Chapter 448
The Only Journey After the Years: Has the Lord of the Mortal World Fallen?! Sin and Puni
Chapter 448 The Only Walker After a Thousand Years, Has the Lord of the Mortal World Fallen?! Sin and Punishment, A Declaration of Victory.
My vision blurred, and the world spun around me.
The dizziness that Uesugi Tetsu felt when he was caught in the crimson vortex was far greater than ever before. If it had happened a few days ago, it would have taken him several seconds to recover.
However, under the ultimate control of the sword spirit of "All of Me Return to One", Uesugi Tetsuya was free from all the effects of dizziness the moment his feet touched solid ground.
"So Kenshin can also be used to treat dizziness... He has quite a few uses."
Uesugi Tetsu let the thoughts rise, then looked down at his empty waist, remembering the last words Lord Mokuzu spoke before throwing him into the crimson vortex.
"—If I let you carry these two knives, wouldn't that be a bit too easy?"
As a result, he simply took his knife without saying a word.
Can't we have agreed on this beforehand?
Uesugi Tetsu's lips twitched.
—This "mischievous little devil" Huo Jin is truly unafraid of dying in this ancient, mysterious realm from a thousand years ago.
From that aloof and proud deity at the beginning to this mischievous child who loves to play pranks...
The culprit that turned Lord Mokujin into this—[Game]—is truly harmful!
Uesugi Tetsu couldn't help but think—what if Lord Mokuzu were to leave the Walking Gathering in the future, and this god who represents calamity were to become playful in the mortal world?
Or perhaps they got so engrossed in the game that they went straight to the game company's building and turned everyone there into a real person...
As expected, it's more reassuring to let Lady Mokuzu stay at the gathering and live a peaceful life as a homebody.
Otherwise, who has the qualifications and ability to control her?
Even if you call the Sword Saint over, it would probably only be a matter of a few slaps.
After thinking haphazardly for a while, Uesugi Tetsu suppressed a whole bunch of thoughts that were about to continue wandering and gathered his mind.
But as soon as he turned his attention back to himself, Uesugi Tetsu immediately discovered that the vast spiritual power that had once surged within him like a sea, even greater than the total amount of Qi in his Qi Sea, had all disappeared.
Or in other words—
It's locked.
With a quick sense, Uesugi Tetsuya could clearly feel that all he could use right now were his physical strength, the Divine Treasury of the Calamity Sea, his Qi Sea, and his avatar.
Everything related to Yin-Yang techniques has been sealed away by the secret realm and has vanished without a trace.
He looked at himself, empty-handed.
"As for hand-to-hand combat skills, I'm just average... I can only be considered barely usable."
"Wow……"
The instant the unfamiliar, indistinct voice appeared, a hundred enormous, scarlet blood-red eyes bloomed from the void, staring with indifferent scrutiny at the figure standing before Uesugi Tetsuya—
A strange-looking, faceless, black phantom is slowly coalescing.
"……Oh."
Only then did the sentence come to a complete conclusion.
"Look what I found! How amazing, how amazing!"
After it fully coalesced, the black phantom's speaking speed and fluency improved significantly.
He spoke in a hoarse, youthful voice.
"A... Thousand Eyes who possesses a sword heart?"
Ignoring what Uesugi Tetsu was about to say, the black phantom continued talking to itself: "With that lord standing behind them, the World Walker really dares to touch anything, and dares to stuff any kind of ghost stuff onto themselves..."
"Tsk tsk."
The black phantom, completely oblivious to the thousand pupils surrounding him, sighed.
"However, this is what it means to live a normal life."
"—Are you the World Walker from a thousand years ago who left a gift in the secret realm?"
Uesugi Tetsuya, squinting and scrutinizing the black phantom with his many thousand eyes, but unable to discern anything, asked.
"Good, you got it right!"
The black phantom opened its arms and answered with a smile—if two black mosaic tiles can be considered "arms".
"But there are no special rewards. I don't test your intelligence here. Rather, if your brain is filled with muscles, you might be even better."
He said, shaking his head.
"However, to be precise, I was merely a projection of my own will that was preserved until now, and then it was activated because of your appearance."
"So it's an ancient AI from a thousand years ago, a humanoid engineer."
Uesugi Tetsu nodded, roughly understanding what the dark figure in front of him was.
—He can’t do this kind of thing right now, but if he ever surpasses even the supernatural, he’ll be able to do it pretty well.
"Although I don't understand what you're saying, it feels like you're saying something disrespectful to your seniors."
The shadowy figure's tone was somewhat unfriendly, but he didn't pay much attention to such irrelevant details. Instead, he asked with some curiosity, "Speaking of which, how much time has passed outside?"
One hundred years? Or one hundred and fifty years?
"If we consider the era when Abe no Seimei existed, it has been a thousand years."
Uesugi Tetsu's calm and ordinary answer caused the shadowy figure to freeze in place.
The shadowy figure paced back and forth for a while, muttering many mysterious and ancient words that Uesugi Tetsuya couldn't understand, before finally standing directly in front of Uesugi Tetsuya again and continuing to ask.
"So now, how many ordinary people are still walking the path of life?"
Uesugi Tetsu blinked, raised his hand, and pointed to himself.
The shadowy figure repeated impatiently, "Kid! What I mean is, just how many Worldly Walkers are left?"
Uesugi Tetsu continued pointing to himself, calmly speaking before the shadowy figure erupted in fury: "It's me."
He says,
"It's just me."
The air grew quiet.
The desolate, crimson land, devoid of any plants or animals, suddenly fell into a deathly silence.
The shadowy figure remained silent for a long time before Uesugi Tetsu continued, "If we include Lord Mokuzu who is still at the gathering, then the entire traveling force consists of just the two of us."
two?
The shadowy figure was puzzled and bewildered.
The shadowy figure flew into a rage, but no one knew who it was targeting.
"What's going on..."
The shadowy figure pointed at Uesugi Tetsuya and roared, "Hey, you brat, what kind of joke are you spouting! Tell me the truth! With that person here, how could there only be..."
"Senior, are you referring to the [Lord of the Eternal World]?"
Before the shadowy figure could finish speaking, Uesugi Tetsu interrupted him, stating a harsh truth.
"His word has long since passed away. We don't know the exact time, it may have been decades ago, or it may have been hundreds of years ago."
Uesugi Tetsu's words were like an invisible, cold hand, tightly gripping the neck of the non-existent shadow.
Despair, frustration, pain...
In an instant, all sorts of negative emotions, almost tangible, emanated from the shadowy figure.
The next instant, the blurry figure of the shadow swelled and twisted as if it had been filled with too much stuff, and it looked like it was about to explode.
buzzing.
The hallucinatory sound passed by, and the dark figure in front of Uesugi Tetsuya returned to its original form.
The shadowy figure waved his hand, suddenly becoming incredibly magnanimous.
"Forget it, I can't control what's going on outside anyway, let's just start the trial first."
The shadowy figure, seemingly "forced to calm down," explained, "If you want to receive the generous gift I left behind, you must pass the trial!"
Faced with this clearly abnormal scene, Uesugi Tetsu didn't say much.
After all, if they did it again and the dark figure in front of them exploded, where would he get his trial gift?
These things can wait until we have the goods in our hands.
"But why are they all challenges and trials? The previous Warring States Secret Realm was also a challenge system."
Uesugi Tetsu clenched his fist: "Did you pay the copyright fees?"
"—Kid, my trial is different."
The dark figure said coldly,
"Once you start, you can never stop. It's a cruel trial where if you stop halfway, you will die, and if you don't finish, you will have nothing."
Immediately, the shadowy figure added, "But if you haven't decided yet, you can leave before the trial begins." "No, that's unnecessary."
Uesugi Tetsu grinned and said to the shadowy figure, "Let's begin now."
"Are you sure?" the shadowy figure asked a second time.
“I am very strong, so…”
Uesugi Tetsuya issued a declaration of certain victory.
"We will win."
The shadowy figure laughed: "Then I'll wait and see."
The strange black shadow slowly disappeared, replaced by an endless road stretching across the crimson sand.
"Let me see..."
"The only one to walk after a thousand years, how strong is he?"
—Uesugi Tetsuya pinched his chin, sizing up the fox-dog barking at him.
I feel like it looks exactly like the one in the abandoned schoolyard.
He seemed to be deep in thought.
Then he laughed.
"never mind."
Uesugi Tetsuya shrugged, easily concealing all his aura, and casually slapped the barking fox-dog that pounced on him into a pulp.
Subsequently, when faced with the ever-increasing number of zero- to three-star demons, Uesugi Tetsuya used his somewhat clumsy martial arts to obliterate them all.
When Uesugi Tetsuya punched a three-star Blue Oni to pieces, he frowned slightly, but then relaxed and realized the real difficulty of this trial.
That is, the recovery speed is very slow.
Very slow!
It's roughly only a fraction of the reality.
"So that's how it is, are we going to wage a war of attrition?"
Moreover, Uesugi Tetsu discovered that he did not receive any notification or reward after killing these demons.
However, they obtained wisps of "karmic fire" from them, which were closely related to the Asura's Heavenly Path.
Karmic fire can burn the soul, bringing boundless suffering.
This is also the [Trial] of the Asura's Heavenly Path.
"Such a trial might be a significant obstacle before I achieve sword heart, but it's nothing now..."
Uesugi Tetsu could control even his thoughts with unparalleled precision, so of course he could also control every wisp of karmic fire.
He laughed.
"Why not unleash an even fiercer attack!"
The originally weak flame was now completely enveloped by Uesugi Tetsuya's entire soul and sword heart, constantly burning and refining them.
As if in response to Uesugi Tetsu's words, amidst the earth-shaking tremors, ten towering monks, each as tall as a small mountain, emerged and surrounded him.
"Finally, some guys have arrived to warm up."
Uesugi Tetsuya loosened his limbs slightly, producing a series of crackling sounds: "But senior, all the people in this trial are people I've met before. Did you manage to steal my memories to do this?"
"I don't have that ability. Your sword spirit is stronger than I've ever seen in my life, even a bit unbelievable. I'm afraid even the geniuses of those great families can't compare."
The shadowy voices echoed from all directions: "It's just through some 'vague connections'."
Vague……
Is it causality, or is it a possibility?
Uesugi Tetsu had no time to think, because the Great Master's enormous fists, imbued with terrifying power, had already locked down every possible direction in which he could dodge.
Before the fist crashed down, Uesugi Tetsu gently pressed the smiling, demonic face against his own.
Boom boom boom!
In a short but intense roar, the ten enormous fists of earth and stone were simultaneously blasted to dust by the grinning Asura.
Uesugi Tetsu felt the power surging from his limbs and bones, and landed lightly on the spot.
Looking at the ten Grand Masters with missing arms, he couldn't help but laugh.
After all, opponents who used to require all their strength to defeat can now be easily and in large numbers destroyed with a single punch.
"This exhilarating feeling..."
Before the great masters could launch their attack on Uesugi Tetsuya, Shura had already vanished from his spot.
Then, amidst the explosion of those ten enormous heads, they reappeared.
"It really is hard to put into words."
Uesugi Tetsu clapped his hands contentedly, effortlessly controlling the surging, molten power within him. He glanced at the hundred or so Grand Masters who appeared in the distance, all looking exactly alike, and his brow twitched.
He bent down to wipe the dust from his palms, then walked forward slowly.
"Borrow it for a moment."
Above the sky, five hundred giant, scarlet eyes opened.
Thus, with the precise and boundless power of thought, as Uesugi Tetsu walked past them, he simultaneously crushed all one hundred Grand Masters into dust.
Following them were ten expressionless factory managers.
"...A disgrace to the gods and spirits?"
The shadowy figure, who had been observing for a long time, laughed: "It truly lives up to its reputation."
After witnessing Uesugi Tetsuya effortlessly crush ten managers as easily as squashing chicks.
Everyone laughed.
"How could such trash become a ghost or god? Just how abundant will the resources be a thousand years from now...?"
The shadowy figure sighed inexplicably, then heard Uesugi Tetsu's question.
"Is that all?"
Uesugi Tetsuya, feeling only a slight stinging in his eyes, shrugged.
"A brutal trial, is that all?"
"A little devil from a thousand years later."
The shadowy figure said, "Do you know that the way you talk now is just like many young ladies from noble families? It makes people want to beat you up and make you suffer."
"That's just the way it is."
Uesugi Tetsu smiled and said, "These defeated opponents, no matter how many there are, can hardly be called 'cruel'."
"You're right."
Unexpectedly, the shadowy figure agreed with Uesugi Tetsuya's statement: "For ordinary people, facing ten or even a hundred such disgraceful demons at the same time is already extremely difficult."
But for a brat like you who's arrogantly overconfident because of your talent, it means absolutely nothing.
Uesugi Tetsu felt a gaze fall upon him, followed by a question from the shadowy figure.
"Kid, are you undergoing the Heavenly Trial?"
Uesugi Tetsu nodded.
"That's perfect."
The shadowy figure spoke with malice.
"Let me give you a taste of some of the small scenes I experienced a thousand years ago."
As soon as the words were spoken, the long, crimson road disappeared.
What appeared before Uesugi Tetsuya, who stood atop a towering, crimson mountain, was a boundless tide of demons in a physical sense, whether scattered, three-dimensional, or ghosts and gods.
All the demons mingled in the tide, fighting and devouring each other as they surged toward Uesugi Tetsuya, the highest point.
The overwhelming malice nearly overwhelmed Uesugi Tetsuya's senses in an instant.
The [Sin] symbol on Shura's left hand and the [Punishment] symbol on his right hand lit up at the same moment.
"This... is alright..."
With his five senses almost maliciously torn into "ten senses," the Asura maintained his cheerful laughter and plunged into the surging crimson waves.
"—That's interesting!"
(End of this chapter)