Chapter 136
Chapter 136: The Greatest Swordsman In The World (2)
Hwangbo Geom had originally been a practitioner of traditional martial arts.
Following the rise of MMA, traditional martial arts were widely regarded as far inferior to combat sports like jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai—but Hwangbo Geom took immense pride in the art to which he had devoted his entire youth and everything he had.
He continued training by the old methods, and even well past the age of fifty, he refused to abandon them. As a result, even among practitioners of traditional martial arts, he was treated as an eccentric.
Hwangbo Geom had been featured on television even before becoming a Climber. He was reluctant to be filmed, but a broadcast producer came to him repeatedly and wore him down.
"Master! Isn't it terribly unfair to just keep being treated like some oddity in the neighborhood?"
"When one trains in martial arts, there is no need to concern oneself with the eyes of others."
Even after multiple attempts at persuasion, he would not budge.
But the producer had a gut feeling.
‘This man. He's guaranteed to be a hit.’
In the end, the producer poked at Hwangbo Geom's deepest wound.
"But who's going to acknowledge you for it? I heard your family all left you."
Hwangbo Geom's eyes widened as he glared at the producer.
The producer did not back down.
"Use this opportunity to prove that you were right. And then approach your family with your head held high!"
"Hmm."
"I'll make sure to film you well. When your family sees the broadcast, they'll understand you."
After much persuasion, Hwangbo Geom agreed to the filming.
The shoot went on for two weeks. Hwangbo Geom led the producer and the cameraman to his training grounds.
In the mountains. By the river. Beneath waterfalls.
He trained by the old methods and swung his sword and spear through the deep forest.
"Master, could you perhaps train somewhere closer to the cliff?"
"Master, I think it would look much better if you trained with your top off."
"That arm-swinging technique from a moment ago—could you show us that a few more times?"
Hwangbo Geom did as the producer asked, and the producer responded with endless expressions of admiration as he filmed.
There were interviews as well.
"Don't you miss your family?"
"Of course I do. My son is already in high school by now…… I haven't seen him once since his elementary school graduation……"
He let out a long sigh. Glancing sideways, his eyes fell on a corner of the room—an old toy robot. Something his son had played with as a little child.
"My master said that the path of a martial artist is a lonely and sorrowful one. I drifted apart from my family walking the path of martial arts, but in my heart, I was always by their side."
Hwangbo Geom exhaled.
"Do you have any regrets?"
"You ask whether I regret the decision I made back then."
He gave a faint smile.
"What a natural question to ask. Of course. I have regrets. If I could go back to that time, I would just live like an ordinary person."
The two weeks of filming came to an end.
Hwangbo Geom was very satisfied with the shoot.
"The broadcast airs in a month. You can look forward to it."
The producer and the cameraman hurried down the mountain together.
And one month later, Hwangbo Geom found his courage.
He rifled through his notebook, found the contact information for his wife and son, and called them.
"Honey…… It's me. Listen, the reason I'm calling—"
He told them to watch the broadcast.
His devotion to martial arts. The pride and honor passed down from his master. His love for his family. The burning longing to return to them.
All of that, he believed, would be woven into the broadcast.
Hwangbo Geom held that conviction as he sat before the television.
And then, some time later—
Crack!
Hwangbo Geom swung the sword in his home and smashed the television to pieces.
"You sons of b*tches!"
The producer had edited the footage to make him look like an eccentric—no, like a madman.
His devotion to martial arts was portrayed as the stubbornness of some deranged old fool. The sequences he had poured his heart into appeared as a scrawny, bare-chested old man flopping around like a fish on a cutting board.
The edgeless practice blades he used in training were presented as illegal weapons used to intimidate the neighborhood residents. And some man he had never once laid eyes on claimed to be a neighbor and called Hwangbo Geom a ‘crazy person’, twirling his finger in circles beside his temple.
His words about wanting to see his family had been spliced together with cunning precision.
[Don't you miss your family?]
[My master said that the path of a martial artist is a lonely and sorrowful one.]
[Do you have any regrets?]
[You ask whether I regret the decision I made back then.]
The lonely smile that had been full of regret was transformed into the face of an irresponsible husband who had simply thrown his family away.
"These……! These wretches worse than dogs!"
Hwangbo Geom felt as though the sky was caving in on him.
"I'll kill every last one of them!"
When, resolved, he grabbed his sword and burst out through the door—the sky darkened, and the Murim Tower appeared.
* * *
[Present—Bottom of the Well]
At the bottom of the well, just as expected, there was a long corridor.
It was a corridor built with considerable effort.
Not merely a tunnel dug out and lined with timber, but one finished with concrete—wide enough for four adults to pass through comfortably side by side.
"To think they constructed something like this."
It was a distance of easily six hundred meters in a straight line.
"If they went to the trouble of digging a tunnel like this, there must be something suspicious going on."
A gut feeling struck me.
‘He hasn't retired.’
"I'll find out when I reach the end of this corridor."
I needed to find the subordinates of the missing Choi brothers.
The tunnel connected to the basement of Hwangbo Geom's home.
"So there's even a second basement level."
A staircase going down, a staircase going up.
"If someone was being held captive, it would be the basement."
I deadened the sound of my footsteps and descended underground.
What appeared before me was a spacious training hall. It resembled the training hall I had seen at the Choi brothers' home.
In the still, sunken air, lingering traces of energy drifted like dust. The floor was tangled with countless footprints. The well-maintained blades and spears hanging on every wall hinted at Hwangbo Geom's character.
In one corner stood wooden practice dummies clad in iron plating—the deep gouges and cracked fissures seeped with red rust, making them look like human figures howling in silent agony.
‘The traces of martial arts always remain.’
I examined the wooden dummies closely.
"Difficult to make sense of. These aren't Hwangbo Geom's marks."
They looked like the marks left by Hwangbo Geom's disciples. The rust on them suggested they were quite old.
"To think he kept these. He's quite the sentimental man."
In one corner, a mountain of broken wooden swords and spears had been piled up. The bloodstains scattered across the floor had dried into dark blotches, as if bearing witness to grueling training.
Then, a training uniform hanging on the wall caught my eye.
‘A training uniform always carries within it the past of the martial artist who sweated in it.’
I drew closer and examined the uniform. Humble, yet imbued with the solitude and anguish Hwangbo Geom had carried.
"A lonely man. One who walks the path of a seeker."
It was worthy of admiration.
Whether or not he was the supreme swordsman under heaven, his effort alone deserved praise.
And yet—the training uniform looked oddly familiar.
"It looks like the uniform Park Je-hwang wore at the Climber tournament."
Park Je-hwang's uniform had, of course, been resplendent with golden embroidery, but the silhouette, the stitching, the finishing, and the embroidery style were identical to his.
"Ah, of course! Chief Han and Jang Ae-guk weren't Hwangbo Geom's only disciples."
Park Je-hwang, too, had been Hwangbo Geom's disciple.
I closed my eyes briefly and recalled Park Je-hwang's swordsmanship. It had been a peculiar style, to be sure.
A martial art that appeared to blend the Eastern Seas' Draw-and-Cut Art, the Hainan Sect's Reverse-Grip Sword, and the Jongnam Sect's Sun-Shooting Sword Art all into one.
"The New Frontier Martial World, the Orthodox Faction, the Nine Sects and One Alliance—they're all in there."
At the time, I had merely thought it similar—but the more I turned it over in my mind, the stranger it became.
The core principles of each martial art had been seamlessly woven together.
"A martial art created by someone who knows the arts of Gangho!"
I let out a low groan.
In both Gangho and in this modern world, plenty of people had claimed to be creating martial arts—but none had come close to even the outermost edge of the principles embedded in the centuries—or millennia—old arts of Gangho.
Yet Park Je-hwang's martial art, while not perfect, appeared remarkably profound.
"At minimum, this is a martial art crafted by a Grand Master."
Was Hwangbo Geom truly at that level?
I tilted my head and examined the footwork traces on the floor again.
"I can't tell."
Too chaotic, and the marks were too faded to make anything out.
I returned up the stairs.
"So they're on the upper floors."
I moved to go up—then stopped.
There were too many presences.
Even with the Concealment Art and the Dark Moon Mask active, the traces of Hwangbo Geom I had just seen were not those of an ordinary martial artist.
‘If I get any closer, I'll be detected.’
For now, I had found a way in. The only option was to wait for another opportunity.
I re-entered the underground corridor.
"Hmph."
Considering how grandly the whole thing had started, the lack of results left a bitter taste.
"I have nothing to say to the Choi brothers."
I walked quietly along, and before long, I had reached the halfway point.
Then, from behind me, a noisy exchange of voices could be heard.
"What's all this commotion in the middle of the night?"
It was the voice of a woman who appeared to be around forty.
"I know, right. Dozens of delivery motorcycles just suddenly rolled up."
A younger-sounding man.
"Master didn't say a single word about it."
"He must be angry. He goes quiet when he's furious."
They referred to Hwangbo Geom as ‘Master’.
"It would've been nothing if the police had shown up—one phone call from Master and it would've been over."
"If it had been the police, there wouldn't have been any reason to come in the first place."
"Anyway, it was really something. Who offered a hundred thousand won as a cash bonus for anyone who completed a delivery here?"
"Must've been some madman playing a prank. The delivery drivers wouldn't leave until they got their money, so there was nothing to be done."
The voices were thick with irritation.
"And every single delivery that came was flowers."
"Tulips and cotton flowers I can somewhat understand, but white chrysanthemums—why on earth did they send those? Felt absolutely awful. Like some kind of funeral parlor."
"Must have all gotten mixed together when someone was randomly ordering all sorts of things."
The voices drew ever closer.
"Well, Master did give us the money to settle it, so it's resolved. And it got Master to take a bit of fresh air outside for the first time in ages."
"They need to catch whoever sent those delivery drivers. How dare they, at Master's home."
"Yes, he's already given orders to look into it."
"Haah. Let's hurry back and sleep."
"Yes."
Their footsteps quickened.
I had suppressed my presence, but I worried about being detected inside the tunnel.
They seemed to be people from the Changbai Sect.
If they served Hwangbo Geom's affairs, they too would be skilled martial artists.
I waited, ready to silence them with Gu Poison if discovered—
"There's no need for that."
I could simply move to the Poison Herb Field.
[Moving to the Poison Herb Field……]
Crackle—.
[■■Conflict]
"……!"
The door to the Poison Herb Field would not open.
What—
I tried again. Still no response.
‘Damn it!’
With no other option, I drew Iron Instrument God's Throwing Blade and severed the electrical wire.
"Oh my goodness!"
The underground tunnel plunged into darkness.
"What's happening all of a sudden?"
"Must be a power outage."
"Good grief. This happened the last time, too."
I pressed myself flat against the wall, suppressing my presence to the absolute limit, and the two of them stumbled past through the darkness.
"Phew."
The sound of their footsteps faded away.
They hadn't detected me. But—
"What on earth just happened?"
I couldn't enter the Poison Herb Field.
"There's definitely something here."
I drew my energy up and focused all five senses.
Near the spot where I had attempted to vanish into the Poison Herb Field—something was emanating from inside the concrete wall.
"What is this? It wasn't here a moment ago."
It felt as though it were resonating with the gateway to the Poison Herb Field.
I approached and investigated.
"A door."
Somewhere in the crack of the wall, there was a faint seam. When I tapped it lightly, a hollow thud-thud echoed back from inside.
But there was not even a finger's width of gap to be seen.
"There must be some mechanism somewhere that activates it."
I looked around, but found nothing.
Then the LED lights stretching along the top of the wall caught my eye.
A very slight difference, but—
"One of them is twisted just a little."
I reached out and touched the light fixture.
Clunk— and the wall swung open.
"Found it."
‘I've been trained at Wunbo Trading House, after all.’
I stepped inside the wall and closed the door behind me.
Another door appeared—and strung across it was a gold-thread seal.
"This……!"
I was struck with surprise.
Not an ordinary seal, but a treasure.
"A Heavenly Demon Divine Sect seal?!"
The seal I had seen when infiltrating the Heavenly Demon Divine Sect in my past life in Gangho. It was saturated with sorcery, carrying the power to block outsiders from passing through.
If one attempted to force their way past carelessly, they would be seized by demonic energy, their internal energy thrown into chaos, causing them to vomit blood.
Of course, if I surged my own energy forcefully, I could likely repel the demonic and sinister energy woven into the seal—but that would amount to announcing my presence here to Hwangbo Geom.
Therefore—
"All I have to do is endure!"
Ignoring the seal, I grabbed the door handle and twisted.
SCREEEEEE!
A horrific ghostly wail rang through my ears, and for a moment I felt my stomach lurch—but—
"Tch. This level of pain is something I dealt with every day!"
I grimaced and stepped through the door in the next instant.
A message appeared.
[Entering the Murim To……]