Return of the God of War - Chapter 88

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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 88. Live comfortably until then.
Bang!
Cheon Hwarin’s body shot upward into the air as she received Na Pyeonggi’s palm strike aimed at her solar plexus.
Clatter-clatter-clatter-bang.
The force was so tremendous that even after she hastily regained her footing and landed, her body didn’t stop until she’d carved a deep furrow three inches into the earth.
“Cough!”
A thin trace of blood mixed with the harsh cough, but fortunately no vital organs had been damaged.
It was thanks to the Yong Ho Ui that Muk Yeojin had given her, which had absorbed the brunt of the impact.
‘Three deaths prevented, he said, but only two remain.’
That was no jest.
She’d already escaped death four or five times thanks to this protective garment.
“Haah…….”
Still, the Naegong that Na Pyeonggi had failed to fully dissipate was slowly churning through her insides.
Her limbs were beginning to feel impossibly heavy, as though weighted with lead.
‘Na Pyeonggi of the Heavenly Martial Eleven Seats…….’
He was a master far beyond anything she’d imagined.
His Jo Beop, wielded seamlessly between Bal Gyeong and Chim Twe Gyeong, was nothing short of Heavenly Martial Art—words themselves seemed insufficient to describe it.
So it was only natural that she found herself thinking this.
‘Magnificent.’
But that admiration was not directed at Na Pyeonggi.
The figure that appeared in her eyes—those pupils that gleamed as though holding starlight.
The man who stood before that raw, crushing might of Na Pyeonggi’s. Muk Yeojin.
‘He’s already transcended common sense.’
Any observer would say that Muk Yeojin was several tiers below Na Pyeonggi—perhaps even more.
He lacked power, technique, Nae Ryeok—he was inferior in every measure.
And yet he stood against Na Pyeonggi.
Not merely defending.
He seized every opening, pressing the advantage, forcing Na Pyeonggi backward.
‘How is this possible?’
Every technique he deployed—swordplay, footwork, all his Martial Arts—was uncannily precise.
Too crude to be called calculation, too refined to be called instinct. The apex of martial art itself.
It was no mere talent.
It was as though.
‘A ghost born on the battlefield, forged in the crucible of war. And…….’
More than anything.
‘Such bitter murderous intent.’
This was not the Sal Ui born from simple survival—kill or be killed.
Nor was it the killing spirit that arose from righteous indignation against evil.
‘Like a man who, after decades of searching, has finally come face to face with his Mortal Enemy…….’
Cheon Hwarin’s grip tightened on the Dae Seok Bu.
For some reason, her chest felt constricted.
‘What could kindle such rage in you? What has made your world so utterly desolate?’
For Cheon Hwarin as she was now, it was difficult to fully comprehend such feeling.
* * *
Shriek!
The sound of Jo Beop and sword clashing grew increasingly discordant.
Gulp.
Bright crimson blood trickled from the corner of Muk Yeojin’s mouth.
The impact from the exchange was beginning to penetrate his Hosin Gong, ravaging what lay beneath.
But he did not stop, thrusting his blade forward again.
There was no turning back now, and he had no intention of doing so.
Muk Yeojin knew.
If he did not kill this man today, countless others would fall to that devastating Jo Beop in the years to come.
‘So Na Pyeonggi, you will die today. By my hand.’
Burst!
Deploying the Yeol Pyobbo once more, Muk Yeojin charged forward and raised the Heukyah Geom.
Shriek!
Na Pyeonggi’s right arm, wrapped in Jo Gang, was driven backward with a violent sweep.
His face twisted.
He understood instinctively.
The man’s spirit and body had already reached their limit long ago.
But what in the world was this technique he was employing now?
It possessed enough brute force to flick his arm aside, and simultaneously it was the heaviest single blade strike exchanged between them all day.
It was as if the man were drawing fresh reserves of strength and martial power from somewhere outside himself.
Of course, such a thing was impossible.
Which meant this could signify only one thing.
‘This madman has no intention of surviving at all?!’
It went beyond merely exerting every last ounce of strength.
The very aura he gave off suggested that if he could only drag his opponent down with him, he would gladly crumble to dust.
It was a concentration of lethal intent so fierce that a boy of his years should never be capable of it.
Crash-crash-crash-crash!
Slice!
Muk Iyeon’s sword bit deep into his thigh.
“Ugh!”
With a demon’s fierce presence blazing before his eyes, his instinct to read his surroundings had grown dull.
“Hiyah!”
Na Pyeonggi roared and charged straight toward Muk Yeojin.
He knew that if he did not deal with this man first, he would face an endless cascade of troublesome variables.
Wielding the Ihyeong Hwanwi technique, he burrowed into Muk Yeojin’s guard in an instant.
Na Pyeonggi’s judgment was entirely sound.
Every weapon has its optimal domain of application.
A sword is certainly suited for close quarters.
But the distance at which a sword reaches its maximum effect is the Three Step Circle—roughly three paces, where the blade can unfold its full potential.
At point-blank range, where breaths mingle, a sword becomes far less effective.
Moreover, swordsmen—especially young Rising Stars—typically lack mastery in martial arts beyond the blade.
It was why young sword masters often fell to street thugs in the chaos of battle.
But.
There was one fact Na Pyeonggi did not know.
Close-quarters hand-to-hand combat was Muk Yeojin’s supreme specialty.
Whoosh!
“Hck!”
Na Pyeonggi stumbled backward, clutching at his ribs.
Muk Yeojin’s right fist had suddenly smashed into his flank.
“This… this madman!”
The impact had jarred his lungs so badly he could barely breathe.
Yet the reason he still screamed the insult aloud was because Muk Yeojin’s action was utterly shocking.
‘He… he threw away his sword?’
Yes.
The moment Na Pyeonggi burrowed in, Muk Yeojin had tossed his blade aside and unleashed a fist technique as if he’d been waiting for exactly this.
And it was no crude brawling art.
Rather, it was an ascending fist method of far higher sophistication than the swordwork he’d displayed until now.
Muk Yeojin smiled thinly.
“You should have retreated instead of pressing in. I’m afraid this distance is where I am most complete.”
Whirrrrr!
A shin strike carrying the force of an eighty-pound iron hammer drove toward Na Pyeonggi’s knee.
“Kh!”
Na Pyeonggi hastily raised his guard.
But his eyes widened.
The shin strike traced a strange, impossible arc—what had been aimed at his lower body suddenly shifted course.
And the true target of that trajectory became clear.
‘My neck?!’
Bang!!!
The third technique of San Wang Mu.
Na Pyeonggi staggered back, having endured the Flying Swallow Kick.
He’d managed to raise his Hosin Gi in time to shield his cervical spine, but the impact still sent a ringing shock through his skull.
Whirrrp!
Muk Yeojin rolled across the ground, seized the Heukyah Geom again, and came at him relentlessly without a moment’s respite.
Crash-crash-crash-crash!
Clang!
His descending blade struck the Baeksu Hyeolpok Jo and rebounded.
A gap that opens for but an instant.
‘Now!’
Screech, screech!
Muk Iyeon’s Four Serpent Venom Death technique and Cheon Hwarin’s Flame Soul Cleaving Axe technique tore into Na Pyeonggi, shredding him.
Blood sprayed in all directions.
He’d dodged the killing blows, but still—the wounds multiplied, gathering on his body one after another.
It meant Na Pyeonggi no longer had room to breathe.
And yet Muk Yeojin could not afford to relax his guard even for a moment.
‘Truly a stubborn creature.’
Most men at this juncture would feel their momentum crack, their eyes flickering with doubt long before this point.
But Na Pyeonggi’s gaze upon Muk Yeojin remained unchanged.
Not the slightest tremor.
Still the hungry gleam of a predator watching prey—not fleeing quarry, but food.
‘Indeed…….’
He was a man worthy of Jang Pyeong’s high regard, a warrior befitting a seat among the Heavenly Martial Eleven.
But therein lay the tragedy.
For the one standing against him was none other than Muk Yeojin.
True, Na Pyeonggi might possess greater depth of cultivation and a larger reserve of inner strength than him.
But the vessel itself—the vessel from the very beginning—was different.
Muk Yeojin’s phenomenal talent was now using every moment of this struggle as fertilizer, sprouting new growth.
Na Pyeonggi felt it too.
Muk Iyeon and Cheon Hwarin had already vanished from his sight.
His consciousness focused entirely upon Muk Yeojin.
‘This bastard…….’
With every single move.
No—with every mere technique he unfurled.
The blade-work of that dark-aura-wreathed demon grew only more vicious.
‘This presumptuous worm dares…….’
Understanding what that meant, Na Pyeonggi’s face twisted hideously.
His gaze upon the young warrior burning with inexperience.
In his eyes—eyes bristling with inferiority and shame—burned only the deepest murderous intent.
“Dare? You think you, barely more than a whelp, would use me—the Hundred-Handed Fiend, Na Pyeonggi—as a stepping stone to claw your way upward? Is that what you believe?”
Na Pyeonggi pulled the energy he’d been storing and thrust his palm toward Muk Yeojin.
His blazing conduit fractured and erupted in unison, tearing through the air toward Muk Yeojin.
The reason he earned the epithet “Hundred-Handed Fiend”.
Na Pyeonggi’s ultimate technique: Hundred-Handed Blood-Burst Claw.
Muk Yeojin’s eyes blazed like flame.
‘I will ascend.’
Even if the Buddha himself stood before him, he would crush that head and climb higher still.
So what of the Heavenly Martial Eleven?
What reason had he to flinch before Na Pyeonggi’s so-called ultimate technique?
In that moment when life hung by a thread.
Muk Yeojin’s blade found a new path.
‘Can I do it now?’
A sudden understanding of the heart—discovered after his return, while painting his mother’s portrait.
That blade which had pierced through Cheon Hwarin’s illusion in the Mangdam Event’s Bi Yeon Pavilion.
‘I can.’
It felt as though he might unfurl it now.
Shrieeeeeeek!
The Heukyah Geom began to paint across the emptiness.
Na Pyeonggi gasped and shuddered without knowing why.
‘A dragon?’
For a moment he doubted his own eyes.
Before him stood a towering creature of dark green scales, vast and terrible, fixing him with its gaze.
An illusion.
The spectral being that manifested before his eyes held no substance.
It was merely the sword’s energy gathered and given form—the shape of a dragon, nothing more.
Na Pyeonggi clenched his teeth.
Whether the thing was dragon or tortoise mattered not to him.
The problem was that this sudden manifestation was now devouring his Hundred-Handed Blood-Burst Claw, erasing it from existence.
It shatters. His Martial Arts.
It crumbles. The Mudao he has built up all these years.
Na Pyeonggi screamed in fury.
“This can’t be! It absolutely cannot be! Aaaaaargh!”
Ignoring his wounds, Na Pyeonggi swung both arms desperately, pouring everything into the Baeksu Hyeolpok Jo.
Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash!
In that instant, the two great forces achieved a standoff, but then Na Pyeonggi’s blood-bursting palm technique began to shatter Muk Yeojin’s sword energy.
Muk Yeojin had no choice but to admit it.
‘You are still undeniably the stronger one. But…….’
This was no fair contest on a formal arena—this was a battlefield where lives were at stake.
And on this battlefield, Muk Yeojin did not stand alone.
In the opening that Na Pyeonggi’s all-out assault had created.
The two heroic women he had entrusted his back to were not about to let this chance slip away.
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
The Sa Bok Geom and the Dae Seok Bu sang out their deadly song as they carved through the air.
Slice. Slice.
Na Pyeonggi’s arms flew from his torso.
And at last.
Thud.
Heavenly Martial Eleven Seats, the White-Water Demon—Na Pyeonggi.
He stared blankly at the black blade that had pierced through his chest.
Then Na Pyeonggi let out a hollow laugh.
“So you’re a prodigy…… but for all that, you’re merely a mortal before an immortal.”
His lips twisted upward.
“Had you been born a hundred years earlier, you would have ruled the Cheonha itself. But you were born in the wrong age. Poor child.”
At those cryptic words, Muk Yeojin smiled softly and whispered close to his ear.
“An immortal, you say…… If you rate someone that highly, you must be speaking of Heukmyeong Jae, aren’t you?”
“……!”
Na Pyeonggi’s eyes widened in shock.
How did you know? What are you really?
He tried to cry out, but his voice never made it past his throat.
Shhhup.
As Muk Yeojin twisted the Heukyah Geom free, the light faded rapidly from his eyes.
Soon, as the true Grim Reapers dragged Na Pyeonggi away by the scruff of his neck, Muk Yeojin spoke softly to his departing back.
“I do hope you’ll be pleased with the boat I’ve prepared for you. There are still many people left to board, so be comfortable until then. Though once they’re all aboard, there likely won’t be enough seats—you’ll probably have to stand all the way to the afterlife.”

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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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