Chronicles of the Martial God’s Return - Chapter 47

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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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“Good grief!”
Hong Won-chang couldn’t gather his wits. Hidden projectiles and blade flashes were whizzing past from every direction, close enough to slice his skin.
One solid hit and he’d be done for.
He had to reach somewhere safe, and fast.
That thought alone convinced him it was wiser than drawing his blade and throwing himself recklessly at these men.
And the safest place he could think of was—
“Great Master!”
Dodging one slash after another, he barely managed to slip alongside Dan Woo-hyun.
The man stood as if this brawl didn’t concern him in the slightest.
Hong Won-chang sidled up with a nervous chuckle.
“You should be fighting.”
“Pardon?”
“Those bailiffs aren’t your men?”
“Of course they are! But naturally I must protect the Great Master’s life, so I’ll remain at your side to guard you!”
Dan Woo-hyun let out a soft laugh at this transparent excuse.
The man had simply come here to stay alive.
“You want to live so badly?”
“Well, naturally…”
“Lower your head and show proper respect. Say ‘I apologize.'”
“…Pardon?”
“You didn’t hear me?”
Whistle!
Crack!
In that instant, a blade flashed toward Hong Won-chang’s throat.
Had Dan Woo-hyun not reached out in that split second to block it, his neck would have been severed.
Dan Woo-hyun caught the blade lightly and twisted it.
The sword edge warped like a whirlpool, the torque traveling up the blade’s length until the swordsman’s entire body contorted in kind.
Crunch!
“Argh!”
The man let out a strangled cry and crumpled into an unnatural heap. Hong Won-chang, now white as a sheet, clamped his hand over his mouth and trembled.
He’d thought himself used to this life by now, but watching a corpse arranged like that made his stomach churn.
“That’s another life you owe me.”
“I… Great Master?”
“You should be saying ‘Thank you for saving my life.'”
Hong Won-chang paused to think.
The man was bold, composed, and in many ways remarkably tolerant—yet sometimes he seemed oddly petty.
This was probably due to that earlier slip of his tongue.
Cold sweat dripped down Hong Won-chang’s face as he forced himself to speak.
“Th… thank you for saving my life, Great Master…”
“Good, good. Since it won’t be the last time, you might as well spend your whole life grateful.”
Hong Won-chang laughed awkwardly in return.

***

Ring!
Namgung So-hye’s Sword Technique was swift and heavy.
Weighted with power, wielded with precision, and tempered at times with fluidity, her swordwork drew involuntary admiration—proof enough that the Namgung Family deserved its place as foremost among the Eight Great Families.
‘There are too many of them.’
Yet Namgung So-hye bit her lip hard.
Among all these fighters, only Kwon Mu-jin was proving genuinely useful.
For reasons she couldn’t fathom, Dan Woo-hyun hadn’t entered the fray, and Jang Sam-tae was so outmatched that she was grateful he wasn’t actively hindering the effort.
It fell to her and Kwon Mu-jin alone to subdue them all.
And to make it worse, Dan Woo-hyun had ordered them taken alive.
Capturing opponents in a melee like this was fiendishly difficult. It would have been far simpler to just cut them down.
Following Dan Woo-hyun’s command in such a situation seemed absurd—but the moment she glanced sideways at Kwon Mu-jin beside her, her perspective shifted.
Kwon Mu-jin was methodically securing his opponents.
With his Dual Blades, he blocked every incoming strike, moved with unhurried grace, and struck pressure points with surgical precision.
Or she’d broken their legs or knocked them unconscious so they couldn’t move.
‘Not against this one!’
Namgung So-hye’s eyes blazed with fighting spirit as she gnashed her teeth.
She was a member of the Orthodox Faction, and even if Kwon Mu-jin had left the Evil Faction, his origins didn’t change.
Moreover, since he’d once served under Ma Do-jin, her competitive fire burned white-hot.
The reason she fought with only her scabbard instead of drawing her blade was rooted in that same fire.
Thwack! Thwack!
“Argh!”
“Oof!”
The sharp grunts and the solid impact reverberated through her arms, confirming each opponent had lost consciousness.
But their numbers were greater than expected, and they’d trained adequately—gradually she found herself pressed back.
Then, from the right, she felt a sharp presence closing in.
She turned her head sharply just as a man thrust his sword at her.
The attack was blindingly fast, and he’d closed the distance so quickly that even dodging seemed nearly impossible.
Her eyes went wide for an instant.
Slice!
The man’s body split cleanly in two.
“You…….”
It was Kwon Mu-jin who’d handled it.
Blood-smeared Dual Blades in both hands, a faint, sardonic smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“You only need someone with a mouth that works. Why are you trying to capture them all alive when they’re not even skilled enough to talk? Fool.”
“Tch!”
There was nothing wrong with what he said.
There was no need to capture them all alive. In fact, as long as they drew breath, wasn’t that enough?
Namgung So-hye’s eyes flared, and she drew her blade.
For a moment her gaze flickered toward Dan Woo-hyun, and she caught sight of a peculiar smile on his face.
She disliked this one and that one equally.
Slice!
“Gahhh!”
Severing an arm didn’t kill them.
Cutting the tendons in a leg didn’t kill them.
In the end, all that mattered was having a mouth capable of speaking, wasn’t it?
Namgung So-hye’s eyes blazed, and she charged forward.
Her blade, which had hesitated before, now bit deeper and more viciously than ever.

***

“There are some with moderate injuries, but… well, I’d say the situation is quite favorable, wouldn’t you?”
Hong Won-chang gazed at the thirty-some fallen bodies, speaking with evident satisfaction.
“More of them alive than I expected.”
“Hmm?”
“There are two who can’t use a sword properly.”
Dan Woo-hyun smiled, glancing between Jang Sam-tae and Namgung So-hye. He’d thought restraining those two would be difficult, yet the number of dead barely exceeded seven.
The smile lingering at the corners of his mouth didn’t fade, as if he found this vastly amusing.
“Hah… hah… I’m actually alive, aren’t I?”
Just then, Jang Sam-tae dropped to the ground, breathing heavily. Most of the suppression had been handled by Kwon Mu-jin and Namgung So-hye, but Jang Sam-tae hadn’t been idle either.
He’d dispatched about five of them himself.
“Very much alive. Your neck is intact too.”
“Ha ha! That’s all thanks to you, Lord Jang!”
Jang Sam-tae seemed astonished by the simple fact that he was still breathing. Indeed, facing such masters without losing an arm or a leg, remaining whole—wasn’t that pure fortune?
He rose to his feet, laughing heartily.
Namgung So-hye stood there looking exhausted, when suddenly she turned her gaze toward Jang Sam-tae.
He was training in Taiji Quan, which surely wasn’t even third-rate martial art, yet he didn’t bear a single wound. That struck her as peculiar.
“You… subdued all these people with that third-rate martial art?”
“Third-rate? That’s not third-rate martial art!”
“Taiji Quan isn’t worth even a single coin of silver in the streets.”
“Tsk! Don’t say such things. If you weren’t connected to Lord Jang, I’d have taught you a harsh lesson! What do you know about Taiji Quan anyway?”
“About… that Taiji Quan?”
“It’s the Supreme Technique!”
Watching him mutter nonsense, Namgung So-hye turned her head away.
If Jang Sam-tae’s words held truth, then countless practitioners of Taiji Quan throughout Zhongyuan would all have mastered the Supreme Technique—and the Martial World would be flooded with the highest-caliber masters capable of overturning everything.
Namgung So-hye’s expression turned bemused, and Jang Sam-tae broke into a grin.
‘You don’t follow, do you?’
Truth be told, Jang Sam-tae himself didn’t fully grasp the true value of the refined Taiji Quan he was studying.
Not long ago, when he’d captured the bandits and returned to the Jang Estate with the opium, Dan Woo-hyun had said something like this to him.

“Does the martial art you’ve been learning—Taiji Quan—strike you as merely gymnastics for maintaining health?”
“Is it not?”
“Who created it?”
“Jang Sam-bong.”

At that moment, Dan Woo-hyun had gazed up at the sky with an expression as though recalling a longed-for face.
Jang Sam-tae didn’t understand why, but something compelled him to listen intently and watch.

“Created by someone Wudang reveres as an honored ancestor—how could it possibly be mere gymnastics? Perhaps there are secrets within that Taiji Quan that countless people have failed to perceive. Secrets even Jang Sam-bong himself never unraveled.”
“Yes?”
“Someone may have released it to the world, hoping that another would unlock that Profound Understanding.”

At the time, there had been too much urgency to dwell on such thoughts.
But since returning to the Jang Estate, wrestling with the question repeatedly, the answer had become clear.
Dan Woo-hyun was not a man given to falsehood.
Though he spoke in roundabout ways and rarely offered direct answers, his words implied one thing: this Taiji Quan was precisely a Supreme Technique that even Jang Sam-bong had never managed to perfect.
And Jang Sam-tae had learned Taiji Quan directly from Dan Woo-hyun.
Admittedly, Dan Woo-hyun hadn’t taught him by guiding his hands and feet formally—merely speaking in the manner of flowing water, natural and unhurried—yet Jang Sam-tae had taken to recording those words afterward so he could return to them later.
Learning Taiji Quan in this way, he might someday unearth that hidden secret. The thought alone kept a smile playing at his lips.
“Why are you grinning like that? It’s unsettling.”
“Heh heh, don’t worry about it!”
Jang Sam-tae spun on his heel and dashed toward Dan Woo-hyun in a blur. Namgung So-hye watched his receding figure in silence, her lips pursed thoughtfully.
“Remarkable, isn’t he?”
“……Are you asking me?”
“Of course. There’s no one else here but you.”
“Ha!”
Kwon Mu-jin had drawn near without warning, muttering beside her. Though she’d rather not have admitted it, his assessment was undeniably correct.
“What he’s learned is unquestionably Taiji Quan. Yet he grows visibly stronger with each passing day—all thanks to this Dan Woo-hyun.”
“Is that why you follow him?”
“Of course. I wish to climb higher still.”
Kwon Mu-jin left those words hanging and turned to bind the fallen bodies—as though there was nothing more worth discussing.
Yet his remark lingered in Namgung So-hye’s ear, refusing to fade. She bit her lip again and kept her eyes fixed on Jang Sam-tae and Dan Woo-hyun beside him.
‘It makes no sense……this cannot be.’
No matter how she turned it over in her mind, her understanding of the world could not accommodate what she was witnessing.

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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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