Defying the Heavens Scholar - Chapter 16

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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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Yeokjin’s Servant, Chapter 16

Chapter 16. The Unnyeong Geombeop.

The air above the platform was cool and, at the same time, crystalline.
Even the sound of a man drawing breath seemed as though it would be caught on the sword’s point and severed.
And Jeong Yeon, standing below the platform, no longer kept his head bowed.

—Watch carefully. My master, Jeong Yeon, was not mistaken…… I will show you the true form of the Unnyeong Geombeop.

Those words still reverberated in his ears.
The shame remained, the indignation remained, the bitter sting of defeat remained—but over it all, something sharper moved Jeong Yeon.

‘Will he really…… show me?’

Jeong Yeon’s fingers tightened around his scabbard, the knuckles blanching white.
His eyes fixed on the platform, unwavering not for a moment.
What he wanted to see was not victory. What he wanted to see was the true grain of the Unnyeong.

That which he had grasped for a month yet never truly caught—the essence of the Unnyeong Geombeop.
He wanted to confirm that the meanings he had awakened to, refined, and endured alone were indeed not mistaken.

‘But…… his opponent is Mudang-pa. Even if Myo Jin is the champion of the External Martial Tournament, can the Unnyeong Geombeop alone overcome Mudang-pa?’

In their brief exchange, the principle of Unnyeong had passed between them. Through that conversation, Jeong Yeon had glimpsed another path entirely.
He believed that Myo Jin, who had shown him that path, was no ordinary man.
Yet how he would fight, Jeong Yeon could not predict at all. From the moment of arrival here, martial prowess seemed far from his concern.

‘But…… to send me a mind transmission. Did he hide his strength?’

Questions and anticipation crossed his mind simultaneously.
But this was no time for doubts. The heat rising from the platform had already reached his skin.

* * *

Jin Ho had not raised his sword. He had not pointed its tip straight forward.
He merely stood half a step to the side, holding the blade lightly.
A stance that deliberately exposed an opening.
It was nothing less than a provocation toward his opponent.
Gudaemun-pa—and among them, a disciple of the one called Iljeol, the Mudang. His composure was unmistakable.

‘I shall yield the first move.’

It was as though he spoke thus.
When Myo Jin lifted his wooden sword, the referee’s voice split the platform above.
Separately, a murmur spread through the crowd below.

“Mudang-pa gives him a handicap.”
“He’ll let it flow past him.”
“Even the External Martial Tournament champion…… against Mudang-pa.”

Myo Jin adjusted his grip on the wooden sword. There was no need to give his all.
And his gaze swept below the platform. Jeong Yeon’s eyes held him.
Not the eyes of one who had been defeated. The eyes of one who had come to learn.

‘Good.’

Myo Jin smiled slightly.

The first step.

His toes grazed the platform and slid forward without sound.
Not swift, yet without hesitation either.
The wooden sword advanced, carving through empty space.
Neither a cut nor a thrust.
Simply revealing form itself.
Like a cloud reflected on water, an elusive curve arose and dissolved.
A kind of provocation—a declaration that he too would wield the current.
His answer to an opponent who’d underestimated him and yielded the first move.

Jin Ho’s eyebrow twitched, barely perceptible.
He neither blocked nor evaded the blade. He simply let it pass through.
As the sword moved, Myo Jin’s weapon deliberately hollowed the space before it.

The subtle principle of Taegeuk.

A technique as implacable as a Mudang-pa master’s face—yielding when pressed, adhering when pushed back, redirecting when force came hard. Yet the Unnyeong style carved a different grain than Taegeuk’s emptiness.
Myo Jin did not extend the wooden sword to its full reach.
As a cloud scatters on the wind of its own accord, he withdrew the blade’s tip a hair’s breadth sooner.
In that instant, Jin Ho’s motion to receive the strike fouled.

Within the circle, he turned his opponent, strangling breath itself.

Through that anguish, they had become his blood and bone.
Now he had reached a level where he could read not only the foundation and current of a martial technique, but its direction and intent as well.

A flow that seemed to have form yet ultimately eluded the grasp.
Jeong Yeon held his breath.
Something inside his mind was beginning to arrange itself.

Those watching from the platform stirred again.

“Looks like a Daoist sword technique, doesn’t it?”
“Unnyeong…… isn’t that the Unnyeong Geombeop?”
“Unnyeong…… Geombeop?”

“The one that just traces empty air and goes nowhere, they said.”

Those words were the very ones he’d been swallowing for a month.
Yet the flow unfolding on the platform bore no resemblance to that mockery whatsoever.
Each time Jin Ho’s Taegeuk circle pressed and overlapped, the wooden sword did not shatter it.
It did not force it to a halt. Instead, from within the circle, it hollowed the circle itself.

The mockery drained from their faces. In its place, gasps of wonder erupted.

“Is it… is Unnyeong Geombeop truly being used like that in real combat?”
“We thought it was such a rigid, old-fashioned technique……”

Among the elders’ seating, energy stirred. Several of them exchanged knowing glances.

“This flowing style—it eliminates any ground to stand upon. Ah, what a feast for the eyes.”
“The Unnyeong Geombeop was always left with only the saying ‘do not establish form,’ yet never developed a clear path for actual combat. In essence, it was like a Daoist scripture rendered as swordplay.”
“Which is precisely why it came to be dismissed as rigid and archaic.”

An elder from Cheongseong-pa spoke quietly, eyes fixed on the platform.

“But this man here is reinterpreting that very principle—’do not establish form’—in a different light. He blocks without blocking, strikes without striking, yet still shakes his opponent……”

Then the elder from Gongdong-pa drove the point home with a low murmur.

“He has made a cloud…… into his sword.”

Those words fell like a stone into still water. Silence blanketed the elders’ section.
Every face showed the same hunger—no one wanted to miss what came next.
Jin Ho felt the shift too.
The crowd’s gaze no longer rested on ‘the sword of Mudang-pa.’
Everyone now waited for the moment when the subtle principle of Taegeuk would crack.

The ease drained from Jin Ho’s expression.
The knuckles gripping his sword grew taut.

“Good.”

The words fell low and quiet—a declaration that he no longer saw his opponent as a lesser swordsman.

“Then I too shall show you the sword of Mudang.”

Jin Ho’s foot pressed down sharply on the platform with a thud.
The sword moved. This time it was not a circle alone. It began as a circle, then folded that circle into an edge—the blade emerging from the flow itself.

Taehydeok Geomshik.

The reason Mudang’s flowing style was never merely ‘soft.’
Within the current lives the blade; within the blade, the current hides again.
The sword descended in one smooth motion, then shifted direction like a breaking wave, boring straight into Myo Jin’s chest.

Swift.
But more terrifying than speed was precision.
A precision that seemed to follow wherever the opponent fled—finding him no matter how he evaded.
Jeong Yeon’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Jin Ho’s blade.

‘The flow I could never quite overcome… and yet now I’m eager to see how the subtle principle of Unnyeong, how this man Myo Jin’s sword, will dismantle it.’

* * *

The cloud shifts and travels.
The reflection on water changes its outline. The transformation is clear, yet the form remains elusive.
The moment Jin Ho’s blade swept past Myo Jin’s guard, his sword moved again to envelop him.

‘He means to bind me within the circle.’

Do not fight the circle—only empty yourself within it.
Myo Jin’s wooden sword followed the flow of Jin Ho’s blade.
Follow without clinging; cling without losing the thread.

‘And seize the next position.’

One beat. That was all it took.
Jin Ho’s eyes narrowed.

‘Somehow…… he’s reversing my flow.’

Gasps erupted from all corners.

“He didn’t just parry—he stole the path itself?”
“Is that what Unnyeong Geombeop is?”
“A man without a school, and yet……”

Jeong Yeon’s eyes trembled.

‘I wasn’t wrong.’

Unnyeong Geombeop wasn’t about layering flow. It wasn’t about smoothly changing the blade’s trajectory either.
Unnyeong Geombeop was a blade that never established form from the beginning.
Rather than winning through form, it was a current that stripped the opponent of the form they relied upon.

Jin Ho pressed deeper still.
The Taegeuk’s ripple became a blade, then rippled again.
Jeong Yeon clenched his teeth.

‘Can he receive that with Unnyeong Geombeop alone?’

Just then, Myo Jin exhaled slowly. As he did, the wooden sword moved.

The wooden sword rose with deliberate slowness. Slow. Impossibly slow.
Yet that very slowness was terrifying—for Jin Ho found he could not even look directly at the blade.

‘How is this possible……?’

Jin Ho’s question echoed inwardly, but found no answer.

Flustered, Jin Ho’s sword flew straight toward Myo Jin’s throat.
Yet Myo Jin only lowered his blade.
And claimed the very space where Jin Ho’s strike would land.

Whoosh—

A shallow wind swept across the platform. Dust rose from the ground in a haze, swirling in all directions. And there—Jin Ho’s blade, extended in a perfect line.
Yet it never reached Myo Jin’s throat.

Myo Jin’s wooden sword blocked the path at Jin Ho’s wrist.
Had this been real combat rather than a demonstration, Jin Ho’s wrist would have already fallen before his blade could touch Myo Jin’s neck.

“Do you wish to continue?”

At Myo Jin’s words, silence fell as though commanded by some invisible force.
The judges held their tongues. The elders’ section remained still.
Sweat beaded on Jin Ho’s forehead.

“……I concede.”

As Jin Ho acknowledged his defeat, he glanced toward me.
His face showed less the sting of losing than the weight of having tarnished the Mudang-pa’s honor.
He drew a long breath, paused to collect his thoughts, then bowed deeply at the waist.

“I have gained enlightenment through your kindness.”
“The gratitude is mine as well.”

The examiner called out, belatedly.

“The victor! Myo Jin!”

Only then did the crowd erupt in gasps of amazement.

“With a wooden sword against the Mudang-pa……!”
“No, he didn’t win with the blade…… he won with the current.”
“Is that what the Unnyeong Geombeop truly is?”

Someone in the elder’s section exhaled a long, slow breath.

“To break the Mudang-pa’s current…… with a current of his own…….”

I looked down at the platform below.
Jeong Yeon’s face was no longer rigid.
His eyes held an eerie clarity. He could not have grasped everything in a single bout.
But one truth he had surely felt: that Unnyeong was not merely a technique, but a “path.”

Did you see it, I asked silently.

Jeong Yeon’s eyes grew suddenly wet. Those were not tears of shame.
They were something like the sorrow of one who, late though it came, had at last glimpsed the way.
I added one final message.

Jeong Yeon. Today’s defeat is not a breaking—it is a beginning. And keep this mind transmission secret, I ask of you.

Jeong Yeon gave the smallest nod. That small gesture was enough.
I adjusted my grip on the wooden sword and drew a quiet, measured breath.

‘Now only the Gongmyeong Dan and his cure remain.’

At last, the path to saving Kang No had opened before me.

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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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