Chapter 37

Chapter 37
Chapter 37. A Second-Rate Warrior Facing a Legend (2)

[The Taeul Sect? Did a school by that name actually exist?]

[Come on, you remember. That group that only wormed its way into the One Hundred Eight Peaks by weaving a web of falsehoods.]

[Ah, the illustrious Taeul Sword Emperor. Unbelievable. Do you think we might witness a technique passed down to the heir of our great Taeul Sword Emperor?]

[Watch your step. Rumor has it that not a single soul who challenged the Taeul Sword Emperor ever came away in one piece.]

The curse of recalling every single detail haunted even the hours I spent asleep.

Vivid fragments of days gone by invaded my slumber, forcing the realization that I was merely dreaming, an awakening that typically left me in a bitter mood for the rest of the day.

Even so, on this occasion, I could not resent that flawless recall. Once my subconscious recognized that the Soul-Destroying Formation had swallowed me whole, I managed to reclaim my wits without delay.

“……Curse it all.”

A dense, opaque vapor blanketed my sight in every direction.

—Help me, please!

—Save me, someone!

—Is there anybody out there?!

In a realm where the coordinates of time and position had completely unraveled, agonized shrieks echoed, their proximity impossible to gauge as they battered my ears.

These belonged to the unfortunate souls who had plunged into the Soul-Destroying Formation, confident they could carve out a passage.

Conspicuous among the isolated cries drifting to me was the total absence of unified voices.

Though hundreds of martial artists had ventured inside, every single individual had been cast into an isolated pocket of existence, utterly severed from the rest.

“Do these two million distinct pathways truly ensure that no two people ever cross paths?”

This absolute isolation was precisely why the mystics of the Maoshan Sect, despite untangling the core geometry of the array, steadfastly refused to step past its threshold.

I strained my vision to pierce the gloom, but my lower dantian was thoroughly drained.

“Have my perceptions grown dull? I completely overlooked the toll of unleashing the Radiant Heaven Divine Palm.”

The crisis had struck with such rapid, unforeseen malice that even my flawless memory had stumbled in the moment.

“He truly is a chilling monster.”

It was easy enough to accept the swift defeat of my Shattering Form, given that the exact same failure had transpired in my past incarnation, but watching the Radiant Heaven Divine Palm get brushed aside so effortlessly remained a bitter pill to swallow.

“And to top it off, he marooned me within the Soul-Destroying Formation. The man was a ruthless bastard even in his youth.”

In that minuscule fraction of time, he had calculated the devastating impact of the Radiant Heaven Divine Palm, realized it posed a threat to his grand designs, and maneuvered me straight into this trap.

He was a mortal foe, yet I was forced to acknowledge the terrifying agility of a mind that could only be deemed brilliant.

He disregarded morality and ethics to secure his objectives, possessed the sheer martial dominance and political weight to enforce his will, brushed off minor casualties without a second thought, and rallied others under a glorious banner.

It was highly likely that men rallied to his side simply because they were spellbound by that aura of absolute authority.

‘Reflecting on it now, that man might actually pose a greater threat than the entire Demonic Cult.’

Up until this point, I believed my sole purpose was to safeguard the Taeul Sect beneath the protective umbrella of the Murim Alliance.

Yet even that ambition would crumble into dust if the puppet masters guiding the Murim Alliance intended to drag us all into the abyss.

‘A confrontation with Yong So-ah is inevitable.’

No, a day would absolutely arrive when our blades would clash. Simply recalling how callously he discarded me into this Soul-Destroying Formation Kindled a fury so intense that hacking off each of his extremities piece by piece wouldn’t satisfy it.

But when I had only mastered the fundamentals of the Minor Heaven Sword Art, how could I hope to challenge an anomaly capable of neutralizing the Radiant Heaven Divine Palm? The sudden inferno of my rage withered as quickly as it had ignited.

“My own path forward is entirely obscured, mirroring the labyrinth of this Soul-Destroying Formation.”

Regardless, survival demanded that I find an exit from this prison.

If I perished within these confines, achieving One cycles of internal energy would amount to nothing, and any hope of striking back at Yong So-ah would vanish forever.

Sinking into a meditative posture, I immediately initiated Qi Circulation. Gradually, I sensed my internal reservoir beginning to replenish.

Yet in the brief window my eyelids remained shut, the surrounding illusion had undergone a total transformation.

The encircling vapor had dissolved into nothingness, replaced by a suffocating, impenetrable dark that sealed off every horizon.

Even the distant wails of my fellow martial artists had fallen dead silent.

Out of the grand total of 2,100,000 pathways governing this labyrinth, my memory held only 1,800,000.

Had I managed to commit just a fraction more to memory, the underlying architecture of the pathways would have revealed itself. Because I had ultimately stumbled into the Soul-Destroying Formation lacking that crucial data, the burden of mapping out the final 300,000 fell squarely on my shoulders.

Compounding this crisis was my total inability to discern which specific path served as my starting point.

Pinpointing my exact position required either complex array calculations or unlocking the upper dantian. At present, I possessed the capability for neither.

“Here is yet another blunder I must hide from my junior disciples.”

With no mathematical formula coming to mind, a solitary, desperate path remained.

Reseating myself and folding my legs, I returned to Qi Circulation and focused breathing.

With each revolution through the Small Heavenly Circuit, the dormant potencies of the Spiritual Medicine scattered across my frame began to awaken one after another.

The fierce current, incinerating impurities within my delicate pathways and bursting through locked gates, surged from the Central Pole Acupoint toward the Reaching Yang Acupoint, bypassed the Spirit Path Acupoint, and demanded a destination.

Without hesitation, I directed this raw internal force toward the Baihui Acupoint at the crown of my head.

Suddenly, an ancient admonition from the day I first practiced cultivation echoed in my thoughts.

—Jin So-un, under no circumstances should you ever attempt to unseal your upper dantian. Absolutely never.

A typical practitioner would never dare provoke the upper dantian without an extraordinary catalyst.

To attempt such a feat within the perilous depths of the Soul-Destroying Formation was nothing short of suicidal madness to any observer.

Even the fanatics of the Demonic Cult, renowned as the premier madmen under heaven, would undoubtedly call me insane if they witnessed this display.

‘Even so, there is no alternative.’

Armed with the insurance of the Calm Heart Pill to absorb a single instance of Qi Deviation, this was a gamble born of lunacy that I could actually afford to risk.

The internal energy that had paused in hesitation surged forward once more.

It seemed to query my resolve repeatedly, demanding to know if this path was truly my intent.

Steeling my willpower, I channeled the entire torrent of inner force upward in a single, explosive breath.

BOOM.

A deafening crack of thunder detonated within my skull, accompanied by a cataclysmic shockwave.

BOOM.

As my entire frame shuddered violently, every nerve ending burning as if scorched by flame, a torrent of agony rushed in, threatening to shatter my very mind.

Urgh.

The concussive force rattling through my meridian pathways threw my internal organs into absolute chaos, and a crimson trickle escaped the edge of my lips.

BOOM.

Trapped beneath a suffocating weight and a torment that felt like a thousand needles pricking every pore, a bizarre, indescribable sensation—hovering between pure agony and transcendent bliss—bloomed within my mind.

CRASH.

A sound resembling a roaring mountain torrent reverberated inside my skull, and the torment racking my flesh instantly transmuted into a piercing, icy refreshment.

The freezing current swirling through my mind cascaded down my frame, systematically shattering the blockages in my meridians.

In the midst of this transformation, the overwhelming current absorbed every lingering remnant of the Spiritual Medicine, augmenting its own strength to terrifying proportions.

‘Halt, bring it to a halt.’

The euphoric rush was intoxicating, but the internal qi was ballooning so violently that a sudden dread gripped me; I was on the verge of losing all authority over my own cultivation.

The energy, surging with greater ferocity than when it breached the Baihui Acupoint, paid no heed to my consciousness. It tore through my body, expanding pathways at its own whim before abruptly pooling against a formidable barrier.

‘This cannot be.’

Distasted by the sealed middle dantian, my internal force violently battered against the obstruction, attempting to bore a path right through it.

Gah.

Because it sought to violently breach a sealed gateway, my internal organs twisted painfully, causing me to violently cough up pool after pool of blood.

Maintaining this trajectory meant an inescapable descent into Qi Deviation.

‘Given that the upper dantian is already unsealed and the Calm Heart Pill protects me… I might as well risk everything.’

BOOM.

The instant the tide of internal force aligned perfectly with the focus of my will, it slammed into the middle dantian with redoubled fury.

BOOM.

Following a massive tremor that convulsed my entire physical form, the middle dantian finally yielded, shattered open as my internal energy surged throughout my body, entirely freed from any remaining barriers.

Only after the torrent had circulated through every vessel for a considerable duration and nestled quietly back into my core did I finally part my eyelids.

“Phew…….”

The sheer volume of internal energy humming within my dantian now equated to roughly a full century of dedicated cultivation.

With both my upper and middle dantians successfully unsealed, not a single impediment remained to disrupt the transit of my internal force.

In a flash, I had crossed into the legendary boundary of the Five Dragons Offering the Sage.

My vision cleared to an astonishing degree, and the heightened clarity of my five senses granted me the ability to observe my own form from a detached, objective viewpoint.

To put it plainly, I had attained the tier of mastery where a warrior could effortlessly intercept a weapon hurled from a blind spot without even turning to look.

“Providence truly smiled upon me.”

It was a hazardous roll of the dice I wouldn’t have dared contemplate without the insurance of the Calm Heart Pill.

By virtue of that gamble, I had forcibly unsealed the middle dantian as well, entirely integrating every scrap of the Spiritual Medicine that lingered within my tissues.

With my perceptions fully liberated, I began to attune myself to the underlying rhythm of the array.

The principles of the Eight Trigrams, the alignment of the Twelve Branches, the cycles of the Sixty Jiazi, and the shifting pathways forged by the three hundred and sixty-five permutations.

I perceived the energetic currents, mapped them against the partial blueprints occupying my thoughts, and pinpointed both my exact location and my destination.

Before I could fully process it, the crimson fog that had blanketed the area reasserted itself. Yet now, absolute certainty filled me.

“The way is clear.”

I shifted my stance, planting a foot firmly in one direction.

The scarlet vapor that had obscured everything immediately recoiled, parting to reveal an open corridor.

It was verification that my feet had chosen the correct pathway.

I advanced another step.

The crimson haze shifted, transforming into a thick yellow mist.

This served as tangible proof that I had crossed into a subsequent pathway.

One more step.

Once again, the vapor rapidly receded, clearing a path before me.

Then, I slammed into total blackness.

This specific route was a blind spot that the mystics of the Maoshan Sect had failed to calculate before their demise.

Even so, turning back or retreating was as impossible here as it would be inside a collapsing cavern.

The array mechanics would simply reset, inevitably forcing me back against this very same barrier.

“The responsibility falls to me to map out the incomplete pathways.”

Simultaneously funnelling my internal energy into the newly opened upper dantian, I began etched the entire geometric architecture of the Soul-Destroying Formation onto a blank wall within the mental archive of my mind.

Upon covering the entirety of that towering, boundless wall, a vacant patch manifested at the bottom left quadrant—the exact coordinates where the missing 300,000 pathways belonged.

It was a void that conventional mathematics could never hope to solve from the outset.

Deducing the core principles governing the known paths, I began to extrapolate and memorize entirely new sequences.

It was an act of pure, unadulterated madness, yet I forged ahead regardless, driven by an uncanny, irrational conviction that I could actually pull it off.

Was this the true gift of unsealing the upper dantian? The missing coordinates began manifesting in perfect harmony with the underlying laws of the array.

A single plotted pathway birthed the next sequence, and the pair of pathways generated by that logic multiplied into four more.

My intellect, supercharged by the awakening of my upper dantian, suffered a massive cognitive overload; the pressure of blood rushing to my head breached the fragile vessels of my nose, flowing downward in steady streams.

By the time I estimated the downpour from my nose could easily fill a small container.

“It is finished.”

The moment all 2,102,400 pathways materialized in perfect order, the absolute dark stretching before me lost all its terror.

TAP.

The surrounding world erupted into sudden brilliance, and I registered a powerful, radiant epicenter of energy.

Advancing another pace, the heavy vapor began to unravel.

With every stride I took, the mist grew thinner, exposing the fallen forms of those who had perished across the terrain.

And just as I sensed I had reached the absolute threshold of the Soul-Destroying Formation.

An immense, white precipice manifested before me, stretching upward into infinity.

I applied pressure to a specific section of that barrier.

RUMBLE.

The ivory barrier shifted upward, granting me entry back into a pitch-black cavern.

“Haa, haa.”

Stalactites of ice clung to the ceiling ahead, casting a vibrant blue radiance that illuminated the subterranean chamber.

“The Mita Sacred Water…….”

The moment my hyper-vigilance snapped, consciousness abandoned me, and I dropped to the floor.

—

When my eyes finally opened again, a profound weightlessness possessed my frame, as though every ounce of exhaustion had been entirely cleansed from my body.

Furthermore, my lower dantian retained roughly half of its maximum internal capacity. Given that I hadn’t spent a single moment in active meditation or breathwork, it was clear that opening the upper and middle dantians had dramatically accelerated my natural rate of energy generation.

“An outsider would assume I barely survived a horrific slaughter.”

My azure sect uniform was thoroughly saturated and stained dark by the torrent of blood I had coughed up alongside the severe nosebleed.

“Not that there is a soul alive to witness it anyway.”

The cavern remained entirely vacant.

Though hundreds of martial artists had blindly thrown themselves into the Soul-Destroying Formation, I stood as the sole survivor to successfully penetrate this inner sanctum.

“Haha, so the legends weren’t a lie after all.”

The conflict surrounding the Mita Sacred Water had sparked fierce skepticism in the past, not merely because it claimed the lives of five thousand warriors, but because the artifact itself was never recovered.

Consequently, rumors had circulated claiming the entire affair was a hoax orchestrated by the Hao Gate to plunge the martial world into utter chaos.

“Yet here I am, witnessing its existence with my own eyes.”

The Mita Sacred Water, flowing in a long, elegant stream from the cavern roof, generated its own luminescent glow.

Quickly retrieving a metal spike from my garments, I unfastened a specially reinforced container and struck the frozen current of Mita Sacred Water.

CRACK.

A fragment of the Mita Sacred Water sheared off, tumbling cleanly into the flask, while a frost pattern rapidly climbed up the metal spike, forcing me to discard it instantly.

The sheer, unadulterated Yin energy radiating from the Mita Sacred Water was so potent that the hand that had held the spike was already frozen stiff.

Channeling my internal force down to my extremities, the frost gradually melted away, leaving water dripping from my fingertips.

It truly was a miraculous phenomenon, a sight one would scarcely encounter twice in a mortal lifetime.

“If this holds true, then the resting place where the Taeul Sword Emperor was interred must be nearby as well.”

My primary objective from the very beginning had been uncovering any remaining signs of the Taeul Sword Emperor.

After crossing into this cavern, the sequence of revelations only served to validate my deepest suspicions.

“The Boundless Indestructible Soul-Destroying Formation, an absolute barrier that can neither be shattered nor undone.”

What manner of entity required the deployment of such a terrifying array, spanning thirty jang, simply to keep it bound?

—The paragons of the sun resolved to sever the ties binding Dark Heaven and Ten Thousand Swords from the living world.

From its very conception, the Soul-Destroying Formation was never a barrier that could be broken by mere martial might or profound inner arts.

The reality that they had enacted a ritual capable of tearing the soul itself away from reality indicated that the prisoner’s power was nothing short of apocalyptic.

—Beside the sacrificial vessel of Chu. At the absolute fringe of purgatory where the heavens meet the earth. In that desolate place, they bound Dark Heaven and Ten Thousand Swords. Only then did peace return to the realm.

The myth surrounding the Taeul Sword Emperor was absolute historical fact, and the ancient masters had erected the supreme barrier known as the Boundless Indestructible Soul-Destroying Formation to ensure they remained buried forever.

“He is bound to be here. Some relic of my Grand Patriarch.”

Turning away from the corridor that brought me here, I strode directly toward the Soul-Destroying Formation on the opposing side.

Now, possessing a flawless understanding of its layout, navigating the heavy vapor and absolute dark that sought to hem me in provoked not an ounce of dread.

With every single stride, the fog was violently repelled.

Through the gaps in the vapor, which parted as if offering a formal escort, I once more arrived before a white precipice.

Manipulating a mechanism on the wall, I wedged myself through the opening. A vast chamber emerged, consumed entirely by dark.

Closing my eyelids for a heartbeat, I mobilized my internal energy to sharpen my vision. As the shadows receded, I detected a pair of human forms seated at opposite ends of a space measuring roughly ten jang in diameter.

One form belonged to an elder adorned with snow-white hair.

The other belonged to a middle-aged figure possessing dark hair and a full beard.

Guided by an inexplicable, magnetic pull, I advanced toward the elder. It was then that I noticed the dense matrix of characters chiseled into the stone floor, radiating outward from his seated form.

And positioned at the very apex of those inscriptions were eight characters carved deeper than all the rest.

Ten Thousand Swords under Heaven.

Taeul Sword Emperor.

An overwhelming sensation struck my core, surging violently up into my chest.

It was the concentrated grief and agony born of centuries of humiliation that the ancestors of the Taeul Sect had carried for five hundred years, bridging the span of both my previous existence and this current life.

The strength evaporated from my legs, and my knees buckled beneath me.

Collapsing into a deep prostration right where I stood, with no time to even clear the tears spilling from my eyes, I managed to speak through a heavy, suffocating sob.

“Jin So-un, an eighteenth-generation descendant of the Taeul Sect, offers his deepest respects to the Grand Patriarch.”