The Legend of Red Cloud - Chapter 112

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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 112. A Foolish Plan
At first, Ryu had been startled and flustered, struggling to restore things to how they were before, but once he confirmed it was impossible, his interest shifted.
He wanted to understand why this sudden change had come upon him.
Eventually, he began to examine his own interior, where the wind flowed.
In truth, ever since his martial power had been sealed, he’d been unable to perceive what lay within himself.
Though the word “perceive” was used, it really meant feeling the path along which his martial power flowed.
So without martial power, he couldn’t feel that at all.
But as he followed the sensation of wind flowing through him, he found he could now observe his inner self just as he did when sensing martial power.
What was remarkable was that the wind flowing through Ryu’s interior actually moved just like martial power would.
‘Move like martial power!’
The moment he grasped this, a glimmer of hope kindled within him.
Following that hope, he immediately guided the wind as if it were martial power, and it began to flow along his meridians according to his will.
He suppressed his excitement and carefully drew it toward his dantian, but as expected, the dantian sealed by the Blood Shadow Demon Lord didn’t budge an inch.
His hope shattered, and as his excitement faded, cold despair settled into Ryu’s heart.
Perhaps it was because of that despair.
The moment his Wind Practice ceased, the torrent of wind energy that had flooded through Ryu’s body scattered and dissipated entirely.
“If only I could awaken my dantian with that energy—or even just contain it anywhere at all…….”
Muttering in frustration, Ryu felt the cold wind of the mountain peak brush across his entire frame.
The whole mountain was filled with the cool, crystalline wind that had been flowing through his body.
Ryu’s eyes suddenly widened, lamenting the waste.
One of the passages contained within the Wind Scripture had come to him in an entirely different light than how he’d interpreted it all this time.
“The wind is of nature; thus one must summon the wind as one’s own.”
Until now, he’d interpreted the passage as: “The wind belongs to nature, so keep it near when you need it.”
But now…….
“The wind is of nature; thus when needed, summon it and make it your own.”
Speaking the words as he understood them, Ryu hastily called upon the wind according to the Wind Scripture’s incantation.
The wind summoned in this way flooded through his body once more like a torrential surge.
Drawing upon that wind as martial power, Ryu deployed the first move of the five-move Wind Blade sequence contained in the Wind Scripture using his bare hand.
Slice!
With an empty gesture, the air split apart with a chilling sound.
Eyes wide with shock at what he’d created, Ryu hastily drew Han-ul from its sheath.
He intended to properly execute the Wind Scripture’s martial technique, the Wind Blade.
After steadying his breath and moving the blade, what Ryu executed was the One Wind Slash—a technique that cuts through anything in its path with a single wind.
The One Wind Slash, which corresponded to the first move of the five-move Wind Blade and had been completely beyond his reach until now, flowed out with remarkable ease.
Slice!
Riding the blade of Han-ul, the wind tore forth in wild torrents, space itself splitting with a chilling sound.
For a moment, he felt the space between this side and that side cleave apart.
He wondered if he’d misperceived.
Beyond seven or eight paces away, the trunk of a massive old tree was severed cleanly.
It stood precisely at the edge of the space he’d felt split asunder.
Scarcely had he registered this wonder before Han-ul, swung again, cleaved through another tree.
Again, it was positioned exactly at the boundary of the space he’d felt tear apart.
After that, Han-ul, wielded in a frenzy by Ryu, wrought destruction upon dozens of massive trees near the mountain peak, their trunks severed in a single stroke each.
Ryu stood motionless, staring blankly at the scene he’d created.
From the center of the peak, without moving an inch, he’d felled trees at distances ranging from mere paces to ten paces away.
And these were no scrubby undergrowth—they were ancient giants so vast that an adult man couldn’t wrap both arms around them.
It was work that would have been difficult even with intact martial power, yet he’d accomplished it with stunning ease.
Even in the days when his martial power had been whole, achieving such results would have left his dantian completely drained by now.
Yet despite deploying the One Wind Slash dozens of times, each consuming a staggering amount of wind energy, his body remained flooded with wind energy just as torrential as before.
That made sense—he wasn’t drawing upon the limited reservoir of a human dantian, but upon the wind that nature itself held.
If that were the case…….
“Nature itself is my dantian!”
Ryu stood with his mouth hanging open.
***
Upon returning from the Yucheon Cheol-ga, Yun Yeo-ok gazed at the empty chair by the window.
Ryu, who had said he was going to the mountain to practice before she left, still hadn’t returned.
“Should I tell him……that his Wind Practice or whatever is pointless?”
As Yun Yeo-ok muttered sadly, her eyes widened.
A familiar energy was approaching, but something about it seemed unstable.
Bang!
Yun Yeo-ok, peering out from the doorway, caught sight of Ryu practically crawling into the guest quarters and bolted barefoot toward him.
“What—what on earth happened!”
She rushed to him with alarm written across her face, steadying him as though he might collapse, and Ryu managed a sheepish smile.
“I was just… having too much fun. Got a little carried away.”
Yun Yeo-ok, confused by his state, pressed him for an answer as he struggled to finish his thought.
“Too much fun? What on earth are you talking about?”
“The Wind Practice… it was just too good. Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
Even on the brink of collapse, he laughed with such abandon that it was genuinely infectious. That was why she couldn’t help but marvel at him.
‘I can’t explain this,’ she thought.
Ryu, oblivious to her musings, let himself be led into his room, and despite barely being able to keep himself upright, he kept laughing—laughing at something only he seemed to understand.
The truth was that Ryu had been thrilled by the manifestation of the One Wind Slash, the first technique of the Wind Scripture.
That excitement had driven him to test this technique as well—the Slash Wave.
Gripping Han-ul in one hand and Tasharah in the other, he had traced waves across the first strike and split the sea itself with the second, unfolding the Slash Wave technique.
Incomparably greater wind than the One Wind Slash had raced through Ryu’s meridians with wild intensity.
The enormous wind pressure had gathered in the first strike, even shattering space itself—but the second strike, moving through that fractured space with the immense wind swirling around it, had stalled midway.
The torrent of wind was too vast for Ryu’s meridians to channel without obstruction.
Even meridians that had been flawlessly conducting the prodigious internal energy that had reached the Fire Realm.
Though Ryu’s meridians had grown even sturdier and more resilient since the absorption incident months ago, the wind that pressed beyond their limits had caused them to swell as though they would tear, and that swelling had translated across his entire body into a pain as if he were being ripped apart.
Seized by the terror that one more push would shred his meridians to ribbons, Ryu had hastily released the wind and abandoned the technique’s execution.
Though the Slash Wave technique had failed to manifest, one thing became crystal clear.
The Wind Scripture arts were achievable.
And Ryu had also confirmed that each technique required progressively greater amounts of wind.
The wind needed for the second technique exceeded that of the first by well over double.
If the second technique demanded this much, he could scarcely imagine what the third, fourth, and fifth techniques would require.
Yet impossible was not a word that came to mind.
Even as the second technique failed partway through, the wind that answered Ryu’s call had been abundant enough.
Whenever Ryu summoned it, the wind came in the quantities he needed.
The real constraint lay not in the abundance of wind, but in the width of Ryu’s own meridians through which that wind had to flow.
If wind were a carriage, his meridians needed to be a road wide enough for two, three carriages to pass simultaneously.
For now, that road was far too narrow for this technique to manifest.
So his meridians would have to expand.
The method was straightforward.
Gradually increase the volume of wind and slowly widen the passages.
It was the same principle as cultivating internal energy to expand one’s meridians.
Nothing unfamiliar, nothing impossible.
Besides, he had already confirmed that wind moved like internal energy, so there was no reason to fear difficulty.
The only drawback, if it could be called that, was time.
It had taken more than a decade on Saja Plain to build the meridians he now possessed.
To double that capacity would require….
‘It’s fine. I survived even when there was no path forward. Now that one exists, what’s a little time?’
Though only the first technique could be executed for now, Ryu felt grateful simply to wield martial arts again in earnest.
And what was learned this way would not fade when he left this place.
Once he completed his mission, unsealed his dantian, found Dong Pil and the Fire Realm internal energy, and returned to Saja Plain, he could still use it.
It meant he would stand again through countless battles.
All those hours when he’d had to rely on physical strength alone, terrified his internal energy would run dry mid-combat, he would then face with laughter.
Because he could call upon wind as readily as he once had internal energy.
And with that, he could protect far more comrades through far more battles.
That was enough.
The rest could wait—save only the hundred days of his mission, there was nothing urgent.
At the mere thought of it, laughter kept bubbling up from Ryu’s lips.
Because he could now ease the path forward for his comrades, for their tomorrow and their future.
Watching that laughter, Yun Yeo-ok’s eyes sank deep with sorrow.
***
The morning after the night Ryu had stumbled back from his Wind Practice, bruised and spent, Yucheon Chu-hon arrived at Mun Chang-so’s house just after dawn, dragging a disreputable-looking man behind him.
It was a visit born of the plan Yun Yeo-ok had devised the previous night.
“Who is this?”
Ryu, whose meridians and muscles had been soothed back to vitality after a night spent exhausting and startling them through Wind Practice, posed the question to Yucheon Chu-hon.
“A thief, sir.”
“A thief…? Surely not…!”
“Yes, sir. The very same one your father pursued alongside Gae Ko.”
“Commander… sir?”
Seeing Jeok Sa’s bewildered expression, Yucheon Chu-hon noticed Yun Yeo-ok standing behind him with alarm written across her face, and he began stammering incoherently.
“Ah! I, did I really call you that? That is… Ah! Mun Chang-so is the lady’s husband. Isn’t that right? I meant her husband.”
Yucheon Chu-hon, whose face wore the expression of ‘see, I explained that well’, looked toward Yun Yeo-ok standing behind Jeok Sa—only to have his complexion drain of color.
It was because he’d met Yun Yeo-ok’s gaze directly: her eyes narrowed to slits, radiating a lethal chill.
—You bastard. Are you trying to get me killed?
The telepathic message struck at him with all the menace of her glare, and Yucheon Chu-hon hastily averted his eyes, dropping his head.
Then Jeok Sa’s voice reached his ears.
“I understand what you meant, but let’s avoid that way of addressing him. Please.”
“Y-yes. Of course. Right, I shouldn’t have called him that. Yes, I understand. I won’t do it again.”
Yucheon Chu-hon startled as though someone had jabbed his ribs, responding with such eagerness that Jeok Sa found himself thinking what an unpredictable character this man truly was, and he continued.
“In any case, this man’s condition suggests he’s been interrogated. Did you manage to learn anything?”
Yucheon Chu-hon answered swiftly at Jeok Sa’s question.

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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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