Chapter 230

Chapter 230: Silence (1)

Kwoooong-.

A distinct rumble rippled beneath the soles of Jin Hagyeong’s feet.

The unsettling reverberation traveled upward, seeping from his heels straight through to his lower legs.

It wasn’t a localized earthquake.

An immense force originating from the base of the peak was vibrating across the entire mountain range.

Accompanying it was a terrifying, metallic cacophony of chanting that sounded like weapon blades grinding together.

Thick mist continued to blanket the lower slopes, masking the view, yet the sheer volume of the noise allowed him to visualize the chaos below.

Hundreds, possibly over a thousand Demonic Soldiers of the Dark Rakshasa Way had to be swarming up the mountainside.

That wasn’t the extent of the threat, either.

‘The Twelve Rakshasas have likely made their move as well…’

Jin Hagyeong focused his attention toward the downward trail.

His head remained perfectly still, even as the early morning gust caused his empty left sleeve to whip back and forth.

The stump where his shoulder met empty air felt utterly frozen.

The chill could not be attributed solely to the crisp dawn wind.

Na―mu―a―mi―ta―bul―.

Na―mu―a―mi―ta―bul―.

The dual-layered cadence relentlessly assaulted his ears and disrupted his internal Dantian.

When he had initially taken his position on the peak, the chanting consisted of a single, unified layer.

For quite some time, that singular, deep resonance—composed of hundreds of voices blending perfectly into one—had dominated the air.

Now, however, a secondary layer had been superimposed upon the first.

While the primary layer was formed by a multitude, this new addition was the work of a lone speaker.

Yet, despite being only one individual, this new voice possessed a power that completely dominated the hundreds beneath it, projecting with singular, focused direction.

Kurururururu-.

Driven by that overwhelming sound, the bedrock of the mountain groaned and shook.

The wooden supports of the medical pavilion sheltering the wounded creaked violently, and loose gravel shifted across the stony earth.

“Great Hero.”

Jeon Rahwa stepped up beside him.

Her eyelids were squeezed tight, straining to pierce the impenetrable wall of white mist.

“We need to descend immediately.”

Jin Hagyeong offered no verbal response.

The person holding the line below was the Sect Leader of the Hero’s Sect, flanked by two phenomenally gifted Formation Masters.

The presence of someone like himself would alter nothing in a clash of that magnitude.

There was simply no role for a one-armed swordsman in that crucible of violence.

Even so, a different duty presented itself to him right where he stood.

Jin Hagyeong turned his gaze back to survey the makeshift encampment pitched near the edge of Colorful Lake.

The vast majority of the occupants were grievously wounded.

Barely any of them possessed the strength to wrap their fingers around a hilt.

Hoae stood firmly in place, blocking Seok Gyeong from advancing further.

Seok Gyeong’s fingers twitched against the grip of his sheathed weapon, yet he refused to take his hand away.

Kugugugu-.

The subterranean trembling intensified significantly.

Abruptly, one of the two layers of chanting cut out entirely.

The collective roar of the hundreds vanished into absolute nothingness.

Only the single voice remained active.

Despite the loss of volume, that lone chanter still held the entire mountain in a state of violent tremor.

The resonance no longer just vibrated beneath their feet; it shook the very marrow of their bones.

Several of the incapacitated men managed to lift their heads.

The sheer physical force of the sound wave was undeniable, forcing even those pinned down by agonizing trauma to take notice.

A single battered warrior dragged himself up, using a snapped blade as an improvised crutch.

Beside him, another soldier followed suit.

Then another joined them.

Observing their ragged determination in silence, Jin Hagyeong ground his teeth so violently that his jaw ached, forcing the words past his lips.

“Anyone who still possesses the strength to grip a weapon, stand up.”

They would have to wage war with whatever remained of their shattered frames.

They would throw themselves into the fray even if it meant being ground into nothingness.

With great champions bleeding on the slopes below, the least they could do was add their own ashes to the pyre.

Sreung-.

He bared his blade using his sole remaining arm.

● ● ●

Kwo-gwang!

The heavy trident crashed downward with immense force.

A massive stone outcropping shattered into a cloud of jagged debris that sprayed wildly in every direction.

Gakjin absorbed the massive kinetic energy of his descent through his legs, anchoring himself before casting his eyes downward.

Bright scarlet monastic garments met his gaze.

Amongst the sea of red-robed casualties littering the incline, two severed torsos rested side by side.

Gakhae and Beopjong.

Furthermore.

Gakhae’s distinctive Crescent Moon Saber lay shattered nearby, reduced to fragments shorter than the span of a palm.

The fractured grip remained clamped within the dead man’s fingers, retaining a faint trace of residual warmth.

He had maintained his hold until his final breath.

Beopjong’s corpse exhibited a bizarre, incomprehensible trauma.

It was an invisible, clean bisection, as though a blade had materialized out of thin air.

The trajectory of the cut indicated that the weapon had not struck from the outside inward, but rather had ruptured outward from within the body itself.

‘What manner of martial art is this?’

The vasculature on the hand clamping the trident distended fiercely.

They had shared the same path for two decades.

He and Gakhae had been inducted into the Rakshasa Monk Corps on the exact same day, and Beopjong was the youth whom Gakhae had protected and mentored above all others.

What was more, the boy had not even seen his fifteenth year.

The raging fury within him quickly froze over into something far colder.

Pure, unadulterated Killing Intent took its place.

The steady chanting resumed from the rear.

It belonged to Beom-eum.

That single monk’s voice caused the entire mountain to hum, colliding directly with the invisible pressure of Dong Bongsu’s energy field.

Simultaneously with the vocalization.

Tteng—.

A crisp, metallic chime reverberated across the terrain.

It originated from the bronze alms bowl.

The vessel was balanced carefully on Beom-eum’s left palm.

The tips of his right fingers struck the lip of the bronze container, and the expanding ripples of sound from that single impact merged seamlessly with the deep registers of his chant, creating a unified frequency.

Where the vocalization provided the melody, the bronze vessel dictated the rhythm.

As the strike’s resonance caught the wave of the chant and expanded outward, everything touched by the sound fell under Beom-eum’s dominion.

The trembling of the boulders, the rustle of the foliage, and even the disturbances in the pools of blood collecting around the dead.

Countless disparate noises were drowned out by a solitary ocean of sound.

The Brahmā’s Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds claimed the entire mountainside.

Dong Bongsu’s Super True Qi Field and Beom-eum’s Brahmā’s Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds locked in a direct, suffocating battle for supremacy over the peak.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the phenomenon successfully forced the adversary, Dong Bongsu, to halt his advance.

Excellent.

Now that Beom-eum had deployed his Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds, his role was simply to execute his forms within its domain.

This was the fruit of twenty years of perfect coordination.

Gakjin ripped his trident free from the earth.

“Almsgiver. How can you perpetrate such a monstrous act without a shred of remorse? To unleash such a brutal, lethal technique upon a mere child?”

Dong Bongsu bared his teeth in a grim smile.

“He chose to obstruct my path, and thus his life was forfeit.”

A thick vein throbbed violently against Gakjin’s temple.

“Is that your stance? Then you, Almsgiver, shall be escorted to the Buddha immediately. For you have chosen to obstruct the path of the two of us.”

He charged.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

With every stride the eight-foot giant took, the earth split open beneath his weight.

An immense physical power and Internal Energy that could easily withstand the combined pressure of three Peak Masters left massive cratered footprints in the soil with every step.

Tteng—.

As if providing direct reinforcement, Beom-eum’s bronze vessel rang out a second time.

In alignment with that chime, the crushing weight of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds deepened by a massive margin.

The perimeter of the transparent barrier enveloping Dong Bongsu—the force that rendered the surrounding atmosphere as viscous as deep water—shuddered imperceptibly.

The acoustic waves of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds were actively disrupting the structural cohesion of the Super True Qi Field.

‘Now.’

Rakshasa Dharma-Protecting Saber, Second Form.

Demon-Rending Slash.

Pwaat!

The trident was driven forward in a vicious horizontal thrust at hip level.

The instant his Spear Aura saturated the three distinct prongs, the atmosphere surrounding the weapon ruptured, and three independent currents of energy surged forward, intertwining tightly around the tips like a braided cord.

Backed by the presence of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds, the absolute concentration of the Spear Aura magnified twofold.

Beom-eum’s rhythmic chanting provided the necessary fuel.

The three piercing currents of Spear Aura emanating from the trident absorbed the acoustic energy of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds, expanding in volume.

It was an destructive force that weaponized sound itself as sustenance.

Chaeng!

Dong Bongsu shifted his blade to intercept.

The Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword.

The midnight-black steel collided directly with the three prongs of the charging trident.

A shower of brilliant sparks erupted.

The immense kinetic feedback surged straight up the shaft of the trident, traveling through his wrist, bypassing his forearm, and striking all the way into his shoulder.

A single engagement.

From that solitary impact, Gakjin understood the reality of the situation.

The raw force behind Dong Bongsu’s strike was not actually sufficient to stop the three currents of Spear Aura in a dead halt.

He had merely redirected the kinetic energy.

He had altered the trajectory of the trident by a fraction of an inch, sliding the primary vector of the attack safely away.

The pure vibration echoing back up the handle was absolute confirmation.

The reality that the entirety of the feedback returned to Gakjin proved his opponent had absorbed none of the blow.

‘…To think his martial arts allow him to deflect pure Aura.’

Nevertheless.

It made no difference whether he deflected the strike or utilized some other trick.

The trident would simply strike again, heavier each time.

Furthermore, the trident’s inherent Aura, compressed within the boundaries of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds, would accumulate mass and destructive power with every consecutive collision.

Gakjin spun the heavy haft, bringing the rear blade around in a sweeping arc.

Rakshasa Dharma-Protecting Saber, First Form.

Demon-Subduing Horizontal Slash.

Kaaang!

The immense rotational momentum generated by the weapon’s spin pooled entirely into the right prong, forcing the Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword violently upward.

The edge of the prong clipped Dong Bongsu’s left shoulder.

From that single, glancing blow, Dong Bongsu’s form was propelled backward by half a handspan.

No. To describe it as being ‘propelled backward’ was inaccurate.

The gouges left by his boots in the dirt did not span a mere half handspan; they stretched for two Zhang.

The immense, stone-hard musculature flexing beneath those scarlet vestments had transmitted a pure, unadulterated concentration of Aura through the weapon, rather than a standard technical form.

Along the path where Dong Bongsu retreated, his soles tearing through the earth, the bedrock fractured as though sliced by a plow share.

Tteng—.

Beom-eum’s bronze vessel sang out once more.

The cadence was accelerating.

The tone of the chanting driving the underlying melody shifted upward by half a step, and the ripples of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds grew noticeably sharper, more piercing.

Chaeng!

This instance did not involve a thrust, but rather a calculated hook.

The twin outer prongs of the trident snared the steel of the Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword.

The moment the dark steel became trapped within the prongs, Gakjin wrenched the haft with all his might, forcing the sword’s path to buckle.

Ujijik!

It was no longer just the dirt beneath Dong Bongsu’s boots that gave way; the entire stretch of ground separating the two combatants ruptured across a distance of over ten Zhang down the incline.

The volatile energy released by the collision of the Spear Aura and the enemy’s sword intent, twisting into a singular vortex, had discharged directly into the bedrock.

From both edges of the newly formed trench, massive shards of stone erupted upward before disintegrating into dust.

The flying shrapnel tore outward like fragments of an explosive projectile, shredding the garments of the corpses strewn across the field.

As though driven by pure survival instinct.

The adversary leaped back to create distance.

‘The strategy is effective.’

Tteng.

Tteng.

Tteng-tteng-tteng.

Beom-eum’s bronze vessel was struck in rapid, overlapping succession.

Shifting seamlessly from a measured three-beat pattern to a frantic five-beat rhythm.

The instant the tempo transitioned, the density of the Sea of Ten Thousand Sounds began to oscillate violently.

The acoustic currents actively disrupted Dong Bongsu’s Super True Qi Field, creating rapid intervals where the defensive perimeter’s cohesion thinned out significantly before reforming.

An artificial low tide.

If he drove his trident forward precisely during those fleeting moments of atmospheric thinning, the impact of each strike multiplied by more than ten thousand jin.

Beom-eum manipulated the fluctuations of the Super True Qi Field using his rhythmic strikes, while Gakjin exploited the resulting vulnerabilities with his heavy trident.

An immaculate orchestration perfected over two decades of shared combat.

Kakang!

The trident ground along the length of the sword’s edge, delivering three rapid, consecutive strikes.

Upon the third impact, the Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword shuddered violently, its steel vibrating unsteadily for the very first time.

‘The blow hit home.’