The Martial Genius Who Remembers Everything Novel - Chapter 183

Chapter 183
Chapter 183. Rewriting the Sichuan Blood Calamity (3)

The Murim Academy representatives whom Gu Jeong-ryong had taken under his command frequently voiced their bitter grievances as they pushed forward.

From their perspective, a journey that was supposed to be an official break from their regular coursework to enjoy some travel had suddenly transformed into a mandatory, grueling march, so their irritation was entirely predictable.

Furthermore, maturity made no difference in this regard. Regardless of how earnestly he emphasized the gravity of the crisis, Elder Suheo and Elder Sangwon erupted with exasperated protests nearly seven times every single day.

‘And these people hold the titles of Elders of the Murim Alliance.’

‘This must be fabricated intelligence,’ ‘What sort of Unorthodox Arts could exist in this era?’ ‘Jin So-un must be playing some underhanded game,’ and similar denials spilled from them. Observing them immerse themselves in such absolute delusion, Gu Jeong-ryong could not stop cursing them in his mind.

“H-how can this be reality……?”

Nonetheless, their constant grumbling dissolved into nothingness the moment they finally crossed paths with the Academy Students of Qingcheng Sect and Emei Sect.

The members of the Righteous Path Association, who were being escorted under close watch by the warriors of the Twelve Peak Citadels, looked like thoroughly beaten remnants of an army in every imaginable way.

Hardly any among them could take a proper step unassisted, and a number of them were being transported on makeshift stretchers.

After dropping off a portion of his own men to safeguard the wounded, Gu Jeong-ryong forced their traveling speed to an even higher gear.

Under ordinary circumstances, Elder Suheo and Elder Sangwon would have loudly demanded to know why they were rushing with such reckless haste, but now they clamped their lips tight and struggled to keep up with the fierce stride of Gu Jeong-ryong and Victory Tiger Hall.

Before long, when they encountered the scattered groups from Mount Hua Sect and Kongtong Sect, they were struck by absolute bewilderment.

“Wh-what in the world took place here?”

“Elder So? You worthless scum! Where has Elder So gone to……?”

They had clearly retreated in a state of sheer, unadulterated terror, given that countless Academy Students were missing their sidearms, which are practically regarded as the very soul of any martial artist.

The magnitude of the destruction here was easily double that of the Academy Students from Qingcheng Sect and Emei Sect, who had been holding the third (3) defensive line.

“Based on the information we explicitly received via the Carrier Pigeon Letter…… surely…… the casualties were never meant to be this catastrophic.”

The devastation far surpassed their worst projections.

Kongtong Sect had suffered a particularly brutal blow; nearly all the Academy Students from its Lay-Affiliated Martial Sects were permanently mangled or left incapable of speech, while a mere handful of Kongtong Sect’s inner disciples had narrowly escaped with their lives.

“……A-after we pulled back, we were, a-ambushed, a-again……”

Looking down at the shattered state of the Academy Student, who could not even muster the courage to look them in the eye and kept faltering over their words, neither Gu Jeong-ryong nor Elder Suheo nor Elder Sangwon could ease the grim tension in their features as they processed the testimony.

“If the second (2) line has been reduced to this state……. the carnage at the first (1) line must be exponentially worse.”

“……”

Staring at the silent Elders, who were completely incapable of offering a response, Gu Jeong-ryong spat on the ground in frustration.

“We are pressing forward immediately.”

“This very instant?”

“We have to advance with maximum speed. If we dally here, there is no telling what disaster will unfold next.”

Hearing Gu Jeong-ryong’s declaration, Elder Suheo’s eyes darted frantically back and forth.

“If the situation ahead matches your description, then what lies right before us…… territory……”

Elder Suheo found himself unable to finish the thought.

At that display, Gu Jeong-ryong’s expression darkened to the absolute limit.

“What exactly are you trying to imply?”

“……Ahem!”

“Can you give me a straight answer?”

“……Forget it.”

Gu Jeong-ryong picked out a detachment from Victory Tiger Hall along with several Academy Students, directing them to escort the survivors of Mount Hua Sect and Kongtong Sect back toward the staging ground where the Qingcheng Sect forces were gathered.

Once that was done, he altered the direction of the main column again and dashed toward the coordinates of the first (1) line.

Right at that moment.

RIIING──

An unsettling, high-pitched resonance pierced straight through the mind of Gu Jeong-ryong, who had been sprinting ahead with his Sensory Perception pushed to its absolute peak.

“Halt!”

The moment Gu Jeong-ryong abruptly forced the vanguard to stop and leaped backward, Gam Cheon-ak closed the distance to his side.

“Is that foul presence…… Witchcraft?”

“You can perceive it?”

“My chest is thumping a bit awkwardly.”

“Do you have a way to cut through it?”

Gam Cheon-ak fixed Gu Jeong-ryong with a thoroughly irritated glare.

“What sort of nonsense are you babbling?”

“Did you just call my words ‘nonsense’?”

“When would I ever say that?”

“……Cut the act, can you break it or not?”

Gam Cheon-ak let loose a heavy, dragging respiration.

“Let’s be realistic for a moment. Even if we pierce this barrier and force our way inside, do you honestly believe anyone will still be breathing up there?”

If Group Three and Group Two had been utterly decimated like that, Group One must have endured a far more horrific slaughter.

Even if they were the renowned Shaolin and Diancang under the heavens, mere Academy Students who had not even completed their fundamental training could never endure such a demonic slaughterhouse.

Gu Jeong-ryong gave a tight nod of agreement, yet his resolve did not waver in the slightest.

“I am well aware of that. But did Jin So-un not venture in there anyway?”

dishonesty
“……”

“Since he charged down that exact path, the very least we can do is show the decency to follow him.”

Gam Cheon-ak grumbled under his breath as if muttering to the wind.

“Good grief…… that insufferable bastard. Because he only has to bark out directives, he dreams up all sorts of bizarre, impossible tasks.”

“What did you call me, you rascal?”

Gam Cheon-ak gave a brazen shrug of his shoulders.

“I didn’t utter a single word.”

“…… shreds”

Gam Cheon-ak observed the shimmering, crimson haze undulating right in front of them and remarked,

“Doesn’t that Ultimate Formation look a bit unraveled at the seams?”

“It appears it isn’t fully sealing off the higher air space.”

“Well, that’s a minor blessing.”

“Can you handle it?”

Gam Cheon-ak turned a deadpan look directly toward Gu Jeong-ryong’s face.

“You gave the order to smash it. So I will smash it.”

Gam Cheon-ak cast his gaze backward.

“Hey! Four of you, step up to the front!”

The instant Gam Cheon-ak’s command left his mouth, four elite warriors of Victory Tiger Hall moved out of the ranks.

“We need to breach this perimeter. You boys don’t have an issue with that, do you?”

“……You expect us to dive headfirst into this foul abomination?”

The expressions plastered across the faces of the Victory Tiger Hall fighters mirrored Gam Cheon-ak’s own reluctance perfectly.

Predicting this exact reaction, Gam Cheon-ak nodded smoothly and gestured toward Gu Jeong-ryong.

“Precisely. That insufferable…… rather, the Hall Master demands that we push through this spot.”

“He has lost his absolute mind……”

“Is he not a certified maniac?”

Gu Jeong-ryong, who was standing right next to them and catching every word, dropped his tone to a low growl.

“I am standing right next to you, you absolute fools.”

“……What a disaster. Why is he sneaking around listening to his own men and creating a scene?”

As the Victory Tiger Hall warriors continued to mumble complaints, Gam Cheon-ak clapped his palms together sharply to lock their focus onto him.

“Cut the chatter, we are breaching this boundary regardless. Keep that in your thick skulls.”

“What’s our compensation if we make it through alive?”

Gam Cheon-ak shot a quick look at Gu Jeong-ryong, then rubbed his jaw and replied,

“If we tear through this barrier and extract Jin So-un, that wealthy bastard is going to treat us all to a famous Sichuan delicacy known as Dispelling Evil and Spirit Suppression.”

“Oooh!!”

The mood of the men completely flipped in a heartbeat.

“Dispelling Evil and Spirit Suppression! Just the title alone sounds incredibly mouth-watering!”

“I’ve never once heard of a meal called Dispelling Evil and Spirit Suppression! This is exactly why a man needs to rub elbows with the wealthy!”

Watching the overjoyed reactions of the Victory Tiger Hall fighters, Gam Cheon-ak let out a wide, mocking grin as well.

“Absolute simpletons, the lot of them……”

While Gu Jeong-ryong internally echoed Gam Cheon-ak’s sentiment and cast a pitiful gaze at the celebrating Victory Tiger Hall members, Gam Cheon-ak quickly moved to strike the Acupoints of the four selected men.

“From this moment on, I am going to completely paralyze your vision and your sense of touch. You are likely going to experience horrific auditory illusions. Block them out to the best of your ability and advance solely based on my Sound Transmission.”

“Understood!”

Gam Cheon-ak turned his face back to Gu Jeong-ryong.

“Do the honors.”

“……Don’t go dying out there.”

“If you’re truly that terrified, Hall Master, you could always take the lead……”

“I have utmost faith in you!”

Gu Jeong-ryong rapidly shut down Gam Cheon-ak’s vision and tactile senses by striking his points.

TAP, TA-TAP, TA-TA-TAP.

The moment his Acupoints were sealed, Gam Cheon-ak lifted his palm right in front of his face and gave it a mock wave.

Then he flipped his middle finger straight at Gu Jeong-ryong.

“Hall Master, what gesture am I making at this moment?”

“A blatant act of mutiny.”

“Oh! Is that what it is? I had no clue since my eyes are completely dark.”

After insulting Gu Jeong-ryong, Gam Cheon-ak unsheathed his blade.

Gu Jeong-ryong swiftly leaped up into the branches of a nearby tree, kept his eyes locked on the twisting patterns of the Ultimate Formation, and began relaying navigation.

-Keep advancing straight! You just completed a right turn. Now pivot back to the left and press forward!

Following Gu Jeong-ryong’s exact vocal cues, the Victory Tiger Hall detachment advanced with perfect synchronization.

Deep within the shifting fog of the Ultimate Formation, those recognizable blood-robed men materialized out of the dark.

Gu Jeong-ryong barked out an immediate warning.

-Hostiles incoming!

A sharp Sound Transmission immediately snapped back from Gam Cheon-ak.

-Don’t just yell, ‘Hostiles!’ Give us the exact coordinates! It is maddeningly difficult to run a tactical maneuver with you guiding!

Gu Jeong-ryong recognized his oversight instantly, but he couldn’t help cursing the man in his mind.

‘That arrogant prick……’

The Victory Tiger Hall fighters unleashed their sword techniques with absolute precision according to Gu Jeong-ryong’s spatial directions.

CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!

Witnessing their bizarre, blind combat maneuvers, the surrounding Academy Students and even the senior Elders could only look on with wide, unblinking eyes.

Kuhk!

Aaaaagh!

Kuk!

Mercifully, the number of blood-robed men guarding the perimeter was small, and every single one of them appeared heavily fatigued and injured.

They possessed nowhere near the agility required to evade the lightning-fast strikes of Victory Tiger Hall.

The moment the final blood-robed assailant who attempted an ambush was ultimately turned into a Lonely Ghost by Gam Cheon-ak’s lethal blade, the resistance ceased entirely.

The Victory Tiger Hall operatives, having successfully navigated across the hazardous terrain of the Ultimate Formation under Gu Jeong-ryong’s guidance, systematically unlocked their sealed senses, beginning with Gam Cheon-ak.

Immediately after, they sprinted at maximum speed toward the coordinates where the Spell Practitioners were hiding.

After effortlessly butchering the final line of blood-robed guards who attempted a desperate stand to shield the casters.

They mercilessly slaughtered every last one of the Spell Practitioners.

The moment they smashed the ritual devices that had been anchored to the earth, the suffocating Ultimate Formation that had obstructed their advance dissolved into nothingness as if wiped away by a torrential downpour.

Gam Cheon-ak, making his way back to the main force, tilted his head in confusion and noted, “The state of those cultists feels incredibly off.”

“In what way?”

“They look as though they were thoroughly thrashed somewhere else before this, and they seem like they haven’t closed their eyes in days. Leaving their residual Internal Qi aside, for assassins who have been executing calculated massacres, their bloodlust felt incredibly muted.”

Gu Jeong-ryong’s forehead pinched tightly together before he could stop it.

“Now that you mention it, their numbers are vastly inferior to the amount of attackers described by the earlier survivors.”

“Do you reckon someone cleared the path before we even got here?”

“……We will obtain our answers once we advance further.”

Victory Tiger Hall along with the rest of the Academy Students began accelerating their pace through the forest once more.

Shortly after, the scenery that unrolled before them was a vision of absolute slaughter.

“Heavens above……”

“What sort of madness is this……?”

“Did an actual military campaign take place here?”

The sheer volume of slain bodies was immense enough to send a visible tremor of shock even through the hardened veterans of Victory Tiger Hall.

Crimson fluid pooled and snaked across the dirt like miniature rivers, as if a massive cloudburst had just saturated the land, and dead bodies littered the landscape like scattered gravel.

“Maintain full defensive postures, every single one of you!”

At Gam Cheon-ak’s sharp instruction, the Victory Tiger Hall operatives fanned out into a disciplined perimeter with seamless coordination.

Gu Jeong-ryong stepped closer to inspect the center of the horrific engagement zone.

‘Huh?’

Yet, the attire of the dead raised immediate questions.

He could easily account for the blood-robed men, as they were the obvious aggressors against the Academy Students, but the garments on the other corpses dying alongside them could never be mistaken for the uniforms of the Righteous Path Association or the elites of the Murim Academy, no matter how much leeway he granted.

‘Outlaws……?’

Their gear was completely mismatched and irregular, which was standard for brigands, and a fair number of them had wrapped themselves in crude animal pelts.

In the most extreme cases, several of the dead were completely bare from the waist up.

“These look like the scum hailing from the local Green Forest strongholds scattered around this mountain range.”

Hearing Gam Cheon-ak’s assessment, Gu Jeong-ryong’s face blanked out in sheer bewilderment.

“Why on earth would mountain bandits be participating in this clash?”

“……How should I know the mind of thieves?”

“What kind of insanity is unfolding here?”

If their adversaries were no longer just the secretive blood-robed faction, then this conflict had escalated to a terrifying degree.

“Are we going to keep pushing into the valley?”

If they were facing enemies armed with dark Witchcraft operating in tandem with an overwhelming horde from the Green Forest strongholds, there was no calculating the level of danger ahead.

No matter how fearless Victory Tiger Hall claimed to be, there existed a fine line between bravery and suicide.

Gam Cheon-ak’s frigid tone sliced through the tense quiet of the clearing.

“If we proceed past this point, our own survival becomes a coin toss.”

“……”

Noticing that Gu Jeong-ryong remained frozen in deep contemplation, he pressed the point further.

“It is a tragic outcome, but Jin So-un is likely also…… shreds”

Right at that critical juncture, a scout from Victory Tiger Hall positioned at the vanguard let out a booming shout,

“Unidentified hostiles moving in rapidly from the front!”

Gu Jeong-ryong, snapping out of his internal deliberation, whipped his head toward the tree line.

What if the blood-robed legions that had completely wiped out Group One were now descending upon this location?

Or what if the massive host of Green Forest Bandits, driven by some inexplicable motive, were marching to crush them?

“All forces, deploy into battle formations immediately!!!”

At Gu Jeong-ryong’s roaring command, the Victory Tiger Hall warriors compressed their lines instantly and bared their weapons.

CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!

Without needing a single spoken word, the entirety of Victory Tiger Hall fell into the formidable Blue Dragon Half-Moon Formation, while the adjacent Academy Students, thoroughly cowed by this suffocating display of martial pressure, swallowed hard and nervously slid their steel from their sheaths.

“Whew……”

Within that heavy, suffocating silence, the sound of a lone individual exhaling felt loud enough to rattle their eardrums.

The mystery group began stepping out from the foliage one by one right before their eyes.

‘What kind of bizarre gathering is that?’

The composition of the figures spearheading the column was completely erratic.

One individual was gripping a longbow, another possessed a hulking, towering frame, and one of them was a young woman.

Meanwhile, the man anchoring the center of the trio was casually dangling a sack roughly the volume of a watermelon in his grip.

Gu Jeong-ryong, squinting his eyes hard to pierce the gloom and identify the travelers, let out a completely flabbergasted cry.

“Jin So-un?”

Gam Cheon-ak leaned his torso forward to get a clearer view of the path ahead.

“Huh? Look at that, it actually is that crazy bastard. Though the youngsters trailing behind him seem to wear the robes of Shaolin and Diancang, don’t they?”

“……”

Evidently, Jin So-un had spotted their gathering as well, because he raised a hand and gave them a completely relaxed, casual wave.

Beholding that casual gesture, even Gam Cheon-ak, who was legendary for maintaining an absolute poker face under any circumstance, couldn’t stop a dry, disbelief-filled chuckle from escaping his lips.

“He truly is a monstrous bastard. Pulling off a stunt like this in the middle of this bloody nightmare……”

His vision remained locked onto Jin So-un’s approaching figure.

“Against all odds, he actually went ahead and rescued the survivors.”

Just as Gam Cheon-ak shook his head in awe and slid his blade back into its scabbard.

Gu Jeong-ryong spoke up in a dangerously quiet voice.

“Hey, which of our idiots just bellowed about ‘unidentified hostiles’ a moment ago?”

“That would be one of my boys.”

“Take him to the back and thrash him thoroughly.”

“……Consider it done.”

Gu Jeong-ryong let loose a massive, heavy sigh, finally allowing the coiled tension in his muscles to slacken.

Then he regarded Jin So-un with a profound sense of newfound amazement.

Even though the devastation visited upon the second and third defensive lines had been apocalyptic, the casualties suffered by the primary line itself appeared surprisingly minimal.

Deducing from the aftermath littered across the valley, it appeared they had chopped their way through not only the specialized blood-robed forces but had simultaneously broken the back of the Green Forest horde.

That ridiculous bastard had accomplished precisely what he vowed to do.

He had protected his peers and marched them back alive.

It completely defied all logic.

‘This is a feat pulled off by a mere Academy Student?’

Even though the Black Flame Dragon was currently celebrated as one of the premier geniuses of the generation within the Murim, no matter how generously one evaluated his talent, a monumental achievement of this scale was simply not something a mere rising star of the Murim should be capable of delivering.

‘What under heaven is that monster made of?’

Though Gu Jeong-ryong had initially agreed to throw his weight behind Jin So-un solely because of the personal intervention of Maeng Ju-won, he found his inner fascination regarding the mysteries of Jin So-un swelling to an uncontrollable degree.