Chapter 35

Chapter 35. Fell for It Again

Jaha’s shout left several people bewildered.

Both Hwancheonma and Magi were enemies to Jaha. Yet telling Magi to dodge did not make sense either, so everyone’s eyes immediately turned toward Jaha.

Even Goeui was looking at him as though he had gone mad.

Realizing what they were thinking, Jaha spoke.

“If one of those two dies, the survivor will kill all of us. That’s why they need to cripple each other. If one side is killed by the other, it’ll only put us at a disadvantage.”

Even in a situation like this, Jaha was still looking at the bigger picture.

It made him seem impressive.

Everyone else had been completely absorbed in watching the battle between the masters, yet Jaha had been observing the whole situation and even considering what they should do next.

The others flushed with embarrassment after realizing they had been watching the fight without thinking about anything else.

But not everyone felt that way.

Dangjong, who had been looking for every possible chance to embarrass Jaha, immediately jumped on his words.

“What a ridiculous bastard. I thought you knew something, but you’re just a complete coward. Didn’t you see the Lord of Seohyeopbang stab his sword straight into Hwancheonma’s side? No matter how incredible Hwancheonma is, there’s no way he escaped without a serious injury. And Magi has already exhausted his true qi fighting Hwancheonma. If we all attack him together, we can take him down. So why should we run away when such a good opportunity is right in front of us?”

No one had said it aloud, but at first, everyone had been thinking the same thing as Dangjong.

Naturally, several of them nodded at his words.

Their martial prowess might be far below Hwancheonma and Magi, but those two had already fought until their true qi was nearly exhausted.

They believed they had a good enough chance of defeating them now.

Jaha spoke in frustration.

“Does Hwancheonma’s face look like the face of someone who’s scared?”

Dangjong replied,

“A master can endure that much pain with a smile.”

Jaha shook his head.

No matter how great a master someone was, he was still human.

No human being was completely free from pain.

Even a peak martial artist frowned or groaned when something hurt.

They merely tried not to make a sound because of their pride.

While Jaha briefly looked elsewhere, the situation between Hwancheonma and Magi suddenly changed.

Magi had stabbed his sword through Hwancheonma’s side and injected true qi into him, believing that he had completely destroyed Hwancheonma’s internal organs.

He was smiling in satisfaction.

Then Hwancheonma swung his right hand.

BBAAAK!

The sound of bones twisting and shattering rang out as Magi’s left shoulder collapsed.

Magi released his sword and stumbled backward.

“How...?”

Despite having his side pierced, Hwancheonma had still gathered enough true qi to attack him.

Magi stared at him as though he could not understand what had happened.

Instead of answering, Hwancheonma grabbed the sword Magi had stabbed into his body and smoothly pulled it out before throwing it aside.

Clang!

Yet there was not even a single drop of blood on the blade.

Magi stammered,

“W-What kind of sorcery is this?”

Despite being a peak master, Magi uttered such an old-fashioned line.

Hwancheonma sneered.

“You are known as Heuksim Okmacho, yet the best thing you can say is that it is sorcery? Demonic martial arts are far broader and deeper than anything people like you can imagine. Do not belittle them by calling them mere sorcery.”

Hwancheonma spoke with immense pride.

At that moment, Jaha remembered a certain martial art.

When he had once studied strange techniques and martial arts within the Demonic Cult’s martial repository, there was one technique he had briefly come across.

So Hwancheonma’s martial art is Heoryeong Gongsohaeng.

I only saw a general description of it before. I became curious and tried searching for it, but I couldn’t find the actual manual.

So the reason was that Hwancheonma had taken it.

Even though the descendants of the Seven Heavenly Demons have their own secret arts passed down to them, he still learned Heoryeong Gongsohaeng because he wanted to maximize the power of his illusion arts.

Just because a martial art came from the Demonic Cult did not mean every martial art had the word Demon in its name.

There were plenty of Demonic Cult techniques whose names sounded even more orthodox than orthodox martial arts.

Heoryeong Gongsohaeng was one of them.

Just hearing its name, no one would think it was a martial art from the Demonic Cult.

But once someone learned what it actually did, they would be shocked by how bizarre it was.

The foundation of Heoryeong Gongsohaeng involved reducing one’s body weight as much as possible in order to achieve lightning-fast movement.

As a result, its practitioners eventually became so skinny that they looked like dried corpses.

To compensate for that weakness, a method was later added that allowed practitioners to inflate their skin, making their bodies appear large and healthy.

That trick proved extremely effective in real combat, so the martial art was developed even further.

Half of the body that others saw was actually nothing but empty space.

So even though Magi had stabbed Hwancheonma in the side, he had not actually inflicted a serious sword wound.

At most, he had pierced some skin.

That was why Hwancheonma had suffered almost no damage.

I knew something was strange from the moment he deliberately let Magi attack his body.

Hwancheonma had intentionally revealed an opening and allowed Magi to stab through an empty part of his body.

Since nearly half of his apparent body consisted of empty space, attacks were meaningless unless they aimed directly for his heart.

Magi did not know that.

That was why even someone known as Heuksim Okmacho had called it sorcery.

Jaha spoke again.

“Seohyeopbang can’t stop Hwancheonma anymore. We need to get out of here.”

Revenge was important to Jaha.

But he had painfully realized that with his current abilities, he was no match for Hwancheonma.

Hwancheonma had defeated Magi without even using his specialty, illusion arts.

He had done it with Heoryeong Gongsohaeng alone.

After hearing Jaha, Hwancheonma snorted.

“No one here will leave alive.”

Hwancheonma stepped forward.

The experts of Seohyeopbang immediately moved in front of Magi and blocked his path.

However, Hwancheonma merely glanced at them before turning his gaze toward Jaha.

“Did this Lord not tell you? I said I would make sure to kill you in a particularly special manner.”

Jaha gave a faint laugh.

In a way, it almost seemed like the resigned laughter of someone who had already given up.

But Jaha soon straightened his back and spoke.

“You can’t catch me.”

“What? You?”

Hwancheonma was so dumbfounded after hearing such casual speech from a young brat that he actually laughed.

Jaha continued.

“Yeah. What, did you expect me to speak politely to an evil bastard from the Demonic Cult like you? You old monster!”

Jaha was finally throwing out all the curses he had failed to say at the cliff.

He had regretted not cursing Hwancheonma properly back then.

So he wanted to make up for it now.

Hwancheonma was not the only person shocked by Jaha’s shout.

Everyone standing behind Jaha stared at him with their mouths wide open.

He had just called the famous Hwancheonma an old monster.

He had even spoken down to him without the slightest hint of respect.

No one could say such things unless they had completely lost their fear of death.

That bastard has finally gone insane.

Dangjong and Namgung Cheol could only reach that conclusion.

They thought Jaha had lost his mind because death was staring him in the face.

Even they would never dare speak like that in front of Hwancheonma.

They might all be on the verge of death, but Magae, Songrim, and the warriors of Jibu secretly felt refreshed as they watched Jaha insult Hwancheonma.

Who in the world could speak like that in front of one of the Demonic Cult’s Seven Heavenly Demons?

Unlike the others, however, Goeui and Deung Hwahong watched Jaha especially closely.

He isn’t the kind of guy who would say something like that for no reason.

He must have something he’s relying on.

Having spent time with Jaha before, Goeui and Deung Hwahong unknowingly looked at each other and smiled.

Realizing that they were thinking the same thing, they folded their arms.

Both looked curious about what Jaha was planning.

Jegal Yuyeon, in particular, closely observed Jaha’s movements.

While provoking Hwancheonma, Jaha had been slowly moving his feet.

He was approaching the area where he had previously spent so much time drawing strange patterns on the ground.

The others were too focused on the verbal confrontation between Jaha and Hwancheonma to notice it.

But the naturally intelligent Jegal Yuyeon had been watching Jaha’s feet from the moment he began provoking Hwancheonma with such ridiculous words.

However, even Jegal Yuyeon had never seen the formation patterns Jaha had drawn.

So she had no idea what was about to happen.

From what I can tell, Young Hero Byeok is deliberately provoking Hwancheonma.

While Jegal Yuyeon stared intently at Jaha, Deung Hwahong watched her from beside her with a displeased expression.

Finally, Deung Hwahong spoke.

“Excuse me... you’re Lady Jegal, right?”

Jegal Yuyeon frowned slightly when Deung Hwahong broke her concentration.

“What is it?”

Her tone came out a little sharp.

Deung Hwahong narrowed her eyes.

“Aren’t you paying a little too much attention to Young Hero Byeok? Judging from the way Young Hero Paeng refuses to leave your side, it doesn’t look like the two of you have an ordinary relationship. Don’t people usually call something like this an affair?”

Even while saying it, Deung Hwahong realized she might have gone too far.

But after finally meeting someone she genuinely liked, she did not want someone else to take him away.

So she wanted to make things clear.

Only then did Jegal Yuyeon realize what was bothering Deung Hwahong.

She smiled.

“Heh. Don’t worry. I’m not watching Young Hero Byeok because I’m interested in him. Young Hero Byeok is about to activate a formation, and I’m curious about what kind of formation it is.”

Deung Hwahong’s face immediately turned red.

“Oh... really? Then I’m sorry.”

Jegal Yuyeon looked pleasantly at the bold yet straightforward Deung Hwahong.

She was even a little envious of that personality, since it was something she herself lacked.

Suddenly, Deung Hwahong cried out.

“Ah! What if he really gets killed like that?!”

Hwancheonma was approaching Jaha.

Deung Hwahong trusted Jaha.

But his opponent was none other than Hwancheonma, one of the Seven Heavenly Demons of the Demonic Cult.

Jegal Yuyeon also stared at the tense scene.

They were about to discover exactly why Jaha had deliberately provoked Hwancheonma.

Jaha grinned as he watched Hwancheonma approach.

Fortunately, he had succeeded in provoking the naturally suspicious Hwancheonma.

Hwancheonma spoke coldly.

“I was planning to kill you later, but since you seem so desperate to die quickly, I’ll deal with you first.”

Normally, Hwancheonma was not a talkative person.

But the sight of Jaha had enraged him so much that he could not stop talking.

And watching that brat grin like an idiot without realizing he was about to die made Hwancheonma want to smash his head into powder with his iron ruler.

What made things even more ridiculous was that Jaha was gathering his energy as though he actually intended to fight him.

So rather than killing Jaha with his iron ruler, Hwancheonma decided to enjoy the feeling of beating him to death with his bare hands.

He gathered true qi into both palms.

The surrounding air began to ripple.

Wooooooong!

He intended to turn Jaha into a bloody mess with a single palm strike.

Only then did he feel that his anger toward Jaha might finally disappear.

Hwancheonma pushed strength into his toes.

His body gently floated into the air.

Then he shot straight toward Jaha.

BBAAAK!

Hwancheonma’s right hand shot toward Jaha’s head while his left hand struck toward Jaha’s chest.

It was one of Hwancheonma’s secret techniques—

Seokseokjang.

A terrifying palm technique said to be capable of shattering even solid rock into pieces.

Long ago, the first martial art of Hwancheonma that Jaha had personally witnessed was Seokseokjang.

At the time, Jaha had watched Hwancheonma leave a palm print nearly three chon deep in a massive boulder.

He had been shocked by both the purity of Hwancheonma’s inner power and the strength of the palm technique.

Hwancheonma Sinjeok specialized in extremely fast movement techniques.

That was why he carried a light iron ruler and mainly trained in fist and kicking techniques.

Just as Jaha’s head and chest were about to be crushed—

Jaha did something that looked completely absurd to everyone watching.

He kicked up a small stone lying near his feet.

Against the force of Hwancheonma’s Seokseokjang, such a tiny stone should have been reduced to dust instantly.

And just as expected, the stone shattered under the force of Hwancheonma’s palm energy.

Fragments scattered in every direction.

A cruel sneer appeared on Hwancheonma’s lips.

He thought Jaha had become so desperate in the face of death that he was doing something even a complete amateur would never attempt.

However, the moment they saw it, Sinbi and the one-armed Right Protector widened their eyes.

“There’s something there.”

“That’s...!”

Sinbi had once cut apart a stone Jaha kicked toward him with his sword.

And he had painfully experienced what happened afterward.

That was why this situation did not look ordinary to him at all.

Just as they expected—

Hwancheonma’s palm force reached Jaha’s head and chest.

At the same moment, the shattered fragments of stone scattered in every direction.

Hwancheonma suddenly felt the force of his palm strike disperse like water the instant it touched Jaha’s head.

The palm energy aimed at Jaha’s chest also scattered in an instant.

Even Hwancheonma froze for a moment at the bizarre phenomenon.

Sinbi shouted,

“Something’s wrong!”

He could not shake the feeling that Hwancheonma had once again fallen into one of Jaha’s strange tricks.