North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 23

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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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23. Eyes of the Black Bear

“What in the world is that…!”

Taikan drew the string of his Gakak Bow, the cry torn from his throat.
Something was approaching through the mist. The shape of a person. And yet, not a person at all.
“Don’t move.”
Airak’s voice came low and steady.
“We need to see what it is.”
“If it attacks us—”
“Then you shoot.”
The Forbidden Realm. Danhon Gorge. It was said to sever the souls of the living.
With each step Airak’s company took deeper into the mist, the cold transformed—no longer mere chill, but a blade carving through bone.
This fog was not simple dampness. It was toxic miasma—centuries of vengeful spirits trapped in the gorge, their resentment congealed and made manifest. Yes. Thick and viscous, a grudge that clung like tar.
“It’s hard to breathe.”
Arko spoke, his voice strained.
“The air feels heavy.”
“It’s the mist. Don’t inhale it.”
Garkan answered him.
“May I fire?”
Taikan asked, the arrowhead already aimed into the murk.
“Wait.”
Airak’s reply was clipped.
From the mist, something small emerged—walking slowly. A doll in a white mourning robe, its face devoid of all animation.
“A doll… it’s moving! The doll is moving!”
Harku cried out, swinging his Dual Swords.
“What is that thing? It looks like a ghost, but… is it human?”
Taikan’s question hung in the stagnant air.
“It’s not human.”
Garkan said flatly.
“It’s a doll. Carved from wood.”
It was small as a child, yet its face was set in the rigid expression of a corpse. The wooden skin cracked in places, and where eyes should have been, there were only hollow voids.
The doll moved toward them with grotesque snapping sounds, its joints bending at impossible angles.
“Clan leader, may we attack?”
Garkan asked, uncoiling the Bingcheolsae around his hand.
“Useless.”
Airak shook his head.
“There’s no point in striking a phantom.”
“A phantom?”
“Danhon Gorge finds the hollow places in our hearts and shapes them into illusion. Don’t let it deceive you.”

The doll did not attack. It merely circled them, emitting a strange keening sound—somewhere between a wail and a song.
The sound burrowed into their ears, like the crying of a dead child.
“That noise… my head aches.”
Arko pressed his palm to his brow, wincing.
“Cover your ears. Don’t listen.”
Taikan said urgently.
Behind the doll, dozens—hundreds—of similar shapes writhed within the mist. Abominations born from Danhon Gorge’s malevolent essence. Phantoms called Danhon Spirits.
“Are all of those illusions?”
Harku’s voice trembled as he spoke.
“All of them. They have no substance. You cannot cut them with a blade.”
“Then how do we—”
“Ignore them. The moment you surrender to fear, they become real.”
“Become real?”
Garkan’s question came sharp and urgent.
“The Danhon Spirits feed on fear. They grow stronger the more you dread them. That’s how they find the cracks in your mind.”
“So those who die in Danhon Gorge can’t even escape as spirits…”
“Correct. A spirit consumed by fear becomes another Danhon Spirit.”
The faces of his subordinates turned ashen.
The puppets circling them seemed to multiply suddenly. No—they were actually multiplying, feeding on their terror.
“Get hold of yourselves.”
Airak spoke coldly.
“Don’t be afraid. Those things are illusions.”
Airak tapped the hilt of his worn Suramangok Blade.
His true purpose in coming here was to find the Bekmyeongdo, a legendary blade lost a century ago.
He hadn’t obtained it yet.
But the chill emanating from Airak alone was enough to scatter the grotesque mist around them for a single moment.
“Forward. We have no time to be paralyzed by illusions.”
Airak advanced with heavy footsteps, trampling through the forbidden space.
Garkan and the subordinates swallowed hard and followed in his wake. Though the spirits’ moans clawed at their ears, they kept their eyes fixed on Airak’s back and suppressed their fear.

* * *

At that same moment, in Zhongyuan.
Cheok Unhwi opened his eyes, drenched in cold sweat.
A dream. A dream of the Northern Sea.
A black shadow approached across endless sheets of ice. It had the shape of a man, yet its eyes held no pupils—only hollow voids that stared at him.
And blood.
Red blood spread across the white snow.
Whose blood it was, he couldn’t tell. Only that it grew wider and wider, threatening to swallow him whole.
“…What was that?”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead, muttering to himself.
The Northern Sea? Why such a vivid dream?
His heart still raced. His fingertips were cold. As if the chill from the dream still lingered.
Outside the window, the moon disappeared behind clouds. An ill omen pressed against his chest. Something was approaching. Something as yet unnamed. From the north. From the land of ice.

* * *

Deep within Danhon Gorge.
Thud…!
The ground trembled faintly.
It was no simple vibration. A massive creature’s footfall unleashed a crushing pressure that bore down upon the entire gorge.
“What is that?”
Harku looked down at the ground beneath his feet.
“An earthquake, sir?”
“No.”
Garkan’s face went rigid.
“Footsteps.”
The mist turned bitterly cold.
A rank, beastial reek stabbed at their nostrils—blood, rotting meat, the stench of death all mingled together. Beyond the hazy veil, a colossal black shadow rose into view.
It was twice the size of an ordinary bear.
Its shoulders alone towered more than ten feet high. Beneath its dark-blue fur, muscles rippled like stone itself, and most unsettling of all were its eyes—blood-red pupils that blazed with intelligence.
This was no mere beast.
“That… that is…!”
Taikan’s face went pale.
“An Ice Beast.”
Airak spoke in a low voice.
“An Ice Beast? You don’t mean…”
“The Haekoong.”
The subordinates’ breath caught. Cold dread ran down their spines.
The Haekoong of the Northern Sea—the most savage, the most massive, the most difficult to hunt of all Ice Beasts. Ordinary blades couldn’t even scratch its hide.
“Is this what the Twelve Grand Martial Artist fought?”
Garkan asked, his voice trembling.
“Presumably.”
Airak’s voice remained steady.
“So this was the opponent he couldn’t defeat even after three days and nights of battle.”
“Yes.”
“The reason I had to abandon the Bekmyeongdo and flee…”
Taikan murmured.
“Now I understand.”
“Understand all you like. But that thing is right here, right in front of us…”
Harku spoke in a trembling voice.
“Are we going to hunt it?”
“No.”
Airak answered curtly.
“In all of Northern Sea history, the Black Bear has been hunted only three times. And each time, dozens had to stake their lives just to barely succeed.”
“Then what do we do…”
“We don’t fight. We flee.”
The Black Bear’s hide is steel. Its fangs jutting from its mouth and its claws carry the sharpness of the finest blades. Each breath the creature exhaled froze the mist solid, sending it clattering to the ground.
“Hhiiieeek…!”
Harku’s Dual Swords trembled faintly.
Though the Airak Tribe had endured countless trials, the monster before them stirred primal terror by its very existence.
The Black Bear’s eyes gleamed blood-red as it turned its massive head toward the group.
“It’s seen us, chief. What do we do?”
Taikan asked urgently.
“Will arrows work?”
“They won’t.”
“Then…”
“Everyone, hide your bodies.”
Garkan spoke in a rush.

“Don’t even breathe. Ice Beasts are sensitive to sound.”
“Where should we hide?”
Harku asked.
“In those cracks in the rocks!”
“What about you, chief?”
“Come with us, chief…”
The subordinates threw themselves into the crevices between the boulders.
They were crushed beneath the Black Bear’s overwhelming presence, barely able to breathe. There seemed no way to pierce that steel hide or evade those claws.
“Chief!”
Garkan called out urgently.
“You must hide too…”
But Airak was different.
He did not conceal himself behind the rocks. Nor did he draw the Suramangok Blade. Airak simply stood where he was, calmly regarding the approaching Black Bear.
“Chief…?”
His gray eyes were not merely composed—they were serene.
It was the gaze of a man watching a stone tumble along the roadside, not a towering monstrosity.
The Black Bear exhaled hot breath as it drew level with Airak’s face.
Searing exhalation struck his cheeks. The stench of the beast assaulted his nose. Enormous claws raked the earth—claws that could bisect a human body with a single sweep.
Yet Airak’s eyelids did not flutter once.
Instead, a faint chill began to rise from his entire being. The aura of one who had endured thirty years in the Extreme Cold Land. Where the Black Bear’s breath touched that coldness, it crystallized into white ice.
The beast’s eyes wavered for an instant. But the Black Bear soon growled—a sound that made the entire gorge resonate. The subordinates hidden in the rock crevices shrank back.
“Chief…!”
Garkan cried out in alarm. But Airak did not move.
Facing the most brutal fiend in Death’s Gorge, he remained still—as though he did not belong to this world at all. Eyes bored with tedium. Expression unmoved. As though even death itself would be a bore.
The Black Bear growled. But it did not attack.
After studying Airak’s eyes for a long moment, it slowly turned its head and vanished into the mist.
“…It left?”
Harku murmured in disbelief.
“We’re alive… we’re alive…!”
The subordinates crept out from the rock crevices. Some collapsed where they stood, legs failing them.
“Why… why didn’t it attack?”
Garkan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Airak stared in the direction the Black Bear had vanished.
“Was it because you met its eyes, chief?”
Taikan asked.
“I’ve heard that Ice Beasts recognize strength.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or maybe it was simply full…”
Harku spoke up.
“But one thing is clear.”
Airak cut in.
“What’s that?”
“That creature didn’t see us as prey. It was stalking something else.”
“Something else?”
At that moment, screams echoed down from higher up in the gorge. A woman’s scream. No—multiple screams.
“That’s…”
Taikan turned his head.
“Screams. People screaming.”
Arko spoke.
“Someone’s under attack.”
Garkan gripped the Bingcheolsae.
“Should we go?”
……
Airak didn’t answer. He simply stared toward the source of the screams.
His eyes flickered with change—ennui replaced by something sharp and vigilant.
The screams drew closer. And then, one by one, they ceased. Like candles being snuffed out.
The deep darkness of Danhon Gorge was now baring its true teeth.

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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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