Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 47 - Fighting While Drifting In and Out
Chapter 47 – Fighting While Drifting In and Out
===================
Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
Normally, masters of the martial world fought face to face.
But one could not expect such propriety from a moth. Its body structure was fundamentally different from a human’s.
The creature sat on the tree with its back to Ju-seong and Red Beggar, yet both men felt it was staring straight at them.
-Flutter, flutter.
Greyish-white wings flapped sporadically, constantly shedding toxic powder.
The patterns on the wings, resembling two pairs of strange eyes, seemed to cast a hypnotic spell, clouding their minds.
In martial world terms, it was a master skilled in both illusions and poison, which Ju-seong found more terrifying than a master with outstanding personal combat skills, because it meant encountering a being that would use any means necessary.
“It is even creepier because it makes no sound, damn thing.”
Red Beggar cursed with his eyelids twitching.
Ju-seong silently pulled out the medicine and poured it over Red Beggar’s head. After a moment’s hesitation, he drank the remaining bit.
It was not originally meant to be consumed, but he felt it would be better this way.
‘Even if it upsets my stomach, a few painful bowel movements will fix it.’
Now there was no medicine left.
All the while, the moth sat motionless, simply watching them… quiet, so quiet. If they tried to run, it would surely spread those silent wings and follow.
“…Checkmate.”
Ju-seong muttered in annoyance, then threw the two needles he had been fingering… a technique that seemed like casually running a hand through one’s hair while throwing hidden weapons.
The battle began with no warning signs, no preparation.
Even the moth, the target of the attack, did not anticipate this attack. Ju-seong had been born with immense killing intent, so he was also skilled at hiding it.
-Thunk, thunk!
One needle lodged in the wing, another in the creature’s body.
-Hiss hiss hiss…
Feeling pain, the creature trembled its wings wildly and made a threatening sound. Greyish-white toxic powder flew wildly, and the wing patterns created dizzying optical illusions as they trembled.
The moment the creature’s body dropped from the tree trunk, Red Beggar and Ju-seong dove for cover as if they had planned it.
-WHOOOM!
Delicate ferns were uprooted and tumbled away, and even the tall trees shook from the wind pressure.
No matter how large it was, it was absurd for a mere moth to produce such force.
‘It is almost a spirit creature.’
Ju-seong clenched his jaw and thought. Meanwhile, Red Beggar had downed a gulp of liquor and thrown the empty gourd to the ground.
“Damn it, let us do this!”
“Are you drunk?”
Red Beggar ran out from behind the tree and began shooting milky-white palm force… white snakes somehow threading through the thick toxic powder.
Ju-seong could not just stand by either, so he charged using the White Phoenix Nine Palace Steps.
Ju-seong raced toward the moth as if racing the snakes.
A gale rose once.
Ju-seong felt all the metal energy protecting him neutralize and vanish in an instant, and immediately began the dance from the demonic art he had found in the shrine.
When the Three Yang Fist mixed with the dance, it became impossible to tell whether these were a martial artist’s movements or a dancer’s.
Ju-seong naturally felt his entire body become engulfed in flames. To him, this was perfectly natural.
He had imitated fire with his whole body.
The flames consumed firewood and grew. Since it was the day after rain, the fire did not spread to the surroundings.
But at least the toxic powder in the air became fuel for the flames.
-CRACKLE!
When Ju-seong instead used the toxic powder as firewood to grow in size, the moth trembled its antennae and backed away.
While executing the dance and approaching, Ju-seong noticed black marks all over the creature’s body.
One wing was also blackened and looked uncomfortable.
‘It fought a deadly battle with the sexual predator. That is how it got injured, and that is why the moths in the forest were so aggressive.’
Only now did Ju-seong understand the whole situation.
Meanwhile, Red Beggar pulled out the dog-beating staff of the Qingling County Beggars’ Sect Captain from his waist. A short staff, different from the bamboo staff he usually used.
Instead of drawing out the long energy he usually created, he poured out crescent-shaped energy.
The sharply honed energy cut straight across the air. To Ju-seong’s eyes, that was not a strike from the Drunken Immortal.
Since his opponent was not human, he seemed to have discarded martial finesse and focused solely on power.
The moth dodged the first attack with agile movement, but could not block Red Beggar’s follow-up charge and reckless club-swinging at its wing.
-THWACK!
With a sound like a leather drum bursting, the wing tore. The creature trembled its wings convulsively and retreated.
The injuries from the sexual predator must have been severe, for it trembled the legs marked with black traces with every movement.
“Brother, can we press the attack? I need some time to prepare a finishing technique.”
“Understood.”
Ju-seong had no time to stop dancing and calmly organize his thoughts.
Because if he released the flame-covered state now with toxic powder all around, he would likely be immediately hit by the poison.
‘Oh, whatever.’
It seemed Ju-seong had to press the moth now so Red Beggar could complete his finishing technique.
Ju-seong filled his heart with madness, then became Taotie, the flame that covets and covets again, and inhaled deeply.
“HAAAAH!”
Greyish-white toxic powder poured into Ju-seong’s lungs.
-CRACKLE…!
Overwhelming drowsiness poured over him, but Ju-seong held onto his sanity and began operating the Flame Crow Six Stage Art.
As if pouring oil on a wildfire, the energy throughout his body surged greatly. Wood creates fire, so he used the toxic powder’s energy as firewood to amplify his internal power.
Severe side effects would follow, but Ju-seong had no time to weigh pros and cons right now. By nature, the world did not always give time to prepare.
Ju-seong cut through the pressing gale.
Like a single shooting star, trailing an orange tail, he charged. His grip, rigorously trained in external arts, was like a vice, and the moth could not shake off the man who had seized its wing.
When the moth frantically flapped its one wing while the other was caught.
Toxic powder flew in all directions and deep gashes appeared in the large trees.
Looking now, the edges of the wings were sharp as blades.
If he got cut there, his neck would fly off before he even realized it.
Ju-seong, driven by fury, inhaled more, more toxic powder.
-Hiss…
Ju-seong’s vision twisted and distorted.
He perceived that he had entered a dream. The moth’s wings looked like four giant hands. Twenty fingers kept squirming, making strange gestures like a Taoist forming hand seals.
The moth’s head was made up of dozens of small human heads.
Those Ju-seong had killed so far. The minions of the Black Dragon Gang in Fujian Province, the minions of the Black Dragon Gang in Sichuan Province. The gang leaders there. And the Qingling County Beggars’ Sect Captain and his underlings that Ju-seong had driven to death…
The crowning touch was the sexual predator’s face, buried at the center, smiling.
“Honestly, did you not want to kill me with your own hands too? Your killing intent was boiling, was it not? But that was not because I was evil, but because you are a man who enjoys killing. You are the same as me.”
The sexual predator waggled his blue-black tongue and spat venom. Ju-seong answered, still gripping a giant finger and not letting go.
“Even if my killing intent boils because I bear the Heavenly Punishment, you were not born like me yet still lived that way, making you a true beast. I have never killed an innocent person.”
He had said a lot, but since he spoke in the dream, in reality he only mouthed a few words. Ju-seong felt time flowing strangely.
When the sexual predator laughed madly at Ju-seong’s words, the small heads stuck around him all started giggling, guffawing, smirking, bitter-smiling, and sneering in unison.
Ju-seong felt as if his mind were about to completely fly away. The sexual predator was with those who would mock with him, while Ju-seong was alone.
“How long do you think you can keep that up! Having been born wholly infused with the essence of heaven’s most malevolent star, someday your destiny will devour you!”
Ju-seong retorted, “Even if my eyes roll back with killing intent, I will only beat bastards like you to death.”
“No matter how many you kill and kill and pile up a mountain of corpses, more like me will keep appearing! If the Way rises a foot, the Demon rises ten feet. I shall be reborn again and again and do the same things!”
The sexual predator laughed madly. What a smooth talker the man had been. Ju-seong soon realized that eloquence was his own, and felt hollow.
Hallucinations were, in the end, created by oneself.
If the Way rises one foot, the Demon rises ten feet. A saying that struck at the essence of the world. Because it was always hard to walk the good path and easy to fall into the temptation of evil.
Ju-seong finally realized he could not beat his opponent with words, and spoke with a smile full of madness and killing intent.
“Fine, do as you please. Be reborn and die by my hand again.”
The laughter of the mad wandering knight and the mad demon intertwined in the dream.
From the edge of his consciousness, he heard Red Beggar shouting and firing a great milky-white palm force.
Because Ju-seong’s thoughts were racing, it sounded very slow.
“Drunken Dragon Eighteen Palms, Drunken Dragon Has Regrets…!”
A drunken dragon regrets?
Even with his dazed consciousness, Ju-seong mused that the name of the technique Red Beggar shouted was profound.
Beside him, a white dragon writhed and flew past. The creature shed tears of regret like some black sheep who had squandered his family fortune on liquor and gambling.
“What the hell is this… I am seeing all sorts of things.”
Ju-seong muttered blankly.
-CRAAASH!
Ju-seong released his grip on the giant finger. The huge form, struck by Red Beggar’s palm force and tumbling away, was the four fluttering hands, then a moth, then hands again.
The moth that made no sound and the sexual predator laughing madly appeared alternately and dizzied his eyes.
‘Ah… I do not know anymore.’
Ju-seong simply charged at the tumbling moth.
“Ah dammit… Brother…!”
From behind, Red Beggar’s voice sounded distant, as if underwater.
This was an illusion, the sexual predator laughing over there was not the sexual predator, but he forgot that. Ju-seong was wholly consumed by the urge to tear, pummel, and beat to death.
Even as he pounded the sexual predator’s face and crushed the faces of the evildoers he had slain one by one, Ju-seong thought.
If those he had killed appeared as hallucinations like this, he was glad he had only killed those who deserved death.
He felt little guilt about killing them again.
Ju-seong, tearing at the sexual predator’s hair with all his might, barely dodged a giant greyish-white hand swinging at him.
As if the sexual predator they had killed was executing claw techniques, each of the giant hand’s nails was sharply honed.
The nails swung repeatedly as if performing techniques, and Ju-seong diligently stepped through the White Phoenix Nine Palace Steps’ directions to dodge.
Even so, whenever there was an opening for approach, he pounced and harassed the Sexual Predator Moth with finger strikes, palm techniques, fist techniques, and kicks.
Meanwhile, a bright light shone from behind and he saw Red Beggar floating in the air.
Strangely, Red Beggar had white eyebrows and long white hair. He looked like a kindly mountain spirit.
“…Flying Dragon in the Sky…!”
Ju-seong watched as another dragon shot from Red Beggar’s palm and plunged downward.
The Iron Staff Becoming Dragon technique was wearing off, making it quite a shabby dragon. As if it had lost its wish-fulfilling jewel and hastily grabbed a jade marble from the market to ascend to heaven…
Anyway, a dragon was a dragon, so the finishing technique’s power was not bad.
Ju-seong dove into the gap created by Flying Dragon in the Sky and charged at the moth. By now, the flames had completely consumed Ju-seong, and his meridians were roiling and his skin stinging.
“I shall end this quickly.”
Ju-seong fixed his gaze precisely on the sexual predator’s face and struck out with clawed hands curved like a raptor’s talons.
The moment he thought he had torn the man’s face.
Something pricked sharply into his side, and soon after, intense agony erupted.
“Haaah…urgh!”
The terrible pain jolted his mind awake for an instant.
“Brother!”
He saw Red Beggar rushing in and kicking the moth away.
Ju-seong witnessed the long stinger on the moth’s rear withdrawing from his side. An utterly unpleasant sight.
“It really was a sexual predator. A sexual predator moth, damn it.”
Ju-seong muttered that, then charged at the moth while cauterizing his side with internal energy.
-CRASH! BANG!
As if the moth had shoved everything it had into Ju-seong’s side, it struggled feebly and fled, unable to control its body.
Ju-seong was now unable to take another step.
“Go kill that bastard for me.”
Knowing full well Red Beggar would never leave him to chase the moth, Ju-seong still muttered in a heated voice.