Chapter 29
Chapter 29
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: Sealing Light Cave (1)
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It was a sleepy rural village where the incessant cry of cicadas stood in for silence.
A clumsy boy gripped a roughly carved wooden sword and silently swung it amid the golden fields of grass.
His swordsmanship was just as awkward as the wooden sword in his hand, yet it bore the unmistakable traces of diligent practice at his fingertips.
It was around that time that a man once called the Blood Demon entered the village with a wistful expression.
In this remote hamlet in Shaanxi, where the only things around were fields and hoes, why had a martial artist come?
The villagers eyed him with suspicion, but Yi Sowol paid it no mind. To these people born and raised in a place where peace fit like a glove, wariness was a foreign feeling.
It was the same in my past life.
To Yi Sowol, every one of those villagers seemed like a benefactor.
And among them, the black-haired boy silently gripping his wooden sword with hands thick with calluses stood out especially.
He slowly approached the boy. The boy who, in his past life, would be called the Sword Emperor of Solitude.
"Do you need something from me?"
The boy pulled a sour face, undaunted even by Yi Sowol standing there with a real sword at his waist.
The boy wanted to become a martial artist. But deep down, he didn't like them.
He'd heard that those who lived in the jianghu despised the weak, so he figured he'd never earn their approval.
Yet the reason he gripped a sword was to change his own frail self.
"You're putting too much strength into your sword hand. Widen your stance. Your lower body supports the sword first, and only then does your hand move."
Yi Sowol stood beside the boy, swinging his own sword in tandem to correct his form. He was merely fixing the flawed posture, but the boy who watched couldn't hold back his awe.
It was the ideal sword the boy had imagined. A sword that traced such a perfect arc it felt beautiful.
A fateful encounter. That fleeting, chance moment that arrives unexpectedly yet changes a person's life forever. The boy sensed this was exactly that.
He vowed to devote his life to wielding a sword like that.
"How can I do that?"
"If you know how to swing a sword until calluses form on your hands, you'll get there for sure."
Yi Sowol saw the boy before him as tough. But the boy, who viewed himself as weak, couldn't accept those words.
"I'm not strong. I'm just a kid who can't protect the person right in front of him and swallows tears every night."
"Feeling more emotions than others doesn't make you weak. The heart can't be severed by a sword. Even sorrow can sometimes become a sharp blade. What matters is believing in your own feelings."
In truth, the boy before him had grown so strong in his past life that he earned the title of the second Blood Demon. Though even the Blood Demon saw that moniker as the worst curse, since he'd made him a target for revenge.
The village had been massacred by execution for hiding the Blood Demon. The boy raised there had died by the Blood Demon's sword, trapped in a cycle of vengeance to the end.
Yi Sowol had used the sword that killed him in his past life to change his fate this time. He knew it was mere self-satisfaction, but he wanted to at least count it as minimal atonement.
"Could you tell me your name?"
"A name? Right now, they call me the Sword Dragon."
The boy, yet to set foot in the jianghu, didn't know what the title Sword Dragon meant. He just thought that someday, when asked who taught him the sword, he'd say the Sword Dragon.
He had no idea yet that those words would one day change his life.
At the very least, I'd done my duty. What happened next was up to the boy.
I only learned much later that the village I'd fled to after stealing the Ten Thousand Year Flower Chestnut's inner core had suffered disaster because of me.
And that the boy born and raised there had become known as the second Blood Demon.
If I met him again in this life, I wanted to at least guide him down the right path.
I might not have the right, but that ignorant boy deserved a shot at happiness.
Helping him was just a side benefit anyway. The real reason I'd come here was something else.
A small village a day's walk east of Chang'an. Nearby loomed the Myriad Year Snow Mountain, a peak even martial artists dared not climb lightly.
Its name was White Snow Heavenly Peak.
Once you reach the pinnacle realm, you can regulate your body heat and inner energy to withstand the cold to some degree. No ordinary chill would freeze you to death.
But White Snow Heavenly Peak's cold was different. It was so intense even peerless masters struggled against it, spawning jokes about whether a Myriad Year Ice Essence lay within.
And its height matched the chill. In my past life, it was where I'd hidden to evade the Murim Alliance's heavenly net and earthly web.
"Whew, brings back memories."
With one leg barely functional, climbing that thing had been pure hell.
I'd nearly slipped to my death scaling snow-covered cliffs, or tumbled off in the dark without a light at night.
And to avoid the Alliance goons, I couldn't even light a fire, so I survived on gnawing dried meat.
...On second thought, not fond memories at all.
But I'd climbed it once before, and in peak condition, it should be no problem now.
At least, that's what I thought until then.
"Damn it, how the hell did I climb this stupid cliff before?"
I hadn't even reached the midpoint, and scaling it was far harder than I'd remembered.
No trails or gentle paths in this untouched wilderness—just sheer, frost-slick cliffs I had to claw my way up.
In my past life, I'd thought the Alliance idiots just couldn't find me. Now I realized no one in their right mind would climb this.
Crack.
"Gah!"
I slipped stepping on ice I mistook for rock while gripping the cliff. Good thing I channeled inner energy into my hands, or a normal person would've died ages ago.
Who the hell flees to a godforsaken place like this?
What madness had driven past-life me up here?
I must've been stark raving mad.
"I swear, I'll never climb this damn cliff again!"
As the frosted walls turned to solid ice, I had to curl my hands like pickaxes and hammer them into the rock just to make progress.
After an hour of nonstop climbing, I finally reached the midpoint of White Snow Heavenly Peak.
Back in my prime, I'd bounded up cliffs like this as if strolling on flat ground. What the—?
What fresh hell is this?
"Ugh, cold!"
Reaching the midpoint, the peak's brutal chill began to close in. Not even at the summit yet, and it was this bad—small wonder no one came.
I pulled out the box the Alliance Leader had given me. Soaked in the ambient cold, it had frozen solid, perfectly sealing in the contents' heat.
Click.
Opening it slowly, the warmth from the inner core peeking through the tiny gap spread through my body. As expected of the Ten Thousand Year Flower Chestnut's core—top-tier performance.
I carefully placed the inner core in my mouth. Moments ago, I'd been shivering in the extreme cold; now I felt so hot sweat poured off me.
Swallowing it like this would cause qi deviation. But that was fine. I'd never planned to swallow it anyway.
With the inner core in my mouth, I pressed on toward the summit. I'd endured the cold the same way in my past life while hiding here.
Even the icy cliffs no longer felt cold. If anything, I was sweltering, so I loosened my outer robes and climbed bare-chested.
Scaling a snowstorm-lashed mountain half-naked—whoever saw this would call me insane and run screaming.
"Ah, refreshing!"
Pressing my body to the ice-covered cliff felt like a cool summer plunge—pure bliss.
Perfect weather for mountain climbing.
As I ascended through the blizzard until the ground looked dizzyingly far below, I drew my sword and began tapping the ice blanketing the mountain.
"It was around here for sure."
Thud. Thud. Ping!
Amid the metallic clangs echoing through the peaks, a sudden clear, bell-like ring pierced the air.
Here.
I steadied my sword and channeled inner energy into the blade.
Blood Heaven Asura Art: Heaven-Destroying Chaotic Slash
Ice shatters like steel under overwhelming force!
Kaboom!
The ice, hard as steel, shattered into pieces that tumbled down the mountain. In its place yawned a massive cave.
Too perfectly circular to be natural, yet too vast for human hands.
Yes, like the trail left by a giant worm.
I stepped slowly into the cave mouth. Even with the inner core, the bone-chilling cold pierced me.
This was the source of White Snow Heavenly Peak's frigid aura. Far beyond the outside chill.
How deep in did I go? At the dead end, huge letters reading 'Sealing Light Cave' came into view.
Cave that imprisons light, huh? Fitting.
Funny, I hadn't noticed in my past life, but the script looked familiar now. Carved with a sword infused with energy? I'd seen something similar before...
Ah, right—the inscription on the Divine Cult Stone at the Demonic Cult's heavenly mountain base, called something like that. Felt just like this.
I'd thought whoever carved 'Heavenly Demon Divine Cult' into that resilient jade stone was nuts. Same person?
This cave hadn't seen humans in at least a thousand years. So the writer was from the distant past.
Like the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's founder, maybe.
Far-fetched, but possible. Not my concern anyway.
My goal lay beyond.
Slash.
I slashed the inscription and the wall itself with my sword. The wall crumbled into rubble, revealing a hidden passage where I'd thought it ended.
Beyond stretched a cavernous expanse too vast for a mere cave.
Every surface—floor to walls—was encased in ice, light reflecting everywhere like the name implied.
And at the center, a light-emitting being slowly opened its eyes and rose majestically, as if to display its grandeur.
"What business does a mere human have setting foot here?"
Snake-like form, white and sleek body, hornless head.
A creature from ancient myths. One that had failed to become a true dragon.
It was an imugi.