North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 97

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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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97. Five Steps of Concession

Damp mist pressed heavy upon the dawn field.
In the cold silence where dewdrops clung to grass blades and fell—tap, tap—two men faced each other across a veil of thick fog.
“I brought someone with me.”
Jegal Chan spoke first.
He gestured to the lean, sharp-eyed boy standing at his side.
“If I die, someone needs to carry word of it back to the main house.”
A cool confession, sentencing himself to death without flinching.
There was no reason to be surprised. This was a man who had already confessed to laying his blade across the back of Bing Gong-ju. He had come understanding the warning Aelak threw down.
He knew one of the eight demons who had torn Kalani to pieces stood here. Come out. If you don’t, I will annihilate the Jegal Clan.
Aelak had proven he possessed the means to do it.
Link four of the Big Dipper Seven Star Array formations together… and one becomes invincible.
He had shattered those alone, slaughtered every martial master positioned at the formation’s front, and thrown down those words while fixing his gaze upon the Jegal house.
Only the clan lord understood the message.
But it meant that now Aelak had nothing left to hide.
Aelak nodded slightly in acknowledgment.
He had sworn an oath before heaven: to offer the first blood sacrifice.
Killing intent and confession coiled tight as wire across the dew-laden field.
Aelak’s ash-grey eyes fixed upon Jegal Chan’s waist, where a Folding Fan was tucked.
The clan lord’s gaunt hand caressed the fan but did not draw it yet.
A probing battle.
No more words were needed.
Jegal Chan’s gaze swept rapidly from Aelak’s feet to his shoulders.
No openings.
No gaps to exploit—which meant that no matter where I struck, my wrist would be severed first.
Like a strategist of the Murim Alliance, Jegal Chan calculated with absolute precision even amid crushing despair.
His breathing never wavered, and the hand gripping the fan was solid as stone. For a man who had come to die, he possessed an unsettling composure.
Aelak, too, stood rooted like a tree grown into damp earth, utterly still.
He would not move for any provocation, any killing intent—nothing. The silence of a mountain, immovable and vast.
That damnable non-response only tightened the noose around Jegal Chan’s throat.

Joka had retreated to a corner, drinking in this savage standoff with wide eyes.
He was a clever boy.
He etched the collision of two monsters into his mind as though watching it unfold in real time.
Jegal Chan thought that was enough.
There had never been any calculation of return. The moment he took his stand here with the hands that had butchered Bing Gong-ju of the North Sea, one of them had to fall before this ended.

Four northern warriors went about their business tens of paces back.
Garkan was chewing stale bread, grinding it noisily.
Arko lay sprawled with a medicine pouch as his pillow, his back already turned away. Taikan rested an unstrung bow across his knees.
To their eyes, this duel was not even worth watching.
“Brother, shouldn’t we at least pretend to be watching?”
Harkoo tapped his Twin Halberd Swords and asked with a crooked smile.
His tone held not a trace of concern.
“What’s the point of watching?”
Garkan shot back, still grinding bread between his teeth.
“He’ll call us when it’s done. Just keep your backside planted.”
“The Jegal clan lord—his technique is no ordinary thing. He’s a supreme master. None of us would stake our lives on victory against him.”
Taikan muttered, shifting his grip on the bow.
Yet his tone held no worry. A lazy hunter’s gaze swept across Jegal Chan’s entire frame, taking his measure.
“The longer this drags on, the more we’ll just stoke the Chieftain’s anger.”
Arko chuckled without moving from where he lay.

Watching them, Joka felt his spine prickle with dread.
These were men who would not so much as flinch if a hundred assassins rushed them. That eerie calm—eating bread while a man’s head was about to fly—was more horrible than any killing intent.
But he quickly put aside his wandering thoughts.
Young though he was, he understood his duty. Right now, that duty was simple: to watch the fight.
The boy’s eyes fixed upon the battlefield.

Whoosh—!
Jegal Chan finally drew his Folding Fan.
Crack!
The fan snapped open, breathing killing intent.
Across the fan’s ribs, dense Enigmatic Script was etched.
The Jegal Clan’s hidden masterwork—never once revealed in living memory.
The Heavenly Mechanism Absolute Severance Fan.
The strain that appeared in his wrist proved the weight of this secret technique.
In the moment he bared his fangs, Jegal Chan accepted his own death completely. A secret technique is strongest when hidden. To deploy it meant either the enemy would die, or he would.
Patter-patter-pat!
Jegal Chan’s Footwork Technique unfolded with blinding speed.
One step, then another.
Following the cold arc traced by his fan, his body began to twist grotesquely. His shoulders split in two, and those two divided into four, tearing through the mist until finally seven Jegal Chans completed their manifestation.
Seven identical demons, each moving with the same footwork and radiating the same killing intent, encircled Aelak completely.
The Jegal Clan’s ultimate art: the Heavenly Mechanism Escape Array.
By moving along the logic of the Eight Trigrams or Nine Palaces, any opponent who enters a specific radius falls into a spatial trap—losing directional sense or growing impossibly heavy.
Woven into these strikes are the Illusion Art elements of Qi Men Dun Jia.
It deceives the enemy’s five senses absolutely.
A single thrust splinters into dozens of phantoms, or a distance that was clearly ten paces away warps to arm’s length in an instant—spatial awareness disintegrates entirely.
Like the way Jegal Chan’s form now split into seven.
Wet sand bore the weight of seven directions. Real. As if no phantom existed. From seven angles, fan-wind tore at the mist like a ravenous beast.

“Gasp!”
Joka drew in his breath sharply.
No phantom. All seven held identical Folding Fans. Even their shadows split into seven, dancing in concert.
Impossible to distinguish the real one with the naked eye.
‘He can win this!’
Hope kindled in Joka’s eyes.

The Field swelled taut.
Seven strands of killing intent converged upon a single point—Aelak’s heart.
Only then did Garkan’s jaw stop chewing bread.
“Impressive. Seven doppelgängers.”
Garkan murmured with apparent interest.
“Nonsense. If he’d ever fought in a North Sea blizzard, he wouldn’t deploy such tricks. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Harkoo spoke.
Garkan returned to chewing his bread noisily.

Above, below, left, right—no escape route anywhere. A perfect encirclement.
Then Aelak’s cool voice tore through the mist.
“How many moves is that… in total?”
A question asked with dry detachment, even as his eyes absorbed the enemy’s ultimate art.
The toneless voice of a seasoned gladiator.
Not a plea for mercy or a request for a defense. It was mocking confirmation—asking exactly how far the other’s reserves reached, a taunt wrapped in courtesy.
Jegal Chan gritted his teeth and answered.
“…Five moves.”
“Deploy them all.”
Aelak sneered.
“Five moves—I grant you a Handicap.”
The Field froze as if doused in ice water.
To grant a Handicap to a martial master was humiliation seared into the bone.
The arrogance that said: even if you pour every killing technique you’ve ground your life into, I won’t flinch. An overwhelming sentence that declared he would absorb your full force and still twist your neck. An utter contempt for everything Jegal Chan had ever been.
The killing intent radiating from the seven perfect doppelgängers dimmed under that single arrogant word, their light draining away.

From a distance, Garkan snorted with amusement and tore into his bread.
A clan leader surrounded, refusing even to draw his sword, offering his throat instead—and these mad bastards didn’t even blink.
“Ah, that handicap again.”
Harkoo smirked.
“Whoever takes it bleeds themselves dry, don’t they?”
Garkan chewed his bread without answering, as he had before.
He’d watched countless times what became of those who received such merciless “concessions.”

Jegal Chan refused to be swayed by insult.
The strategist transmuted that humiliation entirely into “five opportunities.”
‘Then I can strike five times without defense. I can draw out all my power.’
This moment of his opponent’s carelessness was the only opening he would ever have to drive the secret technique he’d honed his whole life straight into the man’s heart.
“Arrogant, are you? I’m no easy prey either. Let’s see what you can do.”
Jegal Chan launched his attack at once.
Whoosh!
First exchange. One of seven clones drove into Aelak’s flank with savage precision. Simultaneously, the other six sealed off every angle.
A hellish net designed so that evading one meant two folding fans would slice at the neck, and evading two meant four more would follow.
Aelak didn’t flinch.
Slash!
The folding fan cut through empty air.
‘What?’
Jegal Chan was startled. He hadn’t seen any movement.
This. This Divine Movement Technique—it was what broke the Big Dipper Seven Star Array.

Whirrrrr!
Second exchange. Seven figures spun in a whirlwind, unleashing a torrent of fan-wind that tore at Aelak’s lower body like a beast.
A perfect, lethal assault—no matter where he withdrew his feet, the next reserve attacker was poised to surge forward.
A glacial wind scraped across the clan chief’s instep, nearly shredding it. Yet his feet remained rooted to the ground as if nailed there.
There was no margin of error in Jegal Chan’s strikes.
An ordinary martial artist would already be scattered into pieces—a limb in each direction.
Aelak simply stood there. Breathing.
Slash!
The folding fan struck empty space. It had caught Aelak—except he was no longer there. Was this… an Illusion Art?

Third exchange, space itself screaming as the distance collapsed.
Seven clones unleashed a killing intent that erupted in explosion, pouring simultaneously at Aelak’s throat, heart, and the space between his brows. Seven deaths danced before his eyes.

“…Already three exchanges.”
Taikan muttered tersely.
A hunter’s eyes traced the trajectories of seven folding fans in a frenzy.
If he himself had faced Jegal Chan…
Even the first exchange would be grueling. The second, the third—he’d need to give everything. Yet the clan chief was evading with such ease.
“The handicap’s only five exchanges, though.”
Arko mumbled while picking his nose.
“Still two left.”

Joka trembled, cold sweat pooling in his palms.
He thought: ‘No human trajectory could evade this.’ He was certain the arrogant North Sea monster’s neck would burst like a fountain.
But in the next moment, looking again—Aelak was already gone.
‘How could anyone beat that!’
Even to the boy’s eyes, Aelak was impossibly fast. No—it was a different dimension altogether.

True to his word, he concedes five moves.
Ashen eyes move mechanically alone, dissecting the killing intent of seven clones.
An overwhelming stillness, as though even defense had been abandoned.
That figure evading the strongest absolute strike with invisible, imperceptible shifts—it gnawed instead at Jegal Chan’s own heart.
He was the one launching the assault, yet he was the one hemorrhaging vitality. The hand gripping the folding fan began to tremble violently.
This monster…
There could be no other thought.
Jegal Chan pushed through his fear and surged into the fourth exchange. Seven clones warped grotesquely, leaving Aelak’s back entirely unguarded. Only his front and flanks came under attack.
It seemed a blind spot, yet this void was precisely the lethal trap designed for the fifth exchange.
Crack!
Aelak dodged the seven clones’ assault with the barest of movements. In that instant, the final five exchanges erupted at last.
The ultimate blow, concentrating every resource of the Heavenly Mechanism Absolute Severance Fan. The last honor of Jegal Chan as patriarch of the Jegal Clan had been compressed entirely into this single strike.
The seven clones’ forms collapsed into one, descending upon Aelak’s throat at a speed that defied comprehension.
“Die!”
Shriek—!
A trajectory of death no one could escape. Perfect. Absolute.
Another clone materialized, making eight. Attacks cascading from all eight directions. No—eight Folding Fans converging into a single mass, pressing down. Like a colossal iron plate dropping from the sky.
The final form of the Heavenly Mechanism Absolute Severance Fan—Absolute Severance!

The dry bread fell from Garkan’s fingers with a soft thud.
Joka held his breath, his eyes fixed upon that overwhelming moment of death’s threshold. The Heavenly Mechanism Absolute Severance Fan was tearing toward Aelak’s carotid artery. It was finished!
Every gaze converged on that single point, an instant before the explosion—

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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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