novelraw Chapter 36 : Chapter 36
Chapter 36 : Chapter 36
Chapter 36: Just call it the Martial Emperor's Divine Art.
Among eye techniques, there was one called the Fine Stream Demonic Eye.
The reason the Fine Stream Demonic Eye was peculiar was that no one knew the origin of this outstanding eye technique.
Some said it was the legacy of the Sword Fiend, a peerless killing star who roamed the previous generation, while others believed it was the exclusive martial art of the Divine Sword of Mount Hua, the greatest swordsman in Mount Hua's history.
Still, others said it was the eye technique of the Illusionary Serpent, who once made a name for himself as the unorthodox faction's number one sword.
Having heard this much, anyone who knew martial arts would get the picture.
The Sword Fiend’s Illusory Demon Sword Style.
Mount Hua’s Twenty-Four Hands Plum Blossom Sword Art.
The Illusionary Serpent’s Night Moon Butterfly Dance.
The common feature of these martial arts was that they were based on brilliant illusory swords.
Illusory swords are flashy, fast, and multifarious.
One must inevitably contend with confusing trajectories for a lifetime, so transcendent eyesight was essential.
The Fine Stream Demonic Eye allowed one to see the minute waves or textures left by true ki, which were impossible to follow with ordinary vision.
The reason I was obsessed with this eye technique was, of course, to read the trajectory of the Twenty-Four Hands Plum Blossom Sword Art unleashed by the Sword Saint.
At the very least, if I could see it, I would have a chance to deal with it somehow.
In the past, I had truly stopped at nothing to find the training method for the Fine Stream Demonic Eye.
Therefore, among the foundational martial arts that existed in my head, the importance of the Fine Stream Demonic Eye was at the very top.
Naturally, from the time the One Ki Divine Origin Art reached the fourth stage, I began to train fiercely in the Fine Stream Demonic Eye.
Since it was an eye technique whose training effect was maximized in the dark, its level had reached the eighth stage in just three years.
If I just removed the martial uniforms worn by those Shadowless Terrace members, I could examine the traces of all the martial arts they had learned.
A vision that had expanded and expanded like that.
I was now meticulously examining every nook and cranny of the naked body of the Shadowless Terrace leader.
Fiercely pulsing blood vessels.
The internal ki that mixed with his breath like a haze every time he breathed, and its unique wavelength.
The way his minute muscles moved and the particularly prominent Ki Meridian Traces also began to come into clear view.
What baffled me from the beginning was his right shoulder, which was much more developed than his left.
Moreover, his right arm was shorter.
That was undoubtedly the result of intentionally shortening the arm's length through a high-level Shrinking Bone Art.
“Why are you so obsessed with drawing the sword?”
To draw the sword quickly.
In fact, it wasn’t that I didn’t know the importance of sword drawing.
For a swordsman, the speed of drawing the sword was a capability that decided the boundary between life and death.
But to go so far as to intentionally shorten the arm's length for the sake of drawing the sword?
The meaning was singular.
To kill the opponent with the fastest sword speed, even at the cost of all the side effects that imbalance brings.
This kind of crazy act was something usually done by mayfly-like assassins, and I was seeing it now in the Jaegal Clan.
“Hoo, stop the Shrinking Bone Art immediately. If you don't stop, all the muscle meridians in your right arm will end up twisted. At most, you have three years.”
At my firm diagnosis, the Shadowless Terrace leader’s eyes began to tremble as if caught in a storm.
“H-How did you know……?”
“What do you mean, how? The traces are all over your shoulder, aren't they? Anyway, I’ve told you. If you ignore it, you will eventually be holding a sword with your left hand.”
For a swordsman to switch hands was the same as learning martial arts from the very beginning.
At my words that he would end up holding a sword with his left hand, the Shadowless Terrace leader’s face turned deathly pale.
“Now, sit cross-legged. Start circulating your ki immediately.”
“……Here?”
A smirk escaped me as I looked at the extremely tense Shadowless Terrace leader.
So he learned this part properly.
A martial artist's meditation had to be done in a place they could trust.
“What does it matter? We’re all family here. You want me to stand guard or something?”
“No, sir. I will do it.”
“Start right away.”
As the Shadowless Terrace leader sat cross-legged and began to circulate his ki, my Fine Stream Demonic Eye was being exerted to its fullest.
With an unwavering gaze, I was scanning the residual heat of the internal ki flowing into his ki meridians.
In my vision now, the entire process of the fierce and explosive wavelength unique to demonic arts spreading and scattering like waves was revealed.
As I observed it in detail, a curse escaped me.
“Damn it, this is how it kills people.”
The Dark Soul Demonic Ki completely violated the common sense of internal Ki Arts.
The Dark Soul Demonic Ki flowing from the Dantian was stretching straight to the four limbs and hundred vessels.
No matter how outstanding a divine art was, there was a procedure of going through the ki points in order.
With that method, one could display mighty power temporarily, but in the end, internal injuries were bound to accumulate.
Why?
Because if the width of the Laogong Acupoint was a needle, the width of the Juque Acupoint was about a bamboo stalk.
That was the fundamental reason why internal Ki Arts were difficult.
Ki points with different characteristics.
Therefore, one had to operate the intensity and nature of their internal energy meticulously to circulate their internal art stably.
But for internal ki to spread simultaneously to all parts of the human body like that?
Naturally, the weaker ki points would accumulate damage, and the healthy ki points would inevitably become narrower.
A demonic art that consumes a person.
For that Shadowless Terrace leader, tomorrow was meaningless.
His prime would always be today.
“Stop. Release your ki circulation. There’s nothing more to see.”
The face of the Shadowless Terrace leader, which had been flushed red, gradually subsided.
I slowly raised the One Ki Divine Origin Art and spoke to him.
“From now on, you are going to be in quite a bit of pain. No, it’s better to be honest. Let me correct that. It will be so painful that you’ll think it’s better to just die.”
I calmly stared into the eyes of the Shadowless Terrace leader, which were weaving with questions.
“There is only one thing you have to do. You must endure it, no matter what. You can't let out a groan, and you must not pass out. If you really feel like you're going to pass out, just bite your tongue. If you lose consciousness, you will die.”
“What on earth are you planning to do to me……?”
“This?”
I stood there and thought about it for a moment, but I couldn't think of a suitable way to express it.
What I was about to perform was not a martial art I had learned from someone.
I explained it to the Shadowless Terrace leader in the easiest way possible.
“Think of it as a martial art somewhere between Pushing Palace Passing Acupoint and Acupoint Striking.”
At that moment, the Blood Demon, who had been watching, suddenly interjected.
“If it’s Pushing Palace Passing Acupoint, it’s Pushing Palace Passing Acupoint, and if it’s Acupoint Striking, it’s Acupoint Striking. What kind of foolish talk is that?”
Like the Blood Demon’s question, these were, in fact, martial arts of conflicting concepts.
As you know, Pushing Palace Passing Acupoint is a beneficial martial art that kneads the opponent's body with my internal art to increase the absolute amount of their internal art or heal internal injuries.
But conversely, Acupoint Striking is a kind of suppression technique that blocks or destroys the opponent's acupoints, making it impossible for them to operate their internal art properly.
Naturally, to the Blood Demon, it sounded like nonsense.
However, I had not decided on a name for what I was about to perform, and within the Great Murim Alliance, there were no martial artists who understood this concept.
A martial art I created after gaining enlightenment by chance while meditating.
No, could it even be called a martial art?
This was a crazy act that I, too, was undertaking at the risk of severe internal injury.
“Now, lie down just like that.”
The Shadowless Terrace leader, sweating with tension, lay down in the main hall of the Phoenix Martial Emperor Pavilion.
The grand energy that had forcefully stretched out from the two channels, the Conception and Governor vessels, gradually grew stronger and became one.
One Origin Jade Flower.
Jade Awakening Void Refinement.
Uniting the Husks.
Demonic Suffering Heavy Universe.
Crossing Traces Separate Blades.
Merging with the Dao of No Void.
I had currently reached the sixth of the twelve stages of the One Ki Divine Origin Art, the stage of Merging with the Dao of No Void.
At this stage, it was possible to handle enhanced qi for a fleeting moment, and I could shoot out ki blasts as finger winds like now.
And.
To shoot hundreds of ki blasts in an instant meant momentarily pouring out all of the One Ki Divine Origin Art.
Moreover, the consumption of mental energy was also extreme.
The reason masters of finger arts were rare in Jianghu was that one had to be naturally gifted with the sense of that moment when power explodes.
But I believed.
I had marveled at the genius of this body more than a thousand times during the past three years of training.
Finally.
In my vision that was focused and focused again, an image gradually began to form.
Towards all those elegant points shining like stars.
I then poured out everything.
Swaaaaaaaaaaaaa—
The explosive power of the Finger Flick Divine Skill was unimaginable.
The continuously flowing, gentle soft palm.
The overwhelmingly pouring Myriad Flowers Like Rain.
The massively encroaching Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
The endlessly surging, profound energy of the Purple Mist Divine Art.
Perhaps.
The culmination of all the ki arts I had faced might all be contained in this single, fleeting move.
Papakpapakpak!
The Shadowless Terrace leader thrashed like a fish.
That was all I saw.
My vision quickly distorted and then tilted precariously.
After that, I couldn't perceive time for a while.
When I came to my senses, I was leaning against a pillar in the main hall.
I barely managed to raise my blurred vision.
The Shadowless Terrace leader, who was lying down and twitching continuously, gradually came into focus.
The Blood Demon's voice came to my ears.
“……What in the world did you do?”
“Keuu, just wait a minute.”
My fight was over, but the Shadowless Terrace leader’s was not.
He had to endure it.
He had to walk out on his own from the sea of pain greater than death, that infinite hell.
If he could just overcome death and return, a completely new life would unfold for him.
Finally, all his movements stopped.
The members of the Shadowless Terrace who had been watching all ran over and poured out their emotions.
“Leader! Open your eyes!”
“Are you alright! Leader!”
I just saw it.
The finger of the Shadowless Terrace leader twitching once.
And a quarter of an hour later.
He finally, slowly, raised his body.
“……”
The Shadowless Terrace leader was examining his own body with wide-open eyes.
Observing his expression full of disbelief, I finally realized that my unique great technique had succeeded.
“Keuu…… feels a bit like shit, doesn’t it?”
The Shadowless Terrace leader was groaning in extreme pain, yet his face showed that he found the changes that had happened to him utterly unbelievable.
“Hoo, it’ll probably be hard to adapt right away. But the sooner the first ki circulation, the better. You can feel it, right?”
Unable to hold back his surging curiosity any longer, the Blood Demon snatched the Shadowless Terrace leader’s wrist like a flash of lightning.
His face immediately contorted bizarrely.
“C-C-Crazy……!”
The members of the Shadowless Terrace also began to pour out questions.
“Leader? What happened?”
“Please tell us something!”
The Shadowless Terrace leader muttered as if possessed.
“Zhongwan…… Juque…… Yinjiao…… Yutang…… countless ki points have all been sealed with a powerful force.”
“Yes? No, what does that mean!”
“That can’t be!”
The members of the Shadowless Terrace were extremely flustered.
At that moment, the Blood Demon began to mutter as if reciting.
“……But he left the necessary ki points. From now on, your leader can only operate his internal art in one direction, a single path.”
A few members of the Shadowless Terrace shouted loudly.
“W-What does that mean? To be able to operate ki in only one direction?”
“Does that mean his internal art isn’t sealed either?”
The Blood Demon then got irritated with the innocent members of the Shadowless Terrace.
“Damn it! Don’t you get it yet! That ignorant bastard just forcibly engraved a new internal art circulation diagram onto your leader’s body!”
“Yeees?”
“W-What does that mean?”
Everyone was staring at my mouth, their eyes blinking.
I barely managed to straighten my constantly distorting vision and stared at the Shadowless Terrace leader.
“My ki art will be embedded in those ki points for only about a fortnight to a month. You must make it your own within that time. Although for now, it may not be as good as before, at least it is an internal heart art that has a tomorrow.”
If he operated his internal art in that state, it would just be forcibly made to flow in a single path.
I had just removed the inertia of the martial artist known as the Shadowless Terrace leader.
“What…… what is the name of this internal art?”
I just mixed a few internal heart arts I had noted before.
Ah, it’s a pain to name it now.
“Just call it the Martial Emperor's Divine Art.”
After forcibly changing all these guys’ internal arts, the next step was the more difficult techniques.
Seriously, what kind of hellish ordeal is this?
Somehow, it feels even tougher than when I lived as the Great Murim Alliance’s leader.
“Damn it.”
The moon, which had been looking down on the Jaegal Clan with drowsy eyes, was hiding behind a dark cloud.