Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 217 - Let There Be Glory (2)
Chapter 217 – Let There Be Glory (2)
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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There was no time to sink down and despair.
We had no way of knowing how much time we had spent here. There was no point in counting it.
For every moment we spent counting, our escape would only be delayed that much longer.
I glanced sidelong at Zhu Mun-hwan. He clearly wanted to get out just as badly as I did.
That was why his clenched fists were trembling like that.
“At this rate, we’ll become the strongest under heaven before we get out.” I joked loudly on purpose.
At my joking tone, Zhu Mun-hwan barely reacted.
“Fine. The moment we get out, let’s split the sea and Mount Tai and fill some Martial Alliance Leader bastard’s neck with liquor and drink from it.” “That is an excellent plan.”
“To be honest, with your talent, once you leave after mastering not the Heavenly King Sect’s arts but the complete Heavenly Demon Divine Art, there will not be many who can stand against you.”
“Ah, ah. I’ll trust in you, Uncle. If the Heavenly Demon Divine Art is really that peerless.” “Of course. Great Ming may be a fallen nation, but it was a martial art revered like a myth by the Great Ming imperial house. Even compared to the arts of the Nine Great Sects or the Five Great Families, it loses nothing in depth or power.”
When Zhu Mun-hwan boasted of Great Ming, he seemed to regain a little spirit.
After that, we truly began studying the martial art known as the Heavenly Demon Divine Art in earnest. Zhu Mun-hwan, who could not learn the Heavenly Demon Divine Art himself, focused on analyzing the verses and reading between the lines, while I continuously practiced the martial arts.
In the middle of that, we had to bring out a proper sword from the tomb, because we had no suitable blade.
Naturally, that was possible because imperial tombs were stocked with treasures, famous swords included. Of course, I had not done it on my own authority.
It was Zhu Mun-hwan, a descendant of the line, who understood and urged me to take it.
The sword taken from the emperor’s tomb bore the name Bright Elegance, and while it was not one of the Eighteen Famous Swords, it was still an extraordinary famous blade. I had only swung Longyuan for a short while, but I could hardly tell any great difference.
“But why did Great Ming worship the Heavenly Demon of all things? You do mean that Heavenly Demon from the Buddhist Three Hindrances and Four Demons, right?”
“That is right.” “As far as I know, the Heavenly Demon is the demon most dreaded in Buddhism, so I am curious why they made a religion that worships it into the state religion.”
“If one must put it simply, they revere it because they fear it.”
Zhu Mun-hwan continued. “In the Imperial Writ, the Treatise for Brothers, it is said: this world is the domain of the demon king of the Sixth Heaven, and all living beings have belonged to that demon king’s retinue since beginningless time. Therefore, before we meet the Buddha, before we cross to the Other Shore, we serve the Heavenly Demon, lord of this shore.”
“That is difficult. Do they revere and placate the Heavenly Demon because it is something one is bound to encounter before meeting the Buddha?”
“That is not far wrong. In the Imperial Writ, Reply to Lord Hyoe, it is said: when the obstacles called the Three Hindrances and Four Demons appear, the wise rejoice while the foolish retreat. The Three Hindrances and Four Demons are not something to flee from, but something to accept and acknowledge.”
I felt as though I could roughly understand. In a way, they were a branch of Buddhism.
But in the eyes of the people, they were merely a heretical group that worshiped a demon called the Heavenly Demon.
Perhaps that too had been the Imperial Court’s handiwork. Tampering with the unconscious would have happened gradually, like paper soaking up paste.
In any case, that was how I studied the doctrines of the Demonic Cult, whether Heavenly Demon Divine Cult or Bright Cult, and interpreted the verses of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art on that basis.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art contained every kind of martial art: fist arts, finger arts, palm arts, kicking arts, sword arts, saber arts, movement arts, and more. I had no choice but to learn every one of them.
Just as expected, after I shattered the diagram of the Heavenly Demon Sword Art by reenacting its forms, another diagram of a different martial art emerged.
And in conclusion, every martial art contained in the Compendium of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art was organically interconnected. To raise the stage of the sword art, I had to pay attention to the movement art, and to raise the realm of the movement art, I had to improve my kicking art, and so on.
“So in the end, I need to learn every martial art in the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to at least the sixth level before I can leave.”
“That is right.” “Most likely, this place was treated as a refuge of the imperial house. If someone came all the way here, it would not be for any ordinary crisis, so the intention was probably that one should not leave without at least this much martial skill.”
“That does sound convincing.”
As the Immortal had said, this place truly had served as a refuge of the imperial house. Large jars were filled with enough Fasting Pills to live on for at least a hundred years.
In any case, in a way I was in a similar situation.
Right now I might be a splendid rising star, but at that level I still could not step out into the martial world. I decided to set my mind at ease.
No matter how long it took, I would properly learn the martial arts before leaving.
Once I thought that way, my impatience eased a little. We used each other’s hair and beards to roughly measure the passage of time.
Whenever the hair reached the waist, we cut it back to the shoulders.
Cutting it was simple. One turned around, and the other swept the sword once to cut the hair away.
In a way, it meant showing your back to someone holding a sword, but there was not the slightest worry.
Zhu Mun-hwan and I had already spent that much time together. We cut our hair five times.
We arbitrarily decided that one cycle from shoulder length to back length would count as a year.
That was because in my case, that was roughly how often I had cut it in the past, and it really had been about a year each time. So by that measure, we had spent five years together inside the same cave.
“I’d like to cut the next round of hair outside.”
“You said that last time too.”
“Did I?” Zhu Mun-hwan chuckled.
“Hui-yeong, long hair suits you rather well.”
“What, does short hair make me unbearable to look at?” “My, my. That is inferiority, my boy.”
As time went on, the only things we talked about were increasingly trivial.
Without ever saying it aloud, we had silently agreed that if we filled our heads with heavy matters while trapped in here, we might go mad. So while we were imprisoned, we decided as much as possible not even to think about troublesome things like Great Ming or the state of the martial world outside.
And then, at last.
I imprinted every footstep of the Heavenly Demon Lightness Art into the diagram. It was the final martial art of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
Rumble.
The sound of the diagram collapsing was much louder than before. Watching that sight, we silently embraced each other.
The swell of emotion from waiting five years was explained better by the heart than by words.
Sharing that emotion was one thing, but now we needed to see what lay beyond the diagram. Beyond it was a circular chamber.
We cautiously entered that circular chamber.
A chill hung in the air there, and when we looked up, the ceiling was wide open. “This really is the exit.”
“It would seem so.”
This cylindrical shaft had clearly been prepared for leaving. That was because a fresh current of wind, something we had never felt in the cave, was blowing down from the ceiling.
We split left and right and searched the chamber.
Just as I was about to say there was nothing on my side, Zhu Mun-hwan called me from the opposite side. “Come look at this.”
I immediately used qinggong and moved to Zhu Mun-hwan’s side.
On the wall he pointed at was something like a narrow hollow. It was just large enough for one finger to fit inside, and above it were engraved the words: There is only one sun.
“This has to be it, doesn’t it?”
“If this is the only thing here, then yes.”
We marked the hollow and searched every other part of the chamber again. Nothing else turned up.
We gathered once more before the hollow.
“Hoo.” “So I just put my finger in there?”
“I do wonder how exactly it will send us out.”
“Will you do it?” “I won’t lie, this is making me nervous.”
I looked at Zhu Mun-hwan and laughed.
“Still, after coming this far, we can’t very well turn back because we’re afraid.” I suddenly thrust my finger into the hollow.
At the far end of the deep hole, I felt something raised against my fingertip, and when I pressed it, there came a metallic click and the circular chamber trembled.
It seemed to be the activation of some mechanical formation. “…Hm.”
Pebbles and dirt began falling from overhead and settling in our hair.
Then I realized that it was not just this chamber that was shaking, but the entire burial mound. With the sound of a pillar snapping apart, a tremendous roar followed.
At once we understood instinctively that the burial mound where we had spent years was collapsing.
“We’re not going to die here, are we?” “Whether we die here or there, death is death.”
I answered Zhu Mun-hwan with a joke on purpose, but I could not help feeling anxious as well.
If this entire space collapsed, death was certain. Whether we were buried or not hardly mattered when we were ten thousand li beneath the sea.
From the side where the shattered diagrams had been, dust rose in huge clouds, and from far away the ceiling began to collapse.
At that point even I stopped thinking of jokes and clenched my teeth hard. The feeling of collapse drawing nearer.
Just when the suffocating tension reached its peak, the floor of the circular chamber we stood on began to glow.
Strange patterns shone across the ground. It was a formation.
Incredibly, that formation lifted us gently into the air.
Only after we floated upward did the space beneath our feet collapse into ruin.
“…As expected of the forefathers.” Watching that, Zhu Mun-hwan let out a sigh of relief.
“If it had been any later, I was about to start cursing your ancestors.”
“As if I would ever do such a thing.” We escaped the burial mound.
Once we came out of the cylindrical shaft, the sea spread out before our eyes.
Astonishingly, no water rushed into where we stood, and we could breathe, as though a transparent membrane had formed around us. It felt as if we were inside a large, sturdy bubble.
The bubble swayed from side to side as it rose upward.
At that speed, there was no telling when we would finish rising all ten thousand li, but it was rising. I was not especially bored.
Being ten thousand li beneath the sea, the sunlight could not penetrate at all, so it was dark, but our eyesight could pierce the darkness.
“How can a creature even look like that?” The deep sea was filled with creatures unlike any I had ever seen in my life.
All of them had dull, milky eyes as though blind, and they moved sluggishly.
In that deep sea, we felt the overwhelming force of nature. It was so majestic that it made the two of us, barely breathing inside the bubble, seem utterly insignificant.
The deep sea was silent, and we floated upward little by little.
There was no way to know how far we had risen. All we could do was pray to the heavens that the bubble would not burst.
At times it shook and was swept by currents, terrifying us, but somehow it kept rising.
“…Uncle.” “What.”
“Look up.”
And at last, we beheld light in the far distance, growing brighter little by little. It was only a faint glimmer, but it meant we had risen high enough that at least some sunlight could penetrate.
That was when it happened.
With a jolt and a shudder, the bubble came to a stop. “What in the…!”
We were still in darkness.
Since we were not controlling the bubble ourselves, there was nothing we could do. We waited quietly, but the bubble did not move.
It was as if it were saying that this was the limit.
“Do you think it’s telling us to get out here and swim the rest of the way?”
“At that level of light, we’d die before we ever made it out.” Zhu Mun-hwan shook his head firmly.
And I felt exactly the same.
No matter that we were martial artists, there was still a limit to how long we could hold our breath. We stared at the faint light wavering in the current.
It felt as though we only needed to rise a little farther, so stopping here made it unbearably cruel.
We had no choice but to keep waiting. The faint light disappeared, darkness returned, and dawn seeped into the sea once again.
But nothing changed.
It was just when despair began staining my heart in the darkness like a plague. “Tell me. Did you know this?”
The silent Zhu Mun-hwan suddenly spoke.
“Know what?” “A refuge of the imperial house can only be used by the emperor.”
“And?”
“Which means everything is built on the assumption of a single person. Perhaps this bubble is the same. That must be why there was that line saying there is only one sun.” “…And?”
“I expected this. I merely hoped otherwise. Most likely, this bubble will only send one person up.”
“Uncle.” I whipped my head around.
That was because I realized what he was trying to say.
But I was already too late. Zhu Mun-hwan tore his way out of the bubble.
Yet water did not rush in through the opening.
The bubble, which had clearly held two people, merely shrank until it was only large enough for me alone. With the light directly above us, Zhu Mun-hwan sank down into the dark deep sea.
As though Zhu Mun-hwan had been right, the moment I was left alone, the bubble began rising again.
“May glory be upon the Great Ming that shall return.” His voice transmission reached me through the darkness.
I could not give him any answer in return.