The Martial Genius Who Remembers Everything Chapter 37

[ … words ]

***

[Tae-eul Sect? Was there a sect like that?]

[You know the one. The sect that got into the Hundred-Eight Peaks by spreading lies.]

[Ah, the Tae-eul Sword Emperor. Wow. I wonder if I could learn a move or two from the descendant of our Tae-eul Sword Emperor?]

[Be careful. There is a legend that no one who stood against the Tae-eul Sword Emperor survived properly.]

The ability to remember everything also affects dreams.

The memories of the past, which were transmitted vividly even in dreams, made me realize that I was dreaming, and on most such days, my mood was quite terrible all day long.

Still, this time, I could not blame this memory. It was because I realized that I had been sucked into the Soul-Extinguishing Formation (Myeol-hon-jin) in my dream, and I was able to quickly come to my senses.

“……Damn it.”

Thick fog blocked my vision on all sides.

-He, help me!

-Someone help!

-Is anyone there!

In this place where the boundaries of time and space °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° had vanished, screams that I could not distinguish as being near or far echoed in my ears.

They were likely the screams of the people who had entered the Soul-Extinguishing Formation hoping to find their way.

Among the various voices I heard, not a single one sounded like a group.

Hundreds of people had entered the formation, but each of them was completely isolated in a different place.

“Did the routes of the twenty thousand formation methods completely isolate everyone from each other?”

This was the reason why the sorcerers of the Mo-san Sect, despite understanding the structure of the formation, had absolutely refused to enter.

I tried to sharpen my spiritual focus (An-ryeok), but my Danjeon was completely empty.

“Have I lost my mind? I had forgotten that I had fired the Light Heaven Divine Palm (Gwang-cheon-sin-jang).”

It had happened so suddenly that even my absolute memory could not be fully utilized.

“He is a truly chilling guy.”

Considering that I had overcome the Crushing Formula (Pa-swae-sik) in my previous life as well, it was understandable, but the fact that he had even deflected the Light Heaven Divine Palm was something I could not easily believe even after seeing it with my own eyes.

“To think he would throw me into the Soul-Extinguishing Formation after that; he was a devious guy from a young age.”

In that short time, he had realized the destructive power of the Light Heaven Divine Palm, judged that I would be an obstacle to his work, and shoved me into the Soul-Extinguishing Formation.

I had to admit that although he was my enemy, his brain worked with terrifying agility.

He did not shy away from any means or methods to achieve his goals, possessed the martial power and influence to push them forward, and established a grand cause without lingering on small sacrifices.

Perhaps people followed him because they were captivated by such a powerful image.

“Come to think of it, he might be more dangerous than the Demonic Cult.”

Until now, I had thought that my purpose was simply to protect the Tae-eul Sect under the influence of the Murim Alliance.

But that, too, would become a meaningless story if those who moved the Murim Alliance eventually pushed us into hell.

‘Perhaps, I might have to fight Yong So-ah.’

No, a moment would surely come when I would have to fight. Just thinking about him throwing me into the Soul-Extinguishing Formation made me feel that even tearing his limbs off would not be enough to vent my anger.

But how could I, who had only learned the Small Heaven Sword Art (So-cheon-geom-beop), deal with a monster who could even deflect the Light Heaven Divine Palm? The anger that had been burning like a wildfire suddenly subsided.

“My life, too, is as invisible as this Soul-Extinguishing Formation.”

Anyway, the important thing was that I had to get out of the Soul-Extinguishing Formation.

If I could not get out of here, even a sixty-year cycle (Il-gap-ja) of internal energy would become meaningless, and I would not be able to seize the opportunity to take revenge on Yong So-ah.

I sat down immediately and performed Woon-gi-haeng-gong (circulation of energy), and I felt my internal energy filling up to a certain extent again.

However, in the short time I had closed my eyes, the formation had taken on a completely different landscape.

The fog on all sides had vanished, and now only pitch-black darkness blocked me on all sides.

The screams of the people were no longer audible either.

Out of a total of two hundred and ten thousand paths, I had memorized only one hundred and eighty thousand.

If I had memorized just a little more, I could have found the form of the path, but since I had entered the Soul-Extinguishing Formation without such preparation, I had to fill in the remaining thirty thousand paths myself.

Moreover, the problem was that I could not determine which path I was starting from.

To identify the path, I needed to be able to calculate the formation or open my Upper Dantian. I was in a state where I could do neither.

“There is another thing I must not tell my saje (junior disciples).”

Since I could not immediately think of a calculable formula, there was only one choice.

I sat down again, crossed my legs, and began Woon-gi-jo-sik (breathing exercise).

Every time I circulated the Small Heavenly Cycle (So-ju-cheon), the energy of the spiritual medicines that had been sleeping in my whole body began to wake up one by one.

The powerful energy, burning away the dregs in my meridians and pushing through the acupoints, moved from the Jung-geuk acupoint to the Ji-yang acupoint, passed through the Sin-do acupoint, and was asking where it should go.

And I began to move my internal energy toward the Baek-hoe acupoint.

Suddenly, I remembered what I had heard when I first learned the Internal Energy Heart Method (Nae-gong-sim-beop).

-Jin So-woon, never try to open your Upper Dantian. Never.

Even ordinary Murim warriors never touch their Upper Dantian unless it is an extraordinary situation.

Let alone inside the Soul-Extinguishing Formation; to anyone, it was clearly a crazy thing to do.

Even the Demonic Cult members, who were full of the world’s craziest people, would surely shake their heads if they saw me now.

‘Still, I have to do it.’

Because of the Jeong-sim-dan (Mind-Calming Pill), I could prevent Ju-hwa-ip-ma (deviation of energy) once, so it was a crazy thing I could do.

The internal energy that had been waiting cautiously began to move again.

It asked me several times if this was the right place. If it was really right to enter here.

I sent my consciousness (Ui-nyeom) to pull up my internal energy at once.

Bang.

Along with a huge impact sound in my head, thunder and lightning rang out.

Bang.

While my whole body trembled as if my nerves were all burning, pain rushed in like a tidal wave as if my mind would snap.

Keo-heuk.

The shock ringing through all my acupoints made my internal state a mess, and blood flowed from the corners of my mouth.

Bang.

While the feeling of stuffiness and pain, as if every pore was being pricked by needles, continued one after another, a strange sensation, I did not know if it was pain or ecstasy, was felt in my head.

Swa-aa-ah.

A sound like water flowing in a valley rang in my head, and the pain that had covered my whole body changed into a cool, refreshing feeling in an instant.

The refreshing feeling that lingered in my head darted around my whole body and began to pierce the blocked acupoints.

In the process, this great force sucked up all the energy of the remaining spiritual medicines, further boosting its power.

‘Stop, stop.’

It was a good feeling, but the internal energy began to grow to the point where I feared I might no longer be able to control it.

The energy, which surged even more strongly than when I pierced the Baek-hoe acupoint, did not know how to stop even at my consciousness, darted around my whole body, widened its path at will, and then stopped at a certain point.

‘No way.’

The internal energy seemed to dislike the blocked Middle Dantian, rubbing against it and trying to pierce a path.

Keuk.

As it tried to force its way through the blockage, my internal organs flipped over, and blood was pouring out endlessly.

At this rate, it was a situation where I could not avoid Ju-hwa-ip-ma.

‘I’ve already opened the Upper Dantian anyway, and I have the Jeong-sim-dan…… It’s do or die.’

Bang.

As the flow of internal energy and the direction of my consciousness coincided, the energy seemed even more excited and began to push against the Middle Dantian.

Bang.

With a huge impact that made my whole body shake, even the Middle Dantian was finally pierced, and the internal energy darted through my whole body with no more obstacles.

Only after the energy, which had been roaming every corner for a while, settled in the Danjeon was I able to open my eyes.

“Hoo…….”

The internal energy felt in my Danjeon was roughly one hundred years’ worth.

The Upper and Middle Dantian were opened, and there was no blockage in the flow of internal energy.

In an instant, I had reached the state of O-ryong-bong-seong (Five Dragons Serving the Saint).

What I saw became clearer, and the sensations coming through my five senses allowed me to objectify myself.

In simple terms, I had reached the state where experts catch objects flying from blind spots without looking.

“Heavenly luck helped me.”

A dangerous gamble that I would not have even thought of trying in the first place without the Jeong-sim-dan.

Thanks to it, I was able to pierce up to the Middle Dantian and absorb all the energy of the spiritual medicines remaining in my body.

As my five senses opened, the flow of the formation began to be felt.

The path according to the changes of the Eight Trigrams (Pal-gwae), the Twelve Earthly Branches (Sip-i-gan), the Sixty-Year Cycle (Yuk-sip-gap-ja), and the three hundred and sixty-five changes.

While feeling the flow, I compared it with the paths filled in my head to grasp where I was and where I should go.

Before I knew it, the fog on all sides had changed back to red. And I was certain.

“I can go.”

I moved my feet toward one direction.

The red fog that had been blocking me like a wall moved away in an instant, opening the path.

It meant I had chosen the right path.

One more step.

The red fog changed to yellow fog.

Proof that I had entered a different path.

One more step.

Once again, the fog pushed back and opened a path.

Then, I encountered darkness.

This path was a path that the sorcerers of the Mo-san Sect had not yet calculated.

Nevertheless, I could not turn around or step back like in the cave.

The paths would start again, and eventually, I would get caught in the same barrier again.

“I have to fill in the paths I haven’t filled yet.”

At the same time as I sent internal energy to my Upper Dantian, I began to record all the paths of the Soul-Extinguishing Formation on one wall of the library in my head.

As I filled the entire endlessly high wall, a space appeared in the bottom left where thirty thousand paths were supposed to go.

A place that could not be filled by calculation in the first place.

I inferred the common laws of the other paths and began to memorize the new paths.

It was clearly a crazy thing to do, but for some reason, I did not stop working, feeling an absurd sense that it might be possible.

Perhaps thanks to opening my Upper Dantian, the missing numbers began to be filled according to each principle.

One path recorded another, and the two paths thus created recorded four more.

My brain, which received energy through the Upper Dantian, forcibly generated an overload, and my nose, with its thin mucous membranes, could not contain the rushing blood and poured it out in streams.

Just about when I thought I could fill a small bottle with just my nosebleed.

“It’s done.”

As the two hundred and twelve thousand and four hundred paths were completed, the darkness before my eyes was no longer an object of fear.

Cheok.

Suddenly, the world brightened, and a halo of light was felt.

As I took another step, the fog began to clear.

With every step I took, the fog thinned, and I began to see the dead people around me.

And the moment I felt I had reached the end of the Soul-Extinguishing Formation.

A white wall that I could not see the end of rose before my eyes.

And I stepped on a part of that wall.

Hwa-ak.

The white wall was lifted, and I entered the pitch-black cave again.

“Haa, haa.”

Before my eyes, ice hanging like stalactites was reflecting a blue light, illuminating the cave brightly.

“Mi-ta-seong-su (The Saintly Water of Amitabha)…….”

As soon as my tension was released, I lost consciousness and collapsed.

When I came to my senses again, my whole body felt light as if all my fatigue had been washed away.

In addition, my Danjeon was filled with about half of my internal energy, and considering that I had not done Woon-gi-jo-sik, I could tell that the speed of natural energy accumulation had become much faster as I opened the Upper and Middle Dantian.

“Anyone who sees this would think I committed a bloodbath.”

My blue martial arts uniform was stained with the blood I had spat out and the nosebleed I had poured out, fully soaked with blood.

“Anyway, there’s no one watching.”

There was no one inside the cave.

Hundreds of people had entered the Soul-Extinguishing Formation on their own, but it meant that I was the only one who had reached this place.

“Haha, so this was true.”

The reason the struggle for the Mi-ta-seong-su became controversial was not only that five hundred people were sacrificed, but because in the end, the Mi-ta-seong-su was not found.

Thanks to this, some even said it was false information spread by the Hao-mun (Information Guild) to bring chaos to the Gang-ho (Murim world).

“But in the end, I see it with my own eyes like this.”

The Mi-ta-seong-su hanging long from the ceiling was emitting light itself.

I quickly took out an awl from my robes and brought a specially made water container to tap the Mi-ta-seong-su.

Jjeo-jeo-jeok.

The Mi-ta-seong-su dropped and went into the water container, and the awl began to freeze jjeo-jeo-jeok, so I quickly threw the awl away.

The Yin energy of the Mi-ta-seong-su was so strong that the palm of my hand holding the awl was already frozen solid.

As I pulled up my internal energy, my hand slowly melted, and water flowed down.

It was truly a bizarre sight that would be hard to see again in the human world.

“By the way, the place where the Tae-eul Sword Emperor was sealed must surely be here too.”

My original purpose was to find traces of the Tae-eul Sword Emperor.

After entering the cave, the series of events that unfolded fueled my suspicion even more.

“The Immeasurable Indestructible Soul-Extinguishing Formation, which can never be broken and never disappears.”

What on earth was the world trying to seal by deploying an absolute formation that reached thirty jang?

-The masters of the sun decided to separate the Dark Heaven (Am-cheon) and the Ten Thousand Swords (Man-geom) from the human world.

In the first place, the Soul-Extinguishing Formation was not something that could be broken with powerful Gong-ryeok (internal force).

The fact that they deployed a formation that separated even the soul from the human world meant that the influence of the target was that great.

-Beside the tray of the Second. Hell where heaven and earth meet. At that end, they sealed the Dark Heaven and the Ten Thousand Swords. Then, the world was at peace.

The legend of the Tae-eul Sword Emperor was true, and it was to seal this that they had deployed the absolute formation called the Immeasurable Indestructible Soul-Extinguishing Formation.

“There must be. Traces of my Taesajo (Grandmaster).”

I stepped toward the Soul-Extinguishing Formation on the opposite side of the path I had come in.

Now, like walking down a neighborhood alley I knew well, the fog and darkness covering the surroundings were not scary at all.

With every step I took, the fog was pushed far away.

I faced the white wall again through the fog that parted as if guiding the way.

As I squeezed my body into a part of the wall, a cavity filled only with darkness appeared.

I closed my eyes for a moment and raised my internal energy to sharpen my spiritual focus, and I saw two figures sitting at both ends of a space reaching ten jang in all directions.

One figure was an old man with white hair.

The opposite figure was a middle-aged man with black hair and a beard.

Drawn by an attraction I did not know, I approached the old man, and I saw densely written letters on the floor centered on the old man.

And the eight characters carved deepest at the very top of those letters.

Man-geom-cheon-ha (Ten Thousand Swords Under Heaven).

Tae-eul Sword Emperor.

Something hit my abdomen and welled up.

Throughout my previous life and current life, the times of disgrace that the masters of the Tae-eul Sect had suffered over the past five hundred years, and the feelings of sorrow that had been melted into those times.

Strength drained from my calves, and I knelt down.

I prostrated myself there, and without even having time to wipe away the flowing tears, I said with a sob.

“The 18th disciple of the Tae-eul Sect, Jin So-woon, greets Taesajo.”

<><><>