Chronicles of the Martial God’s Return - Chapter 146

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Kwon Mu-jin was exhausted.
It had been a long time since he’d felt this drained.
His body and mind were ravaged to the point that even the figure before him blurred in his vision, and he seemed to lack the mental clarity to control it.
Yet the two blades in his hands would not slip from his grip.
The light in his eyes as he held the swords and faced his enemy was much the same—killing intent present and absent at once, hostility flickering in and out of view.
Though his emotions seemed dead and gone, he clearly gazed upon his opponent and raised his blades with an undeniable will to end him.
‘This bastard…!’
Ma Dok-jin, wielding the Large Sword, was taken aback.
He already knew the man was savage. Over two decades he’d kept him close and raised him, so he understood his nature well enough.
But the Kwon Mu-jin before him now was different somehow.
He still came at him with the same vicious desperation, crashing forward even as he shattered—yet his strikes now found Ma Dok-jin’s weaknesses with perfect precision.
Even with one eye gone and clearly unaccustomed to it, Kwon Mu-jin was undeniably overwhelming him.
‘What is this?’
Ma Dok-jin pressed his ribs and felt cold sweat seep across his skin.
A wound from Kwon Mu-jin’s blade.
Not deep, yet not shallow either.
For all the years Ma Dok-jin had weathered his strikes, never before had he seen sword techniques this subtle and keen, cutting in with such vicious precision.
‘He’s changed!’
Barely more than a year had passed.
No matter how much training Kwon Mu-jin poured into himself, there existed a gulf between them that could never be bridged—or so Ma Dok-jin had believed. He’d been groomed from childhood on the Early Training Allowance, his Internal Energy and the Martial Arts he wielded vastly superior.
And yet now.
In just a year, that foundation was crumbling.
Ma Dok-jin gritted his teeth.
What in the world was Yuk Gyeom-sa doing?
He should have slaughtered Dan Woo-hyun and the others by now and come to help!
Clinging to a shred of hope, he flicked his eyes toward Yuk Gyeom-sa.
“…!”
In that instant, his eyes widened in disbelief.
Yuk Gyeom-sa—the man he’d relied upon—was collapsing.
He writhed on the ground, screaming in unbearable anguish.
The way he clutched at his Dantian, groaning in agony, made it unmistakably clear—his Dantian had been shattered.
How could this be?
“Kheh… kheh-kheh. What’s wrong? Can’t believe it?”
“You…!”
Kwon Mu-jin’s voice spilled out low and hollow.
A small laugh escaped his lips—kheh-kheh—and it seemed almost to mock Ma Dok-jin. Displeased, Ma Dok-jin tightened his grip on the Large Sword, killing intent bleeding from him.
“Creatures like you could never match them. Even if you led all the forces of the Demonic Emperor Castle here, it would mean nothing.”
“So you’ve finally lost your mind. Comparing those things to the Demonic Emperor Castle?”
Watching Kwon Mu-jin smile with such satisfaction, Ma Dok-jin’s frustration deepened. He knew he couldn’t kill Dan Woo-hyun. With Yuk Gyeom-sa defeated, there was nothing Ma Dok-jin could do alone.
But to compare to the Demonic Emperor Castle?
Don’t make him laugh.
The Demonic Emperor Castle housed the elite of the Heterodox Sect. Though the Seven Great Clans had brought many warriors, the Ma Clan of Hangsan—one pillar of the Seven Great Clans—possessed forces still more formidable than these.
Having swept aside the Hangsan Sect, once the main strength of the Nine Sects, and seized their position, their power was far from negligible.
And yet this wretch dared mock them?
That ignited his rage all the more.
“Die.”
“Spit! Why don’t you die instead, you dog?”
Kwon Mu-jin spat and gripped his blades all the tighter.
This was something he’d wanted to say for a long time.
How many times had he suffered Ma Dok-jin’s fists without being able to voice even one moment of anger? Battered and broken as he was, this single taunt seemed to breathe life back into him.
His blurred vision cleared for a moment.
Clang-clang-clang!
A violent exchange of steel erupted.
Ma Dok-jin struck first.
His Large Sword came fast, sharp, and strong, cutting in with terrible force. If it seemed even keener than before, it was no illusion.
Just as Kwon Mu-jin had grown over this past year, so too had Ma Dok-jin advanced to new heights.
And yet.
‘Shallow! And light!’
Kwon Mu-jin, receiving the Large Sword, thought precisely that. Certainly Ma Dok-jin’s blade was swift and tremendously heavy, but it lacked the particular qualities that such a weapon should possess.
Dan Woo-hyun had said as much.
A Large Sword was meant to be grasped in both hands, each stroke channeling its full destructive power. That Ma Dok-jin persisted in his old habits even after already losing once to Dan Woo-hyun spoke only to his own confidence in this Sword Method—misplaced though it might be.
But.
Crack-crack-crunch!
“Ugh!”
Kwon Mu-jin parried the descending blade, and his Twin Swords flowed along its trajectory—moving with the fluid grace of a fish riding a current. Startled by the elegance of it, Kwon Mu-jin scrambled backward with urgency.
Slash!
Yet Kwon Mu-jin’s Twin Swords found their mark cleanly across his opponent’s chest.
Blood sprayed into the air.
The impact felt absolutely real.
“You bastard!”
Ma Dok-jin’s fury erupted.
This could not be happening!
Losing to someone like Kwon Mu-jin? Where was the justice in that? For more than two decades he had looked down upon this wretch, and now that crushing fear—the sudden possibility of defeat—scrambled his mind into chaos.
The Large Sword trembled violently in his grip as he threw raw strength into it.
The blade now cut through the air differently than before. Seized in both hands and driven forward with fury, it was not only faster but carried a far greater force behind it.
“Die! Die! Die, you worm!”
Ma Dok-jin’s eyes blazed with murderous light.
He wanted this man dead.
His lost eye. His shattered pride.
He wanted it all back.
He had never imagined himself driven into such a corner, had never conceived that all his carefully laid plans would come to nothing so utterly and absurdly.
And that made him angrier still.
He wanted to kill.
To kill this man!
To reclaim everything.
“Now he’s finally doing it properly.”
Dan Woo-hyun, observing the whole scene unfold, stroked his chin and nodded. Clearly Ma Dok-jin had taken the earlier counsel to heart—the momentum of the Large Sword wielded in both hands felt unmistakably different now.
That he had fought one-handed until now was likely out of respect for the customs of this Martial World.
A true martial artist must display seven parts of their strength and conceal three.
This was the law of survival.
“It’s certainly different from before.”
Namgung Cheon also nodded in agreement.
The change was in technique alone, yet it yielded far greater destructive force, and the arc of the blade appeared to have shifted considerably as well.
But.
“That’s all there is to it, though?”
Sa Do-hak muttered this with an expression of indifference, watching the exchange unfold. A mere year or so of training was scarcely enough to make such techniques truly one’s own.
Ma Dok-jin had just committed a grave error.
One does not employ what one has not mastered.
Least of all in a battle for life and death.
Unless it were one’s final, killing stroke, revealing everything at once only meant the opponent’s eye would soon grow accustomed to it. And then what?
“Gah!”
Kwon Mu-jin, bearing cuts and tears across his body, was beginning to grow familiar with the pattern of the descending Large Sword. The blade no longer touched him; instead, the flow of his Twin Swords grew only fiercer.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
The bright ringing that echoed seemed almost rhythmic. Ma Dok-jin swung the massive blade in desperate arcs, barely managing to keep it at bay, yet his situation was plainly deteriorating.
Composure had drained from Ma Dok-jin’s face.
And cold sweat poured down him like rain.
Each stroke. Each blade.
Whenever the Twin Swords aimed for his throat, he could not hide the chill that ran through him. His heart seized again and again, and each time it was as though he teetered between this world and the next.
Grit!
Ma Dok-jin ground his teeth.
He did not want to die.
Certainly not at the end of Kwon Mu-jin’s blade.
That was not why he had come here.
He drove one foot forward to meet the incoming Twin Swords, pushing them aside—a step that felt as though he were crossing the threshold of the underworld itself.
In that instant, Kwon Mu-jin’s blade pierced his chest.
Thud!
“……!”
Yet the blade missed by a hair’s breadth and pierced his shoulder instead.
It seemed as though Ma Dok-jin had aimed for it from the start. Another of Kwon Mu-jin’s blades flew toward his neck, but he evaded it with nothing more than a quick duck of his head.
Then Ma Dok-jin took another step forward.
The blade lodged in his shoulder drove deeper inward. Kwon Mu-jin tried to wrench it free, but the muscles clenched around it so fiercely that it wouldn’t come loose.
Craaash!
Ma Dok-jin’s large sword cut through Kwon Mu-jin with absurd ease. From shoulder to toe. The wound was shallow, yet deep enough to call a severe injury without question.
Blood sprayed.
But there was no time to think about pain.
Kwon Mu-jin swiftly extended his blade to deflect the large sword coming at him again, then drove his own weapon straight toward Ma Dok-jin’s chest.
Squelch!
“Gahhh!”
A hair’s breadth between life and death.
Perhaps that phrase was made for precisely this moment.
The large sword he thought he’d parried stopped just short of Kwon Mu-jin’s throat. Kwon Mu-jin’s lodged blade pierced clean through Ma Dok-jin’s heart.
Had he been even a moment slower, it would have been Kwon Mu-jin who died, not Ma Dok-jin.
Shlick!
As he withdrew the blade, Ma Dok-jin’s body collapsed. His pupils dilated as he fell, his body convulsing—whether from dying so instantly he hadn’t even time to gasp for breath, or for some other reason.
He looked like a fish in its final moments.
“Haah… haah…”
Kwon Mu-jin breathed hard and ragged.
He touched his throat with one hand and sank to his knees.
To say he had exhausted himself would not be an exaggeration.
Already bearing severe injuries from his match with Yuk Gyeom-sa, he had faced Ma Dok-jin in that condition—his body and mind could only collapse from the strain.
Drip, drip.
Blood streamed down from the gash across his chest.
If he didn’t stop the bleeding soon, death was certain.
Yet Kwon Mu-jin laughed.
He laughed, gazing at the corpse of Ma Dok-jin.
A faint smile played at the corners of his mouth as his gaze shifted to Dan Woo-hyun. To that expression announcing his victory, Dan Woo-hyun gave a quiet nod.
“Well done.”
It was only a few words, tossed out almost offhandedly—yet they carried weight. Kwon Mu-jin beamed at them, a smile deeper than anything before, and then collapsed where he stood.
“My, my. Might as well be a corpse.”
Sa Do-hak exhaled softly and caught Kwon Mu-jin as he fell. His fingers darted across pressure points in rapid succession, and the flow of blood ceased in an instant.
“What’s the next move?”
Namgung Cheon, who had been watching everything unfold, posed the question.
In the end, they had killed Ma Dok-jin.
It would be no exaggeration to say they had made an enemy of Mu Hwang Fortress.
So would they join hands with the Murim Alliance or the Cheon Do Society?
Namgung Cheon rejected that line of reasoning as well.
The moment his curiosity reached its peak, Dan Woo-hyun’s calm voice cut through the silence.
“Send the body to Mu Hwang Fortress.”
“…!”
“What?!”
Both men stared at Dan Woo-hyun in shock.

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