wouldn't call it a generational change... Should I call it a regency...? Or maybe a restoration?”

When a few hall disciples tilted their heads at Gwak Chan's words, Irang explained.

“Hall Master Kang I-tae originally held the position of Chief Master of the Great Exorcist Order. Until Chief Master Sugyeom was appointed.”

“I see.”

“I heard that when he stepped down from the position, he was so sick of it that he declared he'd never do it again... Still, it seems he must feel a heavy sense of responsibility for the fact that most of the Pearl River Gang Clan turned their backs on us this time. In any case, this is a relief. If it's him, then even if the Order Lord remains absent, there will be no lack in his ability to put the chaos back in order.”

Heeya, who had been quietly listening, cut in.

“But won't there be resistance? People haven't exactly been looking kindly on the remaining nobles.”

“Who knows. That is something the Order Lord and the new Chief Master will have to deal with.”

“What are they going to do about the Heavenly Pearl Furnace?”

“Well... To reactivate the Heavenly Pearl Furnace, they need the Earth-Dokkaebi Flame. Since no one knows when the secret realm where it can be obtained will open again, we have to assume the soul-binding contract is gone for the time being.”

The Heavenly Pearl Furnace. The divine artifact through which Great Exorcist Order disciples formed a soul-binding contract when they entered the order.

The fire of the Heavenly Pearl Furnace, the divine artifact that tracked the location of any Great Exorcist Order disciple who was slain and that protected the disciples' Dao hearts through its oath-binding words, had gone out.

That meant that if someone killed a Great Exorcist Order disciple, it would now be nearly impossible to trace the murderer immediately.

And even aside from direct restrictions, the weight carried by oath-binding words sworn upon a divine artifact had never been light. Now even that minimum hesitation was gone.

From now on, there would be people within the Great Exorcist Order who no longer felt any reluctance about murdering fellow disciples.

That was what it meant for a sect to lose its soul-binding contract.

It became a group no different from any other cultivation sect, stripped of the final means that bound the school together and made its members trust one another.

Perhaps that was the Great Exorcist Order's future.

“And what are they going to do about those traitors?”

At Heeya's next question, Irang could not answer.

In truth, they deserved to be punished thoroughly.

The resources they had looted were nothing less than what the Great Exorcist Order had spent more than two hundred years amassing.

This had gone far beyond the level of plunder that could be overlooked just because they had not completely destroyed the divine artifact or killed any disciples.

“They won't immediately go to war against people who used to belong to the same sect. The aftereffects of the last war are still here.”

But the Great Exorcist Order would not forget this.

It could never sit by and watch traitors who had stabbed it in the back at the moment it needed them most live in luxury.

As time passed and people grew farther apart, even old ties would fade.

If one or two incidents broke out in succession, ties could become enmity in an instant.

It was an age of turmoil.

Ise had no sense at all of what changes this upheaval would bring to the Three Peninsula Kingdoms and the Eastern Continent.

* * *

A few days later, a summons was issued for every member of the Great Exorcist Order.

It was an unprecedented move, one that called in not only the inner disciples at headquarters, but every last person connected to the outer branch outposts as well.

Chief Master Kang I-tae and six Hall Masters stepped onto the platform in the central square before the gathered thousands of disciples.

Haeil still did not appear.

Kang I-tae looked over the crowd once, then slowly opened his mouth.

“I am Kang I-tae, the newly appointed Chief Master. First, I extend my thanks to everyone who risked their life for the Great Exorcist Order, and to all those who supported us in body and spirit alike. You fought well.”

The sound of someone starting to clap gradually grew until it rang through the entire square.

When the noise finally died down, Kang I-tae continued.

“The reason I have gathered all of you here is to announce the changes that will come to the Great Exorcist Order from this point onward.”

Change was inevitable.

The problem was that no one could predict what direction it would take.

Everyone held their breath and waited for him to continue.

“First. The harvesting, use, and damaging of spiritual materials, with the exception of spirit beasts, will be permitted. We will foster alchemists intensively and focus on developing cultivation methods that eliminate pill toxin. This policy will continue until all enemies of the Great Exorcist Order are destroyed and the Eastern Continent is brought under our rule. However, Spirit Beast Grove will remain preserved as it is. That place will remain as the final proof that the Great Exorcist Order once possessed convictions.”

A murmur spread.

At last, even the convictions the Great Exorcist Order had upheld were being laid down in the end.

Only Spirit Beast Grove, protected by spirit beasts so that even the traitors had not dared touch it, would remain as the trace of a forgotten conviction.

“Second. The Great Exorcist Order's domain will be limited to Suari and Gamori. Think of Tabaro as territory effectively lost.”

The reorganization of territory was set.

“Third. The Training Compound will be closed. Instead, we will personally travel through both nations to select and train disciples.”

The method of nurturing the next generation would change.

“Fourth. As of today, the clan system is abolished. From now on, every privilege, facility, and institution related to noble families will be done away with. If there is anyone who receives favor or benefits simply because they share a surname, they will be made an example of. Remember that.”

Only after the fact had they moved to mend the stable and prevent a repeat.

“Lastly, we will close most outer branch outposts and reduce the number of formal missions and self-directed missions. Until the lost lands of the Great Exorcist Order are recovered, all disciples are to devote themselves to cultivation.”

The disciples' direction and goal had been set with precision.

Just as Ise was nodding along, thinking the measures were very much like Kang I-tae, entirely fitting, a voice transmission came to him from Kang I-tae.

‘Cultivator, follow me. The Order Lord is looking for you.’

It was a summons from Order Lord Haeil.

Ise's body stiffened for a moment, then he gave the faintest nod.

It was hard to guess why Haeil was calling for him.

Footnotes:

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