Chapter 774 – To My Younger Brother, From The Heavenly Demon (7)

As soon as he passed through the space he’d torn open, humid air brushed his skin. It was Sichuan’s characteristic weather. His vision began blurring in the torrential downpour.

Mount Mei.

The mountain slope where Jeong Yeon-shin had once buried the Tang siblings and faced three life-and-death duels against three of the Thirteen Evil Sects.

Wandering Star’s chatter, as if amused, mixed into the sound of rain.

“Now we’re even stepping on Sichuan soil. These days, there’s no earth energy to support it, just humidity… Ah, this is where you faced Sichuan’s Thirteen Evil Sects? I watched that fight with great interest. But what was that about a Purple Pill bath earlier?”

Jeong Yeon-shin ignored him and gestured downward with his chin.

“Look.”

A basin-like sunken hill. Even in the dim night, jianghu people had gathered. Along with very old traces where dozens of flags had once been planted.

Faint conversation drifted up.

—When will the Emei Sect Leader’s meditation end? Sword King has waited long enough. It’s already been half a day, no matter how elderly…

—Between guarding the gate and managing “Sword King followers” like you, running around exhausted, how dare you speak such tragic words?!

—Then just have Sword King handle Sichuan’s order while you guard the gate!

Wandering Star’s lips curled obliquely upward.

“Long ago, when I was helping my parents with their arduous farm work. With young hands, I pulled truly countless weeds.”

Words that continued dryly, as if harboring resentment. The murky rain streaks fell without settling on his wrinkles.

“But even in the jianghu I boldly fled to, there were only weeds. Growing and tangling no matter how much I pulled.”

“……”

“Looking back, I was frantic before the task of clearing graves. As a child, and even after becoming one of the Five Greatest Swords Under Heaven. I realized very late. That I’d end my life as a farmer who was just somewhat good with a blade…”

The scene below.

It appeared the same to Jeong Yeon-shin. Hundreds sprouting like weeds above old flag traces, surrounding a gaunt old monk. A world where everyone posed as jianghu people.

Before Abbess Cypress Blaze stood a noble clan’s old swordsman holding his blade downward. Faded disheveled hair hung to his lower back. Traces of resisting the World Tree’s unification.

‘New Five Greatest Swords Under Heaven, Sword King Buddha.’

The old swordsman suddenly raised his head, meeting Jeong Yeon-shin’s eyes. His aged voice spread softly like pine wind.

“…Please understand. To maintain sanity, I had to clash countless times with threatening powerful enemies.”

The old swordsman continued.

“If I follow the call in my head and get dragged to the Main Tree, my old training will be used to annihilate the world. Rather than that, wouldn’t it be better to be rude to your Desolate Fortress or this young lady here?”

He called Abbess Cypress Blaze a young lady.

Transparent eyes. He’d clearly perceived Jeong Yeon-shin’s identity. Because there were hermit masters numerous as grains of sand, this was the martial world.

Jeong Yeon-shin asked back without moving from his position.

“So you moved in the opposite direction of the World Tree?”

“Embarrassingly, yes.”

“Why are those behind you so surprised?”

“It’s shocking. A madman who silently only sought strong opponents is speaking.”

The old swordsman’s words continued with a slight smile.

“Because you stand before me, reason and speech returned. In any case, those behind are battle-crazed ghosts without sanity… they’ve been following me while acting as if I led them. The jianghu’s elegance had vanished.”

Suddenly, Jeong Yeon-shin kicked a stone at his feet into the rain. The pebble struck the old swordsman’s blade back, releasing a resonating hum, and that sword song’s vibration stopped as soon as the surrounding jianghu people collapsed.

The old swordsman looked around and spoke lowly.

“…Elegance remains. Truly a lightning-like skill.”

Meanwhile, a scene caught Jeong Yeon-shin’s vision as he turned toward Wandering Star. Rainwater that had flowed ephemerally was pooling one by one into the seventeen flag traces. Between the limbs of collapsed jianghu people.

Jeong Yeon-shin slowly lowered his raised foot and clasped his hands behind his back.

It was the Sixth Step.

Kugugung—

It resonated in his head.

With conviction about his recent jianghu journey, his upper dantian’s power continued explosively increasing. Without showing it, Jeong Yeon-shin opened his mouth to Wandering Star.

“A farmer holding a blade.”

“Hm?”

“In my thinking, that is a hero. Just pull weeds whenever they sprout. Like your parents did.”

That was jianghu person Lightning Genius’s conclusion.

Wandering Star, who had been looking down alongside Jeong Yeon-shin, fell silent.

[Amitabha… You should have visited the Tang siblings’ grave on the mountainside first. Why did you come here?]

It was Abbess Cypress Blaze’s Wisdom Light Mind Speech. Jeong Yeon-shin turned and said.

“The Dragon Phoenix Twin Poisons are Sichuan people, so they’d be curious how many beans the monk protecting Sichuan eats.”

Laughter mixed into Abbess Cypress Blaze’s intent.

[Bean talk again, is it.]

“If it’s difficult due to famine, just wait half a day.”

[…Amitabha.]

Huuk!

As soon as they emerged through the rain, the surroundings quieted. Before them stood a massive cliff. All manner of strokes drawn beyond the grayish night mist.

It was Mount Zhongnan.

He felt it even before spreading his qi sense.

Second brother Jeong Jung-san was breathing with Jeong Family Dynamic Technique in a distant hall.

How long had it been since the First Heavenly Demon manifested from the Qinling Mountain Range? Though not long since permitting transmission to nephew Jeong Hye, he’d already reached the realm of practicing in sleep. Just as he hoped when creating Jeong Family Dynamic Technique.

‘Come to think of it.’

The orthodox lineage of Jeong Family Dynamic Technique that no one would acknowledge.

Jeong Yeon-shin’s smile deepened.

He also sensed Jeong Hye’s feet on Jeong Jung-san’s chest. Traces of swirling energy waves centered on tiny soles. Had she made Brilliant River a toy?

“…Azure Qilin would laugh from the River of Three Crossings.”

Even as he turned, Wandering Star said nothing. Suddenly, a woman landed behind him, merely seeing Jeong Yeon-shin off.

“Are you leaving?”

Zhongnan Sect Leader Wei Zhi-myohwa asked quietly.

Jeong Yeon-shin asked back.

“The Grand Elder…?”

“Convalescing. The World Tree withdrew the Grand Elder’s unification long ago. As if forced to redirect power elsewhere.”

“That’s fortunate.”

Jeong Yeon-shin, nodding slightly, continued.

“Come to think of it, how did Zhongnan become the enemy of Tyrant Sword Sect Leader Dan Sung-eum?”

“…I heard they stabilized the people’s hearts in that land for a long time so Dali Kingdom’s people wouldn’t be massacred by the Ming Imperial Family but become people of Ming’s Yunnan Province. While spreading Central Plains Taoism’s teachings. They also quelled with Qingcheng the war Dali Kingdom’s martial forces tried to start…”

“I understand.”

Jeong Yeon-shin quietly sheathed Remaining Thunder, which he’d swung in the blink of an eye. It was while stepping into the semi-transparently torn space. Suddenly, as if something wasn’t quite right, Wei Zhi-myohwa stopped him.

“You may look at the cliff more. Like when you created Radiant Sword Style, if it helps you even a little… it’s a place that always brings me meditation too.”

“That’s probably not because of the cliff.”

Because life itself was training. That was true not only for Jeong Yeon-shin and Wei Zhi-myohwa but for common people too. People watered fields not knowing what would bear fruit, and Jeong Yeon-shin was fortunate enough to repeatedly confirm those results.

‘Not the World Tree’s fruit.’

But fruit he bore himself.

Crunch.

The Seventh Step, confirming he was born with heavenly fortune, not heavenly punishment.

“I now.”

Jeong Yeon-shin turned to Wei Zhi-myohwa just before disappearing and smiled brightly.

“This is enough.”

* * *

—It’s insufficient.

Words that resonated thunderously in Dan Sung-eum’s head.

It was the dead Yu Ling Leader’s voice. Though not actually sounding, it filled his upper dantian.

They said the Divine Sword Group Leader had the Nether Stream Leader to make the flow of battle his own.

For Dan Sung-eum, the Yu Ling Leader was that existence. His only close friend and strategist. The one who had expounded “Desolate Fortress Lord Countermeasure Methods” to the always dull Dan Sung-eum and analyzed together.

Even after death, it was the same.

In the upper dantian that had experienced eternity, all the Yu Ling Leader’s words and conduct were engraved.

—I didn’t recommend the Dan Family Time Transcendence Method fearing your reason would scatter… but if that dull mind truly endures eons of time, you can obtain the greatest sensory paths throughout history.

Zzejeojeojeojeojeojeong!

Two sounds overlapped.

The Yu Ling Leader’s voice. The roar of two swords repeatedly colliding. Sparks that shook heaven and earth had long since dyed vision blood red.

Nothing was visible.

He didn’t even know where he was racing with his opponent.

Such was the fight of the world’s dullard. An innately pitch-black aptitude. The same even in life-and-death battles like now.

Thrusting his sword according to instincts honed through eternity, mounting and chasing with Sword Flight, stomping down to clash with the lethal sword strike using the sword that shot up, then repeatedly thrusting the re-gripped sword into faintly felt openings…

Yet Dan Sung-eum could know. That the sword strikes he unleashed were progressively approaching Wei Gun-hye. That her protective strong energy and sword qi had begun shattering to the Three Desolate-Breaking Strikes. Like a moon on a lake fragmented by endless ripples.

—When the World Tree takes Lightning Genius as its new fruit and abandons Wei Gun-hye, that’s when you must stake everything. Three things will be achieved.

The Yu Ling Leader said.

—First, the World Tree is a mad tree, and Wei Gun-hye knows this too. Therefore, Wei Gun-hye won’t sever her upper dantian connection with the World Tree even if fruiting, that is, her unification, is undone. She’ll try to restrain it somehow. So the World Tree’s roots won’t rampage like dozens of flood dragons, casting ultra-long-range mind swords or whatever.

—Second is the backlash from unification’s release. Of course, a monster like Wei Gun-hye won’t die from that alone. But she’ll suppress with pure martial arts the backlash that should have led to instant death. Like wearing shackles.

—Third also exists. The countermeasure style our northern jianghu created solely to slay Wei Gun-hye. Mixed into your Three Desolate-Breaking Strikes. Every sword strike can’t help but be adept at severing her true energy structure.

Methods to kill the one to be killed.

The one who taught what was most needed throughout a lifetime. To Dan Sung-eum, the Yu Ling Leader was the world’s greatest strategist.

—You are the World Tree’s end. The one sword that will sever Wei Gun-hye’s tenacious life. Your ill-fated life is the only amusement of my spy career, and your reaching the destination is my other Transcendent Martial Art.

An insignificant ruined kingdom’s prince.

How did he endure eternity with a lowly loser’s mind? Because all the words and plans were woven together like a book densely filled with characters.

Dodging Enter The Extinction Sword that came slicing even the distant sparks’ tidal wave by paper-thin margins, and raising Silent Art Sword in a clumsy sword dance. That sword path was so refined as if polished through nayuta of time. Actually because he was casting the Dan Family Time Transcendence Method during combat.

[TL Note- Nayuta means countless/extremely large amount. It’s a Sanskrit origin word.]

The sensory paths finally reached by one whose only possession was time.

The world’s slowest body. A mind maddened by temporal torture. The gap between them.

The body followed the mind.

That speed made Dan Sung-eum react to Wei Gun-hye’s sword speed.

Kwakwakwakwakwakwakwang!

He clearly felt it, though extremely minutely.

Wei Gun-hye’s grip on Enter The Extinction Sword was gradually loosening. As if time was rewinding, returning to girlhood.

—Desolate Fortress Lord Wei Gun-hye. On the battlefield of the Yuan-Ming transition period, she underwent bone transformation at age fifteen. Though noble clansmen grow remarkably fast in the secular world… perhaps she forcibly pulled forward a realm from the distant future then. Of course, it would have been to suppress the chaotic times, but therefore the body, corresponding to essence among essence, energy, and spirit, might be a hollow facade. In short, if you drive that monster in the state where those three conditions are met, the bone transformation might unravel.

‘Twelve thousand chapters.’

Dan Sung-eum’s countermeasure for Wei Gun-hye was one chapter per sword. Every sword path accompanied phrases engraved in his mind.

—Because it’s absurdly perfect, an absurd decline might occur. Reverting to that battlefield at that moment. If heavenly fortune follows you, some of her memories might be lost. If such a thing happens on the martial arts side, it would be icing on the cake.

‘Twelve thousand nine hundred chapters.’

He clearly felt it. By now, no different from a mechanical trap formula, just before the goal of eternity was achieved. Even when all sparks were suddenly swept away, it was the same singular intent.

Hwaaak!

Sparks scattered into the void mixed with moonlight like a moon halo. He intuited that fifteen-year-old girl’s face lay before Silent Art Sword. He knew without looking further. That it was Wei Gun-hye whose hundred-years-ago bone transformation had broken.

Sarak.

Dan Sung-eum’s hand didn’t advance further.

Not to savor the final moment. But because he intuited the blade wouldn’t advance further.

They stood on familiar ground.

A complex of halls garishly decorated with rosewood and blue tiles as if revealing it was a nouveau riche’s residence. A swing tilting back and forth in the dry wind.

‘Jeong Family Estate.’

Dan Sung-eum stared beside the swing.

There was a young man.

Clearly a human form.

Only in appearance. Due to the surreal presence as if he were the center of the world.

“……”

A thrill rose just from facing him.

His appearance like dangling a night sky as a blade, with dark blue sword fragments falling like ash. And producing blackish smoke. Things that had burned away, the word “embers” was fitting.

[TL Note- Yeon-shin means embers of fire or lingering smoke in hanja.]

The young man opened his mouth.

“One must not live insignificantly.”

It was a purple-tinted voice.