Episode 23: Finding a Path in the Darkness (1)
Light Novel: Volume 1 Episode 23
Manhwa: Chapter 21
Chapter 8 Episode 23. Finding a Path in the Darkness (1)
Hiss!
Something long and slender slithered out from a crevice between the rocks. A snake, twisting and writhing as it crawled forward. But it was no ordinary snake.
Its long, flickering tongue darted through the air as it slithered across the ground. Yet, it had no eyes or ears. It was completely devoid of any sensory organs. And still, even in the pitch darkness, it moved with purpose.
When it encountered a stone, it curved around it. When it met a groove, it slithered over it. The snake crept forward, undeterred, toward its destination.
Its goal lay just ahead which was a small gap between the rocks. It slithered toward the crevice and began pushing its head inside, preparing to pull the rest of its body through.
Just as the snake coiled its body in as hard as it could to gain momentum—
Suddenly, a powerful force clamped down on the snake’s body just below its head. Startled by the sudden pressure, the snake instinctively jerked upward.
Snap!
With a sickening crack, the snake’s head was ripped clean off. The snake’s headless body convulsed violently, thrashing about in madness. But the rough, calloused hand gripping its body did not waver.
Chomp! Chomp!
In the darkness, someone was chewing on the snake’s severed head.
A man. His face was completely obscured by tangled, matted hair, and an unkempt beard that reached down to his chest.
He was completely naked, without a single scrap of clothing. His skin, pale from years without sunlight, looked almost ghostly.
Yet, despite his whitened complexion, his body looked anything but weak. His muscles were so tightly wound as if steel wires had been twisted together beneath his flesh and his bones, bulging outward like forged iron knots, looked as if they had been hammered into shape.
Rip!
As the man tore off another chunk of the snake’s flesh, the muscles of his entire body twitched involuntarily. His muscles were shifting and moving as if they had a life of their own.
For nearly half an incense stick’s time, he devoured the snake whole. From head to tail, he swallowed everything—not a single bone or scale was left behind.
The man wiped the snake’s fluids from his mouth with the back of his hand and slowly rose to his feet. As he did, his eyes gleamed intensely in the darkness.
Like a predator lurking in the shadows, his pupils were fully dilated, allowing him to detect even the faintest traces of light.
The man took a step forward.
His steps were peculiar.
Thud! Sssrrkk! Thud! Sssrrkk!
Whenever his right foot struck the ground, his left foot would drag slightly behind, creating a strange, rhythmic cadence that made his movement appear all the more unnatural.
After leaving the narrow cave behind, the man arrived at a vast underground cavern. It was so large that hundreds of people could have lived there at once. Embedded in the cavern’s ceiling were multiple lightstones, emitting a faint, eerie glow that barely illuminated the immense space.
The man swept back his tangled hair, revealing the pale face that had long been deprived of sunlight. Under the faint glow of the lightstones, his features became clear.
Beneath his well-defined forehead, jet-black eyes gleamed with an unwavering sharpness, and his lips, firmly pressed together, looked as if they would never part easily. The man was mpme other than Dam-ho.
More silent, more rugged than before, he had survived within Celestial Forbidden Infernal Prison.
He had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been a year, or even longer.
Dam-ho estimated that at least five years had gone by. His body had stopped growing, signaling the end of his adolescence.
The mere fact that his growth had halted was proof that he had become an adult. Though he had no way of knowing his exact age anymore.
Dam-ho’s gaze drifted to one side of the underground cavity. Time had passed, but the massive piles of earth and boulders that had collapsed and sealed the entrance still remained.
Without hesitation, Dam-ho walked past the rocks and debris, heading to the opposite side of the cavern. There, another small tunnel had been carved out.
Without any hesitation, Dam-ho entered the passageway.
The tunnel was narrow and suffocatingly dark. But darkness no longer affected him.
It was a path he had traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. He had already memorized every single stone scattered on the floor, every stalactite hanging from the ceiling. Every inch of this place was burned into his memory.
The tunnel twisted and turned, stretching endlessly. The eternal darkness seemed like it would never end, but Dam-ho pressed forward with patience, step by step.
How long had he been walking? Finally, Dam-ho arrived at his destination.
The space was not large, about two zhangs or roughly 6 meters in diameter. Within it stood a stone bookshelf, and on its shelves sat around twenty books.
Dam-ho opened the worn-out chest beside the stone bookshelf. A faint glow seeped from within. Inside the chest was a lightstone, roughly the size of a child’s fist.
Holding the lightstones in one hand, Dam-ho used his other hand to pull out a book from the stone bookcase. Under the dim glow of the lightstone, the book’s title was revealed.
Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist.
The aged, tattered manual bore those words.
Dam-ho flipped through its pages. He had lost count of how many times he had read this old manual.
Hundreds? Thousands? Perhaps even more. But the number didn’t matter. Because every single aspect of Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist was already ingrained in his head.
The space he was in was known as the Ten Thousand Demon Vault.
Long ago, it had been a prison where the Demon Sect confined its criminals. But after their warriors settled in Celestial Forbidden Infernal Prison, the vault had been repurposed as a repository for martial arts manuals.
Before Dam-ho arrived, hundreds of martial arts texts must have been stored here. However, when the Demon Sect’s warriors abandoned this place, they took most of the manuals with them.
What they didn’t take with them were the ones they deemed unimportant.
Techniques such as Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist, Demon Rebounding Kick, and Expansive Suppression Palm were all techniques discarded as worthless.
Since they intended to collapse Celestial Forbidden Infernal Prison anyway, there had been no risk of these manuals leaking to the outside world.
Dam-ho could still remember the sheer joy he had felt when he first discovered this place.
Time dragged painfully in this underground prison. Of course, time itself did not slow down, but to Dam-ho, a single day felt like ten.
Just having something to read, something to pass the time, had been enough to bring him genuine happiness. From that moment on, whenever he had time, he would return to the Ten Thousand Demon Vault and devour the books within.
He read, and read again.
Eventually, he memorized them flawlessly, not missing a single character. And even after that, he read them again, searching for hidden meanings he might have overlooked. That’s how he memorized and absorbed every martial arts manual in this place.
Yet now, Dam-ho was reading them once more, starting with Triple Strike Cannon Shadow Fist.
In the darkness, his pupils dilated wide.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Dam-ho finally left the vault.
This time, he headed to a far more secluded place that was even more terrifying and ominous than the Ten Thousand Demon Vault. The tunnel was cramped and dank, barely big enough for a single person to pass through.
Whoosh!
A gust of wind howled from the far end of the tunnel.
Like the whisper of the devil, the chilling wind swept over Dam-ho’s entire body.
Yet, despite being completely bare, with not a single scrap of clothing on his body, he showed no reaction to the cold. His expression was void of emotion, as if he had lost all human feelings.
At the end of the tunnel, fragments of shattered rock were scattered across the ground. They hadn’t been broken naturally. These rocks had been destroyed by sheer force.
And the one who had shattered them was Dam-ho.
Dam-ho recalled that day, though he could no longer tell exactly when it had been.
The day he ran out of grain pellets, the day he had gone who knows how long without food.
Back then, his mind had nearly snapped from hunger. He had felt as if he might simply die like this, starving, fading away into the darkness. His hunger had been so unbearable that he had even considered gnawing on his own arm.
He had to find something, anything, to eat.
Unable to endure his hunger any longer, he had scraped off and eaten nameless moss growing on the cave walls. Barely keeping himself alive, he desperately wandered in search of food.
And after that agonizing struggle, he had finally discovered this place. He had felt a faint draft escaping through a gap in the rocks blocking the passage. That could only mean one thing. There was empty space behind the boulders.
So Dam-ho shattered the rocks. And beyond them, a new space had revealed itself. The very place now stretching before his eyes.
It was a spacious chamber, spanning over ten zhangs or about 30 meters in diameter. And the entire space was filled with water.
It was far too vast and deep to be just a puddle formed by water trickling down from the stalactites. If water was flowing in from somewhere, that meant it was also flowing out. It was a self-sustaining body of water.
Dam-ho carefully observed the pool. To his astonishment, fish that emitted their own light swam gracefully beneath the surface.
They were so transparent that even their bones were visible. Yet strangely, their bones themselves were glowing. If he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed such creatures existed.
Without hesitation, Dam-ho leaped into the pool.
The water was freezing, so cold that it pierced to the bone. His skin ached as if being torn apart, and his heart pounded violently from the sudden shock of the icy depths.
But Dam-ho pushed through all the pain and plunged through the water, churning and searching. The strange fish scattered in all directions, alarmed by Dam-ho’s appearance. But they could not escape his grasp.
Moments later, Dam-ho emerged from the water. In his hand, he clutched a struggling fish.
The strange fish wriggled frantically in Dam-ho’s grip. Without hesitation, he bit into it. There was nothing in this place that could be used to build a fire.
Cooking was out of the question, and simply having something to eat, even raw, was already something to be grateful for.
Dam-ho devoured the entire fish, everything except its head. He stared at the leftover fish head for a moment, almost reluctantly.
He had no idea how long these fish had existed here, nor how they had come to live in this isolated underground pool. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that they had evolved to survive in this environment.
Thud!
Dam-ho casually tossed the fish head into a clearing on one side of the pool and then waited patiently.
Moments later—
Sssk! Sssk!
A faint scratching sound echoed through the sealed cavern, carried through the still air. Then something crawled out of a crack in the rock.
Dam-ho’s eyes glinted with interest.
It was a peculiar insect, resembling a beetle.
The only difference was that this beetle, like the strange fish, emitted a faint glow.
The beetle latched onto the fish head and began to gnaw at the flesh.
Crunch! Crunch!
In the confined space, even the smallest sound was amplified, making the beetle’s chewing echo loudly.
Crouching down, Dam-ho watched intently. Even though he was close, the beetle paid no attention to him, focusing solely on its meal.
After some time, as the beetle continued eating— suddenly, something else crawled out from the rocks again.
The corners of Dam-ho’s lips curled ever so slightly.
This time, it wasn’t a beetle, but a mantis. And like the beetle, the mantis emitted its own eerie glow.
The mantis was also another species that had adapted to the darkness. As the mantis appeared, the beetle suddenly froze, its posture turning defensive.
Dam-ho’s gaze flickered with curiosity. He watched in silence as the beetle and the mantis locked into an intense standoff.
This underground ecosystem was fascinating.
The strange fish emitted their own light, luring in insects. And despite knowing this place meant certain death, the insects still crawled toward the glow. That was the secret to how the fish had managed to survive here.
But when a fish died, its corpse became food for the very insects it had once preyed upon. Due to the scarcity of food, competition among the underground insects was fierce.
Among them, what caught Dam-ho’s attention the most was the duel between the beetle and the mantis.
The mantis struck first, slashing at the beetle with its scythe-like forelegs. The way it swung its razor-edged limbs was reminiscent of a martial arts master, its every movement swift and deadly.
Without even a fraction of a second’s hesitation, the mantis’s forelegs lashed out, aiming solely for the beetle’s throat.
At that moment, the beetle subtly tilted its body. The mantis’s scythe-like strike clashed against the beetle’s armor-like shell and was deflected away. It had angled its body perfectly, redirecting the attack diagonally.
Thrown off balance by the missed strike, the mantis staggered. Seizing the opportunity, the beetle slammed its heavy body forward, ramming into the mantis.
The mantis flapped its wings and took a few steps back.
Another standoff, and then another attack.
This time, the mantis’s forelegs slashed through the air once more. But unlike before, this was not an attack that could simply be deflected.
Brrrr!
At that moment, the beetle’s wings vibrated.
The mantis’s foreleg was flung back by the beetle’s wingbeats, which were so fast that they were imperceptible to the human eye.
In the darkness, Dam-ho’s eyes gleamed coldly.
‘The ultimate shield…’
SoundlessWind21’s Notes:
If there are any errors, whether it be grammatical, spelling, translation, or website-related issues, feel free to let me know. (´◡`) Anyway, thank you for reading!