Chapter 35
Part 10: The Demonic Path of the Underworld (2)
"Two."
The Golden Spider was so startled that she instantly leaped away from where she had been standing.
"...?!"
She couldn't understand it.
How could the man she had just blasted far into the distance...
Be standing right beside her?
And...
Whose finger was he chewing on?
The corners of his mouth stretched into a long smile.
Crunch.
Crack.
The sound of bones being crushed echoed beside her ear.
Hurriedly widening the distance between them, she looked down at her own hand.
Her right little finger...
Was gone.
"Ah... Wh-What...?"
As she stood there blankly staring at her hand...
The Dark Heavenly Venerable's chuckling sounded beside her once more.
"UAAAAAH!"
With a shrill scream, she slammed another devastating blow into the white mask.
A tremendous shockwave erupted as his head snapped violently backward.
Keeping his head bent back, he whispered,
"Three."
This time...
It was the index finger of her left hand.
Crunch.
Crack.
Having lost three fingers in total, the Golden Spider let out a furious scream.
"You butchered begging girls who pleaded for their lives..."
"And reveled in the sight of their blood..."
"...yet you're screaming over merely three fingers?"
An ordinary person would have long since gone insane.
But the immense internal energy of a master continued protecting her Upper Dantian.
The forbidden art she had cast...
Barely preserved her sanity.
Barely.
The Golden Spider shrieked hysterically.
"You!"
"You!"
"I'll tear you to pieces!"
"...Is he immortal?"
Watching from afar, Se-ah unconsciously muttered.
Gyu slowly shook her head.
"No..."
"That's not it."
***
The Golden Spider unleashed every ounce of her strength against the Dark Heavenly Venerable.
Again.
And again.
She employed every ultimate technique she knew.
Yet...
The only thing that continued disappearing...
Were her fingers.
The white mask standing before her seemed utterly unaffected no matter how many times she struck it.
No matter how thoroughly she pierced him...
Nothing was ever pierced.
"...An unbelievable realm."
"What exactly... is the Dark Heavenly Venerable?"
The large man let out a sigh.
The wounds he had received while fighting the Golden Spider were anything but light.
Blood continued seeping through the bandages wrapped around his body.
Even so...
He could not take his eyes off the extraordinary techniques displayed by the Dark Heavenly Venerable.
"This is seriously absurd."
The young girl watching the battle beside him clicked her tongue.
"It looks like he's getting hit..."
"I mean, he is getting hit..."
"But in reality..."
"He isn't taking any damage at all."
Even to martial artists of their caliber...
The Golden Spider's attacks were unimaginably fast and powerful.
Combined with those completely unpredictable trajectories...
Simply blocking them would already have been the limit.
Hadn't they themselves nearly died because they couldn't even manage that?
Yet the being known as the Dark Heavenly Venerable...
Was treating those attacks like a game.
At first glance...
It looked as though he was simply enduring every blow head-on.
But after observing him for some time...
They had reached a terrifying conclusion.
"What... is that?"
Rubbing the goosebumps covering the back of her neck, the young girl couldn't tear her eyes away from the unbelievable spectacle.
"...Isn't he amazing?"
"Is he simply moving even faster than the Golden Spider and barely dodging every attack?"
At Se-ah 's question, Gyu shook her head once again.
"No."
"I didn't realize it at first either..."
"But now I understand."
She had concentrated every ounce of her internal energy into enhancing her eyesight.
"He's redirecting every single attack..."
"...into the ground."
Every time one of the Golden Spider's strikes landed upon his body...
The earth beneath the tip of his foot split apart with a dull crack.
The fractured ground formed spiraling patterns.
Wherever his feet moved lightly...
Lotus blossoms seemed to bloom upon the earth.
***
"But... how is that even possible?"
The young girl frowned.
The large man merely shrugged.
"Well... I can make a guess..."
"Then guess. You know I taught myself almost everything I know about martial arts."
Scratching his head, the large man replied,
"I think he's reversing the principle of Penetrating Force."
"And then, using the subtle essence of Threading Force through the tips of his feet..."
"...he releases the opponent's force into the ground."
The moment he finished speaking...
He shook his own head.
"No..."
"That wouldn't explain how hostile force flowing through the inside of the body could..."
After listening to his rambling for quite a while, the young girl sighed.
"You don't even know what you're talking about, do you?"
"...Honestly."
"I don't."
The young girl snorted.
"Gyu, to be honest..."
"I didn't understand a single word of that."
As the head of an intelligence organization, Se-ah possessed more theoretical knowledge of martial arts than most martial artists.
Yet even she couldn't comprehend Gyu's explanation regarding such supreme martial arts.
"It's fine."
Without taking her eyes off the Dark Heavenly Venerable's movements for even a moment, Gyu answered,
"You can forget everything I just said."
"Then?"
"To put it simply..."
"Several different schools each possess their own ultimate understanding of force (Jin)."
"His movements..."
"...are the culmination of all of them."
Se-ah summarized thoughtfully,
"So you're saying..."
"He fused together martial arts theories originating from completely different lineages..."
"...and perfected them into a single art?"
"Yes."
***
Gyu wasn't merely refusing to look away.
She couldn't.
Even while witnessing it with her own eyes...
She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Se-ah quietly stepped closer and asked in a low voice.
"...Could that be a technique of the Sword Family?"
The Luoyang Sword Family was known, both officially and unofficially, for collecting every martial art they could find.
If it were them...
Perhaps they had fused together the secret arts of several different sects to create an entirely new martial art.
"...Perhaps."
"But that isn't the important part."
Gyu shook her head.
"The real issue isn't whose technique it is... or who created it."
The martial world was said to be filled with extraordinary eccentrics.
Every now and then, someone would devise a martial art so complex that it was almost impossible to comprehend, yet one that was theoretically sound.
"For example..."
"There was something like that in my own sect."
Ten Swords.
Chaos.
Like an ultimate art that had become nothing more than legend...
A fantasy no one in the present age could ever hope to master.
"...The problem..."
"...is how he's actually using it."
Not just once.
But continuously.
In real combat.
Without making a single mistake.
Only then did Se-ah fully grasp what Gyu was trying to say, and her expression stiffened.
Even she, who had only dipped her toes into the world of martial arts, found it unbelievable.
How much more shocking must it be for someone like Gyu, who stood right before the Wall?
"...Then you're saying..."
"The Dark Heavenly Venerable is accomplishing..."
"...the impossible."
"Yes."
To Gyu...
It was something utterly beyond explanation.
Had the Dark Heavenly Venerable...
The eldest young master of the Luoyang Sword Family...
Already crossed the Wall?
She, who had always been praised as an unparalleled genius...
Could do nothing except watch helplessly.
The colossal Wall that stood before her...
Had a mere teenager crossed it so effortlessly?
Something hot welled up deep inside her chest.
It was not reverence for the Dark Heavenly Venerable...
But for Yeon So-hyeon.
And alongside that reverence...
A fierce competitive spirit.
***
One by one.
"And there's one more thing."
The large man raised a finger.
"The fingers."
"The fingers."
"The fingers?"
The young girl stared at his hand in confusion.
Then...
Goosebumps spread across her entire body.
"...!"
The Dark Heavenly Venerable wasn't merely standing there absorbing her attacks.
Amid all of that...
He had been tearing off the Golden Spider's fingers...
And eating them.
Right at the end of those horrifying attacks that were unimaginably fast, overwhelmingly powerful, and traced utterly unpredictable trajectories.
From the very beginning...
Killing the Golden Spider would have been absurdly easy.
When she had first been trapped inside that building...
He could have ended everything simply by twisting off her head.
A master?
A temporarily elevated realm meant absolutely nothing.
Even if the Gatekeeper had stood here in his place...
The process might have differed...
But the outcome would still have been the same.
The Golden Spider would have suffered a clean defeat.
The bizarre martial art she possessed was difficult to trace to any known origin.
But...
That did not make it particularly troublesome to deal with.
He simply...
Had no intention of letting her die easily.
So...
He experimented.
Ever since becoming the successor of the Jeam Jinchon Scripture...
He had never once had the opportunity to properly display his techniques.
From the very beginning...
His physical body had already been nearly perfect.
Then it became infused with the demonic qi of the Jeam Jinchon Scripture.
That demonic qi...
A force capable of corroding, distorting, and eroding reality itself...
Lay completely beyond the bounds of common sense.
Those who possessed no internal energy often lost their sanity merely by coming into contact with it.
Their minds shattered.
Their reason collapsed.
Martial artists who cultivated internal energy...
Were simply too weak.
They were too slow.
And not a single one truly understood the martial arts they practiced.
They merely copied what they had been taught.
Mindless puppets imitating forms they barely comprehended.
Occasionally...
A few showed some promise.
But even then...
None came remotely close to making him feel threatened.
To be honest...
Killing them was easier than moving the muscles of his face to form an expression.
Of course...
He couldn't deny that killing them was worthwhile.
In one sense...
He even enjoyed it.
As the successor of the Jeam Jinchon Scripture, devouring demonic practitioners was the duty of the Dark Heavenly Venerable.
And as Yeon So-hyeon, the Swordless One, it was another cornerstone in the grand plan he intended to build.
Even so...
There remained an emptiness that nothing could satisfy.
It was the hollowness he felt as a martial artist.
So...
He decided to experiment.
The Golden Spider...
Was, at the very least, an excellent test subject.
She possessed talent.
Excellent stamina.
And...
There were more than enough reasons to torment her thoroughly.
It was perfect.
So he began putting into practice all the ideas he had once only contemplated in his mind.
He embodied complex martial principles through his own body...
And immediately tested every new theory the instant it occurred to him.
It felt...
As though his body had always remembered how to move that way.
He recalled the distant past.
The memory of the first time he had ever picked up a sword.
The overwhelming sensation...
That from the instant he grasped the sword...
There was nothing in the world he couldn't accomplish.
Why...
Had he forgotten that exhilarating feeling for so long?
His figure vanished.
"Cough...!"
The Golden Spider collapsed to her knees, vomiting blood.
Standing behind her...
His hand held the heart that had been vigorously beating inside her chest only a moment earlier.
"With this..."
"That makes eleven."
Crunch!