The Ignored Granddaughter of a Murim Family - Chapter 289

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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 289
Nothing but questions plagued my mind.
How had the stone gate opened? How was the Left Envoy, supposedly dead, standing before me? What was the meaning of his current state?
But there was no time to untangle the chaos in my thoughts.
Namgung Ryu-cheong and the Left Envoy exchanged dozens of blows in an instant.
The silent gorge erupted with thunderous sounds. I suspected the noise would carry even to the rim above.
They fought so close together, their movements so rapid, that I found no opening to intervene.
It wasn’t until I feared the gorge itself might collapse that I finally joined the fray.
The blade I’d taken from a Demonic Cult Member on the way here sang with inner force as I drove it precisely through a gap in his defense.
Crash!
The Left Envoy’s palm struck the sword pommel with perfect accuracy, deflecting it.
“…!”
Gripping the blade itself, he reversed the momentum and swung it back.
Gasp!
The force behind it tore the sword from my grip, sending me flying backward.
In a heartbeat, I hurtled toward the gorge’s cliff face. There was no time to twist my body. Namgung Ryu-cheong rushed forward and intercepted me, colliding with the impact.
Crash-boom!
Unable to overcome the momentum, Namgung Ryu-cheong and I tumbled across the ground together. Even with my protective inner force deployed, my entire body screamed in agony.
Spit.
I expelled blood-tinged saliva.
Had Namgung Ryu-cheong not caught me, something would surely have broken.
Namgung Ryu-cheong grimaced deeply as he pushed himself up with his sword.
Without hesitation, we spoke simultaneously.
“Are you alright?”
“Are you alright?”
Our eyes met, and a wry smile escaped me. I hardened my expression and continued.
“Something’s wrong.”
The Left Envoy’s power was incomprehensibly overwhelming.
His bare hand that had just blocked my blade—the inner force flowing through it should have been insufficient to stop my strike. His technique was noticeably cruder than before, yet the inner force and destructive power were utterly different from what I’d encountered previously.
“When we met before, he wasn’t capable of this…!”
But I couldn’t finish a single sentence. The Left Envoy launched his assault immediately.
Closing nearly ten zhang in an instant, a single step from the Left Envoy caused part of the gorge’s cliff to crumble away.
Lacking refinement in technique?
It didn’t matter—not with power of this magnitude.
Technique was a luxury for the weak. Even the Left Envoy’s crude, sweeping movements were devastatingly threatening.
I barely managed to deflect the murky black force he unleashed.
As I retreated several steps, the Left Envoy descended upon Namgung Ryu-cheong.
I watched Namgung Ryu-cheong draw his sword through the air, wreathed in blade force. The Left Envoy’s turbid black energy split cleanly in two against the pale luminescence of his blade.
There was another peculiarity: the Left Envoy kept targeting Namgung Ryu-cheong first, treating me as mere baggage clinging to his side.
‘Wasn’t he after the Cheonma Jibow?’
The control had already shifted.
And Namgung Ryu-cheong realized that the Left Envoy’s target was himself.
Namgung Ryu-cheong spoke.
“Go.”
“Ryu-cheong!”
“Either way, it seems I’m his target….”
While he could withstand the sword energy, the sword force proved too much—and wounds appeared on the Left Envoy’s iron-like body from Namgung Ryu-cheong’s blade.
“I don’t know what you intend to do in that demon’s tomb, but there’s no benefit in exhausting yourself on the way there.”
“….”
“So go.”
My heart screamed that we should face this together, that I couldn’t leave Namgung Ryu-cheong alone.
“I’ll hold the line.”
Yet my feet hesitated and retreated backward.
The scout discovered at the gorge’s bottom, the mist gradually clearing, the Cheonma Dae-chong before me where someone had clearly entered first.
“Just promise you’ll come back.”
* * *
Boom—!
The Cheonma Dae-chong trembled slightly. With each impact, dust and stone fragments rained down from above.
I gritted my teeth and ran forward, eyes fixed ahead.
The interior of the Cheonma Dae-chong was like a labyrinth.
Whatever had been done here rendered my Golden Eyes useless inside the vault.
I could still manipulate natural energy, but the view beyond walls and mechanical devices that should have been visible was obscured. To be precise, piercing through the Cheonma Dae-chong with my Golden Eyes was impossible.
The only thing I could discern was the stone gate I’d glimpsed while entering.
The stone gate was constructed identically to the ones I’d used escaping Man Shin-ui’s secret hideout and Wi Ji-baek’s mountain manor’s hidden passage.
A method requiring true energy to be infused in an extraordinarily complex sequence to open.
Then who on earth could have opened and entered through this gate?
The interior of the Cheonma Dae-chong was eerily silent despite my tension.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Beyond the open stone gate, only the sound of my footsteps echoed.
The life-threatening mechanisms and traps I’d naturally expected to find in such a place were absent.
Only stone statues spaced along the corridor and a labyrinthine structure descending ever deeper, ever lower.
‘If only footprints remained….’
Then I could follow whoever had entered first.
The Cheonma Jibow had revealed the location of the Cheonma Dae-chong, but not what lay hidden within.
As I walked, torches mounted on the walls flared to life before extinguishing as I passed, repeating endlessly.
In that flickering light, the faces of stone statues gripping swords at chest height brightened and darkened in turn. Their eerie visages were an unwelcome sight for the faint of heart.
Boom.
The noise from outside had grown faint now. My pace slowed without my realizing it.
The Left Envoy’s bizarre appearance. His condition was likely connected to some secret martial art he’d cultivated. Yet nothing came to mind.
Though I’d gained considerable knowledge of the Demonic Cult’s martial arts through the Cheonma Jibow, I didn’t know all their techniques.
The Cheonma Jibow had existed for several centuries now. New martial arts must have been absorbed into the Demonic Cult, and existing techniques surely refined.
‘If only I could discern what drives the Left Envoy to such extremes….’
Then, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp, my gaze drifted toward the stone statues.
The armor adorning the statues was an antiquated style no longer in use. Yet despite their age, they gleamed without a trace of rust. The swords they wielded bore the same pristine quality.
And each statue possessed a different physique, each bearing a distinct countenance.
“….”
As though they might spring to life at any moment….
A chilling thought seized me, and I found myself instinctively stepping backward.
After retreating a few paces.
Thud.
I felt myself collide with something.
My eyes snapped wide open.
Ever since obtaining the Cheonma Jibow and drawing closer to the Heavenly Demon Grand Vault, my spiritual perception had grown exponentially sharper. For someone to deceive such heightened senses and approach so close behind me—they possessed formidable skill indeed.
‘Who in the world…!’
Though it was already too late, I spun around hastily. And my face went pale.
“…Hwa-mu?”
Sickly pallid skin, hair bleached white as bone, eyes gleaming with golden light.
What was he doing here? Was I staring at a ghost?
Jeggal Hwa-mu smiled faintly and spoke.
“So you came with the Namgung Prince after all?”
“….”
After a moment of silence, fury seized me, and I grabbed him by the collar.
“You bastard…!”
Jeggal Hwa-mu gazed at me with a faint smile.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
Before I won the Martial Arts Tournament, Jeggal Hwa-mu had urged me to touch the Cheonma Jibow while in the presence of Taego Jinperson. But Taego Jinperson had prevented me so thoroughly that I couldn’t even place a fingertip upon it.
What would have happened if I had touched it then?
“Yet you kept silent about it all? Why did you let things unfold this way!”
Though Yalyu had pushed me into this predicament, had Jeggal Hwa-mu given me even the slightest warning, I could have avoided this situation.
“Hmm, is that what concerns you now?”
Jeggal Hwa-mu’s eyes shimmered with an eerie golden light. And the hand covering mine exerted considerable strength.
I regarded Jeggal Hwa-mu with suspicion.
The reason I had deliberately refrained from resenting Jeggal Hwa-mu was that his condition had already deteriorated to a point where he could barely endure.
“You said it before, didn’t you? That my illness was wrought by Cheon-ma.”
Jeggal Hwa-mu suddenly broached an entirely different subject.
I narrowed my brow slightly and spoke.
“…Yes, I did.”
Based on the information I had obtained during my regression before meeting Jeggal Hwa-mu, that was the case. Though upon closer examination, the truth proved somewhat different.
“It’s not entirely wrong. In passing down memories to oppose Cheon-ma, all my descendants perished. So I suppose I am the last of House Jeggal.”
“….”
His tone carried a bittersweet quality, tinged with a sense of relief—a far cry from the desperate clinging to life that had once defined Jeggal Hwa-mu.
Every time I witnessed this transformation, the same thought returned: he had become someone entirely different.
“But haven’t you ever found it strange?”
I furrowed my brow.
Jeggal Hwa-mu continued slowly.
“Haven’t you ever thought it peculiar how the way I and Cheon-ma inherit memories across generations is so remarkably similar?”
“….”
I fell silent.
“Well then, shall I tell you an old tale? The story of when Cheon-ma was not yet Cheon-ma.”

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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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