The Terminally Ill Young Master of the Baek Clan-Chapter 455: Heading To Nanman (3)

Nezha could use Domain.

He could do so even though he had not fully ‘descended’ into the lower world and thus possessed no physical body.

That was because the exercise of Domain was, in its essence, rooted in the soul.

Of course, that did not mean he could exert the full power of his true body.

Using Domain like this was a highly limited state.

He was also unaccustomed to using it on humans on the surface, and unless he prepared in advance, there was the problem that he could not invoke it instantaneously.

That was why, back when he had taken over Dam Hyun’s body, he had floundered so badly.

But now, with his Domain prepared, there was no way he would lose to Yi-gang.

How could a mere human stand against the battle methods of a heavenly god?

So when Yi-gang said what he did, Nezha was taken aback at first.

Then he sneered.

Even if this was only a basic application of Domain, it never crossed his mind that Yi-gang could break through it.

Yi-gang raised his sword again.

As before, he seemed to be readying an ordinary straight-down cut without any particular trick to it.

Nothing at all had changed.

There was a saying that expecting a different result from doing the same thing was a kind of madness.

Yet even so, Yi-gang repeated what looked like a pointless strike.

He stepped forward and, at the same time, swung his sword down from above.

But even though it was the same strike, the look in Yi-gang’s eyes was different.

He focused his mind to an extreme degree.

Even after overcoming his severed-meridian condition, the effect of the Great Yin Meridian Blockage remained. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

His outstanding talent remembered in full detail the failure he had just experienced.

The line Nezha had drawn.

From the moment he crossed that line, he entered his Domain.

That meant the part that extended farthest forward, the sword, would be the first to be affected.

The power loaded into the sword worked forward and straight downward.

The tip had to draw an arc, pushing forward as it cut down.

Yet the moment the sword entered that Domain, the direction of its force bounced elsewhere.

The blade would jerk up to the right as if in a fit.

To control that, a swordsman would react at once.

He would force power downward again to correct the trajectory of the strike.

Then something strange would happen again.

He was clearly forcing power downward, yet his arm would whip off to the left.

The same went for his stepping foot.

His body floated up into the air as if gravity had reversed, and the rotation of his waist, the contraction of his chest muscles, and the spring of his thighs all “bounced” off in their own directions.

So how should one respond to that?

What Yi-gang attempted was simple.

If the arm that should be striking down was being flung to the left, then this time he shifted his force to the left from the start instead.

Then his movement corrected itself.

This time, the sword headed downward again.

When his right leg tried to shoot upward, it instead braced firmly against the deck.

When he twisted his waist in the opposite direction of the smooth turn it should have made, it returned to where it needed to be.

With a very simple and brute-force method, Yi-gang overcame Nezha’s Domain.

The strike that had once been beautifully perfect became rough.

Yi-gang cut Nezha.

The tip of the sword split Nezha in two and stabbed into the deck.

「…You…」

Of course, Nezha did not actually split in half, spilling blood and entrails.

As if Yi-gang had only cut through an afterimage, Nezha was perfectly fine.

But his pride had clearly taken a cut.

「Go on then, come in again.」

He was in shock that Yi-gang had broken through his Domain in just a single attempt.

In truth, it should have been Yi-gang, not Nezha, who was shocked.

His intention had been to show the level of a heavenly god and make him understand human powerlessness…

「Try cutting me again!」

Instead, it had backfired on him.

Yi-gang learned that even blue-skinned Nezha’s face could flush red.

With his blue skin and red blush mixing into a purplish shade, Nezha crooked his finger.

Yi-gang had no reason to refuse.

After reaching the Absolute Realm.

And after Zhang Sanfeng and the Heavenly Demon were gone.

Yi-gang had felt as if he had lost his way.

Until now, there had always been a guide stronger than himself at his side, but that was no longer the case.

For someone like that, the Domain Nezha had shown him was a new experience.

Again, for the third time, he launched the exact same strike.

As if time were looping, his movements were identical, without a hair’s breadth of deviation.

But this time as well, Yi-gang’s mind was fully alert.

The laws of physics might warp as they had a moment ago.

Yi-gang focused on the change in force he felt at the tip of his blade.

Nothing happened.

His sword had clearly entered the Domain, yet there was no change he could sense.

So Yi-gang cut Nezha once more.

The blade falling without resistance should, as before, have cleaved Nezha in half.

「Hehe.」

But in reality, that was not what happened.

The sword bent like soft taffy.

The warped blade passed uselessly by Nezha’s body and stabbed into the floor.

And this time, Nezha moved.

Without anything fancy, he simply thrust a fist toward Yi-gang’s body.

Yi-gang reflexively raised his left hand to block the punch.

It was a straight attack that was not even particularly fast.

He should naturally have been able to block it, but Nezha’s fist never touched his arm.

The hand warped in an abnormal way, just as Yi-gang’s sword had, and slipped straight in.

That small blue fist stopped right in front of Yi-gang’s eyes.

Yi-gang quickly pulled his body back.

This time, unlike the first, he could not even begin to guess at the principle behind it.

Nezha’s face lit up.

「Did you see? There is a realm you do not know!」

Calmly, Yi-gang nodded.

“Is that what you are going to teach me?”

「…Yes, that’s right.」

For a moment, Nezha had completely forgotten why he had called Yi-gang out.

“Thank you.”

Regret washed over him at once.

The Domain he had just shown consumed causality far more severely than the first one.

He had not meant to accept that level of loss, but he had gotten carried away.

Feeling the fatigue that followed in its wake, Nezha forced a smile.

「Good. I will give you a detailed explanation of Domain and how to break it.」

“Do I really need to be the only one to hear it?”

「…What do you mean?」

“I’ll call my younger brother and Senior Brother Dam Hyun as well.”

At that unexpected suggestion, Nezha hesitated.

But his pride would not allow him to refuse Yi-gang’s words.

「Very well…」

From the second day after their uneventful life aboard ship began.

The three’s training began.

Chulleong!

A swirling gust of wind blew, and the ship rocked slightly.

The sail, filled with wind, grew taut, then settled back into its proper angle.

Even so, the weather was not bad at all.

The sunlight was warm, and the day was mild.

Though it was winter, the temperature rose day by day.

It was only natural, as they were heading south.

Life aboard ship was peaceful if one put it kindly, and boring if one did not.

The farther south they went, the sparser human settlements became.

On top of that, the party, ship included, was protected by Yu Jeong-shin’s Eight Trigrams Diagram.

They had seen its power not long ago.

There had been fishermen catching fish by the river, yet even as three large ships passed right in front of them, they did not notice a thing.

Even when the bandits’ ships kicked up waves that slapped heavily against the riverbank, it was the same.

It felt as if they had become ghosts.

In the midst of that, there was something that relieved the bandits’ idleness: the little farce that unfolded on the deck every morning.

Yi-gang, Dam Hyun, Ha Jun.

The three of them always stood on deck.

Nezha, who stood in front of them, could not be seen by the bandits’ eyes, so it simply looked as if the three were training together.

“Oh, he’s moving.”

The first to move today was Dam Hyun.

He drew a dagger from his breast and muttered something.

Then an astonishing spell took effect.

Dam Hyun became two people.

They had gotten used to it on their way past Yunnan and as they neared Nanman, but at first there had been bandits who were frightened by the shocking clone technique.

The two Dam Hyuns split in two rushed toward what appeared to be empty space, that is, where Nezha stood.

One of the watching bandits muttered.

“He’s not going to pull it off today either, is he?”

“Let’s see.”

The two Dam Hyuns charged in from different directions.

One shot up into the air and went Pung! as he burst apart, while the other slammed to the deck with a loud thud.

It was as if an invisible giant’s hand had crushed him.

Next was Ha Jun’s turn.

Surprisingly, Ha Jun was also among those who could see Nezha.

No one knew what role the demonic energy hole in his body played.

Ha Jun stepped into advancing steps.

The deck beneath his feet cracked a little as he shot out.

The bandits sprang to their feet in surprise.

“Ah, shit! He shouldn’t be doing that.”

Yet despite his explosive start, Ha Jun’s limbs twisted and he rolled across the deck.

Seeing him spring right back up, he did not seem to be in bad shape.

The bandits debated whether they should report this to the captain, then sat back down.

Today was the last day of their long ship journey.

They would be dropping them off in the afternoon, so they might as well enjoy the show one last time.

“There he goes.”

At last, Yi-gang moved.

What the bandits most looked forward to was Yi-gang.

They had no idea what he was doing, but he had shown the most convincing movements so far.

“Why’s he just standing there?”

Yet Yi-gang did not even draw his sword.

He simply walked with steady steps.

He stopped in the very spot where Dam Hyun and Ha Jun had been flung away.

The bandits had no idea what was going on and could only watch.

The reactions came only from Ha Jun and Dam Hyun.

Ha Jun clapped fervently, while Dam Hyun folded his arms as if frustrated.

To the watching bandits, the result was utterly anticlimactic.

But Yi-gang himself felt deeply satisfied.

“It worked.”

「…How did you do it?」

Nezha wore a look of disbelief.

“I only did as you said.”

「You neutralized my Domain with a Reversal Field?」

「I knew you were not ordinary, but still…」

When Nezha had explained about Domain, there was one point he had made absolutely clear.

It was that humans could not create a Domain.

Unless one’s divinity stacked high enough to completely surpass humanity. He had even said that not even Zhang Sanfeng or the Heavenly Demon could properly use Domain.

Yet Yi-gang had accomplished that impossibility.

「Even so, it should be impossible.」

“I did not use Domain. I only canceled it out with a reversal field, did I not?”

「There is not much difference between the two. Once you learn to walk, you can eventually run.」

Yi-gang was satisfied with Nezha’s words.

These past few weeks of training had clearly borne fruit.

Now, the fear that he would die without being able to do anything when he met the Cardinals again was gone.

Not only that, he might even be able to deal with the Cardinals in a fundamental way.

Unlike in the past, when killing them only led to their reincarnation, their cycle of rebirth had now stopped.

According to what he had heard from Nezha, the Cardinals had been the lords of the Yin and Zhou era

They had continually reincarnated, changing bodies while keeping their memories.

But as the world changed like this and their original level was restored, reincarnation became impossible.

“At last, my sword will reach them.”

In other words, if he cut off their heads now, even the Cardinals would truly die.

Yi-gang was well pleased.

By contrast, Dam Hyun and Ha Jun could not fully resist Domain.

But at the very least, they would avoid being killed in an instant.

Nezha smiled as he looked at Yi-gang.

“Prepare to dock!”

A bandit at the bow shouted.

“We have arrived!”

Their long journey aboard the ship was at an end, and Nanman lay right before them.