Chapter 134: Chapter 134
Two sabers were swung simultaneously.
They were sabers swung respectively by a master of the Righteous Path who had reached the Realm Beyond the Heavens, and a man who had not reached the Realm Beyond the Heavens but had reached a realm corresponding to it as a disciple of the Dark Emperor.
Strikes that no one in the martial world would dare ignore poured down simultaneously, but the rustic, ink-black Crescent Moon Staff merely carried out its role calmly as always.
Crash!
The thick, heavy great saber and the thin, rapid straight saber shattered to pieces within a single trajectory.
No one ever anticipated that the blades of the two men would shatter from exchanging merely a single blow.
Of course, the most astonished were Patriarch Peng and the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean, but due to the strike following immediately, they could not afford to remain dazed.
Falling vertically and smashing the two sabers to pieces, the Crescent Moon Staff drew an unbelievable trajectory and slashed horizontally.
It was an attitude of smashing both of their heads simultaneously.
Patriarch Peng tossed aside the great saber of which only the hilt remained, and rolled across the ground.
Whoosh, the Crescent Moon Staff brushed past narrowly above his head.
The Ghost of the Eastern Ocean also lowered his body to dodge, but his reaction was somewhat late. Judging that he could not dodge, the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean crossed both arms and raised his body-protecting astral qi.
It was truly a pitiful judgment.
Wham!
The Crescent Moon Staff crudely struck his crossed arms.
In an instant, a crunching sound was heard from both of the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean’s arms, and his figure bounced away like an arrow.
Drawing a long, straight tail as he flew, the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean crashed into the ship he had ridden, smashing it.
Watching this, Cheon Woo-jin’s simple assessment followed:
“Surprisingly sturdy.”
He had intended to break the ribs along with the arms, but it stopped at breaking merely one arm.
Around the time a somewhat regretful feeling arose, Patriarch Peng, who had snatched a soldier’s saber before anyone knew, was surging forward once again.
Befitting a master of the Realm Beyond the Heavens, his speed and imposing aura looked like a Mountain Lord.
Compared to the great saber he usually used, the saber he held right now was infinitely slender and weak, but that did not dull the moniker of Saber Wanderer.
Patriarch Peng surging in a straight line.
Cheon Woo-jin’s eyes narrowed as he watched this.
Leaving aside the vivid yellow saber gang dwelling on the thin saber, his footwork was quite miraculous.
Clearly running in a straight line, it appeared as though he could occupy other directions at any moment.
East, west, south, north, and even above the head, five directions in total.
Cheon Woo-jin remembered hearing about that saber technique from White Elder.
‘Five Tigers Gate Breaking Saber.’
It was the ultimate technique of the Peng Clan, said to be able to completely sever any response from the opponent.
If the one who explained the ultimate technique was White Elder, the one who presented the method of breaking it was Black Elder. His method of breaking it was surprisingly simple:
– You just need to stay still.
For that reason, Cheon Woo-jin waited motionlessly.
Until Patriarch Peng, charging forward at terrifying speed like a flying tiger, came right before his nose.
It was a nail-biting situation where even those watching involuntarily broke into a cold sweat. However, the one shaken was not Cheon Woo-jin, but Patriarch Peng.
The Five Tigers Gate Breaking Saber was an ultimate technique placing significance on severing all responses from the opponent. When a fight broke out, one was bound to move constantly, so he should have been able to seize the initiative completely.
However, because his opponent did nothing and remained still, all directions opened up instead, passing the choice to him.
Patriarch Peng fell into contemplation for a moment. If the opponent were an inferior fighter, he could slash him down at random, but… the situation was not like that.
After brief contemplation, Patriarch Peng twisted his toes. It was a movement to burrow into Cheon Woo-jin’s left side.
In response, Cheon Woo-jin slightly shifted the Crescent Moon Staff.
A smile flashed across Patriarch Peng’s face. Seeming as if he would slice into the flank, he suddenly relaxed the strength in his hand.
The blade of the saber he held spun with a whirl along the Crescent Moon Staff.
Meanwhile, having taken Cheon Woo-jin’s rear, Patriarch Peng gripped the spun saber once more and lunged toward his back.
It was a movement truly as natural as flowing water.
He was an experienced martial artist. Although he could not guarantee victory against Cheon Woo-jin in a head-on confrontation right now, he was confident that he had faced far more masters in his lifetime.
Naturally, he had cut down and killed many masters wielding staffs as well.
The advantage of a staff was distance. It was a weapon that held superiority through its uniquely long reach.
However, the disadvantage was also distance. Because it was so long, it was difficult to respond to sudden shifts.
In fact, even though Patriarch Peng’s saber was already on the verge of slashing Cheon Woo-jin’s back, Cheon Woo-jin had not yet completely adjusted his grip on the Crescent Moon Staff.
At this moment, Patriarch Peng was certain.
That this was the victory of experience.
Soon, around the time his blade was about to carve a long diagonal slash across Cheon Woo-jin’s back,
Catch.
In an instant, Patriarch Peng’s eyes flew wide open.
Only now had Cheon Woo-jin shifted his grip on the Crescent Moon Staff. However, his empty left hand grabbed the entire blade.
Not a single drop of blood flowed.
“Wh-What in the world…”
Patriarch Peng was completely flabbergasted. No matter that one enveloped their palm in body-protecting astral qi, could one truly remain unhurt after catching with bare hands a saber swung by a martial artist who had reached the Realm Beyond the Heavens?
Doubts were meaningless. It was something already occurring right before his eyes.
“This one is surprisingly clever.”
Cheon Woo-jin thought that Jianghu was truly fascinating.
The seemingly frail Ghost of the Eastern Ocean was sturdy, and the combat of Patriarch Peng, who seemed ignorant, held rather cunning aspects.
Thinking so, he applied force to the hand gripping the saber.
Snap!
The blade snapped clean in two.
Soon, the Crescent Moon Staff, its grip now completely shifted, plunged vertically.
Boom!
Struck squarely on the head, Patriarch Peng slammed into the ground. Blood poured continuously from his shattered back of the skull.
As if struggling desperately to cling to fleeting life, his body twitched repeatedly.
A heavy silence settled over the grounds.
The Ghost of the Eastern Ocean, whom the Central Plains soldiers and Eastern Ocean warriors feared, was sent flying and crashed in a single strike. Patriarch Peng, called the Saber Wanderer and a martial artist of the Realm Beyond the Heavens, was twitching on the ground.
Everyone had already lost their will to fight. Now, beyond fear, there were even those feeling awe.
It was a moment when the moniker Heartless Wanderer was deeply engraved in everyone’s minds.
Dangling the blood-stained Crescent Moon Staff, Cheon Woo-jin, who had been standing still, suddenly raised his hand.
At that small motion, the entire battlefield flinched.
Whether it did or not, Cheon Woo-jin was still stretching his hand toward the sea. Around the time everyone wondered in confusion,
Whoosh!
The figure of the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean, who had crashed into the large ship and nearly split it in half, flew powerlessly through the air.
At that spectacle, everyone’s jaws dropped half-open. They had heard of instances where masters of the Realm Beyond the Heavens opened or closed doors, or picked up dropped weapons with the subtlety of Telekinetic Attraction, but…
To think he would pull a whole person from this vast distance. It was truly an unrealistic spectacle.
Soon, Cheon Woo-jin took his stance.
He intended to strike him dead on the spot with the Crescent Moon Staff.
The Ghost of the Eastern Ocean drawn right before his nose.
And at the moment the Crescent Moon Staff, brimming with Dark Heavens Qi, slashed through the air,
Swish!
A red thread appeared in midair as a slender sound of breaking air burst out. Simultaneously, Cheon Woo-jin tilted his head back slightly.
A very fine thread appeared on the tip of his chin, splashing droplets of blood.
Thanks to that, the figure of the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean, being pulled by Telekinetic Attraction, dropped straight to the ground.
Soon, a black-robed man who revealed himself caught the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean. In his right hand, he held a sword as crimson as if it held blood, which Cheon Woo-jin recognized at a glance.
“Sword Demon.”
There were few registered disciples whose skills Master Black Elder acknowledged, and one of them was precisely the Sword Demon.
According to what he heard, it was said that there was nothing in the world he could not cut.
“…”
Standing on the battlefield, the Sword Demon gazed at Cheon Woo-jin without a word. Because he wore a pitch-black face mask, only his two eyes tinged with reddish light were revealed.
While Cheon Woo-jin and the Sword Demon engaged in a staring contest,
In an instant, the ground Cheon Woo-jin was treading on squirmed.
Without a shred of hesitation, Cheon Woo-jin leaped into midair.
Thereupon, several slender threads shot out from the spot where he had stood and tangled in midair.
Had he been even slightly late, both of his feet would have been bound by the threads, leaving him completely unable to move.
Cheon Woo-jin knitted his brows slightly.
In all under heaven, there was only a single person who wielded such an ultimate technique.
Sun Moon Angler.
Angler meant a fisherman, signifying a fisherman who hooked the sun and moon.
He was not a registered disciple who inherited the true teachings of the Dark Emperor, but was one of the unregistered disciples taken in due to high evaluation of his outstanding talent.
The fishing lines that had tried to bind Cheon Woo-jin’s feet wrapped tightly around Patriarch Peng’s body, then dragged him into the soil.
His figure reappeared on the coast quite far away. Along the path Patriarch Peng was dragged, the soldiers were greatly flustered because the weakened ground had collapsed.
The Sun Moon Angler looked at Cheon Woo-jin for a moment from a distance, then hoisted Patriarch Peng’s body onto his back. The Sword Demon also retreated step by step while remaining vigilant against Cheon Woo-jin.
Of course, having no intention of letting them go, Cheon Woo-jin soon kicked off the ground and surged forward.
Wearing quite a tense expression, the Sword Demon raised his crimson blade.
At the moment the Crescent Moon Staff and the Sword Demon’s Blood Heavens Sword were about to collide,
A figure dropped down between the two.
In his hand, a small bundle was held…
KABOOOOM!
An enormous explosion occurred from the bundle alongside a blinding flash.
Enveloping himself in body-protecting astral qi as naturally as breathing, Cheon Woo-jin tried to push his body further into the explosion. It was explosive power capable of tearing the limbs of even supreme masters, but it would not inflict much damage on Cheon Woo-jin.
In the midst of that, the Hidden Dragon Squad members and soldiers with terrified expressions suddenly entered his view.
Cheon Woo-jin clicked his tongue quietly.
Soon, instead of wrapping the body-protecting astral qi around his body, he scattered it into midair.
Through formless energy, he gathered the explosive force spreading seamlessly in all directions into a single point. It was truly an unrealistic feat, but Cheon Woo-jin exercised high concentration at the fact that a small mistake would lead to the deaths of his friends.
Soon, that massive explosive force gathered into a single point.
The Explosion Demon, a registered disciple of the Dark Emperor, watched that spectacle with an expression that asked, ‘What kind of monster is this?’
Whether he did or not, Cheon Woo-jin returned that explosive force right back to the Explosion Demon and the Sword Demon. He even mixed in Dark Heavens Qi. He thoroughly fulfilled Black Elder’s teaching that one must return more than what one received.
KABOOOOOOOOM!
An explosion that truly shook heaven and earth occurred.
Flash and smoke rose high into the sky like a mushroom.
So massive was the explosion that incoming waves were pushed backward toward the sea.
Riding the vibration of the explosion, someone’s voice echoed across the entire battlefield:
– Cheon Woo-jin, disciple of Black Elder. ‘We’ have decided to no longer tolerate your insolence. If you stop here, considering Eldest Martial Brother, we will also conclude this, but…
– If you truly do not know your place and run amok to the end, you too will ultimately end up like Eldest Martial Brother.
They were the voices of the Sword Demon and Explosion Demon.
Soon, all of that subsided,
And around the time the vision of others, excluding Cheon Woo-jin who was unharmed from the start, gradually returned,
“For guys running away, you talk too much.”
Cheon Woo-jin spoke as he looked at one of the Explosion Demon’s arms lying on the ground. It was in a state where beyond the shoulder, even the shoulder blade was torn along with it.
In that brief moment of explosion, the Explosion Demon, the Sword Demon, and Cheon Woo-jin had exchanged roughly seven hundred blows.
That was the result.
The Explosion Demon and the Sword Demon were registered disciples acknowledged even by Black Elder. On top of that, three unregistered disciples including the Sun Moon Angler secured a retreat route from afar.
It was truly a thoroughly prepared ambush. Even so, the Explosion Demon had to surrender nearly half of his upper body, and the fact that despite preparing like that, far from killing a single Cheon Woo-jin, they suffered casualties instead astonished the Sword Demon and Explosion Demon.
Regardless of that, Cheon Woo-jin merely felt regret that he could not harvest their heads. In the first place, he had never particularly thought of dying to them.
At any rate, because the situation where the Hebei Peng Clan joined hands with the Great General and the Dark Emperor’s disciples to improperly acquire military funds was completely uncovered, the mission itself was a success.
Along with feelings of regret, Cheon Woo-jin put away the Crescent Moon Staff.
“We will meet soon. Whether the Dark Emperor or his disciples.”
Having said so, Cheon Woo-jin looked around.
The atmosphere was truly bizarre.
Was it because the fact that a disciple of the Dark Emperor, and the eldest disciple at that, was the master of the Heartless Wanderer had been revealed?
Perhaps instinctive terror as humans had visited merely at the overwhelming, marvelous martial prowess shown just now.
Of course, Cheon Woo-jin did not particularly mind.
He merely walked steadily toward the Great General who stood blankly.
In an instant, the Great General’s face was dyed in terror.
“B-Block him! Block that bastard!”
He spoke so, but not a single soldier moved.
No matter how much one ordered to block an approaching typhoon, a tsunami, or a lightning bolt, who could step forward?
Thus, standing before the Great General without anyone’s obstruction, Cheon Woo-jin looked at him steadily.
Since he had lost Patriarch Peng and the Ghost of the Eastern Ocean, he intended to take the Great General and have an audience with the emperor.
“D-Do you know who I am! I am Ju Won-yang, who received the imperial surname Zhu bestowed by the emperor in recognition of my merit…”
The Great General tried to stop Cheon Woo-jin by putting authority forward, but regrettably, the man most insensitive to authority under heaven was Cheon Woo-jin.
Cheon Woo-jin grabbed the Great General by the collar and pulled. Utterly unable to overcome that strength, the Great General crashed face-first into the dirt ground.
The Great General was also a master who had reached the peak. In his entire life after passing eight years of age, he had no memory of being subdued so one-sidedly.
The Great General of a nation was crawling on the ground. Even while murmurs rose from the surroundings, Cheon Woo-jin merely tapped here and there on the Great General’s body like handling freshly caught fish.
Soon, subduing the acupoints of his entire body, Cheon Woo-jin grabbed the collar of the unconscious Great General, dragged him along, and spoke to the Hidden Dragon Squad members:
“The mission is over. Let us return.”