Chapter 474: The Peerless Grand Festival (9)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 474: The Peerless Grand Festival (9)
Near the edge of the hill, a monstrous, thunderous rumble swept through the surroundings.
Ju Gwang-singae flinched, if only for a fleeting moment. He had been searching for an opening in the Dark Sky Emperor's defenses—the very man who had ultimately chosen to defy Heaven.
The moment the Dark Sky Emperor mentioned "Sambong," Ju Gwang-singae raised his eyes.
Thick bolts of lightning flickered amidst the dark clouds. As the rumbling thunder battered his ears, a peerless expert below—who had forged a Nascent Soul out of bone—incessantly chanted a low, echoing mantra.
It was a sight one would only witness at the absolute pinnacle of the martial world.
‘A madman playing at being King Yama of the Underworld...!’
The grandson of the Hegemon Hero had just struck at the old monster's life with an ultimate strike, its profound principles difficult to even fathom. As the Dragon Head Leader of the Nine Sects and One Gang, Ju Gwang-singae could not simply stand by and watch.
Even if his aging body had been slowed by sword wounds and the backlash of the Void Extinction Realm, his duty remained the same.
But that was only in his thoughts. In reality, he could see no openings.
The Dark Sky Emperor had cast a dense shroud of energy in all directions, looking ready to unleash his sorcery at any given moment. Though Ju Gwang-singae had been utterly ruined by the Dark Sky Emperor's Unified Martial Transcendence—a technique prepared over hundreds of years—his sense of Qi remained perfectly intact.
He could clearly feel the intangible currents of air enveloping the old monster's body. It was a spell formation comprising dozens of defensive stances, a Body Protection Qi that completely severed his exterior from his interior.
It was an impenetrable fortress wall. Even if Ju Gwang-singae were in perfect condition, it would be difficult to breach it in a single blow.
The Unified Martial Transcendence he had synthesized was a movement technique designed to swiftly overwhelm the Hegemon Hero in his prime; it was far from the monstrously heavy strikes displayed by the Hegemon Hero's grandson. They were polar opposites. Furthermore, because his Essence, Qi, and Spirit had been disrupted by the Void Extinction Realm, he could not even execute it.
‘But...’
He could not ask his junior to use Unified Martial Transcendence once more.
It would ruin the boy's body. Even now, he had to be spending every spare moment trying to cool down his overheated acupoints and muscles. As a senior, it was not something he could ever wish upon him.
— Are we not striving for a great cause together?
Those were the words Jeong Yeon-shin had spoken earlier.
The Dragon Head Leader was also a man of the martial world. Though he had felt a lingering aversion to the boy's bloodline from their very first meeting, he could not let personal feelings interfere with a Purple Rank expert who fought for the greater good.
It was then. Ju Gwang-singae suddenly kicked off the ground, leaping backward.
Whoosh!
[Please understand.]
The ground beneath cracked and split apart. It happened alongside the low telepathic thought of the Dark Sky Emperor, who had spread his arms wide in the middle of the hill.
A sudden wave of heat rushed in, warping the surrounding air into a semi-transparent haze. The heat packed into that single stance was incredibly dense.
‘He's gotten even stronger...!’
Retreating to the bottom of the hill in an instant, Ju Gwang-singae cursed inwardly. That damned old monster.
Had he not felt the presences behind him on both sides, he would have considered a full retreat.
The new Purple Rank and the Mount Hua Sect Leader. The words of these young people, whose ages were vastly below his own, drifted into Ju Gwang-singae's ears. It was the final conversation they would have before entering an earth-shaking battle.
"He mixed Samadhi True Fire into his Air-Hitting Palm. The direction of release is omnidirectional. Compared to his achievement of Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak, his strikes are excessively fast. He seems to have laid down a Dharma Treasure or a Formation Art nearby to boost his offensive stances, but there is a precursor right before he casts his Sorcery Martial Arts. When you feel the fine hairs on your skin tingle, that is when you should execute your evasive footwork."
"Even that has a flow. If I cut the point of impact, it will disperse."
"The problem lies in his chain formulas and overlapping strikes. Since neither should be impossible for that skeleton, unless one has a Body Protection Qi specifically prepared against the Internal Heavy Hand Technique, one's insides will melt. The same goes for the Ming Cult Leader's Samadhi True Fire. It must be suppressed with a specific step. It is wiser to do that than to face it head-on."
"Indeed, I must keep that in mind. Ultimately, the Combat Interval is the issue. If I can just get within thirty steps..."
"First, Lady Yul-ha, it seems you must continue to guard the Abbot. In a short while, he will rise, having rendered the skeleton's Unified Martial Transcendence useless. Correcting the balance of Essence, Qi, and Spirit through meditation... I, too, have much to learn from this."
"...Yeon-shin, is it a bit easier for you to breathe now?"
"I can move."
"Once this is over, I must see you at Mount Hua. I will prepare a bath infused with the ingredients of the Purple Grace Pill, and then send a letter to the Desolate Fortress. I have already dropped a hint to Old Mother Ak."
"There are plenty of spirit medicines at the main fortress as well."
"Even so, how could they compare to the immortal-like leisure of a sacred mountain like Mount Hua?"
It sounded like a leisurely conversation on the surface. But the reality was vastly different. The energy contained within the Dragon Summoning Formula's formation had completely vanished. The Great Technique had ultimately succeeded.
This was a critical juncture where finding a way to counter the enemies' martial arts was of paramount importance.
Hum—
At that moment, Jeong Yeon-shin and Lady Yul-ha were scanning each other's bodies with their respective Qi waves, lightly tapping the acupoints on their limbs.
They were adjusting their True Qi circulation to match the counter-methods they had just discussed. It was a form of technique transmission, reminiscent of the anecdote where the Hidden King Amidst Flowers, Seomye, once passed down the Myriad Blossoms Rain to the Tang Clan Leader.
Such was the conversation of the world's greatest geniuses. Sensing those profound waves of Qi, Ju Gwang-singae couldn't help but marvel inwardly.
‘Indeed, the old monster isn't the only one who can prepare for battle.’
The next moment.
Suddenly, a massive wave of thunder and lightning surged down from the hill. It was an offensive stance meant to keep them at bay. The surroundings were dyed a brilliant blue. It was a bolt of lightning from the Dark Sky Emperor, packed with monstrous internal energy.
[Unable to forget.]
Crack-crackle-crackle!
Sparks scraped against the ground, flying in all directions. The nearby earth was scorched pitch-black. Before anyone knew it, Jeong Yeon-shin and Lady Yul-ha, who had been behind Ju Gwang-singae, were swinging their swords with their backs to him.
While their purple and pale pink robes fluttered violently backward, the tsunami of lightning collided with invisible shockwaves of sword strikes, dying down on the spot with a deafening roar.
‘How is he already...?’
Ju Gwang-singae, who had stopped mid-evasive step, stared in astonishment. He was amazed by Jeong Yeon-shin's movements. It was a shocking recovery speed, especially considering the boy hadn't even learned a blood-sucking Blood Art.
But such was the way of the martial world. When good fortune arrived, misfortune was sure to follow.
[Do not try to fathom me. It has long been over.]
The roar that had been echoing across the dark sky was now close enough to graze their skin. The monstrous vibration did not just slice through the air; it penetrated deep into their bodies. Their insides trembled violently.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
It felt as though an earthquake had struck the atmosphere. The very space shook so violently that it could be felt on their skin.
"Fall back for a moment!" Ju Gwang-singae shouted urgently.
‘What the Dark Sky Emperor's Dragon Summoning Formula is dragging down is...!’
It was nothing like the Imugi that a certain eccentric in a pink robe had recently slain on the outskirts of the South Sea.
If he were merely summoning a creature that could still be classified as a Spirit Beast, the First Sword of the Outer Paths, whose movements were impossible to track, would not have appeared in Hangzhou, nor would four supreme masters of the Nine Sects and One Gang have gathered here.
A dragon.
The pinnacle of all strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entities in the world. An existence that almost never showed itself to humans, one that even the deceased greatest master of Sichuan from the Golden Wing Sect had spent his entire life desperately trying to track down.
Boom! Crash!
The earth shook. The dark clouds began to swell rapidly. Along with it, a tremendous, deafening roar swept across the sky.
The experts of Taemo Mountain Fortress, who were engaged in a close battle in the distance, rejoiced, while Perfected Clear Water and Ak Su-rim stopped mid-strike, their faces filled with bewilderment.
Standing beside Jeong Yeon-shin, Ju Gwang-singae and Lady Yul-ha could not hide their utter shock either.
It was coming.
Beneath the suddenly thickening clouds, a dark shadow poured down like a black curtain. In an instant, the entirety of Hangzhou was plunged into darkness.
Then, the sky, filled with dark clouds, split wide open.
* * *
It was right after the sea of clouds parted wide.
Jeong Yeon-shin slowly began to take a step forward, channeling the vibrations still coursing through his entire body down into the ground.
Darkness reigned in all directions. Pale, hazy clouds had been dragged all the way down to the earth. It felt as though he had stepped into the immortal realm at nightfall.
A place forbidden to mortals. A place where perhaps the very heavens that had cursed Jeong Yeon-shin with his short-life syndrome were looking down upon the earth...
And then, the Flood Dragon.
Ssssshhhhhh—
A hazy drizzle began to pour down, accompanied by a gale so fierce that it was difficult for anyone to keep their eyes open. As the tremendous wind repeatedly whipped at the hem of Jeong Yeon-shin's robe, a wall of bluish scales endlessly brushed through the empty air.
No. It was not a wall.
It was a body so long and thick that its size was impossible to estimate. It tilted its head, which was covered in scales that glittered like diamonds.
Looking down at the earth from the heavens. It was like a dream, but its overwhelming presence made the wind and rain battering his face and the backs of his hands feel intensely real.
The dragon was reflected in Jeong Yeon-shin's eyes. Teeth lined up as sharp as divine swords within its long snout, eyes glittering like massive obsidian stones, and a body that endlessly drew circles wider than any city.
Its head was about half the size of an average village. To estimate the length of its body, one would have to picture the endless flow of the Yangtze River.
It was just like what he had seen in the world of the formation art that the Lord of the Golden Wing Sect had once opened. The only difference was that this was not a shadow, but a physical entity—a strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural being whose very existence reminded him of the Purple Rank's martial world.
‘...Defying Heaven.’
Such a thing should not have been visible to his eyes. For the world he had to live in was different.
"..."
Jeong Yeon-shin, who had just turned eighteen, was incredibly shocked deep down, but the new Purple Rank of the Desolate Fortress did not let it show on his face at all.
With an indifferent expression, he simply kept walking forward. Toward the Dark Sky Emperor, who stood atop one side of the Flood Dragon's long body, and the Heaven-Smiling Invincible.
Step.
He had already seen the Human-Faced Spider in Beijing. After that, he had donned the purple robe. Although Ma Yeon-jeok and Yong Hee-myung had told him to take charge of the human Murim, he could not truly remain detached from the martial world of strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entities.
Today was proof of that.
[Sambong, I know you are in the heavens.]
The Dark Sky Emperor, wrapped in a thick white cape, looked up at the sky. A pale blue ghost fire flickered unstably within his hollow, pale eye sockets, while his Nascent Soul, which used his skeleton as its true body, did nothing but fiercely spread a semi-transparent wave of Qi.
[Who else but you, throughout all of history, could have achieved true ascension? This is a most obvious truth. Yet, why do you remain silent...? Why did you only grant me the Flood Dragon...? You cannot do this to me.]
Even his telepathic thoughts, which bordered on incoherent rambling, carried a grim, heavy weight.
Crack.
A pure white frost coated the Flood Dragon's body where he stood. The Yin energy was excessive. The raindrops falling around the Dark Sky Emperor turned into thick hailstones the moment they drew near him, pattering down onto the ground.
Dark Sky Emperor Cho-yeol.
‘The one who achieved great completion of the deathless Nascent Soul.’
He summoned dragons and commanded the wind and rain.
As a Purple Rank expert, Jeong Yeon-shin thought to himself: That skeleton comes first. If he prioritized the Heaven-Smiling Invincible here, Baek Mi-ryeo would be furious with him, regardless of rank. She might not even welcome him back.
Rumble! Crash!
It was the sound of lightning striking in the far distance. Perhaps it was the aftermath of the Flood Dragon Manifestation. Massive, blue flashes of light flickered continuously in all directions, some of them clearly illuminating the areas where commoners lived.
How many had already lost their lives?
"Lady Yul-ha," Jeong Yeon-shin spoke slowly, glancing at Lady Yul-ha, who was now walking side-by-side with him. "Do not stop me. This is not something that can be resolved by going alone."
Her face still showed traces of shock, but she seemed less surprised than Jeong Yeon-shin. As expected of a leader of the Nine Great Sects, Lady Yul-ha seemed highly accustomed to strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entities.
"The Abbot is on the verge of waking. His Qi circulation is at its peak, but without the Dark Fragrance Drift, which allows one to roam freely in all directions, it will be difficult to guard against a surprise attack."
"I know. But..."
"There is a way. Please keep an eye on the Flood Dragon."
Jeong Yeon-shin looked up at the dragon, which did not even utter a sound.
[......]
A heavy black light rippled in its massive eyes, and a threat unlike anything he had ever felt before clawed at his mind. His head spun.
It felt as though a natural disaster could strike at any moment. The true Purple Rank's martial world was both mysterious and heavy.
Had it lost its sanity to the Great Technique and chosen to follow the Dark Sky Emperor? Did it feel nothing toward the one who had summoned it? He couldn't even tell what it sought to achieve on earth.
Jeong Yeon-shin shook his head inwardly. There's no need to know.
Whoosh!
The next instant, his figure blurred, and he was standing on the dragon's body. It was before the Flood Dragon could even open its snout. The Dark Sky Emperor, standing far above him, came into view.
[...This, too, is merely a process.]
The meaningless muttering was none of Jeong Yeon-shin's business either. The step he took once more split the wind and rain to his left and right.
Above the transparently splashing water droplets, the propulsion shockwave of his Ten-Mile Light Grace lightness skill faintly materialized.
Whoosh!
Jeong Yeon-shin sprinted along the Flood Dragon's body.
He was monstrously fast. In the blink of an eye, he would have easily reached the Dark Sky Emperor's face, but in that same split second, the Heaven-Smiling Invincible suddenly blocked his path. Her hair fluttered like ebony.
[Did you not have business with me?]
A habitual sneer played on her pale face. And her hand emitted a semi-transparent vibration, like a heartbeat.
Thump—
From the palm that the Heaven-Smiling Invincible thrust forward across the gap of an instant, a blue beam of light rose and drew a large circle. Immediately, ancient characters and patterns formed of internal energy chased each other's tails along the border, spinning like rays of light.
Perhaps she, too, had benefited from the Void Extinction Realm like Jeong Yeon-shin; blue lightning, arising from an entirely different axis of time, instantly flashed its thick body and surged out of the spell formation.
[I wish to know about your Unified Martial Transcendence. As the leader of the Ming Cult, I am willing to ask politely...]
The Heaven-Smiling Invincible's telepathic thought cut off.
It was because of a woman who suddenly soared up like a bat right before the tips of Jeong Yeon-shin's feet. It was a dreamlike sight.
Raindrops glistened like starlight in the night sky from her extremely long black hair, and her red robe cut through the dark air with a smooth texture...
An innate madness seeped from her lips, which curved in a vivid crimson.
He did not need to look to know. Jeong Yeon-shin felt her face through her presence alone. There was no reason to stop. He reached out his hand mid-sprint.
Rustle.
He pressed his hand against the Seventh Apostle's back.
It was the Mingmen Point. Beyond the slippery texture unique to the Pure Blood Robe, he could feel her long, firm erector spinae muscles—structured as if she had mastered the Jeong Family Dynamic Art—right at his fingertips.
In that instant, a shuddering spasm, like a sudden jolt, brushed against the skin of both.
‘She stole my techniques...?’
Jeong Yeon-shin's eyelids twitched, but only for a moment.
He poured the completed mnemonic of the Mara True-Blood Art through his palm. He was currently benefiting from the Void Extinction Realm. It took only a split second for the Qi wave, carrying a specific profound principle, to penetrate the Seventh Apostle's Mingmen Point.
At the same time, her back straightened completely. A bizarre wave of internal power repelled the rain. For a fleeting moment, a small, mad laugh escaped her lips.
‘Fighting fire with fire.’
Whoosh!
The moment Jeong Yeon-shin placed the Seventh Apostle right in front of the Heaven-Smiling Invincible, he bypassed them both. In the next instant, he was facing the Dark Sky Emperor.
[Is there an afterlife for you as well?]
The dead man wrapped in the cape asked, his blue eyes flashing. Jeong Yeon-shin suddenly felt his ears go numb.
Beneath the blue scales they stood upon.
Finally, the Flood Dragon let out a thunderous roar. At the same time, a vibrating sound like thunder, erupting from a human throat, countered that cry and warped the space.
It was Shaolin's Lion's Roar. Abbot Beomheo had finally risen. In that instant, the area below was dyed in a red light, suggesting that Lady Yul-ha's Unified Martial Transcendence was also on the verge of activation.
A battlefield where the pinnacle of the martial world's strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entities each displayed their martial prowess.
"There is no afterlife," Jeong Yeon-shin spoke slowly. "When you die, it's over."
[Your courage is commendable.]
The Dark Sky Emperor let out a soft, echoing laugh that seemed to chill the very air around them. It was a sound steeped in absolute arrogance and centuries of unyielding power. He had thoroughly assessed his young opponent's battered physical state, his piercing gaze stripping away every secret of the boy's exhausted body. The ancient being knew with absolute certainty that it would be incredibly difficult, if not entirely impossible, for the boy to activate the legendary Unified Martial Transcendence ever again in his current condition. When the Emperor's subsequent telepathic thought echoed directly into the young martial artist's mind, it carried a heavy, suffocating mixture of dark satisfaction and genuine, predatory curiosity.
[I asked you a question regarding the Songmun Ancient Sword,] the voice reverberated, dripping with an otherworldly resonance that threatened to crush the listener's spirit. [Your fragile, fleeting life is currently held firmly within the palm of my hand. You stand on the precipice of oblivion. Tell me, in excruciating detail, about that sacred relic—a divine treasure which is absolutely not yours to possess.]
He spoke with the absolute, unshakable conviction of a god passing judgment upon a mortal, acting as if the outcome of this bloody battle had already been decided long before it even began. To the Emperor, this was merely a brief interrogation before an inevitable execution.
However, Jeong Yeon-shin remained utterly unfazed. There was absolutely no reason to offer an answer to such an arrogant entity. Words were useless here; only martial prowess would dictate who walked away alive.
In that fleeting, breathless instant, Jeong Yeon-shin's eyes flashed with a blinding, pure white light. It was the radiant glow of a warrior burning his very soul for one final strike. Deep within the confines of his mind, he conjured a single, perfect mental image, focusing all of his remaining willpower into a singular point of absolute clarity.
Vrooooooom!
A deep, resonant hum tore through the atmosphere. His Baihui Point, located at the very crown of his head, began to vibrate violently, pulsing with an untamed, explosive energy that threatened to tear his meridians apart. The sheer force of the gathering qi was staggering, a maelstrom of power condensing within his fragile mortal vessel.
Given the catastrophic damage to his physical form and the rapid depletion of his internal energy, there was only one martial art he could possibly activate now. Even though he had pondered his limited options several times in the brief lulls of this apocalyptic clash, running through countless simulations in his mind, the grim conclusion remained exactly the same. He had to rely on his most profound, devastating trump card.
Divine Art Secret Technique.
Fan Dragon Lotus Art.
‘Upper Dantian resonance...’ he thought, feeling the immense, ethereal pressure building behind his eyes. The spiritual center of his being was howling like a caged beast, harmonizing with the profound mysteries of the universe. Despite the agonizing pain tearing through his muscles and bones, his body was somehow operating on an entirely different level than before, pushed beyond mortal limits by the sheer necessity of survival and the profound enlightenment of his martial path.
‘Flood Dragon.’ The name echoed in his mind, a silent invocation of ancient, mythical power.
Without a single moment of hesitation, Jeong Yeon-shin stomped his foot down hard on the very spot where he stood. The impact was deafening, sending shockwaves rippling through the massive blue scales beneath him. In an instant, the vivid mental image he had conjured—a majestic, divine dragon gracefully holding a fan—surged with terrifying velocity. It fell from the crown of his head, rushing down through his meridians, all the way to the tips of his toes. The ethereal energy rooted itself deeply into the physical body of the massive dragon beneath them, striking with the sudden, catastrophic violence of a descending bolt of heavenly lightning.
Thud—
A heavy, unnatural sound echoed through the battlefield, as if the very heartbeat of the world had momentarily skipped. The overwhelming pressure radiating from Jeong Yeon-shin's ultimate stance warped the laws of nature themselves. The torrential, pouring rain that had been relentlessly washing over the blood-soaked battlefield suddenly stopped dead in midair, thousands of crystalline droplets suspended in time and space, bowing to the absolute authority of his martial will.