The Martial Master - 99 The Martial's Hut.

“Hut, please bless me with fortune… Perhaps some of those crystals, eh?”

Su Min spoke with hope as he took a step towards the blurry hut.

*WHOOSH*

The wind in the air rang and screeched, yet it all still remained unreactive to Su Min’s presence. A couple steps passed, and Su Min was in front of the hut.

Its edges were maligned and a strange scent of blood permeated the air around it. Nonetheless, its existence was blurry, but Su Min could still catch its somewhat random shakes due to the wind.

A feeling arose in Su Min as he stared at the pitch black entrance, one that even he couldn’t peer into. His black eye seemed to hymn a slight monotonous tune due to this, where that feeling began to take shape.

“How odd…”

Su Min mumbled under his breath as he found this feeling to be indescribable. It contained a hunger similar to when he consumed that Red Giant bloodline, but it was also something more than that; a mystical, almost forbidden feeling.

“Closeness…”

His eyes flashed as his thought cleared up a little. He could tell, and with utmost shock, that he felt an old familiarity with this hut! It was similar to nostalgia, but something more forgotten and ancient. It was akin to never entering a place before, but feeling that this place was home.

A rare hint of hesitation streaked passed Su Min. This feeling was way too strong, and whatever it was, he felt that he may discover something he would rather not know from it.

Yet, as this surfaced an iron will seemed to get roused in his mind. His face lifted with a laugh, and he no longer stopped himself.

“So what?”

*Step*

His foot slammed the ground as he entered the fogged darkness shrouding the hut; thus, his body disappeared and entered an exceptional world…

The black figure seemed to notice this as he opened his eyes and stared at the hut. He giggled a little, where a trace of respect gleamed in his eyes.

“The Martial’s Hut… Maybe he’ll find some of its many uses.”

*Ssss*

Su Min, just as he took the step, felt a primordial strength quake through him. His blood churned, and before his unshaken eyes, a black world flared and unravelled itself around him.

“Hm?”

Shock blazed in Su Min’s eyes as the absent and bleak space reflected itself in his pupils.

“It’s the same..?”

Fog churned and the abyssal blackened ground and sky swirled a constant and writhing tune. The world seemed to be infinitely large, yet from this Su Min felt confusion.

This was because this space was the same space he met the black figure in! Its cold atmosphere; its dead and obtuse earth; he could remember it all…

He didn’t move as he stood motionless in the emotionless world he has entered. His eyes traced the blurry fog and the inked sky, mumbling.

“A world within a world. What is this place?”

He has only entered this world twice! Once when he died, and the other when the black figure threw him in it and allowed him to undergo agonising enlightenment!

He didn’t really think much about it, but now that he knows that this space is inside a hut within another world, he didn’t know what to make of it…

Nonetheless, he began to feel something different. Something that didn’t happen when he entered this lifeless space on both past occasions.

‘Hot…’

Su Min rubbed his black eye as he felt an odd searing heat writhe out of it. It started off small, but it didn’t even take a second for it to become unbearable.

The heat soon reached a point that even holding his hand against his face was painful.

‘Maybe this was a bad decision…”

Su Min stammered backwards as the pain begun to feel like he was being burnt from the inside. It was torturous, even for him.

Though, it never passed the boundary that he could handle. The pain was just touching it, and although it was extreme, Su Min could at least deal with it.

“Guh…”

Su Min collapsed on the ground as he concentrated all his efforts on keeping the pain at bay. His mind seethed, and he even began to consume mental energy.

‘Goddamit.’

He coughed out a wry smile as he began to pray for this pain to leave him. And funnily enough, it did so.

The heat in his eye dwindled, and Su Min breathed a sigh of relief in response.

“Good… But that seemed a bit pointless.”

He looked around and found that nothing had changed, which led him to believe that his bloodline was a sadist. He hoped that maybe it might have some sort of ability that could help him, but all he was gifted was a blank world and some of his mental energy consumed.

The world also didn’t bring happy memories, so he couldn’t even be sentimental of such a thing. He can’t do anything here, of course, he knew that the black figure could somehow summon tea in this place; but why on earth would he want to know how to do that?

He couldn’t sense any Ancient or Martial Energy either, so it wasn’t even useful for cultivation. Not that he cultivates with energy anyway, but it would’ve been something if it contained Martial Energy; pertaining to the fact that he would have to use Martial Energy to cultivate in the future.

To be honest he was a little disappointed with the whole thing…

‘My bloodline really is useless.’

He sighed as he turned around and looked for the exit… Only to find that there wasn’t one.

Su Min felt a certain premonition, but he kept himself from losing it as he tried to be optimistic.

‘Maybe I just need to think of leaving, yeah…’

He prayed as he focused his mind on an ‘exit’, yet it did nothing as well.

‘…’

Su Min’s face seemed to change multiple times, from sadness to anger to self loathing; finally arriving at a placid calm that was a little terrifying. He spoke to himself with such a face.

“The black figure must’ve known this… The piece of shit.”

Su Min knew that he was sleeping, but he has now locked himself in his own head! It was as if this place wasn’t even a part of him; like it was a whole other dimension that had nothing to do with his mind!

‘Maybe this and the broken world is actually a real thing, and that my bloodline is the stuff that lets me access it… But then why would it be broken due to my bloodline?’

He was mostly certain that the 2-meter space with the two plants was part of his bloodline; ie something that he owns. It was just that the other worlds seemed like things he couldn’t possibly house.

Nevertheless, this was all irrelevant right now. For he has confined himself in his head as his body is trapped in a goddamn void.

‘Well ain’t this great.’

Except for his eye overheating nothing else has happened. Though, he at least knows that there must be something in this place that would cause such a strange occurrence.

‘Maybe if I focus on my Martial bloodline, or some feeling close to that…’

He swirled his finger in the air as he played with the absent-minded fog. He breathed a deep breath and focused his mind on his bloodline that seems to be the most useless thing in the world.

*PSSST*

“Oh?”

Su Min gasped as he watched a spark light up from his gaze, and from this, he felt his black eye twitch a bit. However, what he soon found was that after this spark came a strand of greyish energy.

It wasn’t Martial Energy, but it seemed similar.

‘What is this?’

Su Min looked at it with a strange face. He poked it and watched the strand wrap around his finger like silk. It was like a congealed piece of floating cotton, soft to the touch.

‘Maybe this can help me recover? Hm… But it doesn’t seem to be Martial Energy.’

Recovering is his prime objective right now, and he couldn’t help but hope that this could help him. There was no other method except just ‘waiting’ for him; he had tried to absorb Martial Energy into his eye but he could barely summon a single strand to follow his will.

He brought the greyish strand up to his face, and with a little hesitation, he edged it right towards his black eye.

Nothing happened as it squeezed itself onto his pupil, all the way until he began to finger his own eye. He sighed as he drew his hand back down, staring at the strand with no expression.

‘Well, I tried.’

He wasn’t one to think that this had no use, otherwise what would be the point of its existence? However, he had no ideas on what this use was, and seeing that there was no sort of method to escape from this place, he just began to form more of them.

*Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst*

Spark after spark lit around him as more strands grew and swirled on his fingers. It even got to the point that he had formed a cushion out of them, one that was oddly comfortable to lie on.

Firm but not too stiff, and just soft enough that it was pleasing to touch.

*Yawn*

Su Min spewed strands out of his gaze without stopping. He didn’t feel any sort of consumption from doing so, thus he didn’t see a reason to stop.

‘Maybe I can make a nice bed with this.’

Sitting on a hard chair or the ground has gotten irritating to Su Min, so he might as well treat himself.

*Psst* *Psst* *Pss*Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst* *Psst*

A body sized mattress, and a pillow, made out of strands he found useless. He laid on it and gazed at the sky, a sky that was dark and uninspiring.

‘This stuff is probably the key to leaving.’

He relaxed as he let his mind continue to develop those strands on instinct. The sky got slowly enveloped in them, and Su Min began to make bets on himself on how many he could create.

The place was silent as everything in Su Min’s vision got encompassed in these things.

‘If I’m doing this then I might as well read the cultivation manual.’

Su Min seemed to give up as he brought the ‘Supreme’ cultivation manual on his stomach. He opened it with his head cocked up on his pillow, and began to read.