North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 113

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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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113. Outside the Gate

The blades came before nightfall.
Dark masses lined every path below the ridge.
Rogue warriors with spears mingled with swordsmen from minor sects bearing only steel.
Their numbers were beyond easy counting.
Yet all those countless feet twisted into a single gorge.
“Why are they all funneling into this one gorge?”
Harku chuckled softly, his chin propped on a boulder.
“Did someone lay out a feast in there?”
No one answered him.
Aelak did not watch the crowd. Far ahead, he pursued a figure limping through the darkness in flight.
Gwang-jin….
The fleeing assassin twisted and turned all through the night. But wherever he bent his path, at the end of each branch lay the icy chill of Han Ki.
The ice of the North Sea had already passed through.
His escape route lay bare before him. The thought ‘one misstep and I die’ shifted into the resignation ‘damn it all—tonight’s my memorial day.’
That despair was written plainly in every trace he left behind.
Taikan swept the earth with his eyes.
“His stride is shortening. He’s pushing hard, but he doesn’t have the strength left to push.”
“The herding is working.”
Garkan picked up the thread.
Taikan this time placed his hand on the ridge’s end.
“Given the terrain here… once he crosses that ridge, there’s nowhere left. No other paths appear to exist.”
Aelak raised his hand, setting the direction.
All nodded wordlessly. They would seize each fork one step ahead of Gwang-jin, closing off every path that might let him slip through.
This was not pursuit. This was herding.
Now came the final narrow path—Serian’s task.

Whoosh!
Serian glided through the darkness on the Silver-Thread Rope.
Her footsteps made no sound even treading on frost. When she reached the mouth of the side path, her sash came loose.
Crack!
The sash, lined with frost, swept across rock and brush. Wherever it touched, everything froze solid white.
Now Gwang-jin would have no choice but to take the single remaining path in his despair.

The Martial Alliance had changed its approach.
After losing forty-six elite warriors entirely, they had abandoned the sharpened blade and chosen sheer numbers instead. They scraped together swordsmen from minor sects, rogue warriors who’d sell their steel for a few silver coins—anyone they could gather.
Not a single one among them could be called elite. But their bodies filled the ridge from end to end.
Human Wave Tactic.
“Should we kill all of these? Look at that one with the spear there. I’d believe it if you told me he was plowing fields until yesterday. Why did these people even come?”
“They’ve forgotten Majeon’s lesson.”
Garkan cut short Harku’s words.
Numbers held no threat for the warriors of the North Sea.
Win and live, lose and die—for those who carried such a mind, to appeal to hesitation about killing, to morality, would have been foolish.
Torches ignited on every peak.
As the first torch caught fire, it spread to the next peak. The red points linked in a chain, encircling the entire gorge.
Within lay the dwelling where two killers remained. Without lay the ring of fire.
A web laid in layers.
Taikan surveyed the peaks and reported.
“One on each peak. Not a single one empty.”
“To snuff out all those fires, the night would be too short.”
“There’s nothing to snuff out. We just pass through. Mercilessly.”
Garkan’s voice was low and flat.
Aelak did not slow his pace.
The Martial Alliance would believe it had cast a net. But what lay trapped within that net was not a northern hunter. Rather, the two nemeses he had sought were simply surrounded on all sides.
‘Much obliged. For penning us in like this.’
Her gray eyes narrowed to the thinnest slits.

Cheok Ha-rin lifted her gaze to the fires on the ridge.
“Brother. Are all those fires… just to capture us?”
“…I suppose so.”
Cheok Mu-yeong gave only that answer.
He looked back and forth between the layered circles of flame and the northern warriors standing motionless in the center, not a single step out of place. Which side was truly trapped?

Garkan wrapped one length of Ice-Chain around his wrist.
From his little finger to his thumb, the chain wound through his fingers in the order he always used.
Click.
The metal sang low.
“Block it and I’ll break it. If you knew yourselves and stepped aside, that would be better.”
Harku drew both of his Dual Crescent Blades from their sheaths.
“With so many guests, we ought to earn our keep.”
The laugh ended in something cold.
Mouth smiling, eyes dead—a single face holding both mirth and mercilessness.
Arko raised the back of his hand, reading the wind.
“Westerly. We’ll lay the oil downwind.”
That was all he said.
Arko coated two Poison Darts afresh with Black Oil.
Serian adjusted the Eun Seol in a reverse grip, her knots pulled tight.
“We’ll open the path.”
Her voice was low and soft.
Five figures spread out in front and to either side of Aelak.
The skeleton of a passage through which a single man could pass took shape that way.

Aelak felt his subordinates’ readiness against his back.
His gray eyes fixed on a single door of the dwelling crouched in darkness at the ridge’s end.
A war cry filled the Gorge.
The suppression force poured down upon them. The front ranks charged forward at speed, the rear ranks pressed behind, and sword blades caught in the torchlight closed in layer upon layer.
Aelak moved into the thick of it.
He paid no attention to those rushing at him. Those who shouted, those who aimed—none of them existed in his field of vision.
In his eyes there was only the door.
Those who were not his nemesis had no right to receive his blade.
Those charging in front stumbled first at that indifference.
In an instant, the ground beneath their feet turned white.
Wherever Aelak’s feet touched, earth froze.
Frost spread like a tide, climbing up the foot of the man ahead, and with a Chilling Aura that scraped the marrow, sword points fell of their own accord.
At the fore stood an old swordsman. One who’d come to this Gorge for three pieces of silver.
A man who’d earned his bread by the blade all his life, who knew well enough where his death would find him.
Gray eyes swept across him.
Those gray eyes never truly saw the man with the sword. As if people were invisible… the certainty that you can do nothing…
‘Three pieces… three hundred pieces wouldn’t matter. Before this man, I die.’
He lowered his blade and stepped aside.
Some of those beside him followed, stepping aside as well.
No one spoke the command to retreat. Yet the front line split open. Those who’d thrown themselves forward with their lives on the line opened the passage with their own hands.
There were some who did not step back.
Three swordsmen charged in from the side. But metal reached them first, before their blades could connect.
Click!
Garkan’s Ice-Chain uncoiled like a serpent, fastening around the ankle of the foremost swordsman. The leg it bound froze solid at once.
Garkan planted his foot and yanked.
Three swordsmen were strung together and swept sideways out of the way. One of them never even knew when his feet left the ground.
Aelak passed through the empty space without slowing his stride.
From the left, several rogue warriors rushed at him.
Harku met them with a laugh, charging headlong.
Slash!
The Dual Crescent Blades, spinning like a top, flicked the rogue warriors’ weapons skyward. As their arms opened, Harku slipped through their guard.
“Argh!”
“Gahhh!”
Blood sprayed. Where Harku had passed, only a rogue warrior knelt with shattered legs.
“I said move and you live. I don’t repeat myself.”
Those rushing from behind thrust past their vanguard and surged forward.
Whoosh!
Arko released two Poison Darts on the wind.
Black Oil spread diagonally across the grass. Those who stepped on it went rigid and collapsed. A line of oil cleaved the space between their group and the mob like a wall.
Still blind to their own limits, they bunched together as one.
Serian threw herself into their ranks. She glided through their formation with the Silver-Thread Rope, her sash unfurling smoothly as she moved.
Crack!
Her sash bloomed into thirteen radiating strands, the Eun Seol weaving between them like a serpent.
“Agh!”
Men whose knee joints had turned white with ice collapsed like trees with their roots severed.
The chain caught at their feet; the dual blades cut through ahead.
Poison walls rose from the earth; the sash froze the joints of muscle.
Aelak walked as though it were all inevitable, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Between the torches, a path stretched toward the gate, drawn like a line with a ruler.

Cheok Ha-rin could not tear her eyes from his back.
Encircled in layers upon layers of blades, yet he walked through it as though it were his own courtyard.
Cheok Mu-yeong said nothing. He only gripped his sword hilt tighter.

As always, Taikan stood high upon a boulder and picked out only the leaders.
Twang.
The bowstring sang. And each time it did, another neck beside a raised flag snapped.
His hand, reaching for the third arrow, suddenly froze.
His brow narrowed.
Strange. When leaders fell, the mob should have wavered. The frightened should stop, turn, scatter. But this mob did not scatter.
Even as the vanguard crumbled, what lay behind immediately pushed forward.
As though an invisible hand behind them were shoving them one by one, they all poured straight into the Gorge.
Flash!
Light sparked across Taikan’s eyes.
He studied the rear of the mob. Was someone there? He saw no one pushing them. No hands at their backs, yet they were being driven forward.
He descended from the boulder and moved to Garkan’s side.
“Sir. This is… different. These aren’t frightened men. Someone is pushing them from behind. Only toward this Gorge.”
The clash of blade against blade rang out in succession.
Garkan’s chain coiled around another man’s ankles while Harku’s Dual Crescent Blades already struck down the next rogue warrior.
“Why matters not! We block, we break!”
Garkan cried out, pulling the chain taut.
For Garkan, what mattered most was clearing the path before Aelak. The Clan Leader must not be forced to use his blade on worthless men.

Aelak heard it too.
He did not slow his pace.
‘Whoever is driving them.’
If his nemesis waited beyond, he would walk through on his own feet. It could wait—discovering who shoved these men forward. That was a matter for later.
Now came steel and Internal Martial Art.
The Dwelling drew near.
Crumbling stone walls, a moss-covered roof, a closed gate. The master of that fourth dagger—the one that had pressed against the wooden doll’s left breast—sat waiting behind that door.

Gwang-jin reached the gate before Aelak.
His shoulder blade still ached and tingled. He had no appetite for another fight, and his body was already faltering. Above all, the ice that had been here before him—
Behind came the torches, drawing close. Closer still came the Chilling Aura. Only one door remained.
“Old Master! It’s me! Gwang-jin!”
Bang. Bang.
His fists struck the wooden gate.
The gate offered no reply.
“Open the door! Has age robbed your ears too? Do you want to watch me die?”
The gate remained silent.
Instead, from behind came footsteps that fell without a sound—not even a footfall that would crush the grass.
One step behind him.
He did not need to turn. He knew. That Chilling Aura that had stood waiting for him at every turn throughout the half-day’s pursuit.
“Nh…”
A dry rasp escaped Gwang-jin’s throat.
The hand that had spent a lifetime driving blades between other men’s shoulders was now clawing at a wooden door.
The flight ended here.
Ahead lay a door. Behind him, a sword.
Gwang-jin clung to the door frame as if it might hold him.
Then the door opened from within.
Smoothly. Silently. As though someone had been waiting.
In the darkness beyond, two ancient eyes appeared.
They swept across Gwang-jin first—slow, appraising, tracing the pallor of his face from crown to chin. Then they shifted, looking past his shoulder.
Aelak met that gaze.
He had never seen the face before. He didn’t know what martial art the man wielded. All he knew were three words.
North Sea Journey. Master of Internal Arts. Internal Martial Art Master.
And the weight that lingered at his fingertips—the burden of the force that had pressed down from above. That weight’s owner now stood before him, separated only by a threshold.
Behind him, torches ringed the entire ridge. Before him, his nemesis stood in the doorway. The hunt had finally found another face.
The old man’s feet crossed the threshold.
Even treading on frost-touched earth, his pace did not quicken.
Aelak’s voice fell low.
“…Another one, then.

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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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