The World’s Greatest Junior Martial Brother - Chapter 1

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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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Cheonha Jeil Sajae (Prologue)
I want to kill him, yet I must protect him…
Crunch! Crunch!
Someone trudges firmly through the snowfield.
Blood dripped ceaselessly from the boy’s body, his limbs gashed by terrible cuts and stab wounds, yet his every step remained resolute.
And on his back was a person.
It would have been a grueling journey even alone, yet the boy pressed on while carrying another.
Struggling through the snow that swallowed him up to the knees, past his ankles, he swallowed hard, as if tense.
Gulp—!
At last, the boy forced his way through the howling snowstorm and reached the summit of the pure white mountain, buried in snow on all sides.
“Almost there…”
“Halt!”
Whoosh—.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Countless warriors came plummeting down at terrifying speed!
They were martial artists of every rank and sect, monks and laymen alike, and each one had temples bulging high and eyes that burned so fiercely that none among them could be anything but a master.
Over a hundred warriors, batting aside even the stinging snowflakes, closed in around him, and the boy bit down on his lip.
Someone gazing at him spat out a shocking declaration.
“Where do you think you’re taking the Blood Demon?!”
The Blood Demon!
So the person on his back is the Blood Demon!
The Blood Demon is the strongest demon on earth, worshipped by the Demonic Cult, and the great demon sect that is said to annihilate this world.
A demonic thing whose very existence is a curse.
Yet it was said he had not yet appeared.
“Considering your past service, hand over the Blood Demon and we will let this matter go unrecorded. So then—”
“So then?”
He cut him off.
“You plan to kill him the moment you take him over?”
When no one answered, he shouted in a frenzy.
“If you kill this kid, you might feel better for a moment, but the world will be finished!”
He strained his neck veins, but the others thought otherwise.
“Hmph.”
“What nonsense!”
“Are you really acting like this because of some baseless pulp nonsense?”
Unbelievable.
“Of everyone in this world, I’m the one who most wants to kill the Blood Demon! Me! Do you know how much this bastard has done to me?!”
He stamped his foot and yelled.
“He even took my life…!”
Pouring out his heated argument, he studied the warriors’ reactions.
Damn it. No matter how I explain, not a single word is getting through.
“Dammit!”
Grinding his teeth with a grating sound, he glanced around at all of them and slowly began to back away.
He had no means of taking on all of them. Even the strongest living master could not manage that.
“Ah, seriously! If this kid dies, the world’s going to end!”
When he shouted, the warriors exchanged glances with one another.
―Words won’t do it, it seems.
―Unfortunately, we’ll have to use force.
The instant they reached agreement, a commotion broke out at the foot of the mountain.
“Junior Brother!”
“We’re coming!”
“Senior Brother!”
As the reliable senior brother appeared with allies in tow, every warrior’s gaze swung toward them.
In that moment, he launched himself like a flying bird.
“Taaat—!”
Racing toward the cliff, he spotted his target and gathered strength in his toes when a massive palm force came hurtling at him.
Bang!
I’m the Blood Demon, so why would you, a man of the Righteous Path, protect me?
Because you’re the Blood Demon, and.
……Because I’m a damned Righteous Path man!
Cheonha Jeil Sajae (1)
It was always me who got the short end of the stick.
“You only remember you’re my master when you need something.”
His small hands fussed over his master’s armor as the disciple grumbled.
“You always leave him out in the cold, and then the moment you need him, you come running to Master.”
“The protagonist always makes his entrance at the crucial moment, don’t you know.”
Jin Muok gazed at the setting sun and struck a dramatic pose, and his disciple, Baekri Unhak, stuck out his tongue.
‘I don’t think that’s right.’
“What do you mean, it isn’t right!”
Jin Muok whipped his head around and jabbed a finger at him, and Baekri Unhak jolted, caught red-handed with his thoughts.
Jin Muok could read people like a fortune-teller.
“There’s some scheme the Demonic Cult is cooking up near Sipman Daesan, and I need to know what it is. But Sipman Daesan is the Demonic Cult’s main stronghold, so getting close will be next to impossible.”
Sipman Daesan, the main stronghold of the Demonic Cult.
Even the Righteous Path made a point of steering clear of Sipman Daesan.
Setting aside the fact that it was the Demonic Cult’s sacred ground, the Murim Alliance had no way of knowing what the demons had unleashed there or what mechanisms and formations they had laid out.
“Isn’t a treacherous place like that exactly where a man like me belongs?”
There stood the middle-aged master, lifting his chin with a self-satisfied smirk, and his young disciple, frowning at something that displeased him.
Judging by age alone, their positions seemed reversed, but they were, without question, master and disciple.
The only glimpse of the disciple’s youthful petulance was the wooden doll in his hand.
“All those fancy words, and in the end it’s just a reconnaissance job, isn’t it?”
Baekri Unhak asked, fiddling with the wooden doll.
“Mm.”
“If the Demonic Cult really is scheming something, then sending you and the Baekgwi Squad alone isn’t enough. They should mobilize every mobile squad in the Murim Alliance.”
It was a fair point. Which is why they had told Jin Muok otherwise.
That this was a routine reconnaissance mission.
“The Way of Jianghu has fallen to the dirt.”
As if he had made up his mind, Baekri Unhak poured out his words.
“Entrusting a scouting errand to a master recognized as the strongest martial artist in the Murim Alliance. Does that even make sense?”
Baekri Unhak was only ten years old.
Yet the sharpness in his eyes and his calm, composed analysis made his age seem irrelevant.
“What kind of man is my master?”
Baekri Unhak rattled off without pause.
“You’re the instructor who turned the Baekgwi Squad from the weakest unit in the Murim Alliance into the strongest in no time. And on top of that, while training them, you sent countless fiends terrorizing the Jianghu straight to the netherworld.”
Baekri Unhak clenched his fist, his face blazing with conviction.
“It was you, Master, who cut down Georyeong Heukma, the one who painted the Southwest Martial World red and even toyed with Dang Cheon Nosa, the head of the Sichuan Tang Clan.”
“That bastard was a fool who didn’t deserve his reputation. If anything, keeping that old drunk Dang Cheon company was the real chore.”
Jin Muok snorted loudly, but Baekri Unhak pressed on.
“And that’s not all. It was also you, Master, who quietly disposed of Ak Girin, the notorious lecher who murdered hundreds of women across Gangnam and who slaughtered the elite of the Namgung Family that had been hunting him.”
“That was nothing but a lump of fat, useless for anything except his soul-stealing arts.”
Ak Girin had been a lecher of peak mastery, one even the Namgung Family, the sword’s famed sanctuary, had been unable to handle. And yet, according to Jin Muok, he was a useless lump of fat, good for nothing but his mind-controlling tricks.
“And Jo Chugwang, the evil god who drenched Gangdong in blood…”
“He was an idiot, I tell you.”
Tsk.
As the fearsome epithets Baekri Unhak had been reciting were reduced by Jin Muok to pitiful fools, lumps of fat, and idiots, Baekri Unhak puckered his lips like a duck.
And who were they!
Weren’t they the world-shaking demon lords who had plunged the martial world into chaos!
Yet even those whose infamy was renowned throughout the land seemed to mean little to Jin Muok.
“Anyway, within ten years of entering the martial world, he achieved feats never seen before! Though only in his forties, he stands shoulder to shoulder with the Eleven Overlords who rule the martial world, and that is my master!”
The Eleven Overlords are the great martial artists who rule over the martial world.
Eleven absolute masters, subdivided into One Buddha, Two Demons, Three Emperors, and Five Kings.
Especially the Three Emperors and Five Kings, who are now only in their forties, meaning the martial world will not be free of their influence for decades to come.
And to be on equal footing with such Eleven Overlords.
It was a boastful claim, yet in Baekri Unhak’s gaze as he looked at Jin Muok there was something that went beyond mere conviction.
Jin Muok, the Northern Gale.
A man who had devoted his youth to the military and, at the rather late age of thirty, declared his entry into the Jianghu.
Naturally, no one had paid his movements any mind, and no one had taken notice of him.
Yet once the Demonic Cult’s Southwestern Branch was annihilated at his hand, and six more branches fell under his blade over five years, the entire martial world began to hang on his every move.
The Demonic Cult trembled in fear, while the Righteous Path erupted in cheers.
The emergence of this divine figure brought a storm to the martial world, yet unlike the many Righteous Path followers who cheered him on, the leadership of the Murim Alliance regarded him with disfavor.
A divine being who had slipped beyond the reach of the established order was a burden to them, after all.
Still, unable to withstand the pressure of public opinion, they did invite Jin Muok into the Murim Alliance, but they assigned him to the Eighth Mobile Squad, the weakest of the eight.
The so-called show of goodwill.
Yet in just five years, Jin Muok had turned the 8th Mobile Squad into the strongest combat unit in the Murim Alliance.
A show of strength aimed squarely at the Alliance’s top brass, you could say.
“If you had some solid backing, Master, or had smoothed things over with the brass the way others do, do you think they’d have handed you scouting work like this?”
“Hmm.”
“You never minced words, no matter the rank of the man you were talking to. You never bent your principles, saying yes when it was yes and no when it was no, so the people who run the Alliance have…”
“Frozen you out?”
Before Baekri Unhak could finish, Jin Muok snapped up the words himself and scoffed.
“I’m the one freezing them out, you know?”
Jin Muok spat out the arrogant remark, his lips curling up into a smirk.
Smirk.
“If I put my mind to it, I could wreck every last one of those bastards. But I’m holding back.”
Jin Muok had been lifting his chin with self-assurance, but now his eyes narrowed.
“What’s with that doubtful look on your face?”
“N-no, sir.”
Still fixing his steady gaze on Baekri Unhak, who was mumbling, Jin Muok brought up something unexpected.
“You’re the sort of disciple who knows a lot, so you’ve got a lot you want to eat, huh.”
Jin Muok called Baekri Unhak out with a sly tone, leaning in with a face full of scheming.
Grin.
“You’ve finished the Bukhae Mupa, right?”
“Ah! Well, that…”
“The Bukhae Mupa is the sword form that forms the foundation of our Bukcheon Sinmun, and the starting point of everything. Put that donkey away and pick up your wooden sword.”
“It’s a Qiongqi, sir.”
Baekri Unhak puffed out his cheeks. It was a Qiongqi, plain and simple, yet his master kept insisting it was a donkey.
“And a king, at that.”
It was just a blunt head, a chubby body, and two plain arms and legs. A wooden doll that could pass for either a donkey or a Qiongqi.
So to Jin Muok it was a donkey, and to Baekri Unhak it was a Qiongqi, apparently.
“Fine. Put the donkey away and grab your wooden sword.”
Pouting his lips like a duck, Baekri Unhak set down the wooden doll and stepped forward hesitantly.
“W-well, then.”
When Baekri Unhak struck a clumsy guard stance, Jin Muok put on a wildly exaggerated look of surprise.
Gotcha, you little rascal.
“Aaaah! You’re still like this?”
“Th-that’s… well…”
“You’re researching variant forms because the Bukhae Mupa is too honest a set of moves, is that it?”
Nod, nod.
Baekri Unhak nodded, stealing glances at Jin Muok’s expression.
“I keep telling you, the end of every variation is purity.”
This time Jin Muok spread both arms wide.
“Clever as you are, you still have to learn the standard form before you even think about variations and all that.”
Plucking the wooden sword from Baekri Unhak’s hand, Jin Muok struck the guard stance of the Bukhae Mupa.
“Watch closely. The Bukhae Mupa is…!”
* * *
Swish-clack!
Jin Muok swung once, shattering the momentum that came rushing at him, then lunged forward and reached out with his hand.
Thwack!
Clamping down on the head of the old man, whose face showed disbelief, Jin Muok hoisted him up off the ground.
“J-Jin Muok, you crazy bastard.”
“Flattering me now?”
Jin Muok replied indifferently and tightened his grip on the old man’s skull.
“You’re the last one, Bulyeok Sinma.”
Splat!
The old man’s head burst like a ripe watermelon.
Without so much as glancing at the brain matter scattering through the air, Jin Muok ground his teeth.
“This is what you call a routine scouting mission?”
From the middle slopes of Sipman Daesan, where the elite masters of the Demonic Cult, the Sipdae Hobeop among them, lay in wait, this tiger’s den was hardly a routine scouting assignment.
More than three hundred top-tier masters of the Demonic Cult attacked the moment Jin Muok and the Baekgwi Squad set foot on the mountainside, as though they’d been expecting their arrival.
“The intelligence leaked.”
Grind.
Jin Muok, gazing over the sea of corpses he had made, whipped his body around abruptly.
Right below the Eleven Overlords, they were said to be the Ten Great Protectors of the Demonic Cult.
And Jin Muok had wiped them out.
In the blink of an eye.
Jin Muok tossed aside Bulyeok Sinma’s head and glanced around, grinding his teeth.
“You’re the ones who are insane, not me.”
The first principle of war is to inflict the greatest possible damage on the enemy while keeping one’s own losses to a minimum.
Yet the Demonic Cult’s elite had tossed those basics aside and thrown themselves into a reckless, brutal melee.
And this was the result.
*Hwreureung.*
Though it was supposed to be an ordinary reconnaissance mission, the Baekgwi Squad had split into two groups in case of an emergency.
One would climb the southern slope of Sipman Daesan, the other the northern, and they had agreed to regroup at Chuwolae, the midpoint.
But while the northern unit, led by Jin Muok at the vanguard, had sent the Ten Great Protectors and several hundred elite fighters to the netherworld, not a single member of the southern group had ever joined them.
Not one.
Just as Jin Muok clenched his fist, Ya Un emerged through a dark red mist darker than blood.
“Captain.”
In the end, only Jin Muok, Ya Un, and Ju Pilseong had survived from the Baekgwi Squad.
“Still no word from them, I take it?”
A hollow question.
“With you gone, they would have been facing not only the Demonic Cult’s elite but those… things as well, so the southern group must have…”
Been wiped out!
What could Ya Un possibly mean by “those things”?
Ya Un, normally as cheerful as her light, quick footwork, spoke in a gloomy tone that was utterly unlike her.
“What were they trying to accomplish by bringing in creatures like these?”
The moment her words fell, a sneer rang out from somewhere, clawing across Sipman Daesan.
“A ritual.”
The voice was a familiar one, and Jin Muok turned his head with an expression of disbelief.
“Sima… Yan?”
If the Righteous Path has the Jegal Family, then the Demonic Path has the Sima Family. Sima Yan, the Marshal Zhongda, was the greatest mind of the demonic world, the one who had defended the Demonic Cult against the brilliant strategies of the Jegal Family.
Yet he had supposedly left the Demonic Cult long ago, and no one expected him to show his face here.
“You have been chosen as sacrifices for the birth of a new world. Consider it the greatest glory of your three lives.”
*Chi-chi-chi-chi—.*
A demonic qi came creeping in, slow and steady!
No, this wasn’t typical demonic qi!
He had fought countless battles against the Demonic Cult’s elite and faced many vicious demonic arts, but he had never felt an aura this gloomy and clammy before!
Yes. This wasn’t demonic qi at all, but…
Yin Qi!
“Gah!”
As the surging Yin Qi pressed down on him, Jin Muok clenched his jaw, and from behind Sima Yan a beam of light blazed up so intense it nearly blinded him.
*Kwadadadadadadeuk—.*
A figure slowly rose through the frozen ground.
Though his whole body was hidden by dazzling radiance, Jin Muok sensed at once that the man was a youth in his early twenties.
A being who was human yet not human. Something that was not human, yet human.
The radiant youth, now risen to the heavens, lifted a hand with his eyes closed.
Like a compassionate Buddha.
Then Jin Muok felt a chilling shiver crawl down his spine.
“Ya Un, danger…!”
*Pi—sssh!*
Ya Un was run through the chest and fell lifelessly, her end so futile.
That was the signal, and a rain of Qi Projections scattered outward from the light.
*Pa-pa-pa-pa-pak!*
No screams. No resistance.
The light collected the lives of those left behind as though following a routine procedure, and after Ya Un, Ju Pilseong and the surviving members of the Demonic Cult collapsed in vain.
“Stop it! You bastard!”
The demon did not drench himself in blood.
He did not wrap himself in a chilling bloodlust like a banner, nor did he flick a blood-hungry tongue.
The demon was ordinary.
“Four hundred and four Fighting Spirits! Four hundred and four vengeful spirits!”
Sima Yan, trembling with excitement and wringing his hands, shouted.
“When the Fighting Spirits and the vengeful spirits of four hundred and four meet, the Gusaryeonghyeol, linking Saba and Myeongbu, will open!”
“What the hell are you babbling about?”
“Having passed through the cavern of death!”
Sima Yan glanced back at the youth wreathed in light.
“The Blood Demon has manifested!”
“That’s the Blood Demon?”
The Blood Demon!
The strongest demon on earth, one who craves nothing but blood and death!
So the legend goes.
When the Blood Demon appears, the Demonic Cult throws off its old shackles and gains the true power of demons.
That is why it must never be born.
And yet here it is, the Blood Demon.
Gazing up at the youth floating in the sky, wreathed in light, Sima Yan curled his lip in a sneer.
“The Murim Alliance never dreamed of our Blood Demon Summoning Rite, did they?”
With a triumphant grin, Sima Yan swung the red baton.
“Why do you think I bothered asking them to take care of you lot?”
A bolt of lightning struck Jin Muok’s head.
What?
Jin Muok froze and turned his head, but Sima Yan was too busy spouting his deranged monologue to notice.
“Not that it didn’t work out for us. We received a fine sacrifice as tribute, so it was a win-win, really.”
So that was it.
Jin Muok stared blankly at the slaughter of the youth in light, then lowered his head.
The faces of the Murim Alliance’s top brass flickered past his eyes like a lantern’s turning images.
Lurch. Lurch.
Jin Muok drew slowly closer to the youth of light.
He walked like a man who had lost all will to survive, and there was not a trace of fighting spirit about him.
“So you’re offering your own neck! Fine, but wait your turn! You are the Blood Demon’s final sacrifice!”
As Sima Yan rattled on, Jin Muok glanced back at him and muttered in an offhand tone.
“The Blood Demon’s final sacrifice, huh.”
That means…
Gusaryeonghyeol and the Blood Demon aren’t complete yet!
The moment he grasped Jin Muok’s intent, Sima Yan shouted in a panic.
“Block him! Block him! Don’t let that bastard get near the Blood Demon!”
But Jin Muok had already leapt into the air using the Daebung Jeonsi technique and reached the front of the Blood Demon.
Damn it.
I figured I could take him down any time, you know?
But once again, it was me who got taken down.
“Bukhae…”
If I ever run into those bastards again, I’m definitely going to wreck them.
“…Mupa!”
I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance.
Just as Jin Muok, having achieved unity of sword and spirit, flew in with his blade, the youth’s eyes—which had seemed sealed for eons—snapped open, and a bolt of thunder pierced the two of them.
Flash!

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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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