Chapter 27
Translator: T_Fan
It had been about a day since Lee Hyun left Yunjing.
He was crossing the mountain range in the northwestern part of Yunze Kingdom.
It was a route he had traveled countless times over the past dozen years.
He sped down a mountainside with the Reclining Escape Art before reaching a broad expanse of gray bedrock.
Once he crossed this area, he would be back in mountainous terrain covered in thick soil. Normally, he would have crossed it without a second thought.
‘…What is it?’
Lee Hyun sensed something was off.
When he activated the Keen Hearing Art and Ground-Sense Art, even the faint presences of tiny creatures hiding in the cracks between the rocks entered his awareness one after another.
‘There are far fewer insects than usual….’
That was when it happened.
Bang!
Tree roots burst from a crack in the bedrock beneath his feet amid a blue-green glow, coiling around Lee Hyun’s ankles like snakes.
At the same time, savage waves of spiritual power erupted from three directions.
From directly ahead, a flying sword glowing with an eerie blue light shot toward the back of Lee Hyun’s neck.
Clang!
A translucent Spirit Light Shield appeared and knocked the flying sword away.
Crack!
A thin fracture spread across the center of the Spirit Light Shield at the moment of impact.
The blade of the deflected blue flying sword was densely engraved with patterns no larger than grains of millet.
‘A magic tool!’
The auras of three concealed figures entered his divine sense.
The middle-aged man in front was at Qi Refining Stage 6, the gaunt man on the right was at Qi Refining Stage 5, and the young man on the left, who had used the Wood Binding Art, was at Qi Refining Stage 3.
The sunlight above his head vanished.
A black square seal more than one zhang (about 3.3 m) across was descending as though it meant to crush Lee Hyun flat.
“Bind him!”
“Now!”
The three Qi Refining cultivators sealed off every direction.
From the front, the flying sword that had been knocked away curved back and twisted toward him. The black seal fell from above, while his ankles remained bound by the tough roots of the Wood Binding Art.
The moment Lee Hyun realized they truly intended to kill him, rage and killing intent awakened within him.
Boom!
The Qi Sphere Barrier burst outward from around Lee Hyun’s entire body. The air blasted away in every direction, shattering the roots constricting his ankles. At the same instant, he followed with the Square-Inch Step. Lee Hyun’s figure vanished like a ghost.
Rumble!
The black seal smashed down on the exact spot where he had been standing.
“What kind of speed is that…!”
Though startled, the attackers continued their assault.
The gaunt man sent black spikes flying in every direction to cut off his escape, while the young man tore two talismans apart, conjuring a massive curtain of flames and a wall of wind.
The Qi Refining Stage 6 cultivator in front changed his hand seal, splitting the blue flying sword into three phantom blades that targeted Lee Hyun’s vital acupoints.
In response, a dazzling white orb of light bloomed above Lee Hyun’s palm, and the tremendous wave of spiritual power made all three men blanch.
“Dodge!”
Booooom!
The fireball Lee Hyun hurled collided with the curtain of flames ahead, triggering a massive explosion. The curtain of flames and wall of wind collapsed from within, while the flying sword, spikes, and black seal were swept up by the blast and flung in every direction.
Flash!
The entire bedrock field was bathed in white light, and the tempest slammed into the three cultivators as though swallowing them whole.
Boom!
The gaunt man hurriedly pulled the black seal back to block the blast, but the violent impact sent him skidding more than ten chi (over 3.3 m) backward, both feet scraping across the bedrock. The young man, wrapped in a golden barrier, was hurled into the air and smashed into a boulder.
A plain iron sword slid from the sheath at Lee Hyun’s waist as he stood amid the smoke.
Shrring–
A terrifying wave of spiritual power surged from the iron sword, and Spirit Aura imbued with an uncanny radiance sprang into existence.
The middle-aged man’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Don’t let him get close!”
Thump.
The moment Lee Hyun used the Square-Inch Step, his charging figure abruptly veered diagonally. The gaunt man hurriedly sent the black seal and spikes to block his path, but Lee Hyun slipped through the opening before the two attacks could converge.
By the time the gaunt man’s eyes widened in disbelief, Lee Hyun had already reached the young man, who was protected behind layers of talismans and a bronze shield.
“Eek!”
The young man screamed as he wrapped himself in two layers of golden barriers and raised the bronze shield as a barricade.
But Lee Hyun’s sword did not hesitate.
Flash!
Boom!
The first barrier tore apart helplessly, and even the second cracked. Immediately afterward, the Spirit Aura wrapped around the iron sword concentrated at a single point at its tip. Rather than smashing through the bronze shield head-on, the sword light of One Ultimate, Six Swords skimmed past its edge and traced a fleeting arc.
Slash!
“Aaaagh!”
The young man’s left arm was severed at the shoulder, spraying blood through the air. The arm still clutching a talisman tumbled across the ground, and a hole opened in the trio’s once-solid formation.
“Xiaobai! You bastard…!”
The gaunt man roared in fury as he dropped the black seal over Lee Hyun’s head and thrust his spikes forward. The middle-aged man also condensed his blue flying sword and slashed toward the back of Lee Hyun’s neck.
But Lee Hyun did not even look back as he stirred his mental intent.
Hum! Hum! Hum!
Holding nothing back with his Primordial True Qi, twelve Spirit Light Shields bloomed into existence at once. Three layers of shields precisely interposed themselves in front of the flying sword, spikes, and seal, while the remaining Spirit Light Shields rapidly revolved around Lee Hyun to cover every opening. The three magic tools hammered against the Spirit Light Shields one after another, yet not a single shield shattered.
‘That’s a Spirit Light Shield?’
Peng Ziliang felt as though he had been bewitched. Defensive techniques formed from condensed spiritual power were normally weaker than physical magic tools. Yet the Spirit Light Shields before him were withstanding even mid-grade magic tools without the slightest difficulty.
The toughness of the Spirit Light Shields created by this Qi Refining rogue cultivator was simply unbelievable.
Before his shock could fade, an iron nail shot from Lee Hyun’s sleeve. It was the Spirit-Breaking Nail Wang Shao had given him long ago.
Launched with the Divine Finger-Flick Art, the Spirit-Breaking Nail carried an enormous amount of spiritual power as it struck Peng Ziliang’s defensive enchanted robe head-on.
Craack!
The Spirit-Breaking Nail pierced through the enchanted robe’s restriction and buried itself deep in his shoulder. Immediately afterward, cracks spread across the nail as it failed to withstand the immense Primordial True Qi.
Crackle!
The Spirit-Breaking Nail shattered outright, lodging fragments deep inside his shoulder.
‘How can trash that’s not even as good as a low-grade magic tool pierce my enchanted robe?’
While he staggered and struggled to steady himself, Lee Hyun closed the distance in an instant.
‘No…’
Schk.
Sword light pierced through Peng Ziliang’s forehead. He collapsed with his eyes rolling back, unable even to scream.
“Senior Brother Peng!”
Han Xiaobai screamed while clutching the shoulder that was pouring blood.
The situation had reversed in the blink of an eye. In only a few breaths, one man had lost an arm and another had become a corpse.
Wei Wendao’s face turned deathly pale.
‘Is this man truly a Qi Refining Stage 3 rogue cultivator?’
Without hesitation, Wei Wendao bit the tip of his tongue and spat crimson essence blood onto the blue flying sword.
Sizzle–
The blood-dyed flying sword swelled dramatically, radiating an ominous divine radiance.
Whoosh!
The flying sword screamed through the air toward Lee Hyun’s chest. Razor-sharp sword qi shredded the surrounding bedrock.
But Lee Hyun remained calm.
Hum! Hum!
As though responding to Lee Hyun’s mental intent, layers of Spirit Light Shields filled the air.
The blood-red flying sword pierced through three Spirit Light Shields in succession.
Crack! Craaack!
But there was no end to the shields behind them. Each time the flying sword pierced one, a new Spirit Light Shield immediately appeared to block its path.
Clatter.
At last, the flying sword lost its strength and fell to the ground.
“Impossible….”
Wei Wendao could not finish speaking as he coughed up blood.
Seeing the mid-grade magic tool he had empowered with his own essence blood stopped so completely by mere Spirit Light Shields made Wei Wendao feel as though all his cultivation until now had been rendered meaningless.
Boom!
Lee Hyun opened his palm, and a massive wave of force from the Qi Sphere Barrier slammed into Wei Wendao and Han Xiaobai at the same time. Both men screamed as they rolled across the ground.
Realizing there was no longer any chance of victory, Wei Wendao tapped his storage pouch and took out a blue flying boat.
Whoosh–
Wei Wendao tried to launch the flying boat and soar into the air, but Lee Hyun had already drawn the Earth Shovel Sword and leaped skyward.
Slash! Crack!
The sword light of the Azure Steel Sword Art came crashing down, shattering the side of the flying boat. The vessel spun like it was screaming and plummeted toward the ground.
Boom!
Wei Wendao was thrown from the flying boat and landed on his knees atop the bedrock.
Before he could even regain his posture, four streaks of Lee Hyun’s Yang Metal Art precisely pierced the acupoints of his four limbs.
Schk! Schk-sch-sch!
“Ugh!”
Strength drained from Wei Wendao’s limbs, and he collapsed to the ground.
…
Only the faint sound of fine stone grit rolling down the mountainside could be heard.
Lee Hyun silently looked down at the three fallen men.
The gaunt man was dead. The middle-aged man was coughing blood with all four limbs sealed, while the young man trembled in terror after losing his left arm.
The frightened young man suddenly seemed to come to his senses. He slammed his head against the ground and begged.
“We were wrong! Please spare our lives!”
Lee Hyun stared at him without a word.
“We’re pitiful rogue cultivators too! We have no sect and wander from place to place cultivating. That fellow Daoist over there has a wife and children, and I have an elderly mother back home. We will never speak a word of what happened today.”
“…….”
“Take our storage pouches and magic tools, all of them. We don’t need anything. Please….”
The young man’s voice trembled miserably.
“Before that, let me ask you one thing. Why did you attack me?”
“Th-the pill recipe. We thought you obtained the Barrier-Breaking Pill recipe from the Fengtian Bureau… and we became greedy.”
“How did you know that?”
“We knew you’d been saving merit points for a long time, and we saw you visiting the Earth Fire Cavern for more than a month after leaving the Retainers Hall. That’s truly all!”
Lee Hyun silently stared at him.
The Barrier-Breaking Pill recipe was certainly something Qi Refining rogue cultivators would covet.
Now that the battle was over, the killing intent that had been boiling inside him moments ago was gradually subsiding.
If they truly were rogue cultivators without anyone behind them, he could consider taking their belongings and driving them far away.
By the time he emerged from hiding in his tunnel again, they would probably have died of old age anyway.
He was not afraid of the grudges of a few Qi Refining rogue cultivators. The world was too vast. Finding him would be difficult enough, never mind taking revenge.
Lee Hyun pondered briefly and was just about to speak.
Then a blue emblem caught the edge of his vision.
‘Hm?’
The dead gaunt man’s robe had been torn apart by the explosion, revealing an embroidered emblem on the inside.
A blue cloud.
Lee Hyun’s gaze stopped.
‘That….’
He had seen it somewhere before.
As he searched his memory, a scene from several hundred years ago surfaced in his mind.
Back when he had still been living as a woodcutter in White Wood Village in western Great Yan Kingdom, before entering the immortal path, he had once seen an Immortal’s ship flying through the sky.
A blue cloud had been painted on its white sail, and the villagers had all rushed to bow, saying that the Immortal Masters of the Azure Cloud Sect had arrived.
“…….”
‘The Azure Cloud Sect?’
Lee Hyun checked the emblem once more, then looked at the young man and asked indifferently,
“You said you were rogue cultivators?”
“That’s right! The three of us have traveled together for many years.”
Lee Hyun lightly nodded.
“Strange. Your techniques looked quite familiar, so I thought you might be disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect. Long ago, a cultivator from the Azure Cloud Sect did me a great favor. If you were his fellow disciples, I might have spared you out of regard for that connection. But if you’re not, I suppose there’s no reason for me to do so.”
The young man’s eyes widened.
“Wait! We really are disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect!”
“Xiaobai!”
The middle-aged man shouted as he coughed blood.
“You idiot…!”
He tried to force his injured body upright, only to collapse again.
“What nonsense are you spouting?! How dare you impersonate cultivators of the Azure Cloud Sect just to bluff! We’re rogue cultivators!”
“Ah…….”
The face of the young man called Xiaobai turned deathly pale. Only then did he realize what he had said.
The middle-aged man squeezed his eyes shut. It was already too late.
Lee Hyun remained silent for a long while.
If they had truly been rogue cultivators, he might have made a different choice. Killing people felt horrible, so he wanted to avoid it whenever possible.
But if they were disciples of a cultivation sect, the situation was completely different.
He knew almost nothing about the Azure Cloud Sect.
But it was a sect that generously supplied even its Qi Refining disciples with good magic tools and talismans, and had sent people all the way to the remote White Wood Village in Great Yan Kingdom several hundred years ago to recruit disciples. And now, it seemed their disciples were active in Yunze Kingdom as well.
At the very least, it was not a force he could handle.
Which meant that, as nothing more than a Qi Refining Stage 3 rogue cultivator, he had now killed one disciple of a great sect and seriously wounded two others.
What if he let the remaining two go?
“…….”
Great sects of the cultivation world placed tremendous importance on face. Even if the two surviving disciples did not seek revenge themselves, there was no chance the Azure Cloud Sect would simply let the matter go.
Now that things had come to this, he had to kill the two in front of him as well. Only by leaving no witnesses would he have even a chance of surviving.
“F-fellow Daoist.”
The young man spoke in a trembling voice.
“It can’t be helped. You brought this upon yourselves.”
“What?”
Schk.
A small hole appeared in the young man’s forehead. The light slowly faded from his wide-open eyes.
Thud.
Lee Hyun looked at the middle-aged man last. He seemed to understand that there was no point in saying anything.
The man closed his eyes without another word.
“Kill me.”
Schk.
The man’s body went limp.
Lee Hyun let out a short breath.
‘I need to clean up the traces first.’
…
Lee Hyun used several detection arts to inspect the surroundings. He sensed no mortals or other cultivators nearby.
He first used the Soil-Turning Art and the Earth Shovel Sword’s Soil-Softening Art to conceal the traces of battle. After softening and collapsing several cracked sections of bedrock, most of the rocks scorched by the Fireball Art, the marks left by the flying sword, the footprints, and the bloodstains disappeared beneath the fallen rubble.
Before long, the bedrock field looked less like a place where cultivators had fought and more like the site of a small landslide.
Lee Hyun removed everything the corpses carried, including their storage pouches and identity tokens, then gathered all the magic tools and other items scattered nearby into one place.
Afterward, he temporarily hid the bodies beneath rocks and entered the ground using the Earth Escape Art. When he spread the Ground-Sense Art through the surrounding strata, he detected several natural fissures and small caverns running between the deeper layers of bedrock.
He selected three deep fissures that were not connected to underground waterways.
Lee Hyun returned to the surface, dragged the bodies underground one by one, shoved each into a different fissure, then collapsed the entrances.
Rumble–
He did not believe he had erased every trace perfectly.
But this was the most he could do with his current abilities.
Now it was time to sort through the belongings.
…
Lee Hyun found a natural cavern far from the battle site and entered it.
He spread a cloth across the floor, then emptied the three men’s storage pouches one after another.
First, he set aside the three Fengtian Bureau external retainer badges he had removed from their bodies.
Then came three white jade tokens. A blue cloud was engraved on the front of each, while a name was written on the back.
Wei Wendao.
Peng Ziliang.
Han Xiaobai.
“As expected….”
They certainly appeared to be identity tokens of the Azure Cloud Sect.
He pushed the identity tokens aside.
Next came the magic tools.
Wei Wendao’s blue flying sword and the half-destroyed flying boat.
Peng Ziliang’s black square seal and three spikes.
Han Xiaobai’s bronze shield.
There were also several magic tools they had not used in battle, including a black dagger and several thin, needle-shaped implements.
Lee Hyun first picked up the blue flying sword and examined it closely.
“This is… wood.”
During the fight, he had assumed it was made of metal because of its weighty power.
Looking closely, he saw that the entire blade had been carved from a spirit tree. Tiny spirit inscriptions forming its restrictions covered every inch of the surface.
It was the finest magic tool he had ever seen.
‘It’s a shame, but….’
Lee Hyun let go of his attachment.
He had no idea what kinds of restrictions were embedded in that sword.
There was no way to know whether it could alert his sect to its location after its owner’s death, whether someone from the sect could sense the sword’s position through a particular hand seal, or whether someone had already placed an unseen mark on it without his knowledge.
There was no guarantee the other magic tools were safe either.
‘I should discard all the magic tools.’
No matter how expensive they were, they could not be worth more than his life.
He also pushed two gray beads, a black bronze plaque, and an enchanted robe bearing the Azure Cloud Sect’s cloud emblem into the pile of dangerous items, along with anything else whose identity or function he could not determine.
On the other hand, items that could be obtained anywhere and were difficult to trace to a specific source could be kept.
First, the low-grade spirit stones.
“One, two….”
After a long while, Lee Hyun’s lips curved slightly upward as he set down the last spirit stone.
“Three hundred and ninety.”
Adding the twelve he already had gave him a total of four hundred and two.
‘I won’t have to worry about spirit stones for a while.’
Next came the talismans.
The three men had carried dozens of unused talismans. Among them was a single yellow talisman with denser spiritual qi and more intricate patterns than the others.
Talismans of which they had several copies were likely meant for common purposes, so he kept all of those.
Conversely, he unhesitatingly pushed any talisman of which there was only one, or which looked particularly unusual, into the dangerous pile.
He kept every bottle containing pills.
Some of the bottles had labels, while the contents of others were unknown, but since they were meant to be consumed by cultivators, they seemed unlikely to contain any tracking function.
Finally, he inspected the storage pouches.
The three men had possessed five in total.
After emptying them completely, he examined each one with the Aura-Reading Art. They were ordinary storage pouches commonly seen everywhere, with no sect markings either outside or within.
At least within the limits of Lee Hyun’s current knowledge, there was nothing unusual about them.
He decided to keep the empty storage pouches.
Together with the two he already owned, he now had seven storage pouches in total.
There were also several books and documents.
An illustrated guide to demon beasts.
A book on basic talisman-crafting art.
Instructions for using several techniques.
Records the three men had kept during their cultivation.
There were also several jade slips, but those made him somewhat uneasy.
He would need to insert his divine sense to inspect the jade slips, and the divine sense of a Qi Refining Stage 3 cultivator was too weak to properly respond if any sort of trap had been placed inside.
‘I should discard these too.’
He kept the paper books, since he could skim through them normally.
Among them, one item made Lee Hyun’s hand pause.
Rustle.
A vast map of Kun Kingdom and the surrounding regions unfolded before him.
The borders of mortal nations, major cities, large mountain ranges, and rivers were all roughly marked.
And in the northern part of the map.
At the northeastern edge of Great Yan Kingdom, three blue characters were written.
Azure Cloud Sect.
‘About thirty-six thousand li (about 14,100 km) from here. It’s not close, but it still makes me uneasy….’
…
That night.
Lee Hyun buried the items he had deemed dangerous in multiple locations spread across several dozen li.
He did not keep the blue flying sword, black seal, half-destroyed flying boat, Azure Cloud Sect identity tokens, Fengtian Bureau retainer badges, enchanted robe, unidentified jade slips, and unusual talismans together in one place. Some he buried deep after using the Soil-Softening Art to soften the bedrock, then collapsed the surrounding stone over them.
Even after disposing of the final item, he did not immediately return to the surface.
He traveled underground for a long while with the Earth Escape Art until he had put enough distance behind him, only then emerging in the mountains. Even afterward, whenever the terrain seemed unfavorable or he sensed someone’s presence, he changed direction or hid underground again.
In this way, he did everything he could to break his trail as he headed toward Tunnel No. 1.
…
One day later.
Tunnel No. 1.
Rustle–
Lee Hyun’s head emerged from the soil.
“Phew….”
Just as his tension began to ease, he heard a familiar buzzing of wings.
Bzzzz–
Several fuzzbees flew over from the direction of the spirit field.
The moment they spotted Lee Hyun, they flew straight over his head as though delighted to see him.
Chirp.
The moment one landed on his shoulder, it pooped.
The small white lump, blocked by the Qi Sphere Barrier, slid down the transparent barrier and fell to the ground.
Tap.
“…….”
Normally, Lee Hyun would have said something about it pooping on him yet again, but this time he did not even look at the fellow.
He stood in the center of the cultivation chamber without moving for a long time.
‘I’ve done almost everything I can….’
But the unease in the corner of his mind refused to disappear.
‘What if there’s a method I don’t know about?’
The techniques he knew were only a tiny fraction of those that existed throughout the cultivation world. It would not be strange if there were secret arts capable of tracking a culprit through nothing more than a corpse or blood.
And there was something else that bothered him even more.
Yesterday’s ambush had not been a coincidence.
The three men had known the route he frequently used.
They had taken position in the bedrock field ahead of time and chosen a spot where escape would be difficult.
‘They couldn’t have seen me only once or twice.’
They might have watched him for days, perhaps even far longer.
If so, there was a possibility they had left traces behind in the Fengtian Bureau as well.
Three Azure Cloud Sect cultivators had suddenly vanished in Yunze Kingdom.
Moreover, all three had been External Retainers of the Fengtian Bureau. Someone around them was bound to remember their final movements.
If an investigation began, the name of a Retainer called Li Dongyi, who had left Yunjing around the same time, might surface as well.
If they dug deeper, they might even discover that for more than a dozen years, he had repeatedly taken leave and traveled in the same general direction.
If that happened, even if they did not know the exact location of Tunnel No. 1, they could narrow down the search area considerably.
“…….”
Tunnel No. 1, which had felt familiar and safe until just recently, now looked entirely different.
Lee Hyun closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
There was no longer any reason to hesitate.
“Let’s move.”
⚬──────────✧──────────⚬
Join our discord server: https://discord.gg/96hMXymzMP