North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 81

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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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81. Not Barbarians

Two days into the journey.
‘I need to see what they’re capable of.’
Cheok Mu-yeong had not yet glimpsed their true nature. If they continued on like this, he would reach Hua Mountain without ever witnessing their Martial Prowess.
The pale autumn sunlight slanted down across the eastern road in slender threads.
Dry grasses along the roadside whispered as the wind drove them past. Beneath his feet, the packed earth carved by cart wheels stretched endlessly forward.
From the rear of the procession heading toward Hua Mountain, he scrutinized every gesture of the northerners ahead with relentless attention.
Cheok Mu-yeong adjusted the reins with quiet deliberation from his saddle, his gaze never wavering from the figures before him.
The ordinary rhythm of shared tea and idle jests.
When Garkan threw out some quip, Harku and Arko shook their shoulders with laughter. Entirely unremarkable men, these.
In their current state, he could glean nothing of combat from their movements. To gauge their true strength, he would need to see them in actual battle. A martial artist’s blade only shows its genuine edge when drawn to cut—that was the iron law.

Surveillance Director of the Murim Alliance—that was Cheok Mu-yeong’s title.
His eyes and ears stretched across the realm. He knew which remote valleys harbored rogue sects and outlaws.
‘Should I provoke a fight?’
A roster of local rogues arranged itself in his mind.
Who was crouched in which gorge, which one was mad for silver and would cut down a man for coin. He summoned each face in turn.

— Observe if you must, but avoid confrontation. If he suspects your identity, withdraw at once.

His father’s solemn warning before he departed.
Following his father’s counsel, in a situation like this he ought to do nothing at all, to remain silent. Yet after creating some distance from his companions, he withdrew a small Secret Notice from his robes and tucked it between the hollows of a tree trunk.
His movements were unhurried, shielded by shadow, invisible to any watching eye.
Slice!
A blade mark scored the bark.
A secret message transmitted covertly to a hireling.

Intercept and strike. Prepare for death. Reward: five hundred taels of gold.

His father’s caution echoed in his mind, but he pushed the voice away deliberately. He could not bear it without witnessing directly.
Cheok Mu-yeong twisted his father’s strict command into something else entirely.

When the Murim Alliance wanted someone dead in the shadows, he was the blade they often drew. A man who would sell his own parents for silver.
Cheok Mu-yeong’s deliberately chosen piece on the board.
Hyeol Jeon-gwi’s covetous eyes did not catch the scent of death lurking beyond the parchment. His kind dwelt always in its proximity anyway.
Instead, he need only chase the glint of gold.
He flicked his fingers in the air, counting ingots that did not exist.
Five hundred taels.
Greed glistened in his eyes as his tongue licked his lips.
He broke into a murky laugh.
The stakes were steep when death was mentioned. The price was high, so there was no reason to refuse. It was the kind of perilous wage-earning he had always known.
“They’re generous with the terms when it’s a death order. Heheheh! Only a fool would decline.”
He drew his Blade with a sinister smile.
He studied his own face reflected in the steel and laughed, murky and thick.

Cheok Mu-yeong followed behind his sister with a face of perfect composure, as though nothing had transpired.
‘He should be arriving soon.’

He gazed at the Mountain Pass ahead and turned the matter over in his mind.
By now the Secret Notice would have been delivered, the forces gathered, and their resolve tested—he expected them to appear soon.
‘Don’t get drawn into a fight. Just watch from a distance.’
Cheok Mu-yeong quietly reined in his horse at the back of the group.
If they maintained distance, he’d have a clear view of whatever unfolded beyond the curve.

The party was just about to round the Mountain Pass.
Arko suddenly wrinkled his nose and muttered.
“There are people hiding ahead. Blood and metal—I smell both.”
Taikan beside him narrowed his eyes, reading the traces of presence.
“A dozen or so beyond the curve. Armed. They’re blocking the road for certain.”
Cheok Mu-yeong dropped his pretense and listened intently. The hunting ground he himself had orchestrated waited for them just beyond that curve.
‘Counting men by scent alone?’
Cheok Mu-yeong bit back an inward curse. One wrinkle of the nose—that was all it took—and they could read the pass like an open palm.
Then Serian’s eyes grew thin.
Her Shadowless Silver Thread Perception had caught something utterly incongruous about Cheok Mu-yeong.
Even as an unknown enemy appeared, his true Qi remained entirely still, without a tremor. Only his outward semblance was one of alarm.
She chose not to voice that subtle discord aloud.
“Should we be concerned?”
Aelak spoke curtly.
Not a question—an arrogance: was there any reason to trouble themselves with this?

As they rounded the bend, Hyeol Jeon-gwi’s men, positioned in ambush, blocked their path.
“Die!”
Shriek!
Without explanation, they surged forward in a torrent of gleaming steel.
They had received substantial coin, and odds assessed. A man who hesitated before northern barbarians didn’t deserve to wield a blade.
Doubt was inconceivable.
Yet Aelak did not so much as dismount. Eyes closed, his consciousness cast off into some distant realm beyond the curve, he moved his lips with an absent calm.
“Clear them.”

Whoooosh!
Garkan’s Ice-Steel Chain tore through the air.
The links coiled like a serpent, swift as lightning, ensnaring the legs of the first three attackers and driving them to their knees in the grass.
Those who fell had no time to scream.
At the same moment, Harku darted forward like a weasel unleashed.
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
Each footfall was crisp. The two Dual Curved Blades danced, slashing mercilessly through the heart of the mob.
“If you’d stepped aside, you’d still be breathing. Why do you force this?”
Behind Harku, Arko’s Poison Darts and Taikan’s arrows found their marks.
The arrows targeted the rear guard. But they never sought the backs of those fleeing—only those rushing forward.
Those who charged fell where they stood, blood blooming across the grass.
The field turned blood-dark in moments.
The acrid stench of blood carried on the dry wind of late autumn.
Only then did a few realize the danger and break formation to flee. In a single clash—less than a heartbeat—their numbers were shattered.
Taikan went pale but did not pursue the two who bolted. He merely lowered his nocked arrow slowly, watching their retreat with indifference.
‘Those who yield shall not be killed.’
The barbarians’ blunt and unambiguous law lay bare upon the blood-soaked grass.
Only after the combat was entirely finished did Aelak slowly open his eyes.

‘Ah!’
A gasp escaped unbidden.
Only then did Cheok Mu-yeong realize he had been holding his breath all this while. So this was why his chest felt so suffocatingly tight.
His palms were slicked with cold sweat.
To an ordinary eye, it had been no more than a blink—mere instants—but to Cheok Mu-yeong, a Martial Artist of formidable skill, that overwhelming moment decomposed into distinct sequences that burned themselves into his mind.
The Ice-Steel Chain had created a maelstrom. The Dual Curved Blades had opened veins. The Poison Darts and arrows had woven a flawless net across all quarters.
Hyeol Jeon-gwi—a killer renowned enough to take contracts from the Murim Alliance—had not even managed to draw his blade before he fell. Truthfully, if only Harku had charged, it would have been formidable enough.
Throughout that slaughter, Aelak’s hand had not once touched his sword.
Cheok Mu-yeong was an Inspector General who surveyed all under heaven.
A Martial Artist of substantial stature.
A man schooled in measuring martial prowess quietly reconstructed in his mind the techniques he had just witnessed.
The achievement of chains and blades, daggers and bows wielded by those four men rivaled that of any Sect Master from the great sects of the Central Plains.
The bait he had cast to test their caliber had been brushed aside like a child’s plaything by his subordinates’ hands.
‘Father!’
Cheok Mu-yeong thought of Cheok Un-hui, Heaven’s Finest Blade.
He knew his father’s sword well. The thin wisps of smoke that rose from the bamboo tip split by a single stroke, that magnificent Sword Energy.
His father’s blade was the apex of martial perfection — slicing through the void without sound.
But these men’s prowess was something else entirely.
What he had just witnessed with his own eyes was of an entirely different caliber from his father’s martial art. If his father’s sword was a single, finely honed point, these northerners were a storm — vast, towering ends converging and surging forward together.
And the man commanding that terrible storm had not lifted a finger from his saddle.
‘Aelak had no need to use his hands at all.’
As this thought struck him, a chill ran down Cheok Mu-yeong’s spine.
He had not even issued orders to his four subordinates. He had simply closed his eyes and spoken a single word, and with that brief utterance, the swordsmen who had stood against the Mountain Pass collapsed into the grass.
Cheok Mu-yeong himself possessed martial prowess that rivaled a Sect Master of the first rank, and he was confident he could cross blades with any of those four. Yet Aelak, who commanded four masters of his own caliber as though they were his own limbs — what was this man?
Not a Barbarian.
The ones whom the martial artists of the Central Plains had unanimously condemned as human butchers.
Yet the atrocity that had unfolded before his eyes just now was no bestial slaughter. Those who resisted were cut down; those who turned their backs were permitted to live without hesitation. There was an unmistakable code at work.
Though called Barbarians, they were no barbarians at all.
Cheok Mu-yeong cleared his parched throat and slowly surveyed the bloodstained grassland around him. A weight settled deep in his chest.

As peace had returned to all, Serian alone examined the corpses scattered across the ground with an indifferent gaze, then let fall a light remark.
“This isn’t simple banditry.”
To anyone listening, it was a murmur without affect.
She rolled a blade dropped by one of the corpses lightly beneath her foot, examining it as though reading even the fingerprints left on its edge.
Soon her piercing gaze turned toward Cheok Mu-yeong, and in that instant, cold sweat trickled down his spine.
‘This woman…’
Cheok Mu-yeong sat rigid in his saddle, staring forward.
His father’s command, grown impossibly heavy, bore down upon his shoulders.
“Who might they be? Do you have any sense of what organization they might belong to?”
Serian asked, looking at Cheok Mu-yeong.
Cheok Mu-yeong examined the dead carefully.
He recognized one. Hyeol Jeon-gwi — the man had been unable to withstand Harku’s Dual Curved Blades and fell. He was a fairly reliable swordsman, too.
Cheok Mu-yeong shook his head.
“Unknown men. There are no sect markings…”
Just then, as though to rescue Cheok Mu-yeong from the question, Harku stepped forward and spoke.
“Still chasing bounties? They should know better than to throw their lives away. Foolish wretches. Hah!”
Cheok Mu-yeong unconsciously gripped his blade.
Those traveling with him were no mere wildcats. Each and every one was a polar bear.
‘These men are dangerous. Exceedingly dangerous. These four alone already constitute an army.’
Cheok Mu-yeong was coming to understand this truth with devastating clarity.
He was endlessly wavering before the overwhelming martial prowess of these men.

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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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