Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 209 - Flooding (3)

Chapter 209 – Flooding (3)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Our swords clashed more than twenty times in an instant. To be exact, twenty-three.

They say go masters can overturn a board and still reconstruct perfectly the positions of every stone from the game just played. Have I reached such a state as well? Given that even amid blades crossing at this speed, I can count the exact number within my head.

“Treason! Treason!”

Baek Yu-gyeom shouted loudly as he swept out his sword.

In an instant, sword shadows scattered all around and gave rise to five transformations.

Those five transformations were executed at knife-like angles and with perfectly even speed. I swung my sword in response to the changes. Sword qi scattered around us and smashed apart the cabin.

As the cabin collapsed, we naturally spilled outside.

“What is going on!”

When we came out onto the deck, Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop were running toward us.

Seeing me suddenly crossing blades with Baek Yu-gyeom, both their faces turned pale.

“H-Hui-yeong, no matter how reckless you get, drawing a sword against the Northern Pacification Commissioner of the Embroidered Uniform Guard is…”

“It is already too late, Senior Brother.”

I cut off Myeong-yeop in the middle of his words. Baek Yu-gyeom agreed with what I had said.

“Too late indeed. Far too late. You will be executed for treason.”

At Baek Yu-gyeom’s grim words, Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop both looked at me. They could not possibly imagine what had been said within the cabin.

“Northern Pacification Commissioner, calm yourself. No matter who you are, I cannot allow you to harm my disciple.”

Cheong-hwa stepped forward and raised his aura. Baek Yu-gyeom shouted sharply at him.

“If you step in as well, I’ll make sure the Wudang Sect suffers complete annihilation!”

Cheong-hwa faltered. I looked at him too.

“Master. Senior Brother. This is my affair. The affair of Muk Hui-yeong the private man. Please do not interfere.”

I spoke as coolly as I could. With Baek Yu-gyeom’s threat added to my own words, they could not bring themselves to enter the fight.

“Northern Pacification Commissioner, I heard that when men of the Eastern Depot or the Embroidered Uniform Guard die, their corpses are not searched for. Is that true?”

I took my eyes off my master and senior brother and looked at Baek Yu-gyeom. He grinned.

“I don’t know where you heard that, but yes, it is true.”

Baek Yu-gyeom answered.

“But things are different now. At present I carry His Majesty’s edict as an imperial envoy. Naturally, if I die, an investigation will follow.”

“Even so, I think it would be easier to clean things up if you died than if I left you alive.”

“Arrogant to the extreme. No matter how highly the martial world regards you as a young talent, do you truly think you can defeat me?”

An explosive force surged from Baek Yu-gyeom’s body. I tightened my grip on my sword hilt. That was right. Baek Yu-gyeom, Northern Pacification Commissioner, was strong. But the me of now had a chance. At the very least, my body was plastered over with every fourth-grade talent money could buy.

“Die, traitor!”

Stepping in with a shock step, Baek Yu-gyeom charged at me. With the sound of the deck splintering, he closed in at terrifying speed.

Baek Yu-gyeom’s sword path was both precise and fast. When I once evaluated Peng Chae-hyang and Mae Su-il, I said they looked as though they were simply copying sword forms straight from a book.

Baek Yu-gyeom’s sword path was the ultimate refinement of that sort of memorized swordsmanship. Even if both were learned by rote, the degree of precision was different, so naturally the destructive power differed too.

‘But.’

When facing masters on the level of Fighting Exalt or my master, one inevitably sensed a mysterious principle within their sword. But Baek Yu-gyeom’s blade had none of that.

Thinking back on it, Commander-in-Chief Seo Jong-haeng’s sword had been the same. Seo Jong-haeng had said swordsmanship was merely a technique for killing people. Perhaps that difference came from the way they regarded the sword.

Baek Yu-gyeom’s sword was truly colorless. It possessed no distinguishing trait at all. It focused solely on speed and strength.

I slowly raised my sword on a diagonal line. Then I gathered the mist of the Flowing Cloud Sword Art and released Flowing Clouds Twin Peaks. Two streams of sword qi split apart and swept toward Baek Yu-gyeom.

Baek Yu-gyeom immediately used his rear foot as a pivot and leaped upward. But what was the defining feature of the Flowing Cloud Sword Art? That it was soft and swift to change.

Flowing Clouds Twin Peaks curved upward and chased after Baek Yu-gyeom’s body. But Baek Yu-gyeom shot toward me like a meteor faster than those twin peaks could rise. He seemed to be using the method of Thousand-Pound Drop, yet how he managed to fall on such a diagonal line was astonishing skill.

Boom!

I leaped as well and met Baek Yu-gyeom’s sword head-on. I could feel the dense internal energy within his blade. For an instant, blood nearly surged up my throat. No matter how many spiritual medicines I had consumed to increase my reserves, I still could not overcome the refined internal energy of a master of a certain level.

I could not win with internal energy. Then I would decide it through sword forms. Even as we leaped and crossed past each other, we exchanged six more strikes.

The moment we landed on the deck, we launched ourselves at each other again without even a breath’s pause.

Confident in his own internal energy, Baek Yu-gyeom thrust directly at my body. The more our swords collided, the more favorable it would be for him.

But I had no intention of being dragged along by that strategy. What I could trust now were the newly purchased fourth-grade sword talent and fourth-grade body-arts talent.

Sword talent and body-arts talent made it possible to properly manifest sword forms.

‘Then.’

As if to meet Baek Yu-gyeom’s sword, I shook my own blade at blinding speed.

It moved so fast that even to my eyes the sword seemed to spread out wide like the tail of a peacock.

“…Hah.”

The astonished sighs of Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop, who had been watching anxiously, overlapped. Being men of Wudang, they knew what I was trying to do.

Every sword art had its forms. Usually the first extended from the opening stance, and the following forms were suitable for general attack and defense.

And near the end, there was always a form that embodied the very essence of the martial art.

Slash!

Baek Yu-gyeom and I crossed each other once more. And the arm that had held his sword fell away.

“…A tremendous move.”

Baek Yu-gyeom turned to look at me. Trying to smile through the pain left his face twisted.

“What is the name of that form?”

“It is called No Cloud.”

“No Cloud. A clean form, as though it sweeps away every cloud there is.”

“Thank you.”

Baek Yu-gyeom had gone pale from blood loss. He immediately sealed the acupoints and stopped the blood pouring from his shoulder stump.

“Setting aside the excellence of that swordsmanship, what will you do now? You have truly become a traitor. Even if I die here, do you think His Majesty will fail to suspect you?”

“He’ll suspect me.”

The Emperor had said he wanted to test me. That was why the Northern Pacification Commissioner had sought my cooperation.

And if that Northern Pacification Commissioner died, then naturally suspicion would gather around me.

“I’ll think about that later.”

“I thought you were intelligent, but apparently not. Do you really think you can deceive His Majesty anywhere upon this continent of the Central Plains?”

Baek Yu-gyeom laughed loudly. I was troubled too. But what could I do? What had already happened had happened.

Then, without warning, Baek Yu-gyeom shouted.

“Long live His Majesty the Emperor! Long live His Majesty the Emperor! Death to the traitors!”

Then he shut his mouth tight, and with a crunch, blood seeped out between his lips before he toppled over.

Startled, Cheong-hwa rushed over to the fallen Baek Yu-gyeom and thrust a hand into his mouth. But he had not bitten on poison.

Soon a severed tongue, reduced to a lump of blood, came out in Cheong-hwa’s hand. Cheong-hwa scowled deeply and threw Baek Yu-gyeom’s tongue into a corner of the deck.

Baek Yu-gyeom twitched, then soon died. I had heard the phrase biting off one’s tongue to commit suicide, but this was the first time I had ever seen it happen before my eyes.

Looking at Baek Yu-gyeom’s corpse, his mouth smeared with blood, I felt bitter.

If I had still been the man I was in my previous life, I would never have had to kill Baek Yu-gyeom. Judged as an individual, he had not really been a crooked man. I had drunk with him only once, but even so, I had sensed the kind of person he was.

Baek Yu-gyeom had simply been a loyal retainer devoted to the Emperor. Naturally, my anger turned toward the Emperor himself.

“…Now explain it. What exactly has happened?”

Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop came over to me. There was no time to delay, so I explained it quickly.

I told them what was happening in the Zhoushan Archipelago at this very moment.

“Is that really true?”

Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop looked unable to believe it. Then again, I likely would not have believed it either.

How could anyone believe that the Martial Alliance Leader was going around killing fellow orthodox martial artists, and that a monster called the Great Toad of the Eastern Sea was waiting on Hachido to kill us?

“It is.”

“Ha. Since it’s you saying it, I can’t quite disbelieve it either.”

Both Cheong-hwa and Myeong-yeop grasped the seriousness of the situation.

At this point, whether what I said was true or false no longer mattered. The Martial Alliance Leader was still out slaughtering martial artists, and there were still martial artists who, knowing nothing, would search Hachido.

“Then for now, we have to move around and see what we can do. No matter what.”

“Yes. There is a lot we need to do now.”

We had to keep people from entering whatever sort of place Hachido really was, tell people the Martial Alliance Leader had gone mad, and also find where the Martial Alliance Leader’s boat was.

Just then, the ship beneath our feet lurched. It suddenly rocked so hard that we grabbed the railing on reflex.

“And what now?”

At once, sailors came up from the hold. Since violent qi had erupted from the cabin, all of them had likely rushed to hide there.

“Company Lord. This ship is sinking.”

“What?”

I asked in return, but it was not all that strange.

The place where Baek Yu-gyeom and I had fought, and the surrounding area, had been thoroughly wrecked. If some part of the ship had been damaged, it would certainly have been damaged badly.

“…Let’s evacuate first.”

That added one more task to the list. Fortunately, this ship also carried several extra small boats for emergencies. And since they were on the opposite side from where I had fought, they were still intact.

We lowered the small boats onto the sea and began sending the sailors down one by one. Their faces were pale. From a commoner’s point of view, getting swept up in a fight like this had to be terrifying.

“For now, Senior Brother Myeong-yeop, please take these sailors safely back to Zhoushan.”

I said it to Myeong-yeop. He frowned.

“Why me?”

“I need to remain here. Trap or no trap, these are people I helped gather. I cannot be the first to leave this place.”

At my resolute words, Myeong-yeop fell silent. Cheong-hwa nodded as well.

“Yes, Myeong-yeop. You take these sailors back.”

“Understood.”

Myeong-yeop nodded with reluctance and led the small boats back toward Zhoushan.

Rumble…

With the sound of collapse, the prow rose straight upward toward the sky. Then it slowly began to sink. That huge ship was going under.

“…Ah, now that I think of it, that thing was borrowed from the Zhejiang Merchant Association.”

“…Is that really what matters right now?”

Now only Cheong-hwa and I remained in a single small boat.

Where should we go? At that moment, the sound of qi bursting reached us from somewhere to the west. It was rather far, but still unmistakable.

If I remembered correctly, that was the sector assigned to the boat carrying Peng Chae-hyang.

“You heard that, right?”

“Yes.”

At Cheong-hwa’s words, I nodded.

“You still can’t use treading on duckweed and crossing water yet.”

“No.”

“Then get on my back.”

“What? Still, that’s a bit…”

“You know as well as I do that this isn’t the time to be worrying about that.”

I humbly accepted Cheong-hwa’s words. Embarrassing as it was, I climbed onto his back.

“Being carried on someone’s back while fully conscious after already passing twenty is certainly a new experience.”

“I didn’t know I’d be carrying a disciple older than twenty on my back either.”

Cheong-hwa kicked off from the small boat and leaped onto the sea. Small ripples spread where his toes touched the surface. Yet astonishingly, neither Cheong-hwa nor I sank.

“Hold on tight.”

After confirming the destination, Cheong-hwa lightly touched down again upon the sea. The instant after that, he shot forward with explosive speed.

And before long at all, we came face to face with people rushing rapidly toward us.

“…”

On the other side, Namgung Ik was running over the water with Namgung Hwi on his back. Namgung Ik appeared already wounded, blood flowing from his body, and did not look to be in good shape.

“What in the…”

Two middle-aged men meeting atop the sea while carrying youths barely past twenty on their backs. It was a bizarre sight. But the two men immediately understood the situation.

Because behind them, the Martial Alliance Leader was racing after them at incredible speed. Four or five other masters were with him as well.

It was obvious at a glance that these two men could not possibly handle that sort of force. Especially not while carrying younger-generation burdens on their backs.

“Damn it!”

Cheong-hwa planted a foot on the sea, used the swaying surface as a pivot, and turned the opposite way. Even in that instant, I found myself admiring the skill.

Thus it became a chase in which Cheong-hwa and Namgung Ik ran abreast, while the Martial Alliance Leader’s party pursued behind them.

“Where do we go?”

Cheong-hwa shouted the question. The one who could answer here was me.

There were two of the Five Great Sword Masters Under Heaven in that mad group. On top of that came the other transcendent masters. There was simply no way we could handle them.

“…Hachido.”

“What?”

“Head south to Hachido!”

I made the decision quickly. Though puzzled, Cheong-hwa turned south. Namgung Ik too seemed to sense something from my tone, and rather than splitting off elsewhere, he followed after us and turned south as well.

I did not know what sort of unknown monster this Great Toad of the Eastern Sea might be, but at the very least, it was the only hope left that might save us while we were being pursued.