The wind blew.
But could this truly be called wind?
The frenzied gale came crashing in from every direction, each blast like a boulder striking Murin’s entire body.
By contrast, he stood atop a dizzyingly high cliff on a patch of ground only large enough for his two feet.
The slightest mistake would send him plummeting into the bottomless abyss below.
It might only be a Formation Art, but the Mad Gale Crushing the Mountain Formation—created by Sa Giljin and modified by Jin Mudo—felt so real that his legs trembled of their own accord.
“…….”
Under that tremendous pressure, Murin steadied his breathing and slowly surveyed his surroundings.
He stood upon the summit of an unimaginably tall mountain shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
If his concentration wavered for even a moment, his body lurched as though it would be blown away.
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM!
This was no mere swaying. The fierce winds battered his body as though they were pounding against solid rock.
“Come, then! Let’s see what you’ve got!”
Murin gathered strength in his qi center and roared.
Jin Mudo had deployed this formation. There was no possibility that he did not know its power.
He must have had a reason for throwing Murin into it.
THUD―
Standing rigidly upon the summit with both feet planted, Murin sent his True Qi flowing downward.
As the scorching energy gathered in his qi center surged into his legs, his lower body began to weigh as much as a thousand catties.
Ever since he succeeded in controlling the Mad Jade once, it had begun releasing greater power with each passing moment.
HOWL—!
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM!
Even then, the wind raged without pause, trying to drive him over the edge and into the thousand-fathom abyss below.
‘Not a chance! This will never defeat me!’
The overwhelming pressure felt as though Mount Tai itself were bearing down upon him!
Each individual stream of wind seemed to carry Mount Tai within it, relentlessly trying to crush him.
‘The Peng Clan’s blade will be even heavier than this! I have to endure!’
It was said there was no rock under heaven that the Peng Clan’s blade could not cleave.
Their blade must carry an extraordinary amount of force.
If he made a mistake and it so much as grazed him, losing his limbs might be the least of his concerns.
‘I need to understand the old man’s intention.’
Jin Mudo would never have thrown Murin into this formation without a purpose.
Merely drawing up True Qi to resist the wind could not be the end of it.
‘Cultivation of Inner Arts is only the foundation. He must intend something more.’
Circulating his art without pause to build Martial Power had become fundamental. Jin Mudo would never have given him such an easy problem.
There had to be a reason he had placed Murin in this formation just before his fight with the Peng Clan!
WHAM!
“Ugh!”
The instant he became lost in thought, the flow of his True Qi faltered. Seizing that moment, a wind like a hurtling boulder slammed into his body.
He staggered violently, swaying on the verge of losing his balance.
ROAR―
But he gathered every scrap of Martial Power he possessed and endured with the desperation of a dying man.
‘Huff, huff!’
The horrifying danger left Murin’s mouth bone-dry.
He had grown through countless deadly crises, but Mad Gale Crushing the Mountain surpassed anything he had imagined.
‘I have to focus!’
The wind raged regardless of his circumstances.
Allowing his thoughts to wander before it could be as perilous as what had just happened.
Here, he had to focus intensely enough to keep his True Qi flowing without the slightest impurity. At the same time, he had to grasp Jin Mudo’s intention and complete the training perfectly.
‘Find it! Find out what it is!’
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!
The wind continued to surge toward him, but Murin drew up an abundance of True Qi and endured.
At the same time, his mind kept racing.
WHIIIIINE!
Then he sensed a single stream of wind bearing down upon him as though intent on killing him.
The wind had no physical form, yet it carried the crushing intimidation of the immense Mount Tai advancing upon him.
‘I can’t evade it!’
The winds thus far had already driven him hard with their tremendous pressure.
But this blast, surging toward him as though filled with killing intent, seemed ready to sweep his barely enduring body away in its entirety.
It was a truly demented gale unlike anything he had ever experienced!
‘It’s going to hit me!’
ROOOOAR!
The pressure rushing toward him was so immense that he could feel the wind moving as though it were a living thing.
There was nowhere to evade at the end of a peak barely wide enough to support his two feet.
There was nowhere to hide, not even the smallest space that might shelter him from the wind.
All he could do was receive that demented gale with his body.
Yet if it struck him, he would be hurled away in an instant. It was a moment of absolute peril.
‘……!’
Something suddenly flashed through Murin’s mind.
He could not evade it. He could not block it. If it struck him, he would die.
In that case……
ROAR-ROAR-ROAR!
The wind was already upon him, carrying its savage force.
‘A chicken!’
Absurdly, what came to mind was a memory of Chef Yeon explaining how to catch a viciously thrashing chicken with ease.
―Chickens have a habit of pecking whatever they see with their sharp beaks and tearing it apart with their keen claws.
Murin did not know why that memory had surfaced, but he found himself strangely focused on it.
―What do you think you should do, then? How would you wring the neck of a chicken thrashing about like that?
When Chef Yeon asked him that question, Murin had answered as though the solution were obvious.
―Why would I take it from the front? I’d avoid it and grab its neck.
―Good heavens, a master chef in the making! Exactly. There is no need to grab a viciously thrashing creature from the front!
Murin’s eyes flashed open.
‘If I can’t evade it, I’ll redirect it!’
In truth, Murin’s answer had been less about evading the chicken than redirecting its violent movements.
It was not the passive movement of someone fleeing after being cornered. It was a movement rooted in Contemplative Insight, through which he observed everything with detached clarity and seized the initiative!
ROOOOAR!
The wind had already swollen to the size of Mount Tai and was a heartbeat away from swallowing him whole.
One tiny human stood before it.
‘Hooo…….’
He closed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and felt the wind.
He observed where it moved, what force it carried, and how violently it raged, then discerned its flow.
WHAM―
The instant the wind touched his body, he gently redirected its path.
ROAR-ROAR-ROAR!
It was an exceedingly small movement.
But the result was immense.
“Haaah, haaah!”
Murin remained standing upon the summit, while the demented wind that had tried to devour him had already swept past and vanished.
He barely remained upright, his complexion deathly pale and sweat pouring from his body like rain, but a smile had appeared on his lips.
“Aaaaaah! I did it!”
He had realized it.
He now understood how to answer a wind that struck like a boulder.
This had to be the heart of the training Jin Mudo intended.
The Peng Clan’s blade, as heavy and immense as Mount Tai!
Jin Mudo had meant to give him the answer to it.
WHAM―
“Ugh!”
He had focused so intensely that he failed to respond properly to the next blast. It knocked him from the peak as though he had been flung away.
“Heh, heh heh!”
Yet he laughed even as he fell. Then he began laughing like a madman.
“Hahahaha! Ahahahaha!”
His laughter echoed faintly through the depths of the thousand-fathom abyss.
HOWWWL―
And no one remained atop the summit.
***
THUD―
At the faint reverberation, Jin Mudo turned toward the source of the vibration.
“Hooo……!”
Murin sat there cross-legged, his entire body drenched in sweat.
Steam rose from every part of him. He had clearly circulated the Mad Heaven Demonic Art Breathing Method to its absolute limit.
‘This bastard……!’
Jin Mudo scowled.
Only a little over two hours had passed since Murin entered the Mad Gale Crushing the Mountain Formation.
Yet the formation had already broken.
‘What kind of lunatic is this?!’
Jin Mudo had expected him to need at least twelve hours to break the formation.
But this bastard had surpassed his imagination.
‘Good heavens. I truly am raising a monster!’
Complicated emotions rose within him.
There was the joy of finally meeting someone worthy, concern over whether such a monster should be unleashed upon the world, and a trace of envy.
Any martial artist who witnessed a being with such insane talent would naturally feel the same.
“Did you break it?”
Once Murin finished his Qi Circulation and Breath Regulation, Jin Mudo concealed his thoughts and asked the question.
Murin opened his eyes and nodded.
“Whew. I truly thought I was going to die this time!”
“Your voice is trembling, but it does not sound as though fear is the cause.”
“Well, it was also that much fun! I never knew martial arts could be this enjoyable!”
Jin Mudo let out a disbelieving laugh.
He knew the Mad Gale Crushing the Mountain Formation all too well.
And Murin called it enjoyable?
‘This truly is the first time I have met a bastard like this! Does he not possess a single shred of fear in his guts?’
He asked another question.
“What did you find so enjoyable?”
“Well, you see! I’ve fought countless times, but all I ever did was charge in like a madman. I’d get beaten until I nearly died, attack again, and repeat the same thing without end.”
Murin had fought often enough to be sick of it. From childhood, he had become entangled with beggar children and fought countless battles over a single handful of rice.
He had to use his fists to survive. Even after taking a beating, he had to go out and fight again.
Each time, the older and larger beggars beat him nearly to death.
It infuriated Murin.
The injustice and rage drove him to attack with stones and even clubs.
But the gap in strength was not easily overcome.
“But after I began learning martial arts, realizations started coming to me about how I could grow stronger and overcome what stood before me! You can’t know what an incredible thrill that is, old man.”
Jin Mudo smiled faintly. The boy had discovered the most important driving force of the Martial Way.
‘That is it! Even if you lose a fight, you must resolve to win the next one! That is the essence of martial learning. Indeed!’
He was a truly admirable disciple.
He was also brilliant and learned with astonishing speed.
For that very reason, Jin Mudo quickly composed his expression.
The finer a horse’s bloodline, the more strictly it had to be trained and broken in.
If he failed to establish dominance now, the boy would become even more impossible to control once fully grown.
Jin Mudo therefore intended to teach Murin with even greater severity.
‘You are the finest talent, so I will give you the finest training!’
A hundred years ago, Jin Mudo himself had been the strongest being alive.
Back then, learning martial arts and growing ever stronger had filled him with a delirious thrill.
But now that he had met the supreme raw talent called Murin, excitement at the thought of teaching him properly made Jin Mudo’s entire body tremble.
“Listen, my disciple.”
Jin Mudo paused briefly, then continued.
“The desire for victory can become the driving force that makes a martial artist strong, but it can also become the cause that devours him. Just as you must master your killing intent, you must also master that desire.”
Murin listened with equal seriousness.
“Those who let that desire devour them and become madmen all meet the same end: an empty death.”
This was Jin Mudo’s teaching.
He had never taught even his other disciples with such devotion.
Yet now, he was pouring everything he had into teaching Murin.
Murin was the one who had set him ablaze.