Chapter 236

In an instant.

The man’s body stopped.

This wasn’t the kind of slowdown caused by the Eight Trigrams.

It was something on an entirely different level—his first time witnessing it.

Someone unaffected by all Eight Trigrams.

Once you entered the trial grounds, the power of the Eight Trigrams was absolute.

Impossible to avoid, impossible to ignore.

Yet the man before him treated it like a joke.

Under the influence of over thirty ‘Gon’ trigrams, all his physical abilities should have rapidly declined, and with the poison of the ‘Gam’ trigram seeping in, it should have been difficult for him to even move.

What about ‘Gan’?

The durability of his weapon should have dropped, making his attacks pitiful.

And that wasn’t all.

He had been struck by practically every trigram, from Tae and Ri to Jin.

He shouldn’t even have been able to think about resisting.

Then—

A massive beast’s roar boiled up from his dantian.

A cry of a different caliber that shook the entire mountain.

When the sound finally faded, heaven and earth fell silent.

Not a single insect chirped.

A dead, profound stillness stirred in every direction.

He had heard of it.

That such a martial art existed.

A forbidden martial art that ignores countless forms of control and subdues the opponent instead!

‘Li…on’s… Roar…!!’

That was the man’s final thought.

—

Silence descended upon the mountain.

The beast’s roar that shook everything from the entrance to the mid-slope forced countless Arahan to stop in their tracks.

Goosebumps rose across their skin.

Even from this distance, their internal energy trembled.

Everyone held their breath at the soundwave that had exploded forth.

Only after quite some time had passed…

“Lion’s Roar?”

“Someone learned a forbidden martial art…?”

“A Mythic Realm master is at the entrance?”

…could the Arahan finally open their mouths.

There were martial arts called ‘forbidden’.

Those that must never be learned, and the moment someone did, they became a public enemy to all Arahan.

To become an enemy of the Hall of all Gods meant there was absolutely no chance of survival.

And the aura of that Lion’s Roar had flowed from the mountain’s entrance.

But Lion’s Roar was a Demonic Art only supreme masters who had reached the ‘Mythic Realm’ could learn.

Because it fundamentally required the ability to use Remote Force Emission.

Did that mean someone who had learned a long-lost, forbidden Demonic Art was climbing the mountain?

To deny it felt far too ominous.

It was like hearing a beast’s raw, utterly ferocious howl.

A piercing cry that even masters couldn’t withstand.

As all the Arahan who heard the roar hardened their expressions and pondered…

“……”

Yula’s fur stood on end.

She was a demi-human.

A werewolf.

And she was certain that cry was no simple ‘Lion’s Roar’.

Lion’s Roar was a martial art.

An artificially created technique.

A Demonic Art that detonated soundwaves and internal energy to devastate the surroundings.

But.

That cry just now was different.

More primal.

More fundamental.

It was the raw voice of the most ferocious beast in the world.

The apex beast had will.

【Destroy them all.】

It was laced with rage and an aura of destruction aimed at the world.

Yula couldn’t move a muscle.

If she, a half-beast, was like this…

Then real beasts surely wouldn’t even dare to resist before that roar.

But… who?

Who in the trial grounds had unleashed such a roar?

‘…The Non Selected Individuals from the Hidden Realm.’

It seemed Lee Sabek hadn’t given the scores incorrectly after all.

For the first time in a very long while, true monsters capable of shaking the mountain had appeared.

Ones that would make the long-stagnant Hall of all Gods and the families tense.

—

“Heavenly Demon’s Roar…!”

Chiwoo’s body trembled.

It was unmistakably the cry of the Heavenly Demon, passed down only in legends.

From a distant past, Chiwoo had memorized every epic and trace the Heavenly Demon left behind without missing a single one.

Though he had never seen the Heavenly Demon himself, the Heavenly Demon’s biography was nothing but awe-inspiring feats.

The roar just now was clearly one of them: the ‘Heavenly Demon’s Roar’.

Lion’s Roar was merely an imitation created based on the Heavenly Demon’s Roar.

The Heavenly Demon had disappeared without a trace, but later masters who had seen his martial arts up close created Lion’s Roar to resemble it as much as possible.

Naturally, an imitation could never catch up to the real thing.

‘The omnipotent Heavenly Demon has sent a successor!’

It was clear.

He escaped Avici Hell, which all Twelve Heavenly Kings had found impossible.

He bestowed eternal enlightenment upon First Heavenly King Chiwoo.

He uses the Heavenly Demon’s Roar.

A string of impossibilities, unless he truly was the Heavenly Demon’s successor.

And finally, after a long span of time, he had left his own footprints.

The Heavenly Demon’s purpose was obvious.

The normalization of the Hall of all Gods!

Wouldn’t it be to restore the Mountain of Practitioners to its original state?

Drip, drip!

Tears streamed down Chiwoo’s face.

Emotion surged within him.

How oppressed they had been.

After the Heavenly Demon disappeared, the strength of his followers had dwindled without end.

They barely endured, clinging only to his name, but in the end, they all vanished.

Even at the mountain’s entrance, the Heavenly Demon’s name was nowhere to be found.

His mighty reputation was no longer heard.

It had been erased so thoroughly it wasn’t even a joke anymore.

The Twelve Heavenly Kings had become relics of the past as well.

But now that his successor had appeared…

‘Be tense, Hall of all Gods.’

Everything, from one to ten, would change.

Chiwoo had only one mission.

To assist at his side until he ascends to the Hall of all Gods!

Chiwoo’s eyes blazed.

The will of the Twelve Heavenly Kings, and the hearts of all who had followed the Heavenly Demon, rested on his shoulders.

He couldn’t fall behind.

If he was to follow properly, he couldn’t stop.

Chiwoo immediately moved and subdued the remaining Arahan in the trial grounds.

—

“This is absurd.”

Yula muttered as she stared at the pile of Eight Trigrams stacked high before her.

He had swept up nearly all the Eight Trigrams from the second trial grounds.

Among them were even five ‘Geon’ trigrams.

It was enough to make you wonder why no one had passed for so long.

“One person monopolized four ‘Geon’ trigrams,” Park Chan-woo said.

Yula shrugged.

She’d sensed it, more or less.

He must have moved stealthily, slipping past Yula’s gaze.

He had definitely hunted down the owners of the ‘Geon’ trigrams while acting alone.

It seemed he tried to hunt again this time, only to be hunted instead.

Then—

Park Chan-woo spoke as if probing her.

“Is there a devil on this mountain?”

“…What are you talking about? The Hall of all Gods is an organization that opposes devils.”

“Then why was there an Incarnation in the trial grounds?”

“…Was the ‘Geon’ holder an Incarnation?”

“Yes. It seems the Arahan of the Hall of all Gods can’t filter out Incarnations either.”

That confirmed it.

The Hall of all Gods, an organization meant to oppose devils.

They could likely distinguish devils themselves, but they couldn’t specifically identify ‘Incarnations’.

Well, even he wouldn’t have been able to distinguish Incarnations without the Glasses of Resplendent Dantalion.

The problem was that this was the Hall of all Gods.

The place that should have known devils best felt like it was being manipulated by devils instead.

“…As Incarnations climb the mountain, they’ll inevitably use demonic power anyway. It’s not too late to filter them out then.”

At the mountain’s entrance, most were filtered out through the three trials.

Very few Incarnations could safely reach the mid-slope.

Incarnations who used demonic power became intoxicated by it and lacked restraint.

Once they hit their limit, they used demonic power without hesitation.

‘There are Incarnations in the trial grounds. There are definitely Arahan helping Incarnations, too.’

He hoped it was groundless worry, but there was a high chance Incarnations existed even above the mid-slope.

And the possibility that Arahan or families were helping Incarnations was also extremely high.

Yula didn’t seem to be one… but if the mountain was teeming with Incarnations, the climb wouldn’t be as easy as he’d thought.

‘They’re probably incomparable to the Incarnations on Earth.’

There might even be cases of Arahan becoming Incarnations.

If so, they would possess far greater destructive power than humans who became Incarnations.

If their goal was to destroy the Mountain of Practitioners, it had to be stopped.

“Anyway, I’ll grade now. You… Chiwoo, was it?”

Yula looked at Chiwoo as she spoke.

Chiwoo nodded.

“I am Chiwoo.”

“Superior Score.”

“…Superior Score? Even though I swept up all the Eight Trigrams?”

“The ‘Geon’ trigrams were brought by the one you call the successor, weren’t they? Since you didn’t obtain them yourself, it’s ‘Superior Score’.”

Disappointment spread across Chiwoo’s face as he received a Superior Score for the second time in a row.

But there was nothing to be done.

Yula was right.

No matter how many Eight Trigrams he swept up, he hadn’t obtained the crucial ‘Geon’ trigrams himself.

Then Yula turned to Park Chan-woo.

“Congratulations. Special Top Grade Score.”

—

The one who had seized Special Top Grade Scores consecutively.

At that unprecedented grading, the third examiner, Anton, frowned.

“Are you two crazy?”

He openly cursed in front of Lee Sabek and Yula.

Examiners had to be fair.

The highest score was a privilege granted only to the most supreme talent.

Yet Lee Sabek and Yula had consecutively awarded Special Top Grade Scores to one person.

“He broke my fist.”

“He collected four ‘Geon’ trigrams alone.”

Lee Sabek and Yula stated the reasons they had no choice.

But Anton’s frown deepened.

“You probably didn’t conduct the trials properly. Were you slacking off?”

“…Anton. Do I look like the type to slack off?”

“No matter that you’re from the ‘Nine Families’, you should mind the line.”

Lee Sabek and Yula didn’t bother hiding their displeasure.

Anton was an examiner from the ‘Nine Families’ at the mountain’s summit.

But the fact that he was acting as an examiner at the entrance meant, in other words, that he was a fallen figure.

Rumors were widespread that he had committed a grave crime against his family and had been demoted.

Anton clicked his tongue.

“…Tsk. He’ll never pass my trial with the same score as yours. I can’t just watch lowly Hidden Realm brats climb the mountain again.”

“Forcing a failure is taboo, I believe.”

At Lee Sabek’s words, Anton chuckled.

“Is that necessary? My trial is the fairest from the start. The ‘Mystic Tower’, created by condensing all the techniques of my family! There, he’ll meet his limit and be frustrated.”

Anton was confident.

The trial he created was on a different level from the two before it.

There was a reason his was the last, the third trial.

The ‘Mystic Tower’ standing at the very end of the mountain’s entrance was the reason.

At the same time, the three of them turned their eyes to the tower.

It wasn’t just them.

News that someone had passed with a Special Top Grade Score was spreading even to the mid-slope.

A considerable number of Arahan began to take interest.

And then—

[You have entered the ‘Mystic Tower’.]

[‘Jiangshi’ will appear according to combat power level.]

[The higher the floor, the stronger the Jiangshi become.]

[The more Jiangshi you defeat, the higher score you can receive.]

[Floor 1. ‘Common Jiangshi’ will appear.]

[The strength of the appearing ‘Jiangshi’ is adjusted to match the test-taker’s strength.]

[-58 Level…….]

[All stats of the appearing Jiangshi are fixed at 1.]

Park Chan-woo entered the ‘Mystic Tower’.