Heavenly Demon of the Huashan Sect - Chapter 22

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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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Chapter 22
Cheon Hui tilted his head back, gazing up at the ancient tower that rose with dignified height.
The Mangyeonggak, where the Huashan Sect’s history and martial secrets were gathered and organized, stood three stories tall with considerable presence.
Each floor was spacious and clearly demarcated, proportionate to the tower’s height.
A unique arrangement where ascending levels held progressively superior martial arts manuals.
This was the Mangyeonggak in its essence.
And Cheon Hui had already read most of the books housed within it.
‘So there’s a new martial arts manual inside this Mangyeonggak?’
His eyes narrowed.
He regarded the tower with keen curiosity before pushing the door open.
Creak—
The moment he stepped through the threshold.
“You’ve arrived.”
Hyeon Cheong, who had been organizing books scattered across a desk, welcomed him warmly.
“Where is the martial arts manual?”
Hyeon Cheong watched Cheon Hui state his purpose so directly, and smiled slightly.
“Wait a moment.”
Hyeon Cheong set down the books, rose from his chair, and gestured for him to follow.
“This way.”
Hyeon Cheong walked forward with hands clasped behind his back.
Cheon Hui, watching his retreating figure, felt a flicker of puzzlement cross his face.
‘He’s not going up?’
Instead of toward the ascending staircase, Hyeon Cheong had begun walking to another part of the first floor.
Step… step…
Following Hyeon Cheong’s receding back, Cheon Hui moved forward.
Creak… creak…
With each step, the wooden floorboards groaned beneath him as he ventured deeper into the space.
How long had they been walking?
As Cheon Hui followed Hyeon Cheong striding toward the dead-end western wall, his pupils contracted sharply.
‘That place…’
Upon reaching the obstructing wall, Hyeon Cheong swept the surroundings with keen eyes before coming to a careful halt.
“Here it is.”
As Cheon Hui shook his head and looked around, his eyes sharpened with sudden understanding.
The enclosed space, walled on all sides by bookshelves, was somewhere he had visited long ago—a place where he’d harbored questions even then.
Glance—
He cast a quick glance downward.
In the past, whenever he’d wandered through the first floor of the library, he’d sensed an emptiness beneath this very spot.
‘So something was here after all.’
As Cheon Hui stared at the floor with newfound interest, his chin tightened in anticipation.
Soft rustle—
Hyeon Cheong bent at the waist.
Then he felt along several wooden boards, moving as if excavating the floor itself.
In that instant.
Click—
A distinct sound resonated through the space.
Hyeon Cheong straightened his spine and brushed dust from his hands.
“Pull this chain and the Qimen Array Formation will activate. Remember this well.”
As Hyeon Cheong indicated the iron chain hidden in the gap between the wooden boards.
Grind… grind… grind—
An ominous sound echoed as the bookshelf across from them shifted sideways.
And a yawning darkness opened before them.
Cheon Hui stared into the void—empty as a bottomless chasm—then looked at Hyeon Cheong.
The corners of his mouth lifted as he spoke.
“Fascinating.”
Watching Cheon Hui’s expression grow openly intrigued, Hyeon Cheong smiled gently.
“Mind your footing as you descend.”
With a solemn warning to Cheon Hui, Hyeon Cheong stepped into the opening.
Soon he was swallowed by darkness.
‘A Qimen Array Formation in a place like this…’
The corners of Cheon Hui’s mouth curled inward.
In Daoism, the Qimen Array Formation was generally dismissed as sorcery and avoided.
Yet that the Huashan Sect, one of the Daoist orders, had deployed such a formation was…….
‘Something important must be hidden here. There might be a better martial arts manual than I expected.’
Cheon Hui’s eyes flashed with keen interest.
Moments later, he stepped forward.
As he entered the opening, something brushed against his foot.
At once he infused his eyes with inner energy, piercing through the thick darkness.
Now he could see the passage clearly, and his curiosity deepened all the more.
The descending staircase and corridor appeared neat, as if freshly constructed.
‘Quite an ambitious undertaking.’
“We should arrive soon,” Hyeon Cheong called from ahead.
Hearing those words, Cheon Hui quickened his pace, eager now.
As they descended that pitch-black stairwell like a bottomless chasm, anticipation building in him——
Flash!
A blinding light erupted before his eyes.
Cheon Hui squinted against the brilliant glare flooding his vision, trying to make out what lay ahead.
‘A cavern……?’
An enormous underground cavern stretched before him.
And across its walls and ceiling, countless Night Pearls gleamed with brilliant radiance.
‘I never imagined it would be this vast.’
The cavern before him was far larger than he’d anticipated.
“This place is called the Amhyang Secret Cave, known only to our sect master and a handful of elders,” Hyeon Cheong explained, having arrived first and waited here.
He described the space as Cheon Hui took it all in.
“Quite an impressive grotto,” Cheon Hui remarked, scanning the surroundings.
It was clearly no ordinary place.
The countless Night Pearls illuminating the cavern.
And the thick, deeply carved marks etched into the walls——each one thrummed with remarkable spiritual force.
‘This wasn’t carved by one person.’
As Cheon Hui examined the marks on the wall carefully, his expression grew serious.
‘Inscriptions……?’
Upon closer inspection, what had seemed like chaotic scratches revealed themselves to be writing.
“Those are the martial arts manuals I mentioned last night,” Hyeon Cheong said.
“Where?” Cheon Hui whirled around sharply, as if caught on the wind.
Then he spotted a stone table in one corner of the cavern.
And atop it, worn volumes.
Tap— tap—
In moments, Cheon Hui stood before the books.
The aged tomes appeared to have been written centuries ago; they were so fragile that careless handling would tear them at once.
Cheon Hui’s eyes narrowed as he observed them.
‘Most are so damaged they’re nearly illegible.’
As he regarded the incomplete state of the volumes, Hyeon Cheong stepped over and elaborated.
“These are martial arts manuals recording the techniques of our sect’s early days, or texts whose formulas have been so severely lost that they cannot be practiced at all.”
‘So that’s why all the books are in such poor condition, and why they’re kept separately here in the Amhyang Secret Cave rather than in Mangyeonggak.’
With his explanation, Cheon Hui understood now why such an underground cavern existed and why the texts were housed here apart from the main library.
Learning a martial art with so many formulas lost was a life-threatening endeavor.
One couldn’t master it properly, and a single misstep could lead to demonic possession, leaving one a madman.
‘Still, this is worse than I thought.’
Cheon Hui’s frown deepened as he surveyed the utterly dilapidated tomes.
Then, as he was naturally setting aside a few of the upper books——
‘This is……’
His hand froze.
The half-torn cover of the manual he’d just grasped caught his eye.
Most of its characters were blurred from damage, but the title emblazoned across the cover remained perfectly clear.
“……Okwhanhyobo…….”
As Cheon Hui read the characters unevenly——
“The original manuscript of Okwhanhyobo,” Hyeon Cheong interjected from beside him.
Watching Cheon Hui’s astonishment at the discovery, he recalled his own reaction when he’d first found it.

He had been the first to lay hands upon the Okwhanhyobo the moment he arrived at this place, following the previous Master of Mangyeonggak.
And hadn’t he taught it directly to Seol Ran as well?
“As you know, there is an Okwhanhyobo on the third floor of Mangyeonggak too, but that is merely a new interpretation based on this original manuscript…….”
Cheon Hui unfolded the Okwhanhyobo in his hand, indifferent to whether Hyeon Cheong continued his explanation or fell silent.
‘This is the same Okwhanhyobo I know.’
As Cheon Hui read the incantations—similar yet subtly different from those in the Mangyeonggak version—his eyes grew increasingly sharp.
‘So the Okwhanhyobo mounted in Mangyeonggak was a separate interpretation based on this one?’
Cheon Hui’s mind worked rapidly.
The incantations, the heart insights, the question of whether this was the original manuscript.
He, who knew more about the Okwhanhyobo than anyone currently in the Huashan Sect, read through the martial arts manual with increasing speed.
“……The incantations were recovered from other palm techniques—that’s what the current Okwhanhyobo is…….”
Hyeon Cheong, who had been explaining, belatedly noticed Cheon Hui absorbed in the martial arts manual and closed his mouth.
‘Remarkable. Such concentration—already so immersed in the manual…….’
Admiring him, Hyeon Cheong stifled a smile.
Then he turned his body.
“I should return later.”
While conversation with Cheon Hui was important, it was far more crucial that the existence of the Amhyang Secret Cave not become known to others.
‘This is the very essence of the Huashan Sect…….’
Even if the Huashan Sect lost all its other martial arts manuals, what lay within these walls must be preserved.
These were the foundational arts that formed the root of the sect.
‘Fortunately, Cheon Hui is showing such keen interest here—he will surely help in restoring the martial arts manual.’
Hyeon Cheong gazed at Cheon Hui, who was frantically turning pages, a gentle smile on his face, and exhaled with relief.
It had proven far more successful than he’d anticipated.
After a brief moment, he turned and ascended the stairs by which he had descended.
Thump—thump—
About an hour after Hyeon Cheong departed, Cheon Hui’s eyes narrowed.
“What? It ends here?”
Alarmed that the incantation broke off mid-way, he furrowed his brow and flipped the manual, examining its back surface thoroughly.
But there were no further incantations to be found.
“So that’s why the Okwhanhyobo in Mangyeonggak ended up being reconstructed that way.”
Cheon Hui’s criticism was sharp.
Of course, his censure was directed not at the Daoist who had performed the restoration, but at the manual itself.
The original manuscript of the Okwhanhyobo matched the incantations he knew, but it possessed only the first half—the second half had been torn away almost entirely.
Specifically, the most critical explanation and incantations regarding the Eight Trigrams had been lost.
It could only become something else.
“Still, the Huashan Sect was fortunate. If I hadn’t been reborn as a disciple of the Huashan Sect, restoring the Okwhanhyobo would have been forever impossible.”
Cheon Hui straightened his chest and spoke as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
And truly, such confidence was hardly unwarranted.
He now possessed a mastery of martial arts unparalleled across all ages past and present.
Moreover, having witnessed the Okwhanhyobo the Old Woman had deployed, restoring the whole was easier than turning over the palm of his hand.
For the Huashan Sect, he was heaven’s blessing.
‘There’s no need to read this further.’
Having confirmed that the manual in his hand was indeed the Okwhanhyobo, he flicked it aside.
Then he turned his attention to the martial arts manuals before him.
The Okwhanhyobo was among the finest palm techniques he knew.
‘If such an Okwhanhyobo exists here, then the others must be comparable.’
Cheon Hui’s eyes curved into crescents.
As he regarded the worn and tattered texts with interest, he felt a curiosity awakening within him with an intensity he hadn’t experienced in some time.
What manner of martial arts manuals were they, to have been kept separately in this underground chamber?
“Then let me begin right away.”
Saying this, he reached out and seized one of the manuals, opening it at once.
After devouring martial arts manuals for approximately two hours.
“……This is quite a respectable Finger Technique?”
Cheon Hui’s face bore a satisfied smile.
The manual in his hand was in such deplorable condition that the incantations were nearly illegible, yet despite this, he could discern that it was unmistakably an upper-rank martial art.
“It’s similar to the Myeolhon Finger yet somehow different—is this the orthodox Finger Technique?”
Murmuring thus, Cheon Hui stroked his chin, then opened the manual again to examine it further.
Though some sections were torn and rendered completely unintelligible, this posed no significant obstacle to him.
Thus.
Cheon Hui extended his right index finger straight and, following the incantation written in the manual, channeled his internal energy into it.
Thump!
A flash of light pierced through the wall of the Amhyang Secret Cave.
“……Is that all?”
Cheon Hui’s face twisted with dissatisfaction.
The wall of the Amhyang Secret Cave bore only the tiniest hole, nothing like what was described in the Martial Arts Manual.
“Once I restore the corrupted incantation, it’ll be different.”
A competitive fire kindled in Cheon Hui’s eyes.
He soon began counting the pages of the Martial Arts Manual before him, then nodded.
“……Fourteen.”
His eyebrows rose sharply as he muttered the number of manuals he would need to restore.
“Hmm, that should be enough.”
Cheon Hui spoke with confidence, still smiling.
But he did not know.
It would take five years just to restore these fourteen Martial Arts Manuals alone.

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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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