Chapter 50
Chapter 50
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 50
Chapter Title: Heaven, Earth, and Man
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#017_Dagger (3)
#050
1.
I'd had a hunch deep down.
No matter how fiercely we fought here.
This round was ending right here.
This city, Necropolis, was a bottomless pit that sucked every last drop of hope dry, just like the abyss.
A city of death where even the faintest light got buried in the pitch black.
Eiming's depletion was stark.
From watching him up close, Eiming was the powerlifter type, or maybe a strongman.
His punches packed power, sure, but his stamina was crap.
The Golden Carp Clan had unleashed their jiangshi to target that weakness exactly, and the damage had piled up way too much.
And then there was the Golden Carp Clan's last boss, their red stick, Ri Cheng.
A 3rd Rank Mage. A powerhouse who could gain the upper hand even against Eiming at full strength.
A 2nd Rank who'd gone half-mad playing hide-and-seek with a hundred jiangshi.
Versus a 3rd Rank who'd just had a hot meal and a fresh sauna session.
When those two clashed, the outcome was obvious.
“Gah!!!”
Eiming charged at Ri Cheng, exploding forward, but his body got flung back.
He tumbled pathetically across the ground.
“Big bro!!!”
“Don’t come closer! Cough…!”
Eiming spat out thick, black blood.
I couldn’t believe it, even watching it happen.
Sure, Eiming’s hamstrings had weakened a bit, but if I’d been in front of that charge?
I’d have been minced into fine-ground meat without a chance to scream.
Yet Ri Cheng blocked it five times without even pulling his hands out of his sleeves.
What kind of magic was that? Telekinesis? Psychokinesis?
It was like Eiming had slammed into an invisible wall mid-charge and bounced off.
“Tsk tsk, Pavilion Master Eiming, your stubbornness is admirable, but you still fight like a brute. If you’d just stayed put, I could’ve killed you painlessly.”
“Ptoo.”
“But your strength’s all spent anyway, isn’t it? You’ve got no chance of winning.”
Ri Cheng taunted him leisurely.
Eiming rose again, spitting bloody saliva.
Ri Cheng’s tone was downright sleazy, but he wasn’t wrong.
The fight was already over.
The only reason Eiming was still alive was one thing.
A mage’s corpse held immense value in itself—and an intact one was worth even more.
What Ri Cheng was doing wasn’t fighting.
It was more like careful butchery to harvest unmarred meat.
Eiming had to know that.
“Rowen.”
“Yeah, big bro.”
“Sorry. Looks like… I won’t be able to stick with you after all.”
An awkward smile crept across his vicious face—one so ugly you couldn’t call it handsome even if your mouth twisted sideways.
“Rowen, one last question.”
“Ask away.”
“Do you plan to keep serving me… as your big bro?”
“Of course….”
I started to answer lightly, but the words caught in my throat.
I’d never once truly served Eiming as my big bro.
To me, he was the idiot who’d tried collecting Ceres’s corpse as a trophy, only to lose his head to Kisara’s blade.
The moron who’d giggled over stockings and heels while getting infiltrated by a spy.
And his hobbies?
Dressing in drag and hosting tea parties among the dolls he’d made from corpses.
Even Hannibal would’ve recoiled in horror, going, “What the hell is that?”
That’s why.
The loyalty I’d shown him wasn’t real loyalty.
I’d just been waiting for the right moment to smash the back of his skull.
If the chance came, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him.
Even now, I was hiding a ton from him.
That was the Necropolis-optimized lifestyle I’d learned.
What looked like brotherhood and loyalty on the surface was, coldly speaking….
Just meddling from a gullible fool who was easy to exploit.
And yet, right here and now.
I clasped my right fist in my left palm.
“You’re my one and only big bro.”
“Good! Then let this big bro give his little brother one final lesson.”
Eiming chuckled, patted my shoulder, and turned back toward Ri Cheng.
“Rowen! Do you know what the three powers of a mage are?!”
At a time like this? Baffled, I answered from behind his back anyway.
“The three powers? Body, energy, and spirit, right?”
That’s when.
-Whoooosh
The wind blew.
A hot gust from somewhere fluttered the hem of his blood-soaked changpao like a heavy flag.
-Whoooosh
No, not a gust.
“Wrong! You don’t know a damn thing!”
Hot mana rising from Eiming’s body made the air tremble.
“That’s the logic of hack warlocks and gutter trash! The path I pursue isn’t some petty crap like that!!!”
Eiming’s thick finger pointed to the sky. The ground.
And finally, his own chest.
“My path is heaven, earth… and man!!!!”
With a hearty laugh.
-Rumble rumble
An invisible aura surged from Eiming’s body.
The F Sector smog swirled like it’d been caught in a vortex, spiraling up to the heavens.
“He still has this much power left…?!”
I could see Ri Cheng’s ever-relaxed face stiffen.
In the eye of the storm, Eiming took a heavy step forward.
-Thud
The earth screamed and cracked under just one footfall.
“My head holds up the blue heavens, my feet tread the yellow earth!!!”
Red earthly energy surged from beneath his feet, and blue heavenly energy plunged from the sky.
-Kwaaaaa!!!
The two colossal forces pierced Eiming’s body and fused as one.
“This body shall become the pillar linking the vast heavens and the thick earth!!”
A massive pillar of light pierced Necropolis’s soot-choked sky.
It stretched all the way to Aden above.
“Flowers bloom upon the stem connecting heaven and earth!!! This is my stage!!! Let the curtain rise!!!”
From within that beautiful, tragic pillar of light….
“——True Dawn, Tyrant’s Seductress.”
Chanting the technique’s final verse, Eiming slowly stepped forward.
Overwhelmed by his sheer presence, I swallowed hard.
“What…?!?!”
Ri Cheng’s eyes bulged like they’d pop out.
Eiming’s bald head had become flowing long hair whipping in the wind.
His massive 130kg frame was draped in a blue palace gown adorned with peacock feathers.
White powder makeup crisscrossed with red and black lines.
His eyes slanted up grotesquely in crimson, his lips gleaming blood-red.
It looked like a mask at first glance.
The exaggerated makeup of a Peking opera actor—jianpu.
Eiming now embodied a bewitching princess straight off the opera stage.
Just with a much higher BMI.
(For the record, traditional Peking opera features only men on stage, so historically accurate.)
(Though what the hell does heaven-earth-man have to do with cross-dressing?)
Who gives a damn about that!
“Do whatever the hell you want, big bro!!!”
Cross-dressing had always been the manliest act a man could pull off.
But there was a moron here who couldn’t grasp that basic truth.
“Wh-what is that?! That revolting getup…!!!!”
Snapping out of it, Ri Cheng stammered and pointed accusingly.
“The essence of born beauty.”
“Bullshit!!!!”
“Can’t you even recognize it?”
Eiming curled up cat-like and haughtily cried out.
“Rowen! Go! I’ve got this!”
The moment he unfurled his body.
With a flutter of silk robes, he vanished from sight.
No more ground-shattering, air-ripping destructive charges like before.
A 130kg behemoth moved without sound, without wind, without the slightest vibration.
He reappeared right beside Ri Cheng.
“You disgusting freak! Stay away from me! Get off!!!”
Ri Cheng panicked, forgetting his persona entirely. Faint golden threads shimmered around him.
At his gesture, countless strands poured down like ancient willow branches tens of thousands strong.
“Myriad Golden Threads!!!”
A golden waterfall shredding space to bits.
Its absolute cutting power clashed head-on with Eiming’s fist.
——Boom!!!!
A deafening roar that flipped heaven and earth.
“Whoa! Holy shit!”
Eiming was a beast after all!
I’d thought he was a bit weak for a 2nd Rank!
He’d been hiding his true power!
“This hideous magic…! How dare you show me something this grotesque!!! Die!”
The two collided again and again.
To my eyes, it was like two natural disasters smashing into each other.
No room for me to butt in or help. Not on this level.
All I could track were Eiming’s afterimages flickering like teleportation.
And the golden threads slicing space like wind-tossed branches.
-Thud! Boooom!
Gut-shaking vibrations rang out.
Air screamed and burst every time their powers crossed.
“Hraaaaaah!!!!”
One thing was clear: Eiming was burning his life force to fight.
He was using power beyond his limits, plain and simple.
Bloody mist trailed every movement.
Blood sprayed from bursting veins with every breath, every motion.
“Eek! Get away! You monster!”
Ri Cheng seemed freaked by Tyrant’s Seductress Eiming’s appearance, but that was it.
His golden threads writhed like living things, blocking Eiming’s charges effortlessly.
-Rumble rumble boom!!!
But.
“Raaaaagh!!!!”
Little by little, he pushed through.
Like a fairy swimming upstream against the golden waterfall.
Even as the threads tore his clothes, flayed his flesh, scraped his bones.
He advanced without stopping.
“Being born beautiful!!!! Versus being born ugly and striving to become beautiful!!!!”
One step closer to Ri Cheng.
“Which is greater?!”
Ri Cheng’s smug face paled by the second.
“N-no…! Stay back…! Stay back, I said!!!”
Defying his fated path.
Terrified before Eiming, who blazed gloriously with his life as kindling.
“Raaaaah!!!!”
And finally.
Eiming’s palm touched Ri Cheng’s chest through the golden waterfall.
-Tap
A tiny sound buried in the roar-filled battlefield.
But it rang in my ears like thunder.
The moment bewilderment clouded Ri Cheng’s eyes.
-Dooooong!!!
A colossal gong rang out like from some hermit’s retreat.
Ri Cheng’s body exploded like a water balloon.
2.
With Ri Cheng’s death.
The golden threads filling the space snapped one by one and scattered.
Golden snow flurried across all of F Sector.
I kicked off the ground at once.
Eiming stood at the heart of that golden blizzard.
“Big bro! You okay?!”
“Yeah, Rowen… Don’t worry. Right now, I’m the strongest….”
Eiming’s upturned lips faltered as he collapsed limply.
“Big bro!!!!!”
I rushed over and caught him, supporting his weight.
Up close, his condition was way worse.
His shredded lungs rattled with every breath.
His prized tattoos were gone, his skin flayed clean off.
His massive body burned like it’d scald me just to hold.
Alive, barely—clinging to life by a thread, a walking corpse.
“Big bro….”
“Rowen, like I said… I probably can’t go with you.”
“Don’t say that! If you don’t go, I’m not going either!”
“Listen to big bro….”
Eiming barely reached into his robes and pulled something out.
Five blood-soaked Universal Currencies, damp and sticky.
“With these… you can work the elevator…. Cough…! Once you reach Aden…. Head straight to the smugglers’ district… to the Blossoming Tower…. Say my name, and….”
If he’d saved this much power, he could’ve escaped alone.
But he stayed here.
Risked his life to protect his little brother.
Even in his dying moments, he worried about me.
I hesitated.
Farewell loomed.
Should I seal it with a beautiful lie atop pure white deceit?
Or….
“Big bro, I don’t deserve this love…! The truth is….”
Steel ing myself, I started to confess everything.
“Khaha! Hahaha…!”
Eiming laughed.
Bared his bloodstained teeth in laughter.
“You… stupid little shit. You think… I didn’t background-check my own little bro?”
Pure delight in his voice.
“You think… I didn’t know you were banging Ceres… you punk….”
It hit me.
At some point.
He’d stopped ordering me to fetch Ceres’s stockings or heels.
Eiming had known everything.
Eiming’s pot-lid hand clamped my own.
Warmth dwelt in his eyes.
“Still… you’re my little bro. Would I… cut off my own arm?”
Real-life goodbyes don’t grant movie-like time to share hearts.
A faint smile lingered as the last breath rattled from Eiming’s throat.
The strength drained from the arm clutching my hand.
I opened my palm.
The bloodied Universal Currencies he’d thrust into it gleamed.
I stared at them for a long time.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
“No, big bro. Dumping these on me out of nowhere….”
Universal Currencies were a death flag confirmed.
Kisara Yagyu from the pristine Management Bureau would slice my head off in about three hours flat.
“No worries. We’ll meet again.”
I closed Eiming’s eyes and lit one last cigarette.
Purple smoke drifted away.
Guess this round really ends here.
What a wildly eventful one, top-tier in history?
“…Sedric.”
I turned toward the voice calling my name.
Ceres stood there.
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