The Final Battle with the Cheon Clan Family
The Foundation Establishment elder who had heard me out hardened his face and shot back at once.
“As promised, we wiped out Yeoncheon Gate within a single incense-stick time and brought back the sect master. And yet you say the calculations aren’t finished? Are you saying that now that we’re of no use, you mean to turn on us?”
Did he truly not know there were survivors from Yeoncheon Gate? Or was he pretending not to know?
After studying his expression for a moment, I let my gaze drift past him to the Qi Refining cultivators behind him.
The moment one of the young Qi Refining cultivators met my eyes, his expression wavered.
So I looked at him and went on.
“Do you truly believe everyone in Yeoncheon Gate is dead?”
At that, the female cultivator under my stare shrieked in panic.
“Grandfather! That man is insulting our Tian Clan Household! No matter how high his cultivation is, if the family head steps forward…!”
“Enough!”
When the elder finally realized the truth and bellowed, she shut her mouth for a moment. But she bit down hard on her lower lip and quickly pressed on.
“Didn’t you yourself confirm that everyone in Yeoncheon Gate was dead, Grandfather?”
Of course, if Yeoncheon Gate had really been wiped out, she would not have acted like this. Everyone here knew it, though she seemed desperate to ignore it.
“So you left that one alive after all. How could a cultivator give her heart to a mere mortal?”
At the elder cultivator’s words, as if he had finally pieced everything together, she fell to her knees with a thud.
“Grandfather! Please help me! You can’t let him die like this! He’s not someone who should be killed so meaninglessly!!”
Thanks to her desperate plea, I felt as though I had somehow become the villain here.
So I opened my mouth again.
“None of the people in my family who died on the day of my elder brother’s wedding were people who deserved to die like that. If you mean to stop me from dealing with the remnants of Yeoncheon Gate, then I’ll cut you down too. And if the Tian Clan Household stands in my way, then I’ll take the Tian Clan Household as my enemy as well.”
Then the Foundation Establishment elder, his expression dark with pain, spoke to her.
“Ling’er, get up. Are you going to ruin the family’s future over a mortal?”
But she burst into tears and clung to the elder’s trouser leg.
“Grandfather! No! Please! Please! Help him!”
Looking suddenly troubled, the Foundation Establishment elder approached me and spoke.
“Could I perhaps spare that mortal’s life? I’ll give you all two hundred spirit stones I have. That is more than all of Yeoncheon Gate’s wealth combined, so it would more than cover the price of one mortal’s life.”
He seemed determined, in the end, to side with the female cultivator. Unlike ordinary sects, cultivation households were bound by blood, and it seemed he could not so coldly reject her plea.
I was just about to answer when, all at once, a chill ran down my spine. The soul of the Yeoncheon Gate sect master I had killed had been far too quiet.
I had told the bastard that he would pay a horrific price, so why was his soul not even letting out a single scream?
At that moment, the Foundation Establishment elder approached me once more.
“If two hundred spirit stones are not enough, I can also give you a cultivation manual. One that was hard-won from the Tianwu Association….”
“I never said you could come any closer.”
“If my approach makes you uneasy, I won’t come any nearer. I was only trying to show you what I have.”
But I was no longer focusing on his words. I turned my full attention to the divine sense I had extended outward. I had already experienced illusion arts properly, so the slightest oddity made me suspicious.
And yet all my divine sense could detect was a single ordinary mortal presence, crouched within Yeoncheon Gate. Then was this suspicion of mine nothing more than paranoia?
If I thought about it a little more carefully, the female cultivator’s words were suspicious too. It was not that a mortal and a cultivator could never have a connection. Rather, her words reminded me too vividly of the past between A-cheong and me.
If she had made some other excuse, I would have cut it off without hesitation. But for me, still carrying the wounds of my past life, bonds between man and woman were a strangely vulnerable place in my heart.
And her words felt as though they had been aimed precisely at that weakness of mine.
On top of that, even with someone of my caliber before him, an elder at the Foundation Establishment stage was behaving with absurd boldness. If I recalled how the Qi Refining disciples of Hyeondo Sect had viewed the Foundation Establishment uncles and aunts, this was arrogance beyond reason.
And most decisively of all, they had not cut out the Yeoncheon Gate sect master’s tongue, just as I had said. It was as though those who had butchered dozens of lives like swatting flies had suddenly grown merciful.
Having spoken with him for a while, I began to suspect that perhaps their true purpose was never to buy time in the first place. On the surface, everything seemed natural enough, but the smaller details were clearly grinding against one another.
So I decided to trust not the absolute sense of divine sense, but the instincts of a martial artist.
“That was close. It seems the Tian Clan Household prepared quite thoroughly.”
As soon as I finished speaking and poured qi back into my sword, the elder went pale with shock and continued urgently.
“What are you talking about all of a sudden? If my offer offended you, then I apologize. I’ll abandon the mortal’s life, so please stop this at once!”
But I poured even more power into the sword to unleash the Heavenly Demon Heaven-Shattering Sword and said,
Buzzzzzz—
“It will no longer go as the Tian Clan Household wishes!”
Heavenly Demon Heaven-Shattering Sword, first stance: Heavenly Demon Flash!
The sword, vibrating at high speed, tore through the space before me. With a sound like cloth being ripped apart, everything around me distorted as though it were wrinkling like paper, then peeled away in strips.
And in an instant, those strips became hundreds upon hundreds of talismans, falling like scattered blossoms. Just as I had expected, all of this had been a vile scheme set up by the Tian Clan Household after all.
Yet the sight that appeared before me after I had torn apart the false world woven from illusion was rather fascinating. The wandering swordsman I had saved at the tavern was sprawled in the dirt only a few steps away from me, drenched in blood, while farther out—at a distance of perhaps a hundred cultivators—were low-tier cultivators with all the color drained from their faces, looking utterly flustered.
Truthfully, I had assumed all of this had naturally been the work of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, the Tian Clan Household’s family head, but that did not seem to be the case.
Of course, that did not mean everyone surrounding me was merely Qi Refining cultivators.
About half were Qi Refining cultivators, but the other half were Foundation Establishment cultivators, and among them was even one Core Formation cultivator. So they were not a force that could be dismissed just because they were lower-tier cultivators than me.
Taking a moment to steady my scattered qi, I spoke to the Core Formation cultivator.
“Was Yeoncheon Gate really such a remarkable place that the Tian Clan Household had to stake its fortune on it?”
With a face stiffened tight, the Core Formation cultivator answered.
“That is a misleading way to put it. It is not that Yeoncheon Gate was remarkable enough to make the Tian Clan Household intervene. Rather, Yeoncheon Gate was always Tian Clan Household itself.”
At those words, I nodded without thinking. Indeed, only such a reason would be enough for the Tian Clan Household to throw itself so aggressively behind a martial sect known as Yeoncheon Gate.
“So in the end, you’re saying the Tian Clan Household must be erased.”
But the moment I finished speaking, one of the Foundation Establishment cultivators around me shouted out.
“Even if the Hundred Immortal Illusion Script Formation is broken, it’s not over yet! Everyone, keep your heads and continue the attack! That bastard is still surrounded—there’s still a chance!”
It was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, not the Core Formation cultivator I had been speaking with, who shouted that.
And hearing it, the cultivators of the Tian Clan Household attacked me all at once without the slightest hesitation.
It seemed that, unlike ordinary cultivation sects, a cultivation household did not place a cultivator’s station above all else.
“Our group will bind his hands and feet! Everyone, unleash Ice Shackles of Ten Thousand Shadows Talismans at once!”
At the cry of a Qi Refining cultivator, nearly half the enemy Qi Refining cultivators pulled out talismans and flung them in unison. From each talisman, chains of ice burst forth and shot straight toward me.
There were easily hundreds of those ice chains, and each link was thick enough to match my fist, so much so that for a fleeting moment it seemed as if every visible inch of space had been swallowed by them.
Just as the disciples of Hyeondo Sect learned Fire Pellet Art as a basic spell, these people seemed to learn talisman arts as their foundational technique.
But I focused not on the countless ice chains obscuring my sight, but on the stronger flow of power writhing beyond them. There were other ways to deal with ice chains.
Soon enough, I could feel that power beyond the chains. The cultivators who had not joined the attack were flinging dozens of talismans together in one place, releasing a far more powerful surge of qi.
The moment I drew in a breath and charged forward, the ice chains finally began crashing into me.
Crack! Crack-crack!
The ice chains smashed against me with enough force to grind me to paste, bursting apart with harsh cracks, but my steps never once slowed. A Qi Refining cultivator’s minor spell was being stopped by the protective barrier wrapped around me.
Of course, they could not possibly have been unaware of that. The ice chain attack had only been used as a feint to cloud my vision and hide the real strike.
And so, the instant the ice chains obscuring my sight vanished, the powerful blow prepared by the cultivators of Foundation Establishment and above finally revealed itself.
“Blood Snake Spirit Talisman! Release!”
A sword covered in dozens of talismans suddenly burst with red light and transformed into a gigantic crimson snake that attacked me.
A snake with blood-red scales shining with a sinister luster. The creature opened its jaws wide as though it meant to swallow me whole in one bite, but I swung my sword without hesitation.
Claaang!!
The instant my sword, wrapped in a thick sword aura, struck the top of its head and snapped its mouth shut with a sharp click, I leaped over it and charged toward the Foundation Establishment cultivators behind it.
Having already fought Seop Myeong-gyeol’s true body before, I immediately realized that fighting the crimson snake was exactly what they wanted.
But perhaps they had not expected me to pass right by the crimson snake and rush them instead, because they all reacted in shock.
“Tch! Stop him! We have to stop him!”
“My God! He can just ignore a blood serpent like that?”
The crimson snake, which had momentarily lost track of me, twisted its head back toward me, but my movement toward the flustered Foundation Establishment cultivators was faster than the beast’s pursuit.
Heavenly Demon Three Swords, first stance: Heavenly Demon Flash!
The sword wrapped in sword aura trembled and pierced the air. The moment its vibration spread outward in all directions as sword aura, every strand of that force shot straight into the chests of the Foundation Establishment cultivators.
Even the protective barrier of a Foundation Establishment cultivator could not stop sword force, and so dozens upon dozens of Foundation Establishment cultivators lost their lives in that single move. It was the terrifying result brought forth by the Heavenly Demon Three Swords, hailed as the greatest sword art of all time.
Yet despite my attack, one Core Formation cultivator remained alive.
His chest had not escaped being pierced, but given his level, it seemed he had some final means of survival left to him.
And though most of the spellcasters had died, the crimson snake formed from talismans was still charging at me with ferocious momentum. The battle was not over yet.
No, in truth, the real battle was only beginning now. Not only the lower-tier cultivators gathered here, but also the Tian Clan Household’s family head and the higher-tier cultivators—all of them would have to be annihilated.