Fist Demon of Mount Hua - Chapter 23

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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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Episode 23. Finding a Path in Darkness—Part 1
Slither.
Something long and slender forced its way through a crack in the rock. The creature writhing forward was a snake—but not the ordinary kind one might encounter above ground.
The snake crawling along the ground, flicking its long tongue, possessed neither eyes nor ears. Yet even in this darkness, it navigated its chosen path with uncanny precision.
When stones lay in its way, it turned aside; when ravines opened before it, it crossed them. The snake slithered onward toward its destination.
That destination was a narrow crevice in the rock ahead. The snake thrust its head into the gap. Next came its long body.
Just as the snake gathered its strength to push forward—
Suddenly, an enormous force clamped down on the serpent’s body just below its head. Startled by the sudden pressure, the snake reared up.
Crack!
With a sickening snap, the snake’s head tore away entirely. Its body, severed from its head, thrashed wildly in panic. But the strong hands holding it refused to let go.
Crunch, crunch.
In the darkness, someone was chewing the snake’s head.
It was a man whose face was entirely obscured by matted hair and a beard that grew down to his chest, making his features indistinguishable.
The man was naked, not a shred of clothing on him. His skin was deathly pale, as if deprived of sunlight for years on end.
Yet despite that pallid complexion, his body radiated terrible strength. Well-developed muscles stood out like twisted wire, and his skeletal frame was knotted with bone and sinew like the joints of a hammer.
Crunch.
As the man tore into the snake again, his entire body rippled with muscle. Each fiber moved as though possessed of its own life, emanating colossal power.
Over nearly half an hour, the man consumed the entire snake. From head to tail, bones and scales included—he left nothing, forcing the whole creature into his stomach.
The man wiped his mouth clean of the snake’s blood and stood. Then, in the darkness, his eyes blazed.
Like a predator hunting in shadow, his pupils dilated wide, catching even the faintest glimmer of light without missing a thing.
He began to walk.
His gait was profoundly peculiar.
Thud. Drag. Thud. Drag.
His right foot struck the ground while his left trailed behind. This created a strange, rhythmic cadence that made his movement all the more alien.
He emerged from the cramped cavern into a vast underground chamber. Several Nightstones, faintly luminous, were embedded in the ceiling high above—enough space for hundreds of people to live at once.
He swept his hair back from his forehead and face. Beneath the weak glow of the Nightstones, a pale countenance, long deprived of sunlight, became visible.
Below a straight brow lay eyes of pure black, and lips pressed together so firmly they seemed incapable of parting. The man was Dam Ho.
More taciturn than ever, rougher than ever, he still survived within Cheon Geum Ma Ok.
He had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been years—or far longer.
Dam Ho believed at least five years must have elapsed. At some point, his body had stopped growing, a sign that his youth had ended.
The cessation of growth itself was proof that he had become a man. Though his exact age remained unknown.
His gaze turned toward one side of the chamber. Despite the passage of time, an enormous quantity of earth and rocks the size of houses still blocked the entrance.
Dam Ho passed through the debris and crossed to the far side. There too, a small tunnel had been bored through.
Without hesitation, he entered it.
The tunnel was narrow and dark. But darkness exerted no influence whatsoever over Dam Ho.
He had traversed this passage hundreds, thousands of times. He remembered every pebble scattered across the floor, every stalactite hanging from the ceiling.
The tunnel wound on endlessly. Through an darkness that seemed to stretch forever, Dam Ho walked with patient resolve.
How long did he walk? At last, his destination appeared.
A small chamber—perhaps the size of a modest room. Within it stood a bookcase made of stone. On its shelves sat roughly twenty volumes.
Dam Ho opened an old wooden chest beside the stone bookcase. Faint light spilled out. Inside lay a Nightstone, each piece the size of a child’s fist.
Holding the Nightstone in one hand, Dam Ho reached with the other and withdrew a volume from the stone bookcase. In the weak light, the title became visible.
Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist.
So it was inscribed upon the worn, tattered book.
Dam Ho leafed through the volume on the Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist. He could not recall how many times he had read this aged tome.
It must have been hundreds, thousands. Perhaps more. What mattered was that every aspect of the Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist resided in his mind.
The space where he stood was called the Man Ma Go.
Long ago, it had served as a prison for the Demonic Cult’s captives. But after the cult’s martial masters entered Cheon Geum Ma Ok, it became a repository for Martial Manuals.
Before Dam Ho’s arrival, hundreds upon hundreds of volumes had been stored here. Yet when the Demonic Cult’s warriors departed this place, they took most of the Manuals with them.
Only those deemed of little importance remained behind.
The Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist, the Elastic Demon Kick, the Broad Pressure Hand—all of these abandoned arts had been left behind.
Since they intended to collapse Cheon Geum Ma Ok anyway, there was no risk of these arts reaching the outside world.
He could not say how elated he had been upon first discovering this place.
Time moved sluggishly here. It probably wasn’t true, but to Dam Ho, each day felt like ten.
The mere fact that something existed to read, that something existed to pass the time—this alone brought him immense joy. From then on, whenever he had a moment, he sought out the Man Ma Go and devoted himself to studying the texts.
He read and read again.
Eventually, he memorized it so thoroughly that he could recite every character without error. Then he read again, searching for hidden meanings. These were Manuals he had committed to perfect memory.
Yet Dam Ho had begun reading through the Manuals in the Man Ma Go once more, starting with the Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist.
In the darkness, Dam Ho’s pupils opened wide.
After a long time had passed, Dam Ho emerged from the Man Ma Go.
This time, he moved toward a tunnel lying in a far darker, more desolate corner. The passage was narrow—barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through—and damp with moisture.
Whoosh!
Wind was blowing in from the far end of the cavern.
Like a demon’s whisper, the wind was intense and cold, sweeping across Dam Ho’s entire body.
Though he wore nothing and should have felt the chill, Dam Ho’s expression remained unmoved. He seemed like a man who had lost all human feeling.
When he reached the end of the cavern, fragments of shattered rock lay scattered in all directions—not the work of natural erosion, but deliberate, violent destruction.
It was Dam Ho who had shattered those rocks.
Dam Ho recalled that day, though he could not say exactly when it was.
The time when all his Bigu Pills had run out and he had gone without food for days.
Back then, hunger had driven him to madness. He had thought he might simply die this way. He was starving to such an extreme degree that he would have torn off his own limbs to eat them if he could.
He had to find something.
Unable to bear the hunger any longer, he scraped at some nameless moss growing on the cave wall and ate it. In that way, prolonging his life by sheer desperation, he had searched relentlessly for food.
After those agonizing efforts, he had discovered this place. He felt wind seeping through a crack in the rock that sealed the inner part of the cavern—a sign that an empty space existed behind it.
Dam Ho shattered the rock. A new chamber appeared. It now lay spread before his eyes.
It was a spacious cavity, roughly ten mats in area. Water filled the entire space.
It was far too large and deep to be merely a pool of water dripping from stalactites. This meant water was flowing in from somewhere, and because a certain volume was maintained, it must also be flowing out somewhere.
Dam Ho gazed intently at the pool. Remarkably, luminescent fish swam within it, casting their own light.
They were so transparent that their bones were visible, and those bones glowed with an eerie luminescence. Even Dam Ho found it hard to believe, having seen it with his own eyes—such strange creatures they were.
Dam Ho leaped directly into the pool.
The water was so cold it burned his very marrow. The bitter chill made his skin feel as though it would peel away, and his heart raced wildly.
Yet Dam Ho endured all that pain, thrashing through the water. The strange fish scattered in every direction at his arrival. But they could not escape his grasp.
Moments later, Dam Ho emerged from the pool, one of the luminescent fish gripped in his hand.
The fish thrashed in his palm. Dam Ho tore into it immediately. There was nothing here with which to build a fire.
Cooked food was a luxury beyond dreaming. Yet Dam Ho felt grateful that he could eat something raw at all.
Dam Ho devoured everything of the fish except its head. For a moment, he gazed at the head with lingering regret.
He did not know how long the fish had lived in this place or how it came to dwell here. What mattered was that the fish had evolved to survive in these depths.
Thump!
Dam Ho hurled the fish head onto an empty patch of stone beside the pool. Then he waited with patience.
A moment passed.
Scratch-scratch-scratch!
A faint sound suddenly echoed through the underground chamber. Then something began crawling out from a crevice in the rock.
Dam Ho’s eyes gleamed with interest.
It was a very strange insect. It resembled a beetle, except……
The only difference was that this beetle, like the fish, emitted its own light.
The beetle latched onto the fish head and began gnawing at the flesh.
Crunch! Crunch!
In the sealed chamber, even the smallest sound was amplified and echoed loudly.
Dam Ho squatted down, watching the beetle. Though Dam Ho was there, the beetle paid him no mind, focused entirely on its meal.
When the beetle had stripped away a certain amount of flesh, something else suddenly crawled from the rock crevice.
At that instant, the corner of Dam Ho’s mouth lifted slightly.
This time it was not a beetle, but a praying mantis. The mantis, like the beetle, cast its own luminous glow.
The mantis too was a strange creature adapted to darkness. As it appeared, the beetle’s light flickered with wariness, its gaze narrowing.
Dam Ho watched the standoff between beetle and mantis with keen interest.
This underground chamber was fascinating indeed.
The fish emitted light to lure insects, and those insects came to this place despite knowing they would perish. That was the secret of the fish’s survival here.
Whenever a fish died, it became food for the underground insects. Because food was scarce, the insects’ competition was fierce.
But it was the duel between beetle and mantis that captured Dam Ho’s attention most of all.
The mantis attacked with its sickle-like foreleg, slashing with such ferocity that it resembled a master of the martial arts.
Without hesitation, the mantis’s foreleg flew toward the beetle’s neck, precise and unyielding.
In that instant, the beetle tilted its body slightly. The mantis’s leg rebounded off the beetle’s body, which was as hard as armor. The beetle had deflected the attack at an angle.
Unbalanced, the mantis stumbled. The beetle seized the moment, driving forward with its heavy body.
But the mantis beat its wings, pulling back a distance.
Once more came the standoff, the repositioning, the attack.
The mantis’s foreleg swung sharply again—no longer a simple deflection like before.
Flutter!
The beetle’s wings beat suddenly.
The flapping was so swift that the human eye could not follow it, and the mantis’s leg bounced away.
Dam Ho’s eyes blazed in the darkness.
‘The ultimate defense……’

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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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