Reincarnation of the Cloud Dragon - Chapter 22

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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Chapter 22.
“Shall we continue then, Instructor?”
Yun Cheon’s words carried no mockery or provocation.
They were a respectful invitation from one martial artist to another, spoken with genuine sincerity.
“Kuh… kuhaha!”
Chuk Mu Gwang was delighted.
How many times had he yearned for this while teaching disciples beneath his station?
For someone to come at him with true conviction.
Yet what he truly desired was not a match against a junior student, but a duel with a worthy opponent.
‘…I’ve been desperate to escape Zamadong. And now I’ve found an amusing fellow!’
Sinews coiled like serpents across the hand gripping his wooden sword.
“Hehehehe… so this instructor took a hit. You’ve freed the iron rings from your legs—should you not also remove those on your wrists?”
“…I lack the confidence to receive your blade barehanded, Instructor.”
Iron rings still encircled Yun Cheon’s wrists.
While reducing weight mattered, receiving a sword strike from a master of the highest caliber without inner energy was impossible.
“Fair enough… very well. Prepare yourself. From now on, this will be different from before.”
With his cry, the technique of Crimson Blood Sword erupted from the tip of Chuk Mu Gwang’s wooden blade.
Shwiiing—!
The sword strike tore through the air with a piercing wail, rushing toward Yun Cheon.
Though devoid of inner energy, it was the primary weapon in the hands of a master of the highest caliber.
It was a world apart from the fists and kicks Chuk Mu Gwang had wielded until now.
But that was not all that had changed.
‘Indeed… fast. But…!’
Yun Cheon too had finally been freed from the constraints he had imposed upon himself.
With the iron rings cast aside, his movement technique no longer clung solely to the slow footwork.
‘Slowness and swiftness are one pair!’
Clang!
The sound of the iron ring on his remaining arm meeting Chuk Mu Gwang’s blade.
As the full-force wooden sword and iron ring collided, sparks flew.
True to his epithet of Crimson Blood Sword, Chuk Mu Gwang’s eyes blazed with bloodlust, and his strikes rained down like a madman’s assault.
Clang clang—! Clang clang clang—!
Once more, the initiative of the exchange seemed to shift to Chuk Mu Gwang.
“That’s the true Crimson Blood Sword!”
“I… I can’t even follow it with my eyes!”
With each strike received, the impact traveled beyond the iron ring straight through to the bone!
Yun Cheon’s wrists had lost all sensation, struck with a weight that was utterly devastating.
‘Ugh… wood striking steel, yet such crushing force!’
Dozens of rapid exchanges rained down in an instant.
Yet Yun Cheon did not yield easily.
The two figures wove chaotic patterns across the Combat Platform.
The entire Training Ground fell into complete silence, absorbed in the breathtaking clash.
The disciples forgot even to blink, their eyes fixed in a daze upon the two combatants’ collision.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The relentless percussion of iron rings and wooden staff striking together screamed as if to shatter eardrums.
Amid that fierce exchange, my brow furrowed for the first time, ever so slightly.
‘This sensation…!’
The quality of the impact traveling through my wrists was changing.
The iron rings had held firm at first.
But now they were reaching their limit.
The rings shrieked, exhaling an unpleasant vibration.
A metallic groan—
After countless collisions, the paradox: the steel rings reached their breaking point before the wooden staff.
‘To achieve this without even channeling inner force—truly, a master of the pinnacle.’
That realm where a weapon, an extension of the body, becomes as natural as one’s own limbs!
By contrast, the iron rings I wore were merely for training.
Simply withstanding the instructor’s staff strikes had already exhausted their purpose.
‘I cannot receive that staff with bare hands. Is this where it ends…!’
Over the past year, I had lived practically bound to these rings to concentrate on tempering my body, yet my true nature was that of a blade wielder.
‘…But if I draw a sword or saber now, it will only invite suspicion.’
The secret techniques and instruction provided by Zamadong were all the martial arts I had revealed thus far.
It was the Chief Instructor Gal Mu Heun who first sensed this change.
‘…Hmm, what a shame. Does the difference in primary weapons decide the match?’
Though the staff was fashioned from fragile wood, it was the blade—the lifelong companion of the martial master Chuk Mu Gwang.
Meanwhile, the iron rings, despite being forged steel, were merely a blacksmith’s hastily assembled goods.
That difference had decided the outcome.
‘But something troubles me. If that is so, then Yun Cheon does not seem to be a fist fighter…’
The iron rings themselves seemed oddly out of place as a weapon.
Yun Cheon’s footwork was so exceptional, and the leg techniques that accompanied it so perfectly timed, that doubt had not arisen until now.
‘Could it be… that he has withstood Chuk Mu Gwang’s Radiant Blade Technique using only rings and leg techniques all this while?!’
What manner of impossible talent was this!
Truly a prodigy—a gift bestowed by heaven itself.
A talent unmatched beneath the sky!
As Gal Mu Heun marveled, Yu Ha too sensed the change.
‘Yun Cheon… his offense and defense have grown oddly passive! Has he sustained an injury somewhere?’
Yet Yun Cheon’s movements themselves were flawless.
‘If not his body…’
Only then did it register in Yu Ha’s eyes—Yun Cheon actively employing his footwork while avoiding direct collision with the staff as much as possible.
‘Could it be the rings!’
Not long after Gal Mu Heun and Yu Ha sensed the change, Chuk Mu Gwang himself finally spotted Yun Cheon’s opening.
‘A gap!’
As Yun Cheon attempted to retreat from the exchange, Chuk Mu Gwang’s iron ring whistled through the air, targeting his throat.
An inescapable strike!
With no choice, Yun Cheon raised his arm and deflected the blow with his iron ring.
Clang—!
Only then did Kyoto and a few other keen-eared observers sense something amiss.
‘The sound is different!’
In the next instant, Yun Cheon’s iron ring visibly loosened, sliding down his forearm.
‘Damn it, the ring is slipping off!’
Seizing the opportunity, Chuk Mu Gwang surged forward with his ultimate technique—Crimson Blood Slash!
‘Got him!’
At that moment, Yun Cheon threw himself backward, launching his body into the air.
Both hands and feet suspended in mid-air, with nowhere to escape—a desperate crisis!
Yun Cheon’s form seemed to be swallowed by Chuk Mu Gwang’s ultimate technique.
‘No escape! Then…!’
I rotated my body backward in a complete spin.
Then, as if doing a handstand, I pushed off the ground with both hands and launched myself upward.
‘Hmph, this ends it. From such an unstable position, he cannot possibly block my strike.’
Even the one executing the technique thought the same.
Whoosh—!
Suddenly, something shot forth from near Yun Cheon’s wrist.
Chuk Mu Gwang instinctively slowed his blade and ducked his head to evade the projectile.
Boom—!
“What… what was that?”
“What did that bastard throw?”
“A hidden blade?”
Embedded in the spectator wall was none other than
the iron ring that had been dangling from Yun Cheon’s wrist.
“…It’s not a hidden blade! It’s the iron ring!”
Ya Jin, the senior instructor, shot to his feet, trembling with shock.
“He… he manifested the Soul-Severing Dagger using an iron ring!”
Yun Cheon’s deliberate handstand during his evasion was an improvisation—using the loosened iron ring as a projectile weapon!
Drip—.
At that moment, a single drop of crimson fell onto the Combat Platform floor.
A drop that had traced down Chuk Mu Gwang’s cheek.
The entire Training Ground held its breath.
“The instructor’s cheek is bleeding…!”
“A disciple… wounded a peak-level master instructor?”
Yu Ha trembled more than anyone else.
‘…A monster and more! A prodigy! There are no other words to describe this…!’
What Yun Cheon had displayed was no mere ambush.
A move bordering on the miraculous—reversing a desperate, life-or-death crisis!
That single technique wove together not only exquisite footwork, but the very essence of Ya Jin’s secret blade arts.
‘If what he’d thrown wasn’t a bulky iron sphere but a razor-sharp blade instead….’
Even Gal Mu Heun, the master instructor, couldn’t hide the covetous gleam in his eyes.
‘A disciple picked up by that boy? He’s brought back a treasure from the Central Plains. I always thought his methods were inefficient….’
The observer’s section had already descended into chaos.
“I… I’ll take that one! With just him, I won’t need any of the others!”
“Now hold on! Who said you could decide? We of the Black Shadow Squad spotted him first!”
“Gal! The observers must maintain their dignity!”
Unable to bear it any longer, Gal Mu Heun personally moved to restrain them.
“The match is not yet finished. Do not cause a disturbance. That boy is still a disciple of Zamadong.”
As the crowd erupted in fervor, Chuk Mu Gwang quietly wiped away the blood trickling down his cheek.
The promised duration of the match was drawing to a close.
“…You are the first disciple to ever wound an instructor. Yet I am not ashamed. Your skill is simply that exceptional.”
Chuk Mu Gwang spoke with genuine recognition of Yun Cheon.
Yet their conditions were starkly different.
While blood streaked Chuk Mu Gwang’s cheek, my clothes hung in tatters, and my body was covered in countless small wounds.
“…Thank you.”
As the exchange prolonged, compared to Chuk Mu Gwang—whose essence, energy, and spirit had achieved perfect unity—I lacked everything.
Even without wielding inner force, the body of a peak martial master was itself a weapon refined and perfected over decades.
Building my body rapidly over a single year, still growing as a boy, was something I could not sustain.
Eventually my limits revealed themselves, and defeat loomed ever closer.
Yet Chuk Mu Gwang genuinely acknowledged me.
“You are no mere disciple, but a true martial artist. I look forward to seeing you after you’ve fully matured.”
Drenched in sweat and blood, I nodded with eyes ablaze.
Chuk Mu Gwang drew forth the grandest technique of the Blood Vein Blade Method to seal his victory.
‘Blood Reigns Over Heaven.’
A colossal blade momentum crashed down, threatening to engulf me entirely.
I met it head-on.
‘I have no sword now. This is my only option!’
Instead of evading, I unified the Heaven-Earth Cavity Technique I’d been wielding, the Absolute Void Steps, and the essence of the Blood Wind Sect.
‘With the Heaven-Earth Cavity Technique, I can channel the natural qi of the world, even without inner force!’
Then, squeezing out my last reserves of strength, I spun my body.
A whirlwind-like kick—Ma Chung’s Blood Wind Sect reinterpreted in my own way, its power maximized.
It was the creation of a new martial art.
“That is!”
Seeing this, Ma Chung and Kyoto froze as if struck by lightning.
‘It resembles the Blood Wind Sect, but it’s not the Blood Wind Sect! What martial art is this?!’
The tip of my spinning foot met Chuk Mu Gwang’s neck directly head-on.
A tremendous impact transmitted through my heel!
Yet in that final moment, Yun Cheon forced his other leg forward with sheer willpower.
Crash—!
The accumulated impact from colliding with the iron sphere had finally taken its toll; the center of Kyoto’s wooden staff shattered.
“Kyoto’s… Kyoto’s staff broke?”
“Could it be from Yun Cheon’s last strike?”
The match was decided.
“…That was quite the spectacle.”
With Chuk Mu Gwang’s words, my body was hurled beyond the Combat Platform’s edge.
Yet Chuk Mu Gwang remained standing upon the platform.
“Huff… huff….”
Breathing heavily, I pushed myself up from beyond the platform’s boundary and stared forward.
By any measure, my defeat was undeniable.
But the disciples did not cry out Chuk Mu Gwang’s victory.
Instead, they showered me with cheers for the incredible performance I’d displayed against a master of the highest caliber.
“Aah… that was magnificent, Yun Cheon!”
“What a splendid match! Against the instructor, no less!”
In that very moment.
“…Everyone, silence!”
Chuk Mu Gwang raised his hand quietly.
“Disciple Yun Cheon, what was that leg technique at the end? It seems different from Ma Chung’s Blood Wind Sect style….”
“It is called the Whirlwind Kick.”
“A fitting name.”
Chuk Mu Gwang nodded.
Then he uttered words that shocked everyone present.
“I have lost.”
With those words, the black iron medallion hanging upon his chest—
Its surface erupted with cracks that spread like a spider’s web.
And in the next instant.
Clang—!
With a clear, ringing fracture, the black iron medallion shattered and fell to the Combat Platform’s floor.
I staggered to my feet and picked up a fragment of the fallen black iron medallion.
With blood staining the corner of my mouth, I smiled faintly and spoke.
“The sparring with you, instructor… it was a precious lesson. I gratefully accept the black iron medallion.”
Chuk Mu Gwang stared blankly, his gaze alternating between his chest and me.
Then a wild, uncontainable laughter erupted across his face.
“Kuh… kuhaha! Yes, the black iron medallion is yours! You are more than worthy of receiving it!”
All those present in the Training Ground witnessed the birth of a new legend.
“The… the black iron medallion!”
“What happens in a case like this?”
The disciples wavered uncertainly, their eyes darting between me, who had fallen beyond the platform’s edge, and the shattered black iron medallion.
It was at that precise moment.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Gal Mu Heun, master of the Demonic Way Hall, who had been observing everything motionlessly from the Elevated Platform, slowly began to applaud as he revealed himself.

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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