Chapter 324

“Ah!”

The moment Jin Cheongha spotted Kwak Yeon entering the inner cavern, a soft exclamation escaped her lips before she could stop it.

“You... came back?”

There was the faintest tremor in her voice.

Kwak studied her for a moment.

“Young Castle Lord, you sound as though you’re welcoming someone you thought you would never see again.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jin hurriedly lowered her gaze.

“You haven’t come here for the past two days...”

“So because I haven’t shown my face for two days, you thought I might have left?”

Her eyes had already dropped. Now her head bowed as well.

“...Yes. You must have heard everything from my grandfather. There’s no reason for you to keep wasting your time here, is there?”

Kwak’s expression turned faintly displeased.

“Young Castle Lord, hearing you say that is almost enough to hurt my feelings.”

“...?”

“Whatever the circumstances, I didn’t realize you thought me the sort of man who would leave without even saying goodbye to his companions.”

“N-no, absolutely not. I only thought you must have been terribly disappointed...”

Jin shook her head in haste, then continued in a subdued voice.

“Truthfully, isn’t this hopeless? In any case, though it’s a little late, I think it would be best for you to leave now and hurry to find some other way.”

“I am a little late.”

Kwak paused.

“Because I was preparing that other way.”

“...?”

“That is why I haven’t shown my face for the past two days.”

“I have no idea what you mean, Chief Secretary Kwak.”

“It is a very long story, and not one I can speak of lightly. I hope you will understand. And... I would also ask you to give me the cavern for a while.”

Seeing the calmness in his eyes, Jin nodded without protest.

“All right.”

She could not begin to imagine what solution he had found.

But Kwak Yeon was not a man who spoke idly, so she turned to leave the cavern.

“Young Castle Lord. Since you’re going out, have a proper meal and get some sleep as well. This may take quite some time.”

Jin nodded again.

“I’ll rest until you call for me.”

She answered readily enough, yet as she left, bewilderment continued to fill her mind.

The Eight Demonic Venerables had done nothing but sit in their cave niches like stone statues. Not one of them had spoken a single word.

Even her grandfather, the Ghost-Hand Demon Venerable, had returned to his cave niche after speaking with Kwak and once again become as motionless as stone.

What possible method could Kwak have found for dealing with eight men who had cut themselves off from the world so completely?

Yet amid all those doubts, hope slowly began to rise within Jin Cheongha.

Because the man who had said he had found a way was none other than Kwak Yeon.

STEP. STEP.

With every stride, the heaviness in Jin Cheongha’s steps seemed to fade.

Once the sound of her footsteps had receded beyond hearing, the inner cavern became as silent as a tomb.

Had bluish daylight not filtered down from the cavern’s high ceiling, the place truly would have been indistinguishable from one.

Kwak swept his gaze over the cave niches lining the walls, then clasped his hands before his chest.

“I, Kwak Yeon, resident Taoist of Samryeong Palace on Mount Wudang, humbly ask the Venerables of the Eight Divisions to grant me instruction in a martial contest.”

It was an astonishing declaration.

A junior of the martial world so young as to be almost inconsequential beside them had just challenged the Eight Demonic Venerables to a martial duel.

Worse still, the Venerables were hardly in a normal condition. Had anyone witnessed Kwak’s behavior, they might well have thought he was mocking them.

Kwak understood better than anyone how inappropriate his actions appeared.

Yet even a martial duel conducted through a sword duel in the mind was still a duel. He could not begin one against the Eight Demonic Venerables without observing the proper courtesies.

His clear voice echoed through the cavern and faded.

As expected, no answer came from any of the cave niches.

Kwak had known there would be none, so he continued without hesitation.

“I, Kwak Yeon, an insignificant junior of the martial world, once again ask the Venerables of the Eight Divisions to grant me instruction.”

Again, there was no response.

After allowing a brief interval to pass, Kwak spoke a third time.

“If I receive no answer to this third request, then under the custom of the Three-Challenge Rule, I shall take your silence as permission to receive your instruction.”

In the martial world, when a person failed to answer three formal challenges to a duel, it could be treated as acceptance, allowing the challenger to seek them out and contest them wherever they might be.

Kwak was admittedly stretching that custom almost beyond recognition.

But without it, he would have had to draw his sword against the Eight Demonic Venerables without permission—an intolerable breach of courtesy.

“I, Kwak Yeon, resident Taoist of Samryeong Palace on Mount Wudang, humbly ask the Venerables of the Eight Divisions to grant me instruction.”

Naturally, the cavern remained silent after his third request.

“You have graciously refrained from rebuking this insignificant junior for his presumption and have granted your permission. I am deeply grateful.”

Kwak bowed deeply toward the cave niches.

“Then, from this moment onward, I shall present myself before each of the Venerables of the Eight Divisions in turn and receive your instruction.”

He crossed the cavern and stopped before one of the niches.

Facing Jin Gwanho, Ghost-Hand Demon Venerable and former Great Castle Lord of Ghost Night Castle, Kwak gave a clasped-hands bow.

“I, Kwak Yeon, shall humbly receive the instruction of Great Castle Lord, the Ghost-Hand Demon Venerable.”

Jin Gwanho frowned as he stared at him.

He thought he understood why Kwak had come to him first.

They had spoken once already, so the young Taoist was likely hoping to draw him into another exchange and use that conversation to convey his intentions to the other Venerables.

I thought the boy possessed a fair measure of wisdom...

Believing Kwak’s purpose to be no more complicated than that, Jin Gwanho kept his mouth firmly shut and watched.

Let us see what method you spent two entire days preparing without budging from your place.

He had been curious ever since he overheard Kwak confidently tell his granddaughter that he had found a way.

Yet now, inexplicably, Kwak was challenging not only him but all Eight Demonic Venerables to martial duels.

Jin Gwanho was genuinely dumbfounded.

No matter how desperate the circumstances were, how did one even arrive at the idea of challenging men who could do nothing but sit like statues?

SHRING!

Jin Gwanho’s brows drew together as Kwak pulled the Blue-Steel Sword from its sheath.

It looked as though the young Taoist intended to threaten him with the blade and force him to respond.

Hah. You spent two days agonizing over this, only to settle on brute force?

But as Jin Gwanho clicked his tongue inwardly, his expression abruptly changed.

HUMM!

White sword aura suddenly surged from the Blue-Steel Sword.

Sword qi condensing into sword aura!

Then the sword aura contracted rapidly, concentrating around the blade until it gave off a dazzling white radiance.

Jin Gwanho flinched.

He can even fully condense it... Then he has reached the highest extreme of the Flower Realm!

Even setting aside Kwak’s age, it was an astonishing level of cultivation.

Yet astonishing was all it was.

Demanding that someone acknowledge his martial prowess merely because he could display his realm would amount to nothing more than childish obstinacy.

Wasting true qi on something so pointless. He really is young after all... Hm?

Jin Gwanho’s eyes suddenly widened.

Surely that isn’t...

SWOOSH!

It was not because Kwak had suddenly begun performing a sword dance.

To an ordinary observer, that was exactly what it might have looked like.

Kwak moved through sword forms with no visible continuity whatsoever, one after another without pattern or order.

But to Jin Gwanho, a Demonic Venerable, the purpose behind every single movement was unmistakable.

Kwak was fighting an invisible opponent.

And against each martial form that invisible opponent employed, he answered with the sword form best suited to counter it.

That was why there was no continuity to his movements, no recognizable pattern at all. To anyone unable to perceive the exchange, it would have resembled a sword dance rather than combat.

But that was not what shocked Jin Gwanho.

Every sword form Kwak used was precisely suited to countering Jin Gwanho’s own unique martial art—the Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art.

How does that Taoist know my unique martial art...?

The answer came almost as soon as the question arose.

The young Taoist must have read the martial art Jin Gwanho had inscribed on the wall of his cave niche for some future successor destined to find it.

In truth, that much was only natural.

Kwak had remained inside the niche for a considerable amount of time while trying to save him from meditative passing.

But once that question was answered, another immediately took its place.

Simply seeing the formulas of his unique martial art could not possibly explain what was happening now.

Kwak was clearly imagining an opponent using that very martial art, then answering its forms with his sword.

That realization left Jin Gwanho even more stunned.

To imagine an opponent and exchange moves against them was several times more difficult than performing the opponent’s martial art oneself.

One had to understand that martial art completely before one could reproduce it accurately in the mind.

Then that means this Taoist has completely comprehended my Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art. But how...?

Jin Gwanho recalled what Kwak had said.

That he had spent the past two days without showing his face because he had been preparing a method.

You mean to say you comprehended my Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art in only two days?

Jin Gwanho wanted to deny it.

But he could not.

Every sword form Kwak unfolded corresponded precisely to a form of his Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art.

And the moment Jin Gwanho acknowledged within his heart that Kwak had indeed grasped his martial art—

SSSSSS.

A hazy human silhouette began to take shape in the air.

“...!”

There was no question that it was the opponent Kwak had been fighting in his imagination.

Jin Gwanho’s eyes widened until they seemed ready to tear as the indistinct figure slowly sharpened and he recognized who it was.

It was Jin Gwanho himself.

Not the man he was now.

It was Jin Gwanho at the height of his power during the Eight Desolations Upheaval.

The man who had once looked down upon all under heaven, advancing unhindered by anything in his path, was now unleashing the full essence of the Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art.

Of course, Jin Gwanho could never return to that time.

More than that, he had despaired over the knowledge that he could never again reach the realm he had possessed then.

Yet now, without warning, that former self had appeared before him, freely and magnificently matching martial arts against an opponent.

His heart grew hot.

His chest swelled with emotion.

How this was happening, or what sort of phenomenon it was, no longer mattered.

Jin Gwanho’s body still sat motionless within the cave niche like a stone statue.

But his mind had entered the body of his former self—the man now fighting Kwak Yeon.

And Jin Gwanho unleashed to his heart’s content the true essence of the Heaven-Annihilating Ghost-Hand True Demon Art that he had painstakingly pursued and comprehended during his imprisonment in the Great Demon Prison.

He had attained that insight.

Yet he himself had believed he would never again be able to put it into practice, and so he had only hoped that someday, some destined junior would appear and bring that perfected truth to life in his stead.

Now he had been given the chance to unleash it himself.

How could he possibly refuse?