Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 213 - Emperor Beneath the Sea (1)
Chapter 213 – Emperor Beneath the Sea (1)
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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What I had to remember was that my heart was still in a pierced state right now. The blood still pouring from my chest was dyeing the sea red.
Within the Emperor’s hand, moving like a scoop net, I slowly and quietly sank toward the burial mound.
As I drew nearer to the mound, I saw a small opening. It seemed I had not noticed it before because it was only large enough for a single person to barely enter. The Emperor dropped me through it.
With the sensation of something warm supporting me, I slowly fell inside the burial mound.
To my astonishment, the inside of the burial mound was a cavern with a high ceiling. More astonishing still, even though I was still underwater, I was able to breathe.
How was breathing possible? Even if it were a place where breathing was possible, I was still someone whose heart had been pierced. Tilting my head down to look at my own chest, I saw that the inside of the wound was bubbling.
Whether I knew the details or not, it seemed the water in this place was restoring my heart.
The water that entered my body through my heart flowed along my acupoints and meridians. It felt as though the clotted blood and impurities settled in my meridians were being cleanly washed away.
Thus, while sunk there, I received the treatment of the burial mound. Even for water endowed with wondrous power, restoring a pierced heart seemed to be difficult, for it took quite a long time.
Once my heart had been more or less reformed and skin had covered the place where the hole had been, the water slowly drained out of the burial mound.
“Puhah.”
When all the water had drained away, I lay sprawled inside the burial mound’s chamber.
“What in the world is this.”
I placed my hand over my chest. Astonishingly enough, I could no longer feel the hole. The scar was still there, however, reminding me that the fact my heart had been pierced was not some illusion of mine.
“Up I go.”
I pushed myself off the ground and stood. As I straightened up, my heart throbbed painfully, and I frowned. It seemed I had still not fully recovered.
There was no doubt this place was beneath the sea. Yet the existence of a space like this, where one could breathe, was astonishing.
I carefully looked around inside the drained burial mound. Smooth conical stalactites hung sparsely from the pitch-black ceiling, and stalagmites rose from the floor. And enough faint light was filtering in from somewhere that I could see all of it.
It was an environment one could easily mistake for a cave. It was a wondrous creation whose origin, whether natural or man-made, could not be guessed.
I began to walk carefully. The surroundings were silent. Now and then, all I could hear was the sound of droplets falling from the stalactites after the water had filled and drained away.
The inside of the burial mound was larger than it had appeared from the outside. Even after walking for some time, I could instinctively tell there was still a long way to go.
What I was following was the faint light. The deeper I went into the burial mound, the stronger the light became.
In the now brighter corridor, I saw things that had not been visible before. On the ceiling, which had once seemed nothing but black, there were paintings, and along the walls there were faintly carved patterns. Time had likely worn them down.
As if possessed, I went to the wall and ran my hand along the carvings. I could not see them clearly with my eyes, but the grooves were still distinct enough to be felt with my fingertips. In that way I was able to tell that the pattern consisted of a circle surrounded by sharp-pointed shapes. It seemed to symbolize the sun.
From then on, I walked while looking up at the painting on the ceiling. It depicted an emperor rising from his grand preceptor chair, sprouting wings, and flying away. It was the proverbial ascension to immortality.
And beneath him, countless common people were bowing as they watched the emperor ascend.
The painting on the ceiling continued without break. As I kept walking, I began to feel that the painting was trying to tell some story.
The scene painted after the ascension showed people killing a young emperor seated upon the grand preceptor chair. Their faces were utterly vile.
‘A rebellion.’
This was not a painting to praise an emperor. It was a painting depicting the downfall of a nation brought about by rebellion.
The emperor’s loyal retainers were hanged, and those who tried to stop the rebellion also began to die one by one.
The rebels began methodically erasing all traces of the nation. They changed the imperial seal, gathered up all symbols, emblems, and anything that could evoke remembrance of the old nation, and burned the books.
And after wiping out an entire country, they themselves sat calmly upon the bloodstained grand preceptor chair.
That was how the painting ended. Having walked all this time with my head tilted back, I lowered it and saw a huge iron door before me. Light was leaking out through the gap in it.
I opened the door. The moment it opened, I saw soldiers and officials made of clay. The soldiers stood arrayed in ranks, and the officials all wore the posture of bowing their heads. In the center of the chamber, in the direction toward which the officials bowed, stood a jade-colored coffin.
“You have come.”
The moment I approached the jade-colored coffin, I heard a voice by my ear. Startled, I looked around. Like Six Directions Voice, the sound gave no clue as to where it originated.
“…Who are you?”
“Before learning who I am, reveal yourself first. Whose child are you?”
“I am Muk Hui-yeong, child of Muk Se-jin and Tak Yeon-jeong.”
“Not of the Zhu Clan?”
“No. Of the Muk Clan.”
“How strange. I was certain I had sensed within you the aura found only in the imperial house of Great Ming.”
Together with that grave voice, an overwhelming aura burst forth explosively from the jade-colored coffin. It happened so suddenly that I had no choice but to be swept up in that alien force. Naturally, I released my Primordial Mixed Qi.
The aura coiling around me seemed to be inspecting my Primordial Mixed Qi with care. I could tell that it was inspecting me, because while it gradually moved around me, the exclamation of the unknown speaker sounded out again.
“…I cannot understand it. How can such an aura exist in the mortal world?”
The energy in the voice withdrew. It seemed the inspection was over. From that voice, I had a rough guess.
“I understand that what flows within me is the aura of the Heavenly Demon.”
“It is. And how is it that you know that so well?”
Just as I had thought, I truly possessed the aura of the Heavenly Demon. It was probably because of the Divine Demon Pill I had consumed just before my regression.
“The Heavenly Demon is a being of the Upper Realm. How did you come to possess that aura?”
“I do not know.”
I feigned ignorance completely. This voice had seemingly saved me, but it was still too early to trust it.
“Were you granted a divine descent?”
“Are you one of the Zhu Clan?”
The Zhu Clan. I had heard that surname before. It was from the Cult Leader imprisoned in the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s prison. If I remembered right, he had called himself Zhu Zhenwei.
“To be precise, I once was of the Zhu Clan. Not anymore. I was the only Zhu in the world, and as Emperor of Great Ming, I bore the name Zhu Wenjing.”
“This country called Great Ming is unfamiliar to me.”
“Naturally so. Great Ming has been forgotten in the memories of men.”
“Were you perhaps the one who saved me?”
“That is right. I sensed within your body an aura borne only by the imperial house of Great Ming, and so I took you in. Yet it turns out it was the aura of a god.”
“Then the aura of Great Ming’s imperial house and the aura of the Heavenly Demon must be rather similar.”
“They are. For the imperial house of Great Ming revered the Heavenly Demon, and the Heavenly Demon in turn shared his aura with Great Ming’s imperial house.”
“But what do we do then? I’m not of Great Ming’s imperial house at all. I’m only the child of insignificant farmers.”
“Though the power I can use in the lower world has lessened, let us say that in saving you I have at least saved one subject of Great Ming.”
I looked toward the coffin. Could it be that the being speaking was the one within this coffin?
“Are you dead, or alive?”
I asked respectfully. The being who had identified himself as the emperor of Great Ming burst into hearty laughter.
“A most human question.”
“That is because I am human.”
“Indeed. I am neither dead nor alive. Indeed, I am not even one who is. Death and life are words valid only in the human world.”
“Then what are you?”
“One who has ascended. Death and life are words that belong only to the world of man.”
Grandfather of the Peng Clan had said that ascension truly existed and that such people were forgotten from human memory. I had still doubted it, but I could not imagine anyone but an immortal being capable of restoring a heart that had been pierced clean through.
“Since you are human, I should meet you at the level of human eyes. Humans place importance on what can be seen.”
With those words, jade-colored smoke rose from the coffin. The jade-colored smoke soon took on a human shape, and it was exactly the same as the emperor’s statue I had seen beneath the sea.
“…That startled me.”
“The workings of immortals are difficult for humans to bear. It is no wonder you were surprised.”
“Immortal elder, there is something I must say first. I am not a person of Great Ming. I am a person of the Imperial State.”
“Do not soil the word imperial in my presence. As you witnessed, that state consists of traitors who rose in rebellion against Great Ming.”
The immortal who introduced himself as Zhu Wenjing growled. It seemed the Imperial State was his reverse scale.
“Actually, I have met another Zhu before.”
“Oh? Have you now.”
“In the underground prison of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. The Commander-in-Chief called him the Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult.”
“So. Then my descendant was there.”
Zhu Wenjing spoke with what seemed like sorrow. If so, then did the identity that man had screamed about, that he was a descendant of Great Ming and should have been emperor, truly turn out to be real? The information was coming in too fast, and my mind became confused.
“So they have twisted the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult into the name Demonic Cult. Truly venomous creatures.”
“Then the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult must have been Great Ming’s state religion.”
“It was. The emperor of Great Ming was both emperor and cult leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
Then Zhu Zhenwei’s words had been true. That meant the present Imperial State was indeed the country of traitors, and the people called the Demonic Cult were in fact the people of Great Ming, the rightful state.
“Then shouldn’t even Your Majesty be serving me? I possess the aura of the Heavenly Demon.”
“Even if you possess the Heavenly Demon’s aura, you are still human in the end. How could an immortal serve a human?”
“It was a joke.”
“Impertinent.”
In truth, it had not been a joke. I had thought it would be useful to subjugate an immortal who could wield such miraculous power. A pity.
“It is rather better this way. As expected, the aura of a god is preferable to the aura of man.”
“Is that so?”
“The important thing is that you carry the mission to restore Great Ming.”
At the immortal’s words, I flinched. To be fair, it was more or less the sort of thing I had expected him to say.
“You seem to possess tremendous power, so why not help directly? Why try to use me?”
“It is not the place of immortals to interfere in the lower world. Even saving you is something that should not have been done in the first place.”
“…Hmm.”
It was something worth thinking about. In any case, it was true that this immortal had saved me when I had all but died.
If one looked at it another way, it was the Imperial State that had tried to kill me, and even if I somehow made it safely back to the Central Plains, I would still be hunted by the Imperial State.
While I was thinking, the immortal’s form vanished.
“For me to beg a favor of you would demean the dignity of an immortal, so speak instead with one of your own kind.”
“What?”
What absurd thing was this all of a sudden. Right then, with a splash of water from a hole in the ceiling, a human body dropped down.
“…This is insane.”
The one who had fallen was the Great Toad of the Eastern Sea. What sort of conversation was I supposed to have with this lunatic? Not only had he tried to kill me, he had been out of his mind altogether.
“Immortal grandpa, I think the wrong package got delivered. Please take it back.”
I said it while looking up toward the ceiling, but the immortal had already vanished.
“Uuugh…”
Then, slowly, the Great Toad of the Eastern Sea began to regain consciousness.
At once I cloaked both hands in Primordial Mixed Qi and prepared to defend myself. But something astonishing occurred. The green color began to wash gradually from the skin of the prone Great Toad of the Eastern Sea.
At that strange sight, I could do nothing but stare blankly rather than attack. Once all the green had vanished from its skin, the Great Toad of the Eastern Sea’s eyes suddenly flew open. And then they met mine directly.
“…Who might you be?”
In the voice that came from the Great Toad of the Eastern Sea, the phlegmy rasp had vanished completely.