Martial artists learn various techniques, but they choose one internal energy method and principle to master.
Reaching the pinnacle of any single method is an arduous journey.
Depending on one’s aptitude, faction, or technique, learning multiple methods is possible.
But they cannot be used simultaneously, as they govern the body and mind.
Bu Eunseol was no exception.
Yet, in extreme pain to block the Supreme Fire Ring Aura, he unconsciously split his yin-yang energy, rapidly alternating between two principles.
For a brief moment, as two vastly different martial arts alternated from his hands, he blocked the Supreme Fire Ring Aura’s vibrations.
‘I see.’
A realization flashed through his mind.
‘While righteous and demonic martial arts can’t be used together, alternating them quickly with yin-yang energy is possible.’
He could counter the Yeolha Sacred Aura’s heat with Wishful True Binding via Heavenly Glacial Secret.
And the intense vibrations of the Supreme Fire Ring Aura could be repelled with Thirteen Guiding Energies using Yang Strong True Energy.
‘I’ll try it.’ Bu Eunseol took a deep breath.
Righteous and demonic martial arts pursue different goals and cannot be combined, with no method to contain both in one body.
But alternating them rapidly was feasible.
Layering.
Blood Shaolin’s monk had used a similar method to enhance martial prowess.
‘But if I fail, it’s over.’
Circulating yin-yang energy and splitting it to alternate techniques was another matter.
Failure would tangle his energy channels and split his spirit, plunging him into irreversible madness.
Yet Bu Eunseol had no hesitation.
He had never trained without risking his life or entertained complacent thoughts.
He trusted only his abilities and the time he had spent refining them.
Zing.
Without hesitation, he unleashed his energy, activating Heavenly Glacial Secret and Wishful True Binding simultaneously.
Whoosh!
A white aura spread from his left hand, forming a circular barrier around him—Wishful True Binding infused with extreme yin energy.
Since both techniques belonged to the same demonic lineage, they blended seamlessly.
‘Now!’
Swish! Swish!
Quickly halting both techniques, he extended his right arm, generating five sharp energy strands—Thirteen Guiding Energies via Yang Strong True Energy.
Bu Eunseol began repeating this absurd process rapidly.
Whoosh! Swish!
As Wishful True Binding with Heavenly Glacial Secret and Thirteen Guiding Energies with Yang Strong True Energy alternated, the vibrations shaking his fluids couldn’t penetrate and were repelled.
But his vision blurred, and a sweet sensation rose from his abdomen.
‘I can’t hold this for long.’
This method was a desperate improvisation in a life-or-death situation.
Rapidly alternating righteous and demonic techniques with yin-yang energy was a self-destructive act that could shatter his spirit.
Righteous and demonic cannot coexist or be contained together.
Without breaking through the sixth layer of Ban-Geuk Method and achieving Spirit Regulation, such an attempt would have driven him insane instantly.
“Ugh.”
Enduring head-splitting pain, Bu Eunseol pressed forward with all his might.
‘Just a bit more.’
A massive iron gate appeared in his blurred vision.
Staggering, he pulled the Fire Ring Crystal from his robes and thrust it into a circular indentation.
Clank. Rumble.
The gate opened, and the floor’s suction force vanished.
“Huff, huff.”
On the verge of losing consciousness, Bu Eunseol instinctively entered the gate.
Inside was a stone chamber with a red-tinted staff on a small altar, emitting a mystical glow.
Step. Step.
Walking weakly, he reached for the staff in his blurred vision.
Whoosh!
A sun-like light burst from the staff, and flames engulfed Bu Eunseol’s body.
The energy from the staff was hundreds of times stronger than the Yeolha Sacred Aura in the passage.
Roar.
As the immense energy poured out, his body became a blazing inferno.
Swish!
A blue aura and intense cold erupted from him, as Heavenly Glacial Secret activated instinctively against the molten heat.
Crack! Roar!
Frozen like ice, he countered the flames’ power, pouring out cold energy.
As he battled the heat endlessly,
Crack! Crash.
The altar, caught between flames and cold, shattered like brittle candy, and the entire floor collapsed.
Bu Eunseol’s body plummeted into a deep abyss.
***
Crash! Boom!
Hwa Jeong’s eyes flashed outside the Secret Palace’s passage, before Yeolha Holy Saint’s statue.
“Something’s gone wrong.”
Sensing a disturbance, she swiftly entered the passage.
Unlike before, the passage lacked Yeolha Sacred Aura and Supreme Fire Ring Aura.
Entering the open Secret Palace gate, she saw a wide stone chamber with a melted altar and blackened marks.
‘Where’s the Fire Ring Divine Flute, leaving only these traces?’
Hwa Jeong frowned.
She knew all the Secret Palace’s traps.
Even with a Sacred Flame Constitution, no one could hold the flute, as without mastering Yeolha Holy Flame Aura, the flute’s Yeolha Sacred Aura would melt their body.
‘I planned to frame him for grabbing the flute out of curiosity and dying.’
She had summoned Bu Eunseol secretly to avoid witnesses.
If the Martial Alliance investigated, she could claim he entered the Secret Palace out of curiosity and met misfortune.
But with the flute and him gone without a trace, it was a disastrous outcome.
‘I must recover the flute, no matter what.’
Biting her lip, Hwa Jeong recalled her long research as a Three Realms member on artificial inner cores.
She discovered that pure extreme yang energy could alter the nature of the demonic seed of artificial cores.
Thus, she recruited Gwang Yangja, skilled in both martial arts and medicine.
“Use the Fire Ring Crystal to find a way to counter the Demon Seed’s side effects,” she had said.
Gwang Yangja, shocked, asked, “Isn’t the artificial inner core used by sinister forces disrupting the martial world? Where did you get this?”
“It’s not an inner core but a demon seed that can create one. I obtained it by chance, but it has many flaws, requiring much research for our disciples to use.”
Gwang Yangja initially refused firmly.
But she persistently persuaded him that artificial cores could rapidly advance the palace’s disciples’ prowess, making Yeolha Holy Palace the martial world’s hegemon.
As a loyal vassal dreaming of the palace’s dominance, he began researching the Demon Seed and achieved significant results.
Using the Fire Ring Crystal, he could create an extreme yang core akin to the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp’s core.
If they retrieved the Fire Ring Divine Flute, containing Yeolha Holy Saint’s Yeolha Sacred Aura, they could create a flawless artificial inner core without side effects.
“Are you also with the Three Realms?” Gwang Yangja had asked, realizing Hwa Jeong’s affiliation.
He fled with a thousand Demon Seeds and the Fire Ring Crystal.
“If I turn these into extreme yang cores, no one could challenge Yeolha Holy Palace’s invincible legion.”
While pursued by Hwa Jeong, he produced extreme yang cores, planning to contact the Young Palace Lord, form a thousand-strong legion to oust Hwa Jeong, and retrieve the flute.
But Bu Eunseol tracked and killed him for massacring vagrants.
“Jeok Sa. I endured that foul old man only to obtain the perfect inner core!” Hwa Jeong muttered, snapping out of her reverie, biting her lip.
If she couldn’t recover the flute, all her efforts would be for naught.
She had to retrieve it at all costs.
***
Bu Eunseol, having fallen into the abyss, lay clutching the Fire Ring Divine Flute.
The flute still radiated vein-melting Yeolha Sacred Aura, which he countered with Heavenly Glacial Secret.
‘Remarkable.’
A mere object, yet the flute matched his near-five-hundred-year internal energy via Heavenly Glacial Secret.
Whoosh.
A wisp of heat rose from his dantian, and his body began to shimmer silver.
The flute’s heat turned into a pleasant warmth.
Exhaustion overwhelmed him, and his eyes slowly closed, slipping into deep sleep.
“You fell asleep reading books again,” a voice said in his dream—his childhood self.
“If you keep reading these books, your father will get scolded again.”
His father carried him to bed, carefully placing a book back on the shelf.
It was always like this.
Even asleep, his consciousness remained awake, hearing his parents’ conversations.
As his father left, his mother’s gentle but sighing voice came.
“He fell asleep reading again.”
“No, I just came to check on him,” his father said, flustered.
A smile crept onto Bu Eunseol’s sleeping face.
But his mother’s worried voice followed: “I’m sometimes afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That he’ll share your fate.”
His father’s firm voice replied, “Don’t worry. Didn’t the Living Buddha say? Unless we shave his head and send him to Shaolin, he’ll never…”
Flash.
Waking from the dream, Bu Eunseol slowly opened his eyes.
A vast cave, five zhang high, greeted him, illuminated by a soft glow from the ceiling.
‘I dreamed of my parents again.’
Recalling the dream, joy and pain surged simultaneously.
His kind father’s and gentle mother’s voices lingered, yet he couldn’t recall their faces.
‘Living Buddha?’
He mulled over the term.
A title for a monk of great spiritual power, used for both Central Plains and Tibetan lamas, possibly insignificant.
‘“That he’ll share your fate.”’
His mother’s final words troubled him.
‘Did Father live an unfortunate life?’ Trying to recall more, his head throbbed.
“Why am I suddenly remembering new things?” Shaking his head, Bu Eunseol stood and surveyed his surroundings.
“There was a mechanism I didn’t expect.”
Looking at the closed ceiling, he gave a wry smile.
In his frantic effort to counter the extreme yang energy, he hadn’t sensed the mechanism beneath his feet.
“Still a long way to go.”
Even with all his strength, he needed to keep his senses sharp.
Even at death’s door, he sought out his mistakes to improve.
People called him a martial genius, but in truth, his relentless effort—never pausing, even for a moment—drove his rapid growth.
“My appearance is a mess.” Looking at his tattered clothes, he snorted.
Despite countering the Yeolha Sacred Aura, his clothes were reduced to rags.
“I don’t understand. Did the Yeolha Holy Saint intend to kill all his successors?”
Gazing at the staff-sized iron flute—the Fire Ring Divine Flute—he shook his head.
Without alternating two martial arts with yin-yang energy, he would have died in the passage.
And without the Heavenly Glacial Secret, even a great martial artist would have melted under the flute’s Yeolha Sacred Aura.
“Ancient masters create unimaginable mechanisms.”
The Martial Emperor’s Secret Vault also had traps that rendered even skilled warriors helpless.
The Yeolha Holy Saint had created a nearly impossible mechanism, barring access unless one risked their life in a bizarre gamble, even with a Sacred Flame Constitution.
“What the Yeolha Holy Saint wanted wasn’t a Sacred Flame Constitution but an outsider with exceptional martial arts.”
Shaking his head, Bu Eunseol suddenly felt a strange sensation in his right arm and waved it.
Whoosh!
A peculiar airflow spread, the Yeolha Sacred Aura and Supreme Fire Ring Aura that had relentlessly tried to destroy him.
“It’s been absorbed into my body?”
His eyes widened. He had perfectly blocked the energies with Wishful True Binding and Thirteen Guiding Energies.
How had they infiltrated his body?
‘Could it be?’
He looked at the flute on the ground.
Unlike before, its mystical glow was gone, appearing like an ordinary flute.
Grab.
He picked it up, but the sun-like energy was gone.
Crush.
With force, the flute turned to dust.
“Oh no.” He exclaimed, having reduced Yeolha Holy Palace’s treasure to powder. “What do I do now?”
Recalling the flute and extending his right arm, a fiery energy burst forth, spreading intense heat.
The flute’s entire power had been absorbed into his meridians and shattered once exhausted.
His father’s voice from the dream echoed:
‘“If you learn martial arts, this great law will eventually break. I hope you never enter the martial world…”’
“So that’s what it meant.”
He now understood.
“As my martial prowess grows or I’m shocked, my memories return.”
When he regained memories as Mumu, a mysterious force had spiked his internal energy and shocked his brain meridians.
Now, the flute’s power had jolted his brain meridians, restoring another fragment of memory.
“I need to get stronger quickly—or get knocked out.”
Though said in jest, urgency crept into his heart.
Another reason to grow stronger: to recover his memories and find his grandparents, parents, and their killers.
Hiss.
As his focus wavered, the flute’s energy in the air dissipated.
“I’ve inadvertently absorbed someone else’s treasure.”
His eyes narrowed, looking at his right hand.
If Hwa Jeong were honest, he would have found a way to return the flute’s power.
But she had used him as bait to open the Secret Palace, likely planning to report his death as an accident to the Martial Alliance.
Thus, he had no intention of returning the power to her.
Step. Step.
Surveying the cave, he walked inward.
A warm breeze blew, evidence of an exit.
“Good.”
The breeze soothed his weary body, gently brushing past.
“There.”
Reaching the cave’s end, a large stone chamber appeared with an exit at the far side.
On one side sat a mummified skeleton in a meditative pose.
Its appearance was unrecognizable, but even as a mummy, it exuded grandeur and solemnity.
Likely the remains of the Yeolha Holy Saint, who built the Secret Palace.
‘Why is his body hidden deep in a mechanism?’
Yeolha Holy Saint was said to have lived a full life and died quietly in the palace.
Was this not him?
“I’m sorry for disturbing your rest,” Bu Eunseol said, bowing respectfully. “Though not a disciple of the Yeolha Holy Palace, I entered the Secret Palace unintentionally. I’ll inform them of your remains…”
Creak.
Before he finished, the chamber trembled, and letters began carving into the walls as if eaten by ants.
Yeolha Great True Energy.
Astonishingly, the walls bore the secret techniques of Yeolha Holy Saint’s ultimate art, Yeolha Great True Energy.
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