North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 88

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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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88. Refusing to Let Go

Morning light was drying the dew when Arko emerged from the darkness.
Water droplets clinging to grass blades trembled, catching the sun’s rays in fine shivers.
He had crossed the fields through the night.
Thick, caked dust clung to his feet, the remnants of his journey across the open ground.
Without a word, he approached the group and unrolled a map across the grass—a rough sketch dense with marks, a reconnaissance map with key points identified.
“A frontal assault is impossible.”
Arko’s thick fingers pointed to the center of the diagram.
The grim tension of those who had marked their target flooded across the paper. The outer perimeter of Jeegal Sega was enclosed by formations arranged in the shape of a ladle.
“Eighteen guards alone. And setting aside the guards themselves—the positions they occupy form a Big Dipper circuit, each star connected as one whole. Two or three of them rotate shifts at each point, maintaining the line.”
Cheok Mu-yeong drew closer as well.
The elixir that had saved his sister’s life, his father’s strange deeds, Bing Gong-ju’s death—all night he had suppressed these hideous truths beneath a gentle mask, binding them tight within his chest.
‘Strike one, another fills the gap. The rest encircle the intruder. The moment you force your way in, you’ve trapped yourself. It’s a perfect snare.’
Cheok Mu-yeong grasped the formation’s fatal weakness in an instant.
He held the title of Inspector-General for a reason. Yet the more he understood, the heavier his insides burned. Aelak’s expression as he studied the map was utterly unmoved, as if he were asking, ‘So what?’
Merely looking at that indifferent profile made Cheok Mu-yeong’s chest tighten with suffocation.
“Does it change if you’re trapped inside the formation?”
Garkan asked.
“Outside and inside are different. Once caught within a formation, even the trap itself moves with you.”
Arko answered flatly.
“But in the instant they rush to fill an empty position, the next position must necessarily become vacant. That gap—where the rotation is slowest. We have to break the circuit there.”
Arko, like Cheok Mu-yeong, had already identified the formation’s critical flaw.
“How do we know where that gap is?”
“We’d have to see how all eighteen are positioned. We won’t know until we fight. There’s no way but to engage them directly. Reconnaissance ends here.”
Arko withdrew his hand.
The perfect solution lay waiting in the heart of the Death Ground itself.
Se Rian studied the formation arrangement carefully.
Silver hair spilled across her shoulders, casting a faint shadow across the map.
“I once heard of it while training in Ice Fire Cultivation—a classic Qimen Formation Technique that uses star patterns to blind human perception. This is it.”
Beneath her soft voice lay a chill weight.
From a single map, the hostility of the place emanated clearly.
The group’s shoulders sank heavy.
Garkan brushed dust from his calves and stood abruptly.
“A mere star diagram? Why the fear? If the front’s blocked, hit the flank. Eighteen men—nothing we can’t handle.”
“There is no flank, brother.”
Taikan pointed at the circuit and shot back sharply.
“The moment you wedge your way in, both sides seal off your back. One careless move and you’ve dug your own grave.”
His casual bravado crumbled instantly.
This was no formation that could be broken by striking the side.
Garkan clicked his tongue and flopped back onto the grass with a heavy sigh.
“Damn it all! If I’d known, I would’ve studied formation technique or something. Never thought there were fighters this underhanded.”
Harku grumbled.
Cheok Ha-rin, sitting at the edge, poked her head forward.
“Brother, this star diagram—it looks like formation technique. What is it? Which sect are we talking about?”
Her voice was small enough that only Cheok Mu-yeong could hear.
Cheok Mu-yeong gently drew his sister’s shoulders back and turned away.
“Jeegal Sega.”
“Jeegal Sega?”
Cheok Ha-rin’s eyes widened in shock.
From what they were discussing, it sounded as though they were planning to strike some sect—but surely not Jeegal Sega. One of the Five Great Sects of the Martial World. A Death Ground where formations flourish in endless variety.
“You’re sitting this one out completely. Don’t even let your clothes brush against it.”
A tender but absolute command.
Cheok Mu-yeong hardened his resolve to sever his blood relation from this matter.
Blood had to be kept far from this mire. That was the only last shred of justification he could still cling to.
Cheok Ha-rin, sensing the gravity of what lay ahead, withdrew without protest.
Cheok Mu-yeong’s words were not heard by Cheok Ha-rin alone. Se Rian heard them too.
She spoke.
“For this matter, neither of you should step forward. It involves an attack on Central Plains people, after all. Whether a fight breaks out depends entirely on them, but it won’t be resolved easily.”
A brief, weighty pronouncement.
There was no disagreement. It was a fact that anyone who had seen the map could not refute.
“There’s a remote village about half a day’s journey from here. If you’re interested in what we’re doing, I think it would be best to wait there.”
Se Rian spoke in a peculiar way.
If you’re interested in what we’re doing—it sounded as though she had known Cheok Mu’s true intentions and had permitted him to join them. Her tone was too gentle, making it difficult to discern her real meaning.
Only one person, Cheok Mu-yeong, watched Se Rian with sharpened eyes.
At Se Rian’s suggestion, Garkan immediately headed toward the pack animals.
“Fine then. I’ll give you one of the horses, so the two of you go there. This fight is ours. We don’t want to become a spectacle for anyone.”
Garkan spoke in an equally cryptic way.
“If it’s acceptable, I’d prefer to observe. As a martial artist, watching a fight is also a good lesson. I can’t pass up an opportunity like this.”
Cheok Mu-yeong answered without hesitation.
But what left his lips was the opposite of what lay beneath.
If his sister left with the others, a gap would finally open. He could send a secret letter to his father, and he wouldn’t need to travel with these people while carrying anxiety in his heart.
Under the pretext of protecting his bloodline, the son of Heaven’s Greatest Swordsman concealed his petty calculations behind a cooling conscience and put on again the mask of a devoted older brother.
“Ha-rin, come here.”
Cheok Mu-yeong called his sister to a place apart from the group.
His footsteps dragged more heavily than usual across the grass.
“You go to the village. It’s better to keep your distance from these people. This might turn out to be a real plunge into bloodshed.”
It was an order delivered with his usual affection, yet unyielding.
For the first time, he was coercing his sister to do something against her will.
“Weren’t we on our way to Uncle at the Hua Mountains? Don’t I need to visit Okmun Gwan?”
Cheok Ha-rin asked softly in return.
“The path has changed. These people are ahead of us.”
“Is it… are you keeping watch over them? Has their business become our business?”
At the question that struck home, Cheok Mu-yeong’s fingertips flinched.
“I am an inspector of the Muin League. I cannot allow northerners to spill blood across the Central Plains. If a fight seems likely, I must stop it by any means.”
It was not a lie, but it was a cowardly excuse that did not hold the whole truth.
“Then you’re going, Elder Brother?”
“I have to.”
“I want to go too.”
Her words rose sharply at the end.
For the first time, Cheok Ha-rin’s voice—which had always been so docile—bore thorns.
“It’s dangerous. Wait in the village for a few days. I’ll be back soon. Why this stubbornness?”
“What’s the problem with watching from a distance? I absolutely won’t interfere. And Uncle Muyeong Jeol-seon is with Jeegal Sega. If a fight seems about to start, I can try to stop it. He’s always been fond of me.”
“Ha-rin!”
“Honestly, I’m better at stopping fights than you are. I’m connected to Uncle through the cold.”
His words came to nothing.
For twenty years she had never once gone against her older brother’s wishes.
Cheok Ha-rin kept her lips sealed, her gaze fixed only on the tips of her feet.
Her slender shoulders trembled faintly, yet there was no sign of retreat.
Cheok Mu-yeong felt fear for the first time at the sight of his sister’s fierce determination.
‘Why is she so fixated on this?’
Cheok Ha-rin’s own mind was equally confused.
Ash-grey eyes, a familiar and chill sensation constricting her chest.
The impulse to stay with the group outpaced reason. Was it because affection had taken root? For reasons she could not name, her heart burned fiercely toward ‘them’.
That inexplicable pull—one she herself could not understand—made her even more afraid.
Cheok Ha-rin finally lifted her gaze.
“I’m… going with them.”
Silence fell. It was not whimsy or complaint, but a solid, unyielding wedge.
Cheok Mu-yeong stared at his sister with startled eyes.
More terrible still was the direction of his sister’s gaze. Cheok Ha-rin was not looking at him. She was staring intently at the backs of ‘those people’ as they made ready to leave. Her feet could be bound, but that blind intensity in her eyes could not.
His sister’s heart had already crossed over toward the Death Ground.
Se Rian watched this subtle current in silence.
Grey eyes beneath silver lashes rested quietly over the brother and sister.
The remnant of the dead Karani was flowing through the young girl’s chest toward a single man.
The Cold Qi Connection was transforming into curiosity, curiosity into intense kinship. One could say they were well-matched.
When longing runs deep, it is said that even lifeless matter can be infused with vitality. How desperately must Karani have yearned to plant such a profound heart within the Seol-ryeon-gwa?
Each day, each moment, she must have yearned for Aelak while channeling the essence of the Seol-ryeon-gwa, her heart torn and clutched desperately in her own embrace.
Had that longing somehow reached Cheok Ha-rin?
Only Se Rian herself knew this truth.
She knew, yet she bore the weight of her silence.
She could have opened her lips and released it all, but in the end, she kept them sealed.
‘It would be better to accept the facts and discard the feelings. If Cheok Un-hui brought the Seol-ryeon-gwa… their ending won’t be clean.’
It was Aelak who severed that tangled skein of murky emotion.
“Both of you. Leave for the village.”
With that single, resolute pronouncement, both Cheok Mu-yeong’s shallow scheming and Cheok Ha-rin’s stubbornness shattered at once.
His grey eyes never once turned back toward the siblings.
“I—”
“Go. Whoever stands in the way, I cut them down. Those who yield, I do not.”
Aelak was unyielding.
There was no threat in his voice, no anger—only the cold indifference of someone stating an inevitable fact.

The party set forth toward Jeegal Sega.
The massive backs of five North Sea warriors and Se Rian’s silver hair receded swiftly into the distance.
Footsteps that never looked behind—such was the code of warriors.
Left behind, Cheok Ha-rin gazed long at the far end of the northern road even after the dust had settled.
The sun had climbed high overhead, casting only short shadows upon the path.
Watching that stubborn gaze, Cheok Mu-yeong fell into despair.
A blade aimed at his father, and his sister leaning toward the enemy.
Had this been a doomed journey from the start? After lying in sickbed for so long before coming to the Central Plains, had the presence of northerners been too great a shock for his sister?
A terrible, severing bond had formed between his sister and those people.
“Brother.”
Cheok Ha-rin murmured without turning her gaze from the road’s end.
“Will we… be able to see them again?”
“They will return. So wait here.”
“You’re going to follow them?”
“I need to see for myself.”
“I also—”
“You stay. If you sneak after them and are spotted, they’ll see through you. Your skills aren’t enough to deceive their eyes. It’s better you wait here.”
Words that sounded like excuses.
Cheok Ha-rin did not nod. Instead, she left behind a chilling remark.
“Understood. I’ll stay and wait.”
That brief answer only weighed more heavily upon Cheok Mu-yeong’s chest.
His breath caught as if a blade had entered his throat.
One could not sever what had already bound itself. An invisible, terrible shackle had already ensnared his sister.

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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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