Chapter 82

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Translated by Seoulbound

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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**

Just when I was feeling a lack during my training on the mountain,

I spoke to the Master of the True Martial Pavilion, Immortal Hae-won.

It was because the result of the elders’ meeting, which decided to let me set out on missions when I wanted to previously, came to mind.

‘Training on the mountain alone is not enough.’

There were bound to be things that could only be obtained through real combat. It was the same in the process of completing the Four Symbols Flowing Sword.

There was a limit to what could be obtained only in the head or through training on the mountain. By facing the Changyou masks while suffering from internal injuries, I devised formulas to utilize internal energy and physical strength more efficiently, and additionally grafted the formula of elastic collision of the Four Symbols Flowing Sword onto the routine.

Thanks to that, Uncle Yim-won even gained realization.

It was my conclusion that I too needed to leave the mountain to take another step forward.

Not long after I made such a request, Immortal Mang-won came to seek me out,

“…And so, a request for support arrived from the Murim Alliance’s Guizhou branch. It is a request to support them with a warrior who is familiar with facing blood ghouls and would be helpful. Will you go? I know you are currently devoting yourself to training. Therefore, if you are not inclined, you do not have to go. No, rather, this can interfere with your training, so not going might be a good thing.”

Although it was a long talk with various digressions attached at the end, the point was one.

-Since blood ghouls of the Dawn Sky Blood Cult are appearing in the Guizhou region, support the Murim Alliance branch.

I nodded immediately.

“I will do it.”

“What?”

What was with the reaction of his pupils dilating as if he had not expected it, even though he was the one who told me to go support them?

I was briefly puzzled, but Immortal Mang-won’s reaction was soon erased from my head. Instead, what came to mind were the blood ghouls I had faced in Xining and Ado.

‘The elasticity and hardness of their skin and muscles were completely different from average humans.’

They were far tougher and harder.

To the point that even the bodies of martial artists trained through internal energy circulation could not be compared.

Even the Changyou masks of the Chaotic Heaven Green Forest, who were said to have trained their bodies with the external arts of Ado sects, could not be compared to the blood ghouls I had faced at Ado branch of the Hao Sect.

Both physical strength and internal energy were severely consumed.

I knew that if I had not been born with natural divine strength, there would have been many dangerous moments with my internal energy cultivation at the time.

Therefore, I wanted to go out even more.

I had spent too long a peaceful time.

Just as I told my martial nephews during training, I needed to push myself. I could instinctively know that I had to do so to cross the wall.

“I wish to achieve the Unity of Body and Sword. It seems I will only be able to achieve it by cutting down dozens, no, hundreds of blood ghouls to hone the sharpness of the internal energy loaded onto the sword.”

The path heading toward the Nascent Soul Stage beyond the Elixir Condensation Stage.

I had to slice and hone my internal energy infinitely thinly.

‘The edge of internal energy must be sharpened to the point where the tunneling phenomenon occurs to open the Conception and Governing Vessels at my current level of energy accumulation.’

Otherwise, it would be another five years.

I would have to devote myself solely to energy accumulation.

There would be many things to be sacrificed.

It was the calculated result assuming that I threw away all of my fist, palm, and hand-to-hand martial arts training and sword art training, and devoted myself solely to energy accumulation.

For me, who was feeling interest in experiencing diverse martial arts, it was also a calculated value that made me shake my head.

Just in time, they say that things that are of no help to the world’s people are running rampant.

Since the existence of a blood ghoul was literally a parasite that sucked the ‘blood and sweat’ of the people,

I could achieve the path of chivalry and righteousness in addition to obtaining martial cultivation by swinging my sword to my heart’s content.

There was no reason to decline.

Whether he knew my determination was firm, Immortal Mang-won opened his mouth in a solemn voice.

“…I understand.”

A few days later.

I walked out of the sect gate together with Senior Brothers Myeong-hun and Myeong-jin of the Greedy Wolf Unit.

Although it was a humble number of people for setting out to help the Murim Alliance branch, it could not be helped.

“The rest of the Greedy Wolf Unit members have all set out on missions at the request of Uncle Gangwon.”

It was my master who had set out to dig into the problems entangled in the Yeo Clan incident instead of returning to the main mountain with the senior brothers of the Sea Fog Pavilion.

It seemed the work was dragging on.

“If Senior Sister Yi went, it seems to have been a matter that required energy sensitivity, so it is a bit disappointing that they did not call me.”

“Because my junior brother was devoting himself to sword art training at that time. There was an order from Master that no one should disturb you.”

“Ah.”

Senior Brother Myeong-hun’s master was Immortal Hae-won.

He was the Lord of the South Rock Palace where the True Martial Pavilion was located.

Since the allocation of the True Martial Pavilion’s missions was also bound to go through Immortal Hae-won’s hands, it was the reason why the mission had not come to me.

I recalled the moment the elders cleared the path at my short word that I wanted to train in martial arts.

I realized that as one’s reputation rose, one’s words must acquire weight.

‘If I carry my words and actions lightly, it could bring damage to my surroundings.’

As I walked while reflecting on my own appearance that had been briefly puffed up by my heightened reputation, I arrived at the entrance of the village before I knew it.

A refreshing yet heavy aura was felt there,

“Are you coming only now?”

and an old voice was heard.

Immortal Mang-won, the Hall Master of the Mysterious Heaven Pavilion, was standing.

My senior brothers and I immediately clasped our fists to show respect.

At the moment we wondered if he had come to see us off,

the bundle slung on his back caught my eye.

“I am also going together on this mission.”

“Yes?”

“Why is that?”

The moment I expressed my doubt, Immortal Mang-won stroked my head and spoke.

“Bringer of Chaos, you do not seem to recognize how high your reputation has become yet.”

He turned his body and continued speaking.

“People are gossiping that your name is rising, saying the Eight Talents of the Rising Wave must become the Nine Talents.”

I was someone who had felt the efficacy of reputation.

As I struggled to keep humility in my mind, the elder’s words and actions kept rising the potential energy of my mind, leaving me unable to gauge whether I should feel good or bad.

However, Immortal Mang-won brought out words in succession to calmly quiet my mind.

“The road you travel will not be smooth. If it is the head of the Wudang Sect’s greatest genius, the amount of gold placed on it will not be small.”

I had heard of it once before.

It was through the mouths of the Chaotic Heaven Green Forest bandits.

They said bounties were placed among the unorthodox black path factions on the heads of high-profile warriors from prestigious righteous sects.

Senior Brother Myeong-jin also nodded and spoke.

“Wealth and honor. Those are values that Jianghu people, especially the lackeys of the unorthodox black path, pursue even at the cost of their lives. If you go to a crowded place, it would be good to hone your Tai Chi Diagram Exposition sensitivity to examine your surroundings.”

I could feel concern in those words.

Furthermore, I could guess the reason why Immortal Mang-won had set out together.

As that guess warmed my heart,

even the cool autumn wind of late autumn felt like the warm breeze of a spring day.

In addition, a subtle expectation lit a fire in my chest.

‘Evil enemies are coming to find me?’

Until now, I had set out to find enemies through missions.

However, now they say the enemies are coming to seek me out.

Although I had experienced crises of death multiple times while facing powerful enemies like the Red Yang Demonic Immortal, the Young Spirit Slayer, and the Great Sage Who Overturns Seas, since I survived and gained realization each time,

crisis was connected to opportunity.

I began to walk while igniting my sensitivity in accordance with the words of my senior brothers and the elder.

Just like honing internal energy like a sword, it was a training to sharply edge my Tai Chi Diagram Exposition sensitivity as well.

**

A red flame glowed in a manor built in the remote mountains.

However, that flame was not a real fire,

as it was the appearance of extreme Yang internal energy, emitted from the body of an elderly man with graying beard and hair, fluctuating like flames.

The red energy, vivid over his body, or more precisely, his right arm, was coloring the color deeper by hovering around the arm rather than scattering.

Such was the realm of True Qi Materialization that those who reached the so-called Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown displayed.

“Hah!”

With a shout, the red energy struck by his single palm drove into the wall,

and with a loud roar, the wall charred black and collapsed.

Only one thing.

“Ughhh.”

After extending the palm force, as if in pain, the elderly man grabbed the right arm that had just emitted the palm force. The movement was awkward, as if it were not his own arm.

The man ripped off the clothing of the right arm area that had been scorched and burned by the energy arising from the arm. The arm revealed in that manner was not that of a human. Below the elbow of the man’s right arm, an artificial hand woven with iron and mechanical devices was attached,

and a red glare flickered over the eyes of the man looking down at that arm.

At the end of that glare, the face of a very young boy brushed by. The moment when the palm force drove onto the young body and that arm was twisted and ripped off arose vividly.

“Ughhh.”

A sharp pain arose from the cross-section of the severed arm.

The man could not contain the anger brought by the sharp pain and shot out a palm force.

Another corner of the manor wall collapsed.

At that moment, a middle-aged man with an ordinary impression and ordinary attire stepped into the manor, crossing the collapsed wall as if it were nothing.

“It seems you have become quite accustomed to the artificial hand.”

He spoke such words even after seeing the distorted face.

However, the elderly man did not care about the middle-aged man’s insensitive words. He merely wiped the sweat flowing on his forehead with the back of his left hand and asked back,

“What brings you here, Black Butterfly?”

“Because good news has arrived.”

“It is intelligence that those wearing the Black Pine Gate’s Taoist robes have descended Wudang Mountain. Among them, there was also a young Taoist boy who seemed not to have reached the age of majority.”

The middle-aged man spoke while handing over a sheet of letter.

Simultaneously with those words,

the mechanical artificial hand of the right arm wriggled,

and sparks flew from the elderly man’s eyes.

**

Clink.

The moment a cheerful clink resonated over the money pouch,

the head of the storyteller who went around the village marketplace selling stories snapped up.

“Oh, you have come again, Young Master.”

The man called young master was wearing a shabby attire to be called a young master. Even the bamboo hat he pressed down deeply seemed to be roughly woven with bamboo bark.

However, a single silver piece dropped onto the money pouch cast a magic spell that turned even such a man’s status into a ‘young master,’

“Would you like to hear the story about that Wudang Sect’s rising star today as well?”

At the storyteller’s question, the man adjusted his bamboo hat and nodded.

The skin distorted with burn scars over his right arm, which was revealed for a moment, caught his eyes, but the storyteller turned his gaze away, struggling to pretend not to see it.

Even so, the tip of his pupils eventually returned to the vivid burn scars on the man’s right arm,

for such was the storyteller’s curiosity.

A person who collected stories to sell them here and there was in an occupation that could not be maintained without deep curiosity.

Being deeply entangled with a man who was a god of wealth but somehow creepy,

‘there is nothing good about getting entangled with Jianghu people.’

The storyteller struggled to suppress the boiling curiosity unique to a storyteller and cleared his throat.

As the story he had repeated for several days was woven like a net in organized language, the footsteps of passing people naturally stopped in front of the storyteller.

The story that people heard with the greatest interest was precisely the story of who fought whom. Since he wove that story with brilliant speech, it was only natural to make the passing people into sparrows hovering around a mill.

“Thus, the boy Taoist, who snapped and broke the blood ghoul’s neck, frantically scanned the surroundings! But what on earth was this? Had the most dangerous blood ghoul threatening him not vanished? Thus, the boy frantically ran toward his injured comrades…”

And thus, that the boy, along with his comrade swordsman, raised lightning to repel the vicious blood ghoul,

a slightly hard-to-believe story ended.

However, people are bound to go wild over stories that are harder to believe.

“So what happened to the boy after that?”

“They said he returned to the mountain. Ah, since they say he descended the mountain again recently, I will return to this village once I hear the story after his descent.”

“Oh!”

When the storyteller, who finished the story in that manner, packed his bags and stood up,

the grateful ‘young master’ who had dropped the silver piece into his money pouch had vanished without a trace.

And the storyteller met that god of wealth again that night,

and immediately after a brief meeting, he had to cross the River of Three Crossings.

That night,

a wind of blood blew in the village.

There was no villager who survived.

**

“Has the cultivation of his martial arts become deeper.”

The man pressed under a bamboo hat, who was known as the god of wealth and also the grim reaper to the dead storyteller, looked down at his arm full of burn scars and muttered softly.

At those words, the man in black sitting opposite him tilted his head.

“What do you mean by that?”

Even at the question, the man did not reply.

After a brief silence,

the man wearing the bamboo hat raised his head and cast his gaze at the man in black.

“Will you guys accept my request too?”

“Yes? Young Master, a request?”

The reason why they asked back at the words of the legendary young expert in the world of assassins was none other than this.

Because if it were him, if he wanted to kill someone, he possessed the strength to kill them unless they were one of the ten great experts under heaven.

In other words, it meant there was absolutely no reason for him to request people like them.

However, the man wearing the bamboo hat tilted his head and asked back,

“Why? Is an assassin unable to make a request?”

“No, it is not that…”

At the words of the man in black, the man pressed under the bamboo hat took up paper and brush instead of replying and scribbled something.

It was the profile regarding the target of the request.

The eyes of the man in black, who received the paper, shook.

“This person… I cannot be certain of the request’s success, though?”

“It does not matter even if you do not succeed.”

“Then?”

“It is merely to measure the distance.”

In a way, it was an insulting remark, but

since the option of refusal did not exist for the man in black in the first place,

“…I understand.”

the man in black nodded at the words of the man under the bamboo hat and stood up from his seat.

In accordance with Immortal Mang-won’s request, after descending the mountain, I devoted myself to the practice of always honing my Tai Chi Diagram Exposition sensitivity like a sword whenever someone drew near.

**

After the training of sensitivity and diligently moved steps, we arrived at a small inn in Gong’an County, the southernmost tip of Hubei Province.

“Welcome!”

A waiter who seemed to be around my age approached us affably.

I scanned the boy’s body through my Tai Chi Diagram Exposition sensitivity, just as I had been training all the way here.

‘Oh.’

There were occasionally such cases.

Where even among those who did not belong to the Jianghu, like Hwan-yang, there were those born with natural talent in their bones and muscles.

Immortal Mang-won skillfully slipped a few coins to the waiter and spoke.

“I would be grateful if you could guide us to a seat showing the river.”

At Immortal Mang-won’s words, the child replied with a broad smile,

“Please come this way.”

The seat the waiter guided us to sit in was a window seat on the second floor of the inn.

Thanks to the young people who had come out for boating in greeting of the autumn night, the lanterns were bright over the river even though the sun had set,

to the point that it felt as bright as broad daylight in my vision illuminated by the Tai Chi Diagram Exposition.

“I would like you to bring some simple food to quiet our hunger.”

“Our restaurant’s somyeon is also excellent! However, they say Taoist priests do not eat cooked food…”

“There are those who cut off cooked food, and those who do not.”

After giving the boy a few more coins and sending him off,

I relaxed the honed Tai Chi Diagram Exposition.

It was because I was slightly tired thanks to repeating the honing of my sensitivity whenever a human presence drew near while passing along the road.

Fortunately, thanks to the cold autumn night wind brushing past my head, it cooled down my head fatigued by training.

How much time had passed in that manner?

“It is taking quite a while, isn’t it?”

“If it is somyeon, it should be rolled and brought out quickly.”

“Do not be impatient. Were there not many customers?”

“Indeed. That is true.”

We leisurely watched the flower boats floating on the river while waiting for the food.

Meanwhile, the moment the sound of someone stepping on the stairs was heard, I once again pulled up my Tai Chi Diagram Exposition sensitivity.

“Here is the somyeon.”

The waiter skillfully set down four bowls of somyeon with his usual energetic face.

I took a deep breath as I received the somyeon bowl.

At that moment, I recalled the words of Calamity Divine Hand Tang Baek-seon, with whom I had formed a connection during the Zhushan mission.

-…It is to chase the unique energy and scent emitted by medicinal herbs.

‘Why suddenly?’

Did those words come to mind?

Simultaneously with the doubt, my sense of smell spoke.

-Something that must not be in the somyeon has entered.

‘Poison!’

The intuition of my upper dantian sounded an alarm.

At the same time, time flowed slowly.

I immediately transmitted my voice to restrain my senior brothers and Immortal Mang-won, who were picking up the somyeon with their chopsticks.

[Wait a moment.]

In an instant, the chopsticks stopped,

and I felt the air on the second floor of the inn cool down in an instant.

In the slowed time, the moment we stopped using chopsticks, the gaze of the couple sitting at the next table turned toward us.

And I felt it.

The murderous intent read over their pupils.

That murderous intent targeted both me and the waiter simultaneously.

Before thinking, I grabbed and pulled the waiter’s shoulder toward my side.

Simultaneously with that,

Crash-!

the wooden floor where the waiter had been standing burst open,

and I drew my sword.

The pure internal energy of my inner core rushed along the energy channels of the iron sword, which had now become familiar through training.

As the internal energy and the sword blade resonated,

Hummm-!

a sword cry rang out,

and I brandished my sword along the routine of the Four Symbols Flowing Sword. The flying hidden weapons curved their trajectories in the midair and drove into the floor.

An instant look of absurdity arose on the faces of the assassins who had been targeting me and the waiter, and

I immediately thrust my sword forward.

Immortal Pointing the Way.

The straight attack pierced between the assassin’s brows.