Ultimate Martial Venerable - Chapter 22

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 22. Heavy Sword Without Blade
Yuk Beom gathered what strength remained in both hands and pulled the sword toward him. The blade was lodged deep within the heap of treasure, quivering only slightly at first. The wounds across his arms and shoulders tore open anew, and his barely recovered Fusion Strong Energy

drained away into the earth below.
He gritted his teeth and straightened his waist.

“Come forth!”

A low rumble.
At last the heavy sword came free. Its length exceeded four feet, and the blade’s width approached a foot in itself. The edge bore no ornament whatsoever—crude as a thick iron ingot shaped into a sword’s form.
Yuk Beom could not bear its weight, and the sword’s tip dropped.
Thud!
The ground beneath it cratered, and stone fragments scattered. He had merely lowered the weapon in his hand, yet it struck as though a boulder had fallen.

“What in heaven’s name is this sword forged from……”

Upon the hilt was carved a faint Yin-Yang Tai Chi Diagram

that pressed against the flow each time he drew power from his Dantian. The pressure was far stronger than when he first hung the Bongryeok Seok around his neck.
O Jin, too, could not tear his gaze from the blade. The moment his hand reached out to touch the sword’s surface, he yanked it back as though he had grasped lightning.

“Xuan Wu Qi-Breaking Rock

!”

O Jin’s voice—usually unshaken—rose with urgency. He wrapped a thin aura around his hand and examined the sword again. As a strand of Fusion Strong Energy drew near the edge, it split into four threads and scattered.
A blade that bore no sharpness had severed the energy itself.
O Jin slowly traced the hilt. Light bloomed from the dark Yin-Yang Tai Chi pattern, and eight characters rose one by one across the sword’s thick surface.
Heavy Sword Without Blade, Great Skill Without Form.

A blade without edge. Greatness requires no artifice.
Yuk Beom could not look away from those words. Each character carried an invisible weight. The enormous sword seemed to press down upon his mind, and within that weight lay a meaning difficult to express in words.

“A fine sword indeed. You have found yourself something truly extraordinary.”

O Jin broke into laughter.

“This single blade could not be exchanged for thousands of Ice Heart Meteorites.”

Yuk Beom gripped the hilt with both hands and barely managed to stand the sword upright.

“To me, it feels only impossibly heavy.”
“That cannot be helped. Touch the hilt again. Does it not feel familiar?”

Yuk Beom ran his palms across the hilt. His eyes widened as he traced the sensation of suppressed energy.

“Bongryeok Seok

!”
“Yes. The entire hilt is Bongryeok Seok. And the blade itself is Xuan Wu Qi-Breaking Rock.”

O Jin made no effort to conceal his amazement.

“Both are materials difficult to reshape. Yet someone has refined them flawlessly into a single sword. This is no ordinary craftsman’s work.”

As his fingertip brushed the blade’s edge, the aura wrapped around his hand scattered into fine threads once more.

“To possess such Qi-shattering power without even a sharpened edge—this is almost certainly a Divine Weapon wielded by a martial master of the highest caliber. These eight characters might well be the Martial Way that its owner pursued his entire life.”

O Jin looked at Yuk Beom.

“Remember this well. If you grasp its meaning, you might inherit not just the sword but the martial way of its former master as well.”

Yuk Beom tried to lift the heavy sword. The blade rose barely the height of a palm before dropping back to the earth.

“Surely you don’t mean for me to use this as a weapon, sir?”
“You don’t have a proper weapon to begin with, do you?”
“It’s not a weapon if I can’t wield it.”
“When you first trained with the Bongryeok Seok, you couldn’t even walk—yet you eventually reached the top of the waterfall.”

O Jin gestured calmly toward the hilt.

“You’ll need to continue compression training anyway. Rather than have me refine another Bongryeok Seok, carrying this Weaponless Heavy Sword will serve far better. Once you can wield it freely, your compression training will be complete.”

Beads of cold sweat gathered on Yuk Beom’s brow. The original Bongryeok Seok had felt like a thousand-jin mountain at first. But this sword—merely grasping it suppressed the very flow of his energy.
Fear and hunger warred in his chest. He had always grown stronger after bearing what he could not bear.
Yuk Beom felt the tremor lingering in his palm. The sword was draining his power, yet strangely he had no desire to let go. Right now he lacked even the strength to lift it. Which was precisely why he wanted someday to transform this weight into his own power.

“I will do it.”
“Good. But first, we must set the Ice Heart Meteorite into the hilt. If we combine the Bongryeok Seok’s compression force with the power to draw in the Qi of heaven and earth, the training effect will be far greater.”

Yuk Beom handed over the Ice Heart Meteorite and the Refined Fire Cauldron he had secured to O Jin. With a single hand, O Jin lifted the Weaponless Heavy Sword with ease. In his grip, the blade moved like a twig—something Yuk Beom had struggled to hold steady with both arms.

Yuk Beom found himself suddenly curious about his master’s prime. If a Flame Practitioner like O Jin could handle such weight so effortlessly, what sort of monster must he have been in the past?
While O Jin prepared for the refinement, Yuk Beom examined the items brought from the dragon’s nest. Apart from the Ice Heart Meteorite and the Weaponless Heavy Sword, most were glittering ore. A few Wild Beast Crystal Cores and some gold coins were scattered among them, but no other divine weapons had appeared.

He abandoned his search and picked up a small creature sprawled in the grass. Its body hung limp, but its eyes remained sharp and clear. The moment it saw Yuk Beom, it bared its teeth and growled low.

“Don’t worry. I have no intention of killing you. Truth be told, this is the second time I’ve been helped by you.”

Yuk Beom pressed the creature’s small head with his finger.

“But tell me—are you truly a dog, or are you a dragon?”

Instead of answering, a loud sound rumbled from its belly.
Grrrowwwl!
Yuk Beom burst out laughing.

“So you were hungry?”

He pulled roasted meat from the Nine Heavens Ring and held it under the creature’s nose. The small beast did not immediately pounce but sniffed the meat cautiously, regarding Yuk Beom with suspicion.
When Yuk Beom ate a piece himself, only then did the creature open its mouth. The meat vanished at a speed barely believable from such a small body. Its weak front legs began to move a little, and soon it was hugging the meat with its two short legs and tearing into it.
After the creature had eaten all the meat, Yuk Beom set it down on the ground.

“If you can move now, be on your way. And don’t go spewing flames everywhere like today. With your strength, you won’t die easily even on Seo Mountain.”

Black flames flickered at the small creature’s mouth. When Yuk Beom raised his finger, the beast actually swallowed the fire and lowered its head.
Yet it did not leave. The creature, which had been staring up at Yuk Beom with those large eyes, suddenly bit his arm.

“What are you doing now? I gave you food—are you trying to eat me?”

The moment Yuk Beom tried to pull his arm free, a strange landscape flooded into his mind.
A cave without a single glimmer of light. A small life huddled alone, and an Earth Spirit Flower
Earth Spirit Flower
Kkamangi survived by drawing in the energy that flowed from it. Then one day, when Yuk Beom cleared away the stone slab and took the flower, the creature could finally leave the cave.
But the wild beasts in the forest were weak and thought nothing of a creature so strangely formed—not even worth eating. They kicked it and tore at it with their teeth, played with it for a long while, and then sent it back with barely a breath of life remaining. Each time its wounds healed, another wild beast would appear.
The small creature fled and hid, wandering across Seo Mountain. Eventually it clawed its way up a smooth cliff face and crawled into the nest of a Six-Winged Celestial Dragon. It fell countless times, only to climb back up again. In the gaps when the celestial dragon was away, it scavenged and ate crystal cores to survive, and as that strength accumulated, it learned to breathe black flames.
Yuk Beom saw that memory as his own. The pain of being cast aside came through whole, as did the loneliness of crouching in rocky crevices with a starving belly.
What surfaced last was the single piece of warm meat Yuk Beom had handed to it just moments before—the first kindness the small creature had ever received since coming into the world.
Kkamangi’s memories were sharper than words. Yuk Beom understood now why the creature had refused to let go of the Ice Heart Meteorite. In that cave where it had survived on crystal cores, that stone and the treasure were everything it needed to live. Since he had tried to take it from the creature, of course it had revealed its fangs.
Thick tears fell from the small beast’s eyes. Whether it felt Yuk Beom’s own emotion, its tiny body trembled faintly.

“You really have been stubborn about staying alive, haven’t you?”

The small creature nodded desperately.
Yuk Beom reached down and stroked its head.

“They say once is chance, twice is fate. Come with me. I cannot promise to feed you the finest things every day, but I swear you’ll never go hungry for roasted meat.”

The creature nodded vigorously again.
Yuk Beom pulled out another piece of meat. This time he sat beside it and they shared the meal together.
To him, it was merely the moment he took in a wild beast. But to the small creature, it was the first moment it had somewhere to return to.
Half a month later.
Two people and a small creature walked the forest paths of Seo Mountain.
O Jin had already refined the Ice Heart Meteorite into the hilt of the Weaponless Heavy Sword. The Yin-Yang Tai Chi Diagram, once dead and black, now gleamed with an icy blue light.
Of the dozens of pounds of Ice Heart Meteorite, only a small fragment remained in the sword’s hilt. Yuk Beom had been disappointed at first, but changed his mind once he felt the effect.
The hilt drew in Heavenly and Earthly Force

and transformed it into refined energy, which then flowed bit by bit into Yuk Beom’s meridians as he carried the blade. Because his training combined Strong Energy and Original Qi, he needed far more power than most. The Weaponless Heavy Sword with the Ice Heart Meteorite supplied what he lacked.
The problem was the weight.
With each step, Yuk Beom had to pause. When he tried to straighten his back, the sword pressed down on his shoulders; when he lifted his foot, it left a deep impression in the earth.
Beside him, the small creature stood on its hind legs and walked much faster. From time to time it would glance back at Yuk Beom and bare its teeth in a way that, no matter how he looked at it, seemed like mockery.
O Jin observed the creature with interest.

“How did you manage to get that thing to follow you? It looks like a dog, but there’s dragon blood mixed in.”
“A real dragon? The more I look at it, the more it seems like a dog.”
“It’s a hybrid. Looks like dragon blood and canine blood flow together in it.”

Yuk Beom laughed.

“How can a dragon and a dog have offspring? They’re different sizes, aren’t they?”
“You’ve seen a Dark Armored Dragon Turtle and still you question it? Dragons and turtles were possible—why wouldn’t a dog be?”

Yuk Beom had no answer. The small creature, whether it understood they were talking about it, wagged its short front legs enthusiastically.
O Jin asked again.

“So what did you use to tame it?”
“A single piece of roasted meat.”

This time it was O Jin who stopped walking.

“Just that?”
“Just that.”
“The Flame Practitioners who’ve devoted their whole lives to training wild beasts would faint hearing this. Have you decided on a name?”

Yuk Beom looked down at the black fur and round eyes.

“Since it’s all dark-colored, I’d like to call it Kkamangi.”
“You’ll call it Kkamangi even if it grows to be a dragon a hundred feet long?”
“For now it’s small and dark, isn’t it?”

Yuk Beom made a gesture.

“Kkamangi, come here.”

The small beast darted over and bounded onto Yuk Beom’s head. Already bowed under the sword’s weight, his knees buckled further still.
O Jin exhaled slowly.

“Master and beast alike—they’ve found their perfect match.”

That night, Kkamangi perched beside the Refined Fire Cauldron. Following O Jin’s gestures, the creature raised and lowered the black flames, cooking the meat and medicinal herbs within the pot.
Yuk Beom set the Weaponless Heavy Sword across his knees and stared in bewilderment.

“Master, is this the teaching you meant—how to roast meat?”
“A cultivator who wastes time on hunting and cooking will never master the Way. Since you have a creature skilled with fire, let it handle such tasks. Kkamangi, the flame’s too strong.”

The creature promptly dampened the blaze.
Yuk Beom’s gaze returned to the blade. Eight characters still remained inscribed on the sword’s surface.
Heavy Sword Without Blade

, Great Skill Without Form

.
Since the day he’d obtained the Weaponless Heavy Sword, he’d gazed at these words whenever he found a moment. The meaning seemed to hover just within reach, only to slip away the moment he tried to grasp it. But today was different.
The sounds around him faded slowly into silence.
In his mind’s eye, a figure lifted the heavy sword. There were no elaborate footwork, no complex flourishes. The blade merely swept across once, sideways.
That was all.
Yet before that simple lateral cut, heaven and earth seemed to cleave as one. There was no way to block it, no way to escape. Everything the sword passed through shattered without exception.
Yuk Beom jerked awake, cold sweat drenching his body. O Jin was standing close beside him.

“What did you see?”
“A single swordstroke, Master.”

Yuk Beom steadied his ragged breathing and fixed his gaze upon the first character.
Heavy

.
The brush strokes of the character and the trajectory of the heavy sword he’d just witnessed overlaid one another perfectly.
Now he understood.
The sword’s former master had not simply left behind words.
He had concealed his art within the characters themselves.
If one stroke lay hidden within the first character,
what treasures might sleep within the remaining seven?

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————