Reincarnation of the Cloud Dragon - Chapter 79

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

Chapter 79.
Jeon Man Ho took a single step forward. That alone shifted the weight of the air itself.
Beneath Jin So Wol’s feet, parched earth cracked with a sharp sound, and a wooden pillar at the edge of the Backyard trembled violently. This was no pressure a single person could contain. The very space compressed by his Asura Blood Qi seemed to tilt slowly toward her.
‘…Heavy.’
The quality of his presence differed entirely from those I had faced before.
A master.
An aura that far transcended the threshold of the first rank.
‘Yet… there’s something deeply unsettling about it…’
It was as though I stood before a monster—a colossal mass of inner power forcibly crammed into human form.
Cold sweat traced a line down Jin So Wol’s forehead.
“You must feel the gap between us… yet your eyes still shine with spirit. Impressive.”
Jeon Man Ho’s lips twisted into a smile.
Jin So Wol’s grip tightened around the spear shaft.
“Breaking something with such fire—that will be satisfying! Come now, show me your skill.”
Jeon Man Ho raised one hand.
It extended slowly. Yet the crimson inner power coalesced upon that palm was grotesquely heavy.
Jin So Wol understood instinctively.
‘I cannot meet it head-on.’
Kwaaah—!
Blood Sea Collapsing Palm.
A crimson palm strike tore through the air. The metallic stench of blood rushed in, and the stone floor where the force grazed exploded into powder. A wooden pillar beside her snapped at its roots and flew away.
Jin So Wol flowed to the side.
The edge of the unleashed Blood Sea Collapsing Palm grazed her sleeve. Scorching heat licked her skin.
‘Now!’
The instant her evasion succeeded, her spear point flashed back like lightning.
A straight line with the momentum to pierce through his throat.
Shiiing—!
Yet Jeon Man Ho merely twisted his head slightly.
The spear tip grazed his cheek.
A single drop of blood seeped from his cheek.
What reflected in Jeon Man Ho’s eyes was not caution, but intrigue.
“Hoh… quite impressive.”
In that instant, his other hand rose.
Kuung—!
A second palm strike erupted forth.
Jin So Wol hastily withdrew her spear and angled it diagonally to meet it.
The spear shaft twisted the crimson force aside, but the pressure that could not be fully dissipated crashed down through her entire arm.
Crack—!
Her shoulder and elbow screamed in unison.
“Ugh…!”
Jin So Wol’s foot slid back half a step.
My palm burned with a sharp sting. The grip in my hand momentarily weakened.
‘Ugh… at this rate…!’
The opponent’s palm technique didn’t appear particularly refined.
It was a palm strike focused solely on channeling abundant inner force.
Instead, each successive strike carried devastating power capable of toppling buildings as it pressed forward.
‘Slow, but relentless… It’s as if this isn’t a martial arts duel at all, but a contest of pure internal strength…!’
But the spear in my hand couldn’t withstand that weight.
‘…If only I had my black iron spear!’
But what I held now was not my own weapon—merely a common spear seized from an Iron Shark Gang lackey.
The spearhead was steel, but the shaft was ordinary wood.
A direct collision would shatter it without question.
Jeon Man Ho approached slowly.
“Your spear technique is competent enough. But your strength falls far short. With your current inner power, you might scratch me, but you cannot wound me.”
His hands rose before him.
The blood-red aura condensed more densely above his palms.
‘Both hands…!’
Jin So Wol’s feet moved silently.
It was not a retreating footwork.
The distance where the spear could reach and the distance where the palms pressed down.
Reading the half-step between them, my steps flowed diagonally.
Jeon Man Ho’s lips twisted.
“Khekkhek. Struggle all you wish. This proves entertaining enough. Let’s see how long you last.”
Kuguguung—!
Two torrents of palm force surged simultaneously from both sides.
Jin So Wol quickly raised the spear shaft to deflect the right side.
Screech—!
The shaft groaned briefly, but managed to dissipate the force somehow.
The problem was the other side.
The remaining torrent struck my shoulder.
Thud—!
“Cough—!”
The hastily wrapped bandage tore open.
Blood surged hot, streaming down my arm. My knees buckled. The spear tip dropped momentarily.
Jeon Man Ho seized the opening without hesitation.
“It would be wasteful to kill you now. What say you? Come under my command, and I shall grant you overwhelming strength and inner power. With your spear technique… you could become twice as formidable.”
Jeon Man Ho smiled wickedly at Jin So Wol.
‘Once broken, she’ll make a fine hunting hound. More useful than Dan Hong, even.’
Talent in spear technique. Swift and decisive movements. Eyes that refuse to break even under injury.
With proper cultivation, she possessed the makings of one who could reach the pinnacle.
It was strange that she did not covet it.
Jin So Wol steadied her internal injuries while gripping the spear shaft.
“Ha…? The belly grows stronger, you say?”
Jin So Wol asked as if bewildered.
Blood seeped through the bandage and dripped down to her elbow.
Her palm burned as if it might burst, and the sensation in her struck shoulder had gone half-numb.
A metallic taste crept up from deep within her chest.
Merely grazed by one shoulder, yet the aftermath of that force had shaken her to her core.
“The Strong are Revered. The doctrine of our sect is to seize whatever we must, so long as we grow stronger.”
He tapped his dantian with a finger, once, twice.
“Do you know what fills this place? What it is made of?”
Jin So Wol shook her head.
The very aura of it repulsed her, so she felt no curiosity.
“The vital essence of children.”
He raked his gaze up and down her form.
“Come under my command. Your talent is sufficient to reach the pinnacle.”
The pinnacle—a realm where even in the Demonic Cult, where masters were as numerous as needles, one was guaranteed a position of power.
But Jin So Wol would hear no more.
“…Ptui.”
Jin So Wol spat out the blackened, dead blood rising in her throat.
It was not merely from her internal injuries.
Jeon Man Ho disgusted her.
His inner power was vast enough to inspire awe, yet that was all it was.
From their exchange of techniques, his application and martial skill felt anything but refined.
Jin So Wol lifted her head.
“How pathetic. Is the only thing worth boasting of the filthy inner power you extorted from children?”
“Haha… how naive. What is filthy about it? Pursuing strength by any means necessary is the righteous way.”
Jeon Man Ho’s brow twitched.
Through Jin So Wol’s bloodless lips came a fractured voice.
“I am a martial artist.”
She recalled the man who had demonstrated a higher caliber of martial technique without overwhelming inner power.
Yun Cheon, master of the Black Dragon Gang.
“There are countless ways to grow stronger without filthy, repugnant inner cultivation.”
Jeon Man Ho’s mouth twisted.
It was the shape of a smile, but his eyes did not smile.
“A martial artist? Repugnant cultivation?”
He licked the blood beading on his lips with the tip of his tongue.
“How dare a mere woman presume to speak of the martial way?”
Jin So Wol did not answer.
Her palm burned, her shoulder throbbed as if aflame, the pain so sharp that her grip on the spear shaft blurred—yet strangely, her mind grew clearer than ever before.
Jin So Wol’s gaze fell to the spear in her hand as she wiped away the blood from her lips with the back of her hand.
Straight, swift, and sharp—a weapon’s essence.
A spear was always such a thing.
It pierced the momentary opening, devoured the distance of half a step, and severed victory through a direct line.
But.
‘In my current state… I cannot receive that weight in a straight line.’
In that instant, a sensation from long ago flickered through her mind.
A fluttering banner.
A flag that bent while cradling the wind.
The spear advances in a straight line, but the flag does not resist the wind.
It embraces, winds, flows, and returns.
‘…That is the subtlety of banner technique.’
Jin So Wol had wielded countless polearms.
It was not only the spear.
The staff, the whip, the axe, the halberd, the flag.
Among them, the flag had been the most troublesome.
It must bend without breaking, be soft yet not lose its strength. It does not receive the opponent’s force—it lets them pass through.
Jin So Wol’s fingers quietly loosened atop the spear shaft.
The hand that had gripped with force.
That hand changed ever so subtly.
A hand that wound instead of constricted, twisted instead of resisted.
Jeon Man Ho did not notice this shift as he raised both hands before him.
“Good. Let us see how far a warrior’s stubbornness can be maintained.”
Kuguguung—!
Crimson energy condensed simultaneously above both his palms.
Darker and more turbid than before.
An aura as if blood, resentment, and greed had been forcibly wrung out and compressed, it pressed down upon the air of the Backyard.
This was not a casual throw.
This was the technique to shatter her completely.
A cruel light ignited in Jeon Man Ho’s eyes.
“A warrior, you say? I wonder if you’ll spout the same nonsense after your limbs are crushed!”
Kwaaang—!
Two torrents of crimson force tore through the courtyard and surged forward.
There was no space to evade head-on.
Even retreating would be too late.
Jin So Wol instead drove forward, closing the distance by half a step.
Her left foot pivoted diagonally as it struck the ground. Not just her right hand, but her wrist, elbow, waist, and shoulder twisted as one unified mass.
The crimson force struck against the spear shaft.
Zzheeng!
It was not a collision.
It wrapped around him.
Had he met it head-on, the spear shaft would have shattered—but as it twisted, the tension spiraled through the motion. Jeon Man Ho’s vast inner power surged through the entire shaft in an instant, yet Jin So Wol’s body did not resist. Instead, it flowed.
One current.
The spear shaft wavered, redirecting the tension sideways.
Jeon Man Ho’s eyes flickered for a moment.
“What—”
A second current crashed down immediately after.
Jin So Wol gritted her teeth.
‘One more!’
Her left hand slid down the middle of the shaft. Rather than bracing with arm strength, her wrist gave way first, followed by her waist rotating in sequence. Like a flag at the end of a broom dancing in fierce winds, her spear embraced the weight of the blood-crimson force and turned with it.
Crash!
The blood-crimson tension twisted and passed beside her.
The spear shaft, groaning as though it would shatter, barely held firm.
But there was a price.
The residual force that had not fully dissipated burrowed from her shoulder through her back, into her ribs and deep within her lungs.
“Cough!”
Dark crimson blood erupted from Jin So Wol’s lips.
Internal injury.
Her vision wavered.
But.
Jeon Man Ho’s strike had definitely missed.
And in that very instant.
Jin So Wol’s eyes blazed.
‘Now!’
The recoil of the redirected force still lingered within her body. Her waist had rotated, her feet had held. The tremor remaining in the spear shaft became the elasticity for the next move.
The locked spear point surged upward.
‘His entire body is saturated with inner power… then…!’
So there was another place to aim.
Shrieeek—!
The spear point pierced Jeon Man Ho’s right eye.
Splurt!
Sensation flooded her hand.
Dark crimson blood flowed out, drenching Jeon Man Ho’s right face.
Jeon Man Ho’s face twisted like that of a demon.
“You wench!”
For the first time, all levity vanished from his voice.
Jin So Wol tried to withdraw her spear point.
But the internal injury seized her.
Deep within her chest, the force erupted violently in reverse. Her breath caught, sensation severed from her fingertips. The hand gripping the spear trembled ever so slightly.
That instant, Jeon Man Ho would not let slip.
Crash—!
My foot drove into the earth.
This time, there was no hint of intent to capture alive.
As if to seize Jin So Wol by the nape and snap her neck outright, Jeon Man Ho’s form exploded forward with devastating force.
Jin So Wol bit down on her blood-stained lips.
‘Is this where it ends….’
In that moment.
A whisper.
A shadow slipped down from atop the wall.
“Who dares!”
Jeon Man Ho, instinctively sensing the threat, hastily withdrew his force and retreated.
Yet.
The sound was too light—at first, I thought the wind had merely brushed past. A thin blue line appeared belatedly across Jeon Man Ho’s hand.
Crimson energy wavered and scattered across his palm.
“You have decent instincts.”
An unfamiliar voice.
Jeon Man Ho’s eyes widened sharply.
‘My hand was cut? A hand wrapped so densely in Asura’s Blood Qi?’
Through the Asura’s Blood Qi that had been pressing down upon the backyard, a completely different quality of force was seeping in.
Between the murky, viscous marsh-like blood energy.
A cold, thin blade-like sensation, as if cutting silently through.
Jin So Wol felt it then too.
The suffocating pressure that had been crushing her breath grew lighter.
A black-clad figure descended silently into the backyard.
A man standing with his blade angled downward.
“A most unpleasant history.”
It was Yun Cheon.
“How many lives have you ground away to satisfy such filthy greed?”
“…You. What do you know of the Secret Art to speak so carelessly!”
Jeon Man Ho cried out, but Yun Cheon paid him no mind, his gaze brushing across Jin So Wol’s wounded shoulder.
“…You endured well.”
A brief utterance.
It was enough.
Meanwhile, Jeon Man Ho’s composure—so different from when facing Jin So Wol—had vanished entirely.
The thin line drawn across his hand.
What he felt before the pain was a cold, freezing yin-cold force that had pierced through his own Asura’s Blood Qi.
“…Who exactly are you?”
Jeon Man Ho growled low, retreating further.
“I am Yun Cheon, Master of the Black Dragon Gang.”
“Black Dragon Gang Leader, it’s Yun Cheon.”

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