North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 59

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

59. The Point That Does Not Move

White light consumed the meridians.
The ice spreading from his shoulders, swallowing his entire body in agony, was far more brutal than any torture could be.
The reason Aelak had not struck the final blow was plain.
He was saying there was no honor in it. He would not grant a death worthy of the North Sea People.
A scrap of leather from the Twin Curved Swords caught between his teeth pressed against the inside of his tongue. The salty, fishy taste of the leather spread, followed by the sweet warmth of his own blood.
Aelak walked toward him.
His feet crushed the frozen earth. The bloodstains crumbled faintly beneath his soles. After those footprints were set, the silence of the Plains grew even heavier.
Even the wind seemed to diminish its own sound.
The Lord opened his mouth.
“Aelak… you… do not know….”
As he spoke, blood pooled in his mouth split into two streams and ran. The blood from the right side traced his jawline down to his collarbone, while the blood from the left followed the leather scrap caught between his teeth and dripped onto the blade of the Twin Curved Swords.
In that moment… Aelak’s mouth opened and then closed again.
There were no words. No expression. The temperature in his gray eyes did not change. Only his lips parted for an instant, then closed.
Only Taikan saw it.
Taikan watched the shape of Aelak’s mouth from beside him. But he said nothing. He only clenched his jaw.
Words from the Lord whose meaning could not be grasped.
Aelak’s silent words.
The two of them exchanged something.
The Lord’s knees sank deeper into the earth.
A grinding sound came as his kneecap scraped against the frozen soil.
His broken left arm moved one last time.
The movement was sensed by sound before sight. The joint creaked like a dried branch.
The next syllable left the Lord’s mouth.
“More… vast….”
There the syllable broke off. The next words did not follow. Though the Lord tried to continue speaking, his frozen meridians had already locked even the movements of his tongue.
Aelak gripped the Beok Myeong Do.
His thumb… moved to the lower edge of the blade.
That shift held no meaning anyone could read. It was not even what could be called a stance before drawing.
What happened next, no one saw.
Aelak moved.
No one saw it. There was no afterimage, no parting of the wind. Not even a single speck of dust rose from the earth beneath his feet.
Neither his shoulders nor his waist nor his arms carried the temporal thickness that human motion possesses. The realization that he had moved came only after the motion had ended.
It was not a technique. It had transcended the point where the word martial art was even necessary. It was instinct… and mere arrival.
The Lord did not see Aelak move with his eyes.
Thud!
The Beok Myeong Do pierced through the Lord’s chest.
The heart. Precisely.
The blade paused briefly at some point within the chest cavity. And there… the Beok Myeong Do felt the Lord’s heart beat for the last time.
The heart struck against the blade.
That impact was weak. It was the last crumble of remaining strength, a final heartbeat. And after that, there was no more impact. The blade itself knew first that no more beating would come.
Only then did the blade withdraw from the chest.
Even that withdrawal escaped everyone’s sight.
The hole in the chest held its shape for a moment. The path of the Beok Myeong Do returning to its sheath entered no one’s field of vision on the Plains.
Gush!
A single stream of blood surged from the Lord’s chest.
The force of it was weak. The heart could no longer drive the blood. It did not spurt so much as trickle down.
From chest to belly, from belly to thigh, onto the frozen earth.
Blood that did not spray appeared darker in color.
The Lord’s knees gave way against the earth. The left knee that had been holding him buckled first. As it folded to the side, his upper body tilted to the right.
The Lord’s body collapsed there.
The broken left arm was now buried beneath his body.

A thrust, a withdrawal… and no one saw this stroke either.
Only Taikan, after everything had ended, traced fragments of the trajectory in his mind.
“…the shoulder was about there.”
He murmured it under his breath.
“…the angle of the hilt like this. The moment his feet left the ground, there.”
When he’d traced that far, his reconstruction stopped. The motion didn’t follow. What he’d seen was only part of the movement. Not the whole.
The silence of the Plains deepened.
Serian opened her mouth.
“…it’s over.”
Her voice was low, the tone flat. Her gaze had never once looked at the Lord’s body. From the beginning until now, it had stayed fixed only on Aelak’s profile.
Aelak did not answer. The Beok Myeong Do had already returned to its scabbard.
Click!
The sound of the sheath closing rang louder across the Plains than any other sound. Even the white light passing over the corpse seemed to catch upon it.
Aelak’s hand dropped from the hilt.
Another layer of twilight settled across the Plains.
The Black Eagle Flag lay collapsed in the dirt, no longer fluttering. The edges of the flag were stained with frozen blood.
The Corpse Carpet came back into view. White light lay across the frozen forms of some two thousand bodies. And upon that edge, one more corpse had been added. The Lord’s corpse.
And the Plains fell still.
The last wind brushed the edge of the black flag and ceased. The fishy reek of frozen blood caught in that stillness once more and rose.

* * *

Garkan tried to straighten the last strand of the Ice Iron Chain at his wrist.
His fingers would not obey.
The habit of curling from pinky to thumb ceased at the pinky. Dark red blood seeped from the tip of that arrested finger. He couldn’t tell if it was his own blood or someone else’s.
“…my hand won’t work.”
Garkan muttered, looking down at his own hand.
“…the metal’s not heavy. My fingers are.”
It wasn’t a question directed at anyone. No answer came.
The hand gripping his side descended slowly, following the twist of his shoulder blade.
Harku tried to fit both Twin Curved Swords into the leather sheath at his side. But the blades had dulled, and they wouldn’t enter the leather.
He forced them in, and the blade edges tore through the leather as they went.
“Heh-heh!”
A weak chuckle rose briefly at the corner of his dry mouth, then died. The laughter was parched.
He tried to wipe the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. But his hand was covered in blood too. The wiping hand and the wiped mouth were the same color.
He turned his head toward Garkan.
“…brother.”
Garkan didn’t answer.
“Brother.”
“……”
“…never mind. It’s fine.”
Harku fell silent. The silence took the place where his usual “heh-heh” had cut off. The absence of a joke weighed heavier than the joke itself.
Taikan’s back had the Horn Bow empty. He’d exhausted the last arrow.
He tried to fit two Short Daggers into their sheaths, but the sheaths’ mouths were too narrow. Blood had congealed thick and blocked the openings.
He simply tucked the daggers into his side.
“…I’ll have to carve out the sheaths again.”
His voice was low. Not a word meant for anyone else. A word to himself.
“…the blood won’t come out.”
He moved his feet to beside the Lord’s corpse.
Standing beside it, he gazed at the twenty-three ears on the saddle.
His eyes moved slowly from the far left to the far right. Eyes as if counting something… yet he did not ask what was being counted.
Now was no time to look at the corpse, to keep one’s gaze upon it. Even if what lay there were severed ears.
Arko calmly wiped the Poison Dart.
The hand reapplying the black oil seemed to move more slowly than usual.
The acrid smell of rosin mixed with oil.
Against the fishy reek of blood, it almost felt sharp and clear—the smell settling thinly across them.
Blood on the back of his hand mixed with black oil, colors indistinguishable. His hand lingered for a moment at the pouch hanging from his waist, a pouch bearing a three-leaf seal decoration, then dropped.
“…at least the evidence survived.”
A low murmur to himself. Then he added:
“…but… it doesn’t help. Damn it. We should have killed them like this ages ago.”
It wasn’t a question waiting for an answer.
No answer came to these words either. All were thinking the same thing. They’d won, yet… a discomfort that struck deeper than defeat pressed against their chests.
Arko raised the back of his hand with habitual precision, reading the wind’s direction.
“…South.”
One word. Not a report to anyone. He simply informed himself this way—with a single word—of the wind’s bearing.

Serian shifted her position to Aelak’s side.
Half a step back, and slightly to the side… her movement was utterly silent.
She smoothed out the wrinkles in her Blood Wind Robe with a light touch.
She did not touch his left shoulder—the place where Aelak’s hand had rested a moment before.
A single drop of the Lord’s blood. She did not wipe it away. She left it as it was.
“…Are you all right?”
The question rose to her lips, then stopped there.
It never left her mouth. She swallowed the question.
“…Aren’t you cold?”
This question too halted at the same place. She swallowed this one as well. Not asking was the greatest thing she could manage today.

The scar on Aelak’s chest cooled by one degree.
The radiant white light dimmed coldly. A bead of sweat formed in its place.
He noticed the sweat.
For the North Sea People, sweat was a death signal—a sign that core temperature was shifting. The Central Plains’ heat, and the massacre’s scale, had touched even him.
He did not wipe the sweat away. He left it.

Harku spoke again.
“You’ve got something on your face.”
Garkan wiped his face with his palm. Blood came away on his hand. He could not tell if it was his own or someone else’s. He wiped his palm against the leather of his side.
“…Yeah.”
The answer was one syllable. That was all.
“Is it yours? Someone else’s?”
“…I don’t know.”
“I can’t tell either.”
……
Harku asked nothing more. Garkan offered no further reply. The jest found no response.
The six did not gather in one place.
Garkan in his own spot. Harku two paces to the side of Garkan. Taikan with his back turned. Arko on the eastern flank. Serian at Aelak’s side. Only Aelak faced the Plains.
The distance between the six had widened by one pace from usual. With each of those paces, the soil of the Plains pressed down a degree heavier.
No one drew close to the others.
Two thousand eight hundred seventy-three.
That number made the air between them heavy.
Serian turned her gaze to the Corpse Carpet. For the first time.
Countless bodies strewn without end… and above them, one fresh corpse. Her eyes held no expression. She spoke in a low voice.
“…So many… people… have died.”
Her voice was composed. There was no tremor. It was nothing more than a murmur to herself, not meant for anyone’s ears.
Aelak did not answer.
There was nothing to answer. He had no answer to give.
Garkan pressed his own wrist. His pulse raced faster than usual. Faster than the ache in his side. Beneath his pressed fingers, the beat struck the flesh inside his wrist. That rhythm rippled through his shoulder blade.
“Still… we’re alive.”
That was what he said. Yet the words did not comfort him. He released his fingers. The pulse did not stop.
“…Long as the pulse keeps beating, that’s enough.”
The fact of being alive.
The Black Eagle Flag fluttered, then stilled. Its edge was stuck fast to frozen blood and could not ripple to the end.
The Plains’ wind paused above it, then blew again.
A small wind passed between the bodies.
At the wind’s edge came a sharp, salty stench. It was the smell rising from the earth where the blood of two thousand eight hundred seventy-three had frozen solid.
No one asked the direction of that wind. Only Arko raised the back of his hand again.
“…South.”
The same answer.
“Harku.”
Aelak called out briefly.
“Yes.”
“Sharpen the Twin Curved Swords. We have far to go.”
“…Understood.”
“Arko.”
“I’m listening.”
“Guard the Seal. There’s someone from the Central Plains who’s been in contact with Ma-jeon. Find out who.”
“Understood.”
The conversation ended there. Nothing more was needed.
Serian looked at Aelak’s hand.
The hand that hadn’t left the Beok Myeong Do. That hand no longer rose toward the hilt. Its back hung open toward the earth.
Serian tried to reach for Aelak’s hand. But her touch stopped halfway. She sensed he didn’t want it.
Aelak opened his mouth.
“Stand. We leave.”
It wasn’t a command. It was a word spoken to himself. That single utterance settled over the white light of the Plains. No one answered.

Six figures moved eastward in unison, each taking a step. Six footprints struck the frozen earth nearly at once. Nearly.
The white light of the Plains grew brighter.
Six shadows stretched long across the white glow.
The distance between the departing feet and the corpses embedded in the earth widened with each stride.
The depth of the living hell they had just walked through…

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————