The Fortunate Sword God of the Zhuge Clan - Chapter 34

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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 34.
Mu Hun tried hard to maintain his composure, but it wasn’t easy.
He knew the collapse of Jianghu from his past life.
‘But the Central Plains falling? The world itself crumbling?’
The Imperial Court had been the aggressor in the first place — how could such a thing happen?
‘If it’s 1,300 years from now, then this current era matches the timeline….’
Mu Hun puzzled over it for a moment, then continued reading the manuscript.
He realized that without information, deliberation was pointless.
Shizu’s letter that followed, despite being in handwritten form, conveyed such urgency that it tumbled forth with a deluge of information.
[The Heavenly Secrets revealed to me a tremendous ominous star. Thus, a terrifying being shall be born.]
[That ominous star, like the founder of Han before him, shall be born a peasant but rise to the highest seat.]
[Yet in direct opposition to him, he shall lead all the Central Plains to ruin. Believing this knowledge must be shared with you alone, I send this letter in haste.]
Born a peasant, rising to the highest position.
It mirrored the tale of the current ruling Zhu clan.
‘Then… the current Imperial Court’s invasion of the martial world — was it because they were born under the Heavenly Killing Star?’
Mu Hun paused in thought.
‘It’s true the current dynasty began as peasants, and it’s true that the Hongwu Emperor conducted massive purges….’
Yet the Central Plains never fell.
Rather, the Ming achieved tremendous prosperity as a nation.
‘If the current emperor carrying that bloodline was born under the Heavenly Killing Star and would bring ruin to the Central Plains….’
Only the Hongwu Emperor began as a peasant — had the Heavenly Secrets not revealed the precise timing?
‘Even with the Baihui Acupoint opened, it wouldn’t be easy for celestial knowledge from 1,300 years past to predict the present circumstances with accuracy.’
Mu Hun reasoned through it and continued reading the manuscript.
Hyungsan’s response followed.
[Your words strain credulity, yet seeing the design diagram, I cannot dismiss them as mere falsehood.]
Certainly, the Chilsung Won was not something one could design while in their right mind.
It was an artifact that suggested the seemingly impossible notion of twisting the Heavenly Secrets might actually be feasible.
The speech was mad, yet the design was so exquisite — Hyungsan must have been considerably bewildered.
[But if it were so, could you not prevent it from occurring by using this to alter the Heavenly Secrets?]
[Of course, I believe that impossible. The design is masterful, but its structure demands a price. I do not believe you are in a state to pay such a price.]
[Furthermore, I fail to see why you would prepare for something 1,300 years hence. Even the great Han dynasty fractured after merely 400 years. Though you labor earnestly to restore it, do you truly believe it will endure for 1,300 years?]
Hyungsan posed an eminently practical question.
[The matters of that time should be left to the people of that time. Investing in the future is admirable, but is not that horizon too distant?]
He had a point.
By normal standards, it would seem strange to concern oneself with something over a thousand years hence.
But Shizu’s thinking was different.
He posed a question about something more fundamental.
[I am not afraid of what comes 1,300 years hence being left incomplete. But as I said, what that ominous star shall bring about does not end merely in raising a rebellion to found a new nation.]
[The Central Plains falling means all the history that has existed there will vanish.]
[We know of countless events that have occurred atop the Central Plains from the ancient Xia dynasty through today’s Shu, Wei, and Wu. Yet all of this shall be erased by that ominous star.]
[Our war, yours and mine, shall be remembered by no one. All traces of our having lived will disappear. Do you comprehend what that means?]
Desperation emanated from Shizu’s handwriting.
[I do not wish for such a thing. Though I have no price to offer you now as you suggest, I shall find a way nonetheless. I will twist the Heavenly Secrets so that such a future does not come to pass.]
Mu Hun could empathize with Shizu’s heart.
Though their purposes differed in detail, Mu Hun too had sought to twist the Heavenly Secrets using the Chilsung Won to prevent the collapse of the martial world.
What had Hyungsan thought of it?
He did not send a reply thereafter; instead, more of Shizu’s writings followed.
And the contents were quite melancholy.
[Your words were correct. To be precise, I could extend my own lifespan, but even doing so could not prevent the ominous star 1,300 years hence. I have reached that conclusion.]
[Yet this does not mean the end of our endeavor. I have found another way to extend the lifespan.]
[With each passing day, the Heavenly Secrets reveal more, and they compel me to accept this. But how can I?]
Though his words spoke of not giving up, the urgency visible in his earlier script had grown measured, suggesting he had come to terms with it to some degree.
As Mu Hun contemplated this result with some sadness, the words written below suddenly seized his attention.
[I have resolved to entrust the Chilsung Won to a descendant 1,300 years hence.]
[Seeing the Heavenly Secrets, should I be defeated, my bloodline shall endure far longer still.]
[I shall add to the Chilsung Won a mechanism for accumulating celestial essence. Thus, I cannot create the force to twist the Heavenly Secrets immediately, but should 1,300 years of accumulation occur, the matter becomes different.]
[Moreover, I shall leave records of the Chilsung Won within the family, but create a Formation Seal so that no one may use it carelessly.]
[1,300 years hence, a child shall be born into my clan. That child possesses an innately frail constitution, yet as a Formation master, the talent exceeds all others. That child alone could break through this Formation Seal.]
As Mu Hun read the passage that unquestionably referred to himself, he finally understood why the Formation Seal of the Chilsung Won had been such a terrifyingly difficult puzzle.
‘It was designed to condense natural essence over 1,300 years!’
Mu Hun now understood why the Chilsung Won possessed the incomprehensible power to send a person into the past.
Across thirteen centuries, it had accumulated energies far exceeding those of the Gongqing Stone Deposit.
Moreover, unlike the Gongqing Stone Deposit, which had formed naturally, this artifact was the crystallization of Shizu’s every technique and insight.
Whether there existed anything greater remained unknowable, but even if such a thing did, it would not fall beyond the realm of possibility.
[Yet one matter troubles me still: the child chose not to defy Heavenly Secrets, but rather to return to the past. Why this should be, I cannot say. I cannot compel such a choice, so at the very least I must lend my aid to it.]
“What?”
Mu Hun heard himself emit a questioning sound.
“A choice, you say…?”
A misunderstanding.
Mu Hun had intended to offer his entire history as the price and twist Heavenly Secrets.
Yet he had been told that someone had already twisted them, rendering such an attempt impossible—and the Chilsung Won, as an alternative, had chosen regression instead.
The matter bore no relation whatsoever to Mu Hun’s own will.
‘Even Shizu, with the Baihui Acupoint opened, knew nothing of this….’
Certainly, merely perceiving the regression and fashioning the Chilsung Won deserved all praise, yet Mu Hun harbored an inward regret nonetheless.
He could guess it was likely the Imperial Court, but when and how they came to possess such a technique remained utterly opaque to him.
Mu Hun swallowed his disappointment and turned the remaining pages of the manuscript, few though they were.
[In the future I beheld, that child vanishes, and the Central Plains crumbles to ruin and nothing more. It stands to reason that with the Heavenly Secrets as they are, I cannot read what lies beyond the regression.]
[I anticipate and design for a return from sixty trigrams to sixteen trigrams. Should you study the Eight Trigrams, you will come to know that this is the most stable course.]
At this passage, Mu Hun grasped why Hyungsan had held such thoughts regarding the timing of his own regression.
Theoretically, indeed, it aligned perfectly.
‘Circumstances prevented it from coming to pass, but was even that foreseen and designed…?’
Mu Hun pressed forward, reading with mounting admiration.
[We shall not share wine as companions, yet as lifelong adversaries, I trust your ability as I trust no other’s.]
[Should I fall and you prevail, I ask only that you remember the contents of this letter someday.]
[And for the sake of that child. For the prevention of the Central Plains’ destruction, I beg a measure of your effort.]
[I thank you for reading this long account. Then, let us meet again upon the field of war.]
Thus did Shizu’s account conclude.
All that followed was known—Shizu fell, and Hyungsan emerged victorious.
Yet the manuscript did not end there.
‘Is this… something Hyungsan’s original hand wrote in his final years?’
As Mu Hun turned the few remaining pages, his hand trembled slightly, and the script before him wavered with an unsteady stroke.
Strangely, rather than rendering it difficult to read, the tremor felt like a deliberate flourish.
Though no intended recipient remained, the manuscript maintained the grammar of a letter still.
[First, I wish to apologize. When I first read your letter, I confess I did not believe your words.]
[But as the years passed and my own days grew short, I too felt the Baihui Acupoint opening, just as you said it would.]
Mu Hun’s eyes widened slightly.
‘Two in a single age whose Baihui Acupoint opened of its own accord….’
It was not impossible.
Scholars who spent their lives in study and painters who devoted themselves to their art might one day find themselves in a state of complete absorption, losing all sense of self.
This was a phenomenon of communion with Heavenly Secrets; should one experience it frequently enough, the Baihui Acupoint might naturally open.
In other words, one might say such an individual had walked the Path of Literature and thereby achieved enlightenment.
Now that the dangers are known, however, those without martial training are cautioned against entering such states too often.
Mu Hun himself, aware of these perils, had deliberately reduced his frequency of entering such absorption.
One might argue that in that age, lacking such understanding, it was not remarkable for two to have opened the Baihui Acupoint.
‘Yet this was no common occurrence in an ordinary life.’
To achieve such concentration as to lose oneself is far from easy.
How much less likely still—to have the Baihui Acupoint open of its own accord?
Even entering such a state thousands upon thousands of times might never trigger it.
And that two individuals opened the Baihui Acupoint and retained their minds thereafter—
Surely these were the two geniuses who held and moved the world.
‘Of course, I myself can now sink into such states as I wish.’
Mu Hun gazed upon his own body at its apex and curved his lips upward in a subtle smile before returning his attention to the manuscript.
[And so I too beheld it. That terrible future you spoke of, reflected in Heavenly Secrets.]
[Thus my sorrow deepens. That you bore such a vast calamity alone….]
[Yet I harbor no regret for the past. I shall, however, honor the request you left with me.]
What followed was all that Mu Hun himself had experienced.
The discovery of the Formation Seal created by nature upon Qingcheng Mountain.
The tale of having foreseen the Gongqing Stone Deposit’s formation and left his spirit-imprint in this place.
How that imprint was meant to surface when the Formation Seal was corrected, and how it had tested the visitor’s mettle.
The account even contained a somewhat chilling clause: should the talent prove insufficient, the visitor would be imprisoned here for life.
But since he had ultimately been satisfied, Mu Hun saw no cause for great concern.
‘I have learned much, yet there is nothing here regarding the Fate Defying Variable.’
In other words, it seemed the Fate Defying Variable was something neither of those two geniuses from thirteen hundred years ago had foreseen.
It was a pity, but there was nothing to be done about it.
‘Still, thinking on it—to have seen this much across thirteen centuries is itself a remarkable thing. Why should I burden myself with wanting more?’
From the beginning, the decision to reach across thirteen hundred years and help had itself been extraordinary.
Mu Hun set the manuscript down carefully as an offering of gratitude, then knelt before it and performed a full bow.
‘Since you two have aided me so greatly, I shall make it work somehow, no matter what.’
He rose from his place, his resolve hardened into concrete purpose.
“?!”
From the manuscript he had just laid down, a faint light—the same as when Hyungsan had first created it—poured forth.
Soon the light faded, but Mu Hun could tell the manuscript had grown noticeably thicker.
Mu Hun did not hesitate before opening the manuscript again.
[Aya, bearer of the Zhuge name. As you have read, I was entreated by your ancestor, and so I aided you in obtaining the Gongqing Stone Deposit.]
[This alone will scarce suffice to bear the Ominous Star that both Shizu and I perceived, yet still you showed me courtesy.]
[Moved by such character, I would wish to give you anything, but I have little left to offer.]
[Take the latter pages of this book and seek out those who carry on my name.]
‘…If he means those who carry on his name, he must be speaking of the Sima Clan.’
With an expression mingled of strange emotion, Mu Hun turned to the final page of the manuscript.
“…Well. This is….”
Mu Hun let out a low, involuntary laugh.
It was a design diagram of a Formation Technique, drawn in white on black paper.
Yet because its contents comprised only half, anyone unfamiliar with it could not have discerned clearly what it was.
But Mu Hun sensed dimly what purpose this diagram served.
‘…So it is I who have obtained the half he searched for so desperately.’
In his former life, Mu Hun had formed a connection with Sima Doyun, a Formation Technique master of the Sima Clan.
Thanks to that bond, he had even aided in restoring the incomplete design diagram that Sima Doyun had always taken such pride in.
In fact, Mu Hun’s help had been crucial to the restoration’s success.
‘But how could I obtain it at that time…? No, no. If it had not been a Formation Seal used in that manner to begin with….’
Mu Hun entered the State of No-Self and continued to ponder.
How much time had passed?
Mu Hun exhaled deeply and gazed down at the incomplete design diagram remaining in the manuscript.
Having already committed the half-diagram entirely to memory, Mu Hun could now complete the design by examining the missing half.
And he understood, too, that what he had thought in his former life was a restoration had in fact been a misconceived reverse-engineering that defied all convention.
He and Sima Doyun had misunderstood the diagram’s true purpose from the start.
Now he had absolute confidence to craft the Formation Seal according to the complete design.
“What should I do?”
By right, it belonged returned to Sima Doyun.
Yet Mu Hun did not wish to do so.
More precisely, he lacked the courage.
-Pay it no mind. It is not your fault.
The moment he closed his eyes, it bloomed vivid and sharp.
It was the memory of that day—when, for the first time, he cursed his own gift, the one ability he could never forget no matter how desperately he wished to.
‘I had thought it right in this life to remain untangled from her.’
Sima Doyun’s daughter, and Mu Hun’s betrothed.
She who had sacrificed her life trying to save the Divine Sect from its utter ruin.
He did not have the courage to see Cheon Yeo Rin, Matriarch of the Celestial Demon Divine Sect, ever 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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