Chapter 49
Chapter 49
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 49
Chapter Title: Digging a Tunnel
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Entering the ice cave, Bing-seol was shivering alone in the cold. He'd skinned his own fur coat to make a smoke signal, so of course she'd be cold.
But there was no choice if they wanted to fool people's eyes. Heuk Do-san took off the fur coat he'd been wearing up to that point and draped it over Bing-seol.
"What about you, Young Master Heuk?"
"I'll endure."
"I'm sorry. Because of me..."
"I had to take it off anyway to cross the Ice Valley—it was too heavy. Once we're across, I'll untie the bundled coat again, so just bear with it a little."
"Not the fur coat. I mean Lady Dang."
"You heard?"
"Yes."
"How embarrassing."
"Why is it embarrassing for a man and a woman to like each other? That's not embarrassing at all. It's heartwarming."
"Heartwarming?"
"From what Master Hyeon-gak said, you two brushed past each other long ago. And after a decade or so, you met again here."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing happens in this world without reason. You two were fated to end up like this from the start. And there's surely some reason we don't know about."
If Bing-seol was right, then parting with Mo Yong-ak was also for the sake of meeting Dang Yak-ran here today.
Could something like that really happen?
"Enough. Get ready to leave."
"I'm already all set."
Bing-seol tied the bundled leather coat with a strap and slung it over her back.
Heuk Do-san also slung the bow frame made from demon deer horn over his back. He bundled the reed arrows he'd made bit by bit on the way and shoved them onto his back as well.
"No sounds from now on. Especially, never lift your head. You understand?"
"Yes."
"Then let's begin."
Heuk Do-san began digging straight down into the packed snow floor. The deeper he dug, the harder the snow became.
After digging down half a zhang, the snow was as firm as ordinary ground.
It was due to the weight of the snow accumulated over the years. From then on, he started digging horizontally toward the direction of the Ice Valley.
At that moment, the sound of footsteps crunching through snow came from outside. He quickly stopped his hands and perked up his ears.
"Someone's approaching."
Bing-seol whispered.
It was night, and inside the ice cave, he couldn't see an inch ahead.
But he could sense the tension in her voice.
"I know."
"Who could it be at this hour?"
A moment later, the footsteps stopped abruptly in front of the ice cave.
"It's me."
‘Mo Yong-ak?’
"Let's talk for a bit."
In the darkness, Bing-seol tugged at Heuk Do-san's arm. Asking what to do. Heuk Do-san pressed his index finger to her lips. Meaning to stay quiet.
"I know you're not asleep."
"I have nothing to say."
"When dawn breaks, surrender."
"……!"
"I'll try to talk Deputy Sword Lord Seop out of it somehow. I'll say we should escort you to the Righteous Alliance and hand you over to the Enforcement Hall. Though he's senior in rank, I'm still a division leader in my own right. Even Deputy Sword Lord Seop can't completely ignore me. But for that, you have to kneel first and beg forgiveness."
Heuk Do-san let out a scoff.
Mo Yong-ak seemed to know even less about Deputy Sword Lord Seop than he did, despite being his fiancée. Right now, he and Deputy Sword Lord Seop weren't fighting as Righteous Alliance warriors versus Demonic Cult traitors.
"That won't happen."
"You know what? Your pigheaded stubbornness made my life really hard?"
"Are you happy?"
"……?"
"Unlike other women, you had big ambitions. That's what made you attractive. I hope your choice was the right one. I'm going to sleep now. Please leave."
No sound came from outside for a while.
Heuk Do-san believed that Mo Yong-ak's feelings for him back then had been genuine. It was just that her ambitions were too great to choose love.
Deputy Sword Lord Seop was the man who could fulfill those ambitions. He hoped she'd found what she wanted and was happy. Escaping like this was for both their sakes too.
Crunch, crunch.
The sound of Mo Yong-ak returning to her tent came. Heuk Do-san turned back around and resumed digging the ice cave.
The martial arts a human could perform with their hands were endless. Martial artists organized all those arts, collectively called hand techniques.
First, depending on which part of the hand was used: fist techniques for punches, palm techniques for palms, finger techniques for fingers.
There were also joint-locking and breaking capturing hands, and claw techniques for ripping flesh and bone.
Each martial sect had its secret arts and unique traits. Veteran experts with vast rivers-and-lakes experience could tell at a glance which sect a foe belonged to just from their techniques.
Heuk Do-san had mastered them all. To be precise, without caring what they were called, he'd learned any skill useful for killing whenever the chance arose.
What refined arts would a mercenary wandering battlefields learn? Everything Heuk Do-san knew were the motley techniques floating around among riffraff.
Was it the limit of those mongrel arts?
Despite his blood-and-sweat training, at some point his progress stalled, and his skills barely improved.
Then one day, on a moonlit hill, a single sentence from Old Man Mu struck him like lightning.
‘Want to become a hand technique master? Simple. Every morning, lift water jars with your fingers. Every evening, hang from a tree for an hour. Whenever you have a moment, dig the ground with your fingers, strike trees with your palms, smash rocks with your fists. Train like that for ten years, and you can crush a man's skull barehanded.’
The strength of martial arts lay not in freakish ultimate techniques, but in the depth of training.
Through even more grueling training, Heuk Do-san became a hand technique master even old mercenaries acknowledged.
Yet even so, there were masters with walls he couldn't overcome.
In the seventh year of his service, one winter, Heuk Do-san was captured by an unidentified master in enemy territory.
In just ten exchanges.
And in the pitch-black underground prison they'd dug, he met a man. For some reason, all ten of his fingers had been cut off.
"Why are your fingers like that?"
"They cut them off."
"Why the fingers of all things?"
"Two reasons. First, because I wouldn't teach them the arts I knew. Second, to stop me escaping."
"What art wouldn't you teach? No, more importantly, how would you escape a deep underground cave that cutting off fingers would help with? If you had to cut something, it'd be your feet."
"How old are you?"
"A little shy of thirty."
"You don't even know your own age?"
"Fighting nonstop, it's fuzzy. Sometimes it suddenly comes back to me one day."
"You've got great hands."
"To survive, I picked up all sorts. Then I ran into that monster and lost in ten exchanges. Never seen hands so fast and destructive in my life."
"Was that guy missing one finger with a dog's eye embedded in the socket? When he palm-struck, it burned like fire."
"How did you know?"
"You held off Nine Finger Fire King for ten exchanges? You're in for big things, kid."
"He's that great?"
"Great? He's an elder of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. One of the top five hand technique masters. A monster who shatters rocks with a single palm..."
‘Fuck, that was close. No wonder my bones buzzed every hit.’
"But how do you know him, old timer?"
"I plucked out one of that old bastard's eyeballs. In exchange, I lost my fingers."
"……!"
"Want to make a deal with me?"
"A deal?"
"I'll get you out of here. In return, do one favor for me."
"That's impossible. How do you escape a deep underground cave like this? If it were possible, why are you still locked up?"
"I told you. Because they cut off my fingers."
"What are you talking about?"
"Find someone and tell them I went to the afterlife first. Then I'll show you the way out."
"If you can get me out, why not come with me?"
"I'm already riddled with terminal illness. Even if I escape, I won't last long. I'd just burden you."
"……?"
That's how he learned an art called Heavenly Escape Finger Technique.
Heavenly Escape meant hiding oneself from the heavens.
There was no place in the world to evade heaven's eyes. Except one: underground.
Heavenly Escape Finger Technique was astonishingly an art for digging and traversing tunnels freely.
By then, the Demonic Cultists were suffering defeats and retreating from the front lines.
Heuk Do-san was put to pulling wagons carrying the wounded, which let him survive a long time.
Even in exhaustion, every night he trained in the Heavenly Escape Finger Technique from the mysterious old man. Not knowing when disaster might strike, he trained ten days' worth in one.
Then winter passed and spring came.
On the third day of pouring rain that softened the earth completely, Heuk Do-san finally escaped the underground cave. And as promised, he sought out the old woman said to live in some mountain wilds in Shandong.
But the thatched hut had long collapsed, and the old woman was nowhere.
Asking around, he learned she'd died a decade ago. And from the old abbot of a temple who told him, he heard something shocking.
"Looks like you crossed paths with the Thief Ancestor Immortal. He's a great thief unknown to the world. If he set his mind to it, no place was impregnable."
"A thief?"
"A thief, but also an outstanding martial artist. His skills were fearsome depending on how used, so many coveted them. In the end, he died lonely in prison. Namu Amida Butsu, Kwanseum Bosal."
"Who was the old woman in the thatched hut?"
"His wife."
The Thief Ancestor Immortal had been captive to the Demonic Cult for over a decade. Waiting only to return to his wife's side, not even knowing she was dead.
Suddenly, Heuk Do-san became the Thief Ancestor Immortal's successor. He couldn't count how useful the Heavenly Escape Finger Technique proved after that day.
Surrounded by enemies, he'd dig and escape. Or dig tunnels to infiltrate deep into enemy camps for scouting.
The Thief Ancestor Immortal had called the Heavenly Escape Finger Technique the ultimate art. Because it allowed escape at any moment.
But even he couldn't have foreseen this situation. The layered snow built up over ages held a cold incomparable to mere earth.
"Feels like my fingers are going to fall off."
He'd heard inner force masters could harden body parts or concentrate heat using their true qi.
But Heuk Do-san, trained in external arts, could make his fingers steel-hard but lacked the trick to focus heat.
"Are you okay?"
"Still manageable."
"Why not use an axe or dagger?"
"Those split or stab—they're not for digging. It's not impossible, but it'd take way too long."
"I thought snow would be easier."
"Everything in the world turns by yin-yang harmony. Where there's hardness, there's softness; where heat, there's cold."
"Like Deputy Sword Lord Seop and Young Master Heuk?"
"What?"
"Just popped into my head. The prized disciple of mighty Mount Hua, mastering supreme arts, and the nameless battlefield mercenary picking up every mongrel trick. Completely different paths, but you two strangely resemble each other."
"In what way?"
"You lead people without even realizing it. In very different ways."
"……?"
"In short, if Seop shows power first and rules with an iron fist, you feed them and let them follow willingly. Not sure which is right, but if I choose, it's rice."
"I never tried to lead."
"I told you once. Regardless of your intent, everyone will follow you like their lives depend on it. You only stake your life when truly convinced."
Heuk Do-san narrowed his eyes.
Something was off about Bing-seol's voice. Unlike usual, it carried fear?
"You saw something. Right?"
"Tonight, a few people will die."
At that instant, with a thud, a hole broke through ahead. Heuk Do-san carefully swept away the blocking snow chunks.
Soon, the hole widened, and fierce wind howled in. Along with it, the gaping maw of the Ice Valley appeared.
They'd reached the Ice Valley while talking.
Heuk Do-san pulled Bing-seol out of the ice cave. The moment he looked around, his eyes widened.
Right behind them, on the path he'd tunneled through, stood a figure draped in a fur coat, long sword in hand.
Between the wind-tossed furs, a pair of icy blue eyes gleamed.
He said,
"You're late."
"Deputy Sword Lord Seop..."