Defying the Heavens Scholar - Chapter 20

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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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Yeokcheon Seomsaeng, Chapter 20

Chapter 20. Mantong.

The air where the Formation Array dissolved was strangely light.

One layer. Two layers.

As the mist that had been strangling my throat receded, the scent of Cheongnim finally came through as a “forest”—at last, unmistakable.
Wet moss, rotting leaves, the cold water-spray of a distant waterfall.
And yet my body could not fully receive that scent.

The Confused Soul Poison.

Yes. What I had just breathed in was Confused Soul Poison that someone had deliberately suspended in the air.
Under normal circumstances, I would have burned away the poison that had seeped into my body using the Mummyeong Heart Method.
But in the process of dismantling the Formation Array, I had feared that if I summoned my Inner Energy, it might distort the array itself—so I had held back, and that very caution had become my poison.
Even now I longed to burn away the medicinal Qi that had burrowed into my body with my Inner Energy, but it was already too late.
While I lay unconscious, something acrid clawed into my nostrils and pulled me back to awareness.
As my senses returned, I found someone looking down at me.

An old man with hair white as frost.

His robe was plain, and he carried nothing in his hands.
Yet the space where he stood seemed strangely ordered.
Fallen leaves stopped in their tracks at his feet; the water-mist seemed to flow around the line of his shoulders, avoiding him.
He looked me over from head to foot once, then let out a single word.

“You—did you dismantle this Formation Array?”

The old man’s voice was calm.
Which made it all the more startling. In that single measured phrase, both layers of the Formation Array I had struggled through seemed to shrink into nothing but a child’s game.

“…Yes.”

At my answer, the old man’s eyes narrowed.
And for the briefest moment, surprise flickered across his gaze.

“Ha.”

The old man laughed—a sound too short, too thin to be called laughter.

“So you have talent.”

The moment those words ended, his head turned to one side.

“Kangno.”

Kangno, leaning against a tree with both eyes bound tightly in white cloth, went rigid at the sound of that voice alone.

“M—Master?”

His lips trembled several times before those words could escape.
Then he bent forward with an urgency that seemed almost unbelievable. His knees found the ground, and his palms pressed into the earth.

Thud.

It was a kowtow—precise in direction despite his blindness.

“Master……!”

Kangno’s voice was thick with emotion.
In that trembling tone, remorse and longing were tangled together.
Yet the old man did not move. Instead, he spoke more quietly, more coldly still.

“The one who fled, claiming to despise this place…… now comes to kneel?”

The edge of his words turned sharp.

“How lightly you walk through life.”

Kangno’s shoulders sagged. He did not dare lift his head.
The old man took a step forward. Just one step, and yet the air itself changed.
The moisture of Cheongnim scattered from the old man’s feet as if dispersed by his presence.
That delicate thread of Formation Array that I had torn through the very fabric of to capture—for him, it was as natural as breathing.

The old man’s gaze fell upon the elder Kangno’s face.
Beneath the white cloth, stitches visible around his eyes. The marks of old wounds gone hard and brittle.
And cheeks hollowed to bone, lips cracked and split.
The old man’s expression remained calm, yet that calmness flickered—only for a moment.
As though someone had pressed invisibly upon his chest with an unseen hand.

…….

His words ceased. The silence weighed upon the air.
Kangno bowed deeper into that silence. The backs of his hands grew damp.

“I have…… committed wrongs. Master.”

The old man did not answer. But his eyes changed.
A tenderness buried deep within, and the longing for a disciple who had rushed headlong into the world—all of it flickered across his gaze.

‘My only disciple.’

That truth had never altered. In those days when he wandered the realm, had he not taken only one disciple—this one, whose brilliance so far surpassed the ordinary that he had chosen him alone?

‘Ah…….’

At the sight of his disciple’s wretched state, Mantong released a deep sigh.
Then came the sound of footsteps from a distance. Heavy, even as they crushed fallen leaves beneath them.
A stride that seemed to shake the forest itself. I turned instinctively toward the sound.

A man was approaching. His build was massive as a mountain, his shoulders broad as stone.
His clothes were plain, but his exposed arms and neck were densely covered in scars.
Blade marks, spear gashes, burns from molten metal.
Each wound layered upon the last, making even his face appear roughened by an additional thickness of suffering.

He carried in one hand a large bundle.
Fresh meat, its blood still wet—freshly caught. The man’s steps halted as his eyes found us.
His gaze fixed upon the kneeling Kangno. His head tilted slowly to one side.

“You……?”

His voice was rough, yet strangely warm.
The man dropped his burden and hurried forward urgently. Fallen leaves scattered like hills beneath his feet.
He knelt down before Kangno and grasped the slender man’s thin hand in both of his own. Kangno’s hand looked fragile within those massive palms.

“Are you Kangno, disciple of Mantong?”

Kangno caught his breath, startled. A tremor passed through the white cloth beneath his hands.

“Taejunmu… sir?”

One of the rare acquaintances of Mantong, who was said to master every weapon under heaven.

Iron Prowess. Taejunmu.
He did not release Kangno’s hand, his face twisting with emotion.
Not surprise—but the anguish of a wounded heart.

“How could one so brilliant have come to such a state?”

The honesty of those words broke something in Kangno’s chest.
Instead of answering, he bowed his head deeper—as if his very appearance were an admission of guilt.
Taejunmu clenched his teeth, then lifted his gaze toward Mantong.

“Mantong…!”

Reproach threaded through his voice.
But the reproach crumbled almost at once.
The same turbulent emotion was churning in Mantong’s eyes.
Taejunmu steadied himself with a breath, then turned back to Kangno.

“Did you know? Do you know why your master has remained here so long?”

Taejunmu gripped Kangno’s hand firmly, speaking slowly.

“Waiting—hoping you might return, even after you followed the Imperial Court away.”

At those words, Kangno’s fingers trembled violently.

……

Taejunmu continued, threading his words carefully through the sound of the cascade.

“On that hope alone, Mantong has not left Cheongnim.”

At this, Kangno bowed his head still lower.
But this bow was different from before.
Not seeking forgiveness for a transgression, but grasping for something collapsing within.

“Master…”

Those words were drenched more deeply than the mist upon Cheongnim’s waters.
Mantong said nothing. Instead, he exhaled—a short, sharp breath.

“Pointless talk.”

Taejunmu laughed softly—not a scoff, but a laugh that understood and chose not to see.

“Come now. Rise.”

Kangno could not move. I watched, biting my lip.

“Tsk, tsk. You’ve come back without even the strength to stand?”

His words were harsh. Yet that harshness, strangely, did not deny the fact of his return.
As Kangno’s lips trembled, Taejunmu stepped forward carefully.

“Mantong. Right now… this wretch….”
“Close your mouth.”

Taejunmu’s words were cut short.
Mantong swallowed his anger by force, then carefully steadied Kangno instead.
Kangno’s weight was impossibly light—like a reed that might snap in the wind.
I felt Mantong’s gaze turn back toward me.

“You.”

A single syllable. That one word tightened around my throat.
I tried to push myself up, but the lingering traces of the Confused Soul Poison still pressed against my temples.

“How did you break the Formation Array?”

The question was simple. I drew one breath to steady myself, then spoke as briefly as I could.

“I found… the point where the pattern wavered.”
“The point where it wavered.”

Mantong repeated the words slowly. His eyes narrowed.

“Easy enough to say.”

Instead of answering, I lifted my fingertips and gestured toward the pile of fallen leaves on the ground.
Beneath them lay the faint traces I’d left while breaking through—a line swept clear by the edge of my foot.
To most eyes, just a scratch in the earth. But to one who understood the pattern, that line revealed precisely where it had been severed. Mantong’s eyes brushed across the mark, then returned to my face.

“An intriguing one, aren’t you.”

With that, Mantong approached Kangno.

“Kangno.”

Kangno answered in a trembling voice.

“Yes, Master.”
“How long have you been like this?”

Kangno bowed his head in silence, and Mantong pressed further.

“Speak precisely.”
“Around the time I left Mushimdong. Or rather, before that. On the day when the Imperial Court’s blade and Huashan’s blade clashed, their force swept through my body.”

Mantong’s eyes went cold.

“Your Dantian?”
“It was destroyed from the start.”

Mantong’s gaze lowered to Kangno’s wrist.
He lifted a single fingertip and placed it lightly on Kangno’s meridian point.

Inch. Gate. Cubit.

Once. And once more. In that instant, Mantong’s fingertips stilled.

“……Who touched it.”

At that question, I felt my mouth go dry.

“I did, sir.”

Mantong’s gaze turned toward me.

“What medicine qi did you use?”

I hesitated, then finally answered. Those were eyes that would dig deeper if I tried to hide anything.

“……A Resonance Pill, sir.”

The words left my mouth, and Mantong’s fingertips stopped once more. Very briefly.
So briefly that someone careless would miss it entirely.

“A Resonance Pill…….”

Mantong rolled the word around in his mouth.

“Half a dose, then.”

It was not a question. It was confirmation. The traces left on the meridians were telling him exactly that.
Mantong’s eyes swept across my face once.
Wherever that gaze passed, I felt as though my inner energy was being laid bare.
He pressed his fingers to Kangno’s meridians again. This time longer, deeper.

“……You straightened out the tangled meridians once. Then immediately calmed and stabilized the acupoints.”

Cold sweat broke out along my spine.
He was right. Exactly right.
I hadn’t stopped at driving the Resonance Pill’s medicine qi inward.
To keep the meridians from raging out of control, I’d pressed down once more to safely settle them.
It wasn’t something I’d learned from books—it was a technique I’d barely mastered after countless failures using my own body as the crucible.
Mantong spoke quietly.

“This is not something skill alone can accomplish. Nor is it something you can rely on luck to achieve.”

I swallowed hard at his words.

“To reach this level of mastery…… it bears the marks of learning through thousands upon thousands of failures.”

It was a piercing judgment.

“Tell me why Gongtongpa gave you the Resonance Pill.”
“Gongtongpa happened to hold a Martial Tournament, and I participated as an outside contestant and received it as the prize.”

At that answer, Mantong’s eyebrows shot up.

“You won it?”
“Yes, sir.”

He added, almost to himself.

“I see…… that makes sense. If they could secure talent like this for a Resonance Pill, they’d count themselves fortunate indeed.”

Then his gaze descended once more to Kangno’s wrist.

“But you and Kangno both owe a debt to the Gongtongpa. You say the Resonance Pill was earned fairly, yet if they hadn’t agreed to it, you couldn’t have even attempted the thing.”
“……”
“Do you have the strength to repay that debt?”

The question tightened around my throat. But in the same breath, I recalled why I had come this far.
I clenched my teeth and answered.

“I’ll make myself capable of it.”

Mantong looked me over once more. When his gaze finished, he turned away.

“Bold, aren’t you.”

Mantong continued walking, but after a few steps he paused and spoke calmly.

“You have many questions to ask. Follow 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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