Chapter 31
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 31
Chapter Title: The Path of the Emperor
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The nature of the Namgung sword changes with the one who wields it.
Only then did I realize there was a new world beyond the one I knew.
I came to regret my shortsightedness, having thought the Iron Sword Ten Forms and the Lightning Flash Thirteen Sword Thunders were enough.
What is contained at the tip of the Namgung sword depends solely on the Great Young Lord's will.
The tip of Namgung Yeouls sword, imbued with an azure aura as if to split the heavens, was the Azure Sky. As it instantly scattered the stars in the darkened air, its flash eclipsing the starlight, it was Heavenly Thunder.
The tip of Namgung Yeoul's sword, gliding on the wind as if dancing, was called Heavenly Wind. The endlessly moving blade that carved lines in every direction was called Unhindered.
As his presence vanished, the sword strikes embroidering the heavens and the earth were called the Azure Vault. The energy that absorbed the essence of nature and seeped into the moonlight was referred to as Great Expansion.
Therefore, do not set limits for yourself.
Again and again, let the sword have no limits.
Again and again, encompass all that the sword can be.
That is the path of the Emperor. A path only those who have mastered all of the Namgung's swords can walk. That is the path the Great Young Lord must take.
I was utterly overwhelmed. I never knew the Namgung sword could be so brilliant and so fervent.
I found myself swallowing hard. It was a moment of realizationhow trivial and insignificant my life had been.
Today, I want you to contemplate what I have told you, over and over. Your thoughts today will be the foundation for tomorrow. Based on what you cultivate, we will begin the full transmission of all that is Namgung starting tomorrow.
With that, Namgung Yeoul left me behind as I fell into a state of self-forgetfulness.
Facing the sword of the Namgung, praised as the finest among the Six Great Families, I became lost in the principles Namgung Yeoul had shown me.
The Azure Vault.
It means the heavens.
The Azure Sky.
It means the blue that contains the Azure Vault.
Heavenly Thunder.
Beneath the vast, ocean-like Azure Sky, there is a single energy.
Heavenly Wind.
It shall reveal the will that rides the wind to the heart of the heavens.
Unhindered.
It speaks of a place beyond, so vast and distant its end cannot be known.
Great Expansion.
It shall once more speak of the universal laws that contain the principles of heaven and earth.
The six stories had no sequence.
With no sequence and no order, I had to deeply investigate what to add and what to remove.
Though faint, the tip of my sword began to follow Namgung Yeoul's path. I hadn't learned any specific swordsmanship; I was simply following his energy and expressing my thoughts.
The latent energy of the Heavenly Thunder Pill within my body moved according to my will. The energy hidden in the meridians and vessels of my entire body stirred with my latent will.
I named the energy of the Heavenly Thunder Pill the Heavenly Thunder Ki. While circulating the Heavenly Thunder Ki, I discovered a foreign energy within my body.
What in the world is this?
I couldn't understand it, but I suppressed it with the force of my Heavenly Thunder Ki.
The writhing, foreign energy seemed to scoff, as if to ask how I dared confront it with such a paltry force.
A competitive spirit naturally arose within me. I didnt know what this energy was, but it felt familiar.
Yes.
It was like the composure Namgung Yeoul displayed.
And so, my fervor intensified.
After circulating the Heavenly Thunder Ki several times, it moved freely like my own limbs, its tingling power arrayed and ready at a moment's notice.
I surrounded the energy Namgung Yeoul had left behind with my Heavenly Thunder Ki. There was no escape.
I blocked all the meridians and vessels in my body with the energy of the Great Expansion Art and gradually applied pressure with the Heavenly Thunder Ki.
In response, it hunkered down like a hedgehog, its protruding spines threatening my Heavenly Thunder Ki, as if warning that I wouldn't escape unscathed if I came any closer.
It was a pathetic threat.
I ignored the threat and pushed forward with my Heavenly Thunder Ki. I met its defensive posture with a full-scale assault.
Unable to withstand the Heavenly Thunder Ki, the foreign energy shot out of my dantian and darted about, effortlessly shattering the pathways I had blocked with the Great Expansion Art.
I chased after it with my Heavenly Thunder Ki. As this battle raged within me, my dantian swelled with heat. The heat grew so intense that had the foundation of my dantian not been so solid, it would have burst like a drum.
The heat spewed from my open mouth, but I paid it no mind.
The Heavenly Thunder Ki was a concentrated energy obtained from the formidable elixir, the Heavenly Thunder Pill. However, the amount of that energy I could currently accumulate was not very large, because I still lacked an internal art befitting it.
But.
I knew instinctively.
I hid traces of my Heavenly Thunder Ki along the path the foreign energy took, memorizing the way. Which paths led back to the dantian.
Where that circulating energy roamed and how it moved.
Squeeze!
The Heavenly Thunder Ki seized the fleeing foreign energy and devoured it in an instant.
Crackle!
My entire body tingled as the energy spread lightning ki in all directions. My mind grew faint, and the hair on my head stood on end.
I had thought, being such a small amount of energy, how strong could it be?
It was a mass of pure energy. The very essence of it.
The energy was soon absorbed by the Heavenly Thunder Ki, but I couldn't help but grit my teeth at the pain from my torn meridians and blood vessels. Then, I circulated the newly unified Heavenly Thunder Ki.
The energy Namgung Yeoul had left behind.
Following the pathways carved out by the foreign energy.
The lightning ki, born from circulating the Heavenly Thunder Ki again and again.
At that moment, when an almost infinitely powerful energy coalesced.
I realized that this energy
the art hailed as the greatest divine art in history, alongside the Azure Sky Great Expansion Divine Art, representing the pinnacle of the Namgung family's prowess
was the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art.
The Great Heavenly Circulation. Following the Heavenly Ordinance, I reached the Heavenly Inquiry, and at the same time, achieved complete mastery over the Heavenly Thunder Ki as shown by the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art.
Walking a path no one had taught me, entirely on my own.
Having found such a breakthrough by myself, I once again moved forward.
Namgung Yeoul could feel, right before his eyes, the difference made by that one word: talent.
How
How on earth could he
What he had shown was merely a principle, something that couldn't be put into words. In short, it had no context.
He had merely displayed and embroidered a mass of enlightenment, like a single painting.
And he had only shown that painting in the hope that it would slowly melt away and aid the Great Young Lord in achieving his own enlightenment when he wielded the sword in the future.
And yet.
Are you saying you mastered the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art on your own?
Isn't that what you arranged for me to do?
A hollow laugh escaped him.
What kind of art was the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art?
It was a supreme martial art, on par with the Northern Star Shaolin's Prajna Great Power or the Southern Honored Wudang's Taiji Divine Art.
For someone to attain it through sheer enlightenment
It was the kind of thing Namgung Yeoul could not easily find even if he searched the entire world.
It meant the Great Young Lord was someone who possessed just that kind of talent.
An awl in a sack.
A crane among chickens.
He had thought it was merely to that extent.
The realization that the one he had considered a needle in a pile of sand was, in fact, a pearl made Namgung Yeoul shake his head.
Throughout history, those who had shown such progress
Great Grandmaster.
it was a path trodden only by those worthy of such a title.
I thought there was nothing left to be surprised by. But you, Great Young Lord, always manage to astonish me.
The Great Young Lord shrugged his shoulders. Even that gesture was enough to make him smile.
But I will stop my praise here. Any more might become poison to you.
So saying, Namgung Yeoul raised the tip of his sword. Mastering the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art was a remarkable feat, but learning the Namgung family's swordsmanship was a separate matter.
For instance, the third young lord, Namgung Gal, had reached the third star of the Azure Sky Great Expansion Divine Art, but his Heavenly Wind Sword Art was inferior to that of the second young lord.
Mind, Ki, and Body must become one. The moment an imbalance occurs in any of them, the sword is dead.
I understand.
With that, as the training began, Namgung Yeoul's expression hardened with resolve.
A month passed by in a flash.
I reviewed the Iron Sword Ten Forms and the Lightning Flash Thirteen Sword Thunders once more, making them completely my own. With this, I was able to refine all the sword forms and techniques I had handled in my past life.
As I began to move with the energy flowing through the vast expanse of my dantian, the power of the Great Expansion Art dripped from the tip of my sword, embroidering the air.
This, I expressed as the Great Expansion Sword Art.
At the same time, I mercilessly wielded a sword art that had no form, no technique, no intent, just as Namgung Yeoul had shown me. At times, it was as swift as a skipping stone; at others, it advanced like a tempest, ready to split a great tree in a single blow.
I realized the name of this sword art was the Azure Sky Flying Swallow Sword.
Following the fluttering currents of the wind, my sword flashed, unleashing a power swifter than the Lightning Flash Thirteen Sword Thunders and heavier than the Iron Sword Ten Forms, all according to my will.
I suddenly saw the faint, flowing azure energy imbued in the sword and knew it to be the Heavenly Wind Sword Art.
At the end of it all, I came to know a new sword.
A lonely soul with no one to watch over it; one cannot move forward without honoring the spirits of the dead. This was what could be called the Lone Soul Sword Art.
Gasp, gasp.
My dantian tingled as if a heated stone had been placed in my stomach. He had said this was what happened when the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art reached its third star.
Sweat drenched my entire body like rain. Just as Namgung Yeoul had said, as I explosively drew upon the energy of the Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art, the countless sword arts embroidered by the blade in my hand burst forth naturally.
That
was my will.
The Great Expansion Sword, spinning like a windmill, horizontally sliced through a soul tormenting another spirit, and the fangs of a lightning dragon, writhing as it plunged from the sky, split the earth with a great tear.
Only after seeing the tip of my sword playing freely according to my will did I collapse to the ground.
As a sense of complete exhaustion dominated my body, Namgung Yeoul stepped forward.
You never once disappoint. You've completely taken my breath away. Hahaha.
Considering that, don't you think you've worked me a little too hard?
The Green Forest. Be wary of the Green Forest.
The masters of the mountains, the kings among the peaks. And the evil that is expressed as something even greater than that.
The Ultimate Evil of the Mountains.
The Seven Evils of the Green Forest are by no means an easy foe.
At those words, the corners of my mouth curled into a grin.
Perhaps they're the ones who should be wary of me.
Just you wait.
The Killing Demon of my past life, and the Sword Demon.
The tip of my sword is coming to sever all the evil you possess.