Chapter 1878 – Return of The Mount Hua Sect

Chapter 1878The me in the past’ and ‘him, in the future’. (3)

A vivid, yet for that very reason even gloomier, red color filled his vision.

It wasn’t anything special. Nothing unusual. Yet the strange sensation emanating from that redness sent a shiver down Jang Ilso’s spine.

“Did you say you wanted a world in flames?”

From the hand of Cheong Myeong, which was covering his face, came a chilling coldness. A coldness that felt as though it didn’t belong to this world.

“What you long for is nothing more than a past that already existed.”

“Ugh…”

“Everyone risked their lives to save that world that had burned. And now… you're trying to turn it all back?”

Crack.

Cheong Myeong’s hand tightened around Jang Ilso’s face with tremendous force.

“You dumb bastard who doesn’t even know what you’re doing.”

Jang Ilso reflexively kicked at Cheong Myeong. But his foot struck nothing but air. Cheong Myeong had already withdrawn far back, staring at him with emotionless eyes.

“Cough!”

Jang Ilso coughed up blood repeatedly, clutching the ground.

Pain wrapped around him like his whole body had been shattered into pieces. The capillaries in his eyes burst from the pain he could not endure, dyeing them red.

“Ugh.”

Yet Jang Ilso still forced himself upright. His appearance was a wreck, covered in dust and dirt. His eyes, which could no longer hold on to their composure, were filled with intense malice.

“What the hell………”

Grinding his teeth, Jang Ilso glared at Cheong Myeong with murderous intent.

“What the hell is this!”

It wasn’t just a matter of being strong. It felt like someone was looking down on him from above the heavens. An overwhelming despair that Jang Ilso had never felt in his entire life.

He couldn’t understand what was happening. All he could grasp was that this wretch, who was no better than a half-dead corpse, had now gained a strength that Jang Ilso couldn’t even begin to challenge.

Crack.

Jang Ilso clenched his pierced hand so tightly it seemed it would crush itself.

He was so close. Only one final step remained. And yet now, here?

“Don’t screw with me!”

Jang Ilso kicked off the ground violently, rushing toward Cheong Myeong. Blue flames surged fiercely from his entire body.

Like a wounded tiger charging with its body ablaze. The sight alone would’ve frozen anyone in fear, yet at this moment, the one being crushed was Jang Ilso himself.

The swordsman stood without the slightest hint of disturbance.

Cheong Myeong’s calm gaze, radiating an alien sensation, bore down on Jang Ilso, making it hard to breathe.

“Uoooooooh!”

Jang Ilso’s right fist drew back, then shot forward as if to pierce a mountain.

The culmination of a lifetime’s martial arts was packed into that single punch. His surging energy condensed and condensed, until it burst forth like an explosion. The blue flame wrapped around his fist formed a blazing tail like a meteor as it shot straight toward Cheong Myeong.

And in that moment, Cheong Myeong’s sword moved slowly.

Thunk!

Jang Ilso, convinced that Cheong Myeong had reacted too late, widened his eyes in disbelief.

Not the blade, but the pommel, the end of the sword’s hilt. Cheong Myeong had swung it in reverse, and it lightly deflected Jang Ilso’s incoming punch. The fist, which he had put everything into, twisted effortlessly from that single blow.

But at the same moment, Jang Ilso’s left fist struck like an explosion at close range. As if he had predicted this moment, a perfectly timed counterattack.

It was a strike made possible only because Jang Ilso, suppressing his explosive rage, acknowledged that his opponent was stronger than him.

And in that split second, Jang Ilso saw it. No, he felt it.

Before his left fist, which he had drawn back with all his might to drive into Cheong Myeong’s chest, could even be unleashed, Cheong Myeong’s sword was already there, pressing against his body.

Kwaang!

Jang Ilso was flung back faster than he had charged in.

Had he not instinctively refrained from concentrating the Blue Flame Crushing Technique, his body would’ve been split in two by that blow.

Crash!

His feet slammed into the ground, shattering the earth. Jang Ilso forced himself upright with a growl and tried to advance again. Or rather, tried to.

Wham!

But the moment he pulled his recoiling body forward, Cheong Myeong’s fist was already slamming into his face.

Kwaaaaaang!

Jang Ilso crashed into the ground and was flung upward from the rebound.

“Gah!”

Red blood spurted from Jang Ilso’s mouth like a fountain.

‘……What the hell?’

Whenever he tried to do something, Cheong Myeong was already there. Everything was being read.

Cheong Myeong was acting a step ahead of everything Jang Ilso attempted. As if Jang Ilso were in the palm of his hand. This wasn’t simply fear of a stronger opponent, it was a different kind of despair altogether, a crushing helplessness that made it impossible to move even a finger.

Paang!

Jang Ilso kicked through the air as if trying to shake off that helplessness. Throwing himself at Cheong Myeong, he unleashed a barrage of rapid punches that filled the space with fist afterimages.

‘He can read me?’

Then he just had to make it unreadable. No, he had to make it so even if it was read, there would be no time to react.

A flurry of formless strikes without a set form or technique. If even Jang Ilso himself wasn’t consciously aware of them, then surely, even someone who could read minds wouldn’t be able to respond.

However, what Jang Ilso faced next was despair on an entirely different scale.

Even as countless blue bursts of fist energy came crashing down on him, Cheong Myeong didn’t show a flicker of disturbance. As if carving out time itself, he calmly watched the approaching barrage and slowly raised his sword.

Slash.

Cheong Myeong’s sword stabbed forward. Lightly, as if in mockery, the trembling blade drew a tiny flower in the air.

Far too weak a flower to counter the incoming blue flames. But as that one blossom trembled in the breeze, dozens, then hundreds more bloomed in the air.

Flutter.

They bloomed. And bloomed again. Blooming endlessly, over and over.

A storm of flower petals, blooming in chaos without order. The radiant spectacle of that blossoming was, in its own way, a perfect chaos.

Countless petals devoured Jang Ilso’s fist energy. His fists mercilessly shattered the fragile petals again and again, but for every dozen of flowers were crushed, hundreds more burst into bloom.

And at that moment, Jang Ilso instinctively realized. What a mistake he had made.

At the very least, one should never face Mount Hua’s sword in the domain of transformation [byon, ()] and illusion [hwan, ()]. But driven to desperation, Jang Ilso had forgotten even that most basic truth.

The fist energy he had unleashed began to melt and disappear. The petals that had devoured his power didn’t stop there, they surged forward, as if intent on swallowing Jang Ilso himself.

It was an incredibly beautiful sight. But to Jang Ilso’s eyes, it was no different from a swarm of evil spirits screaming and rushing toward him.

“Haahhh!”

Kwaang.

Jang Ilso threw his body backward with all his might.

Putting some distance between them in an instant, Jang Ilso’s eyes spotted flowers that had not yet fully bloomed.

‘With force…!’

Gritting his teeth hard enough to crack them, Jang Ilso planted his feet firmly into the ground.

His left hand clawed at the air like a growling beast, while his right trembled violently like explosive on the verge of detonation.

Whiiiirrr!

The blue flames of his energy, flaring up like the bristling fur of a provoked animal, suddenly spiraled into a vortex and surged toward Jang Ilso’s right hand.

Gooooooooh!

Jang Ilso’s body trembled like a leaf in the wind. His flesh, unable to withstand the overwhelming force of his own energy, screamed in agony as crimson blood poured from his mouth like a waterfall.

However, Jang Ilso pulled in even more energy. He knew that if he couldn’t turn the tide with this one blow, then victory was impossible.

“Aaaaaaahh!”

Jang Ilso’s right and left hands crossed in an instant, and the punch that contained the very limits of his internal energy was unleashed in a transcendent strike.

Blue Flame Crushing Technique: Collapse of the Heavens.

[cheong yeomsalgang - bungcheon , 청염살강-붕천 (靑炎殺罡-崩天)].

KWAHHHH!

A blow that could collapse the heavens shattered the earth as it advanced. A majestic blue vortex, a force that perhaps could only be called a flash of destruction, shot in a straight line toward Cheong Myeong.

The plum blossom sword energy that Cheong Myeong had bloomed warped and shattered the moment it touched the blue flame. Even those magnificently blooming blossoms were powerless before this surging storm of blue flame and force.

The flash of blue that erased all of Cheong Myeong’s plum blossoms in an instant now rushed forward to swallow Cheong Myeong himself.

At that moment, Jang Ilso watched from behind his extended right hand, not with joy, but with desperate hope.

PAAAAANG.

A single streak of red slashed across the sky and earth.

Darker than the crimson of dawn, deeper than the ochre hue of the earth. A red line, eerie beyond words, yet somehow sorrowful. That line of red tore through the world with a jarring contrast, like blood-red paint splashed across a black-and-white landscape.

Even Jang Ilso was mesmerized as he stared blankly at the scene.

Slaash!

“What…..?”

Unable to comprehend what had just happened, Jang Ilso’s face went blank.

But then, an intense, searing pain shot through his body, and a stream of blood erupted from his chest.

From his right shoulder to his left waist, a deep sword wound had been carved across his body without him even realizing it.

His hand moved of its own accord, clutching his chest. He tried to hold on, but it was no use. His legs, which had lost their strength, gave out and one of his knees touched the ground.

And yet, even in that moment, Jang Ilso couldn’t take his eyes off him. The swordsman in black, walking toward him without the slightest hesitation, after slicing his overwhelming power clean in two as if it were nothing.

More than the pain he felt in his body, more than the exhaustion crashing down from having pushed his inner energy beyond his limits, it was that sight that crushed Jang Ilso most of all.

What is this?

What exactly was he facing right now?

He was up against something that couldn’t be explained by anything he knew. That overwhelming pressure forced him to confront a feeling he had never experienced in his entire life.

At last, Cheong Myeong’s indifferent eyes landed on Jang Ilso. A moment later, his mouth slowly opened.

“Yeah…..”

“.....”

“That’s what it feels like.”

Cheong Myeong came to a stop.

And in that moment, Jang Ilso felt something strange. In Cheong Myeong’s eyes as he looked at him, there was a peculiar sense of kinship. It was neither mockery nor intimidation, but a faded, worn-out familiarity.

Cheong Myeong silently gazed at Jang Ilso for a long while. Then he lowered his sword and slowly looked up at the sky. His slumped shoulders, his worn-down figure, it was as though he might collapse at any moment. And yet, to Jang Ilso, it seemed as though that very figure might pull him in completely.

“That sense of helplessness…. and despair.”

“......”

“We struggled within that sense of despair. We threw away our lives for a hopeless victory.”

It must have been an illusion.

But Jang Ilso saw it. Countless hands grasping at Cheong Myeong. Chains made of bloodied hands wrapped around Cheong Myeong, barely allowing him to breathe.

The sight was so chilling, Jang Ilso instinctively shuddered.

“And the cost of that is the world you see now.”

“......”

“The one you’re trying to destroy.”

Cheong Myeong lowered his gaze and glared at Jang Ilso. The bitter cold in his eyes pressed down on Jang Ilso like a weight.

“Pfft.”

At that moment, Jang Ilso let out a hollow, empty laugh.

“You’re spouting such pathetic nonsense.”

Gripping the ground, Jang Ilso forced his battered body upright. Cheong Myeong watched him with eyes devoid of emotion.

His body was in shambles, barely able to stand. Yet Jang Ilso stood up again.

Just like they had in the past.

The purest form of a twisted will. [jeonghwa, 정화(精華): essence, quintessence].

Like yin and yang, alike yet different, ‘they’ stood before Cheong Myeong.

  

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Comments

  1. I swear to god if Jang Ilso somehow reaches enlightenment im going to lose it

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    1. Same I hope cm just quickly defeats jang ilso

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  2. Is the last three lines referring to the Mount Hua sect of the past? "Just like they had in the past"

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    1. I think the 'they' at the very end are PBSS and JIS, because in CM's eyes, his past self was very similar to JIS.

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  3. I hope the twisted will at the end for jang ilso does not make cm just relax and let off of jang ilso, hope cm full on press jang ilso and defeat him quickly

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  4. I think 'they' was referring to the rest of the people with CM when they were fighting the Demonic Lord. It sounds like Jang Ilso will be an ally but he deserves more beating imo

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    1. for the 'they' in "just like they had in the past"—I agree with what you said.

      but for the 'they' in "Like yin and yang, alike yet different, ‘they’ stood before Cheong Myeong."—I thought it was also about JIS bcs it was stated 'yin and yang', and in the original Korean text, the last sentence, the word "they" was given quotation marks, not like the last 3 sentences.

      Then about JIS being an ally, I thought a little bit about it, but it seems like other readers, especially Koreans, will be angry, lol. But if Biga (the author) really wanted to kill JIS in this arc, he shouldn't have to drag it out like this...

      So yeah, I think a little bit like you too lmao

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  5. I want Jang Ilso to be defeated like, yesterday, but also I know that if he died in one chapter after tormenting us for 1500 chapters, it would feel underwhelming. Let that moment last and trust Biga to cook

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