The Heartless Laughing Demon (6)
So Heartless Laughing Demon has completely passed out.
Cheon Woo-jin confirmed that the Heartless Laughing Demon had lost consciousness.
There was no longer any need to watch his reaction.
Explaining everything that was about to happen in a way the Heartless Laughing Demon could accept would be a difficult task indeed. Whether he was a trustworthy man or not, having him asleep for the time being made things far easier.
This isn't quite what I was hoping for, though.
The Phantom-Winged Immortal Bat, Jang Si-u, was a Yao cultivator who specialized not in direct attack arts, but in tricks that bewitched and weakened his opponents. In game terms, he was a boss whose style was to spam status-affliction skills one after another.
The Heartless Laughing Demon had been caught in those tactics and rendered unable to act.
Had he avoided losing the battle of wits and forced a direct confrontation, the Heartless Laughing Demon would likely have won — because right now, Jang Si-u was in a weakened state, having failed his ritual to ascend to the Great Completion stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.
Originally, Jang Si-u should have been at the Late Nascent Soul stage, yet the status window displayed him as Early Nascent Soul. When someone temporarily lowered their realm using arts like the Mountain-Retreat Cicada Hibernation Method, the window never showed it this way. This meant Jang Si-u had truly lost his power.
In some cultivation novels, the protagonist gets caught up in some affair and loses their power. When that happens, they have to bust their humps gathering cultivation resources all over again to recover — and this guy is in exactly that situation.
The current Jang Si-u was at the Early Nascent Soul level — a state in which he could not properly wield the strength that had once been his own. Which meant…
Just how far can I push him with my own power, risen to the Late Core Formation stage?
A massive surge of spiritual power erupted from Cheon Woo-jin's Golden Core. The energy amplified by his Three-Gate Golden Core spread through his entire body — part of it hardening into sword qi, part into thunder qi. The sword qi fortified every one of his spirit meridians, while the thunder qi, amplified once more through the Thunder Aperture System, unfolded into the open air.
KWAAAAAAAAM!
Waves of black thunder surged forth, breathing the law of death and extinction.
Cheon Woo-jin unfolded his own signature ultimate technique from the very start. Black thunder qi infused with the law of death and annihilation — he gave it form through a mental image he had created while gazing upon the savage waters of the Jinhwang Sea. What was completed in that instant was a tidal wave of black lightning.
His ultimate technique, one that devoured everything in its path and ground it to pieces without mercy, spread out across the passage.
"No…?!"
Jang Si-u cried out in shock — because this was no art that a mere Core Formation cultivator could possibly deploy.
To be sure, the Jang Si-u of old could have handled even this with room to spare. But the Jang Si-u of now had fallen back to the Early Nascent Soul level, and both his body and mind were burdened with accumulated exhaustion. Which was why even he was driven into a corner of desperation.
He summoned the skulls he had scattered across the floor and threw up a defense.
KUKUKUNG!
Fortress walls unfurled, encircling Jang Si-u on every side.
It was a solid defensive art — one that, in ordinary times, even the Heartless Laughing Demon's white sword qi could not have easily pierced. But it was useless. The wave of black thunder bursting forth from Cheon Woo-jin bored relentlessly into Jang Si-u's fortress walls.
Jang Si-u's eyes went wide as he watched the ramparts crumble like soft plaster. The skulls serving as the wall's cornerstone were pulverized one after another.
"……!"
KWAKWAKWAKWA!
The grotesque black wave that swept away everything swallowed even the sound of Jang Si-u's voice. But when the wave finally settled, his figure was nowhere to be seen. Realizing that Cheon Woo-jin's power was nothing to scoff at, he had fled in haste.
PAJIK!
Cloaked in thunder qi, Cheon Woo-jin gave chase. Jang Si-u was fleeing toward the forward-facing section of the Grand Yao Bat Ship.
"You lot! Stop that man!"
Several members of the Night Rat Crowd still remained in that direction, and Jang Si-u thrust them forward as meat shields. But they were hopelessly inadequate to stop Cheon Woo-jin as he charged in without hesitation.
"Kgh…!"
Still, Jang Si-u had not simply been running. He was driving skull after skull — snatched up before his flight — deep into his own body, one by one.
The fleeing Jang Si-u abruptly spun around and lunged at Cheon Woo-jin. It was a movement utterly different from what had come before — but he was not using a soft-body movement art. The skulls embedded in his flesh were granting him strength comparable to sword qi.
KWAJIK!
Stamping the passage floor flat under his enormous foot, Jang Si-u came charging in. He spread his fur-covered hands wide and thrust them forward. Finger technique… no — claw technique.
KAKAKAKAK!
Jet-black claws raked across the shield of thunder qi. Jang Si-u's eyes bulged as he tried to tear apart Cheon Woo-jin's defensive technique — but this shield was deployed through the Thunder Aperture System that Master Thunder Spirit had built with his own hands. It did not rend so easily.
Cheon Woo-jin hurled the mass of thunder qi held in his other hand over the shield. The thunder qi burst open like a pomegranate splitting, flooding the dark passage with brilliant light.
"Kgh…!"
This alone could not inflict a fatal wound on Jang Si-u. But thunder qi detonating at point-blank range was effectively a flash grenade. Light, sound, and shockwaves jolted every one of Jang Si-u's senses.
An unmistakable opening appeared. But Cheon Woo-jin did not try to finish it here. Jang Si-u was not an opponent so weak that the matter could be settled that easily — lunge in recklessly, and the counterattack would come. Knowing this, Cheon Woo-jin instead unleashed his hidden move.
"……!"
The moment Cheon Woo-jin flung something from within his robe, Jang Si-u dodged on pure reflex. It didn't matter. He hadn't thrown it to hit him.
What Cheon Woo-jin had thrown toward the floor was none other than a banner. The Nine Dragons Mountain-Binding Banner — a top-grade magic treasure crafted in imitation of the legend of a nine-headed dragon that had coiled its own body around a mountain to bind it. The instant the banner planted itself in the floor and unfurled, nine dragon heads erupted skyward and hurled themselves at Jang Si-u.
"Don't tell me — this is the Dragon Clan's…!"
KWAKWAKWOK!
The dragon heads, capable of binding up to nine targets at once, wrapped themselves around Jang Si-u alone. Even with his entire body reinforced by embedded skulls, moving was no simple matter in this state. But it did not end there.
From beneath Cheon Woo-jin's feet, black shadows were already spreading out.
Countless black spikes erupted from the floor and swarmed over Jang Si-u alone. They pierced his lower body from every direction — and did not stop there, extending thin barbs to ravage his internal organs and meridians.
"GUUUUUGH…!"
Of course, attacks like these could not kill a Nascent Soul cultivator like Jang Si-u. But Cheon Woo-jin was driving him, step by careful step, toward the moment of defeat — just as Jang Si-u, in his ordinary days, had weakened his opponents with every trick in his repertoire before subduing them.
"I'll tear you apart, you wretch…!"
The instant Jang Si-u howled at the top of his lungs, the skulls embedded in his body launched outward like cannonballs. It was a technique of compressing enormous power into a single point and firing it — much like the flying sword spheres that martial artists deployed through the Sword Qi Pressure Sphere method.
But Cheon Woo-jin had seen through even this desperate struggle before it happened. It was a pattern he had watched play out countless times in the game.
PAJIK! PAJIK! PAJIK!
Changing direction at right angles again and again, he moved across the battlefield at will — not merely evading every skull projectile, but boring straight into Jang Si-u's blind spot behind him.
"You little…!"
KWAKWAM!
Jang Si-u twisted his body and released an enormous surge of spiritual power. That alone was enough to throw Cheon Woo-jin backward. Even in his weakened state, Jang Si-u's raw strength still surpassed his.
But it didn't matter. The reason Cheon Woo-jin had bored into his rear was precisely to create the most decisive opening possible.
"You dare, you insignificant little…— KERGHK!"
A crimson blade erupted from Jang Si-u's body. No — to be precise, a blood sword had pierced his torso from an unseen angle. Just before diving in behind Jang Si-u after dodging the skull projectiles with Thunder Flash, Cheon Woo-jin had dripped the living blood of the Blood-Nurturing Pearl onto the floor in advance. The blood spirit born from it had stabbed Jang Si-u from his blind angle.
"Th-this is absurd…— KRAK!"
A second blood sword pierced through Jang Si-u's torso. There had been one more blood spirit besides the one that had ambushed him at the start. The living blood Cheon Woo-jin possessed was enough for two people — which meant he could create and command two blood spirits at once.
"Don't tell me you're not the White Face Pavilion after all, but the Blood Soul Pavilion's…— GGUUHK!"
KWAJIK! KWAJIK! KWAJIK!
The two blood spirits swung their blood swords from two directions, ravaging Jang Si-u without pause. A pincer assault from blood spirits forged from Nascent Soul-grade living blood, each wielding power at the Core Formation level.
Jang Si-u lashed out with his razor claws in an attempt to counterattack — but raking claws over a being composed of liquid meant nothing. Under normal circumstances, he would have thought of some other countermeasure. But right now, Jang Si-u had lost his composure, tangled up in Cheon Woo-jin's psychological warfare and weakening tactics. He had only just failed his challenge of the Great Completion tribulation to begin with, and now, unable to respond to anything properly, his whole body was being torn to shreds.
"I didn't want to bring this out against a mere Core Formation brat…!"
Even so, Jang Si-u was not without a final trump card. Raising his blood-soaked right arm, he plunged his hand into empty space. It was the hidden weapon he had stored in subspace through the Universe in the Sleeve — a magic treasure obtained in the Northern Outer Sea. He was reaching for the Annihilation Wind Calamity Wheel, the treasure that summoned storms to blow everything away.
"Now you're finished…!"
But Jang Si-u knew nothing.
He did not know that Cheon Woo-jin had pressed him relentlessly this entire time precisely to create this very moment. He did not know that Cheon Woo-jin had been waiting only for the instant when the cornered Jang Si-u would pull the treasure from his sleeve. He did not know that Cheon Woo-jin had finished his preparations long in advance for exactly that.
Jang Si-u knew nothing at all.
A single ice sword took form in the air.
The art Cheon Woo-jin had been preparing activated while the blood spirits held Jang Si-u at bay. It was a new signature art of his own devising, created during the five days he had holed up in the eastern district. He had refined the White Night he had once fashioned to fight Baek Shin-yeong of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace, and drawn inspiration from the Heartless Laughing Demon's Hundred Flowers Hundred Blades Art, which formed blades closer to sword qi than to mere sword energy. Onto an ice blade so thin it could barely be seen, he compressed yin energy to realize an absolute cutting force.
The blade of thin ice that cleaved through everything shot out at hyperspeed, severing Jang Si-u's body before he even registered it.
"Eh…?"
SREUK. THUD.
Jang Si-u's right hand — the one holding the wheel-shaped treasure known as the Annihilation Wind Calamity Wheel — dropped to the floor.
Even if the ambushed Jang Si-u had scrambled to retrieve the treasure again, Cheon Woo-jin swinging the ice blade one more time was simply faster.
SREUK.
This time the blade of ice plunged into Jang Si-u's flank and burst out through the opposite hip — cleaving the Golden Core in his lower abdomen clean into two pieces.
Blood spirits — grab the Annihilation Wind Calamity Wheel!
At Cheon Woo-jin's command, one of the blood spirits secured the treasure rolling across the floor. This magic treasure was the spoils of war Cheon Woo-jin had wanted most — an item absolutely essential to the battles that lay ahead in Ghost Head City. That was precisely why he had pressed Jang Si-u so relentlessly, all the way until the moment he pulled the Annihilation Wind Calamity Wheel from his sleeve.
"Ugh…!"
The moment after Jang Si-u, his Golden Core destroyed, let out a short groan — something pitch-black slipped out of his body. It was Jang Si-u's Nascent Soul, abandoning its physical vessel to escape. But his Nascent Soul did not take human form. Hundreds upon hundreds of jet-black bats soared into the air and scattered in every direction.
[I concede! Today, the defeat is mine!]
[But destroying me is impossible! I shall flee this ship even now!]
Jang Si-u's voice rang through Cheon Woo-jin's mind. Like the Soul-Shattering Blood Demon, his Nascent Soul was of a special type. Unless all of the hundreds of bats scattering in different directions could be annihilated simultaneously, Jang Si-u could not be killed. It was true that Cheon Woo-jin could summon a storm with the Annihilation Wind Calamity Wheel and sweep them all away — but then he himself would be caught in the storm, which made it too dangerous.
[This humiliation I shall repay in full! The moment I recover my strength, I will come straight for you — so wait for me! I will cast you down into the most agonizing hell this world has ever known…!]
Jang Si-u declared his vengeance in a voice dripping with menace. But Cheon Woo-jin did not so much as twitch an eyebrow — because he had predicted all along that Jang Si-u would attempt to flee like this at the final moment.
"The one falling into hell is you, Phantom-Winged Immortal Bat."
Cheon Woo-jin's eyes, fixed upon the bats scattering to the four winds, began to glow gold.