Chapter 8
Chapter 8
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Assembly
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To prevent overheating in my upper dantian, I'd drastically reduced the number of prediction variables.
Because of that, some attacks came at me in ways I hadn't anticipated. Up until now, I'd managed to barely block them somehow, but it wasn't easy with my joints and muscles starting to creak.
Boom!
My body floated into the air from the yokai's back kick.
The foundation of all martial arts is footwork.
When you first join a martial sect, you train your lower body's balance and endurance through horse stance, learning how to stand properly.
Humans are beasts meant to live with feet planted on the ground.
Thus, the most vulnerable state for any warrior is being airborne, unable to find footing. The yokai knew this too, crossing its two arms like scissors to slice me apart midair.
In that moment of death staring me down, inspiration flooded my mind.
A wave of sudden enlightenment, like the Buddhist satori. A familiar sensation.
The Pang clan's saber mimicked tiger claws, Huashan's sword evoked swirling plum blossoms.
Wudang's arts were no different. They recreated the concept of taiji—existing since the primordial era before humanity, when gods and beasts ruled the world—through swordsmanship.
Thus, the essence of all martial arts is imitation and emulation. From the yokai's form, I grasped the clue to a new sword stance.
From my left hand in sword mudra, I unleashed sword qi, crossing it with the Pine Pattern Ancient Sword in my right hand into a blazing ten shape.
The moment of clash: blades overlapping like spokes on a wheel. As my hands traced a massive taiji symbol, the yokai's arms were smoothly deflected along its trajectory.
At the same time, the yokai's lower arms grazed my side and chest, and I thrust my sword tip into its thigh.
"Hmph."
Even as warm blood soaked into my nameless uniform, a smile tugged at my lips.
Creating martial arts. It was something my past self had been good at, loved, and enjoyed.
I'd devised countless techniques, orthodox and demonic alike, refining some, discarding others, absorbing the best into my body.
Killing that yokai? For the current me, it wasn't impossible. With all those arts, there had to be a way to take down a mere beast.
Several methods came to mind immediately.
I could block the eight extraordinary meridians' qi flow while attempting a Grand Heavenly Circulation, overloading my dantian until it burst like a thunderbolt bomb. Or use the previous Heavenly Demon's Blood Art to reverse my blood flow, briefly matching transcendent-level prowess.
Of course, the former would shatter my body like a shell packed with gunpowder, while the latter would leave me bleeding from every orifice once the "brief" time expired.
Either way, it'd be mutual destruction at best.
Demonic arts are like that by nature. Anyone who touches them meets a grim end. I was living proof.
And above all...
'The deaths are just too ignoble.'
[When did you ever die nobly?]
My final moments hadn't been exactly dignified, but dying in battle with the emperor was worlds apart from perishing against some underling's underling yokai.
Of course, those weren't my only cards.
There was an easier, cleaner way.
Not just for warriors, but all humans—for any living, breathing creature—the root of life itself.
True Origin Vital Energy.
My mind accelerated. I rapidly calculated how this new variable would affect the fight's outcome.
'If I use it, I win.'
That much was certain.
Then,
could I,
'survive after using it?'
The vast lands of the Nine Provinces.
For physical labor, there's farming; for brains, the imperial exams.
Yet martial artists swing hunks of metal through the air instead of tilling soil, dig up graves for secret manuals written in the same script as the Classics they disdain, chanting martial incantations over Confucius and Mencius.
Madmen who push themselves to death's door, gambling their lives for scraps of insight and flashy titles, only to die sword-pierced and rot as unclaimed corpses.
They don't spare True Origin Vital Energy out of mere self-preservation. They crave a death of worth over a safe life.
Most simply can't use it. Like how ordinary folk know they have a heart but can't stop it at will.
Commoners and third-rate warriors differ by whether they can wield internal energy.
To even recognize and access the True Origin Vital Energy within requires at least transcendent-level mastery.
In my past life, I'd surpassed even that pinnacle as an absolute expert. Now, my skill barely reached peak realm.
I could tap into that sealed energy by recalling those sensations and knocking on my dantian's gate—but closing it in time? Uncertain.
[—____——!!!]
A guttural roar shattered my thoughts. The yokai's arms bulged grotesquely, needle-like spines ripping through its skin.
'Use it.'
I decided swiftly.
The instant I sealed a few upper body acupoints to link my dantian and heart with a vital energy channel—
Krraaaaaang!
A snow-white figure plunged from the sky like lightning.
Protective Gang Qi wrapped around to cushion the landing wreathed the air in shimmering haze from friction. Shockwaves from the soles' acupoints whipped the already ragged hem of his robe wildly.
The intruder's palm shot forward between the yokai and me, less than half a zhang apart. A near-perfect Wudang Cotton Palm strike.
At that moment, I recognized the man.
"Master...?"
"Step back, Hyeonseong!"
His palm, cloaked in bluish gang qi, met the yokai's flank.
Crack—something snapped, ripples forming in concentric waves across its flesh. The yokai's waist bent like a bow.
The next instant—
Boom boom boom boom boom—boom! Propelled by immense palm force, the yokai's body ricocheted off ground and trees like a puppet with cut strings, hurtling away.
A single palm strike unleashing a century's worth of a transcendent expert's power. Its sheer force defied estimation.
The yokai's bulk gouged a massive furrow in the sloped earth as it tumbled.
Unlike the landslide pouring down from above, the mountain ridge it ravaged on the way was left a splintered wasteland.
[--___-_!!!]
After smashing through dozens of trees across dozens of zhang, the yokai spread its four arms wide, bellowing in agony and rage.
Its target was obviously the master who'd blasted it here.
However.
For man or yokai alike, rage is an emotion to purge from battle.
Captured by momentary fury, the yokai failed to sense the death looming overhead.
"Filthy vermin."
A burly middle-aged man gripped his Pine Pattern Ancient Sword. Accomplished lightness skill held him aloft in the sky.
An overbearingly domineering aura unfit for the Wudang leader.
A dense qi veil of pressurized energy crushed the surrounding air, proclaiming this his domain.
What lesser warriors use merely to heighten senses becomes physical force when infused with vast internal energy.
A peerless divine technique, impossible without peak transcendent reserves and qi mastery, unfolded from the Wudang sect leader's hand.
[-_---_?]
Spatial pressure locked the yokai's movements.
Sect Leader Mugwang's voice, dominating all six directions, boomed solemnly.
[You dare harm a Wudang disciple before me?]
As qi veil's flanks tinted black and white, compressing with space-shaking majesty—
Along Sect Leader Mugwang's sword trajectory, black-and-white gang qi formed massive interlocking gears.
Irresistible one-sided violence poured forth. A wail of anguish erupted from the yokai's petal-like maw.
Kraka kaka kag!!
A pair of enormous gears materialized in the air, meshing like taiji and pulverizing half the yokai's upper body.
Two of its four arms torn away, the yokai frantically kicked off the ground.
Blood and entrails spraying, yet its legs moved with astonishing speed. A yokai's wondrous vitality.
But from the moment his master arrived, survival was impossible for it.
Click.
With eerie footsteps following—
Spurt! Blood fountained from the yokai's ankles like geysers. Invisible swift sword strikes had severed its leg tendons.
Its full-speed charge pitched forward from momentum.
Splat. As the yokai face-planted, a sandaled foot stomped its head.
"Uncle Sanbon?"
"Long time."
A curt reply. His foot kept grinding the yokai's skull.
Sect Leader Mugwang and his master, plus Sanbon Uncle—one of Wudang's nine transcendent experts, the Wudang Nine Swords' elite, second only to Mugwang in prowess as Wudang's Second Sword.
The man who'd broken the Pang patriarch's saber in a spar years ago, implanting heart demons.
Three of the Wudang Nine Swords had assembled outside the sect gates. A force that could erase a mid-tier sect in half a day.
[-_--...!]
"Shut it."
Sanbon Uncle muttered irritably, like his training had been interrupted.
Splat! The weighted sandal crushed the skull. The thrashing yokai finally stilled.
In the new moon of the 7th month, 13th year of the Fan Calendar.
The end of the Half-Moon grade yokai that appeared in the wild mountains near Wudang Mountain.
Only then did tension ebb, and I collapsed to the ground.
"Hyeonseong! Pull yourself together, Hyeonseong!"
Master's echoing voice faded as my consciousness sank into the depths.