Third-rate Martial Family Becomes the Best Under Heaven - Chapter 347

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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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Third-rate Martial Arts Family, Greatest Under Heaven – Episode 347
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo poured wine for the Cheonma.
Drip, drip, drip. Crimson droplets fell into the glass like blood.
“Highest One, surely you do not discard a card so easily?”
The wine glass rose and was grasped by a hand of shadow given form.
As the pitch-black darkness receded, the Cheonma’s form was revealed.
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo gazed upon the Cheonma with entranced eyes.
[I have never regarded it as a card, so I do not concern myself with it.]
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo turned her gaze. Where her eyes fell, the landscape of Samhyeop Chongchae was painted.
Seon rampaging, releasing a blood-red aura.
And the Baek-do-in arrayed against him.
All were visions within the Cheonma’s mind.
Though the method was unknowable, the Cheonma perceived and felt the landscape thousands of li distant, rendering it as a vision and sharing it with her.
“Highest One, you say you have never regarded it as a card, yet you drink wine for the first time in sixteen years.”
[Because I have never regarded it as a card, wine calls to me.]
Her Highest One consumed nothing.
He transcended the limitations of sustenance that all living creatures between heaven and earth naturally possessed.
Therefore, for the Cheonma, eating and drinking were merely diversions.
“Susa Jaeseol spent two hundred years perfecting that card. How could this girl understand the thoughts of one who has never regarded anything as a card?”
The corners of the Cheonma’s mouth curved upward.
[It was when I harbored doubts about the Way. As fortune would have it, chaos arose, so I devoted myself to the Five Pecks of Rice Way and created the Way of the Celestial Master.]
It was a shocking revelation.
The Five Pecks of Rice Way, which some regarded as the source of Daoism itself, had transformed into the Way of the Celestial Master through the Cheonma.
Moreover, the founder of the Way of the Celestial Master was the renowned Jang Cheon-sa.
A Daoist Immortal more celebrated in ideology than even Jang Sam-bong was, in truth, the Cheonma.
[That child is merely a remnant. I have never regarded it as a card.]
It was a failed remnant at that.
For the Cheonma had scattered the Five Pecks of Rice Way under the name of Jang Cheon-sa rather than consolidating it into power.
Unlike the Yeokcheon Singyeo, the Illumination of Sun and Moon, and the Blood Heaven Singyeo.
What if the Cheonma had wished to make the Five Pecks of Rice Way into the Five Pecks of Rice Religion?
Susa Jaeseol would have risen to the same position as the leaders of the Illumination of Sun and Moon and the Blood Heaven Singyeo.
…as a fragment of Honeum.
“Still, this girl cannot help but feel regret. So much effort has been invested. And the bestowal of Honeum as well.”
[Do not worry. All things shall proceed according to their natural course.]
Natural course. It was not a phrase the Cheonma, whose very existence defied the natural order, should speak.
Suddenly, Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo harbored such a thought.
What is the natural course for my Highest One?
“Highest One, why do you bestow such excessive power upon Seon?”
The Cheonma’s gaze turned toward Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo.
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo immediately prostrated herself and begged forgiveness.
“The young girl acted rashly. Please forgive this servant who did not know her place.”
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo tore through her own entrails with her fingernails.
The Cheonma’s darkness frosted over, healing the wounds.
From that very fact alone, Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo felt supreme joy.
[Hyeol-nyeo. Do you understand why I do not regard that child as a pawn?]
“Perhaps because he is too insignificant to become even a single piece in the Highest One’s hand? Because Seon was not born under the mandate of heaven.”
[You are wrong.]
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo lifted her head slowly, her expression puzzled as she gazed at the Cheonma.
[A pawn means a tool. I have never made that child into a tool.]
The Cheonma had given Seon so very much.
A child who should never have been able to ascend to heaven came to occupy the first seat among the Cheonmu-sip-jon.
“I resent heaven! I resent it, and resent it again! Why! Why! Why not me!”
A space shrouded in darkness like a curtain.
The Cheonma’s inner landscape stirred, knotting like a response to a young man’s desperate cry.
[People call their innate talent a blessing and beseech heaven for it. I did not wish to miss the chance to become someone’s heaven.]
“Yet, Highest One, if you were to step forward, would not those who regard you as heaven be countless as grains of sand? As the followers of the Three Teachings do.”
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo herself had the confidence to take her own life without hesitation if the order came.
The Cheonma, the sole absolute beneath heaven, was such a being.
[Hyeol-nyeo. You and that child are different. What is martial arts to you?]
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo answered without the slightest hesitation.
“To become a more useful tool, to be held in the Highest One’s grasp.”
Jeol-ae-hyeol-ro—an answer befitting one who had carved even her inner landscape as a warrior solely for the Cheonma.
[Thus you differ. Thus I became that child’s master instead of his owner.]
I could not dare to take the sole Yeokcheon beneath heaven as my master.
But the Cheonma had granted the young Seon the title of teacher.
I gave him strength, taught him martial arts wrapped in the guise of the Taoist lineage, and sought to glimpse his growth.
[He failed to prove himself. That child, despite resenting heaven, could not escape even from me. So he left.]
“How foolish. Had he willingly accepted becoming the Highest One’s slave, you would have accepted him.”
The Cheonma does not refuse those who wish to serve.
Thus Seon is merely a fool who could neither escape nor serve.
Hyeol-hyeol-nyeo thought thus.
“Then why did you send this one to convey the message to such a fool?”
[For the sake of natural order.]
The Cheonma permitted no further dialogue.
He merely drank deeply, gazing upon the end of the Janggang Great War.
‘Son Eun. That child who sought to escape natural order. Now is the time to follow it.’
One reaps what one sows.
Or perhaps, one reaps as much as one sows.
Harvest.
Natural order.

* * *
Martial arts is nothing but the continuous mastery of oneself.
Yet Seon had become an absolute through martial arts, though not entirely by his own strength.
Thus, he inevitably possessed a weakness.
‘Seon is a Cheonmu-sip-jon, yet he depends on his inner energy.’
Even at the Transcendent Pinnacle, one operates primarily through mental imagery and will.
At the level of Cheonmu-sip-jon, one could be considered free from reliance on inner energy.
However, Seon depends on his inner energy.
Because it is artificial, he cannot convert natural essence into inner energy, and when he exhausts his accumulated power, he rapidly weakens.
‘Moreover, even his own power has not achieved unity.’
The foundation of wielding the Five Elements energies?
If he had ascended and unified them himself, there would be no problem.
The first stage of the Leaf Assassin Dragon Formation that triggers collisions of heterogeneous energies would have been meaningless.
All martial arts follow the principle of ten thousand streams returning to one, ultimately becoming unified.
Seon’s martial arts do not follow the principle of unity.
‘That is why I could pierce through. Why I could reach him.’
The moment Yang Hwi drove his blade into Seon’s chest, he poured all his Seonhwa power forward with full force.
He had actually engaged in an inner energy clash against a Cheonmu-sip-jon.
The reason was simple.
The Hwacheon energy that harmonizes all essence beneath heaven, the Seon energy that seeks to guide all things correctly, and even the mental imagery of the Shattered Heaven Divine Seal obtained through ascension.
I was confident that the Seonju Hwacheon power created by unifying these three, though inferior in rank to Seon, would not lose in quality.
‘And on top of that, even the second stage of the Leaf Assassin Dragon Formation.’
Seeing him sculpt dragons from natural materials and command them, his energy must have been depleted.
Thus, what remained for Seon was a handful of energy pooled at the bottom and his own will.
Therefore, the second stage of the Leaf Assassin Dragon Formation was a restriction on his mental imagery.
Seolha, who possessed the Flame Eye and had mastered Heart Sound through ascension.
Dang-gun, who could now handle both energy perception and will perception.
The Jegal family’s expertise in formation techniques, which could even calculate the power of the Upper Dantian thanks to the Hyeonwon Jeondan Divine Art.
Mere formations could not restrict the mental imagery of a Cheonmu-sip-jon, yet this ability was constructed thanks to all three elements combining.
‘I definitely succeeded. I pierced through the gaps in the fractured power, and while his mental imagery was restricted, I definitely destroyed Seon’s interior. But why has everything turned out like this?’
When the interior becomes pulp, one must die.
No matter how much of a Cheonmu-sip-jon, he is still human.
Yet Seon was rampaging.
Spewing forth a blood-crimson energy that corresponded to none of the Five Elements.
Dark and darker still.
It was Honeum—the energy of chaos.
“Everyone, fall back!”
The sense of crisis rings an alarm. If we cannot respond, everyone will die.
‘All my calculations were correct. But why on earth?’
There was no time to think. The chaotic energy spreading in all directions—no, the Murky Heavenly Energy—had undergone a transformation.
Crimson bundles of energy converged on Yang Hwi from every angle.
“Brother!”
“Dodge!”
-Kyiaaaaa!
I pushed the Thousand Responses Divine Technique to its absolute limit, evading the barrage of energy.
Yet the Murky Heavenly Energy moved with relentless speed and persistence, unlike the Five Dragons.
‘Damn it all!’
I’d been cornered. When my senses cleared, there was nowhere to escape, and the Murky Heavenly Energy was bearing down directly before me.
‘Nowhere to… escape!’
Nowhere.
Then could I block it?
No, I couldn’t.
Even if I managed to block it, the force was enough to kill me outright.
Worse still, if I were struck by this energy, it would surely drain both my vital essence and my soul….
“Adu!”
A towering back suddenly shielded me from the assault.
His entire body blazed with the golden radiance of Demon-Slaying Extinction.
The energy of Immovable Adamantine, grounded in the profound principle of Stillness Within Motion.
Prajna Great Power, Golden Light Repels Evil!
But that wasn’t all.
Through the gaps in the net-like bundles of energy, I saw Neung-o charging forward.
Sunbow Sword Technique, Yi the Archer Shoots the Sun!
Adu and Neung-o—my two comrades bound only by the karma of this present life—each took offense and defense.
The crimson energy tore across Adu’s body, and Neung-o’s form plummeted like a kite with its string severed.
“No!”
The bundles of energy recoiled backward.
Like a beast withdrawing its front paws from thorns sprouting from a tree.
Yang Hwi immediately checked Adu’s condition.
“Adu! You foolish bastard!”
It was clearly a critical wound. He could have died on the spot without surprise.
His entire upper body felt as though it had been split open—if Adu hadn’t cultivated the Reverse Tendon Hundred Waters Scripture, he would have died instantly.
Yet Adu laughed.
“Yang Hwi… hehe. I saved you.”
I wanted to curse and scold him, but I couldn’t.
Because Adu lost consciousness after those words.
“….”
I rose quietly to my feet.
I couldn’t even go check on Neung-o’s condition.
He was surely gravely wounded as well.
There was only one way to save them both.
“Seon. I’ll kill you within half a breath.”
A pristine white light began to frost across Yang Hwi’s palm.
Coalescing into a sphere, transforming into an egg.
A Celestial Egg.
‘Treading Heaven.’
The first power gained by inscribing the mental image of the Shattering Heaven Divine Bird.
I wish to reach even unto the heavens themselves.
‘Celestial Orb Harmonized with Heaven.’
The qi of merging all that I possess into singular unity.
I must shape the orb, the Celestial Orb.
Gathering all things beneath the sky into one, no matter the cost.
‘I contain it. I will succeed.’
With a sharp crack, I bit down and swallowed the Celestial Egg.
Beyond the two, the final one for the third—
-Seolha. Full power.
-Yes, brother. I trust you. Together, let us soar.
Chara-rang, chara-ra-ra-rang!
A beautiful melody resonated across my entire being.
-Kee-ahhhhh!
-Kee-ahhhhh!
-Kee-ahhhhh!
Two blades born as wings, devouring the Tai Chi Wisdom Sword and Tai Chi Half Sword.
Added to them, the Thousand-Response Divine Bird that I myself became.
The hawk’s cry vibrated across all directions.
‘I will kill. And thus I will save.’
That alone consumed my thoughts.
I will kill Seon, that mad monster.
And thus I will protect them.
Heaven-Covering One Hundred Eight Swords, Dual One Hundred Eight Transformations of Heaven.
Transformation of Technique Transformed, Hawk’s Sweep Shatters Heaven!

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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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