Chapter 181. Eight Years of Hardships and Suffering (2)

“Eeeuek!!”

With his sword forcefully wrested away by Woo-Moon, the elder Twin Monster suffered fatal injuries from the qi backlash and died on the spot, vomiting blood.

While a Transcendent had to exert all of their effort to control a single sword using Sword control, that was not the case for Absolute Masters. While there were certainly individual differences, they had the ability to control two swords at the same time, at the very least. Moreover, they could do it while fighting, and their control was good enough that they could split a hair with a flying sword. In addition, they could use a sword to fly.

So, what about a Paragon?

Woo-Moon wasn’t sure how many swords he could control using Sword Control, mostly because he had never tried that. Moreover, he had already reached a level where Sword Flight was obsolete. After all, he could fly in the sky without using a sword, solely on the merits of his lightness art, which he had pushed to the extreme.

With that said, there was no need to use Sword Control on multiple swords. The more swords there were, the less powerful each sword was, to the point where the user wouldn’t be able to penetrate the opponent’s defensive qi.

Therefore, Woo-Moon released the elder Twin Monster’s sword the moment he threw it at the Great Darkness Palace Master.

Even in the midst of the fierce battle, the Baek Invincible Forged Squadron and the Song Family Guards below were filled with awe as they watched Woo-Moon and the Great Darkness Palace Master fighting in the air.

‘What in the world?! They’ve gone past even the level of Void-Conquering Path... It’s as if they just exist within heaven itself.’

That Woo-Moon had risen to such a level was shocking in and of itself; that there was an unknown person who could match him in battle was even more shocking.

BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!

Techniques like Sword Control were just for surprise attacks.

Woo-Moon used the opening he had made through the two controlled swords to arrive at the Great Darkness Palace Master's side and start a flurry of attacks.

The explosive sounds of aura colliding with aura resonated like firecrackers, and the two combatants seemed to burst with halos of light as they repeatedly appeared and disappeared at such speeds that the people below couldn’t see them correctly.

Forced on the defensive by Woo-Moon’s barrage of attacks, the Great Darkness Palace Master took a deep breath.

“Spring Jade.”[1]

Swish, swish, swish!

‘What is this?’

Woo-Moon was taken aback as thousands of tiny aura beads appeared simultaneously around him. Then, at that moment, the beads of aura exploded.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The Spring Jades, which contained an extreme yin qi, exploded outward, emitting immense destructive power while simultaneously freezing the atmosphere around them.

A single Spring Jade didn't have much power, but thousands of them had exploded at the same time, amplifying each other’s power.

Moreover, even after the explosions, a residual aura remained that continued to emit frigid qi.

In an instant, Woo-Moon's whole body turned white, and he seemed to be frozen in place.

The Great Darkness Palace Master took advantage of the opening to strike at Woo-Moon’s heart, shooting a blast of black finger qi.

Crack!

Woo-Moon’s fingers, which had turned into white blocks of ice, suddenly moved.

Thwip, thwip, thwip!

Three blasts of finger qi were released in succession, two of which met and offset the Great Darkness Palace Master's finger qi, while the last one shot at the Great Darkness Palace Master's heart.

The next instant, Woo-Moon’s entire body quivered. The ice covering him shattered as he leaped forward, leaving an afterimage behind. He was so fast that he arrived in front of the Great Darkness Palace Master at the same time as his finger qi blast.

‘Ha, I know what you’re going to do!’

Woo-Moon’s legs latched around the neck of the Great Darkness Palace Master, who had predictably coated himself in defensive qi.

Woo-Moon twisted his lower body vigorously, forcing the Great Darkness Palace Master to rotate along with him. Then he shot out palm force in a wide arc opposing his rotation, as if pushing against the very atmosphere.

Boom!!

Because of that, Woo-Moon spun even faster, and at the peak of his rotation, he threw the Great Darkness Palace Master to the ground, leveraging the centrifugal force.

The throw was perfectly aimed—the Great Darkness Palace Master fell like a meteor toward where the bulk of the Murderous Wind Battalion was gathered.

The Great Darkness Palace Master knew that if he were to land on them like this, most of the Murderous Wind Battalion would not survive. He couldn’t let that happen.

Right before he landed, he cleverly redirected his trajectory by kicking one of the Murderous Wind Battalion members in the head.

BANG!

The torso of the battalion member he kicked exploded, a mist of blood spreading through the air. The Great Darkness Palace Master bounced sideways before kicking the air and flying back up.

“River Jade.”

With these soft-spoken words, the Great Darkness Palace Master created twelve large aura beads around Woo-Moon.

“The fuck is it this time?”

The beads of aura exploded, sending aura flowing like water crashing through a river, pouring towards Woo-Moon.

***

The Murderous Wind Battalion’s Third Squad Leader, Blood Tiger, thought he was having a nightmare. He couldn’t believe it.

‘There’s no fucking way this is real. No way!’

When he was young, his greatest fear was the tiger. He had countless nightmares where he was mauled to death by a tiger.

Even though he was strong enough when he was twelve to crack the skull of an adult, he could never get over his fear of this terrifying beast. It wasn’t until he finally learned martial arts and became strong enough to beat tigers to death barehanded that he was freed from his nightmares.

However, that childhood fear left a mark on him, turning into a reverence so great that he even named himself Blood Tiger.

Yet right now, in

“T-third Squad Leader, save us!”

Blood Tiger couldn’t say anything even after seeing the eyes of his subordinates, who were running toward him in fear.

The anxiety that came with

hohwan

, which he thought he had gotten over, had taken complete hold over him.[2]

Right now, he wasn’t the Murderous Wind Battalion’s Third Squad Leader, Blood Tiger, a beast of a man who wasn’t afraid of anything and fought valiantly against any enemy as long as he had his spear.

He was just a young villager, so afraid of the wild beast before him that he couldn’t move a single muscle.

Shing!

An eerie sound rang in his ear as one of his subordinates was... dwarfed.

The man had the stature of an uncommonly large bear standing on two legs, yet for some reason he seemed rather short right now.

Then, Blood Tiger realized that the man was lacking his torso entirely, and blood was spraying from his open abdomen.

The tiger had simply bitten off half his body.

Grrrrrrr....

The giant white tiger's bloodlust-filled eyes looked at Blood Tiger.

The deep growling sound, as if coming from hell, gripped and twisted Blood Tiger's heart.

The next moment, his pants became wet as bright yellow urine trickled down his leg.

Eun-Ah was about to open her large mouth and bite the Blood Tiger, but she frowned as soon as she saw the urine and ended up simply slapping him to death.

She had been fighting the enemies without taking a single second to breathe from the moment the battle had begun, but now, she stopped for a moment and looked at how things were unfolding around her.

Overall, the situation was quite tense.

Before the Great Darkness Palace Master appeared, they had an overwhelming advantage once Woo-Moon had entered the fight. However, now, they were at a standstill.

Huff?

She could see a hostile human with a particularly grotesque odor running toward Jae-Hwa.

The moment she noticed that, Eun-Ah leaped into the sky.

ROAR!!!

Just as that human—the Murderous Wind Battalion Leader, Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak—was about to pierce Jae-Hwa's head with his sword, Eun-Ah roared, simultaneously unleashing her beast ferocity and all the bloodlust that she could muster.

Eun-Ah's roar was aimed only at the Murderous Wind Battalion Leader.

Gam Ak wasn’t able to kill Jae-Hwa as he had initially intended. The roar made him instantly break out in a cold sweat; he quickly turned around and blasted out a spray of sharp sword qi.

"Huh?"

There was no one in front of him!

He belatedly felt the one who radiated that incredible bloodlust right behind him.

Grrr...

Eun-Ah could sense that if she let this man go, the people she loved would be in danger.

Realizing this, she bared her teeth, sharper than any sword, and growled as she walked toward Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak.

“I was just thinking I had to catch you, rampant little beast. At least you’re smart enough to deliver yourself to me,” Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak said, his eyes narrowing.

Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak had been called the incarnation of a heavenly demon due to the particularly strong bloodlust he had emitted from birth. His title came from the fact that his bloodlust was strong enough to blot out the sun!

He was a famous expert even within the Cruel Sandstorm Riders. However, he was known to be a Transcendent. No one knew that he was actually an Absolute Master.

Thud, thud.

He had originally been a disciple of the Chongshan Sect.

Joining the Chongshan Sect at a young age, he had shown outstanding talent, and quickly advanced in his cultivation. However, the sect’s leadership ended up marginalizing him, whether they did it intentionally or not, due to his deep bloodlust.

In the end, hearing that the junior brother he had always ignored would become the sect master over him, he ambushed his junior brother and a number of elders, killing them. Then, he ran away with the manual containing the sect’s foundational art, an art which he had never been allowed to learn.

No one knew whether Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak had been intent on doing this from the get-go or if it was the words and behavior of his elders and peers that had driven him over the edge. Naturally, all kinds of speculations ran rampant throughout the

gangho.

In any case whatever the actual backstory was, he became a public enemy of the Righteous Faction and thus joined the Cruel Sandstorm Riders.

As for the Chongshan Sect, after losing all of its experts and its foundational art at the same time, its lineage was severed at the root. Even to this day, it had never recovered its former glory, and it was now just a second-rate sect.

Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak lunged at Eun-Ah and swung his sword.

Shing!

A sword engulfed in blue sword qi cut at Eun-Ah's torso.

Clang!!

Sparks flew.

Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak's sword flew back, and Eun-Ah swung at him with her paws, equipped with claws the size of short swords.

Swish.

Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak moved quickly to avoid Eun-Ah’s attack, leaving an afterimage. He kept his distance and pointed the tip of his sword at Eun-Ah. He was clearly taking her very seriously.

‘This won’t be easy. To think a mere beast could be so strong....’

He had recently entered the initial Absolute Stage. With that level of strength, if it were the old Eun-Ah, he could have bullied her however he wanted. After all, though Eun-Ah was far superior in sheer strength, she could not possibly have his fighting abilities.

However, after recently consuming half of the Blood-Horned Poison Serpent’s neidan, Eun-Ah was much stronger and had more energy, so she decided that she could take him.

“As expected, sword qi doesn’t work.”

Right as the Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak’s greasy voice rang through the air, his figure flickered as he used Illusive Shift. Appearing above Eun-Ah’s head, he viciously swung his sword, now coated in a bright blue sword aura!

Eun-Ah instantly understood that this blow wasn’t something she could rely on her hide to block, so she reared up on her hind legs, opening her mouth to bite the incoming sword.

Clang!

She caught her sword in her mouth. The moment she tried to twist her head and break the blade, however, it slipped right out.

Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak was the farthest person from an inexperienced fighter. He instantly figured out Eun-Ah’s intention and quickly pulled his sword back.

At the same time, he counterattacked insidiously to try to catch Eun-Ah off guard.

Swish!

A blast of finger qi flew at Eun-Ah’s eye.

‘Not even a Vajra Buddha has eyes that could withstand th—what?!’

As if nothing had happened, Eun-Ah glared at Eclipse Slayer Gam Ak with a fierce gaze.

BANG!

He was slapped to the ground like a fly. Eun-Ah’s tail had struck him from a blind spot.

“

Ke, kekeke, kekekeke

. How interesting.”

He didn’t take much damage, as he had coated himself in defensive qi.

Red veins bulged in his eyeballs as his face suddenly grew distorted, resembling a demon’s. His bloodlust suddenly soared, completely dwarfing Eun-Ah’s.

He was being completely serious now, and he moved completely differently from before. Every single move of his was a sharp attack, and they came in a flurry!

ROAR!

The two well-matched opponents thus began a fierce battle.

***

“Is that really Eun-Ah?” Jae-Hwa asked as he watched in fascination for a moment. He couldn’t believe this was the baby tiger he knew from way back.

“What are you doing?! You’re going to die if you stand there like an idiot!”

Jae-Hwa clenched his fist again, shaking himself out of his reverie at Ah Sam’s voice.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Let’s do this!”

The Murderous Wind Battalion was strong. The Song family guards could barely maintain equilibrium with them.

However, because they specialized in a variety of martial arts and they moved in perfect unison, as if they were real brothers, they were at least able to fight the Murderous Wind Battalion to a standstill.

Jae-Hwa used his fists and feet to pummel his opponent before suddenly bending down at the waist, as if he was bowing in respect.

Swish!!!

He was just paying respects to the dead, however; a sharp arrow flew straight into the face of his opponent.

The moment he let his arrow fly, Ah Sam moved to nock another arrow with practiced ease and looked up at the two people fighting above.

‘If I can help him even a little!’

He knew it wouldn’t do anything. Still, even if it was just to annoy the enemy, Ah Sam shot an arrow at the Great Darkness Palace Master.

1. As in a natural water spring. ☜

2. The fear of tigers is such a widespread fear in Asia that most languages there have a specific term for it—

hohwan

, in the case of Korean. The closest word would be tigriphobia, but I thought leaving the original made it seem cooler. ☜