Martial God of the Sun and Moon - Chapter 446

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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 446
“It has been quite some time since I stood alone.”
Cheolmu-baek muttered to himself, standing solitary as he gazed toward the mountain’s edge.
Whinnny!
As if understanding his murmur, the blood-red steed protested with a petulant neigh.
“That’s right, you’re here with me.”
Cheolmu-baek stroked the horse’s neck while murmuring.
“A martial exhibition match…”
For the first time since entering the Cheonma Sect, Cheolmu-baek found himself alone.
The task assigned to him was to compete in martial prowess without injuring or killing his opponent, seeking only victory through pure skill.
The other managers had likewise been left to their own devices.
Geum Seok-du had formed connections with Gae-bang and Yeon through Ju Won-gwang, then departed to search for Bang Jong-san, who had gone into hiding once more.
Ye-hwa, originally intended to be sent to Gwak Dae-ryong, had chosen instead to journey toward the Ten Thousand Great Mountains alongside the Hong Lu and Hong Ta siblings.
And Dokgo Ak…
“What did you say?”
“Uncle, I beg of you!”
Geom Wang had gone to find Dokgo Un-hak and suddenly dropped to his knees.
“Please grant me instruction!”
“…”
Dokgo Un-hak regarded his nephew kneeling before him with cold eyes.
Though technically his nephew, they had shared no personal dealings whatsoever. Even witnessing him suddenly appear and kneel brought no emotion to his heart.
“What possessed you to seek me out?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m curious why you believed I would offer you instruction.”
“That is… well…”
Had he even considered such reasoning?
He had simply sought out a family elder, the strongest in the household.
“If you have no answer, then leave. You’re interfering with my duties.”
“Please, I implore you! You’re my only option, Uncle!”
“There is a third. I have no reason to spend my time on you.”
Dokgo Un-hak refused outright and walked past Dokgo Ak.
Yet Dokgo Ak sprang up like lightning and knelt before him once more, crying out.
“I wish to master the Eight Divine Techniques of our household completely!”
“…?”
“And while the Saheon Sect Leader is certainly strong… his approach feels different. So what I mean is… I believe no one but you, my eldest uncle, can make this possible.”
Silence descended.
Dokgo Un-hak stared at Dokgo Ak with impassive eyes before asking.
“I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Are you satisfied serving as Myeong-i’s subordinate?”
Dokgo Ak blinked his eyes.
“You too possess the bloodline of our clan, yet you’ve accumulated such martial prowess only to be content serving as a subordinate?”
Dokgo Ak, who had been quietly observing Dokgo Un-hak, broke into a grin and replied.
“My master is my older brother.”
“What?”
“That remarkable older brother serves us by taking on the role of master.”
“….”
Dokgo Un-hak’s face contorted.
‘Damn! Did I mess up?’
From his expression alone, it seemed the persuasion had failed. Dokgo Ak swallowed a sigh and lowered his head.
“I’ll take my leave for today. But mark my words—this Dokgo Ak will never give up! I’ll continue until you grant me permission…!”
“One double-hour each day.”
“…?”
“At the hour of the Rabbit. The moment you arrive late even once or show any sign of failing to follow my instruction, it ends.”
Dokgo Ak immediately lifted his head. His face flushed with joy.
“Thank you, Uncle!”
“Now that you understand, step aside.”
“Yes?”
“You’re blocking the path.”
“Ah, yes! Of course!”
Dokgo Ak sprang to his feet and moved to the side.
“One who carries the bloodline of the Dokgo Family must never kneel carelessly. If you intend to kneel again, I’d sooner cut off your legs.”
Dokgo Ak flinched momentarily.
‘He certainly speaks with a sharp tongue. Cut off my legs? What kind of—’
As his tension eased, Dokgo Ak pouted his lips.
Tap.
At that moment, Dokgo Un-hak, who had been passing by Dokgo Ak, came to a halt.
Dokgo Ak trembled with a start.
“Why, why are you stopping?”
“Now that I think of it.”
Dokgo Un-hak turned his head.
“I heard the Cheonma Sect temporarily disbanded and scattered. Do you know what that one, Dokgo Myeong, intends to do alone?”
“Yes? Ah, my older brother probably….”
* * *
Whoooosh!
A roaring gust of wind echoed across the Jeonmu Army’s training grounds.
Boom! Thud!
It was footwork training. But this was no ordinary footwork practice.
Each time Dokgo Myeong’s feet struck the earth, the very ground trembled.
“Huff, hah….”
After merely practicing footwork, Dokgo Myeong steadied his breathing and came to a halt.
“The Parcheon Footwork has become second nature now. Without overexertion, I should be able to sustain three steps consecutively.”
Footwork fundamentally existed to shift one’s center of gravity correctly and amplify the potency of martial techniques.
But Parcheon Footwork was different.
The footwork itself was an offensive technique. The energy waves emanating from the feet could shake an opponent’s meridians and disrupt their inner power deployment.
‘Against an inferior opponent, I could shake their body and mind with pure inner power alone, but against someone of higher standing, it would be useless unless I read the gaps in their sensory perception.’
It had become a footwork that consolidated every insight imaginable.
The secret formula that nullified the protective technique of the Northern Darkness Divine Art and pierced through, my enlightenment regarding the Sect Leader’s martial prowess, the ability to perceive gaps in sensory perception, and even the true energy of the Heavenly Void Spirit Orb.
“It has become something difficult to call merely footwork.”
Thanks to this, I had infused my insights into it for the first time, but I had not yet mastered it completely. For some time, I would need to organize the formulas and prune the excess.
Once I fully internalized it, I would be able to flow naturally through not three steps, but ten, twenty steps.
‘Well then… this much suffices for now.’
Dokgo Myeong slowly crossed his legs and sat down.
‘Now I should attempt it.’
Tension settled across Dokgo Myeong’s face as he regulated his breathing deeply.
‘Will it truly be alright?’
There was one matter I had continuously postponed.
I had hoped to let it slip away unresolved while I still could.
It was the Inverse Heavenly Energy.
‘There are no more excuses to delay. Yet there are mountains of reasons why I must uncover it.’
Dokgo Myeong exhaled sharply.
Moments later.
Whooooooom!
The Heavenly Void Spirit Orb released tremendous true energy.
Crack! Sizzle sizzle!
The true energy trembles.
It hardens and becomes rough.
The true energy of the Heavenly Void Realm, which had achieved unity through the Dark Heaven Art, no longer emitted light continuously, but began to flicker precariously.
“Hah.”
Cold sweat beaded upon my forehead.
The white bandages wrapped around my body were stained with blood in places. The wounds I had barely finished recovering from had torn open again.
“Cough!”
I even coughed up blood.
It was not the black blood I vomited by gathering turbid energy in my stomach. I spewed forth a handful of bright red blood.
‘No. This isn’t it.’
Dokgo Myeong furrowed his brow.
‘It wasn’t the sensation of forcibly reversing what was flowing forward. From the very beginning… it’s moving in the exact opposite direction.’
Dokgo Myeong deliberately recalled the memories and emotions from that day.
‘Ah, this is…’
A bitter smile emerged unbidden.
‘I hate getting dirty like this.’
Dokgo Myeong bit his lip and opened his eyes wide.
Tssssss!
Dust from the training ground began to swirl upward.
‘I’m not reversing what was flowing smoothly. It’s merely a change in direction.’
Not to gain but to cast away, not to build but to destroy, not to ascend but to sink.
Moving forward through reverse circulation rather than natural flow.
A surge.
For an instant, it felt as though my blood was flowing backward.
My ears grew muffled as if I’d plunged underwater. My vision blurred and dimmed.
That was the moment.
Guuuuuuung!
A vibration resonated.
A low, heavy vibration like a bell toll spread outward from Dokgo Myeong at its center.
“….”
The world fell into momentary silence.
Flutterflutter!
Birds around the training ground took flight in alarm.
Crickets ceased their chirping, and the wind died completely.
‘It comes.’
Right now.
Boom!
My entire body trembled as if struck by lightning.
Before I could react, a tremendous force pierced through the Baihui point, traveled down my spine, and spread throughout my body.
‘Gah!’
Kaaaaaa!
It felt like a raging river sweeping away everything in its path.
It kept pouring in relentlessly. My vital channels swelled and seemed ready to burst.
‘Who do you think you are? Today I will absolutely seize your reins and…!’
Boom!
An explosion erupted in my head.
My consciousness wavered for a moment, but I bit my lip hard again and forced my eyes open.
‘If I can expend even a little to reduce the momentum?’
I had no mental capacity for complex energy circulation. Dokgo Myeong threw a punch into the empty air.
Kwakwakwakwakwa!
“…!?”
A tremendous wave of force spiraled upward like a dragon’s fist wind.
The blue stone floor of the training ground where Dokgo Myeong sat cracked with a sharp sound and shattered in all directions.
‘What is this.’
I had simply expelled my energy without any technique or force application, yet the power was almost unbearable.
‘No, there’s nothing I can’t handle.’
If vital energy reversed its flow, a person would die. The fact that I’m still alive right now, not dead this very moment, means I can control it too.
‘How did this even begin?’
Skreeeee!
Even as the thought crossed my mind, my entire body convulsed, and ashen energy roiled within me. Though invisible, it felt as though my very organs had been dyed that same grey.
‘Let me think about the method of application. If this energy can exist within a human body, then it can be controlled. The world operates on such principles.’
I suspected this energy too possessed its own method of application and incantations. And perhaps I could even create them intentionally.
I simply hadn’t discovered the way yet.
For a moment, my mind felt slightly clearer.
‘If it exists, I can uncover it.’
After all, I had cultivated within myself the Sense Meridian—a supreme martial art that pierces through all flows and patterns.
And then, immediately after.
Writhe.
For the first time, a change occurred.
‘I create the incantation now. The vital energy….’
Dokgo Myeong calmly redirected the flow of true energy.
In that instant, suddenly a sharp crack echoed through my ears.
‘What?’
When I lifted my gaze, one corner of my left vision had turned black.
Crack!
Soon after, my right vision too began to darken gradually, as if ink were spreading across it.
Dokgo Myeong blinked several times.
In that darkening vision….
-So you already knock upon the gate of Hundredth Heaven.
A familiar voice reached my ears.
Immediately after, a sensation as though my consciousness were being sucked into somewhere engulfed me.
* * *
“What?”
Dokgo Myeong’s eyes snapped open.
“Where is this…?”
The scenery was strange. A low, dark mist flowed across the surroundings.
Glancing to my left, a devastated battlefield landscape unfolded. When I turned my head to the right, I could see the Dokgo Household, the Cheonma Sect, and the Saheon Sect.
The moment I closed my eyes once and opened them again, the scenery suddenly shifted. Before I knew it, I was standing once more within the thick black mist.
“…!”
Dokgo Myeong’s eyes widened in an instant.
Though everything was blurred by the mist, a small thatched cottage appeared in my field of vision.
In that moment, I could understand.
‘This is not reality.’
Then was it a lantern of the mind or a dream? Yet I couldn’t explain this sense of wrongness in any such way.
“What is this, suddenly.”
That thatched cottage was a space Dokgo Myeong knew intimately. He could not have forgotten it.
Everything had begun there.
“Perhaps.”
Dokgo Myeong let out a hollow laugh and turned his body.
“…Did you summon me here?”
A single shadow materialized in that place.
Whoooosh!
The black mist dissipates.
In that instant, Dokgo Myeong shielded his eyes. As the mist cleared, a radiant brilliance spread across his surroundings.
“How amusing.”
Beneath a nose sculpted like jade, crimson lips parted as a melodious voice resonated forth.
“To have opened the Heavenly Gate despite being so incomplete and ambiguous.”
Hair as long and lustrous as ebony swayed gently.
Skin as pale and flawless as carved jade, beneath dark brows without a single stray hair, eyes shone with a clarity that seemed to contain the entire cosmos.
She was a beauty of unparalleled elegance. No words could adequately capture her essence.
She emanated a mysterious, otherworldly aura that transcended the mortal realm.
“….”
In the gaze of that woman before him, Dokgo Myeong felt a profound nostalgia wash over him.
Dokgo Myeong opened his mouth with deliberate slowness. Soon, a trembling voice emerged, as if in disbelief.
“Master.”
In my previous life, it was in that thatched cottage where I opened my eyes as I was dying. There I met my teacher and learned the Heavenly Immortal Technique that would become my everything.
She.
This woman was Dokgo Myeong’s Sect Leader.

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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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