North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 103

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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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103. By the Campfire

Killing intent pressed in from beyond the darkness.
Aelak held his palms toward the campfire.
In the middle of the Field Path, they had pitched camp, and dry branches crackled as they burned.
The night meadow lay silent except for the sound of grass insects.
Footsteps broke that silence first—quiet steps treading through the grass, and above them, sword points that shattered starlight into fragments.
Martial warriors bearing an Extermination Order.
The closest Martial Alliance Division Master to Aelak struck the moment he received the order.
A dark shadow rushed near the firelight.
Yet Aelak’s grey eyes never left the flames.
Taikan read the killing intent at their backs first.
With his Thousand-Li Eye, he counted the killing intent rising from all sides, one by one.
“Eighty of them. Moving as one body. A well-laid formation. Elite troops.”
Garkan rose from his seat.
“The Martial Alliance. So soon? That was fast.”
They had heard the rumor that the Martial Alliance had issued an Extermination Order just one Double Hour ago. Yet in barely a Double Hour, martial warriors stationed thousands of li away had already moved.
Taikan unfastened his quiver from his back and set it beside him.
“It must be the closest Division Master. They’ve received the order.”
Those words straightened the spines of the entire party.
Preparation for battle. With the enemy’s intent so clear, there remained only life or death.
Only… Aelak did not straighten his back.

One man stood before eighty.
An aged swordsman with graying beard.
His posture was upright, and his sword hand was free of wasted movement.
Gu Yang-se, the True Mountain Sword Elder and one of the Martial Alliance’s Twelve Division Masters overseeing the Hapbi Castle region. A renowned veteran who had long held down the northwest frontier, and enjoyed close relations with the Family Head of the Je-gal Family.
Gu Yang-se looked at the fire burning in the field.
At a glance, he knew that the man warming himself by the flames was the leader. Yet this leader did not even place his hand on his sword hilt.
A faint sneer played across the old swordsman’s lips.
“Foreigner from the North Sea. Gu Yang-se, Twelve Division Master of the Martial Alliance. I’ve heard much about you.”
There was no answer. Aelak did not even turn his head.
“Did you kill the Family Head of the Je-gal Family?”
Gu Yang-se lifted his sword.
……
“You’re not deaf, it seems. Disrespectful. So this is what a true barbarian looks like?”
……
“Let’s see how well the blade of the frontier holds up.”
True Mountain Sword Gu Yang-se raised his hand.
At that single gesture, eighty men moved in unison.
The Hua-shan Five Sacred Peaks Sword Formation.
The warriors took their positions. They pressed their feet into the ground and raised their sword points. The formation came together simultaneously, with no gaps.
“Are we not even worth his eyes?”
“How dare anyone lay a hand on the Clan Leader.”
Garkan, with Bing Chulsae wound around his wrist, stepped forward to block their path.
His expression showed he had grasped the formation’s structure in an instant.
These were different from Majeon’s thousand warriors. Those were sheer numbers, a tide of humanity. This was smaller in count but moved as a single body.
When one man extended his sword, the next filled the gap, and the man behind supported that space. Five moved as one.
Garkan wrapped Bing Chulsae around his fingers and spoke low.
“I thought Central Plains martial arts were bland, but this one has some bite to it.”
Harku’s lips curled up beside him.
“Brother, it needs bite to satisfy your palate.”
“Shut your mouth and watch your ribs.”
“Tch! Even when I’m careful, you’re rough. I’m already keeping myself safe.”

The man who had been warming himself by the campfire rose without a word.
Cheok Mu-yeong. To him—the Martial Alliance’s Surveillance Director—that Division Master’s blade was the Martial Alliance’s blade. He could not aid the northerner. Yet neither could he strike them down in league with the Division Master.
If the Twelve Division Masters alone could have captured Aelak, he would have done so gladly. But he judged them weaker than their quarry.
‘This one… he has no intention of drawing his sword in this fight. His subordinates will suffice. This way only breeds casualties. Ah, I wrote enough of this in my dispatch.’
He had no choice but to withdraw from this engagement.
He placed a hand on his sister’s shoulder to draw her aside with him.
“Ha-rin. This way.”
But Cheok Ha-rin did not rise to follow him.
Her brother’s hand lingered a moment on her shoulder, then fell away.
Cheok Mu-yeong said nothing more. Even a quarrel with his sister felt out of place here. He could only retreat to the edge of shadow.
The killing intent seeped into the space he left behind.

Whoooosh!
The Five Sacred Peaks Sword Formation tightened.
Eighty swordsmen arranged themselves in four concentric rings, trapping the party at their center.
When the outer ring pressed inward, the inner rank raised their blades; when those blades wavered, another layer steadied them. Every direction bristled with sword tips, each one finding its mark.
It was formidable.
Serian reversed her grip on Eun Seol, her slate-gray eyes tracing the formation’s geometry.
“It’s nothing like the Je-gal Family’s method. The killing intent keeps pressing—an unrelenting Rotating Strike with no room to breathe. They mean to end this in one volley.”
“They move as one body.”
Arko felt the wind across the back of his hand.
“The Poison Powder won’t work. The wind’s wrong for it. Does it counter my toxin somehow… or have they already studied my poison and accounted for it?”
“Then we sever the body.”
Garkan drew tight on the Bing Chulsae.
“Would it not be better to strike at the head first? Someone must be maintaining the formation.”
Taikan replied briefly.
“I’ll handle that.”
Serian’s eyes flashed.

At the heart of that pressure, Aelak did not so much as touch his sword hilt.
Even as eighty blades closed in, he did not lift his palms from the fire.
Firelight reflected in his gray eyes. Those eyes did not read the formation. He did not speak. He simply turned his warmed palms over once and warmed their backs against the flames.
That silence was his command.
Eighty warriors attacked while the Clan Leader kept warming himself at the fire.
It meant, ‘Settle this yourselves’—an order his subordinates needed no ears to hear.
Garkan accepted that indifference and stepped forward.
Snap!
The Bing Chulsae unwound—a single strand, the last remaining after three were lost at Majeon, yet it sufficed for Garkan.
Harku drew his Twin Curved Swords from their sheaths.
The wound he’d taken at the inn had not yet healed; his side caught with every movement. Still, the corner of his mouth lifted.
“A famous sword faction, no less. This ought to be good steel. Heh!”
Taikan nocked an arrow in the Gak Ak Gung. Arko wedged two Poison Darts between his fingers, and Serian cinched her Waist Cord a notch tighter.
The five of them launched toward the formation in unison.

The Hapbi Castle Formation singled out Harku, who had pushed forward first among the five.
Five blades struck the same point simultaneously.
Harku rotated his Twin Curved Swords to parry.
Ching!
He deflected one only for the next to pierce the gap. Block and a void opens; open and another strike comes. No quarter given.
Ching-ching-ching-ching-ching! Ching-ching-ching-ching-ching!
The formation began to push Harku gradually outward.
“Damn!”
His wounded side seized again.
Harku could not withstand the formation’s relentless Rotating Strike and shuffled backward, yielding ground.
“These bastards are toying with me?”
“Don’t strain yourself holding the line!”
Whip-crack!
In that instant, the Bing Chulsae lashed across the grass.
Hiss!
The chain coiled like a serpent around one corner of the formation. Garkan planted his feet and threw his weight back, wrenching hard.
A sword-bearer was torn from within and toppled onto the grass.
A gap opened where the body had been dragged from.
“We have an opening!”
Arko flowed through the breach.
Curved Footwork Technique. Only afterimages stretched long; his feet left no visible trace.
A poison dart slipped into the armpit of a warrior inside the formation.
The blade coated with black oil made no sound as it cut. There was no need. It grazed through—piercing skin at a single point with a soft tap.
The next warrior’s inner thigh received another mark.
Those struck coughed black foam and buckled at the knees.
One side of the formation collapsed.
When one side crumbled, eighty breaths that had moved as a single body fell out of sync for the first time.
Arko flowed to the next position and spoke.
“Lucky break.”
Taikan caught the formation’s disarray instantly.
The formation’s critical keystone.
Blades crossed, and each time the formation shifted, several voices moved throughout the formation. Whenever those voices delivered short commands, all eighty warriors raised their swords in unison.
“Cut off their voices!”
Twang! Snap-snap, twang!
The Gak Ak Gung sang out.
Four arrows flew in succession.
Silent as ghosts, they pierced the throats and temples of those giving orders.
The commands binding the formation died on the spot.
With the voice guiding the formation’s changes gone, the eighty bodies moved without coordination. The formation’s rhythm shattered.
Serian saw the break.
It was the moment the formation’s front line stretched into a single row. Her left hand unwound her waist cord.
Snowflake Thirteen Consecutive.
The waist cord spread into thirteen ribbon-like snowflake trajectories, and Eun Seol wove through them like a serpent.
Five in the front rank fell in the same breath.
Neck, shoulder, wrist—the cord wrapped around them, and Eun Seol opened their arteries.
In a single tempest, the entire front face of the Hapbi formation was swept clean away.
Serian rewound the loosened cord and gripped it.
A layer of killing intent had settled over her face.
With the front collapsed, Hapbi formation was a unified body no longer.
The formidable eighty had scattered back into individual warriors. When unified, the formation had been unstoppable; broken, they were merely eighty.
The scattered ones were claimed one apiece by the five.
Bing Chulsae wrapped ankles and forced knees to buckle, while Twin Curved Swords raked shoulders. Poison darts struck ribs, and ice needles grazed necks.
Arrows pursued those approaching from afar.
Each person held their ground, and each ground was held perfectly.
Garkan gathered his Bing Chulsae and shouted.
“Block and we break you. Retreat and you live!”
Screams scattered across the field.

Flames crackled and blazed.
“Hmm!”
Gu Yang-se, robbed of his formation, exhaled a heavy sigh.
The renowned master of Hua-shan had watched the Five Sacred Peaks Sword Formation collapse before his eyes. The Five Sacred Peaks, which had pressed down generations, had been undone by five foreigners from the North.
And yet the one who led them had not moved a finger.
“These beasts….”
Gu Yang-se spat the words through gritted teeth.
Garkan tightened his Bing Chulsae and answered.
“You think a wretch like you deserves the Clan Leader’s blade? We’re enough for you.”
Still, the old swordsman did not lower his sword.
His pride, shattered by contempt for the borderlands, grew smaller—but his fury only swelled.
Gu Yang-se pointed his blade straight beyond his subordinates to where Aelak sat in the firelight. The old swordsman pushed off the grass and took a step forward.
Aelak did not remove his palms from the flames. He did not even turn his head toward them.
Before the blade could reach the firelight, Garkan stepped between. With one strand of his Bing Chulsae, he knocked the blade aside with a lateral slash, sending it spinning into empty air.
Whistle!
Garkan’s Bing Chulsae ensnared the old swordsman’s blade and flicked it upward. In that instant, the blade tip rose, and through the gap flowed Harku’s Twin Curved Swords.
Thud!
Fire bloomed across his chest.
A shallow wound. He would not die.
Yet what had pierced deep into the old swordsman’s being was not that blade.
Blood spilled from Gu Yang-se’s mouth.
The old swordsman staggered backward, unable to hold his ground.
“…This cannot be. That I should fall to such as these….”
Those words cracked the reputation of a generation.
“Let him go. He’s weak.”
From afar, where he sat warming himself by the fire, Aelak murmured the words almost to himself.

The Hua-shan Sword Formation, which had been launched with such confidence, withdrew.
Garkan did not pursue the one who turned his back. He rewound the Bing Chulsae around his wrist, then swept his gaze across those crawling in survival.
Five subordinates steadied their breathing and returned to the encampment.
Harku shook the blood from his Twin Curved Swords, one hand pressed to his side.
“Brother, the feel was good, but my side keeps taking hits.”
“That’s because you don’t watch it.”
Serian retied her loosened Waist Cord.
In the very heart of that fierce battle, Aelak remained by the fire. His palm still rested above the flames, and his gray eyes had never once looked toward the formation. Until the end, he had not drawn his blade.
Quiet fell again over the battlefield.
Cheok Ha-rin had not left.
The space where her brother had stepped aside stood empty… and she alone remained by the fire’s edge.
Her gaze fell first upon his subordinates.
These five had dismantled the Hua-shan Sword Faction’s Five Sacred Peaks Sword Formation. Each one possessed martial skill that would not pale compared to any sect master.
Such men called one man their Clan Leader.
Her eyes shifted to that man.
While eighty had charged and five had broken them, he had not lifted a hand—only warmed himself by the fire.
That indifference terrified her.
To him, eighty such men were not even worth fighting.
Yet that Han Ki spreading through her chest felt strangely familiar. He was a man she had never seen, his power a cold she had never felt before—and yet she could not understand why it felt so known.
Cheok Ha-rin’s gaze moved between his subordinates and the man himself.
The campfire threw up one last shower of sparks.
In that firelight, Cheok Ha-rin watched the man in silence.
Where her brother’s place lay empty… her eyes lingered on those gray 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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