Snow Mountain (3)
A fierce blizzard swept across the Snow Mountain Region.
The cultivators of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace surrounding the ruins held their positions without so much as a whisper of breath.
Around them, Wi Ju-seon's jiangshi stood trapped within the ice, but to Cheon Woo-jin's eyes, even those who were still very much alive seemed frozen solid.
Perhaps it was fear of the Palace Lord hovering above their heads. They were utterly, perfectly controlled.
"So you're Cheon Woo-jin."
Perched askew atop the silver flying spirit, Baek Shin-yeong smiled with his red lips.
"Seeing you in person, you look rather ordinary. I'd assumed you'd have some striking appearance that gave you away at a glance, like the demons of the Yin Scale Spirit Needle Sect. Honestly, I'd believe it if someone told me you were just some commoner."
"Evaluating my looks the moment we meet?"
Cheon Woo-jin returned the remark as he stared at Baek Shin-yeong's pallid face.
"In my experience, it's always the ones insecure about their own appearance who love to nitpick everyone else's."
"Kheheh..."
Baek Shin-yeong's shoulders shook with laughter atop the flying spirit.
"Ordinary face, but a peculiar personality, I see. To think you'd dare spout such insolence to me, Baek Shin-yeong."
With that laugh still on his lips, he rose and shifted his posture. Sitting in formal seiza on the flying spirit's back, he leaned his head toward Cheon Woo-jin.
"Come to think of it, that explains why you so recklessly run wild. You seem to have made quite a name for yourself in the lower layers. I hear you even killed Gi Shin-ryeo of Mandokyuksamun recently."
"..."
"Though of course, I assume it was mere luck that let you kill him. There are rumors you'd already drained Gi Shin-ryeo's strength at Geumsijong, after all..."
Baek Shin-yeong had a complete grasp of Cheon Woo-jin's reputation.
He had apparently been keeping constant tabs not only on the 6th Layer, but on the state of affairs in the layers below as well.
"I hear you also ran wild in Junggyeongjin recently. We of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace were the first to secure the Ghostly Spirit Foreign Summon Banner, but your interference threw everything into disarray."
"The first to secure the Ghostly Spirit Foreign Summon Banner was Na Chwi-ryang of the Yin Scale Spirit Needle Sect."
Cheon Woo-jin said in an icy voice.
"Even without me, the Yin Scale Spirit Needle Sect would have taken it first. Or Seo Seol-ryeong would have. Either way, your Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace was never going to claim it."
"Kheheh..."
Baek Shin-yeong laughed again. Then he stretched his right hand downward and waved it idly.
Kwajik!
One of the Core Formation cultivators of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace waiting on the ground froze solid.
"That you lost the initiative to that lizard was news to me. To omit information like that — you might as well have spat in my face."
"..."
He froze his own subordinate to death for failing to deliver accurate intelligence.
Killing him without even hearing an excuse — cruelty ran through the very core of the man.
"Hm, now that I think of it, you worked together with Seo Seol-ryeong, didn't you?"
Baek Shin-yeong asked.
"Are you and she in a Daoist partnership?"
"No."
"No need to hide it. I hear Seo Seol-ryeong holds you in particular regard."
"I said no."
"Hmm, is that so?"
At Cheon Woo-jin's answer, Baek Shin-yeong tilted his head.
"Truth be told, I have long sought to form a Daoist partnership with Seo Seol-ryeong — no, a marriage."
"What did you say?"
"Why the surprise?"
When Cheon Woo-jin looked at him in disbelief, Baek Shin-yeong laughed.
"My blood carries the True Human lineage as well. Surely I would be a fine match for Seo Seol-ryeong, a pure-blooded Guye Zhenren?"
"You thought marrying Seo Seol-ryeong would let you sire a child with True Human aptitude?"
"Children? What meaning would that have?"
Baek Shin-yeong said in a grave voice.
"Animals breed because their lifespans are finite. Why would we cultivators, who savor infinite life, need children?"
"..."
There was a hidden sharpness to the words.
Living things reproduce for the sake of the species' survival. By leaving descendants — fragments of oneself — one overcomes the finiteness of one's own life.
But a cultivator who walks the path of cultivation is a being who overcomes the finiteness of life by extending his own.
Which meant that, to remain faithful to a cultivator's very identity, perhaps it was indeed right not to have children.
"A topic that calls for philosophical reflection."
"Philosophy?"
"In any case."
Cheon Woo-jin looked up at Baek Shin-yeong and asked.
"So you want marriage simply to use Seo Seol-ryeong as a Daoist partner?"
"Yes, precisely. And with marriage, I could bind her to the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace for good."
Baek Shin-yeong showed no concern whatsoever for Seo Seol-ryeong's own will.
"As I said, Seo Seol-ryeong and I share much in common. If we stayed joined together, cycling yin and yang between us to maximize the effects of our cultivation, great attainment would be possible."
"..."
"So I have spent all this time persuading her to abandon her errand-running and marry into the palace... but she refuses to listen."
As he spoke, Baek Shin-yeong stared straight at Cheon Woo-jin.
"That's why I suspected she might have a lover. Are you truly nothing to Seo Seol-ryeong?"
"How pitiable."
"Hm?"
Baek Shin-yeong blinked.
"What did you just say?"
"I said it was pitiable, Palace Lord Baek."
Cheon Woo-jin snapped back in a cold voice.
"So it truly galled you that the ordinary path to the Nascent Soul Realm was forever closed to you. And as a desperate last resort, you came up with marrying Seo Seol-ryeong and forging a Daoist bond."
"Wha..."
"I feel genuine sympathy for Seo Seol-ryeong. To receive a marriage proposal from a man capable of nothing but such pitiful schemes."
Baek Shin-yeong, struck to the very core, went wide-eyed.
He had climbed the realms through a shortcut, exploiting his Northern Darkness Divine Body.
That was how he had reached Core Formation Great Circle at a mere hundred-odd years of age.
But because he had forced his realm upward without properly laying each stage's foundation, a problem had emerged.
Challenging the next realm — the Nascent Soul Realm — had become impossible.
With roughly three hundred years of life remaining, he could advance no further.
For a cultivator on the path of cultivation, this was a hopeless situation.
Cornered, Baek Shin-yeong had sought a way out through marriage to Seo Seol-ryeong.
He had intended to use a Daoist partnership with her to break through the wall.
"Forcing marriage on a woman who's already turned you down, pestering her relentlessly — do you feel no shame as a man?"
"..."
The pallor of Baek Shin-yeong's face flushed crimson.
Even his lips were trembling.
"Baseless loose cultivator, daring to run your mouth. Do you wish to die?"
"There it is — the composure finally slips, Baek Shin-yeong."
Cheon Woo-jin said coldly.
"Hauling an entourage of subordinates around and playing the great lord, and only now do you begin to act your size. That petty-small-villain act suits you far better."
"You...!"
Fiit!
Baek Shin-yeong leapt down from the flying spirit.
Standing on both legs in the snow, he brought himself to eye level with Cheon Woo-jin.
Glaring at Cheon Woo-jin with murder in his eyes, he ground his teeth.
"All of you, stay back. This insolent whelp, I will educate personally...!"
Just as planned.
Cheon Woo-jin was quietly relieved that Baek Shin-yeong had reacted exactly according to his design.
Everything Cheon Woo-jin had done to provoke him until now had been to bring about this very situation.
I had to lure him into fighting one-on-one.
If Baek Shin-yeong had ordered his subordinates to charge first, things would have grown considerably difficult.
He would have been forced to expend strength cutting down the minions before ever facing Baek Shin-yeong himself.
Which was precisely why provocation had been necessary — to steer this into a one-on-one duel.
"I will make you regret the day you were born, Cheon Woo-jin."
Hwiiiing.
A dreadful chill whipped around Baek Shin-yeong's body.
It was the frost of the Myeonghan Ice-Snow Art, the technique only the Palace Lord of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace and his direct heirs were permitted to master.
"I'll leave you nothing but your head and freeze the rest of your body solid. Then I will shatter that frozen body bit by bit, starting from your feet, and let you die slowly in agony. This is the Lingchi execution of our Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace."
"I'm not interested, Baek Shin-yeong."
Cheon Woo-jin too set his spirit power in motion.
Following the structure of the Brain-Lightning Great Circuit, he clashed the heart-fire against the kidney-water and filled his entire network of spirit meridians with brain-lightning qi.
"Save that gruesome execution for yourself, you unfilial wretch."
"Insolent...!"
Payat!
A complex sigil unfurled across the snowfield around Baek Shin-yeong.
It took the form of ice crystal structure — identical to the spellcraft Seo Seol-ryeong had wielded.
It was likely proof that the True Human race's teachings had been passed down within the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace.
At once, an extreme cold surged out, freezing everything in the vicinity.
But that chill merely brushed the tip of Cheon Woo-jin's foot.
Cloaked head to toe in brain-lightning qi, he rocketed skyward — tearing free of the spell's domain in an instant.
Cheon Woo-jin surged up into the sky wrapped in lightning qi.
In the blink of an eye he escaped the effective range of Baek Shin-yeong's spellcraft, then gathered the energies of heaven-and-earth yin and yang.
Meeting the eyes of Baek Shin-yeong, whose head had snapped up in reflex, Cheon Woo-jin dropped black lightning qi straight down upon it.
Maximum output. Every wisp of water-attributed qi in the vicinity dragged into the strike — a catastrophic bolt of lightning split the blizzard apart.
Kwakwakwang!
The Black Thunder Heavenfall erupted at full power.
Because he had drawn upon the water-yin qi saturating the air to its utmost limit, he was able to unleash a lightning strike of staggering force.
But Baek Shin-yeong did not fall easily.
He deployed layer upon layer of ice shields above his head, shedding the Black Thunder Heavenfall aside.
Kung!
The accumulated snow was gouged out deeply, and Baek Shin-yeong's figure vanished from sight.
Rising faster than Cheon Woo-jin could react, Baek Shin-yeong raised his right arm.
From empty air, a house-sized mass of ice coalesced and came crashing down to crush Cheon Woo-jin.
Cheon Woo-jin thrust forward the Eunryeong Gangwi Shield he had kept concealed in his left hand.
A protective barrier formed from the small shield on his palm, blocking Baek Shin-yeong's ice.
But it could not fully negate the impact. The staggering mass sent Cheon Woo-jin flying backward.
Even as he plummeted toward the snow-covered mountainside, Cheon Woo-jin fluttered his sleeve and deployed the Cheongap Flying Spirits.
The six autonomous flying spirits locked onto Baek Shin-yeong — who snorted and froze all six of them solid in a single instant.
But it had been nothing more than stalling for time. In those brief seconds, Cheon Woo-jin recovered his posture midair and landed on the snow mountain.
"Not bad at all!"
Baek Shin-yeong sneered and raised both hands.
Countless blades of ice materialized in the empty sky.
Baek Shin-yeong enthroned in the heavens, commanding a legion of ice swords — it was, admittedly, a magnificent sight.
"Let's see just how long you can hold out, Cheon Woo-jin."
Papapapapat!
The ice blades fell like a torrential downpour.
A wide-area attack that spared nothing of Core Formation Great Circle power — enough to sweep this entire region clean.
Amid the merciless barrage, Cheon Woo-jin spread his lightning qi and carved out a path.
Watching Cheon Woo-jin search desperately for an escape within the downpour of ice swords, Baek Shin-yeong laughed heartily.
"Scurrying around like a rat!"
But Cheon Woo-jin remained composed.
One lapse in focus and his whole body would be skewered by the ice swords, mortally wounded — and yet, within his own spiritual domain, he was calmly contemplating Baek Shin-yeong's spellcraft.
Yes. This is it.
He extended his divine sense and observed the storm of ice swords.
This served both to punch through the barrage and find a way out — and to understand Baek Shin-yeong's spellcraft itself.
As expected — far sloppier than Seo Seol-ryeong.
Cheon Woo-jin's discernment had grown sharper since the days when he had first climbed to the 6th Layer.
That eye now pierced through the spiritual structure composing Baek Shin-yeong's spellcraft.
Unlike Seo Seol-ryeong's spellcraft, which had seemed clad in thick armor, Baek Shin-yeong's was transparent — its insides laid bare.
Cheon Woo-jin grasped at once how Baek Shin-yeong's spellcraft held itself together. He even pinpointed where it was vulnerable.
In raw power and scale it was overwhelming, certainly — but structurally, it was riddled with holes.
To understand the spiritual structure of a spell like this made three special techniques possible.
Cheon Woo-jin intended to attempt the first of them right now.
"Hm?"
Baek Shin-yeong's expression turned puzzled.
Cheon Woo-jin, still breaking through the blades of ice, had drawn a sword from his storage pouch.
At the sight of the treasure sword wrapped in white cloth, Baek Shin-yeong's face stiffened with shock.
"You — that's..."
Sreuk.
Cheon Woo-jin unraveled the silver silk wrapping.
At once, a spine-chilling aura of force radiated out from the Tamryeong Yeonhon Sword.
"Why does a spell-treasure...!"
Before the flustered Baek Shin-yeong, Cheon Woo-jin released the spirit qi stored within the Tamryeong Yeonhon Sword.
The first of the three techniques made possible by understanding a spell's spiritual structure.
The thing he had practiced over and over since climbing to the 6th Layer with only a mid-stage Foundation Establishment body.
To unfold the technique of Neutralization — nullifying the spell itself.
A new thunder art, neither black nor azure — it shook heaven and earth to their roots.
A new thunder art reverberated through heaven and earth.