North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 6

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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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6. The 10,000 Gold Tael Prize

The next morning.
A tavern at the border of the Northern Sea—the Binghu Tavern.
“What?!”
A drinking cup shattered against the floor, exploding into fragments.
A bearded man was staring at the Bounty Notice pinned to the wall.

[BOUNTY]
Name: Ailak (also known as He Who Wears Wolf’s Skin)
Distinguishing marks: Scar on left chest. Accompanied by four subordinates.
Dead or alive.
Reward: 10,000 gold taels.

“Ten thousand?! Are they insane?!”
“Shut it, you fool.”
The one-eyed man sitting beside him clamped a hand over the bearded man’s mouth.
“You shout it out, we’ll just have more competitors.”
“But—but ten thousand taels, ten thousand!”
“I know, I know. I’ve got eyes.”
The one-eyed man tore down the Bounty Notice and stuffed it into his coat.
“Let’s go. Time to hunt.”
“Wait, but—he’s a Martial Master? That’s just legend, isn’t it?”
“Legend or not, doesn’t matter. Ten thousand taels and we eat for life.”
“Still… won’t it be dangerous?”
“Scared? Then back out. I’ll take your share too.”
“Hey, hey! Who’s backing out!”
The two men bolted from the tavern.
They weren’t alone.
Three wanderers who’d been drinking in the corner rose quietly from their seats. A hunter eating noodles by the window grabbed his bow. Even the pot-scrubber from the kitchen ripped off his apron.
“Oi, pot-scrubber! Where are you going!”
The tavern keeper shouted.
“I quit!”
“What? All of a sudden?”
“Ten thousand taels means I never have to work again!”
The tavern door swung open and shut, again and again.
In moments, the tavern emptied. The keeper stood alone, dumbfounded.
At that same instant, the same scene was unfolding across the Northern Sea.
Hunters wandering the Snow Mountain’s peaks lit up with hunger. Demon beasts in deep caves stretched and rose. Assassins in back alleys sharpened their blades.
The news spread faster than a blizzard.
Greed. That red, sticky hunger swept across the Snowy Plain, drowning everything in its path.

* * *

Ailak and his wolf pack crossed the Snowy Plain toward the Central Plain, unaware of any of it.
Garkan halted and turned back.
“…Tribe Leader.”
“What is it?”
“Something feels wrong. There’s something behind us……”
Ailak stopped as well. His gaze swept across the horizon.
The wind blew.
A cold wind. But what threaded through it was more than chill.
Killing Intent. Faint but unmistakable, it seeped in from all sides.
The corners of Ailak’s mouth lifted.
“…Interesting.”
“Tribe Leader?”
“Being hunted doesn’t feel so bad.”
Garkan’s eyes widened.
“You don’t mean… there are pursuers?”
“Not pursuers.”
Ailak began walking south again.
“Hunters.”
Behind him, a torrent of killing intent bore down like an avalanche.
“They’re coming!”
The hunter’s voice trembled.
White Bone Gorge, the passage leading toward the borders of the Central Plain.
Blinded by ten thousand gold taels, wanderers from the Northern Sea, demon beasts, and assassins lay in ambush — crammed across cliff faces, between rocks, and beneath snow-covered ground.
“Are those them?”
“Five of them. Matches the bounty notice exactly.”
“Which one is Ailak?”
“Center. The one in the wolf skin.”
Five shadows appeared at the gorge’s entrance.
Ailak led, with Garkan at his heels. To either side came Taikan and Harku, and Arko moved through the shadows.
“What are they doing? Walking straight through like they have no fear.”
“No. That’s… confidence. Christ, it makes my skin crawl.”
Unease rippled through those in hiding. But greed always conquers fear.
“Waaaaah!”
Hundreds rushed forward.
Harku bared his teeth and roared.
“Tor Arkan!”
Blood hunt!
Taikan answered, drawing his bowstring.
“Atar!”
Burn them down!
It was the battle cry of the Ailak Tribe.
The moment the wolf bares its fangs.
The sky darkened all at once. Thousands of arrows fell like rain.
Harku looked up at the sky and whistled.
“Well, now that’s a proper welcome.”
“It’ll become a proper farewell. For them.”
Taikan drew an empty string.
Ping!
A sharp crack rang through the gorge.
The north wind blowing down the gorge twisted strangely.
“What? What’s happening?”
Hunters on the cliff tops rubbed their eyes.
The arrows they had fired hung frozen in midair.
Whoooosh!
The wind reversed.
Thousands of arrows that had been suspended now turned. Their new target was the very ones who had fired them.
“Ugh, argh!”
“Get down! It’s the wind!”
The screams were brief.
Necks pierced by their own poison arrows, bellies torn by comrades’ spears. Bodies rained down from the cliffs like a storm.
Taikan drew his string again. This time, a single arrow of ice.
“He’s controlling the wind! It’s sorcery!”
Panicked demon beasts scrambled behind rocks.
Taikan smirked.
“Sorcery. Ignorant fools. Hiding won’t help you.”
Ping!
The arrow writhed like a serpent through the air.
Behind rocks, shielded, fleeing — the arrow sidestepped every obstacle and struck cleanly between each set of eyes.
“How… we were behind the rocks…”
“The arrow’s bending! The arrow bent!”
Taikan lowered his bow.
“Brother. Isn’t it a bit unsporting to hoard all the glory?”
Harku’s eyes had gone bloodshot, and he licked his lips.
“You handle the ones that stink.”
Harku flared his nostrils.
His eyes rolled back in an instant. The whites flooded crimson, and saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth.
“Kekeke! Meat! Meat!”
Harku charged into the enemy ranks.
“Kill that bald madman first!”
“Surround him! Tear him apart!”
Axes and iron clubs came flying.
Harku didn’t dodge. Instead, he thrust his head straight through the weapons.
Clang-crash!
The Twin Curved Daggers danced.
The two blades, curved backward like a beast’s fangs, tore through the wanderers’ wrists, elbows, and throats.
“Aaahhhhh!”
“More! Come on! I’m still hungry!”
The more blood that drenched Harku, the faster he became.
When an opponent’s blade grazed his shoulder, he paid it no mind. As if pain itself were pleasure, he laughed like a madman and tore through the enemy formation.
“Mon… monster!”
“That’s not human! Run!”
The wanderers stumbled backward. But their escape route was far from safe.
Whoosh.
A hunched figure rose smoothly from the shadow of a boulder.
“Where do you think you’re going? The party’s only just begun.”
Arko’s sinister voice licked at their ears.
Poison Needles shot from Arko’s sleeves.
The wanderer fell without even a cry, his face blackening as death took him.
The battlefield became absolute chaos.
Taikan’s arrows struck from range, Harku massacred at close quarters, and Arko hunted down those who fled.
Hundreds of enemies were being slaughtered by four wolves.
And in the very center of it all.
Step. Step.
Ailak walked with perfect composure.
Arrows flew, blood sprayed, screams echoed through this hellscape—yet he moved with the peace of a man strolling through a garden. His gaze fixed not on the faces of his enemies, but solely on the southern sky.
Thud.
A dull ache bloomed in his left chest.
Pain rising from where his heart should be.
The price paid thirty years ago, when he accepted the Northern Sea Ice Ethereal Divine Art.
‘Cold?’
A phantom voice reached him. Karani’s voice.
Thirty years ago, on a night of blizzard and wind. The words she’d spoken as she wrapped her hand around his.
Ailak looked down at his hand.
Now there is nothing there.
Thirty years ago, she had held this hand and spoken.
‘So cold. Your hands are always so cold.’
And then she’d breathed warm breath onto them.
It was futile. His hands never grew warm, no matter what she did.
But she never gave up. Every time they met.
‘Someday they’ll be warm. I’ll melt them for you.’
And now there are no hands left to hold.
“Die, Ailak!”
A crazed Demon Beast broke through the encirclement and lunged at Ailak’s flank, a blue-gleaming great blade singing toward his throat.
Ailak didn’t even turn his head. He showed no sign of dodging.
Boom…!
A heavy, thunderous crash erupted.
Garkan’s iron chain, swung with full force, sent the Demon Beast’s blade and upper body flying clean away.
“These pests are making a racket! How dare they target the Tribal Leader!”
Ailak didn’t respond.
He simply wiped the blood smudged on his boot sole across the snow.
That indifference. The way he regarded hundreds of enemies rushing to kill him as less than pebbles on a roadside.
“He’s not even fighting back. Doesn’t even look at us. We’re… just insects to him, aren’t we?”
The will of those who remained was broken.
More terrible than overwhelming force was overwhelming indifference.
“Flee!”
The encirclement dissolved in an instant.
Garkan watched the retreating figure of Ailak ahead of him.
He knew why Ailak wasn’t drawing his blade. Ailak was restraining himself now—holding back the destructive instinct that churned within his chest.
“Move faster.”
Ailak’s voice carried on the wind.
“Half a moon’s cycle. Anyone who lags gets left behind.”
“Aye!”
Four wolves answered in unison.
The gorge became a sea of blood and corpses. Red snow climbed to their ankles.
Five shadows began to race across the crimson snowy plain.

* * *

The night deepened.
A flock of crows descended upon the heap of corpses in the gorge.
There was one who watched that scene from a distant hill.
Han A, leader of the Bingxue Dan.
He followed the retreating forms of Ailak’s group through a Thousand-Li Telescope. The tattoo of a third eye carved into his forehead gleamed in the moonlight.
“Hmm. Certainly worth the ten thousand gold taels.”
The Vice Leader beside him spoke.
“Leader. Hundreds of soldiers were slaughtered in an instant. Wouldn’t a direct confrontation be dangerous?”
“Who said anything about direct?”
Han A chuckled, sharp fangs bared.
“We’re the Bingxue Dan. We threw honor to the dogs long ago.”
He pointed to the map—a narrow gorge that Ailak’s group would have to pass through.
“Here. Lay down Ice Mirrors. Dense. Real dense. Let them stare at their own faces while their heads roll.”
“Should we also plant Ice Explosives?”
“Of course. All over the ground.”
“But… there’s a risk the entire valley could collapse.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Han A’s eyes flashed with cruelty.
“As long as they die. We slip out beforehand and we’re clear.”
He produced a Black Orb from his pocket—a bomb formed from compressed Ice Explosive Stones harvested from the depths of the Northern Sea.
“A Martial Master, is he….”
He recalled the gaze he’d seen in Ailak’s eyes that day.
That arrogant look that dismissed everything. That bearing which treated them as insects.
“I’ll gouge out those eyes first. Should be quite the spectacle.”
The Vice Leader asked cautiously.
“Still… wouldn’t someone of that caliber escape even if caught in a trap?”
“So what if they escape?”
Han A giggled.
“We just catch them again. And again. Until they’re exhausted and wounded. We number twenty-three. A couple of deaths mean nothing.”
“…You are merciless, sir.”
“Merciless? It’s cleverness.”
Han A raised his hand.
Twenty-three assassins hidden in the darkness moved without sound.
They were faster than wind and more silent than shadow. But they did not know. They did not know that the prey they hunted was, in truth, a genuine ‘monster.’
The real hunt was only now beginning.

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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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