Obtaining Heavenly Demon Martial Arts in the Magic Era - Chapter 41

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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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41
The failure of the Molten Iron Operation cut deep.
Though to be precise, it wasn’t a complete failure.
Half the forces that had marched toward Seoul Station remained intact.
Jang Jae Young stood in the center of his cold office, stroking his chin as he slowly turned over everything that had happened.
Jang Ki Han, the legitimate heir of the Cheolhyeol Jang Family, was dead. Kim Ki Beom, his most trusted subordinate and sharpest blade, had lost his life as well. Before the shabby name of “Murim,” the core forces of the Cheolhyeol Jang Family were slipping away one by one, like grains of sand.
‘At this point, Ki Han is… a shame.’
The only reason Jang Ki Han, despite being second son, had been recognized as legitimate heir was because he resembled the family patriarch Jang Jae Young most closely in temperament. But now, in this moment, Jang Jae Young concluded that crushing Cheon Do Hyeon and the Murim forces entrenched behind him would require an entirely different approach.
Cold light flickered through his gaze as his fingers traced his jaw.
He had made a decision: to call back his eldest son, Jang Ki Jun—the one he had considered a cast-off all these years.
“That bastard has a vulgar and contemptible side far beneath the dignity of the Cheolhyeol Jang Family. But… sometimes you need a maggot to clean out maggots.”
Jang Ki Jun, who had once caused Jang Jae Young great disappointment over some past incident and been completely edged out from the line of succession, was being reconsidered. This time, Jang Jae Young intended to test that discarded chess piece once more.
“Prove yourself. My son.”
#
Thump—thump—thump—thump!
A heavy bass thundered through the luxurious Sky Lounge, filling it completely.
Premium Champagne flowed like water, and people intoxicated on drink and pills writhed together in abandon. Among them, unmistakably striking, was a half-naked man surrounded by women in daring attire—Jang Ki Jun.
Beep-beep-beep!
Just then, Jang Ki Jun’s phone rang amid the revelry.
The moment he checked the caller, his languid eyes snapped alert.
The call was brief.
But once Jang Ki Jun hung up, he rose from his seat.
“Fuck, everyone stop.”
At that single word from Jang Ki Jun, the music cut dead. The party hall fell into a suffocating silence, as if someone had dumped ice water over the crowd.
“Get out. All of you. If you’re not out of my sight in ten seconds, I’m killing every last one of you motherfuckers. Ten…”
Everyone at the party knew Jang Ki Jun’s temperament.
He was not a man who joked about such things.
Jang Ki Jun was a madman capable of killing people on a whim.
Despite clearly being intoxicated on drink and pills, survival instinct must have seized them.
People didn’t even scream properly—they scrambled, abandoning shoes and dignity, fleeing the lounge in a panicked rush.
The vast lounge emptied in seconds.
Alone now, Jang Ki Jun grabbed a bottle of Whiskey from the table and drank straight from it.
Gulp-gulp-gulp.
Liquor spilled from the corners of his mouth and ran down his chin.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then swept back his hanging fringe with both palms.
Revealed now were his narrow, serpentine eyes.
They gleamed with an unsettling sheen.
“Finally… this fucked-up exile is over. It’s my turn.”
#
Meanwhile, in the underground headquarters of Gaebang.
“Kgh…! Please, open your eyes, Lord! Please, just open them!”
Before the temporary infirmary in the Underground Bunker, burly Gaebang members knelt on the floor, wiping tears from their eyes.
Lying on the bed at the center of their gaze was a corpse-like figure wrapped from head to toe in white bandages, utterly motionless.
Yet surprisingly, the bandages around the mouth trembled.
“…You damned fools. Wrap someone up like this and you’ll kill even a living man.”
A strained voice leaked through the gaps in the bandages. It was Seon Young Hoon, the Lord of Gaebang.
His lips quivered with anger.
“And you’ve wrapped the bandages all the way around my eyes… How in hell am I supposed to open them…?”
A Mugwort Poultice Pack—a specialty of Murim renowned for treating external wounds. Though the Gaebang members had modest means, they had gladly emptied their coffers for their Lord’s recovery. But their devotion had gone too far.
One by one, two by two, three by three… as dozens of Gaebang members came to pay their respects, each reapplied more mugwort…
And so Seon Young Hoon had become a mummy, covered from head to toe in mugwort poultice.
Because of it, the entire room was thick with the pungent smell of mugwort. Relief at his survival and stifled laughter mixed together, and for the first time in ages, warmth returned to the gloomy Underground Bunker of Gaebang.
At the same time, in the Temporary Training Ground.
“Even from outside, you can smell the mugwort…”
Breathing in the pervasive mugwort scent, Cheon Do Hyeon sat perched on a hastily assembled chair, a notebook spread open before him as he scribbled something.
In front of him, Lee Sang Won and Lee Ye Rim were engaged in fierce sparring.
“Hah!”
With a sharp cry, Lee Ye Rim’s keen kick flew forward. But Lee Sang Won had anticipated it, slipping the strike smoothly and launching a counterattack. Lee Ye Rim, losing her balance under the pressure, stumbled back and gasped for breath, wiping the sweat from her brow.
She approached Cheon Do Hyeon’s side with a heavy thud.
Then, a sharp wave of sweat-soaked air washed over him.
It’s fine. I’ve already adapted completely to the smell during all this time spent with them…
“Hey. If you’re going to make it obvious by plugging your nose, why not just tell them straight up to go wash?”
Hmph.
Only then did Cheon Do Hyeon realize he’d been unconsciously pinching his nose shut.
‘I still have a long way to go.’
Watching Lee Ye Rim frown with obvious displeasure, Cheon Do Hyeon silently shifted his gaze back to his notebook. Lee Ye Rim grumbled while sneaking a peek at the notebook he examined every day.
“What in the world do you keep scribbling in that notebook every single day?”
Most martial artists would guard their secret techniques and insights jealously, but Cheon Do Hyeon chuckled and showed her the notebook’s contents without reservation. The pages were filled with hastily scrawled sentences like these:
[- Even a mage dies if their head gets crushed.]
[- You need the courage to close the distance first.]
[- The fatal opening is always beneath the opponent’s jaw.]
They were crude but solid teachings left behind by his grandfather, Cheon Woo Hyeok. And below them:
[- Understand the very principle of force itself.]
There was also advice left by Gwak Cheol.
“Oh! That’s what Gwak Cheol is always saying.”
Lee Ye Rim caught on to it with sharp insight.
The notebook contained realizations Cheon Do Hyeon had gleaned through bitter experience in real combat, recorded as raw, unpolished sentences. But one sentence in particular stood out to Ye Rim—distinctly alien and chilling.
[- Show neither mercy to your enemy nor expect it.]
After reading that final sentence, Ye Rim clicked her tongue and smacked Cheon Do Hyeon sharply on the back.
“You don’t look it, but you’re sitting here wallowing in melodrama. That’s not something you write down in a notebook—that’s something you carve into your body. Enough talk. Come on out. Let’s spar.”
“Fine.”
Cheon Do Hyeon smiled faintly, closed the notebook, and stepped into the center of the Temporary Training Ground.
They stood facing each other.
“Spar without using Inner Force?”
“Deal.”
Since Cheon Do Hyeon had reached the Chochul Stage, whenever Lee Ye Rim sparred with him, she proposed fighting with her Inner Force limited, relying only on pure techniques and instinct.
It happened often.
Snap—
They began their match with no signal between them.
Crack! Whoosh!
Their attacks crossed relentlessly. Beads of sweat flew into the air, and the cluttered maze of his thoughts cleared away clean.
The desperate struggle with Jang Ki Han, the blood-soaked battle with Kim Ki Beom…. Every moment of life and death he’d endured so far replayed in his mind like a panorama. Cheon Do Hyeon gradually raised the intensity.
Cheon Do Hyeon’s attacks were direct, yet threaded through with unpredictable, unconventional moves that were formidable. Lee Ye Rim, by contrast, leveraged her characteristic flexibility and fighting spirit, constantly pressing her opponent with movements impossible to anticipate.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack—
Because of this, they deliberately gave each other distance and engaged in endless exchanges of offense and defense.
Then Cheon Do Hyeon’s extended fist multiplied and poured down on Lee Ye Rim—an attack infused with the subtlety of the Cheonma Hwanyeong Bo. Lee Ye Rim answered back with Baekgyeol Yeonhwan, the third technique of Baekgyeol Sinquan.
Crack, thud-thud-thud, thud.
Their fists collided directly. Just as both were expanding their striking range to claim the “surface,” a sudden flash of insight struck Cheon Do Hyeon’s mind like lightning.
‘Why did I always think the range of firepower projection had to be wide?’
Kim Ki Beom, whom he’d fought recently. That bastard’s unique technique worked by concentrating force into a single point.
What if he applied the Cheonma Gunrim Bo—which crushed empty space itself—in that same manner?
Bzzzzt…
He glimpsed the breakthrough beyond the wall that had kept the Cheonma Gunrim Bo at Six-Star level.
It wasn’t merely the pressure of striking downward from above. It was the application of concentrating the gravitational pressure that crushed the entire space into a single sharp “point,” then detonating it.
“Huh…?”
The instant an anomalous gravitational field formed at Cheon Do Hyeon’s feet, Ye Rim felt her breath catch in paralyzing terror. An inescapable, instinctively death-sensing dread—a horrific pressure crashed down on her crown.
Boom—!
But just before impact, Cheon Do Hyeon roughly dispersed his energy and withdrew his foot. The floor of the Temporary Training Ground caved in with a circular depression. It had been close to disaster. Ye Rim, collapsed on the ground, looked up at him with a dazed expression. Cheon Do Hyeon wiped the sweat from his brow, grinned at her, and extended his hand.
“Thanks. I got the feel for it because of you.”
Ye Rim stared blankly at the rough hand offered to her.
When she’d first encountered him in that alley, she’d thought he was an insufferable brat. But after crossing countless thresholds of death and fighting alongside him, bleeding together, her view had transformed entirely.
At some point, she had come to recognize this prodigy as a comrade—a fellow soldier.
Ye Rim brushed his hand away sharply and stood up on her own, dusting herself off. With her face flushed in embarrassment, she turned away abruptly and spoke curtly.
“Since we sparred without Inner Force, I won. You know that, right? Let’s go get some food.”
At Ye Rim’s halting speech pattern—awkward in its expression—Lee Sang Won stifled a laugh with a cough from behind.
Cheon Do Hyeon merely shrugged and chuckled softly, then followed her.
The Underground Bunker, where the brutal storm had passed.
Over the figures of the three of them, where the scent of sweat and people mingled, the warmth of everyday life—long absent—gently settled down like a benediction.

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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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