The Gate That Answers Only the Sky
The Heavenly Martial Vault.
It was said that the rarest elixirs and marvelous treasures gathered by generations of Clan Leaders slumbered there, along with the fruits of their enlightenment. Above all, it was an absolute forbidden ground that only the Clan Leader himself could enter — a place not even the young masters of the clan could presume to tread.
A murmur rippled out from every corner of the hall.
"The Heavenly Martial Vault?!"
"What on earth is he saying right now…."
The murmuring quickly spread into an uproar no one could contain. The elders abandoned all pretense of composure, each rising from his seat or shouting in agitation. Yet Namgung Cheon, the cause of it all, showed not the slightest tremor. He simply ignored the waves of hostility crashing down upon him.
His gaze, from beginning to end, rested on one man alone — his father, Namgung Mugang, seated upon the head seat. The elders' outcry meant nothing to him. After all, the only person in this hall with the authority to decide was a single man.
Even the Tenth Elder, Namgung Baek, could not bring himself to defend the boy; he sat pale-faced, fidgeting in his seat.
How much time had passed? Just as the elders' denunciation reached its peak, Namgung Mugang quietly raised a hand. At that one small movement, every sound in the Family Head Hall died away as if by magic.
Then Namgung Mugang addressed his son.
"Why do you wish to enter that place?"
Namgung Cheon did not hide it.
"To complete the path of my sword, and to climb higher still."
At that answer, the brows of several elders twitched once more. They took "climb higher still" to mean the position of young Clan Leader. But Namgung Mugang thought otherwise.
Yes — those are the same eyes as then.
He remembered Namgung Cheon's answer when asked why he had drawn out Mukhon.
— Because that sword showed me what power itself truly is.
So. You dream of power — of the very end of what it means to be a martial artist. Then.
"Very well."
"……!"
"Clan Leader!"
At those two words, shock flooded every elder's face. Namgung Mugang paid their reactions no heed and continued.
"One thing, however — the door of the Heavenly Martial Vault does not open for just anyone."
He swept his gaze across the assembly and declared:
"The law will not be broken. By the law left to us by the First Clan Leader, the right of entry belongs only to one who opens the door of the Heavenly Martial Vault by his own strength."
"……."
The door of the Heavenly Martial Vault. Not a soul in that hall failed to understand what it meant.
Namgung Mugang put one final question to his son.
"Will you prove your right, then?"
At those words, the Seventh Elder, Namgung Do, silently exulted within.
The fool has walked straight into his own snare.
The door of the Heavenly Martial Vault. As the stories went, it could only be opened by one who had proven an absolute realm of martial attainment.
But Namgung Cheon's answer defied every expectation.
"I will prove it."
There was not a hair's breadth of hesitation in his voice — only the composure of a man who had been waiting for this very trial. At the sight, a faint ripple that no one could read stirred in the depths of Namgung Mugang's dark eyes. He studied his son for a moment, then asked:
"Do you need time to prepare?"
It was a father's last consideration, and at the same time a reminder of the weight of the trial. At the question, Namgung Cheon smiled faintly for the first time. His gaze passed, in turn, over the two swords hanging side by side at his waist — Changcheon and Mukhon.
Two blades — one the symbol of the Namgung Clan, the other of the Heavenly Demon.
What else could there possibly be to prepare?
"I am always ready," Namgung Cheon said quietly.
Everyone had left the Family Head Hall. Namgung Mugang gazed quietly at his son for a moment, then spoke.
"Follow me."
Without further explanation, he passed the head seat and headed toward the great wall behind it. Namgung Cheon followed in silence. Namgung Mugang laid his hand upon the massive dragon's head carved into the wall, and the energy pouring from his palm flowed along the dragon's eyes into the stone.
Kugugung….
With a deep resonance that shook the entire hall, a section of the wall sank inward, revealing a entrance black as ink.
"Stand beside me," he said quietly.
Once Namgung Cheon had taken his place at his side, Namgung Mugang continued.
"Follow my steps."
"Understood."
The moment Namgung Mugang took his first step forward—
Thud.
The wall sealed shut behind them, and perfect darkness descended. An absolute blackness that permitted not even a single thread of light. And at the same moment—
A formation.
Sharp energies that seemed to flay the skin from his bones pressed in from every direction — a chilling sensation, as though ten thousand invisible blades were all trained on him at once. Namgung Cheon understood at once.
One wrong step, and I'll be carved to ribbons.
Tap.
Just then, from the pitch-black darkness, came the sound of Namgung Mugang taking another step. The only way through the formation was to follow his unseen footsteps with not a hair's deviation.
By sound and qi-sense alone, I must perfectly replicate where his foot lands — even the strength with which he presses into the ground.
Namgung Cheon closed his eyes. The moment he shut out the useless sense of sight, his other senses awoke, razor-sharp.
Tap.
Namgung Mugang's footsteps sounded again, and with them, within the formation's energy that filled the chamber, Namgung Cheon felt a single fine thread of passage open up — the very place where his father's step had fallen.
The sound, and the flow of energy. Combining the two….
The angle of the foot as it met the stone floor, the shift of weight, the internal force gathering in the sole and scattering again — all of it was calculated at lightning speed in Namgung Cheon's mind.
And then—
Tap.
He followed his father's step without the slightest error.
Vwoom—.
The blade-like qi of the formation parted to either side and flowed away, as if by a lie. So it went — the second step, the third. Before long, he had taken twenty steps.
There's a fixed rhythm to it.
The order in which the feet moved, the balancing of internal force between hard and soft, the migration of the center of gravity. Everything followed a codified rule, a set cadence. A clearly defined form of martial learning.
A footwork art.
The instant he recognized that the steps unraveling the formation were themselves a movement art, he began to dig into its underlying principle. Why did it advance straight as a sword, and why did it curve smooth as a river? When must one press down hard as if treading a mountain, and when must one skim soft as if stepping on cloud?
Every movement has its reason.
By the time he had walked a hundred paces—
I understand it now.
Namgung Cheon no longer waited for his father's footsteps or the flow of his energy.
Half a step to the left.
Tap.
His footsteps began to quicken almost imperceptibly. Tap. Tap. Until now, Namgung Mugang's footfalls had sounded first, with Namgung Cheon's echoing after. But now the two men's steps rang out at virtually the same instant — a perfect harmony, like father and son walking shoulder to shoulder.
But that, too, lasted only a moment.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
A minute difference began to emerge. Now Namgung Cheon's footfall sounded first, and Namgung Mugang's followed after.
He's overtaking me.
Namgung Cheon was now carving his own path through the formation, judging it by his own instinct alone. He no longer paid any attention to the footsteps sounding behind him.
How long had he walked? The footsteps of Namgung Cheon, who had pushed ahead, came to an abrupt halt. It was the end of the passage. A moment later, Namgung Mugang, who had followed in silence at his back, also stopped.
Out of the darkness, Namgung Mugang's low voice rang out.
"The Infinite Steps."
He went on.
"A footwork art permitted to the Clan Leader alone."
With those words, a thread of light appeared at the passage's end, and soon a wide-open space unfolded before them.
"!"
At the sight before his eyes, Namgung Cheon's indifferent eyes colored, for the first time in a long while, with wonder. Though they were deep underground, a blue sky and white clouds hung overhead, close enough to grasp in one's hand. And ahead, a bamboo forest rippled in waves of green, stretching on without end. He knew it was an intricately woven illusion array — and still he could not help but marvel.
Namgung Cheon and Namgung Mugang gazed at the scene in silence.
"Walk at ease."
With that single word, Namgung Mugang set off first along the narrow dirt path that wound between the bamboo. Namgung Cheon followed.
Ssaaaa—.
The sound of bamboo leaves brushed by the wind rang out clear, as if to wash away every care in the world. Father and son walked slowly for a long while, listening to it without a word.
After walking some distance, Namgung Mugang spoke quietly, without turning around.
"Do you believe you are here because of the merits you have built?"
His voice drifted back, faint, mingled with the sound of the wind.
"Saving the Baekcheon Trading Company. Creating an enormous source of income. Fine achievements, certainly — things your brothers could not have done."
Namgung Mugang's steps paused briefly.
"But in the end, this is nothing more than clearing obstacles from the roadside."
He began walking again.
"To stand, at last, at the summit — that goes beyond walking the road. At the end of that road, you must stand alone."
A profound loneliness was steeped in his voice.
"There is no one left to cross swords with, no friend in whom to confide. A single stroke of your sword redraws the map of the realm, and a single word from your lips decides the lives of countless people. That is the weight the Clan Leader of the Namgung, the foremost sword family under heaven, must bear."
Namgung Cheon watched his father's back in silence. The solitude of the man who stands at the summit.
How could I not know it?
Heavenly Demon — the seat above all men. That poisonous solitude, that searing emptiness — there was no one in this world who understood it as he did. The man walking ahead with his back turned had, no doubt, walked that same road alone as well.
So this is a first.
For the first time, he felt the ache of kinship from Namgung Mugang — the man he had always seen as nothing more than a towering wall to be surmounted.
But Namgung Cheon did not rashly open his mouth. That solitude does not lighten merely because someone acknowledges it.
How long had they walked? The bamboo forest ended, and a colossal cliff of black rock rose before them. Embedded in its very center was an enormous door.
Namgung Mugang stopped before it and turned to look at his son.
"And I saw in you the quality needed to bear that weight."
His deep eyes held Namgung Cheon's steadily.
"That is why I am giving you this chance — so that you may prove whether you are worthy of it."
With those final words, Namgung Mugang stepped aside. What remained was Namgung Cheon's to do alone.
Namgung Cheon stood before the door, vast as a mountain wall. A cold aura rose from it like mist.
Everfrost Iron.
The cold iron of the North Sea, harder than any other metal under heaven — and only those pieces touched by the breath of ice-jade could claim this name. Namgung Cheon slowly extended his hand toward the door.
Click.
The instant his fingers touched it, his internal force reached out from his palm.
As I thought.
A colossal formation, woven of thousands upon thousands of minute qi-channels, tangled and interlaced. And at its heart sat a seal.
So that's why the elders shut their mouths so quickly.
They had known, of course. They had known this door was not something that yielded to a mere key or brute strength. The channels carved in intricate detail within the Everfrost Iron had been designed to respond to one specific kind of energy alone.
The energy of the Azure Sky Great Evolution Heart Law.
But naturally, merely learning the heart law was not enough to open it.
The entrance is broad and smooth, but the deeper it goes, the narrower and more hopelessly tangled it becomes.
So much so that a half-hearted flow of internal force would never reach the end. One had to draw out the heart law's energy thin as a silk thread and, at the same time—
Sustain it, firm and unbroken, all the way down to that deepest point. That is the realm it demands.
A smile played at the corner of Namgung Cheon's mouth.
It won't be easy. But—
He had no intention of stopping here.
Namgung Cheon closed his eyes.
Hooo—.
With a single long breath, he sank his consciousness deep into his dantian — into the sea of qi. Every sound from outside, Namgung Mugang's gaze, even the bone-piercing chill radiating from the Everfrost Iron — all of it was pushed beyond the edge of his awareness.
Stillness. In perfect silence, he faced his own interior.
The vast internal energy coiled within his dantian. He began to attune it with the finest, most exacting precision.
I draw the Azure Sky.
The heavens are high and vast, their end beyond knowing. A freedom that embraces all things while binding no one. Namgung Cheon slowly set the energy of his dantian rotating. What began as ripples on a quiet pond steadily swelled, spreading through his meridians and out into his whole body. Each meridian it crossed, the energy grew clearer, vaster.
"Hah."
The moment he drew in a breath, every meridian in his body opened at once, and the refined energy poured through his palm and into the door.
Vvwoong—.
The energy that met the door spread like something seeping between the frozen chill of the Everfrost Iron. Namgung Cheon guided it along the flow of the formation he had already mapped. As the sky covers all creation, his energy slowly claimed the entirety of the great door.
The Great Evolution.
True to the name of the heart law — reaching ever outward, without end — his energy expanded without pause, infinitely. The thousands of qi-channels threaded through the Everfrost Iron assimilated to his energy one by one and began to find their proper paths.
KUGUGUNG—!
A heavy tremor shook the entire cliff face. But the door still held fast. The grandeur of the Azure Sky alone was not enough. The final seal was heavier and more unyielding than anything else. The heavens were not merely wide — they must also carry the majesty that, at times, commands the world with thunder and lightning.
Namgung Cheon compressed his gently spreading energy in an instant — as clouds filling the whole sky gather into a single point and become the lightning bolt. The profound power drawn up from the depths of his dantian converged into his palm with explosive force.
KWA-KWANG—!
His will-laden internal force struck the heart of the formation with the fury of a thunderclap.
HWAAAAK—!
From his palm, a burst of blue radiance exploded outward, wreathing the great door in its entirety. Softness and ferocity. Embrace and destruction. The harmony that the Azure Sky Great Evolution Heart Law pursued unfolded through Namgung Cheon's hand.
KUGUGUNG!
The massive door, sealed fast for so long, split down the middle and began slowly to swing open.
"……."
An unfamiliar light flickered in the eyes of Namgung Mugang, who had watched it all.
A moment later, the door stood fully open, and behind it a darkness of unknowable depth gaped like a mouth. Namgung Cheon slowly withdrew his hand. Then, leaving behind Namgung Mugang, who watched him in silence, he set his steps toward the darkness.
Just then, Namgung Mugang's voice came from behind him.
"Take only the one thing you need most. Anything more is empty greed."
Namgung Cheon kept walking without a word. And just before his form vanished into the darkness, he answered quietly:
"One is enough."
Because one day, I'll take everything with these two hands myself.
The Heavenly Demon of Namgung
Author | Baek Ri-haeng
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dreambooks
Address | 7F, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
ISBN | 979-11-7306-734-1
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