Chapter 35
Chapter 35
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: Part 10: Underworld Demonic Path (2)
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“Two.”
Geumju recoiled in terror, leaping away from where she had stood.
“…?!”
She couldn’t comprehend it.
How could this man, whom she had sent flying far away after striking him, now be standing right beside her?
And whose finger was that clutched in his mouth?
His lips split into a long, twisted grin.
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of bones grinding between teeth echoed in her ears.
She hurriedly put more distance between them and checked her hand.
The spot where her right pinky finger had been was now empty.
“Uh… uh-uh…?”
As she stared at her hand in a daze, the sound of the Dark Heaven Venerable’s chuckling came from right beside her again.
“Arrrgh!”
Screaming incoherently, she unleashed a powerful strike at that white mask.
With a massive whoosh of air, his head snapped back.
Head still tilted back, he whispered,
“Three.”
This time, it was her left index finger.
Crunch. Crunch.
Having lost three fingers now, Geumju let out a furious shriek.
“You wretch who sliced the throats of pleading girls and bathed in their blood—do you really scream over just three measly fingers?”
Any ordinary person would have already lost their mind in this situation, but her profound inner energy, rivaling that of a master, was protecting her central meridian point.
The spell she had cast was barely safeguarding her soul.
Geumju cried out hysterically.
“You bastard! You bastard! I’ll grind you up and drink you down!”
* * *
Geumju unleashed everything she had at the Dark Heaven Venerable.
She poured it on, again and again.
She called upon every ultimate technique she knew.
But her fingers kept dwindling away.
That white mask before her eyes seemed utterly unscathed no matter how many blows it took, impenetrable no matter how many times she thrust at it.
“Immortal…?”
Se-ah, watching the scene from afar, murmured in shock. Gyu shook his head.
“No. That’s not it…”
* * *
“…Incredible realm. Just what is this Dark Heaven Venerable’s true nature?”
Dengchi sighed.
The wounds he had sustained fighting Geumju were no joke.
Blood seeped through the bandages wrapped around his body.
Yet even so, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the Dark Heaven Venerable’s display up ahead.
“Utterly ridiculous.”
The beautiful girl hiding with him and watching what could barely be called a fight clicked her tongue in awe.
“It looks like he’s taking hits, no, he is taking them, but somehow he’s not suffering any damage at all.”
Even to their trained eyes as seasoned martial artists, Geumju’s attacks were blindingly fast and ferocious.
With those erratic trajectories added in, blocking them had been the best they could manage.
They had nearly died failing even to do that properly.
Yet this being called the Dark Heaven Venerable was treating Geumju’s onslaught like child’s play.
At first glance, it appeared he was simply enduring every blow.
But after observing closely, they had arrived at that chilling conclusion.
“What the hell is that?”
The beautiful girl rubbed the goosebumps on her neck, unable to look away from the bizarre spectacle.
“Isn’t it kinda cool?”
* * *
“Is he dodging her attacks at an even greater speed, slipping past at the last moment?”
At Se-ah’s question, Gyu shook his head again.
“No. I didn’t realize it at first, but now I see.”
She had focused all her inner energy into her eyes for enhanced vision.
“He’s redirecting every attack into the ground.”
The moment Geumju’s strikes connected, the earth beneath his toes cracked with a sharp split.
The fissures swirled in spiral patterns.
Following his lightly dancing toes, lotus flowers seemed to bloom one after another.
* * *
“But what principle is behind that…?”
The beautiful girl frowned in confusion, but Dengchi just shrugged.
“Who knows? Honestly, I can hypothesize, but…”
“Then hypothesize. As you know, almost everything I know about martial arts is self-taught.”
Dengchi scratched his head.
“Well, first off, taking the hits might be inverting the principle of penetrating energy. Then, channeling the opponent’s force into the ground through his toes using the subtleties of coiling silk energy.”
He shook his head after finishing.
“No. In that case, the flow of hostile energy passing through the body would…”
She sighed as he rambled on incoherently.
“You don’t even know what you’re saying yourself, do you?”
“Truthfully, yes.”
The beautiful girl snorted.
* * *
“Gyu, honestly, I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”
As the head of an intelligence network, Se-ah knew far more martial theory than the average martial artist.
But even she couldn’t grasp the advanced martial concepts Gyu was describing.
“It’s fine.”
Gyu answered Se-ah’s question without taking his eyes off the Dark Heaven Venerable’s movements for even a second.
“Forget everything I said. It doesn’t matter.”
“Then?”
“Simply put, the essences of energies from several different sects are all synthesized into that one movement.”
“So, to sum it up—you’re saying he’s fused martial theories from completely unrelated origins into a single perfected whole?”
“Yes.”
Gyu wasn’t just refusing to look away—he couldn’t.
Even seeing it with her own eyes, she couldn’t believe what they showed her.
Se-ah stepped closer to Gyu and whispered,
“…Could it be a Sword Clan technique?”
The Luoyang Sword Clan was known, officially or not, for collecting all manner of martial arts.
A clan like that might have blended secret arts from various sects to create something new.
“…Possibly. But the core isn’t where the technique comes from or who created it.”
Gyu gritted her teeth.
They said the martial world was full of eccentrics like grains of sand.
Some created martial arts that were theoretically sound, if bafflingly complex.
“For example, young lady.”
Take her own sect.
The Ten Swords, Chaos.
An esoteric technique now like a phantom no one in this era could master.
“…The real issue is how he can even use it.”
In actual combat, no less.
Continuously.
Without a single mistake.
Se-ah’s brow furrowed as understanding dawned.
Even she, who only dabbled superficially in the world of martial arts, felt this absurdity. How must Gyu feel, staring at that wall right in front of her?
“…So this Dark Heaven Venerable is actually performing the impossible.”
“Yes.”
It was an inexplicable realm beyond Gyu’s power to explain.
Had the Dark Heaven Venerable, the Luoyang Sword Clan’s Eldest Young Master, leaped over the wall?
She, who had always been praised for her exceptional talent, was reduced to watching helplessly.
Had he, still in his teens, vaulted over that towering barrier?
A burning heat surged from deep in her chest.
It was awe and fierce rivalry—not toward the Dark Heaven Venerable, but toward Yeon So-hyeon himself.
* * *
“And one more thing.”
“What?”
Dengchi held up his fingers.
“The fingers. The fingers.”
“Huh?”
The beautiful girl stared at Dengchi’s fingers with a strange look for a moment, then shuddered from head to toe.
“...!”
The Dark Heaven Venerable hadn’t just been taking and redirecting attacks.
Amid it all,
he had been plucking and devouring Geumju’s fingers.
Right at the endpoints of her full-force attacks—those horrifically swift, powerful, and erratic strikes.
One by one, methodically.
* * *
Killing Geumju from the start would have been trivially easy.
Back when she was pinned inside that building, a simple neck twist would have ended it.
A master?
Temporary breakthroughs meant nothing.
Even if the “Life-Seizing Ghost Sword” had been in his place, the outcome would have been Geumju’s clean defeat, the process aside.
Her bizarre martial arts had obscure origins, but they weren’t particularly hard to counter.
He simply had no intention of letting her go easily.
So he experimented, one by one.
Since becoming the inheritor of the Jaeam Jincheon Scripture, he had never properly unleashed a technique.
His body was perfect from the outset, infused with the scripture’s demonic qi.
That power eroded reality, corroded it, distorted it—far beyond the orthodox path.
Those without inner energy would shatter mentally and lose their reason just from its influence.
Martial artists with inner energy were too weak.
Too slow, utterly ignorant of the arts they practiced.
Mere puppets aping what they had been taught.
Occasionally, some showed faint promise, but never enough to threaten him in the slightest.
Killing them was easier than twitching a facial muscle to make an expression.
Of course, he couldn’t deny there was satisfaction in slaughtering them.
It was even enjoyable at times.
As the Dark Heaven Venerable, devouring the wicked was his mission.
As the Swordless One, Yeon So-hyeon, it laid the foundation for his grand design.
Yet an unquenchable thirst remained: the emptiness felt as a martial scholar.
So he decided to experiment.
Geumju had sufficient qualities as a test subject, at least.
Stamina, endurance—excellent.
And more than enough reason to torment her long-term. Perfect.
He enacted what he had only theorized in his mind before.
Realizing complex martial principles with his body, testing impromptu theories on the spot.
Savoring the sensation of his flesh moving as if it already knew them by heart.
He recalled the old days.
The memory of first gripping a sword.
That moment when, the instant his hand closed around it, he felt omnipotent, as if he could do anything with it.
Why had he forgotten that joy until now?
* * *
“Ten.”
Crunch. Crunch.
Geumju screamed at the sight of her hands, now devoid of fingers.
It felt like a nightmare.
But no matter how she screamed or thrashed, reality refused to change.
The Dark Heaven Venerable gazed at her with a leisurely smile.
“And…”
His form vanished.
“Guhk…”
Geumju vomited blood and collapsed on the spot.
In the hand that appeared behind her beat her still-pulsing heart.
“That makes eleven.”
Crunch!