Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Return (1)
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“The great work is nearly complete. Why do you defy me now?”
The being known as the Demonic Seed, or the Heaven-Bearing Asura, glared.
He would never understand.
The warrior named Ouyang Jue.
He could never know what drove Ouyang Jue to stand against him alone.
Ouyang Jue grinned, clutching a sword that looked extraordinary even at a glance.
“Isn’t it obvious? It’s because I don’t like you people.”
*Whoosh—!*
With a simple swing, space distorted and the very ground was crushed.
A strike far too immense to be called a mere gust of wind proved Ouyang Jue's strength.
Watching this, the Heaven-Bearing Asura voiced a reasonable question.
“Was a single fortress not enough for you?”
“No.”
“Then is this due to some personal grudge against me?”
“Honestly, I never liked the way you talk or the look on your face. But aren't you overestimating yourself a little?”
At those words, the Heaven-Bearing Asura’s brow furrowed.
“Do you think I will fall for such provocations? Just tell me what you want.”
“Let’s see, what was it.”
Ouyang Jue briefly reflected on the path his life had taken.
But the contemplation was short.
Thirty-two years old this year.
He had left the Mount Hua Sect and come this far.
There was nothing to be gained by clinging to the past and weeping over it now.
All that mattered was to follow through on his current conviction.
“I told you, it’s because I don’t like you people.”
“...So be it.”
He had wanted to keep him as an ally until the very end, if possible.
With a deep sense of regret, the Heaven-Bearing Asura activated the ritual he had prepared in advance.
The Soul-Severing Grand Art.
The most profane of arts in all of China's long history, a grand technique that could only be performed by a master who had reached the pinnacle of demonic arts.
The backlash slammed into the Heaven-Bearing Asura’s lungs and heart, bursting his blood vessels.
*Gurgle.*
Even as blood spilled from his lips, he did not consider it a waste.
To dispose of a warrior of that caliber, this was a rather cheap price to pay.
“This is the end.”
The Heaven-Bearing Asura offered no further explanation of the Soul-Severing Grand Art.
Ouyang Jue was Ouyang Jue.
If he sensed victory and started rambling, the man might pull out a new trick and cause trouble.
...*Rumble, ruuumble.*
The mountain trembled.
The tremor was far too great to have been caused by a single man.
Ouyang Jue unconsciously flexed and unflexed his index finger.
‘He’s done something, it seems.’
With the Heaven-Bearing Asura as his opponent, he couldn't afford to assume it was anything ordinary.
He must have unleashed a technique at least on par with the Immortal Realm.
Ouyang Jue instinctively reached for what was hidden in his breast pocket.
It was a talisman, a final gift from his dear friend, the Omniscient One, before he died.
“...?!”
Seeing it, the Heaven-Bearing Asura’s expression hardened.
Even at a glance, the spiritual power imbued in the talisman was anything but ordinary.
But the Soul-Severing Grand Art had already been cast.
No matter how potent the power within that talisman, Ouyang Jue could not escape his soul’s journey to the netherworld.
‘Old friend, this time, I’m putting my faith in you.’
That is, until Ouyang Jue tore the talisman himself.
*Fwoooosh!*
A brilliant light bathed Ouyang Jue's entire body, just as the ominous dark clouds characteristic of the Soul-Severing Grand Art descended upon him.
In that moment, Ouyang Jue recalled something the Omniscient One used to say.
“You are a being who defies heaven, one who twists the great orbit set by the sky.”
At the time, he had angrily retorted, asking what kind of nonsense that was, but seeing the foul expression on the Heaven-Bearing Asura’s face now, it seemed there was some truth to it.
Before his consciousness faded, Ouyang Jue raised his fist in a final insult to the Heaven-Bearing Asura.
As his mind slipped away, he found himself thinking, for some reason, that he missed the Mount Hua Sect.
* * *
After the bright light faded, Ouyang Jue's eyes flew open.
“Unless this is a dream… am I seeing things?”
Something utterly unbelievable was unfolding before him.
The scenery of a place he had been decades ago.
The sight of plum blossoms in full, glorious bloom unfolded before him, so bright it made his eyes ache.
“This is Mount Hua.”
The colorful panorama of the Mount Hua Sect—which had met a tragic end long ago and been absorbed by neighboring sects—filled Ouyang Jue’s eyes.
The past, with not a hint of falsehood.
A time before its foundations had crumbled.
This was the Mount Hua he had longed for until his final moments.
And within it, Ouyang Jue was breathing.
It was utterly unbelievable.
“Junior Brother.”
A sudden voice made Ouyang Jue turn his head.
“...Senior Brother?”
“Haha, yes. You were unusually quiet today, so I came to check on you.”
“Is it really you, Senior Brother?”
“What's gotten into you today? I'm your Senior Brother, who else would I be?”
As his Senior Brother, Liu Zhangming, offered a faint smile, Ouyang Jue smiled back.
It wasn't a smile of joy.
For the mortal enemy who had gravely wounded Ouyang Jue was none other than Liu Zhangming, standing right before him.
Just as the dead do not return, this too must be a dream.
“You bastard! Who do you think got me killed? And you're standing there grinning!?”
As Ouyang Jue suddenly threw a punch, a startled Liu Zhangming moved his feet.
*Thud, tap.*
Before his masterfully executed Eight Immortals Steps could touch the soft ground three times, Liu Zhangming's jaw was twisted to the side.
‘...My junior brother hasn't gone mad, so why would he attack me?’
It was in that moment that Liu Zhangming clenched his teeth.
His hand naturally extended toward Ouyang Jue in the form of the White Crane Palm.
He didn't intend to use Ouyang Jue's momentum to counterattack, but merely to seize the vital point on his shoulder and subdue him.
“You're pretty weak for a ghost.”
But Ouyang Jue's expression twisted in annoyance.
*Swish.*
By simply lowering his stance and twisting his hips, Ouyang Jue evaded the White Crane Palm and closed the distance to Liu Zhangming in an instant.
As they stood so close their breaths could mingle, Liu Zhangming swallowed hard.
‘Was my junior brother’s martial art always this formidable?’
His insolent attitude was one thing, but his current skill was something Ouyang Jue had never shown before.
To think he could brush aside the White Crane Palm, which he normally couldn't even see coming, and even attempt a counterattack.
Just as a faint smile began to form on Liu Zhangming's face.
“Stop!”
A thunderous voice rang out.
Ouyang Jue frowned at the Lion's Roar, so potent with internal energy it felt like his eardrums would burst. Liu Zhangming naturally bowed and greeted the newcomer.
“Disciple of Mount Hua, Liu Zhangming, greets the Sect Leader.”
Normally, he would have straightened up after the greeting, but this was not the time.
While Liu Zhangming remained bowed, the Sect Leader glared at Ouyang Jue with fiery eyes.
“What is the meaning of this!”
“...”
For a moment, Ouyang Jue didn't recognize the Sect Leader and studied his appearance.
A white beard befitting his stubborn personality, and a sword with the characters for ‘Mount Hua’ ornately engraved upon it hanging at his waist.
Ouyang Jue managed to recall a person from his memory.
The former Sect Leader, Bai Duanxian.
“You scoundrel, Ouyang Jue! As if the trouble you usually cause isn't enough, now you’re brawling with your own Senior Brother!”
Liu Zhangming quickly interjected.
“It is a misunderstanding, Sect Leader. My junior brother and I were just...”
“You stay out of this!”
At the Sect Leader's roar, Liu Zhangming bowed again and took a few steps back.
“Do you have any idea what crime you have just committed?”
At those words, Ouyang Jue muttered to himself.
“...What a long, strange dream.”
“Dream? A dreeeam?”
The Sect Leader let out a hollow laugh, his anger momentarily forgotten.
“Now you resort to babbling about dreams to get away with it. You would be wise to stop.”
“But you are all...”
He swallowed the words he was about to say—that they were all figures who had died in his memory.
Perhaps this was the afterlife.
After all, he had actually died.
And the people he was facing now were all dead as well.
For that reason, he didn't want to say anything harsh to the Sect Leader or Liu Zhangming.
But a sliver of anxiety gnawed at his mind.
‘What if this is real?’
Sensing Ouyang Jue's hesitation, the Sect Leader stroked his beard and commanded.
“Disciple Ouyang Jue, though you may be close, the sin of raising your hand against your Senior Brother is by no means small! I sentence you to three months of wall-gazing!”
The hesitant Liu Zhangming, seeing no other choice, grabbed one of Ouyang Jue's arms.
“Wait, hold on. Wall-gazing, for real? What kind of afterlife is this realistic?”
“Junior Brother, be quiet for now. I will visit you later.”
*Tug, tug.*
No matter how much Ouyang Jue struggled to break free, Liu Zhangming didn't budge.
Seeing this, the Sect Leader chided him.
“First you ramble about dreams, and now... Tsk, tsk.”
The way he clicked his tongue was also just as Ouyang Jue remembered from the past, causing his jaw to drop.
In the end, Ouyang Jue had to be dragged by the arm, dangling from Liu Zhangming, all the way to the hermitage on the mountainside.
‘If this is a dream, shouldn't I be able to control it?’
Flustered and bewildered, Ouyang Jue continued to scan his surroundings.
This might not be the afterlife or a dream, but reality itself.
In a situation where he knew nothing, Ouyang Jue's eyes gleamed with a sharp light.
A short while later.
“Dammit, hell.”
Moved to the mountainside hermitage, Ouyang Jue forced himself to chew and swallow the grain-abstinence pill his senior brother had provided.
No matter how he thought about it, he just couldn't understand.
‘The Heaven-Bearing Asura used a technique... and I tore the talisman, right?’
But why had the Mount Hua Sect of the past appeared before his eyes?
Ouyang Jue couldn't even be certain if he had actually died.
Perhaps this was a dying vision, a flash of his life after being killed by the Heaven-Bearing Asura.
For Ouyang Jue, who was so suspicious by nature, he simply couldn't believe the current situation.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Even if he were to dream, it should not have been of the Mount Hua Sect.
“Wasn't the Mount Hua Sect destroyed, for all intents and purposes, by my own hands?”
His gaze, which had grown somber, sank into the darkness and drifted toward the past.
* * *
His reason for leaving the mountain was simply a desire not to be indebted.
There was also a bit of an inferiority complex, having a peerless swordsman like Liu Zhangming as his Senior Brother.
He was eight years old when he first began his martial arts training.
He had started relatively late and spent ten years as a Daoist of Mount Hua.
During that time, Mount Hua was steadily on the path to ruin.
He couldn't recall the specific reasons.
He only felt that, for various reasons, the glory of the past was fading away.
Was it around his early twenties when he decided to leave?
At that time, Ouyang Jue was far from being a master, barely at a level to be called a first-rate warrior.
At first, he had the goal of raising the martial renown of the great Mount Hua.
But.
A dream of glory?
That was not something for a fledgling in his twenties to harbor.
He lived his life being thoroughly ridiculed.
For three years, Ouyang Jue was trampled upon, yet he managed to sprout.
The moniker he earned then was Bloodhound.
A cheap title he had unworthily gained by tenaciously surviving.
But thanks to it, Ouyang Jue was able to grow.
‘Because no one would feel any competitive spirit towards the likes of a bloodhound.’
Three years as a wanderer, two years in seclusion, five years on the battlefield.
Only after going through that process could Ouyang Jue finally pass as a master.
The long, winding journey, the Ten-Thousand-Li Path of Plum Blossoms.
He thought he was finally seeing the light.
Once he paid off the debts he had accumulated while wandering the martial world, he intended to return to Mount Hua.
‘In the end, I never imagined I would be the one to bring Mount Hua down with my own hands.’
Ouyang Jue stared up at the hermitage exit with an indifferent expression.
“Should I just get the hell out of here?”
Whatever the reason, he had already turned his back on Mount Hua once before.
A second time would be no different.
“Who knows if this is just a final dream before death?”
Trust is built through ten memoirs and a thousand conversations.
That's how little there is to believe in this paltry martial world.
To think ‘I have returned’ based on less than ten minutes of experience was something only a novice would do.
“Let’s test it.”
Ouyang Jue clenched and unclenched his fist.
He then deliberately injured his own skin, infusing his internal energy into the wound to aggravate it.
Finally, he pressed on a pressure point to stop the bleeding.
Yet, at no point in the process did he feel any sense of unreality.
“...Hmm.”
From the minor pain he felt to the sensation of the hermitage's damp wind on the wound, everything felt real.
Even the shabby wall before him was just as dilapidated as he remembered.
Just like the desperately poor, declining Mount Hua.
He was half-convinced it wasn't a dream, but to dispel his remaining doubts, he needed to check something else.
But when he circulated his internal energy, he was struck by an absurd feeling.
‘Why is it so small?’
Though his moniker was shabby, he was a man whose martial arts were said to be beyond imagination.
Naturally, his internal energy was profound, and his execution of techniques was delicate.
But his current martial skill seemed similar to his own on the day before he left the mountain.
Ouyang Jue remembered having only about five years' worth of cultivation right before he left.
If his cultivation was like this, would his body be any different?
“Could it be...”
A low voice escaped from his chest.
“Could this truly be real? Have I... returned to the Mount Hua of the past?”
Even when he heightened his senses, he felt no sense of déjà vu.
At least in that, there was no falsehood.
“If this is real!”
Ouyang Jue focused his gathered internal energy into a single point in his fist and struck one of the hermitage walls.
*Kugung...!*
The vibration that started from the roof spread like wildfire, shaking the pillars.
“Hahaha!”
Ouyang Jue laughed loudly as he looked at the hermitage.
A true master can produce a thousand pounds of force with little cultivation.
What Ouyang Jue had just done was precisely that; although his internal energy was small, it was all focused on a single point, so bringing down the hermitage was no great feat.
The problem was that it collapsed too quickly.
“It's too fast! It's just as dirt-poor as I remember!”
Even as the hermitage collapsed, Ouyang Jue continued to burst into laughter.
*Krrrrrumble...!*
Only when a beam fell towards his head did Ouyang Jue step out of the building.
All the while, laughter continued to erupt from him.
“I've really returned.”
Returning to the past meant he could change the future.
‘I don't know what that thing the Omniscient One gave me was, but it's given me a truly great opportunity.’
A chance to change his future, which had been riddled with regret.
‘If this is real, I can change it. Even those damn bastards.’
This time, he would live not as a wanderer, but as a Daoist of the Mount Hua Sect.
It was then that a glint appeared in Ouyang Jue’s eyes.
“Jue! Are you alright?”
Liu Zhangming, who had come running as if on wings, hurriedly checked Ouyang Jue's condition.
“Are you okay? You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
Ouyang Jue grinned.
“Of course! When have I ever been better! Right now, I fear no one!”
He seemed a bit strange, but he didn't have a single scratch on him, so Liu Zhangming sighed in relief.
“I was just on my way to tell you that the hermitage was old. I’m so glad you’re sa...”
Liu Zhangming's words suddenly cut off.
His gaze had shifted and caught sight of something.
A wall that had fallen over perfectly straight.
Imprinted clearly upon it was the shape of Ouyang Jue’s fist.
The depth, the force, even the wrinkles of his skin were uniform.
Liu Zhangming’s face hardened.
‘First, he skillfully dodged the White Crane Palm. The mark on the hermitage is also Junior Brother Ouyang’s, and his bizarre behavior is also suspicious.’
Above all, his junior brother's martial skill was greater than he had known.
‘Was he hiding his strength? ...If so, it would be best to test the extent of his abilities.’
“Catch.”
“...?”
*Thwack.*
Ouyang Jue caught the wooden sword Liu Zhangming had thrown and swung it lightly.
A faint smile began to appear on Liu Zhangming's face.
“Let's have a spar. It's been a while.”
At those words, a deep smile spread across Ouyang Jue’s face.