Chapter 160. Even If I Have to Paint Myself with Lacquer or Swallow Charcoal (6)
Barring murder, there were no limitations on how the participants were allowed to take the flags from their competitors. Ambushes, traps, poison, working together with a partner... The list was endless.
The competition portion of the Marriage of the Snow Flowers would last one day.
All they had to do was to pick up their flags and arrive back to the beginning by this time tomorrow.
It was a method where not only the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors were being tested but also their resourcefulness and decisiveness.
“Then let’s start now.”
Although all of the participants had some amount of wariness and probed each other’s weaknesses while they waited, the atmosphere of the group seemed to grow even more intense the moment the start of the competition was announced.
“Let’s go!”
One of the pairs suddenly bolted forward, with the rest immediately following, the others worrying about falling behind.
It would be a disaster if the pair who went first snatched several flags and hid themselves for the time.
“I might already be losing steam, considering I have to compete with you, Hyungnim, but I’ll still try my best.”
“I also want to win for once.”
Namgoong Sung’s and Baekri Yeong-Woon’s eyes sparkled as they said their farewells and proceeded.
Although the others were getting heated, Woo-Moon was relaxed.
It only made sense that he wouldn’t be flustered.
He had already reached the Paragon stage, looking down on even the Absolute Master, the Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace Otherworldly Ice Fairy Ah Hee, and the other elders. Yes, he went into this knowing that he was on another level as compared to the other talents, but this difference in power was ridiculous.
The Palace Lord had already realized this as well. Her request for him to join the Marriage of the Snow Flowers hadn’t been because she wanted to test his abilities but because she wanted an excuse to somehow tie Woo-Moon to the North Sea Ice Palace.
“Shall we head out, then, Young Lady Ha?”
"Yes."
There was an awkwardness in the air.
Things felt even more awkward at this moment than when they had met for the first time. The situation between the two was, indeed, somewhat strange. After all, it was a temporary engagement held together only through a contract.
Woo-Moon wanted to bring the forces of the North Sea Ice Palace to fight the Cruel Sandstorm Riders. So, at least until then, their relationship would be maintained.
While he didn’t know if his allied forces would win, if the Cruel Sandstorm Riders were to be defeated, Woo-Moon would break ties with the North Sea Ice Palace, and at that time, Yeo-Seol would also leave her sect, their marriage contract void.
As the two people left the palace and headed far to the left, running on top of the deep snow, Woo-Moon suddenly stopped.
Seeing him suddenly stop, Yeo-Seol also stopped and looked at his back with a puzzled gaze.
Crunch, crunch.
Woo-Moon dug his feet down into the snow, little by little.
“Ugh!”
When he dug himself down to his knees, a suppressed groan burst out from beneath the ground.
At the same time, the snow on their right exploded and a silver light flashed.
“Die!”
Clink.
Woo-Moon blocked a sword with his finger.
The Snow Flower holding the sword turned red as she fell backward, blood spewing from her mouth. The qi Woo-Moon had imbued through the sword had caused her to suffer severe internal injuries.
“Let’s go.”
As Woo-Moon walked ahead, Yeo-Seol followed behind. It was incredibly reassuring for her to be by his side.
The Snow Flower collapsed and gasped for breath, her qi and blood flow temporarily disrupted due to her internal injuries. Then, she suddenly felt Woo-Moon’s powerful qi dissipate and heal her injuries.
Woo-Moon had taken care to make sure he didn’t cripple her or harm her too much.
With her internal injuries recovered, the Snow Flower quickly got up and dug right where Woo-Moon had been standing earlier.
A young man who had been completely buried in the snow was slowly revealed, his body shaking. He was the young master of the Snow Leopard Gate.
He had been hiding in the snow, waiting for an opportunity to attack Woo-Moon, whom he considered to be his greatest enemy. When Woo-Moon passed by, he would jump out and inflict a severe wound that Woo-Moon couldn’t recover from.
However, Woo-Moon had noticed him immediately and deliberately used Thousand-Catty Ballast while standing right above his head.
As a result, the young master of the Snow Leopard Gate, the strongest martial force within the North Sea barring the North Sea Ice Palace, suffered serious internal injuries that put pressure on his entire body and would be extremely difficult to heal.
“You told me we’d be able to handle him with this plan, even if he was the great Song Woo-Moon!”
Hearing her harsh rebuke, the Snow Leopard Gate's young master glared at the Snow Flower fiercely.
“This was your fault! He noticed us because you didn’t suppress your qi well enough!”
As the two fought, blaming each other, Woo-Moon continued walking forward and grew closer and closer to the flag in the eastern direction.
In front of him, the tension was nearly palpable as seven sets of young generation talents and their Snow Flowers stood around the flag, keeping each other in check.
As soon as someone took a step toward the flag, everyone else would focus on them, leading to each pair just watching, unable to even think about approaching the flag.
“It’s Song Woo-Moon!”
“Damn it!”
In the midst of this situation, Woo-Moon’s appearance had become a great variable.
Although everyone’s attention was focused on him, Woo-Moon didn’t care whatsoever and just continued to walk forward.
‘Ugh! Should we attack him?’
So Mu-Yong, the fourth young master of the Hegemon Clan, strengthened his grip on his saber as Woo-Moon passed by him.
However, things didn’t work out like he thought they would.
He was sure that he had just swung his sword, severed Woo-Moon’s arm, dashed forward, snatched the flag, and then tried to run.
However....
Strangely, he was still there. He had not even taken a single step forward, much less attacked Woo-Moon and taken the flag.
He was facing the often-mentioned gap—the gap between desire and reality.
As Woo-Moon walked by him, his back completely open and defenseless, So Mu-Yong’s desire to attack grew.
‘Cut him down! I can cut him down!’
However... just like before, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Although Woo-Moon looked as defenseless as a baby, his saber just wouldn’t move.
Cold sweat flowed down his back, and his entire body grew damp.
Woo-Moon wasn’t emitting any sort of aura or momentum at the moment. Nevertheless, he had already transcended the Absolute wall and he had zero gaps in his defense, even in this casual movement.
Woo-Moon walked slowly forward and took the flag.
“You dare!”
“Put the flag down!”
The seven pairs could no longer just stand around and watch, kicking off the ground at the same time and rushing him.
A saber coated in hegemon aura swung down, while four white palms lashed forward using the Divine Frozen Soul Palm.
All of a sudden, fourteen attacks were aimed at a single Woo-Moon!
Regardless of how far they were from Woo-Moon, all of them had been sweating profusely, just like So Mu-Yong. However, with Woo-Moon picking up the flag, they couldn’t hold back any longer, and their combined attack was truly terrifying, as all of them struck with as much power as they could muster.
Even Yeo-Seol, whose faith in Woo-Moon was greater than anyone else’s, gasped as she watched with an anxious gaze as the attacks came from all directions.
However, she was soon relieved as she saw Woo-Moon still unfazed.
Woo-Moon raised his right foot.
BOOM!
His foot hit the snow hard.
Crack, crack, crack!!
The snow rose upward, forming a veil around him.
All of the attacks landed on the barrier of snow, not a single one able to penetrate through it.
Rather...
“Ugh!!”
A scream rang out and at the same time, everyone dropped their weapons.
In the blink of an eye, Woo-Moon let out twenty-eight blasts of finger qi and hit each of the fourteen on the acupoints of both shoulders, paralyzing their arms.
“Let’s go, Young Lady Ha.”
As Yeo-Seol looked at him in surprise, Woo-Moon walked northeast to get the next flag.
On the other hand, So Mu-Yong watched Woo-Moon’s back, his eyes filled with astonishment.
‘He just single-handedly blocked the attacks of all fourteen of us and accurately pressed our acupoints at a speed we couldn’t even see?!!!’
Woo-Moon had just done something truly absurd.
‘Even if my father was here... could he have done something like that? Did he really just take us down so easily?’
There were two other places beyond the central flag area where the same situation had occurred, with no one able to take the flag under everyone else’s watch. As for the other five flags, they had already been claimed.
Woo-Moon was able to recover the other two flags in the same manner, leaving him and Yeo-Seol with a total of three flags.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to take the rest from the others.”
For some reason, Yeo-Seol's face looked dark and gloomy.
She had been extremely ecstatic when Woo-Moon had shown such incredible skills, as if she had been the one to do so herself. However, she quickly became so depressed that she was on the verge of tears.
She felt completely inadequate.
Her skills were similar to or even greater than those of Jeong Gyeong, the strongest among the Snow Flowers. That in itself was impressive.
However, that was all it was: impressive.
Even the strongest of the Snow Flowers couldn’t hold a candle to Woo-Moon. Of course, unbeknownst to Yeo-Seol, even the Palace Lord couldn’t.
Moreover, Woo-Moon was an elder of the Iron Sword Baek Family, the grandson of the Palm Martial Emperor, and even a battalion leader of the Justice Coalition.
‘Sir Attendant, we’re worlds apart, on completely different levels.’
That was why Yeo-Seol’s expression was dark.
She hadn’t been able to win Woo-Moon’s love because of the remnant feelings Woo-Moon had for Si-Hyeon. But now, on top of that, her lack of qualifications and strength made her feel even more inferior.
She was an orphan of heaven who didn’t even know who her parents were. Moreover, she had even been ostracized by her disciple sisters since young.
Yeo-Seol wasn’t one to usually feel envious or self-deprecating due to her optimistic personality. However, Woo-Moon’s presence made her feel the weight of her lacking qualifications all the more heavily.
“That makes sense. We’ll have to find them one by one. The first is... it's over there.”
Woo-Moon had incredible hearing and an even more incredible sense on top of that.
Although it was hard to find someone of similar cultivation to himself, or even an Absolute Master once the distance grew to a certain point, he could find a younger-generation talent even with his eyes closed and ears plugged. Even more so if said youngsters were fighting among themselves and paid no attention to keeping quiet.
“Eun-Ah.”
As Woo-Moon spoke softly, the sound of a roar in the distance got closer and closer.
Soon, a tiger as white as the sparkling snow appeared in front of Woo-Moon and Yeo-Seol.
“Eeek!”
Even though Yeo-Seol had seen her once the other day, Eun-Ah’s bestial presence was truly intimidating.
Normally, no matter how big a tiger or a lion was, the people of the murim generally treated them as insignificant and largely ignored them or looked down on them.
It wasn’t that difficult to kill an ordinary tiger or lion for martial artists, even if their cultivation was only at Second Class.
However, Eun-Ah was different. Even though there were other tigers the same size, the aura she gave off was far different.
It only made sense, as she was practically an Absolute Master herself.
“Young Lady Ha, get on.”
“P-pardon? I-is that really okay?”
Yeo-Seol seemed a little frightened by Eun-Ah's attention.
“It’s fine. She doesn’t attack people who are close to me.”
Huff.
Eun-Ah cried softly as if to say Woo-Moon was right. As if she was telling Yeo-Seol not to be afraid of her.
However, even that sounded scary to Yeo-Seol.
“Now hurry up and get on, Young Lady Ha. From now on, this rascal will protect you.”
Although it hadn’t happened yet, Woo-Moon was cognizant that there might be some among the participants who might focus on Yeo-Seol instead of him and try to use her as a hostage to threaten Woo-Moon.
On top of simply allowing Yeo-Seol to move more comfortably and quickly, it was a good idea for her to ride on Eun-Ah’s back to prevent such incidents.
“Ah, okay. If you say so, Sir Attendant....”
Out of habit, Yeo-Seol still sometimes called Woo-Moon Sir Attendant instead of Young Hero Song.
Using her movement technique, Yeo-Seol leaped onto Eun-Ah’s back.
Huff.
Yeo-Seol was much lighter and softer than Woo-Moon.
Eun-Ah seemed to be in a good mood and took a step forward, wrinkling her nose as she smelled Yeo-Seol’s delicate scent.
“Kya!!”
When Eun-Ah suddenly moved, Yeo-Seol let out a short scream without realizing it.
However, no matter how flustered she was, she didn’t fall or lose her balance, as expected of someone who had reached the initial Transcendent stage.
“Hahaha!”
Her flustered face was cute, making Woo-Moon burst into laughter and leading Yeo-Seol to blush.
“D-don’t laugh.”