WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 29: Episode 4: Bamboo-Tube Beauty (10)
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‘I’ll close in first.’
Ise hurled the hatchet he had been gripping with all his strength.
The hand axe spun toward Kim Siwon, who was retching. Though it struck him squarely, it did not leave so much as a scratch.
Kim Siwon had not even tried to block it.
“With tricks like that...!”
Kim Siwon reached into his robes and pulled out a talisman.
It brimmed with golden energy before shooting toward Ise.
Sensing its ominous power, Ise immediately raised his black iron shield and blocked the talisman.
The instant it touched the shield, the talisman split apart like a net and tried to swallow it whole.
Before the sticky net could bind him as well, Ise threw the shield to his left and charged Kim Siwon without slowing.
Only about three steps remained between them.
One step. Another talisman flew from Kim Siwon’s robes.
Curled into a sharp point like a narwhal horn, it flew straight into Ise’s left palm.
More accurately, Ise raised his palm and blocked it.
Another step.
The sharp edge of the Vein-Severing Blade, the treasure he had kept carefully hidden since leaving Gwisu Temple, flashed in the sunlight.
The final step.
The Vein-Severing Blade flew straight for the demonic cultivator’s neck, aiming for the carotid artery.
Yet just before it pierced his neck, Ise’s body burst into flames.
“Elder!”
Only after hearing Bamboo-Tube Beauty scream did Ise realize he had been struck by an unknown spell.
A massive blaze swallowed his entire body. Through his warped vision, he saw Kim Siwon glaring at him while holding a red treasure artifact.
The flames pouring from that artifact were burning him.
‘Hot...’
His advance stopped in an instant. The pain was so intense that it felt as though his mind would melt away.
After six years of grueling training, he had thought himself accustomed to any pain. Yet the scorching agony was worse than anything Ise had imagined.
Then the support he had been waiting for arrived.
Splat!
A huge drop of water fell over Ise’s head.
The flames vanished. Heat still shimmered from his body, and his entire body still burned as if it were on fire, but his vision quickly cleared.
Only then did Ise realize he was soaked from head to toe.
A water-attribute spell.
Seolryeong must have regained her senses and used one of her spirit artifacts.
Right.
A scion of a noble family with no shortage of spirit artifacts had his back.
Ise drove the Vein-Severing Blade toward Kim Siwon’s neck.
Kim Siwon’s arm shot up as if flailing, blocking the strike.
The Vein-Severing Blade could not pierce Kim Siwon’s arm.
An ordinary blade could not break through skin covered in a cultivator’s spiritual energy.
Knowing that, Kim Siwon had blocked the dagger with his arm after gauging Ise’s realm.
“A half-baked Daoist who can’t even infuse spiritual energy into a weapon...!”
The corner of his mouth curled in mockery.
Just as he considered which spirit artifact to use to finish Ise off, Ise’s other hand seized his free wrist.
“Get your filthy hand off me.”
That grip was worth acknowledging.
No, Kim Siwon could see that Ise was gifted in every regard, physical ability, courage, and judgment.
The boy lacked only one thing, reverence for cultivators of a higher realm.
“Is that all you’ve prepared, you insect...”
Kim Siwon stirred his spiritual energy and prepared to cast the most powerful spell he could use.
The foul energy twisting his qi and blood had finally begun to fade. Now he would show Ise what a true difference in realms looked like.
“Ise!”
Yet there was more than one enemy.
The girl who had been harassing him from behind with low-quality talismans attacked again.
A huge drop of water smashed into his face like a hammer.
Then, as if that were not enough, the water soaking his body immediately froze.
Perhaps because they countered the fire-attribute spirit artifact he used, water- and ice-attribute talismans posed a much greater threat to him.
“This is only buying time!”
Kim Siwon did not realize it.
He did not realize what that brief moment Seolryeong had bought had done for Ise.
Hummm.
Golden spiritual energy flashed from Ise’s arm.
Kim Siwon could not continue speaking once he understood what it meant.
He had clearly confirmed that this brat was at the second star of the Qi Condensation Realm.
He should not have known how to bring spiritual energy outside his body or infuse it into a weapon.
Yet the spiritual energy within Ise’s body gradually flowed out and began to wrap around the Vein-Severing Blade.
And it was heaven-and-earth spiritual energy, purer and denser than Kim Siwon’s own.
“That can’t be! You damned butchers...!”
Ise’s eyes were bloodshot as he tightened his grip on the Vein-Severing Blade.
The veins in his hand stood out as if they might burst at any moment.
Thrust!
At last, the Vein-Severing Blade sank into Kim Siwon’s forearm.
His plan to seize Kim Siwon’s throat in one strike had failed, but this was enough.
The treasured Vein-Severing Blade was a sacred relic among sacred relics. The moment it touched demons of the Qi Condensation Realm, it brought them death.
As though it had been starving all this time, the Vein-Severing Blade began devouring Kim Siwon’s demonic qi.
Kim Siwon’s face drained of color when he realized the demonic qi in his body was disappearing. He tried to reach into his robes with his other arm, but Ise’s grip held him firmly in place.
Ise slammed his forehead, wrapped in spiritual energy, into Kim Siwon’s nose.
“Gah!”
Kim Siwon screamed and fell backward.
Ise pulled out the Vein-Severing Blade and drove it into his solar plexus.
“That’s... impossible. Advancing a realm in the middle of battle...”
“Bamboo-Tube.”
With the demonic cultivator completely subdued, Ise called to Bamboo-Tube Beauty. She flinched.
“Any last words you want to say?”
“...”
“I’ll take that as no.”
“My name!”
Bamboo-Tube Beauty suddenly raised her voice.
Sensing death, the cultivator blinked twice and turned toward the demon, whose hands were clasped together.
“Geuma... That is my name. It means Golden Child.”
Her voice was wet with tears.
Bamboo-Tube Beauty, Geuma, haltingly spoke what would be their final words to each other.
“It is the name you gave me, carrying the meaning that I was precious. I was so happy. So very happy.”
The light began to fade from the demonic cultivator’s eyes.
What had he thought in his final moments?
Regret that he had failed to attain immortal cultivation?
Regret for following them here?
A lingering attachment to life?
His ragged breathing stopped.
Ise half rose, pulled out the Vein-Severing Blade, then stabbed him once each in the head, neck, and heart.
It looked cruel, but he had heard that some demonic arts hid extra lives in vital organs.
Even with thorough preparation, the difference in their realms had been clear, and his injuries were severe.
He could not make another idiotic mistake.
Still not satisfied, he picked up the hatchet lying nearby and prepared to bring it down on Kim Siwon’s Adam’s apple.
He had intended, as usual, to sever a demon’s head, put it on display, and show his demon-hunting emblem.
“Ise!”
“...?”
“That’s enough. Stop there. You can do that, can’t you?”
At Seolryeong’s cry, Ise stopped his arm.
Then his eyes met those of the spiritual material watching him.
Bamboo-Tube Beauty stared at the demonic cultivator’s corpse with a foolish, vacant expression, tears streaming down her face.
Ise spat. Burned skin, spit, and blood splattered onto the ground.
“Seolryeong. You can perform a spirit-sending rite on a demonic cultivator too, right?”
“Yeah. You can... More importantly, are you okay? Your body...”
“Do you want to do it, or should I?”
Seolryeong could not bring herself to say she would do it while facing Ise, whose skin had been charred black. She shook her head.
Ise took the Purification Staff in hand and recited the formula for the 「Demon Hunting, Spirit Release, and Qi Condensation Art」.
The demonic qi remaining in Kim Siwon’s body was purified and drawn into Ise.
After a while, the flow of spiritual energy being absorbed stopped.
Then the remaining demonic qi was drawn into his body unchanged.
‘...The remaining demonic qi isn’t dispersing.’
Great Exorcist Order had said that the amount of demonic qi that could be purified at once was limited by the cultivator’s realm and the prey’s realm.
He had not expected the demonic qi left after purification to be absorbed without changing at all.
Rather than mention that, Ise roughly tore the fine pouch from Kim Siwon’s robes, took out the Demon-Sealing Talisman Book, and recited the formula once more. Kim Siwon’s corpse entered the talisman book and was imprinted there like a painting.
He was briefly astonished by the strange sight, then turned his eyes toward the demon left behind.
Now that the whole truth had come to light, Kim Siwon had been alive.
But he had only used her to gain her spirituality, then abandoned her once she was no longer useful.
In the end, having lost all sense of morality and become a demonic cultivator, he had come to find her with lies so he could use her again, even after she had become a demon.
The betrayal of the master she had trusted must have shocked her deeply. Geuma’s body had visibly become more transparent.
Soon, she would fully transform into a demon and lose her reason.
“...”
Seolryeong remained silent.
“That’s what happened.”
Ise gave a brief summary of the situation.
It left a foul feeling in him, as though he had personally cut the last thread she had been holding onto.
The wounds carved into her through all those years of waiting had piled up and rotted like pus, only to burst open at last in the name of truth.
“I’m sorry.”
Geuma stood frozen in place. After staring blankly into empty space for a long time, tears finally rolled from her large eyes.
“Waaah...”
The tears of a being who had become a demon glittered mournfully.
“Even if you become a demon, I’ll perform a spirit requiem for you, so you can enter the Gate of Reincarnation without accumulating evil karma. Don’t worry.”
Seolryeong gently comforted her.
“I...”
Footnotes:
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