North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 115

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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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115. Loyal to Neither Side

Shouts crested the ridge.
Torches that had been planted on every peak poured down into the valley at once. Their light raced along the cliff face, turning night into blazing day.
The Martial Alliance’s banner fluttered at the vanguard.
More than a hundred blades had already rushed past the wall and stood ready.
“Enemies! Kill them all!”
There was no time to spare a thought for the two inside. The Martial Alliance warriors came surging like a tempest—it felt as though they would all be swept away by the current.
But the gray-eyed man standing in the center of the courtyard, Aelak, saw none of them. Only the two standing before him existed in his eyes.
“Leave the outside to me.”
The quiet words fell from Aelak’s lips.
“Do not worry, sir!”
Garkan answered at once.
Aelak did not even glance back at what lay beyond the wall.
The five men outside the wall moved swiftly in response. Garkan stepped forward, Harku at his flank. Serian’s Eun Seol drew from its sheath without a sound.

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Screech!
Gwang-jin’s saber came first.
An ambush from the wall’s shadow—the blood-red blade twisted down, seeking his throat. Aelak raised the Beommyeongdo to meet it.
Clang!
Frost scattered where the blades kissed.
Gwang-jin did not yield. Even as the saber fell away, a piercing shriek followed.
Eeee-aahhh!
The metallic wail from the blade’s nine holes rushed through the locked weapons, hunting for Aelak’s wrist.
It splits on the surface, but tears within—such was this blade.
Instead of retreating, Aelak pushed the Han Ki forward another inch. The ultra-high screech froze, its tone dropping into a lower register.
Hyeon Gong-ja had been waiting for that moment.
A shadow bloomed at his feet, and then a withered palm rocketed upward from below, seeking the jaw.
Aelak arched his spine and drove the flat of his blade down onto the wrist.
But the palm was already gone. As he realized the strike had missed, it sank back into shadow.
Where the shadow had swelled, only scattered stones remained.
The two had never practiced coordination before. Yet saber and palm technique wove together as if executing a synchronized attack, each filling the gaps the other left open.

With each new torch, shadows multiplied.
Shadows along the wall, shadows beneath the eaves, shadows of the writhing crowd beyond the gate.
The more the light illuminated the courtyard, the more paths opened for Hyeon Gong-ja’s feet. Yes—his attack began with hiding his body in shadow.
Both feet moved freely through the darkness.
“I’m grateful for the suppression force. More ground to stand on.”
“Old fool! Stop the idle talk and kill him already. Looks like we might manage it if we’re careful.”
Gwang-jin’s saber bit into an ambush again.
Hands that had trembled moments before trembled no longer. Confidence fed on the taut struggle—while Hyeon Gong-ja’s palm technique held sway, his blade would too.
For the first time since meeting Aelak, the frightened assassin believed this hunt could succeed.
Confidence ran through the steel.
Screech!
The saber cut low, targeting the knee.
The moment Aelak lowered his blade to meet it, the saber whipped upward like a lash. A feint to make him catch nothing; the true strike came through sound.
Wooonn!
All nine holes sang at once.
Aelak drove straight through the descending saber. A movement that erased the distance between them before the cry could fully bloom.
Gwang-jin twisted away into an ambush as the blade point sought his chest. In that same breath, a withered palm erupted from the wall’s shadow, raking for Aelak’s temple.
Aelak tilted his head, letting the palm pass.
A few strands of hair scattered as the violent wind cut through.
He could not pursue Hyeon Gong-ja. Chase one, and the other struck from behind. So they held on, each entrusting their life completely to the other’s defense.

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“Form the array! Raise the wall!”
The slope beyond the courtyard had become a field of blades.
Eight sword-wielders at the vanguard locked shoulders and pressed forward—a coordinated formation where feet, blades, and movements interlocked like teeth.
When eight swords drove forward as one body, a single person couldn’t withstand it.
Serian retreated without meeting their force.
But she smiled. In that single moment of withdrawal, she’d already seen it—their formation was imperfect.
Eight fighters… their movements matched, but their breathing didn’t. Their blades fell in unison, yet their breath was ragged and out of time. Her eyes weren’t watching the swords. She was watching their breath.
Whoosh!
She slid through in an instant.
Eun Seol’s blade-tip skated across the frozen earth.
She flowed between the second and third swordsmen like water poured through a crack, her body nearly horizontal. In a heartbeat she’d pierced the formation and positioned herself inside it—not outside the edge of their blades, but within their circle.
“Where are you striking?”
The low question came as Eun Seol twisted in a reverse arc.
Frost traced the blade like capillaries in blood. The Seolya Sword.
Eun Seol caught the leading swordsman’s blade from below, drawing upward.
In an instant, the blade turned white with ice. Then his fingers, his palm, his wrist, his forearm—a creeping chill advanced up his arm.
“My—my blade!”
The swordsman froze.
Serian was already flowing into her next strike. Two more blades froze over, two more men locked rigid. The martial arts of the North Sea were deeply unfamiliar to them.
Serian could have killed them, but she deliberately immobilized them instead.
The effect was immediate.
The swordsmen turned to grab at her as she burrowed deeper into their formation. But as they turned, the array began to twist and tangle—swords that were meant to strike outward now pointed inward.
The formation came undone from within.
Crack!
The Ice Iron Chain whipped free from Garkan’s wrist.
The chain flew low like a serpent, wrapping around the left flank of the collapsing formation. Three swordsmen were bound together in one stroke.
“Resist and I’ll break you!”
The massive figure planted his feet and hauled them toward him.
The three bound men were dragged sideways across their own formation, and an entire side collapsed.
Through the gap, Harku burst in.
The Twin Fang Sabers wheeled with terrible speed. Double shadows layered over each other as he cut their shoulders and knees in succession. His cackling laughter arrived before the blade’s edge.
“Just keep them open, big brother. I’ll handle the cutting. This is excellent work!”
“Less talking, more blades!”
Behind them, dark smoke crept low across the ground.
Arko’s Poison Smoke Technique.
The smoke, carried by the wind at his back, rolled over the broken ranks. Those struggling to rise again clawed at their own throats and collapsed anew. Foam bubbled at every mouth.
“The wind is on the house.”
The hunchbacked figure drawled low.
Behind him, a man who’d been shouting to reform the scattered array took an arrow in the throat and fell silent.
Taikan lowered his bowstring and nocked another shaft.
“The loud ones always go first.”
Five warriors had become an unbreakable wall.
But the enemy was endless. Behind each shattered formation, the next rose and pressed forward. From the slope below, torches advanced in streams.
“They never end, they never end!”
Harku’s Twin Fang Sabers wheeled again. His mouth was laughing, but his eyes were not.
“Is that a compliment or a complaint?”
“Both, big brother!”
Garkan’s chain swept the leading edge of the new formation aside. Serian shattered swords one after another, leaving the swordsmen in shock. Arko’s smoke covered their retreat, and Taikan’s arrows found every voice that cried out.
As time wore on, the breathing of the five grew gradually harder. Yet the wall never broke. The tide pressing against it never ceased.
Not a single foot crossed that wall.

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Within that wall, Aelak watched only two.
Outside the courtyard, screams tore the air and formations crumbled, yet his grey eyes never wavered by a fraction. An errant arrow flew over the courtyard wall and passed beside his cheek, burying itself in the earth. He didn’t even blink.
The foot soldiers are the minions’ work.
Only these two in the courtyard are his. To repay in full what Karani suffered… he would not kill quickly.
The blade came in, slicing at his throat. He took it. Metal sang against exposed flesh. He froze it. A palm technique rose from shadow. He cut it short.
The tangle quickened with each exchange.
Gwang-jin’s saber found only the paths that Hyeon Gong-ja’s palm had opened. The old man’s palm rose only in the moment when his eyes followed the blade.
Reluctant though the coordinated practice was, with each attack the two pairs of hands locked together more tightly.
Bang!
The palm that fell toward the crown of his head—Beommyeongdo turned it aside with a slant. Immediately the saber drove through the open flank. Aelak rolled his left foot, sinking his body half a span lower. The blade whispered past the fabric of his shoulder.
The assault grew faster by the moment, the blade seeming merely to parry and give ground.
But something had changed. Aelak’s feet were not moving. They stayed rooted. No matter how the saber and palm tightened around him, the wolf’s feet would not budge.
And for the first time, the saber and palm came in the same breath.
From the left the saber sliced at his waist; from the shadow of the eaves on the right the palm descended on his shoulder. There was no space to escape.
Aelak moved forward.
Beommyeongdo thrust the blade-body sideways. At once Gwang-jin’s saber, which should have split the waist, twisted its path toward the gap where Hyeon Gong-ja’s palm was falling. No—it was drawn there.
“Ah!”
Gwang-jin cried out in alarm, swinging at empty air.
The hands tangled with each other. A weathered palm bent sharply, evading Gwang-jin’s blade.
“You, you wretch!”
Hyeon Gong-ja’s curse burst forth.
“I didn’t do it! It twisted!”
Gwang-jin shouted urgently. In the darkness, even Hyeon Gong-ja had no reply. He too understands. In a single instant, the blade had twisted.
The old man’s eyes narrowed.
His certainty that Aelak was being driven back shattered into fragments.
The unhurried pace of his movements vanished.
The old man’s palm grew heavy, and the distances he covered leaping from shadow to shadow shortened.
Gwang-jin’s blade grew keener with each passing moment.
At first he had disdained coordinated action, but now both men understand they must give their all. Yet whether they can overcome this man remains doubtful.
The defense quickened to match.
The frost on the courtyard floor rose to powder beneath three pairs of feet and glittered in the torchlight.

*　*　*

At the edge of the sword-field, a brother and sister stood.
Four Martial Alliance warriors, driven from the collapsed formation, tumbled toward them.
A man and woman from the Central Plains, trailing among the Northerners.
In the warriors’ eyes, they were of the same band.
“That woman is one of them too!”
Blade-points turned toward Cheok Ha-rin.
Cheok Mu-yeong stepped before her. But he only gripped the hilt—he did not draw it.
“Cheok Mu-yeong, Chief Inspector of the Martial Alliance.”
His voice was low and flat.
“Sheathe your swords.”
“Inspector… why are you among those—”
“I said sheathe them.”
The foremost warrior thrust his blade forward nonetheless. Cheok Mu-yeong struck upward with his scabbard.
Crack!
The blade sprang into the air, and the disarmed warrior fell hard on his back.
“You’re… truly the Inspector?”
The warriors shuffled backward, hesitant.
Cheok Mu-yeong did not cut them down. He had no wish to. He could not cut down the Martial Alliance. He could not aid the Northerners.
His father’s command echoed worn in his ears: Stand aside.
But the space to stand aside kept shrinking. In this sword-field, he could protect only one thing—the blood ties at his back.
“Ha-rin. Go back.”

Cheok Ha-rin did not retreat.
Her eyes remained fixed on the courtyard.
In the center of the courtyard where firelight and shadow tangled, with the blade striking from the front and the palm falling from above, the man who stood between them did not yield an inch. He received the killing intent of two men alone and breathed without faltering once.
She had just seen it. Blade and palm came together from both sides. That man did not give ground—he stepped forward instead, and made the two weapons strike each other.
It was not strength that held. He was reading the breaths of both men.
She had been taught that the Northerners were barbarians. The savages of the North were like beasts, without letters or courtesy.
She had learned this for twenty years.
Yet there, caught between a hundred blades and two masters, this man who entrusted his back to his own people and faced only his enemy—where was the beast in him?
A chill ran through her. The chill was not unfamiliar. Her heart had begun to ache with an odd, pulling sensation.
Her heart was racing.
Louder than the shouts, louder than the clash of steel, she heard the thundering of her own pulse. Her fingertips tingled.
‘This heart… it’s not fear making it race.’
That realization frightened her more than anything.

“Ha-rin!”
Cheok Mu-yeong seized his sister’s wrist.
“We’re going. We need to leave….”
But her feet wouldn’t move. Her eyes even less so. That gaze fixed on Aelak refused to budge.
Her brother dragged her toward the cliff, into the shadow of a boulder where neither blade nor smoke could reach. A place where they could step back from the fight and watch.
Brother and sister stood there together.
Yet only their feet had retreated. Neither his eyes nor hers could leave the man in the courtyard.
Her brother’s gaze was calculating—measuring the day when that warrior would face their father’s blade.
Her gaze calculated nothing. It only held.
Far beyond the wall on the distant slope, the defensive line held by five subordinates was forced back half a step by the tide of enemies pressing forward.
Her eyes remained fixed on the courtyard’s center even as she watched that wall begin to crumble. If it fell, this place where the two of them stood would soon lay bare.
In the courtyard, the clash of steel erupted again.
Blades and palms and shadows tangled together, frost scattering white between the blows.
With her eyes fixed on the man at the heart of it all, Cheok Ha-rin’s heart continued its wild beating.
Not from fear—but from something else entirely.

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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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