Chapter 50
Chapter 50
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Heavenly Spirit
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Baek Hyun's final strike landed on the Three-Legged Crow at that very moment.
The suffocating heat that had blanketed the entire Starpoint Mountain range condensed into a single parasol tree at an astonishing speed, vanishing as if it had all been a lie.
Yet, as proof that what had just happened wasn't a dream, the profound scars left by the overwhelming heat remained etched across the landscape even after it dissipated.
Countless ancient trees that had stood sentinel over Starpoint Mountain for centuries had been reduced to ashes.
The myriad animals that called it home, along with hundreds of malevolent spirits, had lost their lives and become part of the ash heaps.
"Hyun-ah! Please... you can't die, Hyun-ah!!"
On the barren clearing where all those lives mingled, seeping into the soil, the Starpoint Sect leader Mokheon clutched something desperately and cried out.
A charred corpse, scattered amid the surrounding ash piles—no, even blacker and more wretched than the rest.
-S... uhh...
To be precise, it wasn't quite a corpse.
A faint breath, so weak that only a martial artist could detect it, leaked faintly from his completely burned lips.
Even so, no one would argue against classifying it as a corpse.
Baek Hyun's state amid the ashes before them was that pitiable.
Injuries horrific enough to have killed an ordinary person dozens of times over.
The reason he clung to life in such a state was Mokheon, relentlessly feeding kindling to the flickering flame on the verge of extinction.
"Baek Hyun! Are you alri... Heok!?"
Maeng Yeon, sensing the Three-Legged Crow's presence vanish and rushing back on Har, could only gasp in horror at the sight of Baek Hyun.
Something utterly blackened, its features and form unrecognizable.
Yet instinct told her immediately.
That thing before her eyes was Baek Hyun.
"Ah... Aaaahhh...!!! This... this can't be real...!! Why, why are you in that state...!!!"
Forgetting her own condition, Maeng Yeon tried to leap from Har's back and rush to Baek Hyun, but her body, long past its limits, cruelly refused her will.
Overwhelmed by emotion, all she could do was tumble off Har and writhe on the ground.
In the end, Maeng Yeon squeezed her tear-filled eyes shut.
She couldn't face the reality of the person she trusted most in this world lying dead in such a form.
But Mokheon never averted his gaze.
No—more accurately, he couldn't.
He couldn't bear to turn away from the disciple he'd only recently accepted, the one he'd promised to protect as Starpoint's leader, collapsed like that.
Despite the gruesome sight filling his vision, Mokheon kept pouring internal energy into Baek Hyun's body, desperately holding onto his life.
But even Mokheon's iron will had its limits.
His internal energy, already largely depleted in the battle with the Three-Legged Crow, was finally hitting rock bottom.
He could no longer even serve as kindling for that fragile flame.
'Even if... I have to give my own life...!!'
As Mokheon tried to draw up the innate true energy from the depths of his dantian.
-Fwoosh
The precarious flame, moments from snuffing out, suddenly stabilized.
And then.
-Whoooong...
It began to stir in the most familiar way to him.
The One Yang Divine Art.
The divine art that absorbed natural energy through surrounding natural mediums.
The massive trees it usually relied on had all burned away in the Three-Legged Crow's flames.
But the soil that had sustained all those lives brimmed with an abundance of energy like never before.
Much like how the soil left after a forest fire becomes more fertile than ever.
The immense life force from all the surface lifeforms and hundreds of malevolent spirits had seeped into the soil as ashes.
Of course, laced with the Three-Legged Crow's tremendous yang energy, ordinary plants would wither the instant their roots touched that earth.
But for the Solar Body, it was nothing less than mountains of supreme spirit medicines piled high.
-Kugugugugugu-!!
The Sun, which had been so perilously weak moments ago, devoured the vast energies scattered everywhere like mad, igniting with a ferocity greater than ever before.
Yet, infinite absorbable energy didn't mean it could take it all.
Normally, it would funnel what it could into its limited vessel and expel the rest.
But the body serving as the Sun's vessel was now shattered—its meridians and flesh reduced to bare remnants.
Near-infinite yang energy.
And a completely broken vessel.
The collision of these two extreme conditions.
-Shuuuuu...
The Sun began its final evolution, one impossible at this stage.
Vast energies it couldn't contain due to vessel limits continued pouring in via the One Yang Divine Art.
At the same time, the Sun used the overflowing energy to craft the optimal environment for itself.
A far grander, more beautiful "vessel" than before.
A body fundamentally akin to fragile human flesh—limited by nature to holding finite energy—yet utterly alien, closer to a monstrous being than human.
But precisely because of that, the perfect vessel for housing the "Sun."
As the unusable remnants fully vanished and the new vessel completed.
-Kugugugugugugugugu-!!!!
All the soil's remaining energies, enough to fully reconstruct a human body and still have plenty left, surged into Baek Hyun's new form like a dam burst.
The Sun, whose growth had been stifled by physical limits, now exploded in expansion, supplied with near-infinite energy without regard for boundaries.
Despite the explosive momentum, the growth took quite some time.
The Sun endlessly gorged on the near-infinite energy, swelling in size, while the new vessel effortlessly withstood the rising output.
Just as even those immense soil energies began to run dry.
-Craaaaaack-!!!
A blindingly intense radiance—fiercely warm, washing away all negative emotions—spread outward, carrying tremendous purified life force free of harmful yang energy.
"The wounds... they're healing?"
Mokheon and Maeng Yeon nearby recovered in an instant, and the ruined soil was seeded with new potential for life.
In this moment, it was the Sun itself.
Not the cruel Sun that incinerates and destroys all, but the merciful Sun that caresses all things and bestows life.
The new Sun descended into the mortal world, the polar opposite of the Three-Legged Crow, lavishly sharing unneeded energies and warmly embracing all life.
As the radiance spreading in all directions began to fade.
-Flash
Finally, Baek Hyun opened his eyes.
He rolled his brilliantly glowing golden irises around for a moment before murmuring in confusion.
"...What's this? Why am I floating?"
It wasn't the void-stepping only peak realm martial artists could achieve, of course.
The instant he realized he was airborne, Baek Hyun's body plummeted to the ground, and he landed lightly with a "yep, figures" expression.
"Whoa, never thought I'd experience this. Oh, right—I was fighting the Three-Legged Crow, I think..."
-Tackle!!
In that instant, a shadowy figure lunged at Baek Hyun, who hadn't grasped the situation yet.
Maeng Yeon, her body restored by the life force Baek Hyun had emitted.
She barreled into him at tremendous speed, knocking him over and burying her face in his chest as she burst into tears.
"You fucking idiot, seriously...! Collapsing like that...!! Why'd you do it?! Why charge headlong at an enemy you could never beat...!!!"
"Wh-whoa... what's with the sudden... Master, what's up with her..."
Flustered by Maeng Yeon's intense reaction, Baek Hyun appealed to his master for help.
-Plop
But Mokheon merely stroked Baek Hyun's head in response, closing his eyes without a word.
Guessing the situation somewhat from that, Baek Hyun fell silent and simply accepted the worried touches.
'I... nearly died, huh.'
Not in the game, but in reality—he'd nearly died.
Shocking, sure, but since he'd been unconscious, it didn't feel real.
Even if it did, he'd probably get over it quick.
With two people worrying about his death this much, how could anything not be okay?
Savoring the rare feeling of being fussed over, Baek Hyun soon noticed something shocking.
"Uh... thanks for being happy to see me alive and all, but I'm naked here? Could someone get me some clothes..."
'!!'
Maeng Yeon, who showed no sign of letting go, finally jolted away in shock.
"Y-you pervert! Why didn't you say so sooner!!"
"I just realized too! And you didn't give me a chance!!"
Mokheon cleared his throat softly at the sight and draped his own robe over Baek Hyun.
Maeng Yeon, who had flushed red and stared piercingly at his bare body until it was fully covered, abruptly turned her head away and muttered very quietly.
"F-freaking huge..."
No wonder something had felt like it was pressing against her.
Maeng Yeon's face burned brighter than ever.
Meanwhile, Mokheon wiped the tear tracks from his eyes awkwardly for a moment before forcing his mouth open to break the tension.
"It seems something changed while you were clinging to life. Your constitution feels different somehow... Do you sense what it is?"
"Hm, for one, my hair's gone platinum blonde."
Baek Hyun fiddled with his awkwardly altered locks, lost in thought.
Shimmering platinum hair, closer to white than gold despite the subtle golden sheen.
The most striking change after losing consciousness and undergoing some transformation.
He'd half-expected it since his eyes turned gold, but his hair too...
Worried he might look weird now that his hair—such a big part of one's vibe—had changed.
"Sigh, wanna check the style, but no mirror... Yeon-ah, what do you think?"
"...Fucking gorgeous."
"Huh? I know, but I meant the hair."
"N-no, I mean...! It suits you! Looks fucking cool... pretty, so don't worry!!"
"Hmm, well, if it looks good to a girl's eyes, that's a relief."
Baek Hyun dropped the hair topic and sat cross-legged to examine his body inwardly.
His eye color and now hair changing meant the Solar Body had reached a new milestone.
Probably grown during the Three-Legged Crow fight by sheer luck.
Of course, with its already excessive output, further growth wouldn't boost combat power much, but even a little extra output wasn't ba...
"...Huh?"
As Baek Hyun casually scanned his body, he let out a bewildered noise, doubting his senses.
"Well? Any meaningful changes?"
"Uh, well..."
Unable to answer Mokheon's question readily, Baek Hyun probed his body repeatedly to reconfirm.
Only after grudgingly accepting the changes did he speak cautiously.
"My constitution... evolved?"
Solar Heavenly Spirit Body
(太陽天靈體)
The pinnacle of the Solar Body's growth. Shoulder-to-shoulder with the world's supreme constitutions.
No need for words—it was the strongest constitution in Dominating the World.