Chapter 16
Chapter 16
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: Axe
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"Not coming?"
Standing there stock-still, lost in thought over a clever countermove, I heard the Mountain King ask as he twirled his axe with a whoosh.
"Then this time, I'll come to you."
A grin split his face, thick lips twisting as he slung the great axe behind his back.
A battering ram technique that unleashed the full tension of his body like a trebuchet smashing city walls.
The next instant, the attack exploded forth like a catapult loosing a stone, ripping through the air as it charged straight at me.
A wave of sword gang born from immense inner power.
I didn't resist this massive surge.
The essence of Taiji was the infinite, eternal cycle of the universe.
Its foundation lay not in defiance, but in yielding.
Thus, the Wudang sword flowed softly[柔] and fluidly[流].
This was why the Taiji martial arts, originating from the Three Peaks Immortal, took the principles of softness conquering hardness and flower-shifting wood-grafting as their core.
Not crushing the foe with one's own strength, but borrowing the enemy's force to amplify one's own.
The blade blocked the sword gang riding the axe head, bending to its fullest. My body, yielding to the rebound, shot backward like an arrow.
I didn't try to hold my ground.
Instead, mid-flight through the air like a cannonball, I unleashed lightfoot technique from the soles of my feet.
Cloud Stepping Steps: Cloud Treading.
Acceleration in midair. It was a technique symbolic of Wudang's Number One Speed.
A circular shockwave spread through the air, warping the scenery.
Having flown about thirty zhang, I landed with a thunderous boom right in front of a Green Forest bandit who had been watching the fight.
"Wha—?!"
His mouth gaped in shock. His level seemed around first-rate. He could have been a stronghold leader in any decent bandit lair and lived comfortably, but on a battlefield where superhuman forces clashed, he lacked the prowess to create any upset.
Yet I saw the potential for an upset in him.
The weapon he held. It was all too familiar to me.
"Hand it over."
With my left hand free of a sword, I unleashed a palm strike that slammed into the bandit's gut.
He spewed blood from his mouth and flew off into the distance, dropping the weapon from his hand amid the excruciating pain.
A wooden handle a chi long, with a silver blade the size of a palm.
The hand axe spun through the air before settling perfectly into my grasp.
'Ah.'
I felt the muscles in my face twitch beyond my near-perfect control.
The oddly off-balance weight. A sensation so familiar, so longed for.
Excitement and thrill welled up, making the axe handle feel hot to the touch. Even the pulse of my heart throbbed through to the blade.
A martial artist's weapon was no mere chunk of metal—it was their very life as a warrior.
And as the moniker Wudang Ghost Axe suggested, in my previous life, I wielded not a sword, but an axe.
Green Forest Axe Method was the pinnacle of axe martial arts, and I had reached the world's best in that domain.
"Dual wielding, huh. Rare even in the world... but your aura's completely changed. Some epiphany in that split second?"
The Mountain King muttered, his massive eyes gleaming.
His words were half right, half wrong. It wasn't an epiphany gained, but one reclaimed.
The insights of the absolute realm I'd achieved in my past life had been forged with an axe, not a sword.
Too profound and vast for this immature body that hadn't even pierced the Life-Death Gateway, those dormant insights from the absolute realm were awakening now—stirred by the clash of martial arts in this deathmatch, triggered simply by taking up the axe.
Hand axe in my left, Pine Pattern Ancient Sword in my right.
As the Mountain King said, dual weapons were a non-mainstream martial art.
Dual swords especially were an abomination ignored by all save sword demons or evil outliers.
Fools everywhere in the jianghu spouted nonsense like "two swords double the power," but wielding two weapons made balancing weight centers difficult, and force distribution, speed, inner power control—all suffered losses far exceeding double.
Despite such clear explanations, those who stubbornly toted dual swords were likened to many-legged, substanceless bugs—earning the derogatory term "dual sword bugs."
I knew most of the eighteen weapons at a proficient level, but I'd never operated two at once.
I hadn't learned the Two Yi Divine Art, and after thirty, my eight crippled limbs made "dual wielding" impossible anyway.
Of course, that didn't mean I couldn't now.
'Nothing to it.'
I hurled the hand axe while stepping into footwork, charging forward. Wudang's movement art outpaced the thrown axe.
The axe traced a strangely arcing parabola through the air, its trajectory crossing with flashing sword light to target the Mountain King's vital points.
The great axe and sword clashing in midair with a harsh whoosh sent his arm whipping back.
In power and speed, he was in no way inferior to the yokai I'd faced before. Unlike the beast's instinctual strikes, his axe work wove profound martial principles.
But I wasn't a swordsman, and my attacks didn't end with the sword.
A beat later, the hand axe—hidden from his view by our prior exchange—sliced across to strike.
To block his brow splitting like firewood, he raised his great axe, leaving his abdomen and chest exposed. Seizing the moment, I swept my sword upward.
Dodge or block, or his gut would rip open under the sword strike.
The Mountain King backpedaled with evasive footwork.
But in that instant, I let go of my sword.
The Mountain King was wrapped head to toe in protective sword gang thick as a city wall. Light, sharp sword strikes wouldn't penetrate easily.
A blunt, heavy siege weapon attack would be far more effective—like fists, palms, or a hammer or club.
And Wudang had a technique used to shatter protective sword gang.
Internal Heavy Hand Method, which pierced gang barriers to roil the enemy's blood and qi.
Wudang's deadliest killing art and ultimate technique.
Wudang Ten Brocades.
This supreme martial art, embodying both soft and hard principles, unleashed from my fully spread palms as the Ten Brocades—mastered to the extreme and stacked tenfold.
Thud—!
My twin palms struck home, one to liver and intestines, the other to solar plexus.
Blood spurted from the Mountain King's nose and mouth as he staggered. Yet it fell short of slaying a superhuman master.
With numb hands, I snatched my sword still hanging in the air and the hand axe rebounding off his twin blades.
In that fleeting moment, the Mountain King's arm muscles bulged massively.
Whoosh! Without yielding a breath, the great axe he'd raised for defense twisted at an odd angle, slashing down in a diagonal line.
An axe method that even felt profound at first glance.
In my past life, I'd roamed Xinjiang—opposite Guangdong from the central plains—as a young wandering expert, and after thirty, I'd attained prowess and realm beyond trifling superhumans, becoming an absolute being.
Thus, no Mountain King existed in my memories, but had I not been there, his axe method would surely have been the world's best.
Such was my thought as I watched the axe descend to pulverize me from right shoulder to left flank.
Once more, time seemed to slow, my mind settling calmly. In my vision, only the Mountain King; in my ears, only his breath and the axe's whoosh, stretched long.
I crossed left-hand axe and right-hand sword.
A defensive strike harnessing Taiji Wisdom Sword's innate softness.
Normally overlaying empty-hand palm and true sword to disrupt the enemy's weapon path and gang direction, but one hand didn't need to be bare.
Taiji Wisdom Sword: Sword Sweep.
The weapons in both hands, tracing Taiji, twisted the metal lightning's trajectory. The next instant, the diagonally falling axe was buried in the ground.
Mid-fight, I'd analyzed and comprehended his axe method's path, slipping sword sweep into its opening.
A technique commonly called "destruction." More precisely, "dissection."
And assembly was merely disassembly in reverse.
If one could invent a martial art, one could dismantle it too. Both were trivial for me.
Time had been ample; I'd "read" the structure of his axe method.
"Ha."
A short, clipped laugh. Hollow, defeated.
I understood the Mountain King's feelings.
To have one's martial arts bested by some unknown whelp.
For a jianghu warrior who lived and died by the martial way, it was like having their life denied. The ultimate humiliation.
At least the Mountain King had held his own.
My fourteen-year-old past self could never have beaten him, but thirty-year-old me had been thrashed like a dog in summer heat by a twenties Heavenly Demon who hadn't even regressed.
'Even now, damn it...'
My stance nearly faltered, and I scowled fiercely.
This lunatic's madness followed me even after regression.
Hallucinations and auditory visions were common mental afflictions, ones I'd carried in my past life too.
Better than the old ones where dead comrades accused me of surviving alone, but enduring snide remarks from the one person I hated and envied most while sane was no picnic.
Of course, not worth my attention now.
Even if I'd succeeded in dissection, I couldn't let the enemy rearm. With the advantage seized, I had to press harder, faster.
I stomped the axe blade with one foot. Lost in no-mind, I stabbed, swung, slashed, thrust with both weapons, forcing the Mountain King to retreat.
His protective sword gang blocked major damage, but maintaining it was a burden—spreading focused power across the whole body.
The Mountain King backpedaled bit by bit. Axe lost, he had no choice but to wrap gang around his limbs and fight.
The blazing protective sword gang flickered like a candle in the wind with each exchange.
'Now.'
I hurled the hand axe while swinging my sword.
The Mountain King tilted his head to dodge the thrown axe and wrapped gang around his arm to block the blade.
A deadlock of raw power. The longer it dragged, the worse for me.
"Truly... a marvel. Are you really that age?"
Looking down at tiny me with three gray hairs, the Mountain King spat words with a hearty laugh, blood from his mouth splattering his face.
I didn't reply. With my free hand, I alternated Cotton Palm and Taiji Fist paths, pummeling him.
The moment the Mountain King, out of stamina to maintain protective sword gang, thrust both hands forward to block my sword and palm...
Krunch—!
With the sound of an impregnable city wall crumbling, the hand axe—having flown thirty zhang and returned—slammed into the back of the Mountain King's neck.