Chapter 316: The Northern Army
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 316: The Northern Army
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The disciples of the Qingcheng Sect began hammering away at the iron gate with all their might.
"We’re almost there! Just a little more effort!"
Cheongsong, who was leading the hammering at the front, shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Understood, Sahyeong!"
The Qingcheng disciples shouted back in unison.
After some time had passed...
Creeeak—Crack!
Cracks finally spiderwebbed across the iron gate, and fragments began to fly.
"It’s done!"
As the iron shards scattered, Cheongsong let out a triumphant roar.
Immediately, the Emei disciples, their heads cleanly shaven, pulled up carts and began gathering the iron pieces.
"Once the carts are full, move out immediately! Don't try to do it all at once. Even if it’s tedious, make two or three trips to stay safe!"
Seol-hyang raised her voice toward the Emei disciples who were busy collecting the fragments.
"Understood, Sajeo!"
The disciples answered her in one voice.
"Hmm."
Watching them, Neung So-hwa nodded with a satisfied smile. She felt the junior sisters were very well-trained in showing proper respect to their seniors.
"We still have a long way to go, Sajeo."
Unlike Un-hye, who was currently slacking off right next to her.
"Aren't you going to help pick up the fragments?"
"Oh, come on, Sajeo. Think of how many years I've been eating temple food..." Un-hye replied with a sly expression.
"What does that have to do with anything? Go help them, now!" Seol-hyang scolded her firmly.
"But you aren't working either, Sajeo!" Un-hye snapped back, sounding offended.
"I hold a position equivalent to management and supervision, so it's fine."
"Is there really anything to supervise once the carts are taken away?"
"Don't you talk back to me!"
"See! You have nothing to say, so you're just losing your temper!"
"..."
Seol-hyang fell silent at Un-hye’s rebuttal. To be honest, she was slacking off. Despite her title as a supervisor, she wasn't actually doing anything. She was just passing the time by shouting occasionally from a nice, sunny spot.
"Let's just rest together. How about making me the Assistant Supervisor?"
"There's no such thing!"
"We can just make the position now. What's the problem?" Un-hye looked at Seol-hyang with an expectant face.
"Hmm."
Seol-hyang looked at Un-hye, appearing to be in deep thought. Then, she spoke.
"I've decided against it."
"Why?!" Un-hye asked, feeling wronged.
"You're as shameless as I am, and I don't like that," Seol-hyang stated bluntly.
"What kind of reason is that?!"
"It's reason enough for me!"
"It's unfair that you play around while making everyone else work!"
"I told you, I'm not playing! I'm supervising to make sure no one gets hurt!"
"If that's the case, you should follow them all the way to where they're taking the carts!"
"Do you even know what it's like on the front lines? Do you?!"
"I don't know about the front lines, but I know better than anyone that you're slacking off, Sajeo!"
"...But I don't want to work!"
Under Un-hye’s repeated nagging, Seol-hyang finally revealed her true feelings.
"When are we going to finish breaking, melting, and reforging that massive iron gate?!" Seol-hyang pointed at the giant gate lying on the ground.
"We have no choice! We're the ones who broke it!" Un-hye argued back, raising her voice.
"I didn't break it, though?"
"Well, our group did."
"This is so ridiculous! We aren't under an Emperor, so why is there guilt by association?"
"The Ice Palace Master is basically the Emperor of the North Sea. She's the ruler here."
"Even so, fixing an iron gate takes way too much time."
Seol-hyang spoke with a pained expression. She hated this. Even though she hadn't personally broken it, they all had to pitch in to fix the gate.
"But thanks to that, didn't we get into the Ice Palace safely?"
"That's why I'm staying put and working, isn't it?"
"You seem to be complaining a lot for someone who's 'working.'"
"Don't you think that if they had that much power, it would have been less of a hassle to just cut through the wall instead?"
"Well, that's true."
Un-hye nodded in agreement. Indeed, if someone was skilled enough to slice through a gate reinforced with Cold Iron in a single blow, breaking a stone wall would have been much easier to repair later.
"Still, don't you think it's amazing?"
"What is?"
"That man, Sword Man. He cut through a gate mixed with Cold Iron in an instant. Just what kind of realm has he reached to pull off something so shocking?"
Un-hye spoke with sparkling eyes and a dazed expression. She was a swordsman herself, so she couldn't help but be in awe of what Sword Man had achieved. With just a light swing, a gate reinforced with Cold Iron had been sliced clean in half. She couldn't even fathom what level of mastery was required to display such perfect swordsmanship.
"He is certainly a man of terrifying cultivation," Seol-hyang agreed, nodding.
"That's surprising."
"What is?"
"It's the first time I've seen you acknowledge someone like that, Sajeo."
"What are you talking about? I acknowledged Hero Jang, too."
"That's just because you're wearing rose-colored glasses."
"Rose-colored glasses?! I am not!" Seol-hyang denied it vehemently, shaking her head.
"Anyway, you're more critical than anyone when it comes to martial arts. Seeing you genuinely admire someone is a new experience for me."
Un-hye continued the conversation while watching Seol-hyang. Her words were true. Seol-hyang had reached the Upper Stage of the Super-Peak Realm at a very young age. It was rare for her to easily acknowledge someone's martial prowess. She was the type to even look down on Bulheo Satae, the greatest expert of Emei. For her to be this impressed was truly unusual.
"After seeing a sight like that, there's no way I couldn't acknowledge him," Seol-hyang said calmly.
The image of Sword Man cutting the gate was burned into her mind more vividly than anyone else's. With her extremely heightened senses, she had seen the moment more clearly than anyone.
It was a single strike.
The sword he used to cut the gate had moved only once.
In just one strike, he had sliced through that gargantuan gate—one made incredibly dense and hard by the inclusion of Cold Iron.
How could she not acknowledge that?
"Just how high is his realm?" Un-hye asked curiously.
"Who knows? But at the very least, I don't think Hero Jang was wrong."
Gulp.
"You mean...?" Un-hye swallowed hard and asked.
Jang Sun-woo had stated clearly that Sword Man was stronger than anyone in the search party. Even stronger than himself, the leader of the group.
"The Transcendent Realm, or perhaps even higher."
Seol-hyang spoke in a level voice.
"That's impossible! Higher than that?!" Un-hye exclaimed.
Higher than the Transcendent Realm? That would mean the Profound Realm.
The Profound Realm was a myth. It was the stage of a Half-Immortal—a realm where one transcends humanity. How could some random man they met on the road be at such a sublime level?
"Why is it impossible?" Seol-hyang asked, as if she didn't see the problem.
"In the current Central Plains, the only person said to have reached the Profound Realm is Alliance Leader Lee Jae-won of the Cheonmu Alliance! Someone at such a high level couldn't possibly be a nobody!"
"A nobody? He has a name. Sword Man."
"That's just a name you gave him!"
"Un-hye, I think you're too caught up in stereotypes. Do you know how vast the world is? Do you know how many hidden masters and eccentrics are out there? Sword Man is simply one of those hidden masters."
"Even so... the Profound Realm is... the realm of a Half-Immortal..."
"Is being a Half-Immortal that big of a deal? Even the Ice Palace Master is an expert who has reached the Profound Realm."
"Really?!"
Un-hye’s eyes widened like saucers at Seol-hyang’s words. The Ice Palace Master was in the Profound Realm? This was news to her. What on earth was she talking about?
"It's the truth."
"Is the Ice Palace Master some senior who has undergone Rejuvenation?" Un-hye asked with a look of shock.
Un-hye had caught a glimpse of the Ice Palace Master. To her eyes, the woman was a beauty who looked to be in her mid-twenties at most. Hearing that she was in the Profound Realm made the idea of Rejuvenation the only logical conclusion.
"No, I heard she's twenty-eight."
Seol-hyang shook her head.
"Whaaaat?!"
Un-hye’s jaw dropped. She couldn't believe it. What was the Profound Realm? It was a magnificent stage referred to as Half-Immortal. How could someone reach such a height at the mere age of twenty-eight?
"That makes no sense!"
"Why is everything 'impossible' or 'makes no sense' to you?"
"Because it's too strange!"
"What's strange?"
"In the Central Plains, you can't find anyone in the Profound Realm besides the Alliance Leader no matter how hard you look! How is it that as soon as we come to the North Sea, they're everywhere?!" Un-hye spoke as if the situation was absurd.
"I wonder why?" Seol-hyang replied, looking a bit puzzled herself.
Now that she thought about it, Un-hye was right. For over twenty years, Lee Jae-won was the only one known to have reached the Profound Realm. That was why the reverence for him was so great, and why the Cheonmu Alliance could become the strongest single power in the Central Plains. Yet, here in the North Sea, there were two Profound Realm experts who hadn't been heard of for twenty years. It was indeed strange.
"Don't just say 'I wonder why'! Is your information about the Ice Palace Master being in the Profound Realm definitely accurate?"
"It's certain."
"Who did you get that information from?"
"From her personally."
"Whaaaat?!"
Un-hye screamed in shock. Usually, asking someone about their martial realm was considered extremely rude. In the Murim, it was a taboo to ask even those you were close with. To have heard it directly from the Ice Palace Master herself... just when did they become that close?
"When on earth did you talk about that?!"
"Last night."
"So when you came back late last night...?" Un-hye recalled.
"Yeah, I went and had a drink with the Ice Palace Master."
"A drink?!"
"Yes. She's the benefactor of the Emei Sect, so I couldn't just ignore her. I took a bottle of liquor to her room."
"And she actually accepted it?"
"She was surprisingly welcoming."
"Wow..."
"She even told me to call her 'Unni' later."
Un-hye stood there with her mouth agape. She knew Seol-hyang’s social skills were legendary, but she never imagined they would work on the Ice Palace Master. To think she was now on 'sisterly' terms with the ruler of the North Sea.
Is there some kind of connection between geniuses?
Un-hye fell into serious thought. To her, Seol-hyang—who visited a stranger late at night with a bottle of booze—and the Ice Palace Master—who happily accepted it and suggested they be sisters—were both equally bizarre.
"Anyway, since I'm now like a sister to the Ice Palace Master, I'm allowed to slack off."
"How does the logic even jump to that?!"
"Then what am I supposed to do!"
Seol-hyang and Un-hye began bickering once again.
"Tsk, tsk."
Watching them from afar, Cheongsong shook his head. He wished they would spend that time using their Sword Astral to help dismantle the iron gate instead. Every hand was precious right now. The North Sea iron gate that Sword Man had sliced was unimaginably large, and dismantling it was proving to be an immense task. It would have been better if it had been shattered, but because it was cut so cleanly, it was a nightmare to handle. They had to break it piece by piece, melt it in a furnace, and turn it back into molten iron.
"Sigh."
Cheongsong sighed at the gate-repair duty he never asked for.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Suddenly, a thundering sound that made the ground tremble reached his ears.
What is that?
Startled by the sudden roar, Cheongsong turned his head to identify the source.
"Huh?"
And then, he saw it. A massive dust storm was charging toward them from the edge of the horizon. Seeing this, Cheongsong focused his eyesight even further. He realized he wouldn't be able to identify them with just a casual glance.
As he sharpened his vision and looked ahead, Cheongsong’s face began to turn pale. He looked like a man who had seen something he was never meant to see.
Cheongsong quickly turned around.
"Lady Seol! I think we need to call the Palace Master immediately!" he shouted, addressing Seol-hyang.
"What's the matter?" Seol-hyang asked, confused. Why would they need to call the Palace Master all of a sudden?
"An army has appeared."
"An army?!"
"The Northern Army has appeared!"
"What did you say?!"
Seol-hyang asked back in shock. Why would the Northern Army, whose sole purpose was to subjugate the northern tribes, show up here at the North Sea Ice Palace?
A look of pure bewilderment began to wash over Seol-hyang’s face.