Chapter 196 : Jaseung, Passes Through
Chapter 196: Jaseung, Passes Through
At first, he thought it was nothing more than a simple scratch.
There were plenty of old marks on the stone wall that looked like the traces of long years.
Yet for some reason, one particular part kept drawing his eye.
Lee Jaseung stepped in front of it and brushed away the dirt clinging to the wall. When he did, the mark was revealed in full.
To his surprise, it was in the shape of a lightning bolt. Anyone else would probably have thought it was just a pattern formed by chance, but Lee Jaseung could not.
His gaze dropped to his own palm. To his shock, the lightning-shaped mark on the palm of his Limitless Gauntlets matched the shape on the wall exactly.
Lee Jaseung slowly pressed his hand to that spot.
Light flared from the lightning mark, and with a soft, sliding sound, a narrow passage opened.
Black darkness lay beyond. From inside, a deadly aura poured out, the kind that promised death in repayment the instant anyone dared intrude.
Lee Jaseung hesitated for a moment. Ho Yeonshin was completely absorbed in the writing on the wall and did not notice anything happening on this side.
His hesitation lasted only a breath. Lee Jaseung stepped inside. He was not the sort of man to back down in a situation like this.
As soon as he entered, the doorway closed quietly behind him. Ho Yeonshin probably had no idea that he had vanished into the wall.
Once the door shut, a faint light seeped from every side and pushed back the darkness.
He stood in a bare chamber whose four walls were made of cold metal. One glance told him this was no ordinary metal. Lines in a grid pattern had been carved into the floor and walls, and strangely, the light was coming from those lines.
The next instant,
Vrmmmmm!
The space where Lee Jaseung stood began to move somewhere. He could feel it traveling at incredible speed. As Black Way Alliance Lord, he had encountered plenty of mechanisms in his life, yet he had never seen anything this elaborate.
Thud.
The mechanism came to a stop somewhere.
A brief, unpleasant silence followed.
Then a faint sound drifted to his ears.
Ssssss.
Lee Jaseung focused, trying to locate the source. It was coming from under his feet, from the walls, from the ceiling. From every direction.
Soon the glowing lines began to turn red.
It was not just a red light. It was searing heat. The room grew unbearably hot, as if it had been plunged into molten lava.
Lee Jaseung became flustered. He had never imagined something like this would happen.
He drew up his protective Qi and slammed his fist into the wall.
Bang!
The noise was loud, yet the wall did not break.
He drove his inner Qi to the limit and struck again.
Bang! Bang!
The wall bent, but no hole opened. Considering the level of his martial arts, that should have been impossible.
Only one explanation came to mind.
Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years!
Indeed, the four walls were made from Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years, the strongest of all iron. On top of that, the thickness was immense, so there was no breaking through with bare fists. He could not even imagine how thick that Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years must be.
Lee Jaseung quickly drew Asura.
Ssssing!
A long blade of Qi extended from Asura.
Even as he moved, the temperature in the room continued to soar at a terrifying rate.
The moment the powerful Qi struck the wall, the metal absorbed it.
Lee Jaseung was shocked. Even this massive mass of Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years had some mechanism built into it to neutralize Qi.
This is insane!
In that short span of time, the heat in the chamber had reached an unbearable level.
If this continued, he would be cooked alive.
It was a dreadful device beyond anything he had imagined.
Calm down, let’s stay calm.
Lee Jaseung forced himself to steady his mind.
This was the Heavenly Demon Secret Cave. That meant the person who had created this mechanism had to be one of the Heavenly Demons of the past.
To be honest, if he thought about the cost of building such an incredible device, no one but a Heavenly Demon could have done it.
A mechanism that absorbed Qi, and that was not even the main issue. Just securing this much Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years would have required a staggering amount of money.
“Urgh.”
A groan escaped Lee Jaseung’s lips.
The heat was seeping through his protective Qi. If that defensive layer broke, he would die instantly. That’s how hot the heat was. No matter how deep his inner Qi was, he could not endure this heat for long.
Think! Jaseung, think!
Lee Jaseung tried his best to stay calm.This place was a gate. It was an entrance so well hidden that no one would ever have guessed it at a glance.
On top of that, without the Limitless Gauntlets, he would never even have been able to enter here in the first… place?
Wait.
He looked at the floor and the walls.
Why did they design this place with a grid pattern?
In the next instant, a thought flashed through his mind.
Could it be?
Lee Jaseung’s body started to move.
He stepped precisely along the lines and began to use a particular movement technique.
It was Limitless Steps.
The entrance had opened in response to the Limitless Gauntlets.
Then perhaps, if he executed the exact forms of Limitless Steps inside this grid patterned chamber, that would be the key to stopping the mechanism.
Even as the heat leaked through his protective Qi, Lee Jaseung’s movements were exact. He placed his feet in the precise positions, at the proper speed.
Tat tat tat tat.
His body slid along the wall. The footwork of Limitless Steps did not only use the floor. He could only hope that was the reason lines had been carved there as well. If his guess was wrong… he really could die here.
He completed every form of Limitless Steps, and the moment he came down from the final step,
Ting.
A clear metallic sound rang out, and the red hot lines began to regain their original color.
The scorching heat vanished in an instant. It felt as if the room that had been hurled into lava had now been plunged into ice water instead.
A moment later, everything was back to how it had been at the beginning.
“Wheww.”
Lee Jaseung let out a long sigh of relief. He had come within a hair’s breadth of dying.
When he first entered this chamber, he had been certain that no matter what awaited him, he would be able to overcome it with his own strength.
This time, however, he had truly almost died. He reflected inwardly, wondering if some hidden arrogance had taken root in the depths of his heart.
Shrrrng.
One of the walls slid open, revealing another room.
Inside stood a metal figure. It was made of the same metal as the walls, that same Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years.
And to his astonishment, it looked exactly like the doll from the Limitless Iron Chest. It was simply larger.
The figure slowly raised its head and glared at Lee Jaseung, and its gaze felt like that of a living creature. This was the same feeling he had experienced when he first saw the Limitless Iron Chest.
If he had not already gone through that, the movement and the eyes before him now would have shocked him out of his wits.
But this time was different.
Lee Jaseung leaped forward at once. He already knew how he needed to deal with this figure. The previous two gates had both been related to the Limitless Treasure. That meant this gate was likely tied to Limitless Treasure as well.
He used his body techniques. He dodged the bronze figure’s attack and wrapped around it, then hammered it down.
Whir.
Kwaaaang.
It was an attack that used the exact forms of the body technique.
Sure enough, the bronze figure slammed into the floor and did not move again.
It was a mechanism built so that it could only be destroyed if you used the body techniques. Judging by the danger of the previous gate, he was certain that if he had used ordinary martial arts instead of the correct body technique, stopping the automaton would have been nearly impossible.
Moreover, since it was made of Cold Steel of Ten Thousand Years, any usual master would simply have burned through all of their inner Qi and died.
Another door opened again.
Inside was a small table, and on top of it sat a large chest.
In front of it lay a single letter.
Lee Jaseung carefully unfolded the letter. Thankfully, it had been treated so that it could still be read despite the passing years. It was old, but it did not crumble.
To his utter surprise, the letter had been written by Ho Yeonbaek, Ho Yeonshin’s grandfather, and addressed to his son, Ho Yeongang. He was the Heavenly Demon of the Asura Demon Sect who had been betrayed by Yao Hong.
“Yeongang. By the time you come here, I will no longer belong to this world. I created this space with the help of the Limitless Treasure, and I am leaving these words behind for your sake and for your descendants. Even if it is not you but your descendants who read this letter, the things I say to you will be enough for them to understand what happened. By the time you read this, you will already have suffered the pain of betrayal and have struggled your way here. I will speak plainly. You cannot master Nine Divine Demonic Arts to its ultimate peak.”
The contents of the letter were truly astonishing.
“I was the same. Just as the former Cult Leaders did, I poured every effort into mastering Nine Divine Demonic Arts to the extreme and awakening the Heavenly Demon Soul. Yet I could not easily grasp the true essence of Nine Divine Demonic Arts. At first I thought it was because my talent was lacking. So I tried every method I could think of. I used miraculous elixirs to increase my inner Qi. I trained in reckless ways that put my life on the line. I tried seated meditation, and I wandered the world.”
He described many different methods. It had been a series of hard, desperate days.
“...Yet even so, I could not awaken the true essence of Nine Divine Demonic Arts. And eventually, I discovered the reason. To my surprise, it was related to my inborn constitution. I was born with a body that could never master Nine Divine Demonic Arts to its ultimate peak. Sadly, you inherited that same constitution from me.”
It was truly a shocking secret. He also explained this place, which was connected to the Limitless Treasure.
“That is why I created this space. By its very nature, our cult worships strength. Once it is known that I cannot awaken the Heavenly Demon Soul, rebellion will be inevitable. If not in my generation, then in yours. If not in yours, then in the next. So this place is the arrangement this old man has made in preparation for that day.”
In the end, it was indeed Ho Yeonbaek who had created this place. He went on to describe how he had done it.
“In my youth, when I was still wandering the world, the Limitless Treasure passed into my hands. According to what is said, the foremost of the Limitless Treasures is a map that shows where the Seven-Color Hidden Land is hidden. I had no interest in any martial arts other than Nine Divine Demonic Arts, yet I could not help but feel a certain curiosity about the Seven-Color Hidden Land of the Limitless Treasure. So I studied the map for a time, but I could not find the location. After that, I forgot about the Limitless Treasure for a long while, until I began preparing this place. Then it came back to mind. I became certain that if I used it well, I could create a sealed chamber that no one could enter.”
He had succeeded in creating a secret space that could only be entered by someone who possessed all of the Limitless Treasures, for the sake of his descendants.
The letter continued with more about the Limitless Treasure.
“I entrusted the Limitless Treasure that serves as the key to this place to the head of the Hainan Sect. No one in the world knows it, but he and I are very close. If something happens to our cult, he will pass this Limitless Treasure on to you or your descendants. Even if he dies, his descendants in the Hainan Sect will pass it on. He is not the sort of man to break a promise.”
Yet that promise had not been kept. Once it became known that the Hainan Sect possessed a treasure, they had been annihilated. By then, Ho Yeonbaek had already died at Yao Hong’s hands.
Lee Jaseung had no way of knowing exactly how it had all gone wrong.
In any case, the connection between the Limitless Treasure and the Heavenly Demon Sect had finally been revealed. If he had not entered this place, he would never have learned this hidden history.
At the same time, Lee Jaseung could not help but admire Ho Yeonbaek.
The late Murim Alliance Leader, Jang Wonso, had deliberately exposed the lesser Limitless Treasures in order to guard the map, which was the foremost among them. Because the map that showed the location of the Seven-Color Hidden Land was the most important, the other three treasures were, in truth, quite ordinary.
Ho Yeonbaek had turned that fact on its head. He had made it so that you needed all three of those relatively unimportant treasures in order to enter here.
At last, the letter reached the most important passage.
“Now, open the chest in front of you.”
Lee Jaseung’s heart tightened with tension as he slowly lifted the lid.