Chapter 99 : Demon Wall
Chapter 99: Demon Wall
In truth, I had not intended to search for the Demon Wall from the beginning.
If Cold Blade Blood had been spitting as he spoke about it, I had assumed that the martial arts of the Demon Wall would be organized in the form of secret manuals.
Thus, I had planned to look at those manuals and teach from them.
However.
<The Demon Wall itself is the secret manual, so there was no reason to make another one.>
Only after hearing Iron Demon’s words did I realize there was no transcribed secret manual of the Demon Wall’s illustrations, and so I had no choice but to head to the Demon Wall in person.
What I sought at the Demon Wall were a Heart Method and a Sword Art.
There was no better martial art than those of the Demon Wall to teach as foundational Demonic Arts to horse bandits and mountain bandits.
If I taught them something as Demonic Arts only for Demonic Energy to invade their brains and turn them into murderous ghosts, that had to be prevented.
Thus, as I carefully examined the illustrations of the Demon Wall in order to transcribe them into a manual, my head kept tilting in confusion.
They felt strangely familiar.
Yet when I steeled my resolve and examined them in depth, determined to identify the source of that familiarity, the martial arts seemed unfamiliar once more.
When, flustered, I resumed copying them, that subtle sense of familiarity crept back again.
In the end, I stopped transcribing and stepped back from the wall to observe it as a whole.
There were ten illustrations in total.
Two Heart Methods, two Sword Arts, two Palm Techniques, two Lightness Skills, and one Footwork Art—nine martial arts in all.
The remaining illustration, the very first one, depicted the Heavenly Demon painting the Demon Wall itself.
Perhaps it was like a kind of marker or seal? In other words, it showed who had drawn them.
So I skipped the first illustration and examined the remaining ones that depicted the martial arts in their entirety.
There was no single common thread that penetrated all nine arts.
That meant they had not been created as paired sets from the outset.
Each had been devised separately, yet they could be layered onto a Heart Method without issue to execute the martial arts.
If there was no commonality…
I slowly went through each martial art one by one.
They felt unfamiliar.
Even when viewed as a whole, nothing revealed itself, and individually they remained strange—it was enough to make a ghost wail.
Judging by Iron Demon’s remark that my eyes had turned red again, it seemed even Ghost Eyes were being activated, yet it made no difference.
In the end, when I gave up and resumed transcribing, that familiar sensation returned before long.
The more I ignored it and continued copying, the stronger the feeling became. As though something were whispering to me not to turn away but to look more closely.
Eventually, I stopped again.
“I will find it no matter what!”
Stubbornness flared within me as I glared at the Demon Wall.
An hour passed like that, but the result remained the same.
“What in the world am I supposed to do….”
My muttering trailed off midway.
Because I had discovered something strange in the very first illustration—the scene of the Heavenly Demon engraving the secret manual upon the Demon Wall.
Within the painting, the Heavenly Demon was looking at the first illustration while drawing the second.
‘Combine them?’
Whether it had been a mistake in the drawing or intentional, I seized upon the idea and decided to try combining the two martial arts.
I attached one move and one stance from the second illustration after a move and stance from the first.
“Urgh.”
My blood and qi twisted violently. The qi meridians used by the first and second arts were positioned in opposite order, causing my internal energy to collide.
Most martial arts were completed by moving internal energy gradually farther away from the dantian.
Reversing the flow risked irreversible internal injury due to the collision of internal qi.
The problem was that the qi meridians used by the martial art in the first illustration lay farther back than those used by the second.
“If only the order were reversed.”
I muttered absentmindedly, and my eyes flashed.
Immediately, I rearranged them—placing the second martial art first and the first one after it.
After struggling with it for quite some time, a startled exclamation burst from my lips.
“Sun-Moon Sword!”
The result of recombining the two Sword Arts left on the Demon Wall was identical to the Sun-Moon Sword.
The Sun-Moon Sword was one of the martial arts engraved into me when I obtained this current body.
Its speed and elegance fell short of the Asura Sword Form, and its destructive power was inferior to the Half-Moon Asura Slash, yet it was still an exceptional martial art.
Then again, the Sun-Moon Sword differed from the Asura Sword Form and the Half-Moon Asura Slash in its operation from the outset. It was a dual-sword art.
In any case, discovering a martial art from my memories on the Demon Wall meant—
‘He, the real Yul Han, obtained the Sun-Moon Sword here!’
Having gained certainty, I immediately began combining the third and fourth martial arts.
The method was the same as before.
I placed the fourth art first and the third after it, weaving them together one move at a time.
The martial art that emerged was a Hand Art. Recombining two Palm Techniques into a Hand Art was a strange experience.
The original name of the third art was Calamity Hand Palm. The name the Heavenly Demon had given the fourth was Ten Thousand Hands Palm.
Read in the recombined order, it became Ten Thousand Calamity Hands.
Since it was no longer a Palm Technique, I removed the word “Palm.” I began to understand why the original name had redundantly included the character for “hand.”
However, I had no memory of Ten Thousand Calamity Hands.
I did not know whether I simply could not recall it, or whether the real Yul Han had never learned it in the first place.
Yet upon examining it carefully, it seemed more likely to be the latter.
Ten Thousand Calamity Hands focused on destructive power as much as the Half-Moon Asura Slash.
Because of that, it lacked the delicate movements that a Hand Art should possess. It felt as though one were using the hand like a war hammer.
Aside from destructive force, the Heavenly River Hand in my memory seemed superior.
‘Perhaps.’
Perhaps that was why the real Yul Han had not learned Ten Thousand Calamity Hands.
The destructive power of the Half-Moon Asura Slash had been sufficient.
With anticipation, I recombined the next two Lightness Skills.
They emphasized speed.
The problem was that the more they focused on speed, the greater the consumption of internal energy.
Even so, in terms of speed, it seemed faster than any other Lightness Skill. It even felt faster than the one I possessed.
Yet the reason it did not exist in my memory was likely because of that excessive energy consumption.
No matter that my internal energy amounted to fifteen gapja, using such a Lightness Skill recklessly would have been burdensome.
In the worst case, I might have lacked sufficient internal energy when facing an enemy.
So I turned my gaze away.
The next illustration depicted a Footwork Art.
It was the only one among the Demon Wall’s martial arts that had just a single art of its type.
Perhaps because of that, it was unremarkable.
Nothing special, nothing flawed, not particularly outstanding.
Just as with the Demon Wall’s martial arts when learned individually, it was ordinary.
But in a situation where the preceding arts transformed into entirely different martial arts through recombination, it was impossible that the Heavenly Demon had drawn it without reason.
‘What if the matching piece for recombination is drawn in a different illustration?’
On a whim, I tried recombining it with the immediately preceding Lightness Skill, but it did not connect.
The same was true when I tried it with the following Heart Method.
But then—
“Oh!”
What had not linked with the preceding Lightness Skill aligned perfectly with the recombined version of the two Lightness Skills.
The martial art reborn from that was closer to a Stealth Technique than to simple Footwork.
When unfolded as Footwork that utilized speed and blind angles, it would surely avoid detection by most people.
It seemed to be a martial art of considerable utility, yet it did not exist in my memory.
I could not tell whether the real Yul Han had deemed it unnecessary, or whether he had never realized that the previously combined martial art and this Footwork could be merged.
Lastly, there were the two Heart Methods.
I recombined them in the same manner as before.
However—
“What is this?”
I muttered without thinking. The recombined Heart Method did not generate overwhelming power.
Internal energy flowed more smoothly than before, and its operation was more refined, yet it felt inferior to the several Heart Methods I had already mastered.
Still, it seemed superior to the introductory Heart Methods of any major sect.
In the first place, I had not come to the Demon Wall seeking a supreme ultimate technique, so desiring more would have been greed. With that thought, I transcribed it.
Among the recombined martial arts, the ones I recorded were Ten Thousand Calamity Hands, the Lightness Skill I named One-Flash Form, the Stealth Footwork I decided to call Hidden Flash, and the Heart Method I titled Unified Heart Method, taking one character from each.
As I turned away in quiet satisfaction, a glint passed through my eyes.
If the recombined Lightness Skill and Footwork before had merged to create a Stealth Footwork, could they perhaps also merge with the Unified Heart Method that followed?
I did not know why the thought occurred to me.
The moment those three martial arts entered my vision together, the idea simply surfaced.
Since the thought had arisen, all that remained was to try.
With my eyes reddened once more, I began circulating my internal energy again, combining the Unified Heart Method and the Demon Wall’s Footwork step by step.
As I carefully examined the newly recombined Heart Method, my eyes widened.
It was not because it was stronger than the Heart Methods I knew. In terms of level, it was merely comparable.
Of course, even that was remarkable. The Heart Methods I had mastered were either passed down solely to the Cult Leaders or were peerless arts that had slumbered within the Demonic Cult’s secret archives.
But that was all.
It was not superior.
Yet what astonished me was the unique operational method of this newly combined Heart Method.
Ordinary Heart Methods allowed only one of two things—either expending internal energy or accumulating it.
Even the Duality Heart Method of Wudang, which enabled the simultaneous execution of two martial arts, was no different in that regard.
However, this Heart Method made it possible to expend and accumulate at the same time. Along the very pathways through which internal energy moved to be used, internal energy accumulated in reverse.
It completely overturned the conventional belief that reverse circulation caused internal injury.
If it could truly produce such results not only in theory but also in actual operation, it meant one would no longer be bound by internal energy limitations.
Even a Lightness Skill like One-Flash Form, which consumed immense internal energy, could be used without burden.
Only then did I begin to understand why the Heavenly Demon had left One-Flash Form on the Demon Wall despite its severe internal energy consumption.
After transcribing the newly recombined martial arts, I left the Demon Wall together with Iron Demon.
Upon returning to the Bright Cult, I shut myself inside the training grounds.
Iron Demon was startled when the Vice Cult Leader, who had seemed ready to immediately begin teaching the mountain bandits and horse bandits, headed straight for the training grounds.
At my level, there was no need to enter the training grounds merely to learn the secret manual drawn upon the Demon Wall.
Thus, Iron Demon instinctively realized that I had discovered something different at the Demon Wall.
He unfolded the manual containing the transcriptions of the Demon Wall’s illustrations.
Not the one I had copied, but the version he himself had rendered from images into text.
No matter how closely he examined it, he found nothing special, and so he returned to the Demon Wall once more.
Seven days and nights passed like that.
Iron Demon returned in a haggard state, empty-handed.
He had tried every possible method, yet discovered nothing else.
After all, the Demon Wall had been passed down through a thousand years of geniuses of the Bright Cult.
If something had been hidden within it, it would have been impossible for them not to discover it. And had they discovered it, they would not have taken that secret to their graves.
Though they might have concealed it during their active years to avoid disputes over ownership, they would surely have revealed it before death.
Thus, concluding that there was nothing more on the Demon Wall, Iron Demon returned—only to sense the turbulent atmosphere within the cult.
“What happened?”
At his question, Ghost Demon replied curtly.
“Where have you been that you don’t know about the uproar that started days ago?”
“An uproar?”
“The Vice Cult Leader petitioned the Cult Leader for the public disclosure of the Four Sacred Arts of the Heavenly Demon.”
The Four Sacred Arts of the Heavenly Demon.
The four martial arts exclusive to the Cult Leader, said to have originated from the Heavenly Demon himself.
They were the Heaven-and-Earth Great Shift Divine Art, the Asura Sword Form, the Slaughtering Demon Art, and the Half-Moon Asura Slash.
“That’s absurd. Those are the martial arts that symbolize the Cult Leader!”
“Of course. That’s why even the Cult Leader, who had rarely opposed anything the Vice Cult Leader undertook, stepped forward in opposition this time.”
“Then that’s the end of it. What’s there to cause an uproar?”
“The Vice Cult Leader demonstrated several martial arts to the Cult Leader who opposed him.”
It was Profound Demon who interjected into the conversation. Iron Demon turned to him.
“Martial arts? What martial arts?”
“Their names have not been revealed. What matters is that after seeing them, the Cult Leader permitted the disclosure of the Four Sacred Arts of the Heavenly Demon. Of course, the Council of Elders opened a Behind-the-Curtain session and opposed it.”
Iron Demon shook his head at those words.
“They’ve lost their minds. Opening a Behind-the-Curtain session over the Vice Cult Leader’s request? Do they have a death wish?”
He was referring to the time a Behind-the-Curtain session had been opened before and ended in utter devastation. Ghost Demon answered.
“Perhaps because of that, this time the Behind-the-Curtain session was opened with the Cult Leader, the Vice Cult Leader, and even the Strategist participating.”
“They intend to hear opinions?”
“It seems they’re even granting voting rights. A ploy to avoid the Vice Cult Leader’s wrath.”
Iron Demon glanced at Ghost Demon’s bitter smile, then asked curiously,
“But why are you here? Aren’t you still retaining your position as Elder?”
In other words, why were you not attending the Behind-the-Curtain session?
Ghost Demon replied,
“I have no interest in the Behind-the-Curtain session. No—more precisely, I have no interest in opposing the Vice Cult Leader.”
That was enough to understand his thoughts. Like Profound Demon and Iron Demon, he too had been completely drawn to the Vice Cult Leader.
Knowing that, Iron Demon smirked.
“Why don’t those old Elders realize that?”
“Well, this time they’re acting in the name of preserving tradition, so it’s not entirely pointless.”
“Is that so? But those martial arts—what were they, that the Cult Leader saw them and granted permission?”
Iron Demon’s question was the very same one being raised within the Behind-the-Curtain session itself.