WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Episode 12: Dark Heaven Secret Realm (11)

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As if the probing stage was over, Cheongun raised his spiritual energy. Pure energy thrummed from his body.

With a flash, Cheongun charged forward even faster than before.

Ise immediately raised an Earth Wall to block his path, but Cheongun’s sword tip sliced through it as though it were tofu.

In an instant, the sword tip was upon him.

Ise hastily twisted aside and drew up his internal qi. The blade grazed his side by less than an inch.

That was not the end.

Spiritual energy shot from the sword tip, transforming into sword forms that poured out in succession.

They were not simple slashes, cuts, and swings. Each followed a path with a clear purpose.

‘I’m faster.’

Even if Cheongun was a sword cultivator who had staked everything on Body Tempering, Ise still had the advantage in movement art.

Ise retreated, and Cheongun pursued.

Chilling sword intent sliced across his skin, even through its coating of spiritual energy.

Cheongun calmly pressed him back as though trimming flesh from a butchered demon beast.

A sword form shot straight at him before splitting into seven streams.

All but one should have been feints, but Ise could not distinguish them.

Using the Giant Weapon Art, he enlarged his hatchet instead of a shield and completely blocked Cheongun’s view.

The black-iron axe blade swelled to an enormous size and cut across the sword paths.

Clang, screech!

A series of ominous metallic sounds rang out. Cracks spread over the black iron’s surface.

In the end, the hatchet could not endure and shattered into pieces.

As it broke apart like glass, several sword lines that it had failed to stop sank directly into Ise’s body.

All seven sword paths had been real. It was a feat that would make even dokkaebi cry out in astonishment.

Sword wounds opened across his shoulder, side, and thigh, and blood sprayed like fountains.

Still, none had cut through bone.

He was not a pure Body Tempering cultivator, but his body had also been remade through Reforge Bones with Spirit and Shed the Mortal Form, Remake the Body.

‘It’s hard to gain the upper hand.’

The problem was that he was still being pushed back.

‘There’s no way through him head-on.’

Despite the throbbing pain of his injuries, Ise’s mind settled into calm. He focused solely on how to defeat the opponent before him.

‘Target the sword.’

Take a sword away from a sword cultivator, and how would he fight?

Dokkaebi Shadow-Hunting Demonic Art.

Four-Directions Strike.

Ise’s spell flew straight for Cheongun’s head. At the same time, he threw a punch.

Cheongun raised his sword, wrapped in spiritual energy, over his head to block the shadow, then caught Ise’s fist with his free palm.

Dokkaebi Shadow-Hunting Demonic Art.

Shadow Net Formation.

This time, a net formed of shadows descended over Cheongun. Cheongun released Ise’s hand and stepped back.

Taking that opening, Ise used the Telekinesis Art to move a broken piece of his hatchet blade toward Cheongun’s side.

Thud!

With a crisp sound, the sharp fragment of black iron dug into Cheongun’s flesh.

Yet it only went in an inch. At most, it had left a scratch.

Cheongun had not even managed to coat himself in spiritual energy to defend, yet his skin was hard as stone.

With one hand, Cheongun pulled out the embedded fragment.

A thin line of blood ran down his side, but there was no worse injury.

Then he gripped his sword and rushed at Ise again.

As Cheongun’s sword tip arced through the air, sword radiance bloomed along its path in layer after layer, like flower petals.

Each petal shot toward Ise from a different direction.

Ise hastily raised an Earth Wall, hurled Fireballs, and tore talismans to raise spikes, but the petals slipped through every gap as though mocking his defenses.

At last, Cheongun’s sword pierced Ise’s abdomen.

As Cheongun slashed his sword sideways to finish him in one strike, the Needle-Launching Armor flashed and pierced Cheongun all over.

That was not all. Flames from the Fire-Release Art surged from Ise’s hand and wrapped around Cheongun’s body.

The flames shattered his spiritual energy and melted his flesh. Cheongun pulled out his sword and retreated.

At that moment, Earth Shadow Snare seized Cheongun’s ankle.

A shadow rose from beneath Cheongun’s feet and grabbed his left ankle. His body faltered for an instant as he tried to retreat.

Ise reached both hands behind his back, toward his storage pouch. Inside was the black porous rock that had not received so much as a scratch even when struck by his hatchet.

He took it out and immediately hurled it at Cheongun with the Telekinesis Art.

It felt as though all his spiritual power was draining from his body at once.

As heavy as the rock was, it took an immense amount of spiritual power to launch it.

The shadow winding around his ankle and the unknown rock flying toward him. Which would Cheongun deal with first?

Cheongun chose the latter.

At the same time, Ise took out the Twin-Curtain Spirit-Domain Sealing Banner, and its warding barrier swallowed the area, stopping the flow of spiritual energy.

Cheongun’s sword, now stripped of spiritual energy, collided violently with the unknown rock.

Crack!

Cheongun’s sword broke with a clear ringing sound.

The blade snapped in half at its center, sending fragments of metal flying in every direction.

The rock’s path shifted slightly from the sword’s resistance, but it still smashed into Cheongun’s shoulder and flew past.

Cheongun was forced a step back. For the first time, panic appeared on his face.

He seemed unable to understand why his spiritual energy had stopped or why his sword had broken.

Ise did not miss the opening.

In the space where spiritual energy had stopped, he drew up demonic qi and created an Earth Spear large enough to pierce through a Thunder Boar’s body.

The enormous Earth Spear, formed from demonic qi, plunged down at Cheongun from the air.

A pillar of earth filled Cheongun’s vision.

It struck him directly in the chest and shattered all his ribs at once.

His body lifted into the air before being thrown backward.

Ise hid the Twin-Curtain Spirit-Domain Sealing Banner back in his storage pouch and took out the Vein-Severing Blade.

It would be ineffective against a cultivator, but it was better than fighting barehanded.

Just as Ise prepared his next move, Cheongun slowly rose from the ground, coughing up blood.

His broken ribs seemed to have grazed his lungs, and his breathing came in harsh, ragged bursts, but he still got back on his feet.

Then he raised both hands.

“I lost. I can’t see any way to win. My master was right when they said the world was vast.”

It was a clean declaration of defeat. As Ise hesitated, Cheongun shook his tangled hair.

“That was the first time I’ve ever had such a brutal fight. What keeps coming out of you? You really overdo it.”

He slowly steadied his breathing.

Blood seeped from the many punctures across his body.

Cheongun was riddled with wounds and had broken ribs, but Ise was injured badly enough that he could barely stand as well.

If the fight had continued, no one could say who would have won.

Even so, Cheongun accepted defeat without complaint.

Cheongun took the black demon core from his robes again and tossed it to Ise.

“Take it.”

Ise caught the demon core and put a Healing Pellet in his mouth.

Without either saying another word, they both sat down at the same time and began circulating their qi.

“What continent are you from?”

“The Eastern Continent.”

“I’m from the Northern Continent. I’ll remember that.”

The Tyrant Sword Sect of the Northern Continent. Ise remembered the name as well.

After a short period of circulation to settle their bodies, Ise slowly approached the stone structure and looked at Cheongun.

Cheongun seemed to have no intention of returning. He stood there with his arms crossed, watching Ise with an easygoing expression.

Noticing Ise’s gaze, Cheongun added as if to prevent a misunderstanding.

“I’m only going to watch, so don’t worry. Go inside.”

“You’re not afraid to go back?”

“You’re sharp.”

Ise burst out laughing at the straightforward admission. Then he made a joke.

“Normally, I’d have to empty your storage pouch, but I’ll let you off.”

“Ha ha ha! How generous of you.”

Ise waved to the openly laughing Cheongun and placed the two inner cores into the holes.

This time, the entire door filled with a vivid blue light.

One silver streak and one black streak joined together, circling once over the door’s surface. The engraved words in the center shone as if light were bursting from within them.

Rumble.

A stone wall descended from the ceiling, sealing the outer entrance first.

A moment later, the inner stone door slowly opened.

The inside of the building was unexpectedly small, a circular stone chamber.

At its center stood a stone stele nearly tall enough to touch the ceiling.

Lines of writing were densely engraved across the upper half of the stele. At the bottom was a ledge that extended about a foot forward like an altar.

A transparent sphere, clear enough to see through, rested quietly atop it.

Ise cautiously approached and looked down at the sphere.

‘Can I touch it?’

It did not seem like something he should touch carelessly. Remembering Irang’s advice, Ise turned his gaze to the stele.

‘This is...’

The densely carved text on the stele was a cultivation art.

What was more, it was an advanced cultivation art unlike anything Ise had ever seen, one that did not even allow itself to be easily understood.

Every line of the formula held its own meaning, but Ise’s current realm was far too low to grasp how those meanings fit together.

The cultivation art’s name was engraved boldly at the top of the stele.

‘Soul-Return Body-Entering Art.’

Returning the soul to enter the body. That was the name of the cultivation art.

‘Is this a demonic art?’

The name alone made it sound deeply suspicious. He had heard that some demonic arts involved body seizure, taking another person’s body.

Still, the sphere beside it gave off such an auspicious aura that it did not seem to be a demonic art.

‘I should record it first.’

His memory was not poor, but it would be a problem if he tried to memorize a formula he did not understand and got even one character wrong.

With nothing else to write on, Ise took out all his blank bamboo slips, drew blood from his fingertip, and began writing down the formula one character at a time.

Even that was not enough, so he wrote the formula onto the rock as well.

The moment he finished copying every line, the formula on the stele gradually vanished. The sphere, which had rested quietly in place, suddenly entered Ise’s body on its own.

‘...?’

Then it disappeared without a trace.

No energy spread through his body, and nothing seemed to have changed.

Yet one fact had been firmly imprinted in his mind. To learn the Soul-Return Body-Entering Art, he had to absorb this sphere.

It was not something Ise had realized himself.

The thought had naturally risen in his mind the moment the sphere entered his body, as though someone had arranged it.

It was as if it declared that only the owner of this fortuitous encounter was qualified to learn the cultivation art.

One incomprehensible thing followed another.

Rumble!

An earthquake shook the ground beneath his feet. Thinking some mechanism had activated, Ise looked toward the exit, but it did not open.

The trembling stopped shortly afterward.

Ise realized he was trapped inside.

No matter how hard he tried, the closed stone door did not move in the slightest.

‘It’ll let me out when the secret realm closes... right?’

Ise stood there in confusion for a moment, then sat cross-legged.

The concentration of heaven-and-earth spiritual energy within the stone chamber was denser than anywhere in the Inner Reaches.

He could no longer access the Inner Reaches, which was practically a treasure vault, so he decided to cultivate for a while before leaving.

‘My spiritual herbs...’

Of course, thinking of the countless spiritual materials left behind in the Inner Reaches still made his heart ache.

Footnotes:

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