| Author: Carrot Sauce | Original Source: SFACG | Word Count: 3124 characters |
| Translator: Aoi | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 18760 words |
| Editor(s): Robinxen | ||
Lily crossed the narrow mountainous path and arrived in front of the shrine.
“Who’s there?!” A few disciples illuminated Lily with the torches and saw her approach them with fluttering hair and a calm expression.
“Senior?” A disciple stepped forward vigilantly and asked, “Didn’t you jump down the cliff after getting chased by our master?”
Another spear-holding disciple added, “Just what did you do to make our master chase you, senior? Where’s he?”
“Dead,” Lily answered.
“What?!” The disciples exclaimed in alarm.
“I don’t have time for all this nonsense. You people are unrelated to this matter, so just bugger off now.” Lily stepped forward after saying this.
“Hold on! You better explain the matter clearly!” A disciple pointed his spear at Lily.
Whoosh!
A powerful storm of sakura petals blew the Spirit Jade level disciples away and knocked them against the walls of the cliff. The disciples could not stand up once they crashed down on the ground after sliding down the cliff walls.
“I won’t kill you since you consider me your senior.” Lily entered the shrine.
“Lily!” The three old men rushed out of the cave with eight disciples a few moments later and barred Lily’s path.
These three men were the ones who had helped Tsubiro operate the grand formation so that he could kill her.
“Where’s master, Lily?! What did you do to him?”
“H-How did you climb up? Where’s our master?”
Two of the three old men asked.
“He’s dead,” Lily answered.
“What?!”
“That’s just impossible!”
“Someone as powerful as our master can’t just die like that! Enough of the nonsense now, you damn b̲i̲t̲c̲h̲!”
Lily approached them and said, “It’s up to you whether you believe me. I don’t give a damn about it.”
“Capture her first! We can allow our master to deal with her when he comes back!”
The three old men revealed malicious expressions and surrounded her before they began chanting spell incantations.
Lily stared at them icily and said, “I thought I’d spare your lives, but it looks like you don’t want them. Do you want me to send you where your master is?!”
Lily acted at once and charged towards one of the old men who had launched a two-headed giant purple viper towards her. Lily did not even bother to dodge this early-stage Throned General old man’s magic spell and severed the viper into two.
A crimson, crescent sword beam cleaved through the two-headed viper at an incredible speed and passed through the old man in the next moment, severing him in two and killing him instantly.
“Brother Kuna!”
“Kuna!”
The two old men shouted the dead man’s name when they saw Lily slay him.
The old man behind Lily finished preparing his spell at this moment and captured her feet with the powerful spirit chains that he had manifested with his throne powers. The other old man created a silver-shrouded spear that exuded a fearsome aura.
He willed his throne powers and shot the spear at Lily with incredible momentum.
“Die, b̲i̲t̲c̲h̲!”
Lily, however, shattered the spirit chains with just a shake of her feet and jumped up to dodge the spear. She then stomped on the spear as she descended down and smashed it apart into two pieces with her ninth grade wooden sandals.
She spun her body on one leg when she landed on the ground and almost turned upside down as she kicked the front part of the spear towards the old man who had manifested the chains.
Whoosh! The silver-shrouded spear pierced through his neck in the next moment.
“Keogh…”
Lily picked up the remaining half of the spear and hurled it at the final old man1.
He tried to resist it with a barrier, and blocked the attack somehow, but it caused both his barrier and the spear to shatter and dissipate. He could not even sigh in relief before Lily arrived in front of him.
“What?! How’s she so fast?!” The old man turned pale in fright. “J-Just what power level are you at?!”
Lily answered him with a swing of her blade instead.
Splatter! The final accomplice’s blood splashed on the ground in front of the cave.
Lily waved her blade aside to spatter out the blood on it and directed a stony gaze at the disciples around her.
The disciples kneeled down and begged for their lives when they witnessed her kill their martial seniors with such ease.
“Please spare our lives, senior…”
Lily brushed them off and headed towards the samurai’s location after she entered the cave.
The samurai had weakened a lot, but his will to live made him persist until now.
“Miss?” He called out in a feeble voice.
Lily felt moved when she heard his voice and severed the chains binding him with her sakura blades. The samurai fell to the ground after gaining freedom. He was covered in scars and had an emaciated figure that barely allowed him to raise his head up.
“Did you save me, m—?”
However, there was no one in front of him because Lily had left already.
“Miss?”
The samurai sensed an item that glowed in a green color in front of him. He felt surprised when he discovered that it was a life-recovery magatama.
Lily, on the other hand, had long left the shrine by now, and no one dared to bar her path. She walked past the cliff route and returned to the fork in the path that led uphill based on her memories.
Lily then looked at the mist-covered hilltop.
“No matter what I come across later, I won’t believe it. I’ll continue moving forward and won’t stop until I climb to the hilltop,” Lily soliloquized and continued to climb the mountain.
She walked for a total of twelve days this time.
She had begun sensing an invisible pressure while she climbed the mountain on the fifth day and had to slow down as a result. However, no monster barred her path during these five days. There was just dense spirit power and cold air around her.
Lily passed through the mist and arrived at the flat hilltop in the afternoon of the twelfth day.
“Huh? This is the mountaintop?”
She looked around and saw clouds in three directions and the lower peaks of Mt. Izumo in the final direction. Lily had finally reached above the clouds on Mt. Izumo’s mountaintop and she could see the dusky skies above it2.
A long stone staircase leading to a higher region floated in front of her.
The mountaintop had nothing but the howling wind and the swaying trees on it and looked extremely desolate.
Lily did not believe that this location was the real mountaintop of Mt. Izumo because she had not experienced any difficulties other than coming across Tsubiro on her journey upward. A lot of people would have reached the mountaintop of Mt. Izumo’s main peak if it was this easy to accomplish.
That was why she believed there was something else to it.
Lily had, in fact, been right, but reaching this location was not as easy as she thought it was. The pressure on Mt. Izumo’s main peak increased the higher one climbed and it changed according to the power level of the ascender.
This meant that the pressure was lighter for those who possessed strength far above their power levels. It was pretty much impossible for someone at the average or below-average level to reach this location as it was a test for those who climbed the main peak.
Although Lily had just ascended to the middle-stage Permanence level until now, her strength was actually comparable to a middle-stage to late-stage Throned Sovereign. It was quite rare for an ascender to achieve this, which was the reason she felt less pressure.
“This doesn’t look like a place where the immortals convene,” Lily observed the desolate hilltop and arrived in front of the staircase—which was made of one by one foot floating stone steps—that led into the high-up clouds.
The wind was so violent here that it could blow away a Spirit Jade powerhouse instantly.
Lily’s hair fluttered in the air as she looked at the arduous path ahead of her and felt her mind waver a little. However, she did not plan to give up after coming all the way here. Lily took a step forward and landed her foot on the floating stone step, which made it sink down and wobble sideways a bit3.
This startled her.
It seemed that the stones floating in front of her were not stable.
Lily climbed onto the first stone step and climbed the staircase step by step. The constant directional changes of the wind made her hair and minidress flat around wildly. However, Lily maintained her balance and climbed the staircase through the whistling gales.
She stopped after climbing a few of them and saw that the mountaintop looked like a small plain from where she was now, which was the fourth step.
Lily felt the sight in front of her descend the moment she stepped on the fifth stone step as it seemed that the stone step was losing its floating property and plummeted down slowly.
She rushed to grab the sixth stone step and discovered that it too had begun to plummet down now. Lily broke out in a cold sweat and climbed the step swiftly, leaping on the step further ahead of it.
The stone steps began plummeting as she passed through them and she even sensed that they were plummeting faster now, which forced her to climb faster in the midst of the powerful bursts of winds.
She had no time to look back as clouds were all that remained behind her.
It was as if she was running across the sky, and there was no escape from this path.
Lily finally understood why everyone told her she just had one chance. It was impossible to access this path again. She resisted the wind as best as she could and flitted across the stone steps that led into the high-up clouds.
Lily saw a giant mountain’s shadow within the clouds soon after. It was a peak that floated within the sky.
“Heavens! I never thought I’d discover such a gigantic floating mountain here. This is pretty incredible,” Lily exclaimed in astonishment.
The skies darkened gradually at this moment and a dim light filled the windy, cloudy region. The peak vanished within the dark clouds and kept appearing and disappearing amidst the gale.
Lily heard a woman call out to her from behind at this moment.
“Lily… Lily…”
The voice sounded familiar to her and sounded like the voice that she had heard before she arrived in Heian-kyo. It sounded pleasant yet grudging. Lily instinctively felt that she must not turn back to look at the voice’s owner4.
She resisted the urge to respond to the voice and continued climbing up.
