Chapter 1965 - Return of The Mount Hua Sect

Chapter 1965. Let’s Die. Mount Hua. (5)

From the gash across 491’s chest, black demonic energy surged and spilled out in great gushes. It was a fatal wound that would’ve killed an ordinary person instantly.

But 491 was a demonic person who had reached Extreme Demon. If demonic art were merely martial arts that increased destructive power compared to orthodox art, then demonic people could never have trampled the world beneath their feet.

Yet together with the writhing demonic energy, the wound splitting 491’s chest began healing in an instant.

“You... You fucking vermin!”

Killing intent boiled over from 491’s eyes.

Turning anger into strength, and that strength into demonic energy. Having completed that transformation in an instant, 491 lunged forward with storm-like demonic energy coiling around his entire body.

KWAAAAAA!

A agrotesque regenerative ability that rendered the decisive blow he had unleashed by staking his own life futile in an instant. Even in the face of a sight that anyone could only regard as inhuman, Baek Cheon remained utterly impassive.

KAAAAANG!

491’s dao and Baek Cheon’s sword collided once more in midair. Baek Cheon’s plum blossom sword, forged from hardened cold iron, bent to its limit as it withstood the enemy’s strength.

‘He’s strong.’

His opponent was strong. Strong enough that Baek Cheon couldn’t easily handle him. But so what? There was nothing particularly special about that.

Kagagagak!

Baek Cheon’s sword twisted diagonally. He intended to slip past the opponent’s dao and let its force flow away. But 491 wasn’t foolish enough to fall for the same trick twice after having already been caught by it once.

Kwadeuk.

491’s left hand shot upward like an enraged black dragon and seized Baek Cheon’s sword in one grab.

Baek Cheon’s red sword qi tore through the fiercely churning demonic energy, biting into 491’s hand and ripping through its flesh. The hand, deeply cut open, quickly exposed pale bone.

But in exchange, 491 had completely seized and immobilized Baek Cheon’s sword. It was a vicious move no one but a demonic person would even dare attempt.

‘How about……’

Fwoong.

‘Huh?’

At that moment, he realized it. The sight before his eyes was twisting.

His gaze, fixed on his opponent’s face, gradually shifted toward the crown of his head, and soon his entire field of vision was filled with the vast sky.

In other words, it was as though……

KWAAAAAAAANG!

“Kkeugh……”

A gush of red blood burst from 491’s mouth.

A powerful impact struck him, reminiscent of a blow from an Extreme Demon, no, perhaps even a bishop. There wasn’t even the slightest doubt that the force that had created this had been entirely 491’s own strength.

“Ha…..”

491’s eyes became so bloodshot that they were nearly black.

His strength had been turned against him at a distance where hand met hand.

And he’d been thrown down. It was almost exactly the same way he’d slammed that Taoist into the ground just moments ago.

Regardless of the opponent’s intentions, there could be no greater humiliation than this.

“TAOIIIIIIST!”

KWAAAANG!

491 slammed his fist into the ground, then used the recoil to shoot violently toward Baek Cheon.

Baek Cheon twisted his body in an instant. The energy 491 sent skimming right past his face generated such pressure that it tore off his entire upper garment and sent a shock through his muscles.

“Keuk!”

He’d definitely avoided it. It hadn’t even grazed him.

And yet Baek Cheon’s body had unmistakably been injured. Just how strong did someone have to be for something this absurd to happen?

Furthermore.

‘Even after being cut down and slammed into the ground, he just keeps getting back up as calmly as that?’

Baek Cheon thought he was beginning to understand why that bastard Cheong Myeong had said that fighting a Demonic Cult member was an entirely different concept from facing a strong opponent.

It felt less like fighting a person and more like facing some enormous monster that a human sword could only manage to scratch.

‘That’s why I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.’

Baek Cheon calmed his heart and slowly exhaled.

Then, watching 491 charge toward him once more, he bared his teeth.

Even if the gap between him and 491 was as vast as the distance between Heaven and Earth, in the end, it was merely the difference between one martial artist and another.

Baek Cheon had fought against the martial artists of the Evil Tyrant Alliance even with a body that could not be called that of a martial artist. Compared to the overwhelming despair he had felt back then……

‘Calling this a gap would almost be too generous.’

Baek Cheon lightly swung his sword through the air. Countless petals bloomed from its tip, filling the space between Baek Cheon and 491 in an instant.

“You’re resorting to such shallow tricks!”

491 roared and pulled his right hand, gripping his dao, tightly back.

Within the absolute realm of perceiving one’s opponent through qi-sense, tricks like this could never work. Without the slightest hesitation, 491 swung his dao with all his strength toward the aura of Baek Cheon that he sensed.

KWAAAAAA!

The demonic energy released from it traced the shape of a half-moon. Countless half-moon-shaped forces, irregularly overlapping one another, shot forth like a gigantic saw made in complete disarray and cleaved the forest of plum blossoms in a single stroke. It was a rough attack, but its might was terrifying.

“Do you think you can run away!”

491 shot straight toward Baek Cheon, who emerged from between the divided forest of plum blossoms. His speed was so tremendous that it could rightly be called vicious.

In 491’s field of vision, everything except Baek Cheon distorted beyond recognition. The body, unable to withstand the speed it had created itself, screamed. Pressure descended upon him, so intense that it felt as though the skin on his face would be torn away.

Demonic art was a martial art like that from the very beginning. The body could not withstand the magnitude of its power. Using demonic art was no different from tearing apart one’s own flesh in order to crush the opponent.

But it didn’t matter. Anyone who concerned himself with such things in the first place could never reach Extreme Demon.

491’s single dao stroke, laden with every bit of demonic energy he had squeezed out, came crashing down toward Baek Cheon. It was a dao stroke containing the will to destroy everything, even the very earth beneath Baek Cheon’s feet. The power contained in this attack was enough to remind Baek Cheon of the bishops he had encountered before.

He couldn’t avoid it. He couldn’t block it. Even so, letting it flow away was impossible.

But Baek Cheon didn’t retreat.

He had already sensed it, anyway.

His martial arts could only be completed through actual combat. The bud he had formed was martial arts that could truly bloom only together with his opponent’s strength. All those years of meditation, all that long contemplation, must ultimately have been for this very moment.

‘To think I’ll die if I can’t pull it off.’

A faint chill ran through his entire body. Yet Baek Cheon knew. Even this shiver was a privilege granted to one who could move forward.

Baek Cheon stared straight at the black demonic energy pouring toward him. It was such vicious demonic energy that it looked like a meteor covering the heavens before crashing down.

Looking at it somehow brought back old memories.

Of the time when, under the name of Jin Family, he had endlessly chased after a being he could never surpass.

Was what Baek Cheon had faced back then weaker than this?

‘How could it be?’

Back then, Baek Cheon had learned something. He had forgotten it now, but it had surely been carved into his body and remained with him all this time.

Kuung.

Baek Cheon’s foot dug into the ground.

Every flower, in the end, begins from firm roots. That was the foundation of martial arts, and also the foundation of Zhongnan. No matter how much he tried to deny it, that teaching was carved into the body of Baek Cheon, who carried Zhongnan’s blood.

Wooooooong.

Red sword qi rippled from the sword that carried all the force drawn up from his lower body without letting any of it spill away. The sword gradually took on a deeper and deeper energy, until its red color soon approached violet hue.

A sense of fulfillment unlike anything he had ever known, an intense sensation so powerful that it seemed capable of turning his mind white, came upon him. But Baek Cheon didn’t allow himself to be recklessly swept along by it.

With emptiness filling his entire chest, the tip of Baek Cheon’s sword gently received the demonic energy pouring down upon him. It didn’t resist. It didn’t push it away. Merely touching it was enough.

That was the teaching of Wudang.

When Wudang had spoken to him as he carried the greatest hardship of his life, they had told him that simply opposing something wasn’t the only way.

Gwooooooong!

The sword carrying his inner force met the dao strike containing enormous demonic energy. The gap between them was so distant that it seemed the sword would vanish the instant they touched. Even so, there was no reason to hesitate.

It’s neither pushing it away nor breaking it. It’s merely stopping it, just slightly.

If he fell even a little short, that demonic energy would crush Baek Cheon to death. Yet if he exceeded it, his sword would break.

An intersection where the sword neither bent nor broke, but merely made his opponent heavy. A realm that couldn’t be precisely explained by any theory, one that could only be reached through sensation alone. Baek Cheon’s sword seized that realm.

And so, at the very moment his strength and his opponent’s strength completely intersected, Baek Cheon’s sword qi spread out and began to burst into countless blossoms.

The roots created by Zhongnan’s teachings, the young stem nurtured by Wudang’s teachings. And at the end of that stem, Mount Hua’s plum blossoms, no different from everything Baek Cheon was, bloomed.

Blooming, and blooming again, the plum blossoms bloomed once more.

It is neither as cunningly mesmerizing as Cheong Myeong’s plum blossoms, nor as unpretentiously solid as Yoon Jong’s, nor as lightning-swift as Jo Geol’s, nor as silently elusive as Yoo Iseol’s.

But these plum blossoms do not cease (不絶).

Ever-continuing, unending (綿綿不絕).

[Myeonmyeonbujeol. 면면부절(綿綿不絕). An idiom meaning “continuing without end” or “unceasingly.” 면면(綿綿) conveys something continuing continuously and without interruption, while 부절(不絕) means “not ending” or “not being severed.”]

The plum blossoms that bloomed again and again continued to whirl without end. Where one plum blossom withered, another filled its place, and where another was torn apart, yet another filled the space it left behind.

And so they flowed, and flowed. An endless river of plum blossoms flowed across the earth of black demonic energy.

‘Where did my sword come from?’

Baek Cheon’s heart was deeply hurt.

Until now, he had learned Mount Hua’s sword and lived for the sake of perfecting Mount Hua’s sword. How could he accept that the place he had finally reached wasn’t made solely of Mount Hua’s sword?

Could he be certain this wasn’t another form of mind demon?

‘Who knows.’

That bastard would surely have said this.

‘The way you use the sword doesn’t define Mount Hua.’

The sword, and even sword techniques, were merely means. What he had to carry through was nothing but the will of Mount Hua.

So say it.

No matter where the starting point is, no matter where the rough waters are, a great river flowing steadily will eventually reach the vast sea (大海). The place this sword was headed toward was that end, the great Tao (道).

[Daehae. 대해(大海). Literally “great sea” or “vast sea.” It refers simply to the open, enormous sea, often used figuratively for an ultimate destination or boundless expanse.]

In the end, all currents would gather into one. In the end, it would be all streams returning to their source (萬流歸宗).

[Manryugwijong. 만류귀종(萬流歸宗). Literally “the ten thousand streams return to the source.” A classical expression meaning that countless different paths or currents ultimately converge upon one origin or fundamental principle.]

Baek Cheon’s sword drew a great circle through the air. Following the tip of his sword, the river of plum blossoms that had been circling across the earth of demonic energy turned gently. The river of plum blossoms, having drawn a perfect circle, whirled endlessly, pushing away the demonic energy that covered the world through that very motion.

This was perhaps the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Techniques. No, perhaps the Plum Blossom Sword Formation.

Or perhaps it was something else entirely, something that was the Plum Blossom Sword Technique yet was not the Plum Blossom Sword Technique.

But even that didn’t matter.

The will of one man whose blossoms had been trampled and broken, yet who endured the long winter and bloomed once more in the end. Another plum blossom that had continued to carry on, again and again, until at last it bloomed.

Plum Blossom Sword Formation (梅花劍訣). Plum Blossom Turning the Darkened Heavens (梅花回暗天).

A crack spread across the black sky.

Along with a sharp sound of rupture that should’ve been impossible to hear, that darkened sky shattered into countless pieces. At the same time, fragments of black demonic energy and petals of red sword qi embroidered the blue clear heavens that once again enveloped the world, as though in a dream.

It was a moment when it seemed as though the world had stopped.

Baek Cheon’s sword moved slowly once more.

Without hostility or killing intent, the sword that cleaved through the air as though dancing pointed toward a single demonic person trapped within the wall he himself had created.

The red plum blossom petals that had shattered the sky of demonic energy cleaved through the heavens along the path of Baek Cheon’s sword and shot toward the demonic person.

“......It makes no sense.”

The demonic person muttered as though sobbing. Soon, his body was swept away by the advancing river of plum blossoms.

Hwaaaaaah!

The river that engulfed the demonic person flowed on and on, eventually sweeping up even the other members of the Demonic Cult who had been standing there in a daze.

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Note about “It is neither as cunningly mesmerizing as Cheong Myeong’s plum blossoms, nor as unpretentiously solid as Yoon Jong’s, nor as lightning-swift as Jo Geol’s, nor as silently elusive as Yoo Iseol’s.” (bcs i like it).

요사스럽다 (yosasreopda): Translated here as eerie and tricky or bewitching/unpredictable, dangerously seductive, reflecting Cheong Myeong’s unorthodox, deceptive, and overwhelming martial style.

소담스럽다 (sodam-seureopda): Simple, unpretentious, understated, neat, or satisfyingly full, describing Yoon Jong’s grounded and textbook-faithful execution.

쾌속하다 (kwaesok-hada): Swift, lightning-fast, matching Jo Geol’s aggressive, speed-oriented focus.

은밀하다 (eunmil-hada): Secretive, stealthy, subtle, covert, reflecting Yoo Iseol’s quiet and elusive blade trajectory.

❀ ❀ ❀

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