North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 92

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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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92. Dismantling the Formation

“Easy to say!”
Harkoo’s temper flared.
“That ‘break it and we’re done’ approach only works for the clan chief. We tried last night—last night we didn’t even get close, let alone touch anything.”
Harkoo glared toward the Jegal Family compound, growling. The shame of leaping the wall the previous night, seeing only blood before being driven back, was still raw.
The second night descended.
Aelak sat silently beside the dying fire, watching only the wall. Whatever thoughts occupied his mind left no tremor in his ash-grey eyes.
If they couldn’t shatter this vicious formation, they could never cut off the target’s breath. The enemy had already learned the raiders’ techniques, and the next incursion would see the traps woven far more tightly.
Aelak’s heavy silence.
His clansmen knew this stillness meant he was searching for an answer. So they held their breath.
From Garkan’s torn calf, the metallic reek of blood still hung in the air, and the camp was thick with hopelessness.
It was Harkoo who couldn’t bear the suffocation.
“Damn it all. This cursed formation—where the hell is its head? Show us a diagram or something. Then we can smash it or leave it alone, right?”
Garkan, leaning on his wounded leg, cut his brother short.
“That’s exactly why we need to find that head. Rushing in blind will only get us slaughtered. Stay quiet and watch.”

Arko desperately retraced the sensation that had brushed his nostrils the night before. If it were a Poison Formation, he could have tracked the source of the toxin. But this was pure Qi made solid.
“There’s nothing to latch onto. It has no scent, so I can’t trace the source.”
“If your nose can’t smell it, then there’s no smell, period.”
Harkoo muttered sourly.
Arko said nothing and tossed a dry branch into the embers.
Crack!
Sparks shot up then faded.

Taikan’s Eagle Vision proved useless too. The seven anchor points, whirling like madness, shifted to new positions before his gaze could even touch them.
“Even with my eyes, I couldn’t follow all seven trajectories to the end last night.”
The finest sense of smell and sight—both blocked. A desperate situation.
Then, only one person was looking elsewhere.
Serian knelt down to the ground.
Her eyes, trained in the Fukoo Clan to distinguish information from mere traces. Her gaze read not martial prowess but ‘form’—the underlying pattern itself.
Gripping a dry branch, she fell into thought. Then she pressed the first point firmly into the dirt.
“I’ll sketch the skeleton of how those seven anchor points moved last night.”
Serian marked seven dots and connected them with lines.
Whenever one gap opened, the adjacent point rushed in to fill it—that eerie motion. As she continued drawing those movements… a connected pattern emerged.
A gear rotating in a single direction.
“When this spot is blocked, the neighboring point rotates to cover the gap. When that breaks, the next one turns. The gears move freely, overlapping.”
“Last night I thought those bastards were actually thinking and moving on their own.”
Harkoo leaned in close.
“The way they filled themselves in so smoothly.”
“They’re not rotating of their own will. They turn in a strictly designed sequence.”
“There’s a sequence?”
“Yes.”
Serian pointed at the cogwheels.
“Because they’re synchronized so rapidly, they seemed alive and moving. But if you trace it backward, a clear unidirectional flow appears. Read it in reverse and you can predict exactly where the next gap will open.”
The group gathered around the dirt diagram.
The tiger’s maw that had dealt them overwhelming terror was now reduced to nothing more than seven little cogwheels.
Taikan traced Serian’s explanation with the keen eye of a hawk.
Serian used the branch to precisely mark the center of the cogwheels—the single point where all seven flows converged and bound together.
“Ultimately, all this Qi concentrates and terminates at one single point. Where that elder stood last night, mocking you all while controlling the formation. That—right there—is the ‘core’.”
Her branch came to rest over the core.
“Though I should keep one possibility open. Whether this is the true core or another trap. The Jegal Family has been worn smooth by time—they’d hardly expose the true heart in such an obvious place.”
“How do we verify whether it’s bait or not?”
Harkoo asked.
“Strike and charge. If the formation doesn’t collapse, then it was bait. Which means we all die.”
Serian’s branch circled the core slowly.

Taikan, who had been studying the diagram, pulled out an arrowhead and pointed to a specific location.
Among the seven interlocking gears, there was one seam where the rotation was most subtly delayed. Taikan’s instinct—the same instinct that had found the passage behind them last night—had uncovered the Formation’s most fatal vulnerability.
“Here.”
A short, cold pronouncement.
Serian nodded.
“…The slowest turning gap. How did you spot it?”
“The same moment the passage opened last night… Yes. At that identical instant, this point alone created a brief, infinitesimal void.”
Serian drew a dark line across that seam with a branch.
“Right. This is where it’s loosest.”
Taikan drew a straight line with the arrowhead from the seam through to the core within.
A grim silence hung around the campfire.
“If we freeze the inside by force, the linkage of all seven key points will stop completely at that single spot.”
“Easy to say. But who’s going to do it?”
“The clan chief.”
……
“The clan chief can do it.”
A suffocating stillness settled over them.
Harkoo’s eyes gleamed, and the veins stood out on Garkan’s clenched fists.
“That gear… once it freezes, it never turns again?”
“If we freeze the inside before the neighboring key point can rotate and fill the gap, the chain reaction breaks and the entire Formation collapses. Just one point perfectly frozen—that’s all it takes.”
A Path of Life had finally opened in what seemed an impregnable stone wall.
To freeze is to kill. Whether by Freezing Force or by Killing Force… destroy just one point and the whole thing crumbles.
The problem was this: Aelak, who should shoulder the most critical part, lay sprawled out sleeping. What was he thinking?

For the first time, a clear path to victory had emerged from the murk of despair.
“For now… I’ll handle the inside.”
Taikan spoke.
It would be difficult to penetrate inward on foot, but arrows could slip through easily enough.
Serian’s branch began pointing out each person’s target.
“Harkoo, here. You handle the fastest-turning gear. Don’t even think about breaking it—just slow it down. Clear?”
“Not smashing it is the hardest part.”
“Which is exactly why I’m giving it to you.”
Taikan offered a sardonic jab.
Serian laughed and moved the branch onward.
“Arko, you catch the moment when the force shifts between these two points by scent.”
“I just need to identify the instant the flow changes?”
“Yes. It’ll be a warning before they seal the gap.”
“Taikan, you delay the upper flow with arrows.”
“Both at the top.”
Taikan fingered the arrowhead.
Serian drew a straight line with the branch from the seam through to the core.
“Once I open this path… the clan chief has to drive through from the inside.”
Serian glanced at Aelak.
Aelak wasn’t listening to them. Though he hadn’t fought at all last night, he lay curled on his side, sleeping soundly.

Only one chair sat empty—Garkan’s.
Serian looked at Garkan’s leg, mangled by the spiked chain.
“Garkan, full recovery will take a whole day. In a Formation where a moment’s mistake means death, if your balance breaks, that’s a tomb right there.”
Garkan’s facial muscles twitched.
“My legs may be shattered, but these two hands are sound.”
“Garkan.”
“Serian. For a man with all four limbs intact to hide and watch the clan chief’s back—that’s a shame worse than death for us of the Aelak Tribe.”
He unwound the Bing Chul Swae from his waist and wound it frantically around his wrists.
Snap!
From pinky to ring finger, a perfect binding with not a single thread of slack.
The hands that had faltered yesterday under wound and pain now pulled taut without hesitation.
“Look well. These two hands are alive. I can bear the agony of torn legs. But I will not—cannot—suffer to see my hands idle in the Hunting Ground.”
“He’s got a point.”
Harkoo chimed in.
“Your arm is fine. It’s your leg that’s the problem.”
“Keep your mouth shut.”
Serian didn’t concede immediately.
The two locked eyes in the air, tension drawn taut between them.

Meanwhile, from a distance, another pair of eyes observed these blood-hungry warriors.
Cheok Mu-yeong.
Last night, he’d watched four northerners flee with their tails between their legs.
The monsters his father had warned him to fear so carefully—they couldn’t even clear a single wall? Cheok Mu-yeong’s tension cooled to ice.
‘The North Sea warriors? Two thousand from Okmun Gwan? It’s all just legend mixed with bluster.’
They were there on the dirt, heads together, scheming. But the sight of it—like stray dogs flailing uselessly in the dark.
There seemed no real need to worry about his father’s secret orders.
Cheok Mu-yeong’s hand slid away from his sword hilt.
‘I worried for nothing. They couldn’t breach the Jegal Family with strength like that.’

Serian finally relented.
She’d known all along that Garkan was the kind of beast that wouldn’t retreat even in death.
“Understood, Garkan.”
Rather than the direct path toward the core, she pointed to the outermost gear of the formation.
“But not the front. I need you to handle just this single outer gear. Keep it pinned for a moment—that’s all. If it feels impossible, don’t look back. Just get out. Promise me.”
“…I promise.”
Garkan nodded with heavy conviction.

The perfect killing combination was complete.
Serian’s antidote, Taikan’s precision targeting of weak points, Aelak’s Freezing Force.
The movements of six beasts honed into a single blade.
All that remained was the decisive moment.
Harkoo licked his teeth.
“When do we strike, chief? Can we smash that bastard’s skull this time?”
Aelak’s ashen eyes gleamed, but he said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the formation spread across the Jegal estate.
“Better to do it at dawn.”
Serian spoke instead of Aelak.
And she looked at him—a glance asking for his thoughts. But Aelak remained silent, as if he hadn’t heard them at all.
“Dawn.”
The cold sentence fell like a death knell.
“By then they’ll have been maintaining the formation all night. Their focus will have hit bottom.”
Taikan added to the thought.

Garkan gripped the Bing Chul Swae hard.
“My leg’s still far from healed, but the single gear I’m taking—I’ll shatter it for certain.”
“That’s enough.”
Serian wiped away the diagram she’d drawn in the dirt.
“Tear through the formation, then we confirm the rat’s face hiding behind it.”
“Don’t forget the movements.”
The four looked after one another.
“We’ll keep it in mind.”

Cheok Mu-yeong’s arrogant gaze from afar, contemptuous and distant.
He never once suspected the trajectory of killing intent they’d forged.
‘If their martial arts can be stopped by a mere formation, it ends when dawn breaks.’
The Jegal Family practices Defense-Then-Offense. Once defense succeeds, they attack immediately. They slipped through the formation tonight, but tomorrow will be hell.

Meanwhile, the warriors were preparing a blood-soaked revenge.
“Last night’s humiliation won’t happen twice.”
Garkan snarled.
“This time we tear through everything.”
“When dawn breaks, we’ll cut their leash.”
Aelak’s gaze sliced through the eastern darkness.
The night where arrogant negligence and meticulous killing intent crossed paths. The hunt had begun.

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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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