Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 206 - Karma (2)
Chapter 206 – Karma (2)
===================
Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
“…….He was cast out because he drank too much?”
Mok Gyeong-un asked back.
The reason was that it was outside his expectations.
“It may be somewhat hard to believe, but that is what Shaolin claims was the pretext for expelling him.”
At Mong Mu-yak’s words, interest shimmered in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes.
Was the name of that vow-breaking monk Ja Geum-jeong?
He had a rough appearance that seemed to carry a wild quality uncommon in someone from a monastic background, but even aside from that, the man had clearly gotten a great deal of blood on his hands.
Being sensitive to blood, Mok Gyeong-un could instinctively tell.
“It seems unlikely that that is all.”
At those words from Mok Gyeong-un, Seop Chun clicked his tongue and said,
“This is troublesome, my lord. That bald monk is one of the Three Mad Ones of the Central Plains.”
“The Three Mad Ones?”
“One of the three people said to be the most insane in the current murim.”
“Insane?”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s question, Mong Mu-yak, the Deputy Director under the Society Leader’s direct office and the Society’s own information bureau, said,
“He has been quiet recently, but there was a time when people raised a great uproar, saying Shaolin had let a madman loose because of his incomprehensible eccentric behavior.”
“A madman…”
“Shaolin, like the other sects, normally retrieves its sect’s martial arts from any warrior monk it expels, severing the channels or destroying the dantian. Yet that man still possesses the martial arts he learned at Shaolin. Because of that, many people in the murim protested to Shaolin.”
“Telling them the one who tied the knot should untie it?”
The one who tied the knot should untie it.
It meant the one who caused the trouble had to solve it.
Mong Mu-yak nodded and said,
“Yes.”
“For all that, he looks quite safe?”
“Yes. I do not know why, but if it were Shaolin, called the head of the Nine Great Sects and the center of righteous-path martial arts, they should have been fully capable of subduing him. Instead, they stand by and do nothing.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
To the smiling Mok Gyeong-un, Seop Chun said in a worried tone,
“My lord. I do not know why he is here, but if we get entangled with him for no reason, it may become rather troublesome.”
“Is he really that self-willed?”
“He is a man who committed outrageous acts regardless of whether they concerned righteous sects or unorthodox sects and earned the title of madman. Moreover, I have heard that even his martial arts differ entirely from the usual path.”
“Differ entirely?”
“Yes. Outwardly he looks like a man who trained only external arts, but there are rumors that he alone mastered the Supreme Great Ability, whose line Shaolin says was broken off centuries ago.”
“………”
There existed many supreme martial arts in Shaolin.
Most of the cultivation methods they possessed were called among the very greatest breath cultivation methods in the martial world.
But in the disastrous age when the old murim and the current murim split apart, the lineages of half of them were cut off.
At least the ones whose true texts had been hidden within Buddhist scriptures, such as the Mahayana Prajna Zen Skill, the Yijin Jing, and the Marrow-Cleansing Classic, were able to preserve their lines intact, and even the other cultivation methods could be restored to some degree with the passage of time.
Yet the one thing even Shaolin could not restore was the Supreme Great Ability, Bodhidharma’s Great Zen Skill.
It was said that the remaining materials were that scarce, and that mastering it was also exceedingly difficult.
So if he had restored it at such a young age, then he was no different from someone with the martial talent of a grandmaster.
“My lord. Nothing good will come of getting involved with him, so…”
“What is wrong with all of you?”
At that moment, Wu Hyang, the manor owner’s daughter who had been guiding them, stopped and looked at them in puzzlement.
Mok Gyeong-un smiled faintly and said,
“It is nothing.”
Then he spoke quietly to Seop Chun and Mong Mu-yak.
“Let us simply not concern ourselves with him.”
“What?”
“Whether he learned the Supreme Great Ability or not, whether he is mad or not, did we not say that we need to cross the river quickly?”
“That is true, but…”
“Then is there any need for us to care what sort of man he is?”
With those words, Mok Gyeong-un stepped over the pavilion as if he did not care in the least.
At that, Seop Chun and Mong Mu-yak looked at each other, shrugged, and followed behind Mok Gyeong-un with expressions that said there was no helping it.
When they passed beyond the pavilion like that, Ja Geum-jeong, the Demon-Subduing Fist Warrior, who had been drinking liquor from a gourd bottle beneath the tiled eaves, wildly waved his hand at empty air while looking at somewhere that seemed to have no one there.
Seeing that, Seop Chun and Mong Mu-yak inwardly clicked their tongues in disapproval.
‘He really does look like a madman.’
That was all it looked like to them.
But Wu Hyang, the manor owner’s daughter, seemed used to it and called out without the slightest concern.
“Great Hero.”
“………”
“Great Hero, these people…”
-Wave wave!
At her call, Ja Geum-jeong, the Demon-Subduing Fist Warrior, waved the hand holding the bottle gourd as though to say she should not interrupt him.
Then he continued carrying on with incomprehensible actions.
He was wildly sweeping the other hand through the empty air, and to anyone watching it looked bizarre.
However,
-Ho. That fellow has opened his eyes.
At Blue Spirit’s words, Mok Gyeong-un slightly nodded as if he agreed.
-Yes.
Once they stepped inside the pavilion, the sinister aura surged even more violently, and perhaps because of that influence, low-grade stray spirits that had not even formed proper shapes were crowding in from all sides.
They seemed to be gathering by way of the veins of the land and the falling rain, and although the occult practitioner had used talisman art to block the aura, it looked as if he could not completely stop it.
-Uuuuuuuu!
-Heuuuuuuu!
Crying sounds could be heard from here and there.
It would only grow worse.
“Damn it.”
-Papapak!
Ja Geum-jeong, the Demon-Subduing Fist Warrior, knocked away the stray spirits trying to enter the building with an irritated expression.
At that sight, a glint appeared in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes.
-Did you see?
-That vow-breaking monk is rather impressive. And he is not even an occult practitioner…
-He can directly touch resentful spirits.
That was why both Mok Gyeong-un and Blue Spirit were surprised.
In the case of occult practitioners, direct contact with uncanny beings such as resentful spirits and demons and monsters was possible through spell power or through a medium containing it.
But among ordinary people, although there were rare cases of those whose spiritual power awakened and whose eyes opened only after death should have opened them, almost none existed who could physically touch such things.
-So there was another one like you, living being.
-……Well.
-What do you mean, well?
Mok Gyeong-un’s ability to directly touch the dead and the uncanny was something close to inborn.
It could be called an extremely exceptional case, but this vow-breaking monk called Ja Geum-jeong was making contact in a rather different manner.
-The aura gathering in his hands.
-What about the aura?
Blue Spirit, inside the wooden puppet, could not sense the aura itself.
That was why she asked Mok Gyeong-un, who could directly distinguish aura with his eyes.
-The surrounding aura is gathering there temporarily.
-What? The surrounding aura is gathering?
-Yes.
Now that he had opened the power of the Three Eyes in his right eye, Mok Gyeong-un could see it clearly.
Though only temporarily, whenever the vow-breaking monk Ja Geum-jeong swept his hand at the stray spirits, the surrounding aura gathered into that hand.
That aura was completely different from aura refined through a breath cultivation method.
It was a form much closer to nature.
-It is pure and natural aura.
-Ha… astonishing. That must be the Supreme Great Ability.
-The Supreme Great Ability?
-Yes.
-The lost Shaolin cultivation art Seop Chun was talking about?
-Most likely.
-What kind of thing is the Supreme Great Ability, to make that possible?
-Do you think this Exalted One would know?
-………
-What this Exalted One knows is only that the Supreme Great Ability was said to be one of the three final enlightenments left behind by Bodhidharma after he awakened even to the natural order of great nature through the Buddhist path.
-The natural order of great nature?
-Anyone who cultivates internal power naturally thinks about how to use it more efficiently.
-That is true.
-And when one does, one often has this thought. How wonderful it would be if one could use the aura overflowing all around as if it were one’s own.
-Ah…
Only then could Mok Gyeong-un grasp what she meant.
The natural order of great nature seemed to mean harmonizing with the aura of all things.
However, since that was so abstract, it did not seem to be a realm one could achieve merely by recognizing it and desiring it.
‘Hmm.’
In any case, if, as Blue Spirit said, the Supreme Great Ability had that kind of tremendous utility, there was no way he would not be interested.
It was then that Seop Chun quietly spoke to him.
“My lord… does something not feel strange?”
“What does?”
“Even if that vow-breaking monk is a madman by nature, something still feels oddly unpleasant, as though unknown people were lying in ambush around us.”
“……You feel it too?”
Mong Mu-yak, frowning, agreed as well.
To tell the truth, from the moment they entered the manor, he had felt an inexplicable and strange aura, but once they stood before the main hall building, it grew far too strong.
At their reactions, Mok Gyeong-un gave a short laugh and said,
“Both of you certainly do have sharp aura-sense.”
“Aura-sense? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that even without spell power, you can feel the stray spirits around you.”
‘!?’
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Seop Chun and Mong Mu-yak’s expressions stiffened.
Was their lord saying such things merely to tease them?
Yet the unpleasant aura they kept feeling was far too vile.
It was to the point where they wanted to flee this place at once.
Right then,
“Hngh.”
Wu Hyang, the manor owner’s daughter, pressed a hand to her chest and staggered.
One of the stout men escorting her caught her as she started to fall.
“Miss!”
“Aaaaah.”
Her face, already haggard, turned even paler, and her body trembled violently.
Then,
“Damn it all!”
Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk who had been driving away the stray spirits around him with the bottle gourd in hand, hurried over to her.
There was a reason Wu Hyang was like this.
For no fewer than three stray spirits without even proper form were clinging to her.
Having spent so long in a manor shrouded in sinister aura, both her mind and her body had weakened to the utmost, and the stray spirits had targeted her.
“You damned things!”
Ja Geum-jeong tried to tear away one of the spirits clinging to her chest.
At that, one of the guards holding her shouted,
“What do you think you are doing? Step away at once!”
“Step away? You bastard, making light of the one trying to help. If you do not move that hand, I will punch a hole right through your face and send you to the Buddha.”
His mouth was not merely rough. It was downright vicious.
At those words, one of the other guards angrily cut in and said,
“If you touch so much as a single hair on the young lady’s body…”
-Thud!
Before he could even finish, the guard went down unconscious from one of Ja Geum-jeong’s punches.
“If I touch it, then what?”
At that, the guard who was supporting Wu Hyang could not conceal his bewilderment.
He had judged that the man was no ordinary person because of his large, muscular build, but apparently he had not realized he would be this strong.
“Hey. If you do not move aside right now, you will be carrying out that young lady’s corpse today!”
“D-do not come cl…”
“Move! Today this bald monk should just open the killing commandment once and…”
“If you threaten him like that, of course he will misunderstand.”
At the mocking voice from behind, Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk, turned his head with a ferocious scowl.
“What is it, you gigolo-faced bastard? Does it look like I am so desperate to touch this woman’s chest?”
Looking at him in his fury, Mok Gyeong-un curled up one corner of his mouth.
Then he said,
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“You are not a madman. You just do not care how others see you.”
“What nonsense are you spew…”
-Swoosh!
Mok Gyeong-un suddenly shot out his hand.
Ja Geum-jeong thought the man was lunging at him and began to twist his body to take up a fighting stance.
It was then.
-Hwooooooo!
With a wailing cry, several hazy shapes brushed past and were suddenly caught in Mok Gyeong-un’s hand.
They were none other than the stray spirits clinging to Wu Hyang.
Mok Gyeong-un absorbed the stray spirits through the Form of Attachment and let out a faint laugh.
Then,
-Pssshhh!
He directly erased them with death aura.
Seeing the stray spirits vanish in an instant, Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk, opened his mouth in shock.
“You… just what…”
Just what was this bastard?
By aura-sense, he had seemed to be no more than a martial artist, and that was why he had taken him for one of the martial men Wu Hyang brought.
Indeed, he had only felt something at about peak realm from him.
But what had that just been?
Not only had he pulled in the stray spirits with something like grasping objects through the void and caught them, he had erased them outright.
There was no way he could help but be astonished.
However,
-Hwoooooooo!
-Uuuuuuuuuuu!
Even more stray spirits began to surge in from all sides.
There were too many to even estimate.
And now that the number of stray spirits had increased geometrically, even those who were not occult practitioners and had not opened their spiritual power could feel them.
-Flinch!
“What is this?”
“All around us…”
Mong Mu-yak and Seop Chun looked around with expressions that said they could not understand what was going on.
Clearly nothing could be seen, yet the surroundings had been swallowed by some kind of sinister aura.
“Damn it! There are absurdly many. They said the talismans would block them and keep out the ghostly riffraff entirely!”
Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk, hurriedly took up a hand stance.
At once, the surrounding aura began gathering toward him.
It seemed he meant to start dealing with the stray spirits trying to enter the main hall in earnest.
That was when it happened.
“That would be a waste of time.”
“A waste of time?”
“Yes. It does not seem to be the sort of problem that can be solved by catching them one by one.”
“What, then? You gigolo-faced bastard, do you have some clever method?”
“That way of speaking is not to my liking.”
“What?”
“Let us first put out the urgent fire and then correct it.”
The moment those words ended,
-Pak! Pak! Pak!
With his left hand, Mok Gyeong-un formed a simplified hand seal.
Soldiers. Combat. Split. Display.
It was a hand seal of the Nine Word Living Method.
At once, an immense spell power instantly filled the surroundings.
-Goooooooooo!
Then,
-Paaaaaaa!
Four enormous pillars shot up at the corners around the main hall.
These were things Mok Gyeong-un had created with spell power and occult art.
The only person who could actually see them with the naked eye was Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk whose spiritual eyes had opened.
“This is…”
-Swoosh!
Mok Gyeong-un raised his sword-fingers to his lips and murmured softly.
“Four Peaks Chain Locking Technique.”
-Chwaaaaaaa!
In that instant, the four pillars joined together and formed gigantic surfaces.
And in a blink, those surfaces sealed off the area around the main hall building with spell power.
Then Mok Gyeong-un lifted a hand upward, spread his palm, and then clenched it.
At that,
-Papapapapapapapapapang!
The countless stray spirits that had crowded around the main hall were unable to withstand the vast spell power and all burst apart in an instant.
‘!!!!!!’
At that sight, Ja Geum-jeong, the vow-breaking monk, was momentarily left speechless.