Almighty God of War - Chapter 14

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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014

Guyang Baek and Dong Yeonhwa remained silent for a while.

They looked into each other’s eyes as if weighing the burden of secrets they had buried for so long.

After a moment, Guyang Baek broke the heavy silence and opened his mouth with apparent resolve.

“Cheongang, it seems it’s time you knew. But before that, let me make one thing clear. Our Guyang Family Estate does not possess the Heavenly Martial Emperor’s ‘treasure map.'”

Guyang Cheongang’s eyebrows twitched slightly.

‘Was the story Elder Hwang told just baseless rumors after all?’

But Guyang Baek’s next words completely overturned his expectations.

“There is no treasure map. But there is something even greater.”

Guyang Baek slowly raised his hand and pointed to one wall of the training room.

At his fingertips hung a hanging scroll painting.

“What you’re looking at now—that is the legacy left by our First Family Head, and the source of power that once allowed our family to command the Gangxi Murim.”

Guyang Cheongang’s gaze turned to the hanging scroll.

At first, he had thought it was just an ordinary Oriental painting.

However, looking at the painting again after hearing Guyang Baek’s words, it felt completely different.

The canvas was one jang wide and half a jang tall, with the name ‘Nine Dragons Ten Thousand Mountains Painting’ written at the top.

Though it was a black and white landscape painting expressed only through gradations of ink, the energy emanating from the painting was truly overwhelming.

Filling the canvas were tens of thousands of peaks formed by strange rocks and stones, with treacherous mountain ranges winding between them.

The brushwork was both rough and detailed, and the lifelike brush power seemed ready to draw the viewer into the painting.

In the deep valleys, mysterious energy—whether mist or clouds—hung thick, and through those clouds, nine dragons writhed in different forms.

Some dragons roared toward the sky as if ascending to heaven, others played with wish-fulfilling orbs while displaying ever-changing transformations, and still others hid their bodies deep in the mountains while contemplating the world.

Forests and trees, rocks and waterfalls, clouds and dragons…

All of it felt not like simple scenery but like living, breathing energy itself, and like a massive code hiding something profound.

Looking at the painting, one could simultaneously feel the vastness of heaven and earth and the mysterious principles hidden within, inspiring natural awe.

“This is… a secret manual?”

Guyang Cheongang asked with an expression of disbelief.

Guyang Baek nodded with a complex smile.

“Yes. Our First Family Head, Iron Staff Great Hero Guyang Dam, obtained this painting from a descendant of a servant who had served the Heavenly Martial Emperor his entire life.”

“So the legend was true.”

“Correct. Though it’s not the true insights left by the Heavenly Martial Emperor himself, part of the Emperor’s martial learning that the servant gleaned from watching and listening is hidden within this ‘Nine Dragons Ten Thousand Mountains Painting’ as five supreme techniques.”

He continued while pointing at the painting.

“But those supreme techniques are not hidden as incantations or human body diagrams, but within the forms of those forests and trees, the grandeur of rocks and mountain ranges, and the spirit and movements of the nine dragons in the clouds. Therefore, only those with wisdom reaching the heavens can interpret and obtain them.”

Guyang Cheongang swallowed hard.

The feeling he had received was true.

The painting itself was one massive coded message.

“Our First Family Head was truly a rare martial genius. So after a lifetime of contemplating the Nine Dragons Ten Thousand Mountains Painting, he was able to discover two supreme techniques. Those are precisely the ‘Infinite Return to Origin Mind Method’ and ‘Thirty-Six Seconds Swift Wind Chain Palm’ known as our Guyang Family’s exclusive martial arts.”

Guyang Baek’s voice carried both pride and deep regret.

“With just those two supreme techniques, our First Family Head was called the greatest master in Gangxi, and elevated our Guyang Family to the ranks of prestigious families. But… for over a hundred years since then, the successive family heads have been unable to discover even one more supreme technique from that painting. No descendant with qualifications matching our ancestor appeared.”

His gaze rested on Guyang Cheongang.

“And forty years ago, during the Fifth Orthodox-Demonic War, even those two supreme techniques were lost. I too have delved into that painting for decades, but have yet to grasp even a clue.”

Heavy silence flowed through the training room.

It was a history containing the complete glory and frustration of the Guyang Family.

Then, stepmother Dong Yeonhwa, who had been keeping silent, quietly spoke.

Her voice was calm, but it contained complex emotions.

“Cheongang, your father is right. The Guyang Family has no ‘treasure map.’ But a treasure map leading to the Heavenly Martial Emperor’s ‘Martial Emperor’s Great Scripture’ certainly exists.”

Both Guyang Cheongang and Guyang Baek’s gazes turned to her simultaneously.

“That treasure map is divided into four pieces, and my father… that is, your maternal grandfather, happened to obtain one piece.”

She pointed to the Laughing Buddha jade ornament that Guyang Cheongang was unconsciously taking out and fidgeting with.

“The jade ornament you possess is also a divine artifact discovered together when father obtained that treasure map fragment. But even father could never uncover the secret hidden within that jade ornament. He sent it hoping that you, called a genius of the ages, might discover something.”

Guyang Cheongang looked down at the jade ornament in his hand with a shocked expression.

That this was one of the relics left by the Heavenly Martial Emperor was something he had never even imagined.

‘Then was that heart method that appeared as a hologram something left by the Heavenly Martial Emperor?’

While he was briefly lost in other thoughts, Dong Yeonhwa’s voice was heard again.

Her voice mixed resignation and sadness.

“The reason father didn’t wash the Guyang Family Estate in blood to obtain the ‘treasure map fragment’ was because he believed your father was the only person in this family who knew its whereabouts.”

“Ah!”

“But your father is a man of iron will, who wouldn’t carelessly reveal that secret even with a blade at his throat. Father knew that well too. So… he sent me here.”

“Hmm…”

“It was a long-term plan to have my son—that is, my child carrying Guyang Family blood—become the family head and naturally inherit that secret. This plan has been going on for thirteen years now.”

“He’s a man of remarkable patience.”

“That’s true, but father had no choice either. If matters related to this ‘treasure map’ became known to the world, all forces under heaven would rise up, and even our Golden Tower Manor couldn’t avoid a blood catastrophe, so he had no choice but to move so secretly.”

Dong Yeonhwa continued with a sigh.

“Father believes that by combining the ‘treasure map fragment’ he has already secured with what the Guyang family possesses, he can approach the truth of the Martial Emperor’s Great Scripture.”

“Mother keeps saying ‘one treasure map fragment,’ but does grandfather not know about the Nine Dragons Ten Thousand Mountains Painting?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Ah… you didn’t tell him.”

“As a married woman… I am someone who will bury my bones in the Guyang Family. No matter how much he’s my father, isn’t he still an outsider? How could I leak the family’s crucial secrets to him?”

Guyang Cheongang suddenly felt deep curiosity about the person called Dong Hyeondo.

The man who had continued that enormous plan for over thirteen years, the ruthlessness of using even his own daughter like a piece on a game board.

“Mother, what kind of person is grandfather exactly?”

At that question, the air in the training room seemed to freeze for a moment.

Instead of answering, Dong Yeonhwa stared at a point in empty space.

Instead of her usual coldness, deep shadows fell across her beautiful face.

Only after a long while did she part her dry lips.

“He is…”

She slowly but laboriously chose her words.

“It’s difficult to express in one phrase. The most important value to him is only one thing—the endless prosperity and absolute power of Golden Tower Manor. Everything else is merely a secondary matter.”

Guyang Cheongang quietly waited for her next words.

“Ordinary people want to achieve everything during their lifetime, don’t they? So they become impatient, sometimes making reckless moves… But my father is fundamentally different from such people. He doesn’t rejoice or despair over immediate results.”

Her voice carried resignation and fear.

“To father, only the grand plan he wishes to complete through generations matters. If he cannot achieve his goal in his generation, then in his child’s generation, and if that doesn’t work either, then his grandchild… he believes that someone among his descendants will surely inherit that will and complete the plan.”

Dong Yeonhwa wore a bitter smile.

That smile looked so sorrowful.

“Therefore, this long plan of me spending thirteen years married into this Guyang family is, to father, just one piece of a grand picture, part of a process. He is someone who can wait. For the glory of Golden Tower Manor, even a hundred years willingly.”

Her final words scattered heavily into the cold air of the training room.

Guyang Cheongang could finally dimly grasp the fearsome nature of the person called Dong Hyeondo and the weight of life he had imposed on Dong Yeonhwa.

A bitter smile also appeared at the corners of his mouth.

His description of Dong Hyeondo as a “treasure map fanatic” had not been excessive at all.

After losing words for a while, Guyang Cheongang asked Guyang Baek.

“Father, did you know all of mother’s circumstances?”

Guyang Baek slowly nodded.

“…Yes. Several years after our marriage, your mother confided her feelings toward her family and me. I also told her everything. Because I believed that your mother was my wife and the mother of you, Cheongi, and Cheongcheong before being the daughter of Golden Tower Manor’s master.”

At those words, Dong Yeonhwa’s eyes reddened.

Guyang Cheongang looked back and forth between the two.

Now everything was understood.

The deep anguish hidden behind stepmother Dong Yeonhwa’s coldness, father’s loneliness and sense of responsibility, and the love of two people who had trusted and relied on each other despite knowing all of this.

As much as the weight of secrets the two had shared, their trust was much deeper and stronger than he had thought.

[Doctor, this situation is much more complex than expected. Golden Tower Manor’s purpose, the Guyang Family’s secrets, and even the relationship between these two. We need to reexamine all variables.]

Akasha’s voice echoed in his mind.

Guyang Cheongang nodded silently.

Though it seemed like he had discovered many things, in reality he had merely set foot at the entrance of the massive mountain of secrets that lay before him.

Inside the underground training room, heavy silence pressed down on the three men.

Only after a long while did Guyang Baek finally manage to open his mouth.

“Yes… Father-in-law is a man obsessed with the ‘Treasure Map’. And he believes that our Guyang Family Estate possesses a fragment of it.”

Guyang Baek raised his hand and pointed to the massive ‘Nine Dragons Ten Thousand Mountains Painting’ hanging on the training room wall.

In his eyes was intense pride mixed with the weight of a destiny that had followed him like a shadow his entire life.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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