North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 22

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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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22. The Snow Women Advance

“So in the end, they walk straight into their own grave. Dan Hon Gok? How amusing!”

Bing Sim Jeon—the heart of Bing Gong, a forbidden realm where bitter cold and silence held dominion.
Massive ice pillars rose to support the ceiling, and through fissures carved by centuries of time, frigid air seeped. Frost blanketing the floor swallowed every footstep into silence.
Behind Mukara’s jade throne hung a frozen waterfall.
A cascade that once flowed was now locked solid in time, trapped forever in its suspended descent.
A messenger knelt and reported.
“We have confirmed they entered Dan Hon Gok.”
“Is that so? How delightful! The starving wolf meets a most pitiful end.”
At the messenger’s words, the Palace Mistress Mukara’s pale lips twisted with a sickly smile.
Airak and his band had abandoned Seulli Village and walked of their own accord into Dan Hon Gok, that canyon of death.
Mukara wanted to laugh aloud, intoxicated by the thrill of victory—but in that same instant, a surge of scalding heat rose from the depths of her chest, choking off her throat with savage force.
She coughed violently.
Dark crimson blood flecked her suppressed cough, staining the floor carved from ancient glacial ice.
The blood crystallized instantly upon the frigid surface.
It formed the shape of some grotesque crimson flower, and around it drifted the bitter reek of blood.
The taste pooling in her mouth was rank and acrid.
Mukara felt the taste with her tongue and clenched her teeth.
Her own body was betraying her. The compulsion for power and the terror that Airak might return alive had forced her Inner Force to reverse course, twisting her Blood Meridians beyond repair.
“Palace Mistress!”
Her aide Tarhan rushed to her side.
“It’s nothing.”
“Another vomiting of blood—”
“Silence. It’s trivial.”
Mukara wiped the blood from her lips with her sleeve.
‘Airak… that repugnant vitality of his. Ordinary men would have perished long ago in circumstances like these.’
The Airak Clan—with lifespans averaging two centuries and bodies that fed on extreme cold as nourishment for their blood—possessed a constitution that Mukara could not overcome. It was her one true terror.
She heard her own pulse racing and clenched her trembling hand beneath her sleeve. If Airak returned before her authority took root, the walls of fear she had built would crumble in an instant.
‘If the mere fact of his being alive is enough to bring up blood… I must kill him. I must! Should he go to the Central Plains, he may not return—but my own hand must be certain. My own hand must strike the killing blow.’
“Tarhan.”
“Yes, Palace Mistress.”
“Summon the Snow Women.”
Tarhan’s face went rigid.
“The Snow Women? But they—”
“What? You cannot summon them?”
“No, that is not it. Only that moving the Snow Women requires considerable payment—”
“I care nothing for payment. Summon them at once.”
Killing Intent dripped thick and heavy from Mukara’s voice.
Moments later, a woman appeared from the darkness without a sound, kneeling silently on the floor of Bing Sim Jeon.
An assassin in white mourning garb, her very presence concealed by frigid air.
Binghua—leader of the Snow Women.
Her arrival made no sound. Like snowflakes drifting to earth, her very existence seemed phantom-like.
The hands visible beneath her white garb were pale as ice, and her eyes held the chill of the glaciers of the Northern Sea.
The Snow Women are the Northern Sea’s most covert assassination collective.
They were born in cold, raised in cold, and when they kill, they do so with cold’s own silence.
“You summoned me.”
“There are five who have entered Dan Hon Gok. All of the Airak Clan.”
“The Airak Clan….”
Binghua’s gaze flickered, barely perceptible.
“I know. You cannot kill them with cold. They are monsters who maintain their heartbeat even entombed in ice.”
“Then how—”
“I must see hot blood pour from their bodies with my own eyes.”
Mukara rose slowly to her feet.
“Only when Airak’s head lies before me will I know peace. Can you do this?”
“The Snow Women have never failed a single contract. However… the fee will be quite substantial. And if the target is a Northern Sea Martial Warrior, a good number of them will likely be wounded. All of that must be compensated.”
“Fine. Do it.”
“I will bring you the head of the Airak Clan along with proof of the contract’s completion.”
Binghua’s body dissolved like smoke.
Where she had stood, only a chill remained—as though no one had ever been there at all.
Mukara needed Airak’s death as the most certain offering to quiet the dread that gnawed at her heart.
Tarhan asked carefully.
“Will the Snow Women alone be sufficient? Airak killed even Han Bing Sam Su. He is no ordinary martial master.”
“That’s precisely why I’m sending the Snow Women. Binghua assassinated Balkar, Han Bing Sam Su’s subordinate, thirty years ago.”
“Balkar?”
“She failed, of course. Balkar was a monster. But Binghua was only fifteen at the time.”
A thin smile spread across Mukara’s lips.
It was cold as ice and white as snow, and her pupils glinted with killing intent.
“Now, she is something else entirely.”

* * *

Airak stepped into the desolate, cutting wind that howled through the canyons of Dan Hon Gok.
The entrance to the gorge yawned open like the maw of some enormous beast.
Cliffs hundreds of fathoms high rose on either side, and between them only a thread of sky could be glimpsed.
A place where sunlight never reached.
A place where darkness reigned eternal.
The bone-deep cold came with it, and the rank stench of rotting moss and decaying life pricked at the party’s nostrils. A haze so thick that sight could not pierce even three paces ahead blocked their vision, and the mud beneath their feet lay hard and frozen like the corpse of some dead beast.
“Why is this place so bleak?”
Harku griped, fussing with the Twin Short Swords at his side.
“Because it’s Dan Hon Gok.”
Taikan replied curtly.
“The Valley Where Souls Sever—it lives up to its name.”
Arko spoke, glancing about.
“According to legend, those who die in this gorge cannot even escape with their souls.”
Garkan said quietly.
“Which is why vengeful spirits are said to wander here as mist.”
“Vengeful spirits?”
Harku flinched.
“You mean this mist wrapping around us right now is nothing but vengeful spirits?”
“Perhaps. It’s only legend.”
“Only legend? Does this desolation feel like mere legend to you?”
“Frightened?”
“N-no, of course not! Who would be frightened?”
Airak stared into the deepest, darkest crevice of the gorge.
Karani’s image rose in his mind.
Her, lying in the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Coffin. Silver hair. Skin white as snow. Long lashes casting shadows across her closed eyelids. She looked as though merely sleeping. But she would never open her eyes again.
And the terrible wound carved into her chest.
‘A speed that would not permit even the flesh to part. A cut so clean that even poison could not take hold.’

A Legendary Blade!
The Shura Mangoq Blade he now held was no match for it. To have his vengeance, he needed a better sword.
“For a Northern Sea Martial Warrior to lose his blade is shame itself.”
When Airak spoke, his companions’ eyes fixed upon him.
“And if he lost a blade as worthless as a broken tool and could not retrieve it, forced to retreat…”
“Clan leader, what do you mean?”
“What place could carry such dishonor?”
“Surely not here…”
“Yes. The Twelfth Northern Sea Martial Warrior lost his blade in this very gorge.”
His subordinates’ eyes widened.
“What blade was it?”
“The Buk Myeong Blade.”
Silence fell. Shock swept across the faces of the men.
“The Buk Myeong Blade…”
Garkan’s face grew rigid.
“Forged from Extreme Yin Ice-Iron… the legendary blade passed down through generations of Northern Sea Martial Warriors. Is that the one you speak of?”
“It is.”
“The blade that cuts through ice and steel alike…”
“They say it can even cleave the wind itself.”
Harku murmured.

“But the Buk Myeong Blade exists only in legend…”
“It’s no legend. It simply lies buried here.”
“What manner of danger could have driven the Twelfth Leader of the Airak Clan to abandon his blade?”
Taikan asked.
“I don’t know. From what I’ve heard… he fought something in this gorge. Three days and nights without pause. He couldn’t overcome it.”
“Couldn’t overcome it?”
Harku echoed.
“After three days of fighting?”
“Yes. He battled for three days, shedding blood and sweat, yet in the end he couldn’t bring it down.”
“What in heaven could it have been…”
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever heard it called ‘that thing.'”
Taikan surveyed the surroundings. Something seemed to breathe within the mist.
“In truth, this is my own thinking… but surviving at all was extraordinary. The fact that he lost his blade and never thought to reclaim it means the opponent was overwhelming.”
“Then it might still be…”
“A hundred years have passed.”
Airak gazed deep into the canyon. Something seemed to wait within the fog.
“Clan Leader, is the blade truly sleeping in this place?”
Garkan asked.
“It is.”
“Why do you seek it now, of all times?”
“The one who killed Karani carries a Legendary Blade.”
Airak’s gaze grew cold.
“A Legendary Blade must be matched with a Legendary Blade.”
“We will search. We will keep in mind the location where a blade could be abandoned, the threat that would demand it. All of it.”
Taikan spoke, his Thousand-Li Eye keen.
Whoosh.
The air of the canyon settled heavily.
Mist rose as if alive. The wind died. No sound emerged. No birdsong, no insect hum. Only their own breathing circled their ears.
“Something is wrong. The mist grows thicker.”
Arko spoke in a low voice.
That Arko—skilled in poison and hidden weapons—spoke first meant the mist was truly suspicious.
“This… I cannot discern direction. I think the same. This mist… it doesn’t seem to be natural fog, does it? Whether it’s ‘that thing’ or not, I cannot say, but…”
Taikan drew his Each Ak Gung and nocked an arrow to the string.
“Clan Leader, something approaches from—”
Harku’s words cut off.
Presences. Not one. From all directions. Three? No, four? Five? Countless.
Garkan unfurled his Ice-Iron Chain and wrapped it around his hand. The metal links rang out.
“Enemies?”
……
Airak answered nothing, gripping the Shura Mangoq Blade.
His eyes transformed. Indifference vanished, replaced by terrible keenness.
“Clan Leader, something draws near.”
Taikan drew the bowstring taut.
The arrowhead pointed into the murk. The fingers anchoring the shaft trembled faintly.
His followers planted their backs together, forming a circle.
Strength flooded into the hands gripping weapons. Hearts hammered fast. Mouths went dry. Sweat slicked palms.
How many enemies there were, from where they came—none of it was clear.
On all sides, mist. On all sides, foes.
Shadows drew steadily closer.
No footfalls sounded. No breathing. Only Killing Intent pierced the skin.
Within the mist, faceless shadows tightened their encirclement.

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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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