North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 82

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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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82. Touching Wrists

The path toward the Eastern Volcano.
Before Cheok Ha-rin could even fully grasp what was happening, her feet had already carried her in that direction—exactly one step behind where Aelak had stopped.
‘What am I…’
She realized she had been following Aelak without knowing it.
A small stone tumbled from beneath her feet. Only then did she become aware of where she was standing.
“Fierce.”
Aelak muttered.
Rain from the night before had swollen the stream, cutting off the path.
Murky brown water half-swallowed the stepping stones as it rushed viciously downstream, and rough currents splintered white against the stone edges.
The mud at the water’s edge sucked wetly at each footfall.
Wet grass brushed against her shins as she moved.
On the far bank, small branches and heaps of soil washed down by rain lay scattered in disorder. A thin mist hung low over it all, blurring the far side of the river.
Aelak stood at the water’s edge, surveying the area.
His gaze slid slowly from upstream to downstream.
Eyes measuring the width and depth of the current.
The rest of the party approached as well, gauging the safest place to cross.
Garkan thrust a long pole into the water to measure the depth.
At the point where the pole submerged halfway, the brown water swirled.
Taikan found a place where the current ran gentler.
He tapped the bank’s soil with his foot, testing its firmness.
“We’ll lead the horses across the shallower embankment over there. The rest of us will use the stepping stones in the middle.”
Garkan indicated the stones with the pole’s end as he spoke.
Beasts through the shallow crossing, people across the rocks.
Like those seasoned by countless treacherous passages in the harsh north, they settled on a route in moments without unnecessary discussion.
“Only infants drown in water this shallow.”
Harku shrugged as he spoke.
Meanwhile, without being asked, Serian had already begun securing Aelak’s saddle. Her eyes traced the path where he would step, and she tightened the bundles carefully to keep them from getting soaked.
The way her hands pressed the knot of the Herbal Pouch closed with both palms showed long practice.
Aelak had never kept her close by his side. Yet she quietly fulfilled her duty as a companion, unquestioned.
There was no room for disappointment. She simply did what needed to be done.
As she finished adjusting the load, her gaze naturally drifted to Cheok Ha-rin’s back—watching the younger woman stay close to the front, her steps trailing the path ahead.
Splash!
Soon Aelak stepped into the water.
Spray burst up to his knees, then scattered. Brown water wrapped around his shins, but his stride remained steady.
He tested the first stone to confirm it was safe, then pressed forward. As if bewitched, Cheok Ha-rin moved to follow, crossing toward the far bank.
Her body responded before her mind could reason—moving as though a voice inside her said, ‘Behind Aelak is where I belong.’
She gathered the hem of her wet skirt carefully with one hand.
Her other hand hovered uncertainly in the air, searching for something to steady herself against.

From the back of the line, Cheok Mu-young noticed his sister staying close to the front.
His brow furrowed. It was unlike her usual bearing. In the Central Plains, his sister had always stayed by his side. Now she walked following only some unfamiliar man’s back.
He tried to hurry forward, but Garkan blocked his path, and the order shifted. Two burly northern warriors wedged themselves between brother and sister, and the distance between them widened sharply.
The crossing began.
Aelak strode from stone to stone, and Cheok Ha-rin followed one step behind, treading on the exact same stepping stones he had stepped on.
Safety lay in the path his back created.
She knew it as if by instinct.
The brown water that rushed past her shins was cold and biting.
Between each stone, the water churned with foam. With every footfall, the moisture on the stone’s surface pushed slickly against the soles of her feet.
As she shifted her weight from the middle stone to the next, her foot caught on slick moss beneath the water.
“Oh!”
A cry escaped her lips unbidden.
For someone who had walked only the flat paths of the Central Plains her whole life, this rushing current was treacherous enough to sweep her away with a single misstep.
But to the northern warriors, this river was no more than their own front yard.
Someone threw out a quip, another voiced concern about wet clothes.
Their laughter mingled with the sound of water, drifting back to him from a distance.
Aelak walked ahead in silence, his expression unmoved.
At that very moment, the stone beneath her feet betrayed her without warning.
“Ah—!”
A second cry.
Cheok Ha-rin’s foot slipped into empty air, and the current’s brutal grip seized her calf in an instant, pulling hard. Her body tilted helplessly, threatening to topple. Her outstretched hands flailed desperately against the void.
The world seemed to tilt wholly beneath her.
In that instant, Aelak, who had been crossing ahead, twisted his body like a beast and reached out his hand.
His powerful grip caught her delicate wrist in a flash and hauled her upward. There was no hesitation, no trace of doubt in the motion.
His hand shot out faster than any thought—a rescue born from pure reflex.
Her foot settled safely onto the stepping stone, pulling free from the treacherous current. In the air between them remained only the firm sensation of a wet wrist and a calloused palm locked together.
Cheok Ha-rin was herself a martial artist trained in Internal Cultivation, and in that fraction of a moment she would have had the strength to steady herself. Yet Aelak’s hand reached her far faster than her falling body could collapse.
‘Thank you.’
It was what she ought to have said. But she did not.
Her lips parted, but no sound came forth.
The gripped wrist and the grasping palm.
Between the two patches of skin pressed seamlessly together, an extraordinary coldness seeped across.
The Cold Energy that flowed through Cheok Ha-rin’s body met the Cold Energy that radiated from Aelak’s rough palm in a direct collision, skin to skin.
This was not coldness conveyed through scent or perfume. It was a vertiginous sensation born from bone meeting living flesh—as intense and arresting as a lightning strike.
The chill raced up her wrist and spread instantly to her shoulder.
For a moment, she thought her breath had stopped.
Two incompatible forces collided at a single point.
At that point, the very air around them froze as if struck by lightning.
A palm’s width of space between their skins.
Neither the roar of the water nor the humid wind dared approach—both veered sharply away.
That narrow space alone seemed suspended, carved out from the rest of the world.
Snap! Snap!
Their eyes met.
His gaze held not a single tremor. Only the indifference of someone who had just pulled another to safety—nothing more.
Cheok Ha-rin quickly looked away, even as her heart hammered in her chest.
Heat crept even to her earlobes—the opposite of the cold grip on her wrist.

Only three people had sensed that strange coldness in that moment.
Aelak, Cheok Ha-rin, and Serian, who stood in the grass on the far side of the stream.
Cheok Mu-young, lagging behind, and the four attendants beside him noticed nothing of that fleeting communion.

The moment Aelak set Cheok Ha-rin upon the stone, he stepped back a distance—the span of a single stepping stone.
His rescuing hand dispersed into empty air. There was no perfunctory concern, no solicitous gaze to check for injury.
He turned away coldly at once and pressed forward across the remaining stones.
His back held no hesitation—only the hurried withdrawal of a hand from something it should not have touched.
He withdrew so swiftly that the dramatic contact of moments before seemed to dissolve into nothing. He moved like someone rushing desperately against time itself.
Cheok Ha-rin stood dazed, bewildered.
All she knew was that the wrist he had seized burned with a cold that ached to the bone.
Yet later, her senses gradually awakened to the fact that this cool chill had been, strangely, as soothing as a breath of relief.
She cradled her wet wrist with her other hand, holding it carefully.
The moment she enclosed it in her palm, the cold sensation sharpened. Beneath the wet skin, that chill continued to pulse.
The bone-deep cold lingering in her grasp did not fade, but circled and lingered.
Her feet remained still, yet her gaze kept trailing after Aelak’s broad back as he receded indifferently into the distance.
His back never turned to look behind. Instead, that very indifference gripped something in her chest all the more tightly.

Presently, Cheok Ha-rin crossed the remaining stepping stones and climbed onto the bank.
As her feet touched dry ground, she felt the solid reassurance of earth at last.
Muddy water streamed from the hem of her sodden skirt, but she paid it no mind. The sensation of the captured wrist would not leave her thoughts, and she found herself touching that spot again and again.
Meanwhile, Aelak, having crossed the water entirely, wore an expressionless face.
For him, nothing had occurred.
He had simply opened his wet palm and closed it again into a fist. The cold embedded in his skin was already beneath his notice.
‘What was that? A coldness clinging faintly to the skin.’
This force—she was certain she had encountered it somewhere before in her life. A bone-deep Cold Energy, disturbingly familiar.
Yet no matter how she searched her memory, its source eluded her grasp.
That overwhelming sense of having known it sparked, for the first time, a feeling of curiosity—a ripple of interest in her mind. Curiosity about Aelak.
Until now, he had been nothing but a taciturn man to her. Yet that single palm—that touch—had kindled her curiosity for the first time.
She quickly wiped her damp hand dry against her sleeve, then moved forward in silence, as if nothing had occurred.
But even after leaving her sleeve, her hand continued to linger near her wrist.

Serian, standing at a distance, saw it all clearly. The collision of Cold Energy between the two of them, that brief and violent instant.
She recognized at once that the source of that terrible chill was the Seolryeongwa—the breath she had felt in her final moments, watching Karani cough blood and fade. It had emanated from this very place.
It was a presence impossible to forget, no matter how one tried.
That biting Cold Energy, the last sensation she had known as she lay dying in the grass.
Her fingertips trembled faintly where they pressed against the earth.
‘Even in death, sister, you pursue vengeance with such ferocity. With your own hands, you reveal the culprit’s mark to me.’
Yet Serian did not dwell on the emotion long.
She adjusted the strap of the Herbal Pouch across her shoulder, then approached Aelak silently and examined his wet sleeve.
She gently pressed the damp fabric between her fingers, gauging its weight.
“Are you all right?”
……
Aelak, as always, offered no reply.
Serian was accustomed to his silence. She asked no further questions and released his sleeve.

They had all crossed the river.
Behind them, murky water still churned violently. The broken path now lay once again beneath their feet.
Wet footprints dotted the dry earth, fading gradually in the sun.
The moment Aelak had saved Cheok Ha-rin was already erased from memory. It was simply another thing that happened—no different than stepping on wildflowers while walking a road.
Neither the rescued nor the rescuer owed the other any gratitude.
“If the water had risen just a bit more, we wouldn’t have made it across.”
“We can always turn back if we need to. What’s the worry?”
“Let’s finish this quickly and head back to the North Sea. This place is far too hot.”
The four subordinates had shed their wariness and exchanged banter among themselves.

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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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