Chapter 461: Heaven's Tremor (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 461: Heaven's Tremor (5)
Where the Divine Sword, Lingering Thunder, had vanished.
Shock rippled through the sea of onlookers.
Those who had been retreating in disarray or fleeing in haste when the chaotic battle broke out now hesitated.
Commoners, who made up only a fraction of the crowd, alongside poets, scholars, and martial artists, all stared blankly up at the sky.
"Just now...?"
"The Divine Sword came alive and moved!"
"What nonsense are you talking about?"
"The sword, I'm telling you, the sword ascended to heaven!"
The fierce battle ground to a sudden halt. Even those exchanging blows in the realm of Super-Ascension, leaving faint white trajectories in their wake, took a step back.
The wind compressed within their profound martial forms burst outward all at once.
Swoosh—
A clay-colored vortex whipped up. The wind swept through the surroundings in a massive circle before slowly dispersing. It was incomparably gentler than the tempest the Divine Sword had unleashed earlier.
"……."
In the silence, the hems of the masters' trousers fluttered. Incomprehensible. It was the natural reaction of martial artists confronted with something that utterly defied understanding.
Among them, the Thunder Sword was the quickest to react.
Even after witnessing such a shocking event, she hadn't fully suppressed her energy wave.
A colorless, howling wind wrapped around her upper body, which was marred from shoulder to neck by short, potentially fatal sword wounds. Her black hair, cut to the nape of her neck, shimmered like a summer haze.
"Pursue."
Lowering her stance, she shot forward, shattering the dirt beneath her in a perfect circle.
She bolted in the direction where the Divine Sword, Lingering Thunder, had vanished. A delayed boom echoed behind her pitch-black leather boots. It was an incredibly fast Body Protection Scripture.
The swordsmen of Heaven's Bane, who had formed the encirclement, withdrew like an ebbing tide to follow the Thunder Sword.
The Blade-Net Venerable stood guard at their rear.
Clad in tight-fitting black robes reminiscent of an assassin's garb, a powerful energy wave radiated from his abdomen, where deep shadows faintly highlighted his thick muscles.
He was a swordsman who had refined his lower dantian's internal energy to the absolute limit.
"Surely the great Tang Clan Leader would not strike retreating men in the back," the Blade-Net Venerable said with a faint smile.
He was a middle-aged man with bold facial features and smooth skin above a long beard. He was called the Blade-Net Venerable because both his swordplay and his appearance were peerless.
Heaven's Net. It meant his techniques had no loopholes, inescapable as a net cast by heaven itself.
Yet, even this member of the Five Sword Masters of the Heavens could not entirely hide his astonishment. Traces of the shock that had briefly washed over his face still lingered.
Overhead, three shadows leaped.
Flutter—
They were Shin So-bin, Heonwon Chang, and Yu-hyeon. The rustling of their clothes was loud, whipped by the headwind of their rapid lightness skill.
All three were geniuses counted among the absolute best of their generation—wild cards whose impact in any given situation was impossible to predict.
"Senior Heonwon, was that Sword Control just now...?"
"I don't know. Regardless, heaven wouldn't let the Divine Hero of the Desolate Fortress's minor goal crumble so pointlessly. If you fall behind, I'm leaving you."
"What goal?"
"...Sharing a drink."
"What are you two talking about? Seriously, Yeon-shin always..."
Their voices faded into the distance.
The Blade-Net Venerable couldn't stop the three. He couldn't afford to look away with the Tang Clan Leader standing right in front of him.
Though his martial prowess had declined after suffering defeats at the hands of the mad Supreme Elder and the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect, Poison Lord Tang Un-hwang's Myriad Blossoms Rain was an ultimate technique no one could afford to underestimate.
Even the Blade-Net Venerable of Heaven's Bane had no choice but to furrow his brow.
"Impudent brats..."
"Look who's talking."
A middle-aged man of small stature stood before the Blade-Net Venerable. This was the man who revered a seventeen-year-old boy from the Desolate Fortress as his master.
The hammer Tang Un-hwang held in his stone-like hand began to scatter once more, drifting like pale flower petals.
Shhh—
A chilling sound of friction.
It was a Divine Art Secret Technique, passed down from a small hand to a blunt, calloused one.
* * *
It was a port where clear waterways stretched as wide as the sea.
The land meeting the river consisted of soft sand, and the bright, pouring sunlight wove a golden glow across the ground.
Gaeun Port in Fuyang County, Hangzhou.
Originally, it was a bustling hub of merchant ships that fed Hangzhou. Now, only the intermittent sound of the wind tickling the water's surface echoed through the area.
This silence was accompanied by a faint humming vibration emitted by the thirty-odd sorcerers lined up along the port.
"Absurd. To think a martial artist of the Desolate Fortress actually blocked the waterway? At this rate, the supply of Sophora Paper..." Cho Il-seo muttered, flanked by his subordinates.
In truth, he already knew. He knew that the Myriad Phenomena Water Channel Fortress—who had recently joined the ranks of the Thirteen Heavens alongside the Horde of Demons Green Forest—had long since taken control of Zhejiang with their formidable pirate forces.
Yet, he gestured with his chin, prompting a response from one of the sorcerers.
"...Cheong-myeong of the Gate of the Heavenly Pillar. I have heard he has been famous for his vicious methods for a long time," the subordinate said, bowing slightly.
Cho Il-seo nodded from his seat in a palanquin carried by four servants.
"Indeed. He was so blinded by achievements that he neglected the common people. We must pin the responsibility for Hangzhou's disrupted livelihood on him. The Blue-Eyed Demon Sword of the Desolate Fortress... If you mention him to the Grand Coordinator, he will handle it. After all the bribes he has accepted, how dare he discard our fortress like a hunting dog that has outlived its usefulness? You go. You may threaten him if necessary."
"Yes, sir."
The subordinate left immediately, carrying an armful of yellowish Sophora Paper talismans tucked into his robes. Since they would bolster his lacking sorcery martial arts, he would have no trouble securing a meeting with the Grand Coordinator.
Cho Il-seo nodded to himself. This was killing two birds with one stone.
He could bind a powerhouse suspected of having achieved the Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak to the government office, all while reclaiming the entire quantity of Sophora Paper originally promised to the Myriad Phenomena Water Channel Fortress. And he would achieve this without expending any major forces.
"The Blue-Eyed Demon Sword is taken care of," muttered the Great-Reed Arts Champion Cho Il-seo, the young ruler of Hangzhou.
He was devoting all his efforts to ensuring that the Dragon Summoning Formula of his grandfather, the Dark Sky Emperor, continued without interruption.
"The red-robed, one-eyed woman... If she is truly a peerless master, we would need at least two of the Five Sword Masters of the Heavens right now..."
"Judging by her description, she is the Seventh Apostle, known as the greatest genius of the Blood Flame Cult throughout history. Even they are highly likely to fall short."
Another sorcerer added, catching his young master's gaze. Cho Il-seo's lips curved into an arc.
"Ah, the true-blood Jeok clan. I, too, was well aware of her. I once thought I might have to marry her someday, but I heard she has gone completely mad and is fighting the Blood Flame Cult all on her own. She must know perfectly well that it is like throwing a single pebble at a vast sandy beach."
"Though her reasons for opposing our fortress are unknown, she is someone even the First Apostle of the Blood Flame Cult could not handle, even after ascending to the position of Cult Leader."
"It matters not. Do you think I rely solely on Heaven's Bane?"
At that moment, the golden sunlight shimmering on the port began to distort.
Hands burst through the sandy ground. Bloodless skin emerged from beneath the earth, and soon, corpses began to push themselves up from the dirt one by one. Some of them were little more than moving white skeletons.
It was a martial art of Defying Heaven.
Thud. Thud.
A dry, heavy sensation lingered in their footsteps.
A faint flicker of emotion crossed the faces of the sorcerers, who had stood expressionless the entire time. The Overflowing Jiangshi Technique. It was a method once used by the practitioners of the ancient Maoshan Sect to transport corpses.
Today, it had been newly compiled into a supreme divine art by the geniuses of Taemo Mountain Fortress.
In other words, they were Jiangshi.
Cho Il-seo had merely used his internal energy to animate the vessels his sect had prepared over a long period of time.
The dozens of corpses surrounding him all had a bluish energy flowing over their surfaces. It was the absolute extreme of Yin-Cold Energy.
Not only that, but by using a grand technique to absorb Myriad-Year Cold Iron powder, they mimicked the Vajra Indestructible Body of Shaolin monks.
Each and every one of them was close to becoming a Dharma Treasure, and there were as many as fifty of them. Unlike the Jiangshi of folklore, they were not slow, either. Naturally, they were fit to be the cornerstone in hunting a peerless master.
"Let us go."
"Just like this?" one of his subordinates asked, even though Cho Il-seo hadn't posed a question.
It was a highly unusual response, yet understandable.
Why had the Ming Cult been branded a wicked religion and annihilated in the distant past? It was because they went around performing all kinds of forbidden arts using demonic energy.
Many of those arts defied human imagination. For instance, kneading a newborn baby's body through a bizarre Marrow Cleansing to forge an adult physique in just a single year.
'They were punished for treason under the pretext that mere humans dared to covet the World Tree.'
Of course, the lifespan of such a child did not exceed a few years. But that was of no concern to Cho Il-seo right now.
He was a sorcerer. One who grafted the teachings of the past onto the present.
"Kill everyone who witnesses this. Conveniently, isn't there someone here in Hangzhou who has been a blood ghost since birth? For whatever reason, she has been helping the common folk and slaughtering other blood ghosts and heterodox martial artists, but even so, her karma does not disappear. We can simply claim her madness flared up again. The victor writes the history."
Soon after, the Young Castle Lord issued his final command.
"Follow me."
Shhh—
The sound of dragging feet echoed. Damp earth cracked in various places. The living and the dead began to march forward together.
* * *
Hangzhou was a land of romance and refinement.
Even when the clouds of war from the martial world loomed, it couldn't silence the tongues of people born with a natural love for amusement. In a world with few entertainments, they relished rumors and gossip.
Beneath a massive arborvitae tree, a crowd had gathered.
"I'm telling you! At that moment, the Lotus Nezha shoved Artisan Jang's grandson out of the way! Even though the Jade Emperor of Taemo Mountain Fortress was dropping an iceberg right over their heads!"
A storyteller wearing a wide-brimmed bamboo hat spun his tale in a highly excited tone.
A villager listening from a distance shook his head.
"They say peerless masters are all like strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural beings. If he shoved a child with that kind of strength, he would have turned him into a bloody pulp right then and there."
"This is why country bumpkins are..."
The storyteller clicked his tongue. The villager who had spoiled the mood flared up.
"How can someone born in Hangzhou be a country bumpkin? And what about you, brother? Aren't you just some wandering storyteller who rolled in from god-knows-where?"
The storyteller looked at him with pity.
"In times like these, if you're ignorant of the martial world's affairs, you're a country bumpkin. Haven't you heard about the Jeong fellow from the lower village? He went to the market and ended up leaving both his purse and his head behind."
The villager hesitated.
"I... haven't heard of such a thing."
A strange silence fell for a moment. Above the storyteller's head, on a thick branch of the arborvitae tree, the red hem of a woman's robe rustled.
A sudden breeze brushed through the clearing. Her pitch-black eyepatch shifted slightly against her alabaster cheek.
There was another. On the opposite side of the clearing.
A woman cradling a sword in her arms raised her head slightly.
Her long hair and pink robe clung to her body, drenched in moisture. Because of her bloodshot eyes, her otherwise gentle features did not look harmless at all. Instead, she exuded a chilling aura.
'Do people like that often wander outside the village? I should come out more often.'
The villager, who had encountered all sorts of martial artists as a Hangzhou native, thought it was quite unusual. Where did such devastatingly beautiful women come from?
"In any case, the Lotus Nezha, Jeong Yeon-shin, was surprisingly delicate in his execution. With a highly gentle yet robust energy from whatever dynamic cultivation art he learned, he was able to push Artisan Jang's grandson and Lady Yul-ha of the Mount Hua Sect far away without even deeply delving into the principles of Flow. Just like the Divine Sword, Lingering Thunder, which is said to be lodged somewhere over there," the storyteller smoothly continued.
"At any rate, he was a man more than worthy of becoming a legend of the martial world. Had he not been defeated and killed by the Lord of Heaven's Bane, he truly would have."
"Oh, about that."
The villager, who was often called slow-witted, brightened up.
"Did the Purple Robe of the Desolate Fortress really lose? I mean, even if the First Sword of the Outer Paths is one of the best swordsmen in the world... isn't there always a variable? Frankly speaking, if grown men of similar skill fight ten times, there's no law saying the result will be the same all ten times."
"Hmm, that is not entirely without merit."
"I still find it hard to believe that the Lotus Nezha was slain. I heard he was a young immortal possessing all kinds of Divine Art Secret Techniques..."
"Divine Art Secret Techniques!"
The storyteller, who wore a sword at his waist, pressed down on the crown of his bamboo hat and burst into a hearty laugh.
"Indeed, the Lotus Nezha possessed two formidable arts. One was a secret technique that made his body as fast as lightning, and the other did the same for his sword. Regrettably, each of them was such a massive technique that he could not contain both in a single body. Furthermore, neither of them managed to leave any significant wound on the Lord of Heaven's Bane."
"My word..."
"Moreover."
Suddenly, he lowered his voice, as if sharing a deep secret.
"The Lord of Heaven's Bane was a grown man, but the Lotus Nezha was just a boy."
"I heard the late Lord Jeong was a peerlessly handsome young man... and because he had reached the realm of Marrow Cleansing and Bone Rebirth, he was a man, not a boy. He was just young in years."
"It seems our country bumpkin doesn't understand what a metaphor is."
"Why, you... again?"
Glancing at the man who had jumped to his feet, the storyteller slightly lifted the brim of his bamboo hat. Eyes clouded with white cataracts were revealed. He was blind.
"Do you want to have a go?"
"What rotten luck..."
Spitting on the ground with a scowl, the villager shook his head and left the clearing.
"I knew what kind of person you were the moment you started gossiping about a young hero's tragic death just for entertainment. Don't live your life like that!"
"Does death in the martial world ever care about age when it comes calling?" the blind man in the bamboo hat said with a smirk. He still had two listeners left.
"By the way, you both have more patience than I expected. Especially the maiden of the Blood Flame Cult; that is a surprise. As they say, 'he who comes does not come with good intent'—it seems you haven't come for a pleasant chat."
He continued, stroking the hilt of his sword.
"Did you perhaps wait for the commoner to leave?"
"...Tear them apart."
The voice came from above his head. The woman with the long, trailing crimson hem parted her lips.
She lay askew on the thick branch like a corpse. Her single red eye, opposite her eyepatch, was unfocused and hollow.
"Even if I burn them, even if I burn them..." she muttered to herself.
Swoosh—
A dry wind tickled the green leaves of the arborvitae tree.
"……."
The Taoist sitting cross-legged on one side of the clearing, cradling her sword, kept her eyes fixed on the storyteller. She was incredibly quiet, and in her terrifyingly bloodshot eyes, the red-robed woman did not even exist.
Water droplets fell slowly, drip, drip, from her wet hair and clothes.
"The great wrath of a failure," the storyteller laughed. "How delightful. It sends a shiver down my spine."
He casually tossed his bamboo hat, which was secured by a chin strap, over his back.
Suddenly, the earth trembled.
Rumble.
At first, it was faint.
"Hmm...?"
A moment later, it was anything but faint. In the literal blink of an eye, the rumbling grew exponentially. The momentum of vibration compounding upon vibration was extraordinary.
Before a single breath could even finish, the ground shook entirely with a deafening roar.
Rumble, rumble, rumble—!
It was as if lightning were spreading through the dirt. The clay-colored ground was splitting wide from the repeated tremors.
The sky was no different.
Something like a comet shot vertically down from the upper atmosphere. It was not lightning, but a literal beam of light.
It dispersed the distant clouds into dozens of circular shockwaves, plunging to the earth in an instant.
In that split second.
The shape was reflected in the cataract-clouded eyes of the Lord of Heaven's Bane.
It was a sword.