Ultimate Martial Venerable - Chapter 16

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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 16. Two Roads Become One
The commotion did not last long.
Five days had passed since the Seosan hunting competition ended, and Yuk Beom stood beneath the waterfall once more. The celebrations and the stream of visitors that had filled the past several days had finally dried up. His name was probably still being tossed around in Ganglim Castle, but no voices followed him this deep into the mountains.
Before him there was nothing but the falling water and the sheer face of the cliff.
Yuk Beom drew a deep breath.
Beneath his feet, Original Qi turned into wind. When he kicked off from the rock, his body shot up three zhang into the air. The fierce torrent lashed at his head and shoulders, but the currents gathering at his toes held the empty air up like a solid footing.
Yuk Beom did not use his hands.
He trod on the empty air once, then stepped on the rushing water again. His body rose lightly, like a leaf pushed along by the wind.
Just as he neared the summit of the cliff, the waterfall pouring down from above surged back upward.
Kwaaaah!
Thousands of catties of water gathered into one mass and took the shape of an enormous tiger. Its watery claws raked the cliff face, and from its gaping jaws the roar of the falls rang out like a howl.
Yuk Beom did not flinch.
Yesterday it had been a deer. Today it was only a tiger.
Red flames of the Blazing Gold Body bloomed across his whole body.

“Flame Collapsing Mountain Fist!”

His blazing fist collided head-on with the water tiger.
Kwang!
The tiger’s head burst apart, scattering droplets like a sudden downpour. The recoil pushed his body out over the edge of the cliff, but Yuk Beom drove his right hand deep into the rock.
His five fingers gripped the solid stone face. He gave his body one hard swing, then leapt straight up onto the summit.

“Whew…”

Yuk Beom raked his wet hair back from his forehead.

“This time I really thought I was going to get eaten.”

O Jin stood on a boulder above the falls.

“You say that, yet you threw your fist first.”
“Because I knew it was a shape you’d shaped out of water, Master.”
“And if I hadn’t made it, you would have run away instead?”

Yuk Beom thought it over for a moment, then shook his head.

“I’d have still landed at least one hit.”

A smile spread across O Jin’s face.

“Good. You were faster than yesterday, and the flow of your Original Qi never broke. You may stop the waterfall training here.”

It was the words he had been waiting for, yet Yuk Beom did not brighten. Instead, his eyes dropped to the black stone hanging around his neck.

“So the Bongryeok Seok is finished as well?”
“Hand it over.”

Yuk Beom pulled the Bongryeok Seok off and passed it to O Jin. The pressure that had weighed on his neck and shoulders vanished, and his body felt so light he might have floated into the sky at any moment.
O Jin, however, did not tuck the stone into his robe. He set it on his palm and rolled it a few times, as if weighing it.

“It has become far too light for you now.”
“I’ll take that to mean I won’t be wearing it again.”
“Quite the opposite.”

O Jin answered with perfect composure.

“We’ll refine it again and make it heavier.”

The smile drained from Yuk Beom’s face.

“Could it have been even heavier?”
“The Bongryeok Seok was originally a thing for subduing criminals. What you wore was closer to a toy.”
“Because of that toy, I couldn’t walk for a whole month.”
“Which is why you walk so well now, isn’t it.”

He had no reply to that.
O Jin held out a single white flower, saying he would need more material if he wanted to re-refine the Bongryeok Seok.
The flower was no bigger than a palm, white from stem to petal. Its scent was faint, yet breathing it in too close made his head swim with a strange, almost cloying richness.

“Dragon Saliva Flower.”

It was the spiritual medicine the Mak Family had sent as the stake of the wager.
The next morning, the Mak heirs left the Dragon Saliva Flower and a copy of the Small Annihilation Fist manual at the Yuk Clan’s front gate. The look on their faces was plain enough: they resented having to admit defeat.
Even those weren’t whole.
The Dragon Saliva Flower was mostly used in pills that nurtured the skin and complexion. It was a precious medicine, true, but it did little for Yuk Beom’s cultivation at present.
The Small Annihilation Fist was worse. The manual was incomplete, missing the core oral formulas and the final sequence entirely.
He had expected the Mak Family would never hand over a secret martial art willingly, but he hadn’t thought they would be this blatant about it.
The Jang Family had done even less.
They hadn’t yet offered to hand over the hundred thousand gold coins.

“What do you intend to do with this flower?”
“As a medicine for people, it’s of little use, as you say.”

O Jin lightly brushed a petal with his finger.

“But for a beast, that’s another matter. One whiff of this and they’ll charge at anything without a second thought.”
“So you mean to use it as bait to lure beasts?”
“I’ve strengthened the scent. Plant it in the ground, and every beast within ten li will come racing to it.”

Yuk Beom looked down at the flower in his hand once more.
It didn’t feel like a medicine. It felt like a sachet that summoned disaster.
O Jin went on.

“Your cultivation has begun to touch its ceiling. Fighting people on the martial stage won’t be enough from here on.”

Yuk Beom thought of Mak Un Bi and Jang Wol Ham.
Both had been formidable opponents. Jang Wol Ham in particular, having reached the Inner Gangjing Realm, would not have been easy to defeat had Yuk Beom not taken off the Bongryeok Seok.
Even so, it seemed the fight had not looked like a life-or-death struggle to O Jin.

“So this time you’re really telling me I have to stake my life.”
“Only then will I see what choice you make when you reach your limit.”

O Jin gazed deeper into the mountains of Seosan.

“Find the Ice Heart Meteorite.”

Yuk Beom’s eyes changed.
Several years ago, a small, unknown family had discovered an Ice Heart Meteorite the size of a fist in Seosan. The stone had sold at the Jeongseong Auction House for a price that was hard to believe.

“Isn’t that the sort of thing that could feed an ordinary family for several years, if you found just one?”
“Meteorites don’t fall singly. If only one fragment was found, the rest were most likely devoured by beasts.”

O Jin pointed at the Dragon Saliva Flower.

“Lure them out and kill them, then bring back whatever meteorite remains in their bellies, or their Wild Beast Crystal Core.”

Yuk Beom tucked the Dragon Saliva Flower into the Nine Heavens Ring.

“I’ll bring them back.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Then I’ll show you the results.”

O Jin nodded, looking satisfied, and took out a small cauldron.
Yuk Beom recognized it at once.

“The Culture Fire Cauldron?”
“Now it’s yours.”
“Isn’t this something you use yourself, Master?”
“I don’t need it. For you, it will cut down the time you spend making medicine, and it may even save your life once when you’re in a pinch.”

O Jin explained how to use it.
When you pour your Original Qi into it, the cauldron grows large enough for a grown man to step inside. While making medicine, it steadies the flames and the medicinal power. In danger, you can hide inside it and let it absorb the blow.
Yuk Beom received the small cauldron with both hands.
When he first endured the Purple Heart Heavenly Fire inside the Culture Fire Cauldron, he never imagined he would one day be the one to receive this object.

“I’ll put it to good use.”
“There’s something more important than that still left.”

O Jin’s voice dropped.
He drew an old book from his robe.
Four characters were written on the yellowed cover.
Limitless Evolution Formation.
Yuk Beom did not reach for it right away.
O Jin’s manner was not what it usually was. He wasn’t at ease the way he was when judging a medicinal recipe or a martial technique. His fingers gripping the book were tensed, just slightly.

“Before you take it, I’ll ask you one last thing.”

O Jin looked Yuk Beom straight in the eye.

“Are you really set on the Dual Cultivation of Qi and Martial Arts?”
“I’ve already made up my mind.”
“If you chose only one, the Martial Way or Qi Refining, your talent could carry you to great heights. But if you walk both paths together, you may end up mastering neither and waste your whole life.”

Yuk Beom did not hesitate.

“I didn’t become your disciple to give up one path and take the easy road.”

Satisfaction and worry flickered across O Jin’s eyes at the same time.

“No one in this world has ever mastered this Limitless Evolution Formation properly.”
“But someone created it, didn’t they?”

A brief silence settled over them.
O Jin spoke.

“It was me.”

Yuk Beom looked from the book to his master and back again.
O Jin slowly rolled up his sleeve.
Down to the elbow, his arm was no different from any thin old man’s. But near the elbow, veins stood out and knotted together into a dark red tangle.
The skin above that was gray, like a corpse with no blood flowing through it.
Yuk Beom’s expression hardened.

“Is this the backlash from the Limitless Evolution Formation?”
“The Gangjing of a martial artist and the Original Qi of a Flame Practitioner are fundamentally different in nature. I forced Gangjing into a body already set in the path of Qi Refining, and the two forces never fully merged.”

O Jin lowered his sleeve.

“My Meridians are blocked, and the flow of my Blood Vessels has twisted out of course. Even now, my strength is slowly draining away. In the end, my Dantian will collapse and my body won’t be able to bear it.”

Yuk Beom’s hand clenched tight.

“Is there no way to cure it?”
“There is, but the medicinal ingredients required are far too rare. I’ve wandered the realm for twenty years and haven’t managed to obtain a single one.”

O Jin spoke as if it were someone else’s problem.

“Avoid fights and you can hold on for decades more. So don’t look like a man who’s about to die this very moment.”

Yuk Beom could not find an answer.
The calmer his teacher’s face grew, the more clearly he felt the weight of the years the man had endured alone.
O Jin moved his hand as though to take back the book.

“You may still give up on this.”

Yuk Beom seized the other end of the book.

“Master, you are not the sort of man who would hand this to me in order to harm me.”
“Are you certain?”
“Isn’t it because you’ve discovered why you failed that you’re passing this on to me?”

O Jin’s eyes brightened.

“Exactly. When I began, my body had already been completed as a Flame Practitioner. I then tried to fit a Martial Artist’s Strong Energy into it, so the two forces were bound to collide.”

From the tips of his fingers, a milky-white current rose.
Unlike ordinary Original Qi, this current wavered like a flame, yet within it a tightly condensed force throbbed like a pulse, while outward it spread a flow that drew in the surrounding wind and moisture.

“But you are different. You have been cultivating both Strong Energy and Original Qi together, before either was complete. If you merge the two forces into one from the moment they take shape, you can avoid the same backlash I suffered.”

O Jin flicked his fingertip.
A thread-thin current dropped beneath the waterfall.
Kwa-ang!
With a roar that shook the entire mountain, the waterfall burst apart in its middle. The water sprayed in every direction, then curled back like dozens of whips and lashed at the rocks around them.
Yuk Beom caught his breath.
Within that one small force lay both the explosive power of a Martial Artist and the transformative nature of a Flame Practitioner.

“A force that fuses a Martial Artist’s Strong Energy with a Flame Practitioner’s Original Qi into one.”

Heat that he could not hide seeped into O Jin’s voice.

“I call this Fusion Strong Energy.”

Yuk Beom could not tear his eyes from the mist scattering into spray.
The force was both powerful and unbound. It shattered stone with a fist while at the same time altering the flow of the water itself.
It was not a matter of choosing one of two paths.
It was a matter of joining the two paths to forge one that no one had yet walked.

“Teach me, please.”
“Will you not regret it?”
“I will never regret it.”

For a long while, O Jin studied his disciple’s face, then set down the Wuji Yeonshin Formula.

“Until you create your first Fusion Strong Energy, I will stay by your side and watch. I will not let you repeat the failure that happened in my own body.”

Yuk Beom received the book with both hands.
As he turned the cover, bold, forceful characters filled his view.
From Wuji comes Taiji, and from Taiji the Liangyi divides.
From the Liangyi arise the Sixiang, and from the Sixiang the Bagua unfolds, and from the Bagua all Myriad Things begin.
Yuk Beom settled himself down atop the waterfall.
The water that had scattered flowed back together and ran on down the cliff face, and the mountain wind stirred the hem of his soaked robe. He read the first line again.
Until now, he had been standing between two paths.
Now it was time to make those two into one.

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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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