Chapter 49
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 48
Chapter Title: Flame - 1
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In the burning clan estate, the Fist King pressed forward.
Flames filled every direction. The acrid air stabbed at his lungs. Everywhere he passed, everything crumbled to ruin.
The accumulated ashes of generations were returning to nothingness without a trace. Majestic tiled roofs, intricate stone statues, grand pavilions—all reduced to heaps of cinders and vanishing.
How many years had passed since the Huangfu Clan was established on Blaze Mountain? Easily over two hundred.
The land their ancestors had claimed was passed to their heirs, who made it prosper. The legacy had grown, enduring countless crises.
Secret ties with the officials. Martial prowess strong enough to rebuke the world. Wealth piled like mountains.
Guangdong was the clan's domain, and Blaze Mountain was undoubtedly its capital.
Yet the bureaucracy, weary from political strife, had no strength to intervene. The Huangfu martial arts had been shattered by the Divine Maiden. The amassed riches were devoured by the flames.
Now, the Fist King witnessed the destruction of his kingdom with his own eyes.
But it did not amount to a denial of the Fist King himself.
The aura surrounding him drove back the ash and smoke. His solidly forged body gleamed like golden armor, even past the age of sixty.
True energy surging with rage bolstered his entire frame.
Toward the culprit right before his eyes.
"Saint—ess—!"
Boom!
A massive crater formed where the Iron Blood Fist King stomped the ground. The earth trembled with each advancing step.
"How dare you!"
The Mountain Breaking Cannon served as his greeting.
Kaboom!
A single fist launched from shoulders drawn back to their limit. The whistling tear through the air was impossible to believe came from a human punch.
Not even a peak-level master could survive a direct hit unscathed!
But the Divine Maiden didn't so much as flinch. Tap. Her slender hand intercepted the Mountain Breaking Cannon as it closed in on the Fist King's punch.
Screeech. With a bizarre grinding sound, her wrist twisted ever so slightly.
That technique felt familiar, causing Huangfu Hu's thick eyebrows to shoot up.
It was the clan's signature Golden Claw Technique—one of the forms from the Earth-Shaking Arts that he himself practiced.
An blatant mockery. Fury boiling over, the Iron Blood Fist King poured every ounce of his inner power into the clashing fist. Resentment exploded from his chest.
"How dare you! How dare you insult the Huangfu Clan!"
The bloodshot roar drew the girl's gaze straight to the Fist King.
She remembered.
The damp, dark cave. The place lit only by the faint glow of luminous jewels. The endless agonizing deliberations in that cramped darkness.
Gangil died because she was weak.
No one cared because she was weak.
Her hands, her arms weren't enough to harm anyone—couldn't rip out hearts or snap necks. She was scorned and trampled. Without a master or weapon, she had to grow strong alone.
All she possessed was a frail body and vivid nightmares.
What should she imitate to grow strong? A girl ignorant of martial arts had no other choices.
The man with more qi than anyone else there. The leader of the group, a renowned master.
Even a girl in some rural backwater had barely heard his name—the patriarch of the Huangfu Clan.
And the root of it all.
"I'll kill you! I'll kill you dead! Do you even know what you've done?!"
Boom! Kaboom! Three punches landed like cannon fire, heavy and thunderous. Her delicate arms crossed in an X to block them. That too was a Huangfu Clan technique.
"With your half-baked martial arts! Your lowly status! Do you have any idea what you've done—?!"
The Divine Maiden's clumsiness was plain as day. To the Fist King, a pinnacle of bare-handed combat, any deficiency in martial arts stood out starkly. All she had were the bare forms of the techniques.
Could decades of solo training from manuals alone produce that? The girl before him knew nothing of the refinements of offense and defense. She simply overwhelmed it all with brute inner power.
Pouring vast true energy into her body to make it faster, harder, stronger.
An utterly absurd approach.
But... if that inner power surpassed even the Iron Blood Fist King himself, the story changed.
Swish. In an unexpected instant, the girl's hand bent. The gripping form resembled a dragon's talon.
The vicious technique, meant to tear flesh, had no place in righteous sects.
'Flying Heaven Golden Blade's vicious martial arts!'
In that split-second counter, Huangfu Hu shifted his footwork. His massive frame moved with fluid grace, deflecting the attack. But—thud.
A chunk of flesh now dangled from the girl's fingers. Huangfu Hu's training robes were soaked in blood.
Did that mean she emerged unscathed? Her arms, having blocked the triple strike, were bruised black and blue. The righteous clan's weighted hand techniques inflicted deeper internal damage than external wounds.
She twisted her arms this way and that, but they responded sluggishly. Her meridians were damaged; qi wouldn't flow properly.
"What I've done?"
Staring at her limp arm, the girl looked up. Whoosh. A wind blew from somewhere. Her long hair fluttered amid the ashes.
It doesn't hurt.
In the cave, I decided I wouldn't hurt anymore. So it doesn't hurt.
She ignored the fiery pain racing through her meridians. She shoved aside the dying groans of her arm. Since that day, what she needed had always been clear.
Kindling to feed her heart. More hatred.
More resentment.
What she—what they—had wanted from you murim folk, just once...
"Hey, how does it feel right now?"
No answer came.
The Iron Blood Fist King raised his fist. Assumed his stance. Flames ignited in his gaze fixed on the girl. The tension in his eyes, the bloodshot pupils, told the story.
"Ahaha..."
The girl laughed.
What had been a faint smile against Three Blades One Flash was now a chillingly radiant grin.
Blood splatters on her snow-white face created an eerie contrast.
She felt utterly elated.
It was the sensation of that vague resolve in the cave solidifying, step by step.
What did the girl want to become?
She knew she couldn't block every swinging blade. She wasn't omnipotent.
But if anyone was hurt by a blade-wielder, she wanted to help.
Payback. Revenge.
"You, who don't even know the basics of martial arts, dare call yourself a Divine Maiden? You think you can compare to the sword sages of the Nine Sects?!"
"Is that so? Yeah, you're right."
"You bastard!"
Thud! His stamping footwork roared. The bursting air wailed into a thunderclap. How many dozens of fist strikes had he unleashed already?
Even in his rage, the Iron Blood Fist King judged coolly.
He could win. He gained the advantage with every exchange.
An enemy who stubbornly refused to dodge. The Huangfu Clan's weighted hand techniques, peak among the Five Great Clans.
She would break eventually. No demon or phantom could sustain battle forever.
"They say the Nine Sects have immortals..."
But the girl seemed disinterested in the fight.
Her dreamy eyes gazed at something distant. Her instinctive movements showed no calculation of offense or defense subtleties. They were light as a sheltered lady's grace, yet majestic.
Could you even call that martial arts?
"Then being a goddess won't be enough."
A faint, almost imperceptible unease crept into the Iron Blood Fist King's subconscious.
His pupils contracted. Honed senses sharpened. His acute qi perception caught every swirl of ash around him.
The motions blindly mimicking Huangfu Clan and Dragon Star Clan techniques began to evolve into something unique.
Derivative steps crept into her footwork. Subtleties infused her once-brutal gestures.
Plum Blossom Grafting to redirect attacks. Late Blooming Strike that arrived first despite extending later.
Even the Weighted Hand's Fierce Mountain Strike, the epitome of Huangfu techniques.
"I'll become whatever surpasses a god."
Her limp arm whipped unnaturally. At the minute bend in angle, the heavy fist thudded aside. The punch that had connected moments ago now missed.
Horror flashed in the Iron Blood Fist King's eyes. Only now did he realize.
The girl stared back at him. The hatred that had wrung her heart ceaselessly for three months brought more pain, but it didn't matter.
The target was high. A long road ahead, short on time.
She squeezed harder. Burned hotter. Fueled it with endless lifetime resentment.
Through the agony of her body shattering, toward that beyond.
She wanted to return that feeling to the murim folk exactly as she'd felt it.
"Huangfu Patriarch, how does it feel? Tell me."
In the flames devouring everything, the girl smiled. To an ignorant onlooker, it would seem innocent and pure.
"How does it feel to be crushed by an unstoppable foe?"
"You don't mean... right now..."
Huangfu Hu spat the words even as he denied them. Impossible.
The opponent he'd first met. Martial skill that would take ten years of training to match. No way.
Genius wasn't just talent. If it were possible, it wouldn't be dismissed as mere aptitude. It had to be something heaven-sent.
Something unprecedented, beyond human power to face.
"You're... growing here?"
Then what should he call it?
Calamity? Disaster? Injustice? Monster?
Or perhaps,
a demon.
"You got it."
The "thing" smiled. What rampaged before him was no longer a wild girl, but a mortal enemy.
"Even if you're a mimicking monster, it changes nothing. I'll show you a realm you can never surpass!"
The Fist King ground his teeth.