Reincarnation of the Cloud Dragon - Chapter 73

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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Chapter 73.
Skreeeee—
The crystalline ring of steel and the biting chill of blade-wind tore through the Inn simultaneously.
In his left hand, a sword.
In his right hand, a saber.
Two disparate blades crossed in an X through empty air.
“Insane—he wasn’t using the saber before?”
“…Dual weapons?”
The blood-robed warriors froze mid-ascent on the Staircase.
But their hesitation was brief.
“Push forward! He’s only one man!”
“The Staircase is narrow! Stay tight and drive him back!”
Spurred by the command from behind, the three men in front roared with grim determination and surged upward. A sword thrust toward the lower abdomen while two sabers carved toward both shoulders.
A cramped Staircase with nowhere to retreat.
Yet Yun Cheon’s eyes remained as serene as a frozen winter lake.
The sensation of consciousness splitting into two paths.
Soul-Sundering Duality.
Swooooosh—
The sword in his left hand traced a gentle circle.
The Kunlun Sect’s Balanced Duality Sword Technique.
A blade-path like the ripples of the Yangtze River enveloped the incoming sword and sabers. The subtle principle of softness subduing hardness—twisting the very trajectory itself by exploiting the opponent’s own force.
“Wh-what?!”
Their weapons spun uselessly through the void, and the three men’s chests lay wide open.
Screeeech—!
The saber in his right hand flashed like lightning into that gap.
The Huashan Inverted Duality Saber Technique.
Slice—! Thud!
Two heads rose simultaneously from the horizontal cut, and the sword pierced through the chest of the man behind them.
“Ugh… gah…”
“This… this can’t be. Opposing martial arts wielded simultaneously…!”
The faces of the pursuing warriors drained of all color.
“The sword and saber move independently…!”
“We can’t read the trajectories!”
The gentle sword disrupted their formation while the merciless saber carved through every opening. A miraculous technique—two distinct martial arts unfolding simultaneously from a single body.
Thump, crash-bang!
The headless corpse tumbled down the Staircase, entangling the legs of those who followed.
Yun Cheon flicked away the blood and descended another step.
The slaughter had begun.
With each step Yun Cheon descended, the front line was ground away. The middle ranks stumbled over corpses and wounded, while those behind, ignorant of what lay ahead, continued pushing forward.
“Aaaagh! Stop pushing!”
“The path ahead leads to death…!”
“Move! Get out of the way— Gack!”
Those at the front weren’t fighting. They were merely being shoved from behind, stumbling forward toward their doom.
My blade parried smoothly while my saber carved through flesh.
When an opening appeared, I thrust. When none existed, I broke through.
It was simple.
And that simplicity made it unstoppable.
My right arm, standing atop the Staircase, extended freely beyond the railing, but the enemies pinned against the wall couldn’t find the angle to properly wield even their weapons.
“Ugh…! Did you plan this, you bastard!”
“…This… this is hell!”
From the start, this Staircase had been my slaughterhouse. The moment I seized control of the battlefield, victory was already mine.
“Eek! Don’t push!”
“Fall back, retreat―!”
As the front line crumbled with death cries, the area below the Staircase became chaos in an instant.
Corpses and wounded sprawled across the already cramped steps, turning them into a quagmire.
Feet tangled. Balance shattered.
No one could see even an inch ahead.
Each time a fallen body cleared the line of sight, my blade flashed without fail.
Slice!
Thud!
Crack!
“Ahhh!”
“How are we supposed to stop that monster!”
The Staircase was no longer a path.
It had become a massive trap—tangled with blood, flesh, and shattered weapons.
“We… we’re retreating. We can’t match him!”
The enemies dared not advance further, slinking backward cautiously.
Yalü Hee, who had been repelling enemies attempting to crawl up from various points to avoid the Staircase, caught her breath sharply.
Yun Cheon was overwhelming them alone.
With each step he descended, the front line split apart, corpses piled up, and those whose feet caught on the bodies screamed anew.
‘He’s forcing back so many elite soldiers by himself….’
Yalü Hee’s pupils trembled faintly.
It felt like only yesterday she was gritting her teeth to catch up, yet the Yun Cheon before her eyes had already moved one step further ahead.
‘…No. This isn’t the time to just watch Yun Cheon.’
That was the moment.
A very faint sound.
“Hhh….”
From somewhere beneath the floorboards below the Staircase, a suppressed child’s breathing seeped upward.
It was so faint that only Yalü Hee, who knew the children were in the Underground Chamber, could hear it.
“…!”
Yalü Hee’s gaze dropped downward. The carpet concealed what lay beneath, but she knew it was there.
One of the children she and Yun Cheon had checked on earlier must have regained consciousness.
‘I thought they wouldn’t wake for a while longer. Why now of all times!’
It would have been better if they’d awakened just a little later.
Yalü Hee’s jaw tightened slightly.
For now, fortunately, the enemies’ attention remained entirely fixed on Yun Cheon.
But the moment those bastards began to suspect the sounds leaking from below, they would immediately start tearing up the carpet.
If that happened, the children would be exposed directly in the middle of the battle.
‘…While Yun Cheon holds the Staircase, I keep their eyes fixed upward.’
At that moment, a man who had bypassed the Staircase and climbed the wall caught her eye. Yalü Hee drew her black blade in a swift arc and struck.
Shhk.
The man’s throat, which had been approaching in silence, split open and sprayed blood.
As he staggered with his hand clutching his neck, Yalü Hee’s foot immediately swept upward against his jaw.
Crack!
The man’s body plummeted over the railing and crashed directly onto the carpet.
As blood smeared and the corpse sprawled across the floor, the area transformed in an instant into a filthy mess.
“Ughhhh….”
The fallen enemy groaned as death claimed him.
The carpet concealing the Basement entrance—soiling it with blood and corpses was the best I could do right now.
‘Hold on just a little longer… you children! Don’t get discovered.’
The enemies believed Yun Cheon and I had come to this level to prevent them from reaching something above.
I had to maintain that delusion until the very end.
Yalü Hee moved swiftly between the railing and corridor, cutting down every enemy who tried to climb upward.
Yun Cheon blocked the Staircase, while I cut down those who tried to ascend via the walls and railing.
Though their numbers were far greater, they had no path to climb higher.
Yalü Hee’s black blade flicked blood from its surface.
Beneath the railing, the corpse embedded in the carpet convulsed once before going limp.
That made five already.
Blood pooled and stained the floor.
She deliberately took one more step toward the edge of the railing.
With her black blade hanging at an angle, she looked down and smiled coldly.
“Are you afraid to climb up now?”
The eyes of the blood-robed men all turned toward her in unison.
“Well… all the ones trying to crawl up are dead anyway.”
It was a brief provocation.
But its effect was considerable.
“The way that woman is blocking so desperately—there must be someone important on the upper level!”
“Get her! Capture that woman first!”
The enemies’ attention shifted back to the railing and corridor.
Some lowered their stance, attempting to climb the adjacent pillars and walls instead of using the Staircase.
Yalü Hee’s gaze turned glacial.
‘Good. Take the bait.’
The child’s thin breathing seeping up from below grew fainter, buried beneath curses, footsteps, and the clash of metal.
Yalü Hee kicked off the railing and slid sideways. A man climbing the wall had his wrist severed first.
“Gaaaahhh!”
The black blade spun immediately, slashing diagonally across the second man’s forehead. His body flipped with the spray of blood, tumbling back down to the first floor.
Thud!
Another corpse crashed near the carpet.
The stench of blood, screams, and collision sounds transformed the space into complete chaos.
Yalü Hee caught her breath sharply.
‘Yes. Look up! Don’t suspect what’s below.’
Unlike Yun Cheon, I couldn’t hold the passage alone, but I focused on using the terrain to its fullest advantage, knocking down those who clawed their way up.
Keeping their attention fixed on me was enough.
However, neither Yun Cheon’s nor my tactics could sustain indefinitely.
“Move aside, you useless wretches.”
The momentum of those pushing from behind the Staircase cut off as if it were a lie. The men in blood-red robes stiffened and split left and right.
Through that gap walked a massive figure, ascending slowly. A man in a blood-red long robe with black iron armor layered over it. A neck thick as a log. An old scar running diagonally from his left cheek to his jaw.
In his hand was a vicious polearm with a crescent-moon blade at the end of a long shaft—a hooked scythe spear.
“Tsk.”
Gwak Tu swept his gaze over the subordinates tangled on the Staircase with indifferent eyes. The front row had retreated in fear, the middle was floundering over corpses and wounded, and the Staircase was already completely blocked.
Swish—.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Gwak Tu thrust the hooked scythe spear forward. The hook caught the neck of a man sprawled in the middle of the Staircase.
“C-Captain…?”
As Gwak Tu twisted his thick wrist and pulled, the man’s body shot up into the air like cargo.
“Ahhhhh! P-Please… save me…!”
Crash!
That body crashed into two wounded men beside it, dragging them down the Staircase without ceremony. Gwak Tu’s hooked scythe spear continued to pull out the wounded and corpses indiscriminately.
The tangled heap of bodies collapsed, and the bottleneck that had been blocking the passage opened in an instant.
“Ugh!”
“G-Get back!”
“Retreat from the Staircase!”
The escort team’s faces hardened. Yet Gwak Tu, his hooked scythe spear angled beneath his chin, spoke as if nothing had happened.
“Idiots. If the path is blocked, clear it.”
His voice was chillingly calm.
Gwak Tu, Commander of the Blood Scythe Squad, swept his sharp gaze over Yun Cheon above on the Staircase and the layers of corpses piled at his feet.
“From the start, that one wasn’t pushed onto the Staircase. He chose that place as his ground of death. So don’t act recklessly—withdraw.”
Gwak Tu’s gaze shifted to Yun Cheon’s dual-blade stance.
A brief silence.
Then Gwak Tu gripped his hooked scythe spear and ascended one step further.
Whoooosh—!
From his entire body, a Asura Blood Qi rose like heat shimmer, as if his blood were boiling.
Yun Cheon’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
“Are you the leader of these rats?”
Their gazes met in the empty air between them.
“To kill your own subordinate with your own hands and not even flinch—you lack the qualifications to be a leader.”
“The ones lacking qualifications are those fools. Men who can’t even clear a path against a mere boy have no right to stand under me. They’re nothing but dead weight.”
Gwak Tu let out a cold snort, as if Yun Cheon’s icy mockery meant nothing to him.
“More importantly… where have you hidden the Blood Star?”
Gwak Tu’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Do you think you can hold out indefinitely by blocking a narrow staircase? But… such efforts are futile before my Nine-Pronged Spear.”
Gwak Tu was certain that once he broke Yun Cheon, the sacrifice would ultimately fall into his hands.
‘Even if they spirited away the Blood Star, they couldn’t have gone far.’
Instead of answering, Yun Cheon lightly flicked the blood from his left sword.
“…Perhaps.”
A frozen droplet of blood fell from the blade.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. If you won’t speak, I’ll simply make you.”
From Gwak Tu’s Nine-Pronged Spear, crimson Asura Blood Qi writhed like a serpent.
The way the blood qi flowed along the spear’s shaft was far from ordinary.
‘At least Peak realm. On par with Chuk Mu Gwang.’
A sharp glint flashed across Yun Cheon’s eyes.
Boom—!
Gwak Tu stomped the ground.
The Nine-Pronged Spear surged toward Yun Cheon like a viper ascending the staircase.

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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