North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 95

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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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95. A Warning

“…Just one man.”
In the dawn as the mist lifted, the voice of the figure atop the wall trembled like aspen leaves.
Frost from the early morning had settled white across the roof tiles of the wall.
“Just one man demolished the formation. A single man.”
“That makes no sense. That’s a death wall—even a hundred would enter only to devour their own flesh and perish.”
“Doesn’t make sense, I know, but I saw it clearly with these eyes. It’s the truth.”
The first to speak turned to Aelak, his expression twisted with dread.
“I’d almost prefer it was a phantom. Do you believe that’s actually a person standing in the middle of that nightmare?”
“Four formations, eighteen men each, all rotating at once—and he… he ground through all of them alone? Is that even possible? What kind of martial art is this?”
The strength drained from the hand gripping the sword.
Between teeth chattering with tremors, no further words came.
At the heart of the now-still Beidou Seven Stars Formation.
A single man walked out through that inferno.
The eighteen Daoists who had worked the formation lay scattered across the dirt like clots of blood. The towering qi of the seven constellations, which had pierced heaven itself, dissolved into nothing but the chill of morning frost.
Across the blood pooling on the ground, the dawn mist crept low and heavy.
Aelak emerged from the wreckage with unhurried grace.
Each footfall upon the collapsed formation’s remains carried not a tremor of hesitation.
Crimson droplets of blood dotted the hem of his Blood Cloak, and his ashen eyes were colder than the frost of dawn.
Crunch. Crunch.
With each step, the grass beneath his feet froze white.
His blade had not yet returned to its sheath.
Even the blood beaded on the steel could not fall—it too had frozen solid.
The formation that boasted of being Unbreakable had been torn to shreds by a single man’s footwork and blade. Aelak was the first monster to ever rip apart the Jegal Clan’s Beidou Seven Stars Formation in a matter of moments.
That overwhelming martial prowess itself was the cruelest of warnings.
The warriors atop the wall could not even draw breath.
Strength drained from their sword hands, and both legs trembled of their own accord. None of them dared grip the hilt again.

The commotion was equally bewildering for the others.
Garkan and Harkoo exchanged glances.
Breaking the formation was not the surprise—they had seen the clan leader’s mastery like breathing since their time in the North Sea. What chilled their spines was something else entirely: the expressionless back of the clan leader, who had demolished everything utterly, yet did not advance further, did not finish what remained.
“Brother, why is the clan leader stopping? The formation’s done for—why won’t he land the killing blow?”
Harkoo whispered.
Garkan’s hands, which had been winding the Bing Chul Swae, had also stilled.
“Keep your mouth shut. If the clan leader has stopped, he has his reasons.”
Though he reprimanded Harkoo, Garkan’s own stomach churned with confusion.
Even he, who had prowled the Hunting Ground like a beast, could not fathom the true intentions behind the clan leader’s sudden retreat from certain victory.
“Brother, one more step and it’s finished—and the clan leader has never turned back before.”
Harkoo finally could not hold his tongue and murmured again.
Garkan roughly finished winding the Bing Chul Swae around his waist.
“Don’t try to guess what the clan leader is thinking. Hold your tongue and keep watch.”
Even as he spoke, Garkan’s eyes never left the clan leader’s back.

Aelak’s gaze fixed upon the ruins of the formation, beyond them.
The main hall of the Jegal Clan, shrouded in mist.
Beyond the wall lay the Jegal patriarch—the target of his revenge.
Just one step.
One step, and clan annihilation would be complete.
Both the warriors atop the wall and his subordinates behind him held their breath, watching the end point of those gray eyes. Would he strike, or would he withdraw?
Wind descended from the ridge and caught the hem of the Blood Cloak, billowing it.
Aelak’s hand hovered near the hilt, neither touching nor falling away. That brief moment felt as long as an hour to all who watched.

Aelak turned his back without a word.
He sheathed his blade and walked toward the camp with not a trace of regret, abandoning the fate of a clan that could have been obliterated with a single stroke. None could comprehend the meaning in that retreating figure.

Aelak returned to the camp as silent as a statue, offering nothing to those around him.
His men surrounded him with eyes wide in shock, but he paid them no attention.
He spread out the Blood Cloak and lay back with his arm as a pillow, eyes closed. But for the eerie frost gathering at his side, he might have looked like an old man taking an afternoon nap after a leisurely walk through town.
A thin wisp of smoke rose from the ashes of the campfire and dispersed into the dawn air.
“…He sleeps.”
Harkoo let out a hollow laugh.
“After pulling off something insane like that, sleep comes calling? I’d be too excited—wouldn’t shut my mouth for three days straight.”
“Then go somewhere else and vent.”
Taikan offered the rebuke flatly.
“You’re alive because the clan survived. Be grateful you still have a mouth to run. That’s blessing enough.”
Taikan wiped his blade clean with a cloth and added one more thought.
Harkoo twisted his lips but said nothing further.
“…I really wish I could see what’s rattling around inside the clan leader’s head.”
Harkoo let the words slip out quietly, but no one answered him.
When the clan leader falls silent, you don’t ask. That is the law of the barren North Sea.
Taikan and Arko maintained their weapons in silence.
Arko ran his fingers over a dagger, then stopped and glanced toward the sleeping clan leader. But soon his gaze returned to his own hands.
A strange stillness settled over the camp.
A handful of ash scattered on the predawn wind, strewing across the grass.

Serian approached where Aelak slept.
Her footsteps across the grass were careful, deliberate.
“Three days and nights I spent crafting that strategy. All ruined now.”
A flawless countermeasure, each position calculated with precision.
Aelak had dismantled it alone in less than an hour.
Yet her faint smile held no resentment—only awe.
“…This way, I cannot be of help to you, Aelak.”
She let the words drift out like a murmur. The sleeping man offered no reply.
“Still, you owe me an answer. Why you came back. Why you decided to return to us.”
She knelt and settled quietly beside the sleeping man.
A faint unease flickered across her pale gray eyes, then faded.
‘…Why did you simply come back?’
Even Serian, the Fukoo Clan’s finest strategist, could not decipher that wordless reason.
Her pale gray gaze rested deep upon the sleeping man’s face.
A thread of frost gathered near his cheek and melted away.

* * *

On a low hill overlooking the Jegal Clan estate.
Cheok Moo-yeong pressed his back against a tree, trembling uncontrollably.
The skin beneath his fingernails had gone white as he clawed at the bark.
From beginning to end, he had burned the image of the clan’s slaughter into his eyes.
‘Watch only. Do not interfere.’
His father Cheok Un-hui’s stern command became nothing but scraps of paper in that moment.
Movement technique that mocked the Formation Diagram’s geometry. Sword technique that carved out the Formation’s very heart.
The eyes of a man who had seen only the Greatest Swordsman under Heaven’s path his whole life trembled without cease. Cold sweat beaded on the hand gripping his sword hilt.
‘…A monster to match my father.’
“…Impossible. That thing can’t be human.”
The murmur slipped unbidden from his lips and scattered into the dawn air.
Okmun Gwan breached. Mazeon annihilated.
His own arrogance—the contempt with which he’d dismissed barbarian rumor-mongering—shattered into a thousand pieces.
A monster existed in this world who matched the Greatest Swordsman under Heaven.
The terror that his father—whom he had revered his whole life—might not be invincible numbed Cheok Moo-yeong’s reason.
Cheok Moo-yeong bolted into his quarters like a madman.
He seized a brush and scattered ink across paper.
His hands shook so badly the ink splattered beyond the edges, but he had no time to wipe it away.
Aelak’s Movement Technique. The angles of his Sword Technique. Every trajectory.
He crammed every detail of the hellish spectacle he’d just witnessed onto the page without omitting a single stroke.
‘Not one detail. Not a single detail missed.’
“Father has to know. What that thing is. What we’re truly facing.”
He breathed hard, rolling the completed page into a small scroll and gripping it tightly.
He tied the rolled message to the leg of a carrier pigeon and released it into the pre-dawn sky.
The pigeon vanished southward, shrinking to a speck before disappearing altogether.
He had disobeyed his father’s command, but he could not let his father remain ignorant of this terrible calamity.
Cheok Moo-yeong could not tear his eyes from the dawn sky until the bird was completely gone.

* * *

The deepest vault of the Jegal Clan.
Beneath a dim lantern, Jegal Chan sat rigid as stone.
As the lamp’s wick burned down, the heavy air of the cramped chamber seemed to press inward.
The contents of the report were devastating.
Eighteen warriors dead, five severely wounded. Four forward positions collapsed. The enemy: a single man.
The Beidou Seven Stars Formation—a family’s pride forged over a lifetime—had been crushed like paper.
The fingers of the hand holding the report trembled slightly.
‘If that creature comes, the Jegal Clan will be erased.’
Whether he assembled a hundred warriors or a thousand, they meant nothing before such a monster. He had racked his mind, but no strategy emerged that could stop that man. Yet it was not overwhelming force alone that had driven Jegal Chan to the edge of this cliff.
‘Why did he abandon victory and turn back? Why?’
The same question had circled his mind all night, gnawing at him.
One more step and the Jegal Clan’s breath would have been cut off.
That he could not read the enemy’s intent at all.
Or rather—he had read it. He only pretended not to know, wanting to forget the truth, but inside his head he heard Aelak’s voice. It was as if the man spoke directly to him.

Jegal Chan staggered to his feet.
As patriarch, he had to prepare the Entrusting of the Egg—a measure for the clan’s future survival.
He opened a deep chest and withdrew an old Formation Diagram.
The lamp’s shadow wavered across the yellowed parchment.
A fragment of the ancient Northern Gate pattern stolen from Bing Gong after her death and desecration—a cursed piece he had once been glad to possess, thinking it would provide him pleasure for a lifetime.
“Hui—come in.”
At the devastated patriarch’s call, his eldest son entered with shoulders hunched.
Jegal Chan held out the Formation Diagram with trembling hands.
“Take it.”
The eldest son, bewildered, offered his hands to receive it.
“…What is this, Father?”
“Heaven’s First Formation Diagram. Stolen. From the North Sea. If you study it deeply enough… it may be a formation you will need to devote your entire life to unraveling.”
North Sea. At those two words, the eldest son’s breath caught.
The demon of the North Sea that had shattered the family’s walls at dawn this very morning came to mind.
“Then… does that man come because of this?”
Jegal Chan shook his head.
“Fortunately, he seems to have no interest in this diagram. Then we must hide it. You must solve it. If you do, the Jegal Clan will not merely be one of the Five Great Clans—we will be foremost in the Martial World.”
“How could I possibly solve it, Father?”
The eldest son’s voice trembled as much as the hands holding the diagram.
“I am not asking you to solve it at once. If you cannot in your lifetime, pass it to your son. As long as Jegal blood flows, this diagram must flow with it.”
“But Father—did you not say it might take a lifetime, or even then remain unsolved?”
“Some things must be held onto even if they cannot be solved. That is what a family is.”
The eldest son could ask nothing more. He closed his mouth.
Not a command, but a desperate plea.
The heaviest legacy a patriarch standing before a monster’s blade could pass to his child.
As Jegal Hui accepted the diagram, his shoulders trembled as if the weight of the parchment pressed down upon his frame.
“I shall honor this trust.”
The moment his eldest son gripped the diagram, Jegal Chan’s hollow eyes suddenly cleared.
A final testament, like words spoken by one who knows why the demon who broke the formation turned back.
“No matter what comes… you must decipher it.”

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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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