WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 185
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Ise had always been good at listening to others.
More precisely, he usually was.
But at the moments that mattered most, the moments when he had to decide his fate, he followed only his own judgment, will, and intuition.
And the stubbornness that surfaced then had never once been broken.
When he had walked toward the Snail-Headed Scholar in the body of a ten-year-old.
When he had cut down the Infant-Cry Dragon Horse that attacked Gwisu Temple.
When he had pursued the demonic cultivator Kim Siwon.
When he had faced the Ghost Lord Ancestor of the Essence-Draining Ghost-Demon Valley.
Every time had been the same.
It was bullheaded resolve that neither the principles of Demon Hunting, another's teachings, nor even the danger of death could stop.
This battle was the culmination of his life, a proving ground where he staked everything he had achieved and hurled his whole being into the trial.
Just as Ryu Seonghan's Dao heart had been when Ryu found their place to die, threw everything away without retreating, and completed vengeance with their life.
Unyielding unto death.
Even if it led to death, he would not retreat.
If he could win, he did not mind dying.
The blood droplets from Bi Hyeongrang's burst wrist had not yet fallen.
Primordial qi fired from Yeowol condensed in midair and took shape.
A golden spear as large as a house plunged down before Bi Hyeongrang.
KRAAASH!
The floor of the main hall caved in completely.
The throne and pillars shattered into powder at once and flew into the air.
But Bi Hyeongrang was no longer beneath the spearpoint.
His figure flickered and blurred with the crackle of lightning before reforming six or seven steps away.
His ruptured wrist had already healed.
“I'll give you one final chance. If you don't retreat now, you will die.”
Instead of answering, Ise tossed Yeowol upward.
The hatchet, enlarged in an instant with Giant Weapon Art, fell over Bi Hyeongrang's head.
Once again, Bi Hyeongrang's body blurred like lightning and reappeared out of its path.
“The fact that you must not die in the Lower Realm has nothing whatsoever to do with me. Don't expect me to preserve your life.”
Ise watched the path of Bi Hyeongrang's scattering form and calculated.
That lightning spell.
It temporarily transformed the divine soul itself into lightning, making attacks unable to reach it.
It was also the secret behind the uncanny movements Bi Hyeongrang had displayed during his battle with Master Mongryeon.
Ordinary spell arts could not harm him at all.
Ise's hand brushed his storage pouch.
A palm-sized Foundation Establishment Realm formation artifact shaped like a flag planted itself in the floor.
A formation that disrupted the flow of lightning cultivation methods spread out.
A mere Foundation Establishment Realm sacred relic could not stop a Nascent Soul Realm spell.
But it could slow its activation. It could make it inconvenient.
That was enough.
Ise darted in from close range.
Dokkaebi Shadow-Hunting Demonic Art.
Thousand-Pound Strike.
A blow layered with the shadows spread across the dokkaebi clan's sacred ground descended toward Bi Hyeongrang's chest.
It was like a mountain falling.
Then it happened.
Flash!
The bracelet around Bi Hyeongrang's wrist shone.
Ise's vision turned white.
Lightning released in an instant blew away his entire chest.
Ribs and flesh vanished completely, leaving his Golden Core exposed to the open air.
Yet in the next moment, flesh began filling in around the exposed Golden Core at a mad pace.
The three medicinal pellets he had swallowed before the battle, the Lightning-Tribulation-Reducing Pellet, Tribulation-Failure Preservation Pellet, and Golden Core Preservation Pellet, were proving their worth.
They subdued the lightning qi, held his body and soul together, and protected his Golden Core.
Without even looking down at his regenerating chest, Ise kept his eyes on Bi Hyeongrang.
He had sensed it from the moment Bi Hyeongrang stored the lightning qi from the heavenly tribulation in his hand. As expected.
Even after Ise had planted a formation artifact to disrupt lightning cultivation methods, the lightning strike had come.
That meant it was not Bi Hyeongrang's spell.
It was the bracelet's power, a defensive sacred relic that had gathered the lightning qi cast down by the heavenly tribulation.
‘I've lost most of the effect of those precious pellets, but...’
He had exposed one of Bi Hyeongrang's major sacred relics and used up its one attack.
It was cheap at the price.
The heavenly tribulation would not strike twice, so the bracelet could not be reloaded.
“Oh? To think you predicted even my treasure artifact...”
Scrrrape!
Before Bi Hyeongrang could finish, Wind-Gold Submerging Threads wrapped around his body and gnawed at him.
It was the second net Ise had laid throughout the air at the same time he fired the golden spear.
Wind Blades followed, flying in from every direction like the teeth of a comb.
“I have never shown this before...”
Hummm!
Ise had no intention of conversing.
With a division of divine sense astonishing enough to make one's tongue click, he unleashed Five Elements spell arts in rapid succession.
When fireballs burned up Bi Hyeongrang's vision, golden spears burst from the smoke. When Bi Hyeongrang knocked aside the golden spears, Earth Spears rose beneath his feet.
It was a chain refined thousands of times through fifteen years of imagined spell duels.
It was not merely an onslaught that gave no room to breathe. It gave no chance even to think of breathing.
Yet Bi Hyeongrang disrupted the entire barrage of spell arts with one gesture.
“...”
Then he formed a blood-red sphere around himself.
The Blood Cultivation Art, one of Cheoryang Thunder Gate's four secret inheritances.
Yet it was a defensive spell that did not exist anywhere in the Blood Cultivation Art Ise had learned.
“You have quite a foul temper, attacking while someone is speaking.”
“Do you fight with your mouth?”
Twitch.
For the first time, a crack appeared in Bi Hyeongrang's expression.
“Certainly...”
His expression soon settled, and the corners of his mouth curved smoothly upward.
“You prepared quite thoroughly. It is obvious how desperately you wish to kill me.”
“If you know that, die quietly.”
“If you have prepared this seriously, I should respond in kind. You have paid enough for the answer to your question.”
The Blood Cultivation Art unfolded in earnest.
The surrounding land was soaked with the blood of thousands of slaughtered demonic cultivators.
There was more than enough material for the spell.
Scarlet light flashed, and sinister spikes rapidly grew larger as they rushed toward Ise.
Ise extended his hand to meet them.
Dokkaebi Bloodflame, brought to Great Completion, ignited.
The spell arts wielded by the two great cultivators collided head-on.
It was the first direct clash since the battle began.
Blood, bright red as flame.
Flames, bright red as blood.
The two spell arts, like twins, crashed directly into each other in the middle of the main hall.
The world was dyed red.
As the two scarlet radiances tangled together to devour each other, every fragment of the main hall melted and flowed away.
The winner of that struggle of power, strong enough to erase the entire building, was Ise's Dokkaebi Bloodflame.
The violently aggressive bloodflame split apart the spikes and swallowed Bi Hyeongrang's upper body whole.
The smile disappeared from Bi Hyeongrang's charcoal-blackened face.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
At that moment, parasitic demons that could not be seen by either sight or divine sense burst out all around Ise.
They had scattered during the struggle of power, creeping closer and closer while leaking demonic qi toward him.
Evil spirits then clung to him like leeches, but the aura of his Golden Core drove them away as though roaring at them.
“Don't play petty tricks.”
As Ise brushed off the parasitic demons' remains with the Golden-Needle Ring's barrier, he became certain.
Bi Hyeongrang had adapted to his new realm as naturally as though he had already reached the Nascent Soul Realm before.
But he had not completely mastered the power of the Nascent Soul Realm.
If he had, he would not have had to give up his face in that direct confrontation.
At some point, Bi Hyeongrang's mouth had closed tightly, like that of a Mouthless Ghost.
Ise found that change deeply satisfying.
Bi Hyeongrang raised a hand toward the sky.
Blood-red clouds billowed above the ground of Gwisu Temple.
Red rain began to fall beneath them.
Sssshhhh!
The ground wherever the drops touched bubbled and melted away.
It was extremely acidic rain that dissolved everything it touched.
A wide-area spell with nowhere to hide.
Ise's body scattered like wind.
He turned his very form into wind and slipped between the falling rain.
Wind-Riding Art, brought to Great Completion.
It had an effect much like Bi Hyeongrang's lightning escape art.
You're not the only one who's hard to hit, Bi Hyeongrang.
The wind gathered again behind Bi Hyeongrang.
Yeowol swung.
At the same time, an Earth Wall rose from the ground and formed a dome around them in an instant.
Bi Hyeongrang's route of escape, as he tried to turn into lightning and flee, was blocked.
Inside the confined dome.
Bi Hyeongrang's defensive spell collided with Ise's Thousand-Pound Strike.
The contest of strength was brief.
Yeowol crushed through the defensive barrier and drove straight toward the abdomen where the Nascent Soul rested.
It had landed properly.
The moment Ise became certain of it, something in Bi Hyeongrang's robes lit up again.
Just before it could strike his body, the slash bounced off a curtain of light.
How many defensive spirit artifacts had he prepared?
Instead of being knocked back, Ise countered with Dokkaebi Bloodflame.
The flames of bloodflame and Bi Hyeongrang's lightning qi tangled together inside the dome.
KRAAASH!
The Earth Wall exploded.
Amid the rain of dirt, the two faced each other again in ruined condition.
Ise's left arm was shredded to rags. Half of Bi Hyeongrang's scholar's robe had burned away, exposing charred bare flesh.
His skin was blackened in places.
Nothing remained of the neat scholar he had once resembled.
Ise spoke first.
“They say that once a cultivator reaches the Nascent Soul Realm, they can read heavenly omens. That a Nascent Soul Realm great cultivator can read one or two moves into the future during battle.”
He continued, catching his breath.
“But you can't.”
Orthodox cultivators sought heaven's permission and overcame its trials to advance in realm.
Demonic cultivators advanced by cutting off heaven's gaze and severing that connection.
“You half-baked bastard.”
Bi Hyeongrang glared at Ise.
He said nothing, but the shock and humiliation he felt were plain.
At last, he revealed what he had saved until the end.
His hand slipped into his robes and took out a black sphere.
Ise's eyes narrowed.
He remembered that artifact.
The day Bi Hyeongrang had driven Master Mongryeon into a corner. The unidentified thing that had floated behind Bi Hyeongrang and slowly gnawed away at her strength.
The instant the sphere rose into the air, Ise felt his internal qi rapidly leaking away.
It was an artifact of qi absorption. The longer the battle lasted, the more it sucked away the opponent's internal qi and weakened them.
Now that Bi Hyeongrang had reached the Nascent Soul Realm, the sphere's power was even stronger and more sinister than before.
‘Is that his Natal Spirit Artifact?’
Then all the blood on the ground rose at once.
Blood Puppets made of clotted blood formed into countless human shapes and charged at Ise.
Wind Blades spread like a fan and sliced through the ones in front.
The blood rose again from where they fell and became the next puppets.
Their numbers were endless.
The blood shed by thousands of demonic cultivators had become inexhaustible material.
All the while, like sand falling through a sandglass, his internal qi continued to be drained away.
It was a battle where Bi Hyeongrang only needed to create puppets from limitless resources and wait with folded arms for Ise's internal qi to run dry.
Even in such an unfair battle, Ise silently unleashed spell arts, driving back the Blood Puppets that rushed him.
Crackle!
Lightning flew from beyond the waves of Blood Puppets.
Ise poured an enormous amount of internal qi into the Golden-Needle Ring.
A barrier spread out and received the lightning.
Crack!
The barrier, which had tried to block even one Nascent Soul Realm spell, shattered. Along with the treasure artifact, everything below Ise's elbow was blown away.
After regenerating his elbow, Ise retreated with gritted teeth and assessed his remaining internal qi.
It was steadily nearing its limit.
The spell arts he unleashed with all his strength could not get past the Blood Puppets filling earth and sky to reach the black sphere.
Bi Hyeongrang seemed to have finished the same calculation.
Lightning qi began gathering over his head.
A massive bolt of lightning formed, like an entire stretch of sky folded into one place.
Its mass of light was so enormous that the Shamans at altars dozens of li away all raised their heads.
Ise could not stop it with the internal qi he had left.
Bi Hyeongrang had judged so, and his judgment was correct.
So, as though delivering a final blow, he gathered ample power before bringing it down.
At the instant the world was erased in white.
Yeowol extended toward the sky.
The blue-green Natal Spirit Artifact began swallowing the lightning.
The power it could not swallow overflowed and tore Ise's entire body apart.
His head was blown away, holes opened through his torso, and both legs vanished.
The Tribulation-Failure Preservation Pellet desperately held his soul and remaining body together.
And amid that carnage, it protected only the right hand gripping the hatchet.
Telekinesis moved that hand.
“...?”
Bi Hyeongrang, in the midst of casting his spell, suddenly felt a strange sense of discord.
Only an instant had passed, but something had happened.
An anomaly. That was the word that rose in Bi Hyeongrang's mind.
Ise did not grant even that brief opening.
The lightning Yeowol had swallowed and the primordial qi Ise had gathered to his very limit were restored and erupted at a single point.
Return-to-Origin Fire Strike.
Flames that could melt heaven and earth swallowed Bi Hyeongrang.
When the flames cleared, half of Bi Hyeongrang's body was gone.
From shoulder to flank, diagonally.
He said nothing. His mouth was gone to begin with.
What remained of one eye in the surviving half stared down at his severed cross-section.
Only then did he realize that his body was not recovering.
Bi Hyeongrang panicked.
Faced with an emotion he had felt for the first time in hundreds of years, he could do nothing but stand there.
Ise's headless, legless body remained upright without falling.
It is not over yet, Bi Hyeongrang.
You are not going to fall like this, are you?
As though that strike were a signal flare, beings filled with demonic qi rushed in from afar.
With the speed of darkness arriving at night.
Like a thin black line drawn across the horizon.
Gong Wol-a, Acting Leader of the dokkaebi clan, and the clan's elite warriors.
His kin were coming.
The reinforcements Ise had summoned with his message appeared to save him at precisely the moment he had requested.
The dokkaebi's demonic arts, unleashed as though venting their pent-up rage, immediately began raining down indiscriminately upon Bi Hyeongrang, whose upper body had been sliced away diagonally.
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