North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 87

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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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87. The Same Name

“Se Rian… you’re not sleeping?”
Cheok Ha-rin broke the silence first.
On the night they camped within sight of the Jegal Clan Residence, it had been some time since Arko departed on reconnaissance.
The group gathered around the campfire held their bodies taut, tension wound through them like wire. When the quarry draws near, the flesh learns to read the killing intent before the mind does.
A single twig snapped in the flames with a sharp crack, scattering a handful of embers into the darkness, where they vanished.
Across the fire, Se Rian looked up from trimming medicinal herbs.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No. There’s a name I heard this afternoon—it keeps circling back.”
Cheok Ha-rin pushed herself up onto her elbows.
Karani. A name she’d never heard before, and in the darkness it tightened around her chest like a fist. When she pressed her hand to her heart, something strange rose and fell there, a tremor without name.
An inexplicable vibration.
She was desperate to know who bore that name.
She shifted closer to Se Rian and spoke carefully.
The fresh green scent of herbs lingered faintly on Se Rian’s fingertips.
“That person Garkan mentioned this afternoon—Karani—what sort of person were they?”
Her grip tightened on her own sleeve for reasons she couldn’t name.
Even as she asked, Cheok Ha-rin wondered if her voice had been too loud, and she drew her shoulders inward.
Se Rian said nothing, merely sorting through the leaves.
The fingernail tracing the leaf veins paused for a moment—not the hesitation of choosing an answer, but of deferring one.
“They were a good person.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s all I can offer you.”
“Did you know them yourself?”
“I never met them, but I know of them. That they existed.”
“If you cared enough to sew them clothes with such care, they must have been warm-hearted.”
Se Rian set down the herbs.
Both hands, gathered in her lap, remained utterly still for a long moment.
“Please don’t ask about that person anymore.”
“I—”
“Some names, when spoken aloud even by those close to us, harm someone. That’s why we bury them. Not to forget—to protect.”
It was a firm refusal. A boundary drawn, not to be crossed.
Se Rian’s lips had sealed shut, and the closure itself, paradoxically, only kindled Cheok Ha-rin’s curiosity further—but she simply held her silence and smoothed the fabric of her sleeve.
To bury something meant that something heavy lay upon that name, pressing it down into the earth.
As the ash dimmed, Se Rian’s profile sank halfway into shadow.
Within earshot, Cheok Mu-yeong had heard the exchange, but his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere.
Who was their true quarry?
For days now, the question had gnawed at him, and with each turn of that spiral, his father’s face loomed before him—an ill omen he’d tried to dismiss, but which refused to be denied.
Soon after, Cheok Ha-rin fell asleep, and the ash burned lower. Yet in the darkness of Cheok Mu-yeong’s mind, that name surfaced once more.
Karani.
Until this afternoon, he’d thought her merely a dead woman of Bing Gong. But now, in the profound quiet of the night, those three syllables drew up fragments of the past, piece by piece.
First fragment.
The White Flower that had saved his sister. The miraculous medicine that severed the Han-seo-ji-byeong that had bound her for twenty years. That potent flower his father had brought back…
The red glow of the dying embers trembled faintly across his dry lips.
Second fragment. His father’s silence on its origin.
Even his father, who had never hesitated to speak, would clam up whenever that flower was mentioned. What if he hadn’t merely chosen not to speak—but couldn’t?
That silence had seemed like nothing but taciturn nature. Looking back now, he saw a hand laid across it, concealing something underneath.
Third fragment. Rumor that swept through the martial world.
Intelligence that martial masters of the Central Plains had murdered the Bing Gong master of the North Sea.
The news had reached his ears too, tasked as he was with investigation. At the time, he’d dismissed it as distant northern gossip.
And fourth fragment. Coincidentally, around that same period, his father had absented himself from Cheon Geom Mun for a while, his whereabouts hidden.
Cheok Mu-yeong’s fingertips had gone cold.
The fractured pieces converged, coalescing into a single, weighty truth.
There was no turning away from it now.
At last, Cheok Mu-yeong drew the two names together with clarity.
Karani. That was the name of the dead Bing Gong-ju.
The flower that saved her sister had belonged to Bing Gong, and the Bing Gong-ju who possessed it was dead. Around the same time, their father had absconded, and the flower’s origin was buried forever.
The conclusion was simple. At the end of this crimson trail lay their father.
The situation was dire.
Isolated with his sister in the very midst of those hunting their father.
Cheok Mu-yeong drew out a sheet of paper from his breast.
His fingers traced only the edge of the paper. He neither unfolded it nor tucked it away.
A Secret Letter to send their father.
A warning: our tail has been picked up—prepare yourself.
Yet the hand holding the brush had frozen in midair.
The overwhelming martial prowess of the North Sea warriors who had swept through the Narrow Gorge.
Of course, they were no match for the Jeol-hwi Il-geom. Their father would crush these northerners in a single breath. If they were to fight.
But those ashen eyes. That man.
He had not yet glimpsed that one’s martial skill. Something told him that even his father would find this one formidable. A hastily sent letter might instead drive his father into a trap.
To warn him was danger; not to warn him was also danger.
Cheok Mu-yeong stared only at the ash-covered embers, unable to write even a single character.
Then, piercing the darkness, Arko materialized.
Only after the phantom-like silhouette took its place beside the campfire did the group notice his return.
“I have found something.”
Cheok Mu-yeong quickly tucked the paper away. All eyes turned toward Arko.
“I have narrowed their identities. From the placement of their footprints and the distribution of their weight—the Qimen Dunjia Step. It is the footwork of the Jegal Clan.”
“You are certain?”
Aelak asked.
“Had I seen it only once, I would not speak with such confidence. But the traces are scattered all around their residence. This is not the work of one or two men.”
Days of misdirection had finally led to a single family.
“Where is their residence?”
“They have guards, and beyond them, the residence is ringed by a formation in the shape of the Seven Stars.”
“Have you broken the formation?”
“I have only traced its outline. It is not something to break through while entering. It must be dismantled before we breach it.”
Arko’s fingers sketched the formation’s contours in empty air, then fell still.
Aelak’s ashen gaze swept once across the darkness beyond the campfire.
“A formation like that cannot be broken without someone inside to respond. The entire household must be integrated into it. That is how impenetrable it is.”
Aelak’s low assertion settled over the campfire’s edge.
Could they breach even such an iron wall? His subordinates might struggle. But for Aelak himself, it was no different than the Okmun Gwan.
Now that they had identified both the formation and the household, what remained was only the name of the target hidden within.
“There is still…”
Se Rian continued.
“What we have uncovered is only the trail of those who pursued us. We are certain they tracked us, but we do not yet know why. We cannot even be certain whether they lured us to Hwa Mountain.”
“That can be asked directly.”
Aelak seemed intent on a frontal assault. Whoever they faced. He would enter directly, demand answers, and if they refused—he would interrogate them with his blade.
“No. Our purpose is vengeance for the Bing Gong-ju. Even if we slaughter all of them, if we do not learn which of them cut her down… we must first identify the enemy.”
“Hmm.”
Aelak fell silent.
Just when he thought he had grasped the rope, information revealed yet another layer.
“You are right. To cut down the wrong target and only then realize it—that is not our way.”
Aelak agreed with Se Rian.
“And there is one more thing.”
Arko’s voice dropped.
“On the way back, there was a tail. I lost it again.”
For days, a gaze had clung to the group’s back like a leech. Even in the moment they might have seized their enemy’s throat, that one remained uncaught.
The hunter was becoming the hunted.
This was strange. They had come here by tracking those who pursued them, yet they were still being pursued. Then were there two hands tracking them?
“That one is not following us to strike. If they meant to kill, they would have acted long ago. They have only been watching.”
Se Rian’s words floated over the darkness.
“If they are watching, they must be reporting to someone. You could not find any trace of that person?”
“No. It is as if they know me already. They disappear without a trace.”
For an instant, Se Rian’s eyes flashed with light.
This too… the Jegal Clan too… an enemy had guided them. Just as they had been led to Hwa Mountain.
But she did not speak. Now was the time to focus on the Jegal Clan. If they allowed confusion here, the coming fight would be harder.
Arko cast a glance toward the darkness, then withdrew it.
“We go to the Jegal Clan Residence.”
Aelak’s cold command fell upon the dying fire.
In that moment, a name flashed through Cheok Mu-yeong’s mind like lightning.
‘Jegal Chan—the Swordless Sage.’
His father’s oldest friend and kindred spirit.
The companion who would drink alone with his father in the halls of Cheon Geom Mun.
Two silhouettes sitting opposite each other across a Go board, keeping vigil through the night—their image overlaid itself against the embers.
If his father had cut down Bing Gong-ju, then the one who had orchestrated that board from beside him could only be that old fox.
These men still did not know who had truly been behind Bing Gong-ju’s death, but Cheok Mu-yeong had pierced through to the real target’s name in a single breath.
Yet he sealed his lips tight.
He could not hand clues to his enemies. Whether he was protecting his bloodline or preparing to strike at the Jegal Clan’s blind side—even he was uncertain.
Speaking might have been easier. Staying silent was always the harder choice.
Garkan circled the mound, keeping watch, then tossed a remark toward Cheok Mu-yeong.
“Sleep won’t come with enemies at your doorstep, I see.”
Mu-yeong wiped his expression clean and answered curtly.
“…That’s true.”
“I don’t understand what warriors of the Central Plains think about before a decisive battle.”
“People are all the same, I suppose.”
“No. We’re simple. We think only of whose neck we’ll cut. Nothing else.”
“Is that enough?”
“Of course. A man who schemes too much always dies first in a sword fight.”
Garkan’s blunt directness struck Cheok Mu-yeong’s chest with dead weight.
The words hit home—they seemed aimed squarely at himself, who had done nothing but calculate for days on end. By that man’s logic, Cheok Mu-yeong had spent this entire night baring his neck to the blade, scheming endlessly.
Whose neck to cut.
Garkan had no idea that the man whose neck he was meant to sever was the father of the young man before him.
In the darkness beyond, Aelak sat like a stone, his back visible.
Those ashen eyes could not have missed the turbulence roiling beneath Cheok Mu-yeong’s skin. One had seen through him and asked nothing. The other had felt himself discovered and yet remained silent.
Whether that silence was mercy or a snare, Cheok Mu-yeong could not in the end determine.
Garkan moved away and added without emotion.
“Still, close your eyes and get some rest. Don’t involve yourself in our fight. No one knows whose head will fly tomorrow.”
Cheok Mu-yeong gave only a slight nod.
All the while swallowing the knowledge that only he knew what tomorrow would bring.
The receding footsteps faded into the darkness of the mound.
The embers had now dwindled to no more than a red point the size of a palm, quietly withdrawing the light it had cast across the mound. Once it faded entirely, there would be only darkness.
Mu-yeong folded the half-written secret letter in half, then in half again, and thrust it deep into his breast.
To save his father or bury him.
He decided to make no choice this night. It was the same dilemma he’d been turning over for days, but…
‘Perhaps this is my chance to see that man’s martial power. The Jegal Clan will need more than mere subordinates. In a strange way, hasn’t fortune smiled?’
When dawn broke, the blade of vengeance would tear into the Jegal Clan Residence. Whether its edge would find his father or pass him by remained unknowable.
Until noon today, Karani’s death had been a stranger’s fate.
Now her name coiled heavy and suffocating at the very center of the living survivor’s cold calculations.

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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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