Chapter 387: The Divine Sword Corps (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 387: The Divine Sword Corps (3)
A whirlwind of hazy shockwaves erupted.
It quite literally reached the heavens—or at least the ceiling of the hemispherical space created by the Unified Martial Transcendence, which had isolated them from the true azure sky.
In this moment, the Dragon Ascent, forged from fragments of Body Protection Qi, possessed enough sheer power to crack the very ceiling of that domain.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
Fragments of the halo flickered and vanished across the surface of the vortex. Accompanied by the deafening sound of crushing boulders, cracks spiderwebbed across the space forged by sorcery martial arts.
Trapped inside that whirlwind was Sichuan's Greatest.
She hung suspended in the air against her will, the gourd that once rested at her waist long since shattered to pieces.
"This... This is...!"
Her Body Protection Qi, shaped like golden feathers, was relentlessly ground down by the tempest. Blood seeped through the gaps in the glowing gale.
Until now, the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect had treated Void Stepping and Void Treading as second nature. Simply being suspended in the air shouldn't have restricted her movements. At least, normally, it wouldn't.
"They say Sichuan's flower rain can trap even a flood dragon. A human will be no different," Jeong Yeon-shin said.
His Body Protection Qi was rooted in the Myriad Blossoms Rain. Though seemingly chaotic at a glance, it moved in perfect accordance with his will. In fact, owing to the subtle principles of Sword Control infused within it, every single trajectory within the vortex of Bright Dawn could be considered a martial form of its own.
"……!"
The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect couldn't even launch a strike. All she could do was squirm helplessly in midair.
Whenever she tried to flick her wrist, her entire elbow was yanked upward.
When she attempted to unleash a propulsion shockwave from the Yongquan point on the sole of her foot, a sudden, razor-sharp gale swept diagonally across her knees and thighs.
The fiercely raging currents were incredibly complex—entirely different from when the two had first clashed at the Golden Wing Sect.
The razor-sharp winds bent and curved repeatedly in midair. Every trajectory was a fluid variation, containing a depth of time and experience that hadn't existed before.
"Ah... Ah...!"
"Die now."
The Commander of the Demonlight Wing looked up at her quietly.
He perceived every twitch of her muscles. He instantly saw through and countered even the internal power waves surging from her acupoints.
He had mastered the human body. He possessed a sensory perception unmatched in a thousand years.
Equalized energy.
Internal energy where opposing natures became meaningless.
Fragments of Body Protection Qi that pushed recoil to its absolute limit.
It was the culmination of Jeong Yeon-shin's senses—controlling all those clusters of light with the Fan Dragon Lotus Art—and his complete dissection of the enemy's movements over the course of more than two hundred exchanges.
The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect was a master whose specialties lay in close-quarters combat and aerial arts. Even her Unified Martial Transcendence was a technique designed to assist close-range strikes.
Yet, at the very beginning of the fight, she had been helplessly swept upward by his Sword Control.
The completed form of the Myriad Blossoms Rain was just as fatal to her as it was to a flood dragon.
A bird could not escape the storm.
Defense was impossible.
Screeech!
The scream she let out sounded like the shriek of a bird of prey. The echo reverberating in all directions was immense, as if she were venting the sound not just from her mouth, but from her entire body.
Jeong Yeon-shin stood perfectly still, maintaining Bright Dawn.
Just a little more.
The burning sensation in his Upper Dantian was, if anything, proof that Bright Dawn was an ultimate technique capable of working against a transcendent master.
The dizziness was nothing. Even with his vision blurring the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect into multiple figures, it was bearable.
Eventually, the translucent whirlwind ruptured against the ceiling of the Unified Martial Transcendence with a sharp crack, instantly transforming into hundreds of gusts of wind.
The vortex unraveled into countless strands, sweeping away the surrounding dust before vanishing entirely.
Whoosh...
A gentle shower of stardust drifted back down, seeping into Jeong Yeon-shin's body.
He lowered his eyelids for a moment.
The fragments of light gathered at his heart once more, forming a halo. He couldn't feel the same surging power as before. He had expended a massive amount of energy, but it was nothing a proper session of Qi Meditation couldn't fix.
A light price to pay for defeating Sichuan's Greatest, a transcendent master, Jeong Yeon-shin thought calmly.
As he refocused his eyes, his vision grew much clearer. On the desolate ground, stripped of every blade of grass and splinter of wood, lay a dust-covered heap of rags.
It was the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect.
Through the gaps in her shredded clothes, blood showed instead of skin. Her crimson, glistening figure was a gruesome sight. A dark red pool was already expanding across the earth beneath her.
Haa...
A faint breath reached his ears.
It was internal energy breathing. The fact that she was faintly generating internal power waves meant she had instinctively entered Qi Meditation.
Jeong Yeon-shin reflexively thought of the Lord of the Tenth Sect—a man who had survived being killed multiple times by both him and the Blood Flame Cult Leader.
Peerless masters, without exception, possessed a sickeningly tenacious Innate Qi. They were barely any different from the immortal nobles of the Blood Flame Cult.
I need to take her head.
Step.
He moved his heavy legs, activating the Jeong Family Dynamic Art to stabilize his battered body. The sound of her ragged, wheezing breath gradually drew closer.
The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's body flinched.
"Don't... come. Go away..."
He didn't reply.
The moment he stopped right beside her, the dust swirling around his feet dispersed to the left and right with a soft whoosh.
At the exact same time, the flow of Natural Qi gathering toward her nose was abruptly severed.
A step that pierced straight through momentum itself—it was the Radiant Wing Step.
The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's eyes trembled. Her pupils were still dyed golden, as if that were their natural state.
"Disrupting my meditation... with mere footwork...?"
"I thought facing you would allow me to complete up to the eighth step," Jeong Yeon-shin said.
Dismantling her counters in reverse had been highly enjoyable, but it had yielded zero progress for his footwork.
He wasn't deeply disappointed. There were plenty of other touchstones out there. Once he left this place, he would become a tempest sweeping across the entire Jianghu. He had to anticipate challenges from other peerless masters anyway.
"Still, I'm glad I could at least refine Bright Dawn. Wasn't my Body Protection Qi quite decent?"
"That kind of thing... isn't Body Protection Qi..."
It was the grumbling of a loser. Jeong Yeon-shin only said what he needed to say.
"Since you mobilized that much power at Unhoe Peak, the heterodox sects of Sichuan must have no strength left, right? There is a limit to the influence Lingering Spirit and the Hegemon Sword Sect can exert in other regions."
"I don't know... about every single thing like that."
Lying prone, the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect parted her swollen, blood-red lips. She slowly raised her head, her gaze meeting Jeong Yeon-shin's.
"How... did you do it...?"
Finally.
The attention of Sichuan's Greatest, a master who had once looked down on the entire world, was focused entirely on Jeong Yeon-shin.
It was the characteristically mad gaze of a peerless master—the look of a lunatic who had built their martial arts upon the principles of all creation, grasped through profound comprehension.
"Do what?"
"That stance just now... it wasn't just the Myriad Blossoms Rain. The Release Formula, Astral Qi, Sword Kinesis, different forms for every single fragment... That's not something a human's Upper Dantian can handle. Did Wudang give you the Dual-Principle Mind Art just to hunt me down...?"
The Wudang Sect's Dual-Principle Mind Art. It was a peerless martial art said to divide one's thoughts into multiple, independent streams.
Jeong Yeon-shin had also thought about it once.
He had wondered if he could simultaneously operate Ultimate Lightning—which detonated his entire body's internal power into Brilliant River—and the Fan Dragon Lotus Art.
Hummm...
While driving the Great Heavenly Cycle of the Jeong Family Dynamic Art even harder to stabilize his body, he gave a brief shake of his head.
"I simply tried overlaying the subtle principles of Sword Control onto my Body Protection Qi as a single martial art. It wasn't difficult to conceptualize the flow."
"...That's just wordplay."
"You said unleashing all the martial arts one has refined over a lifetime at once is a peerless master's life-saving ultimate technique. Your Unified Martial Transcendence broke the mold. It broadened my horizons."
He had united two of his sect-exclusive martial arts.
Jeong Yeon-shin caressed the hilt of Lingering Thunder with his thumb. Now that I've grasped the thread, I can go further.
The golden light in the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's eyes began to fade.
"It's different. Unified Martial Transcendence is not a technique; it's a mental image. Even if you use your Upper Dantian as naturally as breathing, you shouldn't be able to..."
"Is breathing difficult?"
"..."
Jeong Yeon-shin refined his insights in the quieted space. The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect was Sichuan's Greatest, a master recognized by the entire world.
Even their seemingly casual exchange was laden with insight and realization.
Her perspective made him realize anew things he thought he already knew. Her view on the Unified Martial Transcendence was absolutely worth engraving in his heart.
Not a technique, but a mental image...
Muttering inwardly, Jeong Yeon-shin adjusted his grip on his sword.
"Earlier, you said you were going to travel the world. I heard you don't move unless it concerns a spirit beast. Where did you have in mind?"
"...The southern tip of this land."
"The Hegemon Hero of our main fortress went to hunt the Hainan Imugi, though," Jeong Yeon-shin said, recalling his maternal grandfather's face. It was something he had heard in passing while conversing about the purple-ranked figures of the Jianghu.
Perhaps she knew the former Commander of the Divine Sword Corps well. The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect changed her tune in the blink of an eye.
"Then the west."
"Why?"
"My hometown is there. A place with beautiful mountains," she said.
Jeong Yeon-shin nodded slowly.
"See it after you die."
No answer came. Her fate had been sealed the moment his Radiant Wing Step disrupted her Qi Meditation. She had borne the full brunt of Bright Dawn, and she had failed to tend to her severe internal injuries in time.
The Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's face grew deathly pale. Her end was approaching rapidly.
Jeong Yeon-shin asked, "Why were you so obsessed with the flood dragon, even to the point of harming innocent people and destroying their livelihoods?"
"Because that is my Heavenly Mandate."
It happened right after she spoke of the will of heaven.
Flash!
Suddenly, a golden haze of light arose, spreading all the way to Jeong Yeon-shin's feet. It was a radiance originating directly from the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's body.
For an instant, the phantom of a giant bird flickered over her body and vanished.
"Humans cling to their names... and crave the attention of posterity, but..." the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect said. Her eyes held the dry, mischievous glint that occasionally appeared when she drank alcohol. "There are also beings who wish to return to the heavens without leaving even a single fingerprint behind. Because they do not wish to be defiled by human hands."
A spectacle bordering on a miracle unfolded.
Her body began to turn into pure golden light. The sight of her rapidly fading form was profoundly mystical.
An internal power wave swept weakly against the hem of Jeong Yeon-shin's trousers like a gentle breeze.
Was she truly not human, but rather one of the strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural beings of this world? It was said that spirit beasts rarely left their traces on the earth, as human greed extended even to their corpses.
"I am not dying in defeat. I am escaping the Saha world and ascending to—"
Thud!
Suddenly, a colorless ripple erupted in midair and slammed downward.
"..."
The heavy wind pressed down on the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect and dispersed translucently. Her body instantly became solid flesh again, the golden radiance vanishing without a trace.
"You're still trying cheap tricks even though I've already ruined your sorcery once before."
Jeong Yeon-shin shook his hand once and adjusted his grip on his sword hilt. He had experienced quite a lot of sorcery martial arts since coming to Sichuan.
Unless it was cast fast enough to be used in active, close-quarters combat, he had become fully capable of sealing it with Fa Jin.
It was time to bring this journey to the Jianghu to an end.
"Die now."
The Divine Sword: Lingering Thunder transformed into a chilling streak of light.
The downward slash severed the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's neck with a dull thud. Though it was a blunt strike due to his depleted strength, it was more than enough to take her head.
Thud.
Her face, frozen in shock, rolled onto the ground.
At the same time, the space overhead began to shatter. As the domain of the Unified Martial Transcendence broke apart, the vast night sky was finally revealed.
Jeong Yeon-shin immediately closed his eyes. Having dispersed the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's accumulated Fa Jin with the Jeong Family Dynamic Art, he needed to rotate his halo to accumulate Qi, even if only for a brief moment.
Outside was a battlefield. Along with the dissipation of the Unified Martial Transcendence, the flood dragon's spirituality that had resided in her heart was also vanishing.
Let me commit this stage of great completion's Dharma Power to memory.
While engraving the sensation of the halo into his mind, he worried about the senior Unit Commanders.
Many of those gathered outside were the elites of the great sects.
Every single one of them was stronger than ordinary wanderers, and their numbers reached into the hundreds. It was a force where anyone would have to prepare for death. Just how arduous of a battle would he have to fight this time?
I haven't even healed my severe internal injuries yet.
The aftermath of slaying Sichuan's Greatest was immense. This was true for both his internal and external wounds.
Severed and ruptured acupoints, and gashes that reached the bone. The Jeong Family Dynamic Art he had briefly activated was merely a temporary stopgap.
Shaolin's Bright-Righteous Pill was gone now. The elixir of the Gate of the Heavenly Pillar he had entrusted to the Lazy Flame Dragon had also been used up for his Marrow Cleansing and Bone Rebirth.
There were healing pills provided to the Unit Commanders of the main fortress, but they had long since vanished without a trace during the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect's aerial assault.
Whoosh...
The night sky gradually expanded above him.
Jeong Yeon-shin stood still, taking stock of his martial arts. The Lightning-Flash Sword Ridge Style and the Infinite Flower of Time Hand were out of the question. He needed something with low internal recoil and minimal consumption of internal power.
Let's go with one-handed bare-handed strikes. Supported by swordplay.
It was right after he recalled the fighting style inspired by the Eon Family's Number One Fist.
Slowly, the hemispherical space cleared away completely.
The vast night sky unfolded. The scent of grass unique to the mountains late at night wafted over, thick and heavy with the smell of blood.
Beneath the densely twinkling stardust lay a field of corpses.
Broken weapons were driven into the earth everywhere. Massive craters gaped here and there, looking as though the ground had been repeatedly bombarded by wide-area ultimate techniques infused with profound internal energy. A foul stench wafted from the pools of blood.
It was a quiet night.
Amidst the countless scattered corpses, a dozen or so long shadows stretched out across the earth. They belonged to those who had just turned around or stood up.
The gentle starlight poured down upon their pitch-black robes.
"..."
Jeong Yeon-shin silently met their eyes, the severed corpse of the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect lying at his feet.