North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 114

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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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114. Two Reluctant Adversaries

The door opened.
And the gaze that poured forth from within was colder than any blade waiting outside.
Gwang-jin tumbled over the threshold.
Not the measured roll of an assassin. More like a drowning man scrambling over the gunwale of a boat.
He scraped his shoulder across the earthen floor and managed to rise only by gripping a post, his shoulder blade still burning where frost had lodged itself. Even after half a day of hard riding, the Han Ki had not thawed.
The old house master did not step aside.
“To live in silence, as though one does not exist in this world—that is what it means to be a recluse.”
Hyeon Gong-ja’s voice was low and sparse.
“This was a perfect hidden place. Until you knocked on the door.”
“Why didn’t you just watch me die instead of answering?”
“That would have been quieter, I suppose.”
A sound escaped Gwang-jin’s throat—neither laugh nor curse.
Not long ago, they had both stood on the North Sea together. Even then, this old man had been the same: everything beyond his own shadow was merely noise.
“Recluses are all the same. They mind only their own skins.”
“That’s not how a man speaks when he asks for help. If you have strength enough to say such things, then fight. That’s why men like you stink.”
A teacup sat on the table inside the room. Steam was still rising from it—on a night when a hunted man was pounding on the door, this old sage had been brewing tea.
Only now did Gwang-jin understand why the door had opened without the sound of a bolt.
He had been waiting. Watching to see who would come.
Through the gap in the window, the ridge was visible.
Every peak blazed with torches. Outside the door, blades stood ready, and the valley had been completely encircled by rings of fire.
There was nowhere left to run. Not for him. Not for this old man.
Hyeon Gong-ja’s aged eyes swept over Gwang-jin from top to bottom.
A face drained of color. A sword scabbard torn at its lacing. Hands that could not stop trembling.
“The Gwi-hyeol Technique reduced to this? How many did this to you?”
“…One.”
“One.”
The old man laughed through his nose.
“One blade from the north and the Gwi-hyeol Technique is in this state?”
“Elder.”
Gwang-jin tried not to look toward the door. Still his voice shook.
“That thing isn’t human. The blade—you’ll know when you clash with it. I’ve been hunted by a beast all night long. It’s always waiting at the fork in the road before I arrive.”
“A fleeing man sees his own shadow as a ghost.”
“That ghost is standing in your courtyard right now!”
Gwang-jin’s ears still held the sound—the cry of his own blade, the note of his steel freezing in midair.
A sound he had made a lifetime of extracting from his enemies, now stifled by frost and dying away.
“My blade’s voice. Frozen silent by that thing. Elder, don’t take this lightly.”
“So… your blade… you said yourself it was a trick. Heh! My guts aren’t so easily deceived.”
Hyeon Gong-ja regarded Gwang-jin with a sneer.
Gwang-jin said nothing in return. Instead, he bit his dry lips once and cast his gaze toward the door.
Hyeon Gong-ja sneered again, then turned toward the door with hands clasped behind his back. Not a trace of haste in his stride.
“For thirty years, no one has set foot in my courtyard. Some northern savage certainly won’t be the first.”
Night frost lay white across the courtyard.
Aelak stood five paces back from the door, in the heart of that whiteness.
There was no need to rush. There was only one way out. The walls were low, but beyond them lay a cliff, and the ridge was ringed with torches of the Martial Alliance.
The gorge was sealed. Trapped within this sealed gorge were two of his enemies.
When he had met those eyes just beyond the threshold, Aelak had seen something. The old feet that touched the doorstone made no sound. They had no weight.
In those feet dwelt the speed of Gale Force and the heaviness of crushing strength bound together.
‘The fourth. Those palms will shatter a heart. A Poison Hand no lesser than Dohon.’
In his chest, the wooden carving pressed against his heart.
Below the wall, four subordinates and Serian stood in a line.
They did not enter the courtyard.
Karni’s fear-flame was something they could not touch. Only Aelak could act.

Clang!
The door opened again.
Hyeon Gong-ja emerged first.
Without his walking staff, hands clasped behind his back, he walked as if taking a leisurely stroll through his own courtyard.
Crunch.
As his feet pressed against the frost-covered ground, only half his footprints appeared. The five men standing spread below the wall didn’t glance at him. The old man’s eyes bored into only one figure standing in the center of the courtyard.
Gwang-jin followed behind him.
The dark-red great sword was already drawn. Yet his back remained hunched. The tendons on the hand gripping the hilt swelled, then relaxed.
He was trembling. Only the force of his internal energy suppressed the shaking.
He’d walked forward with a certain arrogance, but couldn’t hide the quivering in his hands.
The two of them stood side by side in the center of the courtyard. Without trusting each other.
“Just this once, old master. I’m asking.”
“Quiet. He’s strong. Very strong.”
“…Damn it. I told you alone won’t work. Even with a combined assault, that man…”
“Just maintain the perimeter defense. That’s the only thing you do well.”
Hyeon Gong-ja didn’t budge at Gwang-jin’s plea.
For a master of Hyeon Gong-ja’s caliber to join hands with a heretical figure and attack one man… such a thing happened once in a lifetime. A journey north. And only at the request of the Supreme Swordmaster of the World would he consent to it.
“Just don’t die, old master.”
Gwang-jin spoke as if resigned to fate.
“Worry about yourself instead. Corpses stink, and I hate that.”
Gwang-jin searched for a reply, then gave up.
This mouth had always been that way. Yet strangely, that unchanging harsh tongue felt like a solid wall to lean against now.
Only then did Hyeon Gong-ja’s eyes turn to the man in the courtyard.
Gray eyes, upright upon the frost. From where he stood, the ground had frozen solid white.
“The wolf of the North.”
The old man murmured. Not in admiration. It was the sound of taking measure.
“What brought you to seek me out, northerner?”
“Your palms.”
The answer was brief and heavy.
The old man’s white brows twitched. But he didn’t probe the meaning. There was no need to ask—he understood without words. Then there was nothing left to discuss.
Hyeon Gong-ja’s foot stepped into the shadow of the wall. And the old man’s body sank into that darkness as if submerged in water.
Gwang-jin forced himself to swallow and angled his feet into position. The attack had begun, so he pulled back, shifting reluctantly into the perimeter.
The shadows across the courtyard deepened at once.
The first movement came from beneath Aelak’s feet. His shadow swelled black, and from within it, a withered palm thrust upward.
Boom!
Frost and earth, shoved upward by the palm strike, shot up like a pillar.
A rising palm strike from below.
Aelak had already flowed to the side. The earth where he’d stood was cratered in the shape of a palm—wider than a human torso.
Without time to catch his breath, the next strike erupted from above.
The old man clung upside down in the shadow of the eaves. As his palms spread wide and descended, the courtyard’s frost was crushed entirely. The stones buried beneath the pressure cracked with a grinding sound.
Aelak raised the Beommyeongdo to meet it.
Screech!
Frost exploded between blade and palm.
As the Han Ki traveled up through the palm, the old man had already withdrawn his hand and vanished. He’d slipped into the wall’s shadow.
‘Fast.’
Try to strike, and there’s only shadow; cut through the shadow, and only empty darkness remains.
There was no target for the blade to find.
The third palm came from the side.
The stone wall’s shade rippled, and a withered palm extended toward his ribs.
This time, Aelak didn’t evade. He met it head-on.
Whoosh!
The Beommyeongdo split the palm force straight through.
Frost that could split a massive boulder… the tremendous pressure cleaved in two, striking both walls on either side. The stone walls crumbled like dried reeds.
The blade’s point drove through the palm force and caught the hem of a gray sleeve.
Hyeon Gong-ja yanked his body back.
An animal’s reflex—yet a scrap of his sleeve was severed and fluttered down.
Even so, his voice emerging from the darkness remained unhurried.
“I suppose I’ll charge you for a new robe. Wolf.”
‘His feet are fast.’
Aelak didn’t pursue.
This man’s movement technique is extraordinary. Here in the North Sea, only someone like Han Bing Sam Su would be capable of facing him.
Aelak lowered his Beommyeongdo and took his stance.
There’s no hurry. Now that they’ve entered my sight, they won’t escape. I’ll let them deploy their Absolute Technique to its fullest. Let them taste the despair of watching what they once prided as their greatest art crumble to dust.

Gwang-jin watched that gray back.
Now. While the wolf chases shadows—now is when I have to run.
But his feet wouldn’t move.
At every fork in the path, that Han Ki he’d encountered earlier came to mind. The cry of the blade freezing and dying in empty air. His feet had gone rigid.
‘The blade sings first, and its song finishes the kill.’
The voice of the blade echoed, aged and worn in his ears. He’d killed several men this way…
Crack!
Gwang-jin laid the blade’s cry into his trembling hands.
In the darkness, the sword seemed to urge him on.
“Your blade has no strength. Deploy the Gwi-hyeol Technique.”
“Shut up!”
With a cry that was neither shout nor scream, the assassin’s feet moved.
Hyeon Gong-ja wanted no joint attack, but alone he was losing ground. No—he was already losing. That barbarian was toying with him.
This was Gwang-jin’s assessment.
Whine!
He hadn’t chosen a direct confrontation.
Terror gripped him, but his body remembered the blade’s path. He twisted left, dropped low, and bored through the empty space behind the wolf where its eyes couldn’t reach.
Nine holes in the dark-red blade drank the wind.
Hummmm…!
The blade began to sing low.
The tremor of fear from Aelak’s sword still lingered in his hands. Yet the blade extended. His martial skill exactly as before—the dark-red great sword fell toward the gray back with no afterimage.
Aelak sensed the blade rising behind him even before the sound reached his ears.
Swish!
He twisted his body and met the blade with his Beommyeongdo.
Clang!
Where blade touched blade, Han Ki took root.
The blade’s cry cut in half at once. From high to low… but the low notes still lingered.
Shrieeeek…!
Metal screamed across the blade, burrowing into Aelak’s sinews with numbing force.
In that half-breath, Hyeon Gong-ja seized his chance.
The wind from the two locked blades sealed off the left. Aelak couldn’t extend his blade to the left no matter what.
Above, to the left, darkness swelled. Then from that darkness, a palm descended smoothly toward his crown.
The blades were locked together, the palm falling from above.
Slip!
Aelak dropped his shoulder and broke free.
The palm that had been meant for his crown crashed down into the middle of the courtyard instead.
Boom!
The imprint of a palm was carved into the stones laid below.
But this time, Hyeon Gong-ja couldn’t slip away cleanly either. The blade followed to where he’d retreated, arriving first.
The nape of his neck!
He dodged—and the blade shot to where he’d dodged. At every step back, the blade was already there waiting, one stride ahead.
Gwang-jin had learned resignation from this technique. At every fork in his escape route, Han Ki had waited for him first. Without fail.
Now Hyeon Gong-ja was experiencing it himself.
‘This northerner’s footwork matches my own movement technique.’
Hyeon Gong-ja’s eyes widened.
Then Aelak threw himself backward.
He could have decided the match right then… but instead his feet carved long furrows into the frozen ground. As though deliberately laying bare his movement technique.
Crack! Boom!
At the spot where Aelak had retreated, Gwang-jin’s blade and Hyeon Gong-ja’s palm crossed and struck.
The palm of the righteous path and the blade of the unorthodox school.
An arrogant hand and a fearful sword.
They collided with discord yet interlocked like teeth, closing in on the wolf from front and back.
It was no planned alliance. A forced joint attack born of desperation. No oath bound them, and trust was absent altogether.
Two masters didn’t need such things to stand back to back.

Below the wall, Harku adjusted his grip on the twin-bladed haft.
“Look at those two—they’re completely out of sync. They can’t stand against the lord like this. Their teeth are grinding together.”
“They’re masters beyond our reach. There’s no place for us in this. We can only bear witness.”
Garkan spoke.
The torches on the ridge ringed the courtyard from a distance.
Those who held the torches could not know what collided against what within the net they had drawn.

Beneath the firelight, three figures stood facing each other once more.
The spear lay half-submerged in shadow, while the sword trembled yet held its edge raised. Gwang-jin’s ragged breaths rose and scattered white against the cold.
The gorge settled into silence.
Aelak adjusted his grip on the Beommyeongdo’s hilt, and instead deliberately left open an escape route on either side for the two of them.
Only Aelak’s eyes grew colder, sinking deeper still.

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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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