The Ignored Granddaughter of a Murim Family - Chapter 293

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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 293
Whether from the wound or the memories I had accepted, my head throbbed as if it might split apart.
“In this life, it seems your relationship with your father is quite good.”
“….”
“Is that not also a result I obtained by turning back time?”
I blinked my eyes.
With each blink, blood trickling down my forehead gradually tinted my vision red.
As if the first attack had merely been a taste, Cheon-ma’s blade grew progressively faster.
It was not a movement I could see and block with my eyes alone. I relied on the fleeting will that flowed in each instant, sensing through the currents of natural energy.
As the accumulated sword strikes intensified, the solid altar shattered and braziers tumbled across the ground.
Hazy smoke rose like mist within the cave chamber. The traces of sword strikes lingered in the smoke before scattering as the energy waves dispersed them.
In a single breath, we exchanged dozens of blows.
The sword exchanges between Cheon-ma and me differed from those of others.
Normally, collisions occurred through the vital energy contained in each blade, sword energy, or manifestations through tangible sword force. But when Cheon-ma’s blade and mine met, they sought to absorb the vital energy from each other.
It was not a battle of pushing with greater force, but one where the one who pulled with greater force would win.
Ordinary eyes would not perceive the difference, and only someone of Taego Jinperson’s caliber would be able to discern what kind of battle this was.
Wounds accumulated across my body one by one. Yet without any decisive injury, when our exchanges exceeded one hundred strikes, my lips murmured of their own accord.
“Cheon-ma, you truly have not progressed at all.”
The words came from my mouth, but it did not feel as though I had spoken them of my own will. A sensation of being someone else.
‘This is more unpleasant than I expected.’
The Jegal Family’s memories had not yet fully merged with me, which was why this foreign sensation arose.
And the reason I suddenly uttered such words was because I was now blocking Cheon-ma’s blade using the Jegal Family’s memories.
The Jegal Family had long researched methods to counter Cheon-ma’s swordsmanship. And I was now employing them exactly as they had.
It was an extraordinarily strange matter.
Swordsmanship, by nature, develops through repeated cycles of countering and defending.
Yet Cheon-ma’s swordsmanship showed no change in the Jegal Family’s memories.
It remained exactly as it had been centuries ago.
Therefore, the countermeasures the Jegal Family had devised over such a long time worked perfectly.
‘…So that was it.’
The technique of defying heaven.
Among them, turning back time was an ability only Cheon-ma could perform within this Heavenly Demon Grand Vault.
Cheon-ma, who had regressed dozens of times, must have accumulated an immense amount that needed to be remembered. He could not pass it all to his successors.
So Cheon-ma created the Cheonma Jibow, leaving behind his martial arts, will, and power. And to his successors, he passed only the memories of failures to avoid repeating the same mistakes, along with the goals, plans, and will he deemed most important.
“Cheon-ma, do you remember your parents?”
“I forgot long ago.”
He had already forgotten why he set such a goal. He likely could not even remember his own name.
His martial arts had remained unchanged for centuries. One might say he never touched his memories of his original martial techniques.
He neither created new martial arts, modified them, nor accepted other martial arts.
Perhaps he lacked the leisure for it, had no inclination, or had no reason.
After unifying the world, ascending to the position of Cheon-ma, and gaining the ability to turn back time, he believed all his defeats were due to the will of heaven.
To Cheon-ma, martial prowess no longer held significance.
He was already formidable, already the Heavenly Demon.
Whenever someone appeared who might surpass him and threaten defeat, he simply rewound time.
His defeats stemmed not from insufficient martial skill, but solely from fate itself blocking his path forward.
Cheon-ma was merely a phantom shackled to the past.
The countermeasures researched by the Jegal Family, the abilities of the Golden Eyes, the spacing more suited to the dagger’s mobility than the long sword, the Baek Li Family swordsmanship specialized in evading and redirecting blades.
These interwoven elements ultimately prevented Cheon-ma’s blade from claiming my life.
Cheon-ma swung his sword downward with honest directness. The trajectory was easier to block than evade, so I naturally parried.
Crash—!
Cheon-ma retreated by the distance his blade’s internal energy carried him. A deliberate maneuver to create separation.
“The Jegal Family has been wasting effort on useless things.”
“Just say it. You can’t kill me.”
Smoke had filled the cave chamber without my noticing. I regretted being unable to read Cheon-ma’s expression through it.
In that instant, the smoke scattered as a black sword aura descended upon me like a tiger pouncing to crush its prey.
I couldn’t discern the exact technique, but I instinctively knew that even a fingertip grazing that aura would drain my internal energy entirely.
I hastily gathered energy to block, and in the moment the aura was momentarily halted, I withdrew my body.
Crash—!
The ground where the palm strike landed caved inward. Cheon-ma immediately sent another aura toward where I had been retreating.
‘Unable to overcome him with the blade, so now it’s a contest of auras?’
I was at a disadvantage.
Cheon-ma possessed an intact dantian and internal energy accumulated over several decades. I couldn’t fathom how many lives he had claimed to amass such power.
‘If one accumulates internal energy to that degree through the Absorption Demonic Art, shouldn’t they fall into demonic obsession?’
Yet Cheon-ma, sitting at the apex of demonhood, controlled his internal energy in a manner incomparable to those who achieved success through crude absorption techniques.
I was someone who wielded natural energy without a single dantian.
And Cheon-ma too could wield natural energy.
In a direct clash of internal forces, I could only be pushed back.
After several exchanges of auras, finally—
With a sound like compressed air bursting outward, Cheon-ma seized my left palm as if he had been waiting for this very moment.
“…!”
I felt Cheon-ma’s Absorption Demonic Art activate, as if he had been anticipating this instant all along.
I deployed the same Absorption Demonic Art in response.
My right hand, gripping the dagger, moved toward Cheon-ma, but being able to evade his attack didn’t mean I could strike him.
After dozens of exchanges, my other hand was inevitably drawn into contact as well.
From that point onward, we were locked in a pure contest of Absorption Demonic Arts.
Had the Righteous Faction witnessed this, they would have recoiled in horror, calling it a battle of demons.
Internal energy flowed toward me, then pulled toward Cheon-ma, oscillating back and forth before being drawn more forcefully toward the stronger side.
Cheon-ma’s expression had never wavered once from the beginning until now.
As if he had orchestrated this situation from the start, as if this outcome was inevitable.
How much time had elapsed?
Cheon-ma closed his eyes and spoke.
It was a voice that seemed to transmit directly into my mind. Similar to sound transmission, yet distinctly different.
[You endured well. You did your best until the very end, so go in peace. I suspect you will remain in my memory for quite some time.]
“….”
I held my silence without opening my mouth.
As my reddened vision gradually returned over time, and more than half of the Cheonma Jibow’s power flowed into Cheon-ma, the force that had been drawing me in suddenly stopped.
Cheon-ma’s eyes snapped open.
[What have you done!]
Bewilderment colored Cheon-ma’s voice. It was the second emotional shift since entering this place.
This time, I opened my mouth.
“Don’t you understand?”
“….”
I smiled brilliantly.
“It’s the poison you created.”
Pale smoke filled the entire cave chamber. Smoke saturated with inner energy poison.
Jeggal Hwa-mu’s folding fan had several mechanisms, and he typically carried various poisons within it. This time, it contained the inner energy poison he had recreated.
At first, I considered using the fan as a weapon to poison him. But my opponent was Cheon-ma. The moment I scattered anything, he would notice.
So what I chose instead was to infuse the inner energy poison into the smoke.
The moment I entered, I made the inner energy poison release from the fan, threw it into the brazier, and blocked the flow of smoke escaping through the hole where light entered from the ceiling.
Only now did Cheon-ma seem to feel the abnormality in his body.
Cheon-ma glared at me with wide, fierce eyes.
[How dare you…!]
Cheon-ma’s will thundered through the space like lightning.
I countered it with a light, casual voice. It was almost playful.
“How does it feel to be poisoned by the very toxin you created?”
Could Cheon-ma truly detoxify this?
Inner energy poison was quite a troublesome toxin. It only became poisonous after absorption if one performed full-body circulation of inner energy.
It was why Baek Li-ui-ran had laced the healing elixir with inner energy poison, and why Baek Li-ui-gang had become ambiguously poisoned.
And Cheon-ma had been poisoned in exactly the same manner as my father.
My father found himself in a situation where he could not know whether the inner energy poison would flare up each time he drew his sword.
If he had drawn his blade before an enemy and the inner energy poison had flared, that day would have been my father’s day of reckoning.
Yet my father never hesitated to draw his blade when the situation demanded it. He entrusted himself entirely to the will of heaven.
My expression became blank, as if I had never smiled, and I spoke.
“Why don’t you try entrusting yourself to fortune as well.”

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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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