Chapter 234. Within Ten Paces, You’ll Find A Fragrant Flower (5)

He finally understood why, in spite of its overwhelming might, Martial Heaven was not the only martial arts organization in existence.

“... That bastard didn’t even kill us. He just beat us up, made us kneel, and then forced us to stop our plans and go back into hiding again. His power was impossible to even ascertain, let alone fight against, so we had no choice but to go into hiding again.”

‘Huh? Why didn’t Master kill these crazy bastards?’

It was as if the Martial Heaven Emperor could read Woo-Moon’s mind.

“Keke, I wondered that too. Why didn’t he kill us? And the answer is... how should I know? In any case, many years passed again, after which the Martial Heaven God began to be filled with pride once more. He thought that, considering how much his cultivation had developed in that time, he would now be able to defeat Woo Bok-Hee. Moreover... considering how much time had passed, he felt that Woo Bok-Hee might have ascended anyway.”

Of course, Woo-Moon knew that his master hadn’t ascended for many years in his pursuit to treat the Solar Physique.

“Did Master show up and stop you this time, too?”

“Yes. That damn Daoist was still there, and he showed up again. Because of that, we had no choice but to go into forced seclusion once again. As time passed, we started to plan to conserve our strength as much as possible, in case Woo Bok-Hee was still around.”

Martial Heaven had overwhelming power and treasured power above all else.

Woo-Moon had thus been wondering why such a pride-filled organization was going around plotting and scheming so underhandedly like this, and he only now understood the reason behind their actions.

‘Martial Heaven was afraid of Master. That’s why they tried to use as little strength as possible to deal with the murim. So that they could fight more effectively if Master showed up again in the future.’

They had established their dominance, and Woo Bok-Hee had shown up to stomp them into the ground. Then, they had gone into hiding and built up their strength again, going as far as to erase their very existence from the annals of history. When they regained their power, they showed up once again, only to be stopped by Woo Bok-Hee a second time.

That repetition had brought them to this point.

“I realized that you were that damned Daoist’s disciple when we first exchanged moves.”

The Martial Heaven Emperor had been mortally wounded. The wound caused by Woo-Moon’s last strike was not something that could ever be healed.

It was inevitable. All of the qi within his body had been exhausted while trying to endure All the Myriad Things in the World.

Indeed, it was not that his dantian was dried-up and he needed replenishment. Every single bit of the qi normally spread throughout his body was gone, and his dantian had been abused to such an extent that it could no longer recover... ever. The very foundation of qi itself had been stripped from the Martial Heaven Emperor’s body.

The only reason he was still alive, with his chest split open and massive blood loss, was not actually his remaining qi—there was none remaining. It was the enlightenment of martial arts that he had achieved in his lifetime that was keeping him alive.

Even though his life’s flame had already been extinguished and his soul should have left his body, that high-level enlightenment allowed him to forcefully hold himself for a little while. A really, really little while.

The end was near.

With the aura of death filling his gaze, the Martial Heaven Emperor looked at Woo-Moon.

“Kill the Martial Heaven God. Kill that bastard, no matter what. Stop those damned bastards.”

If someone could hear him now, they might have thought that the Martial Heaven Emperor was regretting his past and had grown tired of the bloodshed. However, Woo-Moon felt otherwise.

“You harbor great hatred toward the Martial Heaven God. And it’s not because of what happened just now.”

The Martial Heaven Emperor laughed again.

Before he knew it, the Martial Heaven Emperor’s eyes turned crimson, and he smiled seductively at Woo-Moon.

At that moment, Woo-Moon felt his heart pounding. Even though the Martial Heaven Emperor was a man, right now, even Woo-Moon’s three fairies would have to concede to him in terms of attractiveness.

‘The Blood Cloud Devil Emperor was like that too. To think the Martial Heaven Emperor is even more seductive.’

“I was a woman.”

Woo-Moon’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What.”

“Well, I think you can tell I’m a man now, but I really used to be a woman. I... I...”

The Martial Heaven Emperor stopped mid-sentence and suddenly looked at Princess Mok Yong with bloodlust-filled eyes.

The emotion within his gaze was a swirl of longing, sadness, and jealousy.

“There was a time like that for me, too. A time when my heart would beat quickly while I secretly yearned for someone. A time when I was still like a fresh flower that had not yet bloomed. When my chest was not fully grown, but even so...”

The Martial Heaven Emperor looked down at his manly chest and quivered.

A terrible venom seemed to exude from his eyes.

“That bastard... is the devil. He only cares about himself and doesn’t think about the feelings of others. He's a demon who fundamentally cannot comprehend the suffering of others.”

As he spoke of the Martial Heaven God, the Martial Heaven Emperor felt hatred, anger, fear, and yet an inexplicable longing; his emotions constantly shifted.

Woo-Moon said nothing.

“He was the person I loved. But he... Knowing that I had an exceptional talent for cultivating, he tricked me into becoming his experiment. His trial for martial arts. Not knowing this, I fell for his trick and learned what he gave me. Since it was a cultivation method that my lover had given to me, I never doubted him for a second...”

“If you were tricked into cultivating something that turned you into a man, why are you still with the Martial Heaven God?”

“When I found out that he had experimented on me and my cultivation method was turning me into a man, well, I would’ve had to be an idiot not to realize it...”

“The Martial Heaven God didn’t really love you...”

The Martial Heaven Emperor nodded sadly.

“But I couldn’t leave because I loved him just as much as I hated him. Maybe the opposite of love isn’t hate. Because even though I hated him, my love didn’t disappear.”

Love and hate—were they really polar opposites?

“Please kill the Martial Heaven God. He isn’t someone that should exist in this world. He’s not a human. Please, kill...”

“Don’t worry, I was going to do that anyway. But you’re no different, either. Whether it was because of the Martial Heaven God’s orders or because of your past wounds, you yourself are also a villain who killed countless innocent people. That much is clear.”

Hearing Woo-Moon’s words, for some reason, she smiled as if she felt relieved.[1]

That was the final moment of her life.

The second strongest master within Martial Heaven after the Martial Heaven God.

One of the main enemies that Woo-Moon had to kill. The enemy who had cut off his father’s ear and made his life hell.

Yet although he had succeeded in killing this enemy and had become who knew how much stronger in the process... Woo-Moon felt more bitter than relieved.

“Damn it!”

And thus, the bloodshed in the capital came to an end.

***

“What is it, Father?”

While the Martial Heaven God smiled at Eun Dang-Hwi’s words, his smile never reached his eyes.

“The Martial Heaven Emperor is dead.”

Eun Dang-Hwi trembled as if he had been struck by lightning.

“M-mother...”

The Martial Heaven Emperor had indeed been a woman, and in the distant past, during the embryonic period of Martial Heaven, she had actually been the Martial Heaven God’s wife. No one except for the three members of the Martial Heaven God’s family knew that fact, of course. Everyone else had all been killed by the Martial Heaven Emperor.

But it was the first time in hundreds of years that Eun Dang-Hwi had referred to the Martial Heaven Emperor as “Mother.”

After becoming a man, the Martial Heaven Emperor had strictly acted as a man, even going so far as forbidding Eun Dang-Hwi to call her mother, treating her child like a stranger.

“Which... Which bastard did it, Father?”

“A Zenith has passed away, and before that, another Zenith was born. A person who could become a Zenith Master while not being a member of Martial Heaven.... It’s most likely the one receiving the most attention right now, Song Woo-Moon.”

“Song Woo-Moon!”

Eun Dang-Hwi gritted his teeth. He thought back to when he had briefly encountered Woo-Moon at the entrance of the Heavenly Demon Tomb.

‘I should have killed him back then. I should have killed him instead of just playing around! I should have put the Heaven-Spanning Flying Dagger through his head!’

Eun Dang-Hwi, filled with murderous intent toward Woo-Moon, stormed out of the room. He then called Martial Heaven’s subordinates to join him and kill Woo-Moon.

The Martial Heaven God did not stop him.

He simply poured himself a cup of tea and sipped it slowly, smiling quietly.

***

One target, one kill!

This was the answer.

Ma-Ra realized it not long after starting to fight Da Wu, so she continued to attack Da Wu’s side over and over again.

“AAARGH!!”

As Ma-Ra’s long, luscious hair fluttered in the wind, Da Wu’s fierce fist failed to hit her face and only cut through the air.

Bang!

The terrifyingly keen Silver Moon Discs struck Da Wu in the same place once again. Her first couple of strikes had achieved nothing whatsoever, but her tenacity was now bearing fruit—Da Wu’s flesh was bruised and swelling, something he hadn’t felt in years.

Feeling both pain and fear, Da Wu took a deep breath, and his already massive upper body became significantly more massive.

“Shut up,” Ma-Ra said softly.

With that, she swept the ground with her hands and leaped into the air, shoving a large rock into Da Wu’s wide-open mouth.

Bang!

As Da Wu took a deep breath, the stone was sucked in along with air, stuffing his mouth.

“ROAR!!!!”

It was as if he was using every sound technique from every martial art, all at once. His roar simply pulverized the solid stone lodged in his mouth into dust, spreading the particles forward with tremendous force.

Ma-Ra didn’t dodge, didn’t cover her ears, or even stimulate her qi to block it.

“I said, shut up.”

She simply swung her sword, Death’s Pursuit, straight down. The sword strike, as cold as frost and as sharp as her gaze, split Da Wu’s sound qi exactly in half, rendering it useless.

Clank, clank, clank!

At the same time, Ma-Ra’s other hand swept across her wasp-thin waist, and the chain sickle shot out and cut into the same spot as before: the right side of Da Wu’s waist.

Furious at being attacked without being able to retaliate, Da Wu quickly punched forward. Well, it was quick as far as he was concerned. From Ma-Ra’s perspective, the attack was slow enough she had time to ponder tomorrow’s meal plan.

Of course, the fist was accompanied by a powerful pressure. However, it wasn’t enough to hold Ma-Ra down.

She flickered through the shadows using her stealth technique and appeared right next to Da Wu, scratching into Da Wu’s side again with the sharp iron claws in her hand.

“You damned assassin bitch!”

Da Wu was naturally furious.

Thick veins bulged all over his entire body as he swung his right fist at Ma-Ra’s torso, which was vaguely revealed because of her attack with the iron claw.

Suddenly, Ma-Ra flipped through the air. Looking down at Da Wu from above, she put her hands into her robes, then flicked her wrists out at lightning speed.

Swish! Swish, swish...!

Ten heavy daggers made of Profound Iron flew forward with Millennium Blood Threads hanging behind them.

In this situation, an average warrior would have tried to dodge or deflect the daggers. However, Da Wu trusted his Transcendent Aura-reinforced physique and continued to attack without worrying about defense.

Ma-Ra twisted her wrist.

Swoosh!

Before they reached Da Wu, the ten Profound Iron daggers spread out in different directions, and the threads wrapped around Da Wu like snakes. And when Ma-Ra let go of the Millennium Blood Threads that she was holding, it turned out that there was another Profound Iron dagger attached at the other end of the threads as well.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!

The Profound Iron Daggers hanging from each end of the ten Millennium Blood Thread met and crossed each other, tightly squeezing Da Wu’s body. Thanks to their intervention, Da Wu’s right fist stopped right in front of Ma-Ra.

‘This bitch really has some tricks!’

“Fuck off now!

The Millennium Blood Thread was wrapped around his body and his right arm, impeding his movement. However, he still had one free arm, and his left fist struck at Ma-Ra without a moment’s hesitation.

1. The raws have switched pronouns here. ☜