Chapter 534: Southern Flower Radiant Taiji (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 534: Southern Flower Radiant Taiji (5)
‘They’re both insane.’
At the thought, a sharp crack echoed as Jade Cliff clenched his fist. Instantly, a series of booming explosions erupted along the boundary of the formation.
The rapid succession of shockwaves was his signal, an order for the Wudang disciples in the encirclement to deploy their sword formation.
“Sect Leader, you cannot go any further. Hand over the expelled disciple.”
Wrooooom!
[Seven Seats Hiding the Heavens!]
The voices of over a hundred Wudang disciples rang out as one, their unified shout heavy with profound grief.
“Must you go this far?”
At the cry, Hyeon-gong, who had looked ready to depart at any moment, slowly turned his head with a stiff, creaking motion.
Rumble! Craaaack!
Suddenly, a massive energy barrier shattered into pieces. A horse and rider descended, galloping through the empty air.
They came with a deafening roar of thunder. With every hoofbeat on the empty air, earthquake-like vibrations tore through the ground and atmosphere alike.
[Where is he? Wilderness Sunfall.]
The voice boomed with such raw power it was indistinguishable from a physical shockwave.
In that split second, Hyeon-gong’s eyes widened.
“That appearance… How dare a northern dog set foot in our sect?”
The northern spy, the Super Mad Dream Demon.
The mad Sect Leader.
The Wudang experts trying to set their sect straight.
And the peerless horse and rider who had just intruded.
Mount Wudang, the immortal mountain typically shrouded in pure white mist, had instantly transformed into a world-shaking battlefield.
As Jade Cliff squeezed his eyes shut, the mild mountain air began to boil like a furnace under the pressure of surging waves of internal power.
“What is your purpose?”
[You are… Seven.]
Rumble!
In an instant, the air flashed with pale lightning.
It was the recoil from Hyeon-gong’s sword clashing with the horse and rider charging through the air.
Light flickered violently, and on the ground, even the sparse trees were uprooted and swept away as if struck by a typhoon. Through it all, the iron-colored body protection qi surrounding the horse and rider merely spat red sparks against Hyeon-gong’s Songmun Ancient Sword.
It could not be cut.
“You…”
Hyeon-gong stared at the man on the warhorse.
He was a man of monstrous build, wearing a bamboo hat like the Lord of Heaven’s Bane, seemingly to conceal his face. Even his jawline was obscured by the heat-like waves of energy that constantly distorted the air around him.
[Answer my question. This is a futile fight.]
The man’s tone remained utterly indifferent, the powerful vibrations of his voice the only thing disrupting the surroundings.
It was an afternoon bathed in streams of pure white sunlight.
* * *
—First, we must eliminate the source of the energy waves feeding the Sect Leader’s heart demon. The sound arts used by the Super Mad Dream Demon are the primary cause. As far as our sect knows, it is a technique belonging to the God Thief, and it is unbelievably stealthy and insidious. Ah… and whatever you do, do not make eye contact with him. Perhaps nothing will happen to you, Lord Jeong, but just in case…
That had been Ju Se-hwa’s advice.
She was not with Jeong Yeon-shin now, having been left far behind the moment he began his descent. Her lightness skill was inferior even to the Lazy Flame Dragon’s.
‘And…'
Jeong Yeon-shin’s gaze darkened.
Perfected Hyeon-gong, having succumbed to demonic possession, was certainly a grave threat. But he wasn’t sure if the same could be said for the Super Mad Dream Demon.
The reason was the energy waves that had just intruded upon the scene—a concentration of internal power so monstrously vast that he had rarely felt its like before.
In fact, it wasn’t just one, but two. It felt as though two masters of internal cultivation were moving as a single entity, and they didn't seem likely to yield even to Perfected Hyeon-gong. It was hard to believe, but undeniably true.
It should have been impossible.
Jeong Yeon-shin and the Desolate Fortress had fought countless battles, achieving their victories through immense sacrifice. Because of that, the martial world had already been brought under some semblance of order.
No matter how many hidden masters and eccentrics existed, could someone capable of clashing with one of the Five Great Swords of the World truly appear out of nowhere?
Even if there were peerless masters who walked the world alone, the energy waves of these intruders felt incredibly foreign. They were crude yet sophisticated, destructive yet controlled. Possessing such contradictory traits in a single body, it was impossible to guess what kind of martial arts they practiced.
This was a first.
‘Unless they came from a completely different martial world…’
Jeong Yeon-shin was startled by his own thought. At that moment, he sensed a familiar presence beside him.
“Where have you been?” he asked abruptly as he soared through the air.
Shin Cheon-hwa was keeping pace right beside him, a playful smile on her lips.
“Always remember and be on guard. Masters of sorcery martial arts who have mastered Void Displacement can appear anywhere. They treat all of space as the combat interval for their footwork. There are bound to be a few of them in the northern martial world as well.”
“Can’t you just teach me the mnemonic for Void Displacement?”
He wasn’t asking for a personal favor. As the Acting Commander of the Divine Sword Corps, he was demanding a strategic asset for the greater good. He had every right.
Yet, Shin Cheon-hwa merely shook her head with a mysterious smile.
“Can’t you already travel anywhere from branch to branch of the World Tree? You even possess a divine sword strike that can trace Void Displacement. You are already a martial artist of Absolute Perfection.”
“I am not perfect.”
“You are more than enough. This is for your own sake.”
Rustle.
She lightly clasped her hands behind her back, matching her stride with his as he kicked off the ground and soared once more. They were moving at a terrifying speed, their lightness skill distorting the very air as they plunged downward.
“It is best not to delve any deeper into sorcery martial arts,” she continued. “The end of those who peered too deeply into creation was almost always horrific. The same goes for the things I taught you. Treat them as minor tricks and prioritize your swordplay.”
“What do you mean by horrific?”
“Just as a corpse is laid in a grave, natural qi can invade your acupoints and shorten your lifespan. Sorcery martial arts are, in essence, heretical arts that manipulate forces beyond one’s true capacity. Unless you are heavily adorned with precious dharma treasures, you will inevitably pay a price. To always be on guard against this is the fate of those who walk this path.”
“…I crossed hands with the Wudang Sect Leader before. He manipulated forces outside his body using natural qi, yet his energy waves felt unbelievably stable.”
“Well, that is Zhang Sanfeng’s martial arts, after all.”
She offered no further explanation, as if that alone settled the matter, before concluding.
“Four times. That is the exact number of times I used Void Displacement in my entire life. It is not a technique to be thrown around unless you are on the verge of death. You would be a hundred times better off focusing on fully mastering the Three Pure Powers.”
“……”
Suddenly, Jeong Yeon-shin felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t they had this exact conversation before?
‘Was it right after the Great War of the Desolate Fortress?’
Yes, he was certain of it.
He had heard these words once before—just before the real Shin Cheon-hwa vanished from the world. Which meant the Shin Cheon-hwa who had been accompanying him all this time was merely an illusion, born of his own fractured mind.
Flutter!
Suddenly, his sleeves whipped violently against his arms. The sensation was incredibly vivid.
“……”
Shin Cheon-hwa, whom he had been speaking with just a moment ago, was gone. In truth, she had already moved far ahead of him.
He could see her back, faint and hazy.
Beyond her straight shoulders, a battlefield stretched out—a scene that perfectly suited her figure, her purple robes fluttering in the wind.
Yet, for some reason, her form would not remain fixed. She shifted like a gemstone reflecting light differently from every angle.
‘Ah.’
That purple-robed warrior.
In Jeong Yeon-shin’s eyes, the figure looked like Shin Cheon-hwa one moment, then shifted into Yong Hee-myung the next, and for a fleeting second, wavered into the dependable back of Ma Yeon-jeok.
Then, the illusion returned to Shin Cheon-hwa. But regardless of who it was, each of them was a Commander of the Divine Sword Corps—figures capable of turning any battlefield on its head.
And at the same time, they were illusions born of his Qi Deviation.
He was only eighteen.
With the energy of heaven and earth surging through his Baihui Point, this heart demon had silently crept up on the young man as he witnessed the consecutive deaths of his fellow fortress warriors.
To truly find himself, he had to shatter this illusion in his mind.
‘No,’ Jeong Yeon-shin thought. ‘I cannot stop there.’
Booooom!
The ground shattered, fissures spreading like an earthquake as the propulsion shockwave from his Ten-Mile Light Grace erupted behind him. He took another step forward.
It was already his seventeenth step. Jeong Yeon-shin completely bypassed the space, unleashing a pale shockwave in his wake.
Whoosh!
He soared high into the air, reaching a vantage point where the entire battlefield of Mount Wudang lay spread out below.
In that split second, as Jeong Yeon-shin’s body overlapped with the shifting illusion of the three figures, his long black hair and purple robe seemed to deepen in color.
A sense of warmth washed over him. The phrase supreme and unrivaled came to mind.
‘Of course.’
For he was the only one in the entire world who could succeed them.
Finally, the words the real Shin Cheon-hwa had left him before she vanished after the Great War of the Desolate Fortress echoed in his mind. Now, he could fully comprehend them.
Her final farewell, wishing him strength for the heavy burdens he would inevitably bear, echoed once more.
—You, too, are a Commander of the Divine Sword Corps.
In an instant, translucent shards of glass materialized in his vision, only to shatter completely and vanish.
Crash!
Those fragments bore many names: defeatism, impatience, sorrow, inferiority, fear… the very heart demons that narrow one’s vision and roast the soul over hellfire.
Having merged with the illusion of Shin Cheon-hwa, Jeong Yeon-shin accepted them all, channeling them down through his feet. The invisible shards fell to the earth, scattering alongside the faint remnants of his Ten-Mile Light Grace’s shockwave.
From his immense height, the moment he felt the entire world become spotlessly clear—
“What on earth is that?!”
“The Wilderness Sunfall… no, the Lotus Nezha! Our guest! How is he so fast?!”
[Wilderness Sunfall?]
“…Ah, the child I have already crossed swords with. I believe I told you not to seek me out.”
“The Flash Art of the Desolate Fortress? Why does he look completely unharmed…?”
He was already plunging toward the center of the battlefield, which was shrouded in a hazy storm of shockwaves.
The handsome young man who had uttered that last question stood at the center of it all, with Perfected Hyeon-gong right beside him.
‘The Super Mad Dream Demon.’
Jeong Yeon-shin reached for his waist.
Slide.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, he felt the quiet, carved pattern of a pine tree. Simultaneously, a clear, resonant hum erupted from the Songmun Ancient Sword.
It was the sound of something invisible shattering—the disguise of the Nature Sword had broken.
“……!”
In an instant, the eyes of every Wudang master snapped toward the Songmun Ancient Sword.
Rumble!
The lofty energy waves radiating from each of them began to swirl together in a massive circle, drawn in by the power emanating from Jeong Yeon-shin’s grip. In a mere fraction of a second, the chaotic yet powerful waves of internal power were woven into a single, unified thread.
Holding the Songmun Ancient Sword in a reverse grip, Jeong Yeon-shin thrust it downward with casual indifference.
Thud!
The ancient sword pierced straight through the Super Mad Dream Demon’s ribs, pinning him to the ground. As his delayed scream tore through the air, Perfected Hyeon-gong’s eyes sharpened like blades.
Yet, no shockwave erupted from the strike.
Sssss—!
Instead, the dirt of the wide clearing simply parted in all directions, tracing a massive pattern on the ground like a giant Imugi coiling upon itself.
Suddenly, Perfected Hyeon-gong froze as he glanced down. The other Wudang masters, who had been unleashing their lofty energy waves, did the same.
“……”
Crackle, pop—
It sounded like firewood burning down to embers.
Beneath their feet, a brilliant blue Taiji was burning softly—a perfect circle formed of flickering blue flames.