Obtaining Heavenly Demon Martial Arts in the Magic Era - Chapter 31

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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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31
Staff and armor.
The two unique weapons Jang Ki-han had prepared finally revealed their complete forms.
Gleam—!
The crimson Mana Stones embedded in both pieces resonated with each other, releasing blinding light that seared the eyes.
Cheon Do-hyeon’s strike was completely blocked by Jang Ki-han’s unique weapon—the obsidian armor called Aegis.
‘I can’t move!’
Along with the Three-section Staff, his body seemed frozen in midair, unable to budge an inch. Seizing that moment of Do-hyeon’s shock, Jang Ki-han recovered his stance and swiftly wove a seal with one hand.
Whoosh—
A ring of fire materialized around his body—a vicious, roiling circle of flames that looked ready to rupture and explode outward at any moment. Jang Ki-han released the seal and chanted the technique’s name in a cruel tone.
[Fire Wave]
The pent-up ultra-high-temperature energy detonated catastrophically. A ferocious wave of fire erupted from Jang Ki-han’s center, devouring the entire rooftop.
“Ughhhh!”
Do-hyeon’s body was caught in the fiery maelstrom, flinging him backward helplessly.
Thud-thud-thud—thud.
The gap he had fought so hard to close exploded open, more than doubling in an instant.
The distance he had painstakingly closed with all his strength vanished in a heartbeat, expanding to more than twice its former width. Do-hyeon quickly braced himself against the ground, pushing his body upright while assessing the extent of his injuries.
‘Fortunately, nothing critical.’
For taking a direct hit from magic at close range, his physical state was remarkably intact. But the true horror of Fire Wave arrived after the explosion had ended.
The scattered sparks did not fade in the air. They lingered in the atmosphere as embers, wildly driving up the temperature of the entire area.
“Gasp—”
His breath caught.
Now, without blocking the heat with his Internal Force, merely inhaling would scorch his bronchial tubes and alveoli to ash.
Jang Ki-han’s arrogance was no bluff. The moment Do-hyeon lost initiative to the flame mage, there was no opening to turn the tide. The rooftop had already been completely dominated by the enemy’s Mana Field. Victory seemed impossible.
‘…I have no choice.’
Cheon Do-hyeon sensed that the moment he had been deliberating had arrived.
It was time to deploy the Absorption Grand Method—True Vacuum.
‘If I use the Absorption Grand Method now…’
This technique was not infallible. Because it violently seized the target’s mana without filtration or refinement, a single misstep could inflict catastrophic internal injuries.
In fact, before the Absorption Grand Method reached the fifth rank, merely deploying the technique itself caused side effects. The damage worsened depending on the degree of mana degradation—
The first time he had absorbed Kim Byeong-ju’s mana, a three-Circle Ignition-stage mage, served as a prime example.
‘It was unbearably painful.’
When he had absorbed the mana specialized in steel, it felt like inhaling molten metal glowing white-hot.
After recently activating the Conception and Governing Vessels and recalibrating his body, absorbing mana at the three-Circle level posed no problem. But Jang Ki-han before him was of the fifth Circle.
He could not predict what would happen if he absorbed all of Jang Ki-han’s mana flooding the area.
‘The absorption alone could leave me incapacitated.’
Yet despite that risk, the reason he was resolving to deploy the Absorption Grand Method was simple:
‘If this situation continues, there’s no chance of winning.’
Unaware of Do-hyeon’s thoughts, Jang Ki-han was completing his next incantation with glacial eyes. The Mana Stone-embedded Staff traced geometric patterns through the air. The scattered flames hanging in the atmosphere condensed into a single point, beginning to form the massive silhouette of a dragon.
Roooooaaarrr—
Mana churned throughout the area. Even at a glance, this technique was of an entirely different magnitude than any magic he had deployed before. The Mana Stone in the armor and the Stone in the Staff blazed with brilliant light once more.
In that instant, Jang Ki-han’s limits were forcibly torn open. He felt spiritual exaltation coursing through him, along with a sense of omnipotence filling his entire body.
“This is the true power of the Abyss Stage.”
The intricate structure of the incantation became intuitively clear. What formulas were missing, what form the mana needed to take—he understood it all on his own, without aid from anyone. Jang Ki-han extended his hand forward, adding the miraculous punctuation to his spell.
And finally, his magic was complete.
Jang Ki-han’s unique technique—
[Hellfire Dragon].
Craaaaaawwww—
Though it was merely a form woven from magic, it opened its jaws toward Cheon Do-hyeon and unleashed a cry. Then, with a single beat of its massive wings, it launched forward at a ferocious speed.
[Hellfire Strike]
Crackle-snap—
The heat radiating from the magic alone incinerated his hair and clothes.
“Come on—bring it!”
Cheon Do-hyeon did not evade. Instead, he thrust both palms forward directly, and against the cataclysm rushing toward him, he wrung out every shred of his Internal Force to deploy his grand technique.
[Absorption Grand Method!!!]
Kraaaaaaaahhh—
The mouth of the fire dragon, which had appeared a dozen times the size of a grown man, began to warp before Do-hyeon’s palms. It was a bizarre sight, as though the laws of physics themselves were collapsing against a colossal black hole.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
Starting from the dragon’s head, through its body, to its tail—
It vanished at the same speed it had come. No—it was being drawn in.
“What—what is this—hck!”
Jang Ki-han stared in disbelief at the sight before him. In the same instant, his connection to the magic he’d woven shattered, and a crushing wave of backlash engulfed him.
He’d forced his realm upward using a Mana Stone. His body wasn’t mature enough to withstand the recoil of a fifth-Circle spell. And so it was Jang Ki-han who buckled first.
Dark red blood poured from his mouth in a torrent.
“Uuuuuung—”
Normally this would have been enough to send him straight to the sidelines, but what kept him barely standing was his Unique Equipment—the armor. Woven into the Aegis were layered protective spells to shield its wielder’s life. Passive enchantments suppressed the formula’s backlash and fed continuous recovery Mana into his shattered Blood Meridians.
Cheon Do-hyeon, by contrast—the one who’d neutralized Jang Ki-han’s killing blow with the Absorption Grand Method—was in far more desperate straits.
Cheon Do-hyeon lost consciousness the moment he neutralized the Hellfire Strike with the Absorption Grand Method.
The instant he’d drawn the Hellfire Dragon into himself whole, an absolute agony swept through every Blood Meridian in his body—as if molten lava had been poured into his veins.
“Kkk—ugh….”
As his consciousness slipped away while the Grand Method was still active, the Art began to devour the surrounding life force like a wild beast slipped from its chains.
“Gooooooo—”
Not only the lingering flames Jang Ki-han had scattered, but every trace of Mana particles naturally suspended in the air—all of it was sucked into Cheon Do-hyeon’s body.
Every blood vessel in his overloaded form swelled grotesquely, threatening to burst at any moment. His skin burned crimson, and black blood streamed from the Seven Orifices—his eyes, nose, mouth, ears.
“Kkhh—ghghgh—”
And so, devouring every trace of Mana in the Rooftop’s vicinity, it transformed the very space itself into a perfect “True Vacuum” of Mana—the result of an Art running wild, indifferent to whether its caster lived or died.
Cheon Do-hyeon stood now at the crossroads between life and death.
His Blood Meridians were shattered; the circulation of his Internal Force faced critical obstruction. And the force he’d swallowed from Jang Ki-han thrashed inside him like it might tear through his Dantian and burst free at any moment.
When Cheon Do-hyeon’s consciousness returned to a body barely able to hold it together,
the onset of pain almost dragged him under again. But he sensed with raw instinct that to lose consciousness a second time would mean true death—so he clamped his teeth down and held on by a thread.
And to anchor his mind, he began to recite an incantation that rose in his thoughts—the Incantation of the Taeheo Hundwan Heart Technique.
Heo-hoe-yak-gok, baek-cheon-gwi-hae, nap-gi-gwi-won, a-sin-wi-heo…
The Heart Technique he’d chanted and trained with as readily as eating, meant to suppress the side effects of the Absorption Grand Method.
Now, only to survive, he cried it out inwardly with the desperation of one coughing blood.
Tu-cheon-hwan-il, tan-cheon-shik-ji, gi-hae-mu-ryang, man-ma-ang-bok…
Reciting it again and again.
Without ceasing, he recited it.
And so, as he gripped the fraying thread of consciousness and murmured the Incantation,
a voice rang out in his mind—whether hallucination or something more, he couldn’t tell.
To empty one’s heart as a deep valley empties itself.
A voice strange yet achingly familiar, expounding the hidden meaning of the Incantation.

‘A hallucination? No. This is the voice of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art…!’
He recognized it then—the voice of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. Had it read his desperate heart?
Until now, the Heavenly Demon Divine Art had never graciously offered enlightenment beyond the knowledge impressed upon his mind. And the Taeheo Hundwan Heart Technique was merely a preparatory step to learning the Heavenly Demon Divine Art itself—a foundational Heart Technique not even recorded in the main text. Yet now the very origin of the formless Art stood forth to explain the true meaning of the technique.
Cheon Do-hyeon focused on the voice echoing in his mind.
To empty one’s heart as a deep valley empties itself—
when you make your chest a valley that shuns nothing,
then a hundred rivers will flow back to the sea.
All waters gather there; the ocean rejects none.
Have you not seen how the sea receives all, however murky?
Such is the Way of nature.
So embrace all forces without rejection.
Let everything become your source.
My body is nothing but hollow void.
Receive all forces; at last become the origin of all things.
Then you will steal from heaven itself and exchange the sun.
You will swallow the sky and consume the earth.
The sea of force is without measure, without limit.
And when you have devoured all that heaven and earth contain,
then ten thousand demons shall prostrate at your feet and gaze up at you in reverence.
When the final Incantation was complete, Cheon Do-hyeon realized the pain that had tortured every fiber of his being had vanished.
Jang Ki-han’s force, which had been thrashing through Cheon Do-hyeon’s Blood Meridians and Dantian, had quieted.
Was it not his own rejection of the force that had created the backlash in the first place?
‘To empty oneself and accept all in wholeness.’

In the moment Cheon Do-hyeon grasped the true essence of the Taeheo Hundwan Heart Technique, the genuine power of the Heart Technique finally unfurled.
The Taeheo Hundwan Heart Technique synchronizes one’s Dantian with the Void itself, allowing it to digest all the world’s energies without discrimination—not merely a Heart Technique, but a divine art.
It was the perfect complement to the Absorption Grand Method, which seized energies with brutal force.
The Mana raging within Cheon Do-hyeon’s body dissolved in an instant, transmuting into Internal Force. As a side effect, the extreme heat that had scorched his flesh erupted outward through the Seven Orifices and pores in a single violent release.
Hisssss—!
White steam exploded from Cheon Do-hyeon’s entire body in a torrential cloud.
Jang Ki-han, watching this, set his expression hard and slowly pushed himself upright.
“What exactly are you?”
Using his Staff as a crutch, he rose fully to his feet. He tried to channel his magic, feeding power into his hands, but the Mana refused to gather. All of it had evaporated from the area.

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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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