Fist Demon of Mount Hua - Chapter 52

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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 52. A Blood Star Descends Upon Xinjiang—Part Two
Dam Ho’s True Horn reverberated through Eun Ha-seong as well.
A deep boom!
The violent shock wave that struck his eardrums sent Eun Ha-seong’s pupils flickering. His vision blurred for an instant, his balance wavering.
But he was a master of tremendous Internal Energy. He marshaled that vast power to seal off the sound waves boring into his ears, restoring his equilibrium.
A sharp slash!
In that moment, the blade he swung cut only empty air.
“Where are you?”
Eun Ha-seong’s eyes hunted for Dam Ho’s trail.
Dam Ho had already stepped back—precisely far enough to evade the blade stroke Eun Ha-seong had just delivered, no more, no less.
“Curse you!”
Eun Ha-seong barked out a furious cry and channeled his power into the Jeok-seong. The blade’s aura shimmered and rippled, its phantom form extending three feet longer.
Blade Qi.
Though he had not achieved enlightenment enough to forge a Blade Rampart, the force of Blade Qi infused with such tremendous power was scarcely inferior.
Eun Ha-seong believed that if he could land even a single cut on Dam Ho’s flesh, it would all be over.
Moreover, Dam Ho was a cripple. Whatever strange martial art he had mastered, without proper Movement Method to support it, its power was halved.
The upper body was three parts; the lower body accounted for the remaining seven. There was no coincidence in the saying Upper Three Lower Seven.
Eun Ha-seong unleashed the Wind Heaven Step, a secret-sect technique, and rushed after Dam Ho.
His form multiplied seemingly a dozen times over. The Wind Heaven Step’s transformations were that dazzling.
“Hah! Die!”
The Ghost Eye Blood World—the most devastating form from his unique martial art, the Mad Heaven Harmony Blade—unfolded.
Slash, slash, slash!
Seven blade strikes tore through the air toward Dam Ho in rapid succession.
Though Eun Ha-seong had not mastered the Blood Demon’s Inheritance techniques, he believed the sheer Internal Energy infused into these strikes alone would be enough to kill Dam Ho.
‘I kill him, master the Blood Demon’s arts. Then I enter the Central Plains. Hehehehe!’
He dreamed his dream.
Of himself wielding the Blood Demon’s martial power, scourging all under heaven.
Eun Ha-seong’s voice thundered through the blood-red cavern.
“Crumble to dust and vanish.”
And then it happened.
Dam Ho, who had done nothing but evade until now, suddenly extended his hand.
His five fingers spread wide, spiraling outward to meet the incoming blade strikes.
A tremendous crash!
The explosion of force tore through the cavern.
All seven blade strikes were caught—stopped dead—by Dam Ho’s palm.
“Impossible!”
Eun Ha-seong’s eyes widened in disbelief. The Jeok-seong’s sharpness and hardness were such that it could rival the finest blade under heaven.
It could slice through human flesh like paper, even without Internal Energy. Yet this Jeok-seong had been stopped by Dam Ho’s hand.
Looking closely, there was a hairline gap between Dam Ho’s palm and the blade. The Qi Dam Ho radiated had formed a protective barrier around his hand. But Eun Ha-seong had not yet perceived this truth.
The Silver Net Hand.
Delicate threads of Qi tangled and wove into a net of Qi. This gossamer net of force cradled Dam Ho’s hand.
It was his own creation, synthesized from insights gained in the Bamboo Leaf Hand, the Crouching Tiger Fist, and the Six Harmonies Fist.
The swift elegance of the Bamboo Leaf Hand melded seamlessly with the crushing weight of the Crouching Tiger Fist and the versatility of the Six Harmonies Fist.
Where Dam Ho’s hand met the Jeok-seong, it erupted in a ferocious pulse of force.
A deep, reverberating boom!
The Jeok-seong itself cried out, a scream of blade-song.
The violent vibration nearly shook the weapon from Eun Ha-seong’s grip.
It was an instant—an incalculable flicker of time that ordinary eyes could not even register. Yet to a master of Eun Ha-seong’s caliber, it stretched like eternity.
Eun Ha-seong’s instincts screamed that the air around him had transformed.
A chill of mortal danger swept his mind.
‘It comes.’
An ominous pressure rolled toward him like a storm.
A sharp whistle of movement!
Eun Ha-seong retreated and swung his blade in response.
Ghost Heaven Light Extinction.
The defensive form of his unique art, the Mad Heaven Harmony Blade. A technique that swung the blade eighteen times in one motion, layering blade barriers to shield oneself.
It was the highest defensive form Eun Ha-seong could manifest without yet mastering the Blood Demon’s Inheritance.
Defense first, then counterattack. That was his strategy.
A suffocating tension gripped him as he blinked.
In the space between closing his eyes and opening them, he witnessed something impossible.
Dam Ho’s face suddenly came into view. He had pierced through the Ghost Heaven Light Extinction form and closed the distance to within arm’s reach.
‘How?’
Disbelief flickered across his face.
He couldn’t comprehend how Dam Ho had penetrated the Ghost Heaven Light Extinction—eighteen blade strikes flowing in a single breath—without so much as a collision, boring straight through to within striking distance.
A violent wind crashed down upon him. His entire face was assaulted by a crushing pressure, as though pierced by thousands of needles.
‘A storm?’
Eun Ha-seong felt the vertiginous isolation of standing alone in a tiny boat in the middle of a boundless sea.
A mountain-high wave crashing down, a brutal wind that seemed to sweep the world clean away—Dam Ho was bringing all of it with him.
Thunk!
Dam Ho’s two hands seized him by the collar.
Even now, Eun Ha-seong could not grasp what was happening, his eyes merely blinking in confusion.
Whoosh!
In that instant, his feet were torn from the ground as though uprooted, and his body was wrenched upward.
Swept up in the Dragon Tornado, Eun Ha-seong’s body was lifted a zhang into the air, still clutched in Dam Ho’s grip.
“Ugh!”
Coming to his senses too late, Eun Ha-seong thrashed against Dam Ho’s arms. But Dam Ho’s grip was impossibly strong—he could not break free.
Eun Ha-seong shifted tactics, attempting to strike at Dam Ho’s throat with the Jeok-seong.
Swish!
In that moment, his body spun violently.
Head downward, legs toward the sky.
Heaven and earth inverted. His body plummeted toward the ground.
Crack! Crunch!
Eun Ha-seong’s body was driven into the earth—headfirst.
The face that had gleamed with fierce light moments before burst open like an overripe fruit, its contents spraying in all directions.
No scream escaped.
For one who had cast his ambitions beyond Xinjiang toward dominion of the Central Plains, the end was hollow beyond words. The sight provoked a hollow ache in those who witnessed it, yet all who looked upon that form felt a chill creep through their bones.
The entire sequence unfolded so swiftly it seemed dreamlike—as unreal as a nightmare dreamed on a summer night.
The Jeok-seong that had been held in Eun Ha-seong’s hand fell far away, its mournful Daoist Name still resonating from the blade.
Dam Ho withdrew his hands from Eun Ha-seong’s corpse and rose. Those watching saw shock and terror reflected in Dam Ho’s perfectly steady breathing and composure.
The master of Seo Cheon Mountain Lodge had died without landing a single proper strike. And in a grotesque manner unlike anything any of them had ever witnessed.
Sim Su-myeong suddenly looked down at his own hands. The hand gripping the Blood Scale Blade was slick with sweat.
His body was reacting of its own accord to a scene so shocking he had never once imagined it could occur.
Earth Heaven Strike.
That was the name of the form Dam Ho had deployed.
The Earth Heaven Strike had been born by chance in the Underground Cavern, during the process of shattering and moving stone.
To escape the cavern, the bedrock had to be destroyed. But destruction alone wasn’t enough—the broken stone fragments had to be carried and removed to forge a passage.
At first, Dam Ho had shouldered and carried the rocks one by one. But as he grew experienced, he began throwing them. After repeating this hundreds, thousands of times, the method of driving stone into the ground to shatter it dawned on him naturally.
One day, a thought came to him.
What if, instead of stone, what he drove into the ground was a person?
The Earth Heaven Strike was conceived from that very premise.
A vicious attack that wielded the earth itself—the ground upon which all humans walk—as a weapon.
Thinking the power was greater than expected, Dam Ho regarded Sim Su-myeong. At that gaze, Sim Su-myeong flinched involuntarily.
He was not alone. All the martial artists Sim Su-myeong had brought, as well as Sim Ok, trembled.
‘A grim reaper…’
‘Where did such a being come from….’
They too were veterans of countless battles. Yet despite the rough temperaments typical of vagrants, those who rarely yielded to anyone, fear now flickered in their eyes.
They had never imagined such a martial artist could exist. That Eun Ha-seong, the master of Seo Cheon Mountain Lodge, could be killed without managing a single proper attack, his head bursting like a gourd.
When word of this reached the world, it would surely provoke astonishment.
A suffocating silence fell over the cavern. But no silence is eternal, and Sim Su-myeong, speaking for all, finally broke it.
“Who are you, great warrior? How did you…do that to Eun Ha-seong?”
Sim Su-myeong’s voice trembled slightly as he spoke. But his nervousness was so acute he didn’t even notice it himself.
Dam Ho tilted his head.
“Eun Ha-seong?”
“The master of Seo Cheon Mountain Lodge whom you just killed.”
“He wasn’t much.”
“He wasn’t much? What do you—”
Sim Su-myeong’s expression said this was absurd, but Dam Ho’s assessment remained unchanged.
Eun Ha-seong certainly possessed exceptional qualities.
The Bright Blade and Blood Demon legacy left behind by him were formidable—the killing intent alone was sharp enough to cut through skin.
But as a martial artist, Eun Ha-seong was unremarkable. His martial power might have been strong, yet his reflexes, adaptability, tactical awareness, and decisiveness all fell short of expectation.
A martial master should have sharp nerves on constant edge and senses wide open. But Eun Ha-seong, who had lived long as a ruler, possessed none of that primal awareness.
If the blade was a weapon, Internal Energy was the force that enabled one to wield it well.
A blade meant nothing if it didn’t connect; formidable Internal Energy was useless if it never collided with anything.
Combat wasn’t won by those with superior strength alone. The truly strong were those who could read the rhythm of victory in a fleeting instant and draw the advantage toward themselves.
By that measure, Eun Ha-seong was merely a fool who possessed excellent weapons and tremendous power but didn’t know how to use them properly. At least, that was Dam Ho’s assessment.
Dam Ho’s gaze turned suddenly toward Sim Ok. Her cheek, where he had struck her, still swelled with an angry red. Yet she dared not question him about it. The terrible weight of his presence made even breathing difficult.
Sim Ok’s pupils trembled. The image of Dam Ho reflected on her retina quivered along with them.
“You… brought a storm of blood with you.”
“…….”
“You could have avoided this.”
“Why should I have?”
“That is…….”
Sim Ok found no words.
Dam Ho’s gaze turned toward Sim Su-myeong, Sim Ok’s father.
“Do you think I should have done otherwise?”
“I…….”
Sim Su-myeong clenched his teeth.
Part of him wanted to deny Dam Ho’s words, to fight back. But he could not.
Though Sim Su-myeong took pride in the countless battles he had fought and the battlefields he had crossed, he could not utter a single word before the hellscape unfolding before his eyes.
One thing was certain: the man standing before him was different from any martial master he had ever encountered.
It was not a matter of martial skill or temperament.
The man himself was fundamentally different. He was a being that ordinary human perception could neither measure nor judge.
“Sigh.”
Sim Su-myeong exhaled a long breath instead of answering. It was a sigh laden with many meanings.
Dam Ho spoke as he passed Sim Su-myeong by.
“Leave the cleanup to yourself.”
“Understood.”
He had brought the full strength of the Blood Scale Sword, only to be left with cleanup duty. But Sim Su-myeong could not voice his discontent.
His gaze could not tear itself away from Dam Ho’s receding figure.
“A Blood Star has descended upon Xinjiang.”
Sim Su-myeong’s voice, trembling with unease, spoke for them all.

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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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