Chapter 279: Meeting the Bloodline of the Ice Demon-2
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 279: Meeting the Bloodline of the Ice Demon-2
Sun-woo was stunned when he saw her.
And that was an understatement.
The day he first met Neung So-hwa, Sun-woo had thought to himself that she was undoubtedly the Greatest Beauty Under Heaven. Her appearance was so peerless that he believed nothing like it could ever exist again in this world.
But today, that peerlessness was shattered.
He was looking at a woman who could actually stand as her equal.
Her hair was as white as fallen snow, complemented by snow-white eyebrows and large, crystal-clear blue eyes. Her nose looked as if it had been sculpted by a god, set into a slender, palm-sized face, and her flushed red lips served as the perfect finishing touch.
Furthermore, she was quite tall for a woman, and her exceptionally curvaceous figure made her unrealistic beauty shine even more brilliantly. She possessed a beauty that transcended the mortal realm—like a goddess stepped straight out of ancient mythology.
Gulp.
Sun-woo swallowed hard without even realizing it. His eyes grew hazy.
Thwack!
"Urgh!"
Suddenly, a sharp pain radiated from the back of his head.
"Are you back with us now?"
The Sword Man, who had just struck Sun-woo, spoke with a faint smirk.
"Why did you have to put internal energy into that hit?!" Sun-woo barked, snapping out of it.
Having reached his current realm, Sun-woo was the type of person who would find most attacks merely ticklish. For him to actually feel pain, the strike must have been infused with a significant amount of internal energy.
"I had to do at least that much to snap you out of it, didn't I?"
"Just a light tap would have been enough!"
"You looked a bit too entranced for a light tap to work."
The Sword Man continued to smile at Sun-woo’s protest.
"..........."
Sun-woo fell silent, feeling a wave of embarrassment. He was ashamed of the fact that he had been so easily bewitched by her appearance.
"Kekeke, don't take it too much to heart." The Sword Man looked at Sun-woo and continued, "Even I found my resolve wavering at such beauty."
"Really?" Sun-woo asked, surprised.
Who was this Sword Man? He was a powerhouse who had long since surpassed the Absolute Realm. For someone like him to feel his resolve waver...
"She’s a woman who can truly be compared to Lady Neung. I thought Lady Neung would be the most beautiful person I’d ever see in my life," the Sword Man added, sounding impressed.
Sun-woo nodded in agreement. It was a statement so true it left no room for argument.
"I believe I asked a question?"
Once again, her voice—clear and resonant like jade beads rolling on a tray—vibrated in his ears.
"Are you in league with them?"
She stared at Sun-woo and the Sword Man with eyes as cold as ice.
"We aren't exactly 'in league,' are we?" The Sword Man looked at Sun-woo as he answered her.
"No, we aren't," Sun-woo agreed, nodding.
"Wait! Hero! How could you say that?!"
"That’s too cold-hearted!"
As soon as Sun-woo finished speaking, the merchants who had been listening in silence began to protest one after another.
"How strange," the woman in front of them said in a frigid tone. "If you aren't with them, then why did you cut down the castle gate?"
".........."
Sun-woo clamped his mouth shut. He didn't even know where to begin. They were the ones who had forced their way in despite hearing the expulsion order. There was no excuse. But telling the truth would be no different from declaring war.
Sun-woo fell into deep thought, trying to find the best way to salvage the situation.
"I cut it because they wouldn't open it."
However, rendering Sun-woo’s deliberation useless, the Sword Man simply stated the blunt truth. Sun-woo was horrified. What was he supposed to do if the man just blurted it out like that?
"Is that the only reason?"
The woman’s expression turned even more glacial at the Sword Man’s response.
"What other reason would there be? It was in the way, so I cut it. Is there any reason more simple and perfect than that?" the Sword Man replied with a mischievous, boyish grin.
"Can you handle the consequences?"
"What consequences?" the Sword Man asked back.
"The consequences of what you've done." She glared at him with chilling eyes. "I specifically blockaded the gates of the North Sea Ice Palace to prevent the scum who are eating away at the North Sea from escaping."
Her already cold gaze became even more piercing.
"I didn't know that was the reason," the Sword Man replied calmly.
"Whether you knew or not doesn't matter. You defied my command and destroyed the gate. Do you understand what that means?"
"I wonder?" the Sword Man asked with a slight smile.
"You are challenging my authority."
She spoke as she began to radiate a dense, heavy murderous aura.
"Hahahaha! You say the most amusing things. A challenge? Is there any fool who 'challenges' the weak?"
Exposed to her thick murderous aura, the Sword Man burst into a jovial laugh.
"How arrogant."
"Arrogance that one can back up is called confidence," the Sword Man said, his eyes flashing.
"I pray for your sake that it is confidence and not mere arrogance."
With those words, she slowly began to draw upon her energy.
Whirrrrrrrr!
Suddenly, a massive Snow Wind began to swirl around her once again.
Shring.
Seeing this, the Sword Man also drew the blade from the scabbard at his waist. His expression was now deathly serious.
"Wait! Stop!"
Sun-woo shouted quickly, trying to intervene. But despite his cry, neither of them withdrew their energy; instead, they let it explode even further.
'Shit.'
Sun-woo cursed inwardly. He had come here hoping to settle things peacefully, and the fact that a fight was breaking out anyway made his irritation flare.
Whirrrrrrrr!
At that moment, a massive blast of Snow Wind swept toward them. Sun-woo immediately circulated his Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art. The Yin-Yang Harmony Qi flickered and began to wrap around his body in layers.
The layered energy became so vivid it was visible to the naked eye, eventually forming a solidified barrier of energy. It was the Protective Qi.
Swoooooosh!
The immense Snow Wind slammed into them.
Chatter, chatter, chatter.
Sun-woo’s teeth began to clatter uncontrollably from the bone-chilling cold of the wind wrapping around him.
'Dammit.'
He cursed again. Even with his Protective Qi active, the frigid cold embedded in the wind didn't dissipate easily.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Argh!"
Suddenly, screams erupted from the merchants of the Geumjeong Merchant Guild beside him. Startled, Sun-woo looked over.
He saw the merchants, half of their bodies already encased in ice.
"He... Hero, please save us..."
"Please, help..."
"I have a wife and children back home..."
One by one, they looked at Sun-woo and begged for their lives. Sun-woo felt conflicted. Since they were from the Geumjeong Merchant Guild, they weren't complete strangers, so it wasn't that he couldn't save them.
However, the woman’s words calling them "scum eating away at the North Sea" weighed on him. Without knowing the full story, he didn't feel particularly inclined to jump in and help. It left a bad taste in his mouth.
'First, I have to stop the fight.'
Sun-woo made his decision. Stopping the battle was a higher priority than saving the merchants right now. He turned his head forward.
He saw the two figures locked in a fierce combat. Sun-woo’s jaw dropped. The level of the fight was so high that he couldn't see an opening to intervene.
The woman summoned a massive Snow Wind and fired it directly at the Sword Man. The gale threatened to swallow him whole, but the Sword Man cut through the enormous wind with a single strike.
The severed wind scattered, only to gather back into the woman’s hands. She compressed the Snow Wind. A chill so concentrated that even Sun-woo could feel it from a distance began to dwell in her palms.
She fired the compressed cold at the Sword Man again. He cut through it as before, but this time, he suffered the indignity of having his sword flash-frozen.
The Sword Man immediately subjected his blade to a super-vibration, shaking off the ice instantly. The shards flew off in every direction. He then lunged at the woman, swinging his sword.
Boom!
The woman blocked the sword strike directly with her hand, which was shrouded in frigid energy. A massive explosion of sound erupted as the blade met her palm.
Sun-woo watched blankly. This wasn't a scale he could interfere with. How was he supposed to stop a fight between a woman who was essentially a natural disaster and a man who could cut through such disasters?
Sun-woo’s head began to ache. To conduct his search, he needed the cooperation of the North Sea Ice Palace. But at this rate, forget cooperation—they were on the verge of a full-scale war.
He had to stop them. But he had no way. How do you stop a fight between monsters who have reached the Half-Immortal stage?
Sun-woo felt a sense of futility. He had worked himself to the bone to finally reach the Upper Stage of the Transcendent Realm, yet he still felt infinitely weak.
Of course, compared to his past self when he was merely at the Peak Realm, this was an unbelievable achievement. But in front of these two, he felt small.
Just how many people in the Profound Realm were there? When he first entered this Wuxia novel, he thought Lee Jae-won was the only one.
Boom!
Another massive explosion thundered from the front. The two monsters had clashed again. The sound snapped Sun-woo back to his senses. He shook his head from side to side. Now was not the time for self-pity.
Sun-woo thought hard about how to stop them.
Suppressing them with internal energy was out of the question. They were monsters who had already transcended the limits of internal energy. There was no way he could overpower them that way.
He couldn't just jump in blindly, either. There was no guarantee they would stop their attacks just because he got in the middle. He didn't want to take that kind of risk.
He lacked the power and the technique. And he didn't want to appeal to their emotions, which were fickle at best.
That left only one way.
Sun-woo began to walk toward them.
Step. Step.
He moved his feet, heading straight into the fray.
Step. Step.
To be honest, he didn't want to use this move.
Step. Step.
It was a martial art that would be incredibly troublesome if someone recognized it.
Step. Step.
But fortunately, there was no one here who would make an issue of it.
Step. Step.
Neither the Sword Man nor the woman before him belonged to the Orthodox Faction, so they likely wouldn't care.
Sun-woo’s figure drew closer and closer to them. As he reached the immediate vicinity, the massive Snow Wind began to buffet him.
In that instant, Sun-woo maximized every sense in his body. Sight, hearing, touch, smell—even taste. As his five senses reached their peak, a final, hidden sense began to reveal itself.
Thump.
Sun-woo could feel it. The sense he had been instinctively suppressing had awakened.
He could feel the flow of the frigid internal energy permeating the wind. Though the wind possessed enormous power, twisting it didn't require a massive amount of internal energy. About half of what she had used would be enough.
Sun-woo redirected the path of the incoming Snow Wind.
The gale that had been rushing straight at him suddenly veered off course and began to spiral back toward where it had come from.
Whirrrrrrrr!
The massive Snow Wind swept back toward the Sword Man and the woman. The Sword Man quickly swung his sword to cut through it, while the woman reclaimed the rushing wind, gathering it back into her hands.
"Both of you, please calm down."
Sun-woo spoke, looking at them with a steady gaze.
The eyes of both individuals were filled with disbelief. In the Sword Man’s eyes, specifically, there was an emotion bordering on shock—the look of someone who had just seen the impossible.
".........How did you do that?" the Sword Man asked, his eyes trembling as he looked at Sun-woo.
"Do what?"
"How do you know the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth?"
The Sword Man spoke in a tone that was dead serious, ignoring Sun-woo’s attempt to play dumb. It was a complete reversal from his usual easygoing demeanor.
"The opportunity presented itself."
"That’s a very vague answer." The Sword Man looked unconvinced. "What is your relationship with the Yin-Yang Demon?"
He stared at Sun-woo with a grave expression.
"........."
Sun-woo remained silent. He hadn't expected the name of the Yin-Yang Demon to come up.
"They are my masters," Sun-woo answered briefly.
"Hah."
Upon hearing the answer, the Sword Man let out a hollow laugh. He had never imagined that Sun-woo would be a disciple of the Yin-Yang Demon.