Chapter 169

Seven flashes of light burst forth at an unrecognizable speed, particles in the shape of a great sword.
The shape of an emperor sword. Implanted.
The Seven Divine Forms.
Pippit, pippit, pippit, pippit!
In an instant, seven slashes sliced through the air. With each stroke, the white mane was cut off and scattered into thin air. At the same time, White Light’s long, fluffy hair began to float in the air.
“I see it.”
My eyes sink. There’s nothing to catch, nothing to reach. He would know it.
The foundation of the greatsword,
a greatsword that can slice through the earth, a sword that can split mountains.
Bai Guang’s movements are instinctive. Fierce as a tiger, sharp as a lance, and soaring like a hawk, Bai Guang’s movements are similar to those of a beast.
“Have you heard of the Mountain Lord? They are the first to enter the mountains and the first to suffer.”
Mountain lord.
The mountain spirits of the mountains,
the lords of the mountains.
A criminal of immense size and overwhelming destructive power and momentum, he feeds on the essence of the mountains, and as he speaks of his time battling the spirit known as the Mountain Lord, Baekwang shows the scars that mark his body.
“His movements are ridiculous,” he says, ”the behemoth is already moving before I do, just like you and I are now.”
As if on cue, his movements come before mine.
“Waves.”
Baekwang has already reached the peak of his cultivation.
“Once you learn to read and follow the grain, whatever you do will be a step forward, just like you and I are now.”
I twisted as the one saying the same thing disappeared, five prongs of power transforming into a single stream, a red flash that threatened to tear through my side.
I felt a burning sensation, but I kept rolling forward, unable to stop. The venomous power of the red flash, like the tearing claws of a beast, continued without warning.
If he let his guard down, he would be severely injured. At that moment,
“Slow.”
Snap.
It was a knee to the stomach. I quickly spit out the regurgitated blood and quickly adjusted my stance, swinging my sword to close the distance between us.
The red flash of power was what made him a beast.
“I told you, you and I have different experiences.”
A fight between a man and an inanimate object is a battle of the senses.
Sight with the eyes,
Smell to smell,
hearing to hear footsteps,
Taste in the air,
touch on the wind.
It’s a visceral experience, driven by some instinct that moves the body and transcends the five senses.
Its red flashes trick my senses and penetrate my mind, which may be why I allowed it to get so close and attack.
Its bird-of-prey-like darting toes skimmed my thighs, and its elbows, like Iri’s sharp fangs, grazed my ribcage.
Soon I was covered in blood. The fishy odor made my nose burn. His new form disappeared and reappeared until I couldn’t recognize it, and I felt like a meek sheep trapped in his territory, a weakling, an insignificant creature.
He must be more experienced than I am.
So.
“Of course we have different experiences, far different.”
I have to admit it. I have to admit that I have competed against those who are stronger than me.
But.
“In the experience you speak of, did you ever hide among a pile of dying bodies and plunge a knife into another’s back?”
There was something qualitatively different about the experience he spoke of.
“Have you ever stabbed someone in the gut with a rusty iron sword with no history?”
In my previous life, I was not a man who wanted to live. I wanted to die. It was the way I was meant to go.
“……what are you trying to say?”
Bai Guang did not understand my words. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t meant to be understood.
“It’s not over yet. Have you ever been in a kill-or-be-killed situation, when you’ve killed and killed and killed until all your knuckles are broken and you can’t hold the sword anymore and you bite the hilt with your mouth?”
I, like him, will say to you, and to many others who think they are gifted with genius.
“I was a flesh demon.”
“……!”
If a white beast,
I was a ghost who walked the path of Sura.
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of blood on my hands in twenty years of battle.
The price I paid for trying to live by following orders is what keeps my hands, feet, and heart beating, and at this moment, when I am living independently, my past life’s experiences are my driving force.
“If it is the experience you speak of, to play an unexpected game and win or lose with it.”
The hidden side of my genius, which others say is my genius, is the path of my previous life.
“I’m better than you.”
A blue sword strike, accompanied by a thunderous crackle, falls on a red flash of white light. In the blink of an eye, a thunderbolt rips through the air, tearing apart the five-pronged right hand of White Light.
Crackle!
Squeak!
Pfft! Pfft!
There was an instantaneous sense of touch, and it was none other than the aura of the emperor sword that slashed through Bai Guang’s instinctively raised self-defense power, the emperor sword form. Implantation.
Emperor’s Seven Forms.
Once again, the imperial sword form was implanted. Seven or eight sword cuts flowed like water, annihilating the self-defense powerhouse.
Sweeping swords that swept across the ground, solid lines that pierced both eyes at the same time.
Bai Guang’s shoulders, sides, and thighs were sliced off, and a clump of his right ear was sliced off at the same time.
“……You almost got yourself killed.”
“Too bad.”
As he said it, I felt a pang of regret. Opportunities like the one just now would not come along easily. Baekwang fought this fight with the determination he still believed in, going with the flow.
He was relaxed, carefree, and weak. But strong nonetheless.
Now, if he were to go into this fight in earnest.
“I’ve got to do it right …… or everyone will look at me like I’m a fool.”
His body grew by leaps and bounds, and his stooped movements became similar to those of a criminal.
Boom!
There’s a popping sound, and the white form disappears. I lose sight of his new form and feel my mind go blank at the five-pronged nail marks on my chest.
* * *
The blood on his hands as he strokes the area around his neck, his smile replaced by a grim expression. Feeling the heated blood, Baekwang’s expression hardened for the first time.
“……ha.”
Baekwang had been sincere from the beginning until now. He was sincere with the young man in front of him, and he was willing to kill him. He believed he could tear him apart in one fell swoop.
So I picked up the pace and kept hitting him with one attack after another.
As a result, its flesh is covered in blood. It no longer felt human.
After the wound around his neck, which caused him to bleed out, he was gradually cornered. Like a sheep running away from Iri in a sheepfold.
But why does he feel so out of place in the middle of a fight?
Was it the glare of his eyes, which only deepened as his wounds grew.
Or was it my impatience that prevented me from inflicting a fatal wound?
I don’t know what’s holding Baekwang back, but his instincts keep screaming at him. It’s dangerous.
Even if I had fought against the Southern Palace Wu Bai, I would not have heard this instinctive alarm bell.
Everyone who knows Bai Guang knows this.
What feeds Bai Guang is none other than his pride.
However, it is not the white light itself.
It is not pride that feeds the white light, but ‘instinct’.
Because of his animal-like senses and the instincts that sometimes come to him in moments of crisis, he was called the Two Kings of the Green Forest, and he was able to rise to the position of Unanimity faster than anyone else.
The same instincts that had propelled him to this point were now screaming at him.
‘Run away. To me.’
It’s screaming that now is not the time.
The blue, clear sword power that bursts from the tip of his inky blade grows stronger by the second. He knows how to anticipate Bai Guang’s power, so he steps forward and parries it with his blade, and when Bai Guang’s knee slams down like a bird of prey, he raises his knee to counteract the force.
His elbow stabs like sharp fangs, but he neutralizes it with a slash of the hilt, and he feels his kicked toe strike the blade’s face.
It all happened in the span of a single meal.
Only then did Bai Guang realize what he could sense in the creature’s eyes.
‘…… He’s waiting for the right time. He’s waiting for the right time.
The coldness of reason.
Emotions pounding in my head.
The instinct to flinch.
The three came together, and Baekwang could see the look in its eyes.
It wasn’t that he was the predator, but that he was the predator, waiting for the right moment.
Like a bird of prey in a beautiful tree watching a rabbit hopping in the grass, it was focused on striking, waiting for the one moment of slackness, waiting for Bai Xiaochun to make a mistake, waiting for the one moment of weakness.
He had to admit it.
Why the instincts that had fed him all these years had set off so many alarm bells.
So he chose.
* * *
He spat out his breath in the face of the thickening attack, waiting for his one chance.
“……!”
He aimed for the gap in the many red flashes of white light. I turned my senses up to full blast once more as the newcomer disappeared in a flash.
This attack was different. The intensity of the white light’s power had increased dramatically. As if it was going to finish the job with this attack.
Damn.
I’m just starting to get used to the white light’s attack and get my hands and feet free. It had drawn a bloody line around my neck, and after that one attack, my escape route was blocked.
Kwao! Kwao!
I was crushed, and I was forced to take a few precarious steps back. Stifling a groan, I raised my sword and unleashed the Emperor Sword Form, my implant, the Emperor Seven Heavens Strike.
Bloodbibbit!
Kwagagagagang!
In the span of a single breath, I deployed my graft four times, or twenty-eight sword strikes.
As soon as the red flash dissipated, I had to panic.
I couldn’t feel it. No matter how much I heightened my senses, I couldn’t sense anything around me.
I spread my energy out, but nothing touched me.
Why?
No matter how strong I am, I can’t do this.
No matter how strong I was, I couldn’t even catch a single drop of the energy I scattered everywhere.
It didn’t make sense.
My bewildered gaze darted around in the air, but quickly settled on one spot. I just had to stare.
……?
I had to feel something out of the ordinary happening.
The white light was turning and disappearing.
What the hell.
I froze without realizing it.