Chapter 25
Chapter 25
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: uly
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: Finding the Reversal Amid Crisis
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Clang!
“Ugh!”
Whoosh! Whish!
“You little worm!”
Slash! Whirl! Clang! Slash!
“Urgh!”
The three demons who had been watching from behind jumped into the fray, and Geon-woo immediately started falling back.
The demons’ power was unexpectedly strong.
One in particular, who wielded a special ability, posed a real problem.
Clang! Clang-clang-clang! Whoosh! Slash!
“Damn it! What the hell are you, a ghost?!”
After clashing swords with his opponent several times, Geon-woo’s blade passed right through the demon’s sword and body like it was slicing through an illusion. Meanwhile, the demon’s blade sliced across Geon-woo’s chest.
The ability of this apparent leader was incredibly annoying.
Sometimes their swords would clash solidly, but other times the demon’s sword and body would turn illusory.
Geon-woo had taken several hits because of it.
If his body weren’t a jiangshi physique, the fight would have ended in defeat long ago.
“What is this, some upgraded version of Paeng’s trick?”
Paeng’s ability let him make his weapons and limbs ignore the opponent’s awareness when needed.
But that merely disrupted or distorted perception—it didn’t turn them into illusions like this.
Bukedochira! Salkeo!
Seeing Geon-woo draw a long breath and recover his wounds with the power of Gangsigong, the illusion-wielding demon bellowed.
The surrounding demons charged at Geon-woo all at once.
It was a rotation tactic to deny him any time to recover his stamina.
“Weak-ass bastard!”
Geon-woo ground his teeth as he watched the demon retreat while issuing orders.
“Fine, you punk! I get it now—you can’t use that ability indefinitely. That’s why you’re pulling back. It has a limit.”
Geon-woo muttered to himself while fending off the charging demons.
Block and strike! Slash! Punch, stab! Kick!
The battle raged on, employing every means available.
Amid the prolonged fight, Geon-woo occasionally landed a gamble of an attack, severing the heads of two or three demons.
“Hah, ha! Good! Good! Come on, let’s go again.”
Geon-woo stomped on the corpse of one demon, drawing his Gangsigong breath to its limit as he bluffed boldly.
The outburst had strained his body further.
‘If only I could use the Infective Blood ability right now. Not that it’d work on demons anyway.’
Geon-woo regretted not having acquired the Infective Blood ability that all his jiangshi possessed.
Even if it didn’t work on demons, it could at least serve as poison—a desperate thought born of his cornered state.
So he deliberately radiated even fiercer killing intent, glaring at the demons.
In the process, the demon corpse under his foot rapidly withered like a mummy.
Geon-woo was absorbing its energy with Ultimate Gangsigong to heal himself.
Crunch!
“Nice! That’s perfect.”
Geon-woo crushed the withered demon’s head underfoot.
It was a deliberate act to break the morale of the standoff demons.
Tuka jasapira! Katan!
But it backfired, enraging the demons instead.
“Well, shaking their composure isn’t bad either.”
As if it didn’t matter, Geon-woo lunged forward again with his sword at the ready.
He’d recovered his stamina—there was no reason to give the demons any breathing room.
* * *
“Damn, these bastards are tough.”
After another prolonged exchange, Geon-woo found himself backed against the cavern wall, facing off against the demons.
About thirty demons remained.
But Geon-woo’s condition was poor.
His armored suit was nearly shredded, revealing his upper body crisscrossed with wounds like a spiderweb.
Blood from those wounds soaked his body red and dripped down.
It meant he hadn’t properly healed the cuts from the blades.
“How can you grind up your own kin’s corpses like that?”
Geon-woo glared at one of the demons standing at the rear.
The culprit behind this situation.
Whenever Geon-woo managed to kill a demon, this one immediately turned the corpse to ash.
That cut off Geon-woo’s means of recovery via Gangsigong.
In that state, the demons kept hit-and-run tactics going, wearing him down.
Shhh! Peeeng! Ping!
Clang-clang! Clang! Splatter!
“Urk!”
In an instant, a barrage from the demons with ranged psychic abilities swept in.
They were attacks the demons charged up over time before unleashing sporadically.
Geon-woo blocked them with his sword, but a few inevitably grazed him.
The cavern severely restricted psychic powers, so the demons’ attacks lacked real force.
Before, he could have brushed them off easily.
They couldn’t pierce Gangsigong’s defenses, and even minor scratches healed right away.
But without any way to recover now, even those small wounds became serious problems.
The grazing hits accumulated, mounting pressure.
The demons knew this, so they maintained their encirclement, dragging things out while gathering their psychic energy for occasional strikes.
Geon-woo desperately wanted to charge them, but without the wall at his back, he no longer had confidence in handling their numbers.
He was that exhausted, the accumulated wounds weighing heavily.
“This is insane. I was hoping for some way out.”
He’d gone in prepared to die from the moment he sent Paeng away.
But entering the cavern had restricted their psychics, letting him take down over twenty demons.
“I’ve gathered over 500 souls already, right? So dropping some from dying should cover it just fine.”
All things considered, it wasn’t much of a loss.
Losing his gear stung a bit, but it wasn’t irrecoverable.
A word to Lord Kuron, and he could get a new armored suit easily enough.
Solid connections were wealth too.
No, such calculations didn’t matter now.
What Geon-woo needed was the resolve not to give up—and total focus on the enemy.
“Hah! Hah! Come on, you bastards! Come at me! Come on!”
Geon-woo taunted the demon leader by waggling his sword.
A gesture universal in any language.
The other demons bristled with murderous fury at the sight.
But the leader himself calmly issued low orders, soothing his subordinates.
He saw no need to change tactics against an enemy already in the bag.
Keep distance in encirclement, charge psychics for ranged attacks.
And have their best three or four probe for openings relentlessly, denying rest.
Rumble! Rumble!
“Damn it, I’ll make my own grave. Come on in! Come on!”
Eotung! Jejarira! Nadamiru!
The stalemate dragged on like that until Geon-woo created a shift.
He used telekinesis, which he hadn’t employed much since entering the cavern.
He applied it to the wall behind him, carving a narrow tunnel just wide enough for his body.
A mere few meters deep.
But slipping inside gave him some leeway.
It drastically limited how many demons could attack him directly.
And the deeper the tunnel went, the less effective the psychic ranged attacks became.
Geon-woo had added curves while digging.
Now the demons couldn’t reach him without venturing further in.
Instead.
“You bastards!”
The demons outside pooled their strength to disrupt his telekinesis.
Even straining with all his might, he could barely expand the space by an inch at a time now.
The demons strained too, blocking him.
Thus began the standoff between Geon-woo and the demons.
“Man, and there’s nothing decent to eat.”
Geon-woo’s jiangshi body needed little food or drink, but he couldn’t survive forever without it.
The demons probably felt the same, but they had numbers and freedom on their side.
Better positioned to outlast the trapped Geon-woo.
* * *
Geon-woo guessed about three days had passed.
He couldn’t track time precisely by heartbeat or sensation alone.
Sitting in the cramped tunnel, he lost all sense of time at some point.
Miss even a moment, and it snowballs into constant irrelevance.
The tunnel he’d dug stretched about ten meters.
Its twists hid him completely from outside view.
So the demons had little reason to lob idle psychic shots for fun.
Since finishing the tunnel, they’d mostly send in the leader occasionally for a sword skirmish before withdrawing.
His illusion body made him immune to Geon-woo’s strikes.
He couldn’t maintain it long, but it sufficed to scout Geon-woo’s state.
Geon-woo figured he visited once a day.
With him boxed in the tunnel, they probably thought starvation would finish him eventually.
‘Well, without telekinesis, escape really is blocked.’
Geon-woo acknowledged that much.
Telekinesis was off the table now.
But that didn’t mean all hope was lost.
Every time he circulated Ultimate Gangsigong, he sensed a faint, unknown energy responding.
He’d dismissed it as imagination at first, due to its weakness.
But with time in the tunnel’s depths, circulating calmly, he confirmed it was real.
An energy reacting to Ultimate Gangsigong.
Faint, but what if he absorbed it?
‘I’ve found the way now. Just hold on a bit longer! You’re all dead!’
Faint yet pure and potent.
Absorbing it with Ultimate Gangsigong to heal?
Or better yet, advancing Ultimate Gangsigong’s attainment?
That might even propel the linked Celestial Mind Multisoul Dominion Art beyond completion at the 10th stage—to the 11th stage, Azure Transcendence.
Geon-woo harbored such hopes as he probed the unknown energy responding to Ultimate Gangsigong.
It lay deep beneath him, under his seated hips.
* * *
= My lord! How is this possible…?
Ilryeong exclaimed in shock at suddenly appearing before Geon-woo.
“How have you been holding up?”
= After parting from you, my lord, I hid in the shelter you prepared and entered dormancy.
“Hmm, so that’s how it ended up. I should’ve realized.”
When parting from Ilryeong, Geon-woo had ordered him to go to Lord Kuron, rally the other jiangshi, and wait.
But even Ilryeong couldn’t stay active if separated too far from Geon-woo.
As a jiangshi bound to him, he fell under Celestial Mind Multisoul Dominion Art’s control like the rest.
During Geon-woo’s seven years unable to enter Onbirad, Ilryeong had lingered in the waiting room with minimal awareness.
This time too, after parting, dragging the demons too far severed the connection.
Geon-woo hadn’t considered it amid the urgency.
= What’s the situation?
Though Ilryeong grasped the gist via their reconnected spirits, he steered the conversation.
It was awkward for a subordinate to hear his lord endlessly self-reproach his mistakes.
“About thirty demons outside. I’m trapped in here.”
= Because there were no corpses for Gangsigong recovery?
Through Geon-woo’s incoming thoughts, Ilryeong quickly pieced together everything.
What followed in Geon-woo’s mind startled him further.
= Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations again. The Celestial Mind Multisoul Dominion Art at 11th stage? That surpasses the founder’s realm. And shattering Ultimate Gangsigong’s limits too!
The Langajang founder had created Celestial Mind Multisoul Dominion Art and reached the 12th stage.
But successors deemed reaching that 12th stage as completion.
Completion was the 10th stage; 11th and 12th transcended it.
Since the founder had already achieved it, attaining the 10th marked completion for them.
Only advancing that completed realm merited calling it 11th stage.
Geon-woo reaching the 11th meant, after the founder completed it, Geon-woo was the first to take that next step.
That’s why Ilryeong was so deeply moved.
And the fruit of that breakthrough was none other than Ilryeong’s summoning.