The Deep Sea Chain Formation.
Once trapped within it, one had to fight countless enemies surging in from all sides in the lightless depths of the sea, where even breathing was impossible.
There was only one thing to rely on.
The True Qi generated through the Mad Heaven Demonic Art Breathing Method.
Occasionally, air bubbles rose from the seabed. Failure to absorb them in time meant drowning was unavoidable.
That was why the formation demanded tremendous concentration and a high degree of mastery over the Mad Heaven Demonic Art Breathing Method.
‘Hooo…….’
It was a Formation Art designed to teach the Mad Heaven Demonic Art as quickly as possible under the most extreme conditions imaginable.
Yet Murin had already entered the formation for the fourth time.
His internal force from the Mad Heaven Demonic Art had accumulated considerably compared to before, allowing him to delay the exhaustion of his strength. Even that reserve was now nearly spent.
If he failed to break the formation within two more attempts at most, he would suffer a considerable blow.
ROAR―
Even beneath the sea, the fierce current swept through with enough force to send his body lurching violently. Enduring it consumed still more True Qi.
Murin kept firm control over his Martial Power and prepared for the attack that would soon follow.
‘Observe.’
Watch the enemy’s movements clearly.
That was the first method he had realized amid this chaotic and bewildering ordeal.
If he let the distractions around him make him miss what he needed to see, he would go straight to his death.
‘Endure.’
If he failed to withstand the current that battered him without pause, trying to tear him down, he would die.
‘Strike.’
That was the essence of the Deep Sea Chain Formation as he had come to understand it.
The key to breaking this formation lay in properly distributing the internal force of the Mad Heaven Demonic Art among those three actions.
‘Come.’
The True Qi circulating inside him settled into profound stillness.
With it, he could withstand the fierce current naturally.
Then his invisible sixth sense awakened.
There was no light, so he used his other senses to perceive what his eyes could not.
WHOOSH―
An unnatural movement in the water!
‘They’re coming!’
His sharpened senses caught it.
Their frenzied chain of attacks would begin now.
Like the endless turning of a waterwheel, he had to block and counter the unceasing assault by any means possible.
SWISH―
CLANG―
At that moment, Murin swung the sword in his hand upward.
A heavy impact traveled through his fingertips, and something was knocked away.
But he had no room to relax.
The chained assault would not grant him even a single instant to think.
CLANG! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Beginning with that first strike, the unknown attacks came in a frenzied torrent.
They assailed him from the front, the right, and the left in a bewildering barrage!
Amid it all, Murin observed, endured, and struck almost simultaneously.
At the same time, he did not forget to absorb the air bubbles rising through the water and maintain his Breathing Method.
CLANG-CLANG!
A single mistake would already have left him a corpse.
But Murin had entered a state of perfect selflessness. He immersed himself completely in what he had to do, and time raced past.
“GAAASP!”
Then, at some point, his constricted lungs suddenly opened wide, and he drew in one ragged breath after another.
Only a moment ago, he had been in the depths of the sea. Now the familiar surroundings had returned around him.
“HUFF, HUFF!”
His shoulders heaved as he dropped his head.
It had been a truly wretched ordeal.
The slightest mistake would have left him suffocating to death or having his flesh torn apart by the enemy’s attacks.
“Hmmm……”
The Deep Sea Chain Formation―Raging Tide.
Jin Mudo narrowed his brow as he looked at the utterly exhausted Murin.
The boy must have experienced extreme terror and suffocating oppression inside it.
An ordinary person could not even have conceived of entering such a place repeatedly. Any human being would naturally feel that way.
But this bastard was different.
‘Three times in succession. And without the slightest hesitation! Do you truly feel no fear of death?’
Beyond the fear of dying, the Deep Sea Chain Formation created an ordeal so extreme that it drove people to the very brink of madness.
It was a hellish place that could make death seem preferable.
Yet after entering such a place three times in succession, this time the bastard had actually broken through it.
‘Is this the power of the Heavenly Kill Physique? Heh, how absurd.’
In any case, Murin was nothing like an ordinary person.
Pretending not to be surprised, Jin Mudo spoke calmly.
“You only barely broke it on the fourth attempt.”
At his dissatisfied tone, Murin smiled weakly.
“It felt like I’d die otherwise. Whew, that was a little difficult.”
That answer was Murin through and through.
An ordinary person would have been weeping and sniveling as they begged to be spared.
“Well, did you learn anything from it?”
At Jin Mudo’s casual question, Murin looked down at his hand and spoke.
“It was incredible! Just as you said, this Mad Heaven Demonic Art thing is the real deal! Now I understand exactly why people want to learn martial arts!”
‘Th-Thing? He called the Mad Heaven Demonic Art a thing?’
Jin Mudo was dumbfounded.
The Mad Heaven Demonic Art alone had made him the Greatest Martial Artist of All Ages.
Yet this lunatic was treating it like a mere object.
Could anyone receive such an extraordinary Fortuitous Encounter and still speak of it with such nonchalance?
“Mm, but it’s a little lacking. It’s too slow! I mean the speed at which my inner arts are accumulating. Isn’t there a faster martial art than this?”
“……Are you insane?”
At last, Jin Mudo voiced the thought in his heart.
If the Mad Heaven Demonic Art’s Cultivation of Inner Arts was slow, what martial art in the world could possibly be considered fast?
One of the Mad Heaven Demonic Art’s greatest strengths was the absurd speed of its Cultivation of Inner Arts.
“Hm? How am I supposed to defeat someone who’s trained in the Peng Clan’s martial arts his entire life after only fifteen days? Come to think of it, I heard martial artists take things called elixirs to increase their inner arts. Old man, don’t you have anything hidden away?”
Now the bastard was even demanding an elixir.
Jin Mudo felt faint.
He had tried to overlook Murin’s behavior because the boy knew nothing about the martial world, but at this point, he was no different from a brazen highwayman.
“I have more Fasting Pills than I know what to do with. Would you like some?”
Murin shook his head.
Then he spoke in a displeased tone.
“Tsk. When you said you were the Greatest Martial Artist of All Ages, I thought you’d have something special. Forget it. I’ll figure something out myself.”
‘Good heavens…….’
Did this bastard have no grasp of reality? For a moment, Jin Mudo seriously wondered whether he was doing something wrong.
“Give me your hand.”
But he quickly collected himself and addressed Murin.
When Murin extended his hand, Jin Mudo faced it and sniffed like a man testing a scent.
With his eyes gouged out and his limbs left maimed, Jin Mudo had honed his sense of smell as far as he possibly could.
Over the long span of a hundred years, he had reached a realm where he could determine an opponent’s level through scent.
It did come with the limitation that the other person had to be close.
‘……!’
The moment he caught the scent of True Qi from Murin’s wrist, however, an expression close to shock crossed Jin Mudo’s face.
‘What in the world?!’
The formations he had refined might have produced tremendous results, but not to this extent.
Murin had known nothing whatsoever about martial arts. Yet the internal force now accumulating layer by layer inside this bastard’s body was……!
‘Good heavens. What kind of monster am I raising?!’
Even if Jin Mudo returned to Murin’s age, he probably could not have achieved such results.
Something truly impossible was happening before him.
‘If he fails to conceal his strength properly, this will bring disaster down on him!’
Murin’s victory over Peng Jowi was now a foregone conclusion.
The condition was that his victory had to look plausible.
If he failed to win with only the carefully measured level of strength Jin Mudo had planned for him, the Martial Alliance would inevitably turn its wary gaze upon Murin.
They probably considered this little more than entertainment. If Murin exceeded their expectations, his identity as the Heavenly Kill Star would make him their foremost target of vigilance.
‘Even growing too quickly is a problem. Hm…….’
Until Murin developed enough strength to leave Heavenly Prison, they had to reveal his abilities according to a meticulous plan.
“Why are you thinking so hard? Neither of us can wash ourselves, so you seem far too serious over a little stench.”
Murin’s surly voice interrupted his thoughts.
Jin Mudo hurriedly shook his head.
“Yes, exactly! Neither you nor I can wash ourselves, so why should it matter what either of us smells like?”
After covering the matter up, Jin Mudo thought for a moment.
‘At this rate, the bastard can escape Heavenly Prison within three months!’
In truth, he had estimated that breaking Murin out would take at least a year.
Even that calculation had accounted for the boy’s Heavenly Kill Physique.
But judging by the series of events unfolding now, his growth was proceeding at an impossible rate.
Of course, the Heavenly Kill Physique alone could not resolve everything.
But Jin Mudo had been steadily preparing something for a moment such as this.
Once he added that, Murin would probably gain the strength to escape Heavenly Prison in three months…… No, perhaps even sooner.
‘But he must conceal his strength even as he reveals it. The masters of the Martial Alliance’s Dragon-Phoenix Gathering will probably continue issuing challenges to Murin.’
The Heavenly Kill Star.
How much renown would someone gain by defeating the bearer of that name?
Would any clan or sect abandon such an extraordinary opportunity to win honor extending far beyond the individual?
The black-hearted bastards of the Martial Alliance, who pretended to be virtuous gentlemen on the outside, would never do so.
Therefore, Murin was destined to face endless challenges from the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, the assembly of the Martial Alliance’s young talents.
‘The bastard must survive!’
Even if he had never learned martial arts, the symbolism surrounding him would eventually have been used as a pretext to execute him.
Now that he knew martial arts, he could no longer avoid those challenges.
There was only one way for Murin to survive this cruel fate.
He had to grow stronger.
“How strong do you believe you are?”
“I don’t know. I do think I’m much stronger than before.”
Jin Mudo spoke in a cold voice.
“You must always be weak. Do you understand? You need only be slightly stronger than the opponent before you.”
Murin frowned.
He had sensed the barb hidden in those words.
“Old man, what are you afraid of? Do you think they’ll kill me at once if I don’t hide my strength?”
He truly was clever.
Murin had grasped exactly what worried Jin Mudo.
“Listen, old man. I haven’t lived long, but I’ve never lived on my knees. Even if showing my strength meant I’d be shattered afterward, I still fought back again and again.”
Murin continued calmly.
“If I’d bowed my head even once along the way, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Don’t make a coward of me.”
Jin Mudo turned toward Murin and released a short sigh.
Then he smiled bitterly.
‘When did I—the Greatest Martial Artist of All Ages, once called Unopposable—become so weak? Today, I have learned a profound lesson from a brat with the blood not yet dry on his head!’
After a brief silence, Jin Mudo nodded firmly.
“Very well. If that is your resolve, it is something I should celebrate as your master.”
He adjusted his posture and spoke gravely.
Since his disciple was serious, he had to respond in kind.
“From this moment onward, your training will grow even harsher. Do you understand?”
Murin nodded.
“As much as you like!”
Was this the inescapable fate of the Heavenly Kill Star?
A smile tinged with excitement had risen to his lips.