I Became the Namgung Clan’s Omnipotent Item-Powered Martial God - Chapter 60

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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 60
Episode 60 — Shameful Secret
#1
The path to the summit was long.
In ordinary times, it would take roughly two hours to reach the peak; now, the mountain stretched endlessly beneath his feet.
But what of now?
No matter how hard he ran, the end refused to appear—and behind him, something like a beast with its jaws gaping wide seemed to chase him down.
His breath came in ragged gasps, clawing its way up to his throat.
Killing Intent and Demonic Aura saturated the air on all sides, and his senses grew numb as though he were wandering through a dream.
His nose had long since ceased to detect any scent, and blood had splattered across his vision, rendering everything a dull haze.
“Graaaaaaaagh!”
“Die! Die! Die!”
“Tear him apart while he lives! Swarm him!”
Inhuman shrieks poured from the Demons like evil spirits, their words a cascade of curses.
Namgung Yeon pressed forward through it all in resolute silence.
The training he had undertaken was not in vain.
His body, remade through unrelenting exertion, now received each glancing blade strike as though it were nothing.
All those mountain ascents, bearing the Gold Dragon Chain and Water Bucket up and down the slopes, had taught him to deliver precise sword strokes even at the edge of oblivion.
Legs tempered to iron hardness.
A waist that rotated with fluid grace.
Eyes that could pierce through the chaos and read the openings.
Each of these had become his means of survival, keeping him from being devoured by the Demons’ gaping maws.
How long had he run like this?
At last, the sky began to show itself.
“Graaaaagh!”
“Hah! Hah-hah! We’re almost there! I can see the training grounds!”
“Catch!”
Bi Go continued to pull elixirs from his pack, hurling them to the two below.
Forcing the body awake like this meant they would collapse once the battle ended, but survival came first, did it not?
He was in the same condition.
His body had begun to reach the point where it could no longer accept Spiritual Elixirs.
He had arrived at the limit his flesh could endure.
And yet he did not stop.
The hell he had endured was far more fierce and terrible than this moment.
Namgung Yeon wielded his blade without the slightest sign of strain.
More cruel and more vicious than before.
‘Forgive me, you who have fallen—I will pay the price of my sins in hell.’
The reality that he could not save them all crashed down upon him, and shame flooded in.
One day, when all of this was finished, he would atone for every sin.
To complete the larger design, Namgung Yeon cut down the innocent again and again.
And at last—
“Enough.”
A voice, hoarse and dull.
The vocal cords of someone whose throat had withered with the passage of years.
A single word, yet the relentless onslaught of Demons ceased at once.
By now, the sun had begun to sink toward the horizon.
True darkness was drawing near.
Namgung Yeon raised his head and gazed upon his ancient rival.
Namgung Hyeon-geum.
He had reached the nest where the sower of seeds dwelt.
#2
It had been a day when the rain fell in quiet, steady drops.
Upon hearing certain news, Namgung Hyeon-geum had gone straight to seek his brother.
The Soga Joo Selection Trial was meant to be the most sacred and just of all events held by the Namgung Family.
Yet clear evidence of foul play had emerged at that very gathering.
And not only that—there had been casualties.
A man had died, and not just anyone, but the closest friend Namgung Hyeon-geum had ever known.
The Group Members who followed him had been slaughtered as well.
All by a single hand—his brother’s.
“Impressive that you found your way here. But tell me—who are you?”
“I am Namgung Yeon, the fourth son of Namgung Mu.”
“Hmm…….”
Namgung Mu.
Even now, he commanded the mightiest strength, just as he had then.
Merciless hands and a tactical mind sharp as a blade.
A strategist brilliant enough to drive enemies into defeat without the slightest opening.
So he had grown to manhood and fathered a son.
Namgung Hyeon-geum studied the boy for a moment.
His eyes were far more clouded and hollow than Namgung Hyeon-geum’s own had been then.
The eyes of one who had lost everything yet lived on, unable to die.
They resembled his own gaze from the moment he’d surrendered to survival instinct and drunk from a spring—that very same look.
“What suffering brought you to stand before me?”
“…….”
Namgung Yeon did not speak.
The two men standing here shared too many similarities.
‘Eyes that have lost so much.’
‘Even if you stop me here, nothing will come back.’
The memory surfaced—the man speaking to him with such kindness, as though he understood.
Among the countless dead, Namgung Hyeon-geum had found him, and always spoke as though he understood Namgung Yeon.
Was this the Mutual Sympathy of Shared Suffering?
It was a strange thing indeed.
At first, being understood had been a wonder.
A man who spoke as though he knew him fully—knew the madman dyed in hatred, thrashing wildly.
And it was Namgung Hyeon-geum who had promised him a painless death, then severed his neck with a single stroke.
“I have lost more than you. And now…… I intend to lose nothing more.”
“Heh heh…… Truly, you are greedy. Did your father teach you such things?”
That was indeed the nature of the Family Head, Namgung Mu.
Though the words seemed to mock his father, Namgung Yeon smiled faintly.
“It is purely my own will.”
“…….”
“My brother will come soon.”
“How do you know such a thing?”
Why would I not know?
It was the plea he had voiced so desperately.
A man who wished to sever rotted roots, yet became the catastrophe himself, burning all to ash.
Namgung Yeon spoke softly, with a small smile.
A truth so cruel, yet unknown to anyone.
“You told me yourself.”
“Nonsense. We have never met.”
“I have met you many times. Yet you should not have turned innocent people into puppets.”
“Insolent. What do you know to presume such judgment?”
The exchange was quiet, but emotion was rising within him.
Namgung Yeon let his sword hang loose.
Then he reached into his Bi Go and swallowed another Spiritual Elixir.
Zhenhun Pill.
This was the Zhenhun Pill he had reserved for this very moment.
Since its duration would expire and he could not consume it again for some time, he swallowed it now.
Moreover, he took out a single Elixir Pill that he could only draw out at this moment.
Fei Ying Jin Tian Pill.
(Flying Shadow Heavenly Advancement Pill)
Who could cast a shadow even upon the heavens?
For the next half hour, he would become a master who played freely in the sky.
‘The backlash will come. From this moment on…… it is a gamble.’
If the Grand Elder did not arrive in time, his final journey would end here.
With the Fei Ying Jin Tian Pill alone, he no longer needed to consume the lesser Spiritual Elixirs separately.
A Spiritual Elixir made from hundreds or thousands of ingredients combined.
Crafted to contain even the raging energy of a dragon, it was a rare pill of which only one remained.
This was his first preparation.
Namgung Hyeon-geum was formidable.
A recluse, yet a master who had honed his craft relentlessly.
That was how Bi Go could shoulder weighty responsibilities even among the Demons.
“The Demons you took such pride in… they’re gone now.”
Bi Go of Muhan
Zhiling Mo Huan Powder
(Spirit-Controlling Demon-Dispersing Powder)
Remaining count: 2
Extractable count: 1
The second solution Namgung Yeon had poured his lifeblood into creating.
A miraculous powder that would break the shackles binding the innocent—now took form.
Hundreds, thousands of failures lay behind it.
Some days it simply wouldn’t activate.
Other days its effects proved meager.
Insufficient potency, too narrow a range……
Thousands of lives had been sacrificed.
His own fleeting existence, again and again.
All of it distilled into powder, scattered now into empty air.
“You petty schemer—!”
Whoosh—!
Namgung Hyeon-geum fired a volley from his bow, tearing open the pouch of powder in a satisfying burst.
Yes.
Even this motion, this response—he had deliberated and studied it.
He had observed it in that very moment of collapse.
He had calculated it even as people screamed and burned.
The optimal sequence of movements.
The optimal timing……
In the instant all those calculations aligned.
“KRRAAAAAHHHHGH!?”
“Grrrrraaaahhhh!”
“Uuurrrgh! Uuurrrgh uuurrrgh uuurrrgh!”
The beasts began to howl.
To shed the masks stained with Demonic Aura and return to human form.
In that moment when self reclaimed dominion over flesh, the seed would fail to take root.
“What in the—!?”
Wind streaming down from the peak scattered the powder evenly across the mountaintop.
Kunlun—the most sacred, the most mystical of all mountains.
The purifying powder, refined with the essence drawn from that blessed place, descended like starfall rain.
The foul seeds planted within the people would be cleansed.
Yet it was not finished.
This was merely work to reduce the general quantity of possessed ones.
The true battle began now.
“You two handle the uncompromised true Demons.”
“Understood.”
Ting—!
The silver chime of the Maling Sword’s bells rang clear on the wind.
Inner power amplified by the Zhenhun Pill surged through Namgung Yeon’s Middle Dantian and Upper Dantian, then gathered force once more from the deep well of his core.
Torrents of True Energy piercing through both Ren and Du Meridians.
Falling like cascades, undulating like waves.
True Energy surged and spiraled through his entire body like a dragon ascending, filling his eyes with radiance.
‘Though my strength may be but a speck of dust……’
It would be possible to twist fate here and now.
“You are mine to face.”
To sever the sins of the past.
And to somehow grasp a future that had never come.
Namgung Yeon threw himself at the one who sowed the seeds.
#3
“We found him!”
“Where?”
The Grand Elder, Namgung Hyeon-jong, asked urgently.
Before him walked a guide leading the way, and behind him trailed the martial artists who had sworn their loyalty.
By interrogating the disciples like rats flushed from their holes, they had identified those who bore the pursuit marker and learned their objective.
And he was heading toward the source, having traced the path that Chui Zhong-xiang had taken.
This matter must never come to light in the world.
‘That affair’ was something not even the Grand Elder of the Namgung Family could escape.
How much effort had gone into narrowing the Family Head’s position.
‘I cannot allow everything to crumble to nothing.’
Perhaps an extreme choice would become necessary.
Namgung Hyeon-jong’s eyes darkened with the weight of it.
A man who carries a shameful secret fears his own secret.
And to bury one shameful secret, he creates another.
He stood at a crossroads of choice.
Whether to forge an even greater shameful secret.
Or to bare his own secret and seek atonement.
All of it was his karmic burden.
‘Namgung Yeon…….’
The Grand Elder rolled the name of the Fourth Young Master, Namgung Yeon, over his tongue as he pressed forward.
To confirm his shameful secret with his own eyes.

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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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