Defying the Heavens Scholar - Chapter 34

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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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Yeok Jin Method Chapter 34

Chapter 34. Gwilyu Myeoldo.

The moment three former members of Amyeoung Gak stepped forward in unison, the wind’s grain skating across the Ridge twisted as if made visible to the naked eye.
At the sight of them, I tightened my grip on my sword.
My muscles tensed, but mercifully my body didn’t stiffen. If anything, my senses grew sharper, my mind unnaturally calm.
Even I couldn’t trace the source of that composure.
They stood as though they’d already chosen their opponents—facing Tae Jun Mu, Yeon Hwa Rin, and me in turn.
Just as a sluggish wind swept across the Ridge in an indifferent caress, the first blade came carving down.

My eyes tracked it. I could follow the trajectory’s arc, could see exactly where it aimed. But my body couldn’t keep pace.

A difference in Realm.

These men existed in a different dimension from anyone I’d faced before.
Their presence and depth were truly awe-inspiring—an unbridgeable wall I dared not challenge.

‘If it feels this strong… does that mean they’ve entered the Hwa Gyeong, just like Senior Tae?’

Though it seemed difficult to call it exactly the same Realm as his.
From what I could sense, there was considerable gap between their aura and Tae Jun Mu’s.
Yet even this was so overwhelming… I could only feel bewildered and astounded.

As that confusion pressed against my heart, his blade drew another diagonal line and came slashing down.
A heartless sword—free of emotion, devoid of any killing intent.
But its weight alone was devastating.

“Don’t be absurd!”

With Tae Jun Mu’s sharp rebuke, the blade meant for me bounced back in the opposite direction.
Tae Jun Mu, his tiger-like eyes wide open, had deflected the sword aura coming at me.

Tae Jun Mu fighting with everything he had.
Whenever a dangerous sword aura threatened to reach me, he shared his Inner Energy to parry it aside,
and Yeon Hwa Rin likewise fought with careful watchfulness.
So despite being vastly unequal in strength, the battle maintained an illusion of balance.

“Troublesome!”

A booming voice erupted from Tae Jun Mu’s mouth.
With it, his opponent was shoved back forcefully. But Dok Go Hwan immediately rushed into the gap left behind.

“Remarkable! Truly one of the Ten Masters of the Martial Realm! Despite serving the Demonic Sect, I can only marvel at your skill. But what a pity—that you have only one body. Trying to protect both the Crown Prince and the Third at once must be so taxing.”
“Cursed bastard!”

As expected, Dok Go Hwan didn’t let Tae Jun Mu go. His opponent, pushed back, quickly regained his footing and threw himself forward with renewed ferocity.
In that moment, the next blade came at me. I barely blocked it without Tae Jun Mu’s aid.
Its force was tremendous enough to shake my very bones. A sensation crawled up my wrist, delivering a stark warning: flee if you want to live.

But I couldn’t flee, so I clenched my teeth and braced myself.
Then came the next technique in sequence.
With Tae Jun Mu no longer there to prop me up, its force became truly terrifying. His heartless blade came at me like a hook, ready to rend my body in two.
Directions I couldn’t possibly anticipate. Currents of movement I couldn’t read.
His sword had already begun tearing through my collar in shreds.

A terrible pressure I’d never felt before now gripped me. The thought that I might actually die here seared through my chest and traveled down to my hands.
Blood, metallic and warm, trickled between my clenched teeth. Even Tae Jun Mu and Yeon Hwa Rin were locked in fierce combat—their labored breathing hammered against my ears.

Yet after just three exchanges, I’d been pushed back more than six paces before regaining my stance.
My trembling hands betrayed me—the blade wavered slightly in my grip.
The master from Amyeoung Gak tilted his head curiously as I steadied myself, then advanced with a single deliberate step.
I couldn’t fathom why he’d tilted his head, but it seemed he’d expected me to fall within those three exchanges—and my survival had left him puzzled.

“Well? Has your thinking changed at all?”

Dok Go Hwan lowered his blade and posed the question, and for a moment, our clash ceased.
Even he seemed shaken by my endurance through three exchanges—his eyes had hardened with a gravity wholly absent before. I offered no reply. I simply fixed my gaze upon the figure before me.

“Hwang Dae In. It’s not too late even now. Leave Yeon Hwa Rin behind and join hands with me. Should you enter my service, I’ll spare no effort in granting you—not merely your life, but whatever conditions your heart desires.”
“That won’t be necessary.”

My curt reply drew his brow into a fine furrow. Then, in a flash, his eyes blazed with renewed fury.
At my refusal, Dok Go Hwan gave a sharp nod, and the next assault began.

“You’ll soon learn how hollow that pride of yours truly is.”

A blade thrust straight at my chest. Beneath it, a torrent of raw energy coiling upward to bind my legs.
The blade before me blazed with dense Sword Intent, threatening my heart, while the energy at my waist locked both my feet in place. I surged my Inner Energy forward and struck his blade aside once more. But that was far from the end.
The force binding my legs suddenly surged upward, now threatening my head.
I jerked my face to the side and evaded, but I couldn’t escape his follow-up kick.

I couldn’t draw breath. Before my spinning senses could clear, his fist drove deep into my abdomen.

The impact was so violent that the stone caved inward where he struck it, and countless shards cascaded down around his head.

The Amyeoung Gak master, advancing toward the fallen Myo Jin, tilted his head once more as Tae Jun Mu moved to intercept him, then raised his blade. In that instant, a catastrophic collision erupted.
The air split asunder, and the ground beneath Tae Jun Mu’s feet cracked and buckled.

He glanced swiftly toward Yeon Hwa Rin, but she too seemed far from advantage.
Tae Jun Mu gritted his teeth and pressed forward again. Fists clashed, blades shattered, and the Ridge trembled violently. Yet the Amyeoung Gak warrior would not yield.
Instead, the master who had been fighting Tae Jun Mu from the start dove in to lend his strength.

In that moment, the entire nature of the battle shifted. Tae Jun Mu’s shoulder split open.
Blood sprayed. His breathing grew ragged. Still, he refused to retreat.

His senses severed one by one, and his vision darkened.
He couldn’t feel where his breath went or how far it traveled. Then, slowly, consciousness began to sink.
His mind grew hazy, but it did not vanish entirely.

Darkness descended beyond the haze of awareness. It felt not like an empty void, but like a place where everything lay submerged.
No sound, no light, and even the sensation of having a body had faded into dimness—yet somehow the awareness of ‘I’ remained unbroken.
How long this state lasted, he couldn’t say. The very concept of time seemed to lose meaning.
Fleeting, indistinct shapes brushed past.

‘Mother… Hwang Dae In…’

When the faces of those two people—whom he had longed to see so desperately in days past—wavered before his eyes, his chest tightened.
His mother, as always, gazed at him with a warm smile.
Yet that smile carried an inexplicable sorrow, as though she were asking him: ‘Are you all right?’

Hwang Dae In patted his shoulder and spoke. His voice made no sound, but mercifully, he could read the shape of his lips.

‘I wish to hear the secret verses of Mencius that Myo Jin first taught you.’

At those words, he nodded.

‘When Heaven is about to bestow a great responsibility upon a person, it must first shake his heart, exhaust his body, starve him, and confound his purpose. This is done so that he might accomplish what was once beyond his reach.’

When he spoke these words, Hwang Dae In smiled gently and nodded in return.
Then he said something more to him.

‘Yes. That is your support, your worth. Remember this. And become stronger.’

With those words, the two figures faded into the darkness.

What Hwang Dae In left behind stirred great waves within him.
My support. My worth.
What, then, was the strength that would let him endure this harsh life?
He gazed up into the hollow void and posed the question to himself.

‘What do I fight with?’

With raw power? No. Then with realm? That either.
He already knew the truth: his current realm was merely at the tail end of First Class, and before them, he was nothing at all.
Then the answer became clearer. He could never fight them using their methods.
So what was his greatest advantage?
The answer to that question already lay within him, accumulated and crystalline.

The countless martial techniques he had witnessed in Musim Cave.
Orthodox and heterodox schools alike, techniques even from the Demonic Sect—so many that he could not name them all, yet they were stored within his mind.
They were not merely seen but carved into his body through countless repetitions within the Yeok Jin Method.
In that space where time flowed slowly, he had encountered what others could barely grasp in a lifetime of devotion, had struggled to understand their essence, and had driven himself relentlessly so as never to forget them.

And the Nameless Heart Method—his own technique, perfected upon the foundations of Buddhist, Daoist, and Demonic inner cultivation.
Foolishly, though he had created this method himself, he had never wielded it correctly.

Finally, the Doyujeonwui Gyeong.
What Man Tong had taught him—the principle of drawing an opponent into his own space. Not merely to fight, but to transform the arena of battle itself.
All of this already dwelled within him. Yet why had he failed to employ it fully?
Why, with so much at his command, did he fight using only a single approach?

The answer was simple: because he had never woven them together into one.
They remained separate. Though he knew them, though he had cultivated and refined them fiercely within the Yeok Jin Method, each existed in its own form. He merely drew upon what he needed in the moment, never connecting them into a unified flow.

‘That’s it… This is no excuse about lacking realm. I simply haven’t unleashed myself completely.’

The moment he arrived at that understanding, the countless martial techniques scattered throughout his mind began to organize themselves in a single direction. Receiving blows, deflecting them, breaking them, reading the flow, shifting space itself.
The sensation crystallized with sudden clarity: all of these were not in collision with one another, but could be connected by a single thread.
It was not perfect. It was not yet complete in this moment.
Yet it was possible. I had grasped that possibility.

Gwilyu Myeoldo.
To draw in all scattered flows, to shatter the path those flows once followed, and at last to converge everything into myself alone.

This martial technique could not be perfectly defined by sword, fist, spear, or staff—nor did it belong to any school, faction, or principle.
This was not a single martial technique. It was everything I had walked through, bound together by force alone…….

A single Martial Way.

‘Ah…….’

Beams of light pierce through the descending darkness. My blurred vision clears, embracing the world with sudden sharpness.
Consciousness returns.

* * *

My body remained heavy. A splitting pain crawled up my shoulders and ribs, and with each breath, deep within my lungs felt as though they were tearing. Yet that pain no longer held me captive.
I pressed my palms against the floor and slowly pushed myself upright.

My knees trembled. But I did not stop.

“……Elder Tae. It is not yet over.”
“Myo Jin……!”

Tae Jun Mu, already worn down to the edge of exhaustion by the enemy’s relentless assault, looked back at me with trembling eyes, unaware of the blood flowing from his own mouth.

“Forgive me. And this time…… I will see it through to the end.”

I grasped my blade. Yet it was not merely a blade I held.
Now, at last, I knew what it was I held in my hand.

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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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