Return of the God of War - Chapter 25

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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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Episode 25. Spring arrives without warning, and.
The following day, early morning.
Before the darkness of night had fully lifted, Muk Yeojin stepped out of his quarters.
And two women watched his retreating figure from beyond the window.
“Where on earth is the young master rushing off to at this hour?”
Pyo Yeon asked as she steeped fragrant Tianchi Tea, and Namgung Ryeongryeong replied.
“Chunghon Hall.”
“Chunghon Hall? What business does he have there?”
“He says destiny draws him.”
“……What?”
Pyo Yeon stared blankly, and Namgung Ryeongryeong gave a slight shrug.
The two of them watched as Muk Yeojin’s figure dwindled to a black speck in the distance, then both let out a soft laugh.
“When he was younger, his thoughts were so transparent I could read them like daylight, but these days I haven’t the faintest idea what goes on in his head.”
“Nor do I.”
“He was so endearing just a few years ago. I do find myself missing that.”
Namgung Ryeongryeong regarded Pyo Yeon with a knowing look.
“……Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It seems to me you’ve come of age to bear children yourself.”
“My lady, really…… how could I at this stage of life…….”
“Flowers that bloom late are beautiful in their own way. And there happens to be someone suitable nearby.”
“Someone suitable, you say…….”
In that instant, Pyo Yeon realized Namgung Ryeongryeong meant Gam Mo, and she waved her hand dismissively.
“Oh, that spindly sort of man is not at all to my taste. A man ought to have a proper build, and besides, his every word is so carefully measured—if he at least had some humor to him, I might overlook it.”
Pyo Yeon grumbled while waving her hand, but Namgung Ryeongryeong had already caught the subtle shift in her.
The faint blush creeping across Pyo Yeon’s cheeks as she prattled on endlessly about Gam Mo’s faults.
Namgung Ryeongryeong, a faint smile at the corners of her mouth, turned her gaze back to the window.
The plum tree that occupied one corner of the quarters.
At the tip of its branches, a single small bud had emerged with a soft pop.
‘Spring must be nearly upon us.’
Spring always comes without warning.
And fate, it seems, is much the same.
* * *
Meanwhile, Muk Yeojin hurried toward Chunghon Hall.
His form moved swiftly through the dawn air.
Though he knew the treasure would still be there, a restlessness blooming in his chest had driven him to deploy his Lightweight Skill.
The hidden treasure of Chunghon Hall.
It was what they called the Yeonhwa Wheel, a bracelet—a mystical ornament.
But no ordinary bracelet.
The lotus symbolizes purification and healing.
True to its name, the Yeonhwa Wheel was a wondrous bracelet that purified the wearer’s Turbid Qi.
The elements that define Turbid Qi are manifold, but the most representative is poison.
All manner of murky Qi that exists in this world, concentrated into its essence—that is poison. What more need be said?
In other words.
‘Simply by wearing the Yeonhwa Wheel, one is liberated from the danger of poisoning.’
This could be said to be equivalent to setting foot upon the realm of Ten Thousand Poisons Cannot Invade, however indirectly.
Of course, compared to true Ten Thousand Poisons Cannot Invade, it falls somewhat short.
Yet to gain such ability merely by wearing it, the Yeonhwa Wheel’s status as a treasure was beyond question.
His feet carried him without rest, and soon the destination came into view.
Chunghon Hall.
It was a sacred shrine built to honor the martial masters who elevated the prestige of Sadocheon.
To explain how he came by the information that the Yeonhwa Wheel lay within Chunghon Hall, one must go back to before the Return.
The one who discovered the Yeonhwa Wheel was not an insider of Sadocheon.
It was Cheonoe Sintu.
Along with Yak-seon, one of the eccentric talents called the Five Eccentric Talents of Heaven, the greatest thief under heaven.
He too was a martial master who had dealt considerable damage to the Woneum Cult during the war.
Behind that lay the treasures he had pilfered from various places across Jungwon, and the Yeonhwa Wheel was among them.
It was during those days when they clashed in bloody conflict with the Woneum Cult in Habuk.
By chance, there had been an opportunity to forge some acquaintance with Cheonoe Sintu, and at that time he had told him something.
―Do you know where I obtained this Yeonhwa Wheel, Master Yeojin?
―I don’t care, you thief.
―Since you’re so curious, I suppose I have no choice but to tell you. This treasure was discovered in Chunghon Hall, the main sect of Sadocheon where Yeojin was born and raised.
Sintu rattled on all night not only about the Yeonhwa Wheel but about dozens of other treasures he’d wrapped around his body and where he’d obtained them.
‘Who knew that bastard’s boasting would come back to benefit me like this.’
At the time, Muk Yeojin had let most of Sintu’s words go in one ear and out the other, but there were certainly some treasures that had caught his attention.
In this life, those treasures would fall into his own hands, not Sintu’s.
‘Thank you, you thieving fool. I’ll make good use of those treasures from here on out.’
And it would all begin with the Yeonhwa Wheel.
Muk Yeojin immediately made his way to the shrine standing alone in the center of Chunghon Hall.
Inside the shrine, wooden statues of various kinds occupied positions in all eight directions.
“That’s the one.”
Muk Yeojin came to a halt before the wooden statue positioned to the south.
It was a Buddha statue with hands raised in blessing.
Among all the ordinary warrior statues, only this one was uniquely a Buddha.
‘Now that I think about it, that’s strange.’
How was there a Buddha statue in the heart of Sadocheon, a place that dismissed the teachings of Buddhism as fraudulent?
The oddity nagged at him, but not enough to warrant deeper investigation.
Dismissing the thought, Muk Yeojin reached out and grasped the statue’s nose, applying force as he twisted it.
Then—
Click!
The sound of a mechanism engaging echoed out, and the statue’s jaw fell open.
And there, resting in the gaping mouth, was a grayish-white bracelet.
The Yeonhwa Wheel itself.
“It really was here!”
A broad smile spread across Muk Yeojin’s face.
The Yeonhwa Wheel was exactly where Sintu had said it would be.
―Inside the shrine at Chunghon Hall there are various wooden statues, and the Yeonhwa Wheel was hidden in the mouth of the Buddha statue with raised hands. Do you have any idea how much hardship I endured to infiltrate that place? It was truly a long and solitary……
The rest of that conversation wasn’t worth recalling.
He didn’t know how the Buddha statue holding the Yeonhwa Wheel had come to be in Sadocheon.
Nor did he know how Sintu had learned of it, but that hardly mattered.
In any case, thanks to that bastard, the Yeonhwa Wheel had now formed a connection with him.
Another objective had been accomplished.
Muk Yeojin carefully fed his right wrist into the Yeonhwa Wheel.
Then—
Whoom.
With a peculiar hum of resonance, the Yeonhwa Wheel contracted to fit his wrist perfectly.
There was no sensation of foreign presence, but to be safe—
Thump! Thump!
Muk Yeojin drove his Right Fist repeatedly through empty air, then nodded in satisfaction.
He’d confirmed that there was no hindrance whatsoever to deploying his martial techniques.
“Excellent.”
Now, while wearing the Yeonhwa Wheel, he could drink an entire bowl of noodles stewed in Formless Poison without any adverse effect.
It was just as Muk Yeojin was preparing to leave Chunghon Hall, satisfied with himself, that—
Zing.
‘……!’
The Yeonhwa Wheel around his wrist vibrated, and black spots began to appear on its grayish-white surface.
‘What is this?!’
Muk Yeojin’s expression darkened.
This was a phenomenon that occurred as the Yeonhwa Wheel purified the Turbid Qi in his body.
Zing.
The black spots gradually grew larger.
What this signified—
Could it be……
‘Was I poisoned?’
Where? By what, exactly? By whom?
Hundreds of possibilities swirled through his mind in an instant.
But this was no time to panic.
Regaining his composure at once, Muk Yeojin sat in lotus position and closed his eyes.
He began to observe his body carefully, preparing for any contingency.
And moments later—
Muk Yeojin understood.
‘It wasn’t poison. Impurities.’
The layered impurities that had accumulated in both the Major and Minor Meridians running throughout his body were being drawn into the Yeonhwa Wheel.
It was something he had overlooked.
What the Yeonhwa Wheel purified was not poison at all.
‘It was Turbid Qi.’
Poison itself was merely a type of Turbid Qi.
The detoxifying effect had been only part of the Yeonhwa Wheel’s true ability.
‘This is something I didn’t anticipate.’
Even Cheonoe Sintu had never mentioned such an effect of the Yeonhwa Wheel.
‘Or perhaps he himself didn’t know.’
The Yeonhwa Wheel was reacting to the impurities accumulated in Muk Yeojin’s blood meridians.
In other words, had his body been free of impurities, he would never have discovered this property of the wheel.
‘He comes from a prestigious clan, so it’s entirely plausible he wouldn’t know.’
Regardless, this was a tremendous stroke of fortune.
Since Muk Yeojin had begun his training at the late age of twelve, compared to those who had learned martial arts early, his blood meridians contained far more accumulated impurities.
The more impurities present, the narrower the passages through which vital energy could flow, and the greater the obstruction to manipulating one’s Qi.
‘Breaking through to a certain level of mastery would naturally resolve this in time, but for now it remained a problem to carry.’
Today, in this very moment, he had found the solution.
Whoooosh.
At Muk Yeojin’s will, the Changgung Qi dwelling in his Dantian slowly rose to his head.
He began Energy Circulation to support the purification work of the Yeonhwa Wheel.
Splort.
Splort-splort.
The sticky residue accumulated in his blood meridians fell away weakly, drawn into the Yeonhwa Wheel.
As the Turbid Qi fell away, a tingling sensation began at his extremities—fingertips and toes—before spreading swiftly through his entire body.
Muk Yeojin sighed inwardly.
‘There were more impurities than I expected.’
He had anticipated that clearing the obstruction would merely widen the path somewhat, but he had been mistaken.
If the original passage had been like a cramped alleyway in a slum, the path now that the Turbid Qi had vanished resembled nothing less than the grand Vermillion Bird Avenue leading to the capital itself.
Without hesitation, Muk Yeojin drew his Changgung Qi to its limit.
A bluish shimmer began to rise across his entire frame.
With the passages widened, the Qi circulating through his body could now rush far more violently than before.
Whoooosh!
The Changgung Qi surging through his blood meridians resembled a cavalry charge advancing across the plains.
And with it, transformation began.
Crack-crack-boom!
The energy starting from his lower Dantian surged through his middle Dantian without pause, swept across his upper Dantian, and revolved through his entire body.
The Changgung Qi violently forced open the blood meridians that had remained sealed until now.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
Muk Yeojin’s face twisted in pain.
‘Focus…….’
Whoooosh.
The water had already begun to flow.
Building a dam here to control it would only cause it to overflow.
‘What’s needed now isn’t control—it’s harmony.’
Muk Yeojin surrendered his entire body to the natural flow of his Qi.
Water beginning in the Heavenly Mountains flows forth and encounters a valley.
The flowing stream grows gradually thicker, becoming a river, and soon spreads out into a vast sea.
Before long, Muk Yeojin had sunk deep into the heart of the No-Self state.
Time passed—how much, he could not say.
Flash!
Muk Yeojin’s eyes opened.
A clear, piercing light erupted from his pupils as if exploding outward.
And…….
“Hah!”
A breathless laugh escaped him.
It was warranted.
‘The purity of my martial ability has been refined to an absurd degree.’
The same applied to his Qi and Blood.
They had hardened to a degree incomparable to before, and their scope had widened as well.
It meant only one thing.
‘The foundation has hardened.’
To build a tower of No-Self high, above all else the foundation must be solid.
In that sense, now.
Muk Yeojin had completed his preparations to raise a pavilion higher than anyone else’s.
His heart thrummed with excitement.
Even before the Return, Muk Yeojin had risen to the ranks of the strong despite a body cobbled together like a patchwork rag.
Yet now to possess such a sturdy foundation…….
He could scarcely believe his own growth would become something to anticipate in the years ahead.
‘An entirely unexpected harvest.’
When he lowered his head, he saw the surface of the Yeonhwa Wheel covered in black spots so dense they’d begun to blur together.
Each time the Yeonhwa Wheel absorbed Turbid Qi, spots appeared on its surface, and when it darkened completely, it would lose its purifying power.
It meant Muk Yeojin had carried that much Turbid Qi within him.
‘A shame, perhaps.’
He had achieved in one breath an accomplishment that could never be measured in coin or numbers.
Truly, a bargain.
‘At this rate, I may well reach mastery of Changgung Qi before long.’
A smile crossed Muk Yeojin’s face as he rose from his seat, surprised by this unforeseen opportunity.
But he had not come alone to greet him.
The moment he stepped from Chunghon Hall.
His breath caught.
Upon seeing the figure waiting for him, Muk Yeojin could not help but stiffen.

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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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