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Chapter 229. Nine in the Fifth Place (25)

“I’ll avenge the Lust Emperor and the Black Hand people today!”

The Black Hand criminals, who had been made aware that Woo-Moon wasn’t allowed to use his qi, smiled proudly.

They seemed to think that Woo-Moon’s head was in their pockets.

‘Well, as they say, there’s always a silver lining. Ever since I was poisoned by that Qi Dispersion Poison, I’ve thought a lot about how to attack and defend without qi.’

Woo-Moon was running toward a group of twenty or so bandits, and the moment he was five steps away from them, his speed suddenly shifted.

“Huh?”

When one keeps looking at an object traveling at the same speed, one becomes accustomed to that speed without even realizing it.

Woo-Moon took advantage of this predisposition, tricking his enemies into getting used to his speed before suddenly moving faster, leaving them surprised and, more importantly, unable to keep track of his movements.

If Woo-Moon had moved this quickly from the beginning, they would have been able to keep track of him easily, but his little psychological trick ensured that initiative was still on his side.

Swish! Squelch!

A sword flew in from a blind spot and pierced the neck of a bandit.

It was North Wind. Woo-Moon couldn’t use his qi, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use his techniques at all.

“W-what is this?! Hurry up and attack!” the bandit boss shouted with a distorted expression.

He had just taken a loss to an opponent who couldn’t even use qi; naturally, his pride was quite injured.

Three bandits attacked Woo-Moon at the same time.

However, Woo-Moon took a strange step, vanishing before their eyes.

It was the Divine Phantasm Steps.

While his body didn’t become illusory, because he wasn’t using any qi, it still allowed him to leave the enemy’s sight and appear behind them before they realized it.

Squelch!

He stabbed one of the bandits in the back, embedding his sword between the man’s vertebrae. As he pulled it out, he spun around and slit open the throat of the man next to him. While he didn’t cut through the neck entirely, because he needed to conserve his strength, he made sure to sever the arteries, causing blood to spurt out like a fountain.

At the same time, he kicked another bandit from behind. The kick threw the bandit off balance, not allowing him to use his qi.

“W-what?!”

Woo-Moon climbed on top of the fallen opponent and stabbed him.

Squelch!

Blood spurted out and landed on Woo-Moon’s face.

While he was unable to imbue them with aura for the time being, all three of Woo-Moon’s swords were of excellent quality.

Golden Dragon and Inkblade were divine-grade swords that could cut through the finest iron like butter, and while Lightflash wasn’t at that level, it was still at the peak of the treasure grade.

The three swords showed their real value now that he couldn’t use qi.

Woo-Moon pulled out his sword and looked at the remaining bandits.

“Didn’t you all think I was a pushover? Come, let’s see what you got.”

He didn’t have any qi at the moment. If he were to fight head-on, there were many bandits here that could trample him.

However, Woo-Moon had already killed four of them, and he was in a perfectly arrogant stance, sword hanging by his side, completely open to any and all attacks.

“Come, you animals!”

Thump!

Sensing a Paragon’s aura from Woo-Moon, the bandits were intimidated and took a step back.

“Well, if you won’t come at me... then I’ll go to you. You see, I have to kill all of you as soon as possible.”

He ran toward the bandits.

The bandit boss, frightened, sent the bandits behind him forward, while he hid behind his subordinates.

One of those who were pushed forward swung his podao, thinking, ‘Fuck it, let’s fight!’

Woo-Moon held his sword diagonally and let the podao slide along the blade, deflecting it just as it was about to strike him. Then he reached right in front of the bandit and flicked his sword up.

Squelch!

With what sounded like the crack of thunder, the bandit’s arms were severed and fell to the ground with his weapon.

“Agk!!”

“Shut up.”

Simultaneously, Woo-Moon turned his sword horizontally and decapitated the bandit.

Then, he transferred Inkblade from his right hand to his left, using his now-free right hand to grab the bandit’s messy hair.

He swung the severed head toward the bandits in front of him.

Splat!

“Ugh!”

“M-my eyes!”

The blood gushing from the head splashed directly onto the bandits’ faces, blinding them. Woo-Moon’s feet moved quickly as he took three steps. On the fourth step, he stomped the ground hard and twisted his hips, using the power of his entire body through his left hand holding the sword.

Swish!

With a single blow, four bandits had their heads split open.

“Nine left.”

Woo-Moon’s cold voice penetrated the bandits’ ears, and at the same time, another scream rang out.

“Ahhhh!”

His sword rose up and split one bandit’s head in half, then drew an arc and swung back down, splitting another bandit’s body in twain.

The sword completed a full turn, like a wheel, then suddenly shot forward and pierced another bandit through the heart.

Woo-Moon then pulled out his sword and rolled on the ground just in time for four podaos to cut through the empty air above him.

Woo-Moon squatted and threw a dragon whip kick, kicking the bandits’ legs from underneath them.

Clang! Clang, clang, clang!

Woo-Moon’s sword struck the ground and then advanced forward, sending sparks flying.

A bandit screamed as he saw the sword approaching, cutting through the ground after decapitating his comrade.

“Ahhhhh!”

Woo-Moon’s hand guided his sword along the ground, making sure it passed right through the necks of the fallen bandits.

“Two to go.”

“Agh!!!”

The boss, who had been confident when he first encountered Woo-Moon, was stricken by fear.

He had no idea what he was getting himself into. He had thought that if all of a Paragon’s qi was locked away, that Paragon would be no different from an ordinary warrior.

As it turrned out, that was a terrible mistake.

Woo-Moon’s sword moved twice, and the heads of the boss and his last subordinate rolled on the ground. Paralyzed by fear, they might as well be training dummies in front of Woo-Moon.

He grabbed a long strip of cloth he saw nearby and twisted it a little, then wrapped it around his waist. Then, he looked toward where he knew the Martial Heaven Emperor was.

Since he couldn’t use his qi, the Martial Heaven Emperor’s figure was just a tiny dot on the horizon. However, Woo-Moon was sure that the Martial Heaven Emperor was looking at him.

Woo-Moon sneered with his blood-soaked face. He moved his lips, mouthing something.

“After I kill them all, you’re next.”

Since he had been delayed, standing in the same place for a minute, the bandits, thieves, and robbers who had been elsewhere through the city had gathered around him.

A hundred or so enemies ran in, filling the street in front of Woo-Moon.

It really was a large number to him now that he couldn’t use any qi.

However, Woo-Moon wasn’t afraid at all. An inexplicable excitement rose up and caused his entire body to burn up.

Even though the qi within his dantian couldn’t emerge because his Qihai acupoint had been pressed, all his acupoints took over as secondary dantians and started producing qi to replenish him.

However, Woo-Moon had made a deal with the Martial Heaven Emperor.

He would not use his qi, so he simply suppressed it all.

The robbers and the thieves each held a crossbow or a bow.

Unlike the bandits he’d just slaughtered, they did not limit themselves with melee weapons.

The archers all pulled on their bowstrings at the same time, aiming at him.

Woo-Moon untied the thick, wide, and long cloth that he had tied around his waist and spread it out in front of him, swinging his sword with his other hand.

As countless lines were drawn in the air, the cloth split into dozens of strands.

At this moment, the enemies shot their crossbows and bows.

Woo-Moon began to spin while holding the cloth.

Since he was using all of his body’s strength, even without his qi, the large stretch of cloth spun quickly. He moved as if practicing the Taiji Fist of the Wudang Sect; after three complete turns, he skillfully changed the direction in which the cloth was spinning, making it spin in a circle in front of him without losing any of the momentum it had built.

Since the cloth was already spinning, he just had to help it continue spinning by adding a bit of rotational force from his arm.

Woo-Moon ran forward while spinning the cloth like that. All the arrows and bolts were blocked by the cloth, and none of them were able to reach him.

Having calculated the positions of the last dozen or so arrows and making sure that they wouldn’t hit him, Woo-Moon took a big step forward and swung the cloth forward.

The cloth, which contained all the rotational power that he had built up so far, stretched out like Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang and struck the heads of the five bandits in front.[1]

Crunch!

The slap caused their heads to twist at unnatural angles, and nauseating crunches sounded from their necks. Woo-Moon wrapped half of the cloth around his waist again and ran toward the enemies with the remaining half in his hand.

Swish!

His sword cut through the air as he skillfully avoided a bandit’s sword and split open his chest.

Even without qi, there was a massive difference in skill level, which meant that no one among this riffraff could ever block Woo-Moon’s sword.

While fighting, Woo-Moon suddenly felt a strange shift in his body.

The qi that permeated his entire body, which had been tightly suppressed, began to move again, trying to circulate in accordance with his movement.

‘No!’

Woo-Moon suppressed his qi again.

It wasn’t just his stamina; his mental power was also getting consumed at a rapid pace as he clashed with his enemies and used his techniques.

However, there was something else strange.

He was now a Paragon, and things that would normally cripple a martial artist—such as having their dantian disabled—did not have the same effect on him. For instance, now that his dantian was locked, each of his acupoints had taken over the burden of absorbing and converting qi, essentially functioning as a miniature dantian.

With that said, their overall qi output was lower than the original dantian’s, which was completely normal. However, he now noticed that whenever he suppressed his qi and whenever his qi stirred naturally, the sheer amount and strength of his qi would increase.

‘If things continue, I’ll end up using my qi without realizing it.’

In the end, Woo-Moon took a drastic measure: instead of suppressing his qi, he released it all completely.

He let out all the qi in his meridians and acupoints and released it through the pores of his body. All of his qi vaporized into the air, leaving him completely empty.

Woo-Moon continued to move and kill his enemies even in this state. However, at some point, a surprising sensation arose within him.

‘If I just emptied out all my qi... why is it that I feel completely full?’

It was truly surprising. Although he was a hundred percent sure that his entire body had been depleted of qi, he felt as though his acupoints were so full that nothing could enter.

What was empty and what was full? What was illusion and what was reality?

Was the difference even something that could be determined?

At some point, Woo-Moon himself couldn’t properly understand whether he had released all of his qi or if he was absorbing qi with all his might.

The energy transmitted through his sword, the movements he made with his body, none of them changed in any way that he could quantify.

However, strangely, it felt more comfortable to move, and it felt easier to cut down his enemies.

Though his qi was gone and he was martially crippled for all practical purposes, it somehow felt better than when he’d just finished cultivating and his entire body was filled with qi.

“Even if it exists, it doesn’t exist, and even if it doesn’t exist, it exists...” Woo-Moon muttered without realizing it.

Forced to fight countless enemies without using any qi, he was experiencing something nearly impossible for a Paragon to experience. After all, which of these paramount figures would put themselves in such a situation?

Right at this moment, right as the Martial Heaven Emperor was testing Woo-Moon, Woo-Moon was slowly finding the path to becoming a Zenith, master on par with the Martial Heaven Emperor or the Martial Heaven God, both figures beyond the Paragon realm.

To be continued in the next volume

1. If you don’t know who Sun Wukong is by now, please look at the 50 million other books on Wuxiaworld that reference him. All jokes aside, he’s the main character of Journey to the West, and Ruyi Jingu Bang is a staff that can change size according to the user’s will. Also, please kindly reserve some suspension of disbelief when it comes to Woo-Moon’s fighting techniques. ☜