North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 104

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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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104. The Defiant Answer

“No.”
It was Cheok Ha-rin’s first word.
She had never contradicted her father. Twenty years—that was how she had lived. When he said no, she withdrew her hand. When he said go, she went.
Now that daughter read the letter through and slowly shook her head.
The morning they met on the open road, mist lay shallow over the dried grass where it had gathered through the night.
The company moved slowly, packing their belongings.
It was then that a Sealed Letter bearing the Cheon Geom Mun Seal reached Cheok Ha-rin’s hands. A summons—in her father’s name. Come home, it said.
Cheok Mu-yeong saw the letter in his sister’s hands.
Before he even read its contents, his eyes hardened briefly. The Cheon Geom Mun Seal.
“Ha-rin, if Father summons you, you must go. It’s Father’s call.”
“There’s still something I need to understand.”
“What is there to understand?”
Cheok Ha-rin opened her mouth, then stopped. She could not name it clearly, even to herself. Or rather, she did not know what it was she wanted to know. There was only a vague sense that something needed to be pursued.
She changed the subject hastily.
“Brother, you saw it too, didn’t you? The marks carved into that Wooden Figurine. They say those are the traces of Kara’s enemy’s Martial Art—the ones those people are hunting. The marks themselves…”
“Ha-rin.”
“Brother, look closely at those marks—each one shows the characteristics of a different Martial Art. With your eye, surely you could identify at least one or two of them…”
“This is not something for you to meddle in.”
Her brother’s voice had dropped lower than usual.
Cheok Ha-rin fell silent.
She understood what that tone was telling her—say no more.
Cheok Mu-yeong asked nothing further.
He glanced at his sister’s profile once, then turned his gaze toward the saddle.
Cheok Ha-rin knew that his silence was not his ordinary silence. But she folded the letter and tucked it into her robes as though she understood nothing.

Twenty years she had lived within a compound wall.
Han-seo-ji-byeong had confined her. During all those long years without ever stepping beyond the gate, there was only one thing she had done.
In her father’s library, she read and reread the Martial Arts and figures of Kangho. She had never wielded a sword properly, but on paper—in the pages of Kangho—she knew as deeply as anyone alive.
I am no fool.
Cheok Ha-rin repeated those words to herself.
Not being able to hold a sword does not mean not knowing Kangho. In letters, she knew it better than most.

* * *

Night had deepened.
The campfire burned through dried branches. The company sat in a circle and sought sleep.
Cheok Ha-rin sat beside the fire with both hands folded in her lap. Her eyes watched the flames, but her mind drew something else.
The marks upon the Wooden Figurine bound to the saddle.
The first mark came to mind. A thick blade mark.
Much thicker than any sword mark would be. A sword cuts and divides, but a blade crushes and tears. The difference lay not only in the blade itself, but in the depth of the cut, the thickness of the wound.
The work of a Blade Master’s Technique—tearing flesh in a single exchange.
A thickness that could never result from striking twice, divided into two blows. A blade wielded in a single, final motion. There were not many in Kangho who wielded a blade that way.
Even searching through the Martial Records, only two or three names narrowed down to that style.
She touched the cloth gently upon her lap.
The second mark came to mind. It looked like a crushed handprint—as if an unskilled martial warrior had struck upward while stumbling and sliding.
At the moment of the strike, hand and foot moved in entirely different directions, separate from each other. It meant Palm Technique and Step Technique used together.
A master of the Fist Technique in a world where weapons flourished.
Such warriors were rare even in Kangho. And she had read in the Martial Records that Cheon Geom Mun collected—warriors of great power who wielded the Fist Technique.
Among those who combined that Step Technique with such a Fist, the Martial Records held the names of no more than two or three.
The third mark chilled her merely to behold it. Where a sword had first passed, something else had passed through again. A voice.
After the sword cut through flesh, the blade’s song cut through the wound again.
A sword that could wound a person merely by being heard.
No warrior wielding a sword that roared like a lion was recorded in the Martial Records.
Cheok Ha-rin’s fingers scraped at the cloth without her knowing it.
Three marks, but two of them had only a handful of suspects. Up to that point, it had been no difficult matter—merely identifying the peculiarities of each martial art.
For a maiden raised in confinement, it was a familiar game.
But the moment she gathered those suspects in one place, a chill ran down her spine.
Each mark had two or three candidates, yet no matter which names she fitted into the pattern, they all converged at a single point. The one place she knew.
Those Kangho figures who had once shared a cup with her father.
Their names rose, one by one, layering themselves atop the three marks on the wooden figurine.
She wished there had been even one that didn’t align, but not a single name was out of place.
The cup in her hand seemed to grow cold.
There was no cup, yet it felt so. A numbing chill.
Excluding one mark for which she had no records, there were barely two marks. No—three, if she counted Je-gal Uncle, who was already dead. No matter how she rearranged the candidates, the path led to only one destination.
If those three pointed there, the rest would as well.
Cheok Ha-rin had not yet wanted to see what lay at the end of that path, but it stretched before her, straight and clear.
She had already seen it; she could not pretend otherwise.
The answer already lived in her heart, and that terrified her more than anything.

The next morning.
Cheok Ha-rin could not remain still. If no one helped her resolve what she had grasped, her suspicions would only grow larger and larger.
She quietly drew Cheok Mu-yeong away.
While the others loaded the pack horses and erased all traces of the camp, the two of them enjoyed a morning walk. A companionable one.
She lowered her voice.
“Brother. Among those marks on the wooden figurine—three of them, I’ve worked them out.”
“Stop talking about that.”
“The deep Blade Mark comes from slicing with one stroke—the Blade Master’s Technique. The crushed palm is a Fist Art master. Someone who steps the Empty Step while unleashing the True Fist. And there’s the Sword Mark carved by sound waves too, yes? The one who wields the Lion’s Roar Sword. All three gained their names in Kangho around the same time…”
“Stop it, I said.”
His voice dropped low, almost threatening.
His hand seized her arm. Crunch! His fingers dug into her flesh, and her arm froze in place.
Cheok Ha-rin looked down at that hand.
It was not the hand that had steadied her shoulder as they left. It was not the tender hand that had guided her. The grip held a force that stopped her arm dead.
“It hurts.”
“Stop.”
“Those three all converge at one place, and you know where that place is, don’t you, Brother?”
“You truly—even if you lack discretion, I will indulge your tantrums no longer.”
Low, and uncharacteristically clipped.
His voice was brutally cold, devoid of any warmth.
“Never. Never mention this again.”
“Why not? If I’m wrong, you can simply say so.”
……
“Tell me. Is my suspicion correct?”
Cheok Mu-yeong did not answer.
Only then did Cheok Ha-rin understand. Her brother could not speak.
To give a reason would be to voice what he knew, and the moment those words left his lips, they would become something that could never be gathered back up.
So he only blocked her path. Like a man with nothing left to do but refuse.
Still, his grip on her arm remained tight.
‘Brother knows too.’
That thought pressed heaviest upon Cheok Ha-rin’s chest.
What she had discerned, Cheok Mu-yeong had already discerned as well—perhaps even before she did. The ignorant do not block. Only those who know can block with such violence.
The force in that grip spoke what his words could not: what he understood.
She had never seen that face before.
Cheok Ha-rin closed her mouth.
Only her lips closed. Her mind spun faster than ever.
‘This very violence itself—another answer.’
If her suspicion had been wrong, he would have laughed. What nonsense, he would have said, such martial arts are scattered throughout Kangho. But he did not laugh; he blocked instead. And to block is to admit there is something to block.

A childhood scene returned to her.
A grassy field within the compound wall. Her father had drawn his sword once, and the blade had merely passed over the grass leaf—yet the cut blackened, as if scorched.
A thin wisp of smoke rose from that place.
She had not understood then, young as she was, that her flesh would burn from moving so fast.
That blackened mark aligned with the first mark upon the wooden figurine.
Cheok Ha-rin frantically pushed the thought away.
‘No. It couldn’t be.’
The hand that pushed back trembled, so she pushed again, harder this time.
Her father’s sword was too strong. A sword so powerful could not possibly cut down a person like that. A strong sword exists to protect people.
‘No. It can’t be.’
The second denial came firmer than the first. Her hands, clasped atop her knees, unconsciously gripped the fabric beneath them, and she held her breath for a moment.
The stronger the denial, the deeper the question it tried to bury.
The answer only grew more elusive the more she sought it.

Cheok Ha-rin’s gaze, lips sealed tight, kept drifting toward one place.
The northerner and Serian.
At the far end of that line stood a man with grey eyes.
The man who yesterday sent away the Martial Alliance’s twelve Elite Inspectors without laying a finger on them.
A man about whom they said eighty opponents wouldn’t even constitute a warm-up.
She tried to tear her eyes away, but her gaze returned to him again. For a reason that had nothing to do with fear, she could not look away from him.
He seemed familiar.
A man she’d never seen before. A Han Ki she’d never felt before. And yet why did he feel so familiar? Why did she feel as though she’d seen him long ago?
She did not understand her own heart.
The man gazed toward the end of the road.

At that same moment, Aelak looked toward the end of the road.
He knew that the eighty men he’d sent yesterday were not the end. The closest inspectors had simply come first, bearing their commander’s will.
If one Elite Inspector squad fell, the next would come. Two squads. If those fell, then four. That was the law of the Central Plains.
Taikan, whose eyes were like those of a hunting hawk, caught the sound first.
His ears, reading the darkness behind them, measured the footsteps beyond the curve in the road.
“They’re coming. But different from yesterday? Much lighter on their feet.”
“You’re saying the fight will be harder?”
Aelak spoke without emotion.
Garkan, a massive man wrapped in bear hide, took up the reins of the pack horse and acknowledged this.
“The big one’s coming, that’s for sure. One squad of inspectors is broken, so headquarters will move. If the Martial Alliance’s committed now, things will only get harder from here on.”
Serian, with her silver hair, adjusted her waist sash as she gazed toward the end of the road.
She always stepped back first to assess the situation.
“Fighting blind doesn’t seem wise, does it? The more we fight, the more we bleed. You’re thinking of meeting them head-on again?”
Aelak kept his eyes fixed on the end of the road. He raised his hand once.
“Break through.”
His subordinates received the command.
Garkan turned the pack horse’s head at an angle, and Taikan reslung his arrow quiver across his back.
No one asked why.
When the Clan Leader ordered the way broken open, you broke it open, even if it cost you your life.

Far down the road, dust rose into the air.
At first, she thought it might be wind. Dust like that was common in the fields.
But the dust didn’t scatter. It grew denser, coalescing into a single mass that advanced toward them.
The wind-driven dust parted to the side.
“Clan Leader, look at that.”
Harku, bald-headed, pressed his side and pointed with his chin toward the end of the road.
“One solid mass. Like an iron block. Different from those men yesterday.”
“I see it.”
Garkan’s voice turned clipped.
A mass of unknown numbers. The weight of their approach as a unified body reached his feet first, traveling through the earth itself.
Thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud!
The eyes of the party hardened like flint.

Cheok Ha-rin saw the dust as well.
Blades advancing—on one side, the path leading toward her father; on the other, the swords of the Martial Alliance crashing down. She was free to dodge in either direction. Even if she turned back toward her father, Aelak would not stop her.
There was nothing to stop her choice—and yet the moment of decision was bearing down upon her.
The dust rose higher. Above it, the weapons of elite martial warriors flashed in the light.

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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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