North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 102

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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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102. The Sword That Could Not Be Drawn

The Supreme Swordmaster of the World drew his sword.
But it was not yet unsheathed.
In the study of Cheon Geom Mun, night had settled deep. A single lamp burned thinly atop a desk. Outside, the mist from the garden touched the window, then withdrew.
Cheok Un-hui sat alone beneath that light.
The Sect Leader of Cheon Geom Mun.
A man called the Supreme Swordmaster of the World — one whose blade had never missed its mark since the day he first drew it.
A sound of footsteps came from beyond the door.
“Sect Leader. A secret letter has arrived from the Je-gal Family.”
Jin Hwa-sang, the Vice Sect Leader, entered the study and stopped a pace before the desk.
A swordsman whose skill rivaled Cheok Un-hui’s own — yet one who had spent his entire life standing one step behind.
Cheon Geom Mun’s eternal second.
He held forward a single letter, cradled in both hands.
“Je-gal Yeom sent it himself. It concerns the Family Head.”
Cheok Un-hui broke the seal and unfolded the paper.
Word that Family Head Je-gal Chan had fallen to a blade from the north — his head severed in a single stroke.
He read to the end. His expression did not change. Few in Cheon Geom Mun had ever seen his face falter.
Only the hand holding the paper stopped for a moment in place.
To the measure that his hand trembled, so too did something within him shake.
Je-gal Chan had been an old friend.
A man who called himself a genius of the mind and the strongest of fists — one who, when drink entered him, would proclaim his own titles with laughter.
That arrogance was not distasteful, because the man truly was formidable.
Strong enough to boast as he did.
The head of a great family — that hand once called the Shadowless Absolute Fan — had been severed by a single stroke of that man’s blade.
One stroke.
Cheok Un-hui quietly measured the weight of it.
He knew better than anyone what level of mastery was required to fell Je-gal Chan in a single exchange. He was of that order himself.
This man from the borderlands must be a master to rival his own skill.
At the end of the letter, Je-gal Yeom had appended a single line.
Confirmation that this barbarian was the same man who had breached Okmun Gwan alone and buried the Majeon headquarters in wasteland.
A single man from the borderlands. A foreigner.
That he should find Je-gal Chan so quickly, and kill him. When the journey north was known only to those eight who made it — a secret known to no other living soul.
Cheok Un-hui’s eyes settled once upon the lamp.
One man erasing the great houses of the realm, one after another.
Such a thing was rare. No — it had never happened. Looking back across his entire life, not a single such figure came to mind.
He folded the paper and set it down on the desk.
His fingers lingered upon the folded letter, then braced against the desk as he rose.
His rising gaze passed over his friend’s obituary and found, instead, the sword that hung upon the wall.
He wanted to strike down the man who held that blade.
To repay sorrow with steel — it was the only way he had ever known.
His feet moved first, taking a step toward the sword.

The Jeol-hwi Geom hung upon the wall.
It was a sword that could not be sharpened again after its first honing.
That single blade, born from molten Cheong-gang-seok, stood alone in all the world.
Cheok Un-hui reached out and grasped the scabbard.
The moment his fingers made contact, the warm light of the lamp recoiled a hand’s breadth from the sword’s presence.
The Jeol-hwi Geom shed its chill even within the sheath.
That cold flowed up the back of his hand and into his forearm.
The blade that had cut down his friend would, in the end, stand before him.
At the end of that path of descending houses… that end was himself.
He had never lost once in all his life.
His blade had never given a wrong answer on any battlefield.
The certainty that he could end the man who slew his friend in that very place.
Cheok Un-hui began to draw the sword from its sheath.
A span of blue blade emerged from the sheath. Along the exposed edge, a chill crystallized into a thin line, and when the lamplight touched it, the light fractured into shards.
The Undefeated’s hand had never been blocked in a lifetime, and there was no reason it should be stopped now.
When the blade came halfway out… before it could be drawn fully… he stopped.
The blue blade hung motionless outside the scabbard.
The Supreme Swordmaster’s hand lay upon the hilt, neither drawing further nor sheathing the steel.
The knuckles of his fingers wrapped around the grip turned white.
What had stopped his hand?
His journey north was unknown to all. Only he knew of leading seven masters into Bing Gong and cutting down the Bing Gong Master. No other soul possessed that knowledge.
What had passed between them that day, whose weapon had found whose chest… there was no mouth in all the world that knew it.
Should he step forward now, there was no reason for that secret to spill out.
The truth of that day at Bing Gong had been buried in the deepest chamber of his heart.
He had resolved never to open it.
The day he saw his daughter’s laughter, he had deemed the matter settled and sealed it all away.
Covering the truth did not cool what lay beneath. Yet he was determined never to entertain that thought again for the rest of his life.
But that was not why his hand had stopped. The reason lay elsewhere.
The Martial Alliance had already moved.
The Alliance Lord had established public righteousness and issued an Extermination Order. Only the Alliance Lord could invoke such an edict in all the world.
With that order issued, each major faction and sect drew their blades in succession. To capture a single man, the swords of the world rose together, and righteousness stood unified.
Should the Supreme Swordmaster’s blade intervene before theirs touched, it would not be a matter of cutting down a barbarian, but of shaking the very order.
The sight of a Sect Leader charging forward alone before the Alliance’s blades could land would chip away at the Martial Alliance’s weight for years to come. The Supreme Swordmaster must always show restraint.
If word spread through the Martial World that Cheon Geom Mun’s Sect Leader had spurned righteousness, it could never be undone.
Cheok Un-hui understood that line. He had lived his whole life within that boundary, wielding his sword in harmony with the Central Plains’ martial world.
Jin Hwa-sang, standing at the entrance of the chamber, read that silence.
Dry paper rustled in his hand. A paper recording the scale of the Alliance’s mobilization.
He waited in silence for the Sect Leader’s hand to release the sword hilt.
“The Alliance’s mobilization scale has arrived.”
Only when Cheok Un-hui finally lifted his hand from the hilt did he speak.
“Three nearby major factions are moving first, and the sects beneath them are following in line. All the world is… concentrating on a single point.”
Cheok Un-hui did not take his eyes from the paper.
The number of major factions, the number of sects, the directions of the roads—all were listed in order.
He traced the routes in his mind, calculating where those blades would meet the barbarian.
“That barbarian’s martial ability.”
Cheok Un-hui opened his mouth. It was brief.
“How much does it amount to?”
It was not a question asked from ignorance. It was closer to thinking aloud.
Jin Hwa-sang’s shoulders grew heavy.
He recalled the diagram left behind by Je-gal Myeong.
The final wisdom of a dying man—a diagram drawn by the Je-gal Family’s tactician before his death, mapping out that barbarian’s movements in meticulous detail.
“Je-gal Myeong’s diagram remains.”
Jin Hwa-sang paused, choosing his words carefully.
“That footwork technique… was said to be twice as fast as the Family Head’s Whip-like Footwork.”
Silence descended upon the study.
The void was filled only by the sound of the lampwick crackling as it burned.
Twice.
That number reached his fingertips.
Cheok Un-hui received the words coldly.
Suddenly fighting spirit surged within him—the desire to do battle. There was no room for fear to enter. Only the thought that if it were true, the match would be decided in a single exchange, whichever side emerged victorious. That thought remained in his mind.
Among all the masters he had faced in his lifetime, few had kindled such fighting spirit.
Jin Hwa-sang spoke again.
“Sect Leader. Would it not be appropriate for me to face that blade first?”
The words had reached this point.
Second-in-command. Had he not been Cheok Un-hui, he would have become the Supreme Swordmaster of the world. Even such a man harbored the desire to meet that blade.
Cheok Un-hui paid him no mind. His thoughts were already consumed by that barbarian, leaving no room in his mind for the Vice Sect Leader standing beside him.
Jin Hwa-sang spoke no further.
It had always been this way. The Supreme Swordmaster’s thoughts were cold, and the second position was forever outside those thoughts. He could not break through to stand before them.

The palm resting upon the blade slowly pressed downward.
Let the Alliance’s blades reach the barbarian first. If they fall short, then he would step forward. Or rather, by then the Alliance would demand he take the lead.
The blade that strikes last, not the blade that rushes forward first.
Cheok Un-hui sheathed his sword once more.
The half-drawn blue blade slid slowly back into its sheath.
As the scabbard swallowed the steel, the study’s air reclaimed its former warmth.
The lamplight drew close to the sword once more.
The moment the scabbard fully enclosed the blade, Cheok Un-hui’s fingertips trembled faintly. He peeled away his fingers one by one from the hilt, the last digit reluctant to leave the metal, releasing slowly.
The trembling ceased.
To have drawn a sword that could cut, a sword worth cutting for, only to sheathe it again with his own hands.
That old, gnawing thirst to face a master who could shake his very being clawed at him afresh. With it came a desperate question: would he ever meet such a man again in all his years?
Cheok Un-hui hung the sword back on the wall.
He returned to the table and drew the lamp closer.
With the same hand that had gripped the blade, he unrolled blank paper and took up his brush.
There was no tremor in the hand that held the brush.
He began to write across the paper.
A secret letter, commanding that Mu-yeong and Ha-rin be separated from that group at once and sent back.
He already knew what lay in his children’s hearts as they traveled with them.
The greatest swords of the realm would soon rain down upon that company. His two children stood directly in the path where those blades would fall.
The brush pressed against the paper. In that instant, his children’s faces rose before him.
His chest grew cold.
He wrote “Mu-yeong” on the page. When he tried to finish with “Ha-rin,” the brush halted above the paper. This hand had never trembled even when writing the names of enemies throughout his life. Now that same brush moved slowly and hesitantly before his own child’s name for the first time.
He had to pull his children from that place.
Once he folded the finished paper and pressed the seal, the mark of Cheon Geom Mun was stamped upon the wax.
Cheok Un-hui handed the paper to Jin Hwa-sang.
“By the fastest messenger.”
Jin Hwa-sang received it with both hands.
“Has the Sect Leader… made your decision?”
It was not quite a question, but rather one final plea veiled in words.
Whether Cheon Geom Mun should align with the Martial Alliance’s cause. Whether he himself should go first and taste Aelak’s blade.
This was the meaning contained within the word “decision.”
Cheok Un-hui glanced once at the sword hung on the wall before answering.
“The Alliance’s blade goes first. We stand behind.”
“If that blade fails to reach.”
“Then we cannot afford to be late.”
Jin Hwa-sang bowed his head.
The eagerness to draw his sword was held back by that single statement.
“I accept your orders.”

The main gate of Cheon Geom Mun opened.
Jin Hwa-sang passed the sealed secret letter into the messenger’s hands.
The messenger mounted his horse.
A single horse bolted from beyond the gate into the darkness, heading toward Gangnam.
Clop, clop.
The sound of hoofbeats tore through the night’s silence and faded into distance.

Cheok Un-hui stood at the study window, listening until that sound was swallowed by darkness.
With the messenger gone, Cheon Geom Mun fell into silence.
Cheok Un-hui had chosen to wait behind the Martial Alliance’s blade.
He left the foreground empty and took the highest vantage point from which to survey the entire board.
There he intended to wait for the moment when that blade would prove unable to reach.
The Jeol-hwi Geom hung on the wall, gleaming blue beneath the lamplight. The sword that had nearly been drawn cooled once more within its scabbard.
That blade had not cut a single thing today.
Yet merely by resting within its sheath, it weighed upon all of Cheon Geom Mun.
Cheok Un-hui gazed into the darkness beyond the window.
There dwelt two wishes in the same heart: that his children would return safely, and that the Alliance’s blade would strike that savage in time.
That all of these moments would align.
There was one thing that even the strength of the Supreme Swordmaster of the World could not control.
Timing? Yes. Timing. The moment.
He held the sword to cut his enemy, but timing told him to hold back.
He spoke softly into the silence.
“It must not be too late.”
That single utterance settled into the empty study. The lamplight flickered faintly.

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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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