Return of the God of War - Chapter 10

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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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Chapter 10: The Strongest Opponent and Yet
Muk Yeojin opened and closed his fists, observing his adult body anew.
‘Is this really just an illusion?’
It wasn’t merely that his limbs had grown longer.
The strength and elasticity emanating from trained muscle, the Five Senses honed to razor sharpness.
And above all, the vast cultivation strength threatening to overflow at any moment.
‘It truly feels like I’ve come home.’
If someone were freed after being locked in the tiniest of prisons, perhaps they would feel this way.
A deep smile bloomed across Muk Yeojin’s face.
‘With this…’
Snap!
Before long, Muk Yeojin grasped the Broad Sword he’d favored before his regression, pointing its blade at Cheon Hwarin.
“Things are going to be different now, sister.”
Cheon Hwarin’s eyes widened for a moment, then she let out a soft laugh.
“You’ve been thinking hard, have you? Yet you forget—you’ve never beaten me. Not once.”
Even as she spoke, she surged forward.
How could she move with such speed while carrying that enormous Great Stone Axe?
In an instant she was upon him, and a luminous lance of force crystallized along her axe’s edge.
The energy extended nearly half a zhang in length.
Whoosh!
The Great Stone Axe, wreathed in Axe Force, swept down in a crescent arc.
But this time was different from before.
Muk Yeojin had no reason to flee headlong anymore.
Crash!!!
A sound that shook the very earth thundered out.
Suddenly, a crimson force erupted from Muk Yeojin’s blade, meeting her Great Stone Axe head-on.
“Unless you’re the real Cheon Hwarin, I won’t lose to an illusion!”
“A man who only talks big is no charm at all, younger brother!”
Crash! Crash! Crash!!
The two warriors became entwined and separated at a speed the eye could scarcely follow.
Each time the Great Stone Axe met the blade, brilliant sparks scattered in all directions.
In mere moments, they had already exchanged more than thirty blows.
A perfect balance of power—neither side yielding.
When Axe Force and Blade Force repelled each other with equal resistance, sending both warriors stumbling back, that was when she acted.
Cheon Hwarin took a step back, drew in a deep breath, and raised her upper body, gripping the Great Stone Axe tight.
Whirrrrr!
The Xuetian Dara Energy coiled in her dantian began to unravel in torrents.
The Great Stone Axe, now wreathed in a Axe Force of brilliant crimson like the glow of sunset, descended vertically to cleave the very space in two.
By nature, an axe as a weapon reveals its full power in the downward strike.
And this was Cheon Hwarin’s Great Stone Axe, weighing a full hundred jin.
Add to that her Xuetian Dara Energy at its peak?
A simple, seemingly crude downward motion became in itself a supreme technique, became in itself a secret art.
Whoooooooosh!
The very wind pressure made skin tremble.
Even the most ignorant would instinctively understand in that instant.
One must not dare to meet it—one must escape at all costs.
A perfect display of the apex of her power.
But.
Muk Yeojin had no intention of retreating.
“Huh!”
He drew in his breath, locked his lower dantian firm, and drove his inner force through his blade in a violent surge.
Dazzling Blade Qi formed along the crude Broad Sword in his grip, yet unable to withstand the overwhelming force bearing down, thin strands were drawn out from the blade’s tip—sword threads, thousands upon thousands of them, weaving into a single form, becoming at last Blade Force.
The brilliant black-red force erupting from Muk Yeojin’s blade met Cheon Hwarin’s Great Stone Axe head-on as it fell like a tremendous rockslide.
Boom!!!
Wheeeee!
A sound loud enough to split the eardrums accompanied a vast cloud of dust that bloomed before them.
And then.
Whissssh!
As the dust cleared in the sharp wind, the result revealed itself—far removed from expectation.
“Ugh!”
Muk Yeojin staggered backward five paces, a groan escaping his lips.
But that was all.
His weapon hadn’t shattered, and his skull hadn’t split in two.
He’d blocked Cheon Hwarin’s strike.
A faint smile played at the corner of Muk Yeojin’s mouth.
‘Just as I thought—she can’t manifest her true strength in this place.’
To deflect Cheon Hwarin’s Bugang upward—
In those days, it would have been impossible even to attempt.
Receiving her axe as it fell vertically from above, there should have been only two possible outcomes.
Either cleaved or crushed.
Yet Muk Yeojin had stopped it.
This was possible only because the Illusion-wrought version of Cheon Hwarin was far weaker than she had initially anticipated.
‘Of course, I can’t channel my full strength either, not the way I had before the return.’
In terms of percentage, Cheon Hwarin could only muster perhaps thirty percent of her peak power.
But he could draw out fifty percent of his capability.
In other words—
“This might actually be winnable, Sister!”
“……Arrogant wretch!”
Crash! Bang! Boom!
The clash of two warriors resumed.
Sword and axe collided.
At the first exchange, the earth inverted; at the second, the heavens cried out.
As strength met strength, the shattered fragments of Cultivation Energy scattered through the air like constellations.
Whoosh!
Slash!
Cheon Hwarin’s Great Stone Axe descended toward his neck while Muk Yeojin’s blade thrust toward her heart.
The two of them.
Neither yielded an inch.
An endless dance of death between two warriors, where a single mistake—one move, one fraction, one instant—would spell their doom.
“Is this truly all you have, Youngest?”
“Don’t talk nonsense! I’m just getting started!”
Boom!
As Muk Yeojin planted a powerful Jingak, stone fragments around him lifted half a chi into the air.
The Earth Energy he drew in through his lower body via the Jingak, he transmitted upward through his torso in its entirety.
Then, slashing from upper-left to lower-right in one fluid motion, four strands of sword energy rushed toward Cheon Hwarin.
Muk Yeojin’s secret swordsmanship—the Sabyeon Manchcho.
Blade energy split in four directions, then multiplied into twenty strands in mid-air, each one converging on the opponent’s vital points—a devastating technique of the highest order.
But Cheon Hwarin was no easy match.
She stepped back half a pace, then wielded her hundred-jin Great Stone Axe in one hand, sweeping it in a zigzag pattern that summoned a fierce wind.
Screeeech!
Where the axe wind and blade energy met in mid-air, they struggled against each other before dissolving skyward.
“Heartless brute! To unleash such cruel blades upon your sister?”
“Who was it trying to split my skull first? Don’t talk such shameless nonsense!”
The two of them maintained their banter while struggling for breath.
How many rounds had this duel gone on?
‘At this rate, it will never end.’
Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.
And that was precisely the situation they found themselves in.
Muk Yeojin and his sister knew each other far too well—so well that there seemed to be no end to this contest in sight.
Muk Yeojin had to make a decision.
He couldn’t waste any more time in a place like this.
If he squandered these precious moments and lost someone dear because of it later, he would be consumed entirely by the monster called regret.
‘In this life, I will not regret again.’
In that instant.
Muk Yeojin’s eyes and aura grew cold and settled.
Breath.
He extended his right foot half a step forward and assumed a middle stance.
Cheon Hwarin read the shift in his momentum.
“Will you truly attempt it, Youngest?”
“I must, even if I cannot. You wouldn’t have sent me back otherwise.”
Cheon Hwarin smiled faintly.
“Quite right.”
Clack.
She positioned the Great Stone Axe behind her back.
At first glance it appeared to be a riddled stance, her entire front exposed and undefended,
but it was the opening posture of Ilbupacheon, one of the supreme techniques in her unique martial art.
Cheon Hwarin, too, intended to pour everything she had into this single move.
A whisper of wind.
Their gazes collided in the empty air.
An invisible contest of thrust and parry unfolded with fierce intensity—each searching for even the smallest opening, each concealing even the tiniest flaw.
As if time itself had stopped.
How long did they remain like this?
In the moment a cool breeze brushed the tip of her nose.
Whoosh!
Both figures shot forward like beams of light.
Boom!
In Cheon Hwarin’s swift advance, Muk Yeojin’s form remained perfectly visible to her.
‘I’m sorry, but victory is mine, Muk Yeojin.’
Already having divined his next movement, she responded half a beat faster than he could strike.
In a duel between warriors who had reached the pinnacle of their art, such a hair’s-breadth margin determined life and death.
Certain she had seized victory, she raised the Great Stone Axe to bisect him—at that very moment.
In that fraction of time.
She felt her vision plunge into darkness.
Or rather, a black creature filled her entire field of sight.
‘A black… dragon…?’
It was a dragon.
‘What in the world…’
A dull thud.
Her question went unfinished.
After the great ebony dragon vanished,
a sword—a single blade—pierced through her heart and filled her vision.
She stared numbly between the sword and Muk Yeojin’s face, then burst into laughter.
“You lied to me, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean, all of a sudden?”
“You claimed that the strongest being you could imagine was me. But if you had truly believed that in the depths of your heart, then even in this Inner World of yours, you could never have defeated me.”
Muk Yeojin nodded as if he understood.
‘So that’s what you meant.’
In other words, this trial could not be passed by anyone who had set limits upon themselves.
In Muk Iyeon’s case, her father—the Immortal Sovereign Muk Uhmyeong—had appeared as an illusion.
As long as her unconscious mind perceived her father as an opponent she could never overcome, Muk Iyeon could never pass the trial.
Muk Yeojin withdrew the sword from his heart and spoke.
Naturally, no blood flowed from the wound.
“I did not lie, sister. Rather… you were the strongest opponent and simultaneously the martial artist I must surpass. That is what you meant to me. If I could not overcome you, then what would be the point of my return to the past?”
For a moment Cheon Hwarin’s eyes widened in surprise, then she smiled quietly.
“Arrogant creature… yet magnificent.”
Swirls of smoke.
Her form dissolved into black mist and vanished before his eyes, just as she had first appeared.
When he opened his eyes again, Muk Yeojin found himself standing before the ancient iron gate once more.
Returned to his body as a twelve-year-old child.
* * *
Muk Yeojin recalled that final sword strike he had unleashed against Cheon Hwarin.
It had emerged one night, a month before he entered Biyeon Cave.
A sword into which he had poured a sudden Heart Understanding—one that had come to him while painting a portrait of his mother, Namgung Ryeongryeong.
Of course, it was still an incomplete technique.
He had no certainty whether he could recreate that sword stroke if asked to do so again.
And one thing was clear.
‘With my current Realm, I cannot even attempt it.’
He had only been able to manifest it because the Illusion Formation allowed him to return to the strength he possessed before his regression.
‘At minimum, I must reach that Realm once more if I’m to even hope to refine it.’
In other words, creating a new sword technique would not be possible for at least several years to come.
Still, the mere fact that he had witnessed firsthand the possibility of the unknown with his own eyes was achievement enough to be satisfied with.
Moreover, Muk Yeojin was convinced by it. The moment he completed that sword.
‘I will cross another barrier.’
It was an illusion, but it was a sword that had brought down none other than Cheon Hwarin herself.
Muk Yeojin murmured suddenly.
Toward the real Cheon Hwarin, who somewhere at this very moment was swinging the Great Stone Axe with fierce determination.
“Well, I suppose I owe an apology for piercing your heart just now. I’ll offer you one when we meet again.”

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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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