TN Note: Thanks to Daniel P. for the generous donation! I’m still not quite sure how to navigate the paypal/sponsor bar… but somehow or another I will get it to work. Your contribution is noted!!! <3
Chapter 19: The fallen main character halo is quite durable!
The one that saved Ye Jing, Old Monster Han, suddenly moved in a way that defied everyone’s expectations. Without any explanation, he shot towards the Eastern Tang Principal Elder that had just arrived.
The two Martial Grandmasters that had arrived later had unexpectedly become entangled in battle with each other. The Crimson Spirit Flag Master, who had originally been the target of these two, was suddenly left completely free.
Seeing the arrival of Broad Creed Mountain’s Elder Yan, even though Elder Yan was currently preoccupied, he did not plan on lingering.
The Eastern Tang region and the East Heaven region both had many experts, many of whom were flying towards the Sealing Dragon Abyss at lightning speed.
Without even entering the Sealing Dragon Abyss, the Crimson Spirit Flag Master had sent a massive fist strike flying down from a valley away. Not bothering to stay and see the result of his attack, he immediately fled.
The target of the fist strike… naturally was the one who held the Li Flame True Fire fire seed–Ye Jing…
Ye Jing almost cried.
Yan Zhaoge was unsure whether to laugh or to cry.
Everything had fallen into chaos….
Yan Zhaoge shouted: “Throw away the fire seed! He is using the fire seed to determine our location!”
Ye Jing also quickly reacted and hastily threw away the fire seed.
However, the speed of the attack from the Martial Grandmaster was too quick. This bunch of martial artists and scholars in the Sealing Dragon Abyss were too close. The attack had almost reaching Ye Jing, who was left with no way to evade.
Luckily, because Old Monster Han had previously dissipated some of the power, the cliff around Ye Jing had already been ruined to the point where it no longer looked like it could support its own weight.
The second fist from the Crimson Spirit Flag Master had not even arrived yet, but the enormous wind that preempted its arrival already caused the cliff to collapse.
Ye Jing was unable to control his own body as his figure plummeted downwards. At last, he was out of immediate danger. Even though he had suffered dire wounds from the scattered attack of the Crimson Spirit Flag Master, he at least did not perish on the spot.
Only, in the eyes of other people, they quickly let out cries of alarm as they witnessed Ye Jing fall downwards into the darkness of the Sealing Dragon Abyss!
With the cultivation of someone like Ye Jing, he would have little chance of returning alive.
Even though he had managed to escape death at the hands of the Crimson Spirit Flag Master, Ye Jing would be hard placed to escape the same grisly outcome in the end.
A mountain road has twists and turns*, but in the end, the outcome was still unable to be changed. The disciples, regardless of their previous relationship with Ye Jing, felt some grief at this time.
TL Note: Idiom that means that any situation/life in general will have ups/downs or many different parts
Of course, Yan Zhaoge knew better than that.
In fact, at this moment he had an extreme desire to yawn.
The sudden appearance of that Old Monster Han gave Yan Zhaoge ample belief that this Ye Jing was thoroughly enshrouded by the bullshit Main Character halo.
In that case, falling off a cliff—it’s pretty relaxed, no?
Not only surviving the fall, if Ye Jing didn’t happen upon some fortuitous encounter, that sort of basic cheat, then he would find a way to rise a couple of levels in a small realm. Upon Ye Jing’s return, Yan Zhaoge would so embarrassed that it would be hard to even greet him.
Yan Zhaoge was almost dancing with joy as he saw Ye Jing freefalling into the abyss. An anomaly—this brother has already seen through your cheats!
Yet, just at this time, the black mist covering the deeper parts of the abyss suddenly erupted with extreme splendor.
Streams of brilliant light interwove with the black mist, releasing a heaving-shaking explosion. An enormous tide erupted outwards.
“That is… my Internal Crystal Furnace. Earlier, it fell into the abyss… and it exploded?”, Yan Zhaoge muttered in a daze.
In an instant, the enormous tide caused by the explosion of the crystal furnace met the free-falling Ye Jing in midair and lifted him upwards!
Under the berserk energy of the tidal wave, Ye Jing, who was already seriously hurt and was riddled with wounds, had his body terrifically smashed!
Observing this sight, Yan Zhaoge also felt a faint despondency: “… Is this life of yours lucky or unlucky?”
Ye Jing’s eyes were wide open, yet he could only look on in horror as his own body shattered. His body already had lost all sensation, and he could not even feel pain from the intense buffeting of his body.
“YAN—ZHAO—GE!!”
Seeing the explosion of the Internal Crystal Furnace, seeing himself be swallowed up by the raging current, Ye Jing let out a mad howl filled with resentment and unwillingness to concede that reverberated in the abyss.
The pale red ring on his right finger, at this moment, suddenly released an unprecedented brilliance!
For that one split second, under the reflection of that pale red ring, the violent astral qi flame tempest released by the Crimson Spirit Flag Master’s previous attack seemed to lose its color, then faded away into nothingness.
Yan Zhaoge’s pupils shrank. For a brief moment, under the reflection of the ring, he had been able to detect a faintly projected image around Ye Jing’s body.
In that projection, he could see that blurry outlines of a world made of fire!
Under the crimson sky, lava endlessly erupted in enormous geysers, while magma poured out of the earth. It looked as if the world itself had ended.
An enormous disaster, bringing the heavens themselves to ruin! An odor of suffering seemed to emanate from within—though all that was visible was endless lava. This was a world of molten rock, a fiery hell!
Myriad streams of liquid fire intertwined in the air, condensing into an enormous god of fire!
In the presence of this fire god, all beings would have the involuntarily urge prostrate themselves in fear and worship.
Compared to the fire god, the auras of the Eastern Tang Disciplinary Elder, Old Monster Han, and the Five Spirit Flags elder were nothing.
Even though it was only for that split second, even though it was only an illusory projection, even though it was only the remnants of its aura, it made every person feel as if they were facing an unprecedented disaster.
Many of the others had their vision obstructed by the black mist and were unable to observe what had actually happened, but they were unable to control themselves as their spirits shook uncontrollably.
Yan Zhaoge, after seeing the illusory projection, had some guesses.
However, what was more pressing to him at this moment was Ye Jing’s ultimate fate.
Ye Jing’s body, under the violent swell of the eruption from the Sealing Dragon Abyss, was already thoroughly smashed to pieces, and had become a bloody mist. Apparently, his life had already come to an end.
Yet, the sudden appearance of the previous projection… was it to signal the main character plot armor once again kicking into action?
As the red light from the ring enveloped Ye Jing’s shattered flesh and blood, and out of nowhere, a perfect copy of Ye Jing’s body was reassembled. Though it perfectly resembled him, it had a dull gaze which made it seem entirely lifeless.
“Soul…”
Yan Zhaoge paused for a moment as he processed what was going on. As he began to understand, Ye Jing’s soul seemed to be sheltered by the ring’s light, and flew into the ring itself.
If the fleshly body was shattered, it could be considered to be inevitable that the person had already died. However, this ring defied all logic and was able to preserve the soul even after the body was destroyed, saving Ye Jing’s chance to make a comeback.
Seeing that ring sink down within the abyss, Yan Zhaoge stroked his chin: “Ahhh, interesting.”
Even though he wasn’t too sure what Ye Jing’s ultimate outcome would be, he figured that there would ultimately be a good show to come after Ye Jing’s miraculous return from the dead.
For example, reconstructing the body, leading to a big cultivation breakthrough… wow! Or maybe instead, having some benefit from an ill wind… a fortuitous meeting would occur, like having no body but being able to cultivate some sort of awesome skill inside the ring….
Anyways, wouldn’t there always be some way?
Still, for today’s developments, even Yan Zhaoge hadn’t been able to imagine them happening.
Ye Jing really had been thrown around quite a bit. If one were to ask him what the meaning of it all was, he would probably have ten thousand grievances.
He was on the verge of being totally ruined.
“If the main character halo really is consumable, Ye Jing must’ve used up quite a lot of it today.” Saying this, Yan Zhaoge immediately started coming up with a bunch of weird and random ideas.
Ye Jing unresigned howl of resentment, on the other hand, was still echoing.
“What are you doing, shouting so loudly? It’s not like I threw away my Internal Crystal Furnace down to smash you. My heart is still hurting from losing my Internal Crystal Furnace, let alone…”
Yan Zhaoge stuck a finger in his ear, letting his smiling expression gradually turn cold: “…I didn’t respond to you, yet you still take the initiative to provoke me? In the future, if you never appeared in front of me again then I’ll leave it at that… otherwise, regarding the issue of the seed of Li Flame True Fire—we still need to settle that account. “
“Main Character halo? So what? This boss here will make your turn from a wuxia protagonist into a existentialist* novel’s protagonist.
TL note: This sentence is kind of hard to translate… he says he’ll make Ye Jing transform from 爽文主角 to a 虐文主角. Even though it can be loosely translated as “genre” ie. Wuxia, it really is kind of referring to what kind of feeling the novel gives the reader. ‘shuang wen’ makes the reader feel ‘shuang’ which is basically like cool, boss. (ie. Wrecking noobs, having sex, being op, having a lot of money, etc.) while ‘nue wen’ is basically just like a story which is just the MC suffering. This concept is a little bit harder because it seems to not really appear much in English literature, but is kind of a classical Chinese concept where the main character of a work just suffers. I translated this to existentialism cause it’s kind of similar, though that’s more like life is pointless rather than MC just having a life of pure suffering.
Inside the Sealing Dragon Abyss, the tide of qi was a torrential rush. The intertwined black mist and water continued to shoot up, as a spot of blue light and a spot of white light flew up with it out of the Sealing Dragon Abyss, landing in front of Yan Zhaoge.
The seed of Li Flame True Fire was gently suspended in the air, as that spot of white light gently resumed its normal form. It turned out to actually be a small metal tablet, which landed gently among the dust and rubble on the ground.
Yan Zhaoge quietly claimed the fire seed and the metal tablet: “Even though my efforts were constantly being foiled, this can finally count as having obtained the item.”
Yan Zhaoge walked through the violent tempest, picking up the struggling Broad Creed Mountain disciples as he went.
Turning around and looking down at the abyss, Yan Zhaoge suddenly thought of something: “That’s right… wasn’t this metal plate something that belonged to Ye Jing?”
TL NOTE: ayyyy done with the chapter… hope you enjoy! I’ll try to get another one out this weekend… but might not be able to til after my exam on Mon. pls bear with me