Chapter 34

Chapter 34: An Invisible Danger

I carefully took my first step down the stone staircase leading into the underground darkness.

A cold chill brushed past my ankles as I descended.

This is deeper than I expected.

I had thought the stairs would end after five or six steps.

But even after descending much farther than that...

there was still no end in sight.

Relying on the lamp in my left hand, I continued downward.

I had no idea how long I had been walking when suddenly...

the ground beneath my feet became flat.

“Is this the bottom?”

Just as I raised the lamp to illuminate my surroundings...

a tiny point of light flickered in the darkness.

"...What?"

I narrowed my eyes toward the direction it came from.

At first, I thought it was an illusion.

But after taking another step forward...

a second point appeared.

Then a third.

The farther I moved inside, the brighter those tiny lights became.

At the same time...

my eyes slowly began to make out the shape of the surrounding space.

Only then did I realize that small beads were embedded throughout the walls.

“Night Pearls...?”

Finger-sized beads glowed with a pale blue-white light.

It almost felt as though the underground chamber had sensed someone's arrival and illuminated itself.

I extinguished my lamp.

Then I allowed the glow of the Night Pearls to guide my eyes.

The underground space was much larger than I had expected.

It was far too neat and spacious to be an ordinary storage room or hidden chamber.

The structure almost looked as though it had been designed with the assumption that someone would be moving around freely inside.

I slowly walked forward and examined the surroundings.

Then something caught my eye.

"...What's this?"

There were marks all over the walls and floor.

Long scratches.

Countless lines left behind as though something had repeatedly scraped across the stone.

I approached one wall and lightly ran my fingers over one of the marks.

The stone itself was rough.

But strangely...

the groove was perfectly smooth.

Don't tell me...

I touched it again.

The feeling became even clearer.

If something had smashed into the wall through brute force, there should have been shattered stone or jagged edges.

But there was nothing like that.

The surface hadn't cracked.

Nothing had chipped outward.

It looked as though something incredibly sharp had simply passed across the stone and smoothly shaved it away.

At that moment...

I understood what these marks were.

Traces of martial arts.

They had been left by sword aura infused with internal energy cutting across the stone wall.

These weren't marks an ordinary martial artist could ever leave behind.

I withdrew my hand and looked around again.

One side of the wall was covered in flowing curves.

The lines moved like waves...

then changed direction at certain points before digging deeper into the stone.

They looked exactly like the path of a sword.

The opposite wall had an entirely different character.

Straight lines extended outward...

broke...

bounced away...

then connected again.

They looked like traces left behind by changes and transitions between techniques.

The floor was the same.

Certain spots were noticeably more depressed or pushed aside.

Marks left by toes sliding across the ground.

Heels bracing against the floor.

Feet turning and pushing off to change direction.

Footwork.

I slowly looked over the entire space.

Countless sword paths covered the walls.

Footwork traces covered the floor.

There was only one conclusion.

Someone trained with a sword here.

For a very long time.

Thousands of times.

Maybe tens of thousands.

This wasn't simple practice.

These were the marks of someone relentlessly refining their sword path.

I muttered inwardly.

An underground training ground.

The walls and floor said everything.

There was no longer any doubt about the purpose of this place.

I swept my gaze around again.

The sword lines covering the walls and the traces of footwork on the floor seemed to flow toward a single direction.

And where that flow ended...

at the deepest part of the underground chamber...

stood a stone pedestal around waist height.

Its structure was simple.

A square stone pillar with a flat slab resting on top.

It was exactly the right height for placing a sword.

I slowly approached it.

Nothing rested on top.

But when I drew closer...

I noticed something engraved into the wall behind the pedestal.

I brought the lamp closer.

Hidden lines slowly became visible.

"...Writing?"

It was definitely writing.

But it hadn't been written with a brush.

The letters looked as though they had been carved directly into the stone wall with the tip of a sword.

And yet...

every stroke was smooth.

Alive.

I swallowed.

He did this with a sword?

The lines were terrifyingly precise.

The rise and fall of force flowed naturally between every stroke.

It looked like calligraphy drawn with a brush...

except it had been written on solid stone.

This wasn't something a person could achieve merely by being skilled with a sword.

Only a supreme master capable of controlling sword paths however they wished could leave behind writing like this.

I steadied my breathing.

Then I began reading the words engraved into the stone.

[To the one in a later generation whose fate brings you here.

I never intended to leave my name behind.

But to reveal the origin of these traces, I leave this final mark.

The people of old Kunlun called me True Immortal Cheongun.]

"...True Immortal Cheongun?!"

My breath caught.

That was the last name I had expected to see.

The creator of the Flowing Flower Kunlun Sword I had learned.

The strongest under heaven from two hundred years ago.

The legendary figure who reached the pinnacle of the martial world with a single sword...

then supposedly ascended beyond mortality and vanished.

And now...

that mysterious man had personally carved these words into this underground chamber.

I swallowed and leaned closer to the stone wall.

[There was a time when I believed I could split all beneath heaven with my sword.

The Demonic Cult.

The unorthodox fiends.

Before my sword, all of them were nothing more than meaningless dust.

But one day...

I encountered a darkness that even my sword could not cut.]

A darkness his sword couldn't cut?

I instinctively held my breath.

If he simply meant that he had encountered someone stronger...

there would have been nothing particularly strange about it.

There was always someone who could reach a higher realm.

Even someone called the strongest under heaven could encounter such a person.

But saying something "could not be cut" was different.

It suggested something beyond simple strength.

Something that twisted the very logic itself.

That single sentence sent a chill down my spine.

What exactly did he mean?

I fixed my eyes on the next lines.

[That darkness was an immense evil whose scale could not even be measured.

Sinister.

Formless.

Like a wicked ghost that distorted the laws of heaven and earth.

When I faced that evil, which existed beyond the texture of martial arts...

for the first time, I saw a boundary my sword could not reach.]

I couldn't believe it.

True Immortal Cheongun.

A supreme master who had supposedly ruled the entire martial world through swordsmanship.

And yet...

he had personally left behind words admitting that even he had limits.

I took a slow breath.

Then continued reading.

[I was not the only one who sensed that existence.

A few others who viewed the world through different eyes also recognized the presence of that immense evil.

Each of us left behind our own understanding in search of a way to destroy it.

We called those understandings "Flow."]

[And so...

here, in the deepest place of Kunlun...

I leave behind the "Flow" that I realized.

This Flow alone cannot cut the source of that immense evil.

But the Flows of others still remain.

If someday a successor appears who can connect every trace...

that person will surely be able to sever the boundary of that evil.]

I swallowed as I reached the final section.

[To the one whose fate has brought you here.

If you are reading these words...

then you too possess eyes capable of seeing "Flow."

Seek out the remaining Flows.

Find the evil that distorts the laws of heaven and earth...

and sever its final thread.

And the next Flow you must seek is Hua...]

The sentence ended there.

Everything after that had disappeared.

As though someone had deliberately erased it.

Or perhaps time itself had swallowed the rest.

"..."

I stood there silently for a long time.

Something that even True Immortal Cheongun, the strongest under heaven, had feared enough to leave behind a warning.

A darkness that couldn't be cut even through supreme martial arts.

An immense evil that twisted the laws of heaven and earth.

If those words had come from anyone else...

I would have dismissed them as some vague old legend.

But because True Immortal Cheongun himself had written them...

they refused to leave my mind.

There was something deeply unsettling about them.

...Still, there's no reason to take this too seriously yet.

I quietly calmed myself.

This was something True Immortal Cheongun had experienced more than two hundred years ago.

No such bizarre existence had appeared in the martial world during all those years.

The "immense evil" he described might have disappeared long ago.

Or perhaps it had been some phenomenon that only a supreme master at his level could perceive.

Whatever it was...

that's not what matters to me right now.

I turned my attention back to the chamber.

True Immortal Cheongun had personally left behind his "Flow" somewhere in this underground space.

Judging by what he had written...

that Flow was undoubtedly a realization concerning martial arts.

That fact alone made this a once-in-a-lifetime fortuitous encounter.

I slowly raised my head and looked around again.

The sword marks and traces of footwork I had examined earlier came back into view.

I had already seen all of them.

Yet now...

they looked completely different.

The moment the word "Flow" became firmly embedded in my mind...

the entire space seemed to change.

They're the same marks.

So why do they feel completely different now?

A flowing line on the wall caught my eye.

Earlier, it had looked like nothing more than a sword mark.

But now...

I could faintly sense the movement of energy running between the lines.

The floor was the same.

The place where a toe had pressed down.

The marks left behind by a heel sliding.

Earlier, they had simply been traces of footwork.

Now...

I could see an invisible line connecting them.

Faint.

But unmistakably there.

It felt almost as though the entire chamber had reacted the moment I understood the concept of "Flow."

I quietly closed my eyes.

Then I slowly circulated the Kunlun Blue Soul Scripture.

As my internal energy settled...

the traces lingering throughout the chamber seemed to recognize my qi.

They reacted faintly.

Then...

a familiar sensation passed through my vision along with a short resonance.

[Trace of True Intent detected.]

[Hidden traces are being revealed.]

It was the same familiar sensation I experienced whenever I learned martial arts from the manuals in the Abandoned Martial Hall.

So there really was a condition that had to be met first.

Only after my internal energy stabilized...

and I recognized the concept of "Flow"...

did the True Intent left behind by True Immortal Cheongun finally reveal itself.

I opened my eyes wide and looked toward the wall.

The sword marks began to glow with a faint blue light.

It was completely different from the light of the Night Pearls.

This light felt alive.

It pulsed.

Swish...

A single line detached itself from the wall and drew a path through the air.

Another line followed behind it.

Then a third.

A fourth.

Like waves...

countless glowing lines poured out from the walls and floor.

In an instant, they filled the air and formed one vast Flow.

It was almost as if someone stood before me...

demonstrating that Flow through martial practice.

"...!"

I held my breath.

There was clearly no one in front of me.

And yet...

the Flow moved through the air as though alive.

It curved.

Broke.

Connected.

Returned.

The strange trajectories continued without end.

Not separation...

but connection.

Not stillness...

but breath.

Not scattering...

but a will gathering everything into one.

...So this is the True Intent left behind by True Immortal Cheongun....

Then...

something changed.

The lines dancing through the air suddenly began gathering in one direction.

One curved line pulled another toward it.

Straight lines intertwined and formed new trajectories.

It looked as though an invisible hand were shaping something in the air.

Swish...

Scrape...

Slash...

The lines of Flow connected one after another.

Soon...

they began forming the shape of a person.

Shoulders.

Spine.

Arms.

Their outlines slowly became clear.

Then...

the final line curved gently and settled above the figure's head.

A man's back appeared in the air.

White hair tied loosely behind him.

The lines flowing across his back, shoulders, and waist moved gently...

like a living current of martial intent.

The moment I saw that figure...

an inexplicable certainty filled me.

No one needed to tell me.

I had never seen his face.

And yet...

I knew exactly who stood before me.

...True Immortal Cheongun.

The legend of Kunlun...

was standing right before my eyes.