Chapter 259 : Let Them Kill Each Other (1)
Chapter 259: Let Them Kill Each Other (1)
Thud.
The holes-riddled corpse collapsed to the ground.
"Kugh."
Il-mok coughed up a mouthful of dark red blood.
"Haah."
Although Il-mok had suffered severe internal injuries, his first thought was one of relief.
Thanks to puking out all that Blood Qi at the end, there wasn't enough left in him to go on a rampage.
He was seriously hurt, but he won’t fall into Qi Deviation at the very least.
Il-mok stared down at the mangled corpse of the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord with an indifferent expression, then casually tossed the Ascension Sword onto the body.
As the blade embedded itself in the corpse and began draining the blood, Il-mok let go of the handle.
If he absorbed that Blood Qi in his current state, he'd actually risk falling into Qi Deviation for real.
While the Ascension Sword sucked the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord dry into a dried-up husk, Il-mok sat down cross-legged and entered meditation.
He wasn't trying to heal his internal injuries through qi circulation, as that would take too much time and he obviously doesn’t have that much time.
After about an hour of meditation to restore just enough internal energy to move, Il-mok opened his eyes to find a corpse that looked like a mummy.
‘At least I got my revenge.’
That was the first thing that popped into his head when he saw the dried-up husk.
But honestly, he hadn't stabbed the Ascension Sword into the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord's corpse out of pure spite.
‘This bastard's the only one who knows about the sword's abilities. Anyone else who finds this body will blame the Blood Cult.'
It was to sow discord.
"Phew. We'll just do our missionary work and live quietly, so you bastards can tear each other apart or kill each other for all I care."
Il-mok yanked the Ascension Sword out of the mummified corpse.
It felt exactly like a mosquito pulling its proboscis out after draining all the blood.
"Tch."
When Blood Qi tried to seep into his body through the handle, Il-mok swung the sword through the air to shake it off.
While he was at it, he deliberately left more traces of combat to cover up the fight between him and the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord.
After finishing his cleanup, Il-mok headed toward the center of the altar.
“It should be around here.”
Even with the Third Elder dead, Blood Qi was still gathering at this location.
That meant the Formation spread across all of Mount Baihe was still active.
As Il-mok approached Third Elder's corpse, he spotted something radiating ghostly energy.
‘Is this it?’
The moment Il-mok grabbed and yanked out the iron plaque overflowing with ghostly and Blood Qi, the flow of energy around him suddenly twisted and warped.
The stream of Blood Qi converging on the altar also vanished.
Il-mok let out a sigh of relief, thinking that the flow of energy across Mount Baihe had finally returned to normal.
Boom!
"Holy shit!"
A heavy thud echoed from behind him.
It came from the spot where that corpse with a talisman on its forehead had burst out earlier.
When Il-mok glanced back, he saw a gaping hole in the center of the deep crater.
"A tunnel?"
A possibility occurred to him, and he cautiously approached.
Through the hole, he could see some kind of cavern below.
"No way..."
Il-mok jumped straight into the hole, and when he landed, his eyes fell on a skeleton.
Though calling it a skeleton was generous. It was just a pile of ancient bones, so decayed they almost turned to dust.
In front of that pile of bones, there was a letter that looked like it was written in blood.
[To the one who finds this. If you are a child of our Divine Cult who came looking for me, thank you, and I am sorry. I am sorry for the believers who died because of my foolishness, and I am so proud of those of you who survived to find your way back here….]
Il-mok let out a hollow laugh.
‘So it really was the Heavenly Demon Secret Cave.’
This had to be the end of that tunnel the Orthodox Faction warriors had been fighting over.
But there were no elixirs, martial insights, divine swords, or treasures like the rumors claimed.
[To the one who finds this. If you are not of our Divine Cult, then you've come all this way for nothing, and it serves you right! Hahahaha! Did you really think I would leave any treasures here for you hypocritical bastards to find? You're all garbage. How dare you use such a dirty trap….]
Compared to the friendly tone for his own people, the rest of the message was just a stream of curses and jeers aimed at the Orthodox Faction.
'Yep, with a split personality like that, he was one of ours, all right.'
Il-mok nodded in understanding and stripped off his shirt.
Since what the Divine Cult fanatics wanted most was the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon's remains, he needed to gather up those bones.
His clothes were already soaked in blood and sweat and torn to rags, so he figured he might as well use his shirt as a wrapping cloth.
Just as he finished bundling the decayed bones in his shirt, he sensed people approaching from deeper in the cave.
‘Guess the Formation is really down.’
Grabbing his bundle, Il-mok used his lightness skill to leap back out of the hole.
Then he grabbed the mask that the Third Elder had knocked off him earlier.
The mask happened to be rolling around near Beggar Chaser's body.
"Hmm."
Il-mok looked down at Beggar Chaser for a moment, then turned away.
Beggar Chaser was still alive, though he looked to be in really bad shape.
‘Well, no need to kill him.’
The Beggars’ Gang had helped them in various ways, and Beggar Chaser didn't know anything about the Ascension Sword.
That said, Il-mok couldn't exactly help heal his internal injuries when his own condition is no better.
On top of that, using Demonic Arts to heal an Orthodox Faction martial artist would probably just kill him faster.
Putting Beggar Chaser out of his mind, Il-mok used his lightness skill to leave the area.
Il-mok made his way back to the cave entrance where he’d left his party.
The second he got there, Seon-ah ran to him.
"Big Brother!"
"You're awake?"
"I had a terrible nightmare..."
She grabbed his clothes tightly, as if she'd never let him go.
The only problem was that all he was wearing were his pants.
"Ahem. Don't worry."
Figuring it was better than having her yank his pants off, Il-mok offered her his hand to hold instead.
Just then, three other women came over.
Dam Bin, Jeong Hyeon, and Ju Seo-yeon. All three looked a bit pale from internal injuries, but they were conscious.
"Young Master, what on earth happened?" Dam Bin asked for everyone.
Il-mok ignored the question and looked past her.
"It's a long story, so let's talk after we get back. First, we need to help those two."
The two Il-mok mentioned were Jin Hayeon and Ouyang Mun.
‘As expected, the closer to Extremity, the more dangerous that Formation was.’
Until one escaped Extremity, the higher one's cultivation level, the more severe the mental illness became. That makes you a sitting duck for any kind of mental attack.
At Il-mok's instruction, the group moved to help the two.
"Kugh."
Right on cue, Jin Hayeon coughed up blood and opened her eyes.
Her face had already been pale, but after vomiting that much blood, it turned from white to almost blue.
"She's in bad shape, so let's just carry them back."
"Understood!"
Jin Hayeon, fresh out of her Qi Deviation, had a dazed and confused look on her face, but there was no time to explain everything.
"I'll explain once we get back to the county. For now, let Dam Bin carry you on her back."
Jin Hayeon wanted to say something, then gave up and closed her mouth.
And so they set off.
Dam Bin giving Jin Hayeon a piggyback, Ju Seo-yeon carrying Ouyang Mun, and Hyeokryeon Seon-ah carrying Il-mok.
Il-mok didn't have much of a choice either since he was just as badly hurt inside.
Jeong Hyeon didn't carry anyone. They were worried that after the nightmare she just had, the physical contact might make her break down.
The only one with a shit-eating expression was Ju Seo-yeon, probably because she ended up carrying Ouyang Mun.
"Hayeon... why..."
Every time Ouyang Mun's delirious muttering leaked out from behind her, Ju Seo-yeon's expression twisted further.
Hearing him, Jin Hayeon let out a heavy sigh that was very unlike her.
It was hard to tell if she was sighing at how pathetic he was, or how pathetic she felt.
As the group travelled back, Il-mok felt a strange uneasiness.
‘But why did those Blood Cult bastards just leave all that stuff there?’
He understood why they'd turned the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon's secret cave into a trap, but he couldn't figure out why they'd left behind the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon's bones and that message.
Those bastards surely hadn't left it out of kindness.
Il-mok pictured what would've happened if the Blood Cult's plan had succeeded, and it didn't take long for it to click.
‘Those petty sons of bitches. They were planning to frame us!’
With a message like that left at the scene of the crime, anyone would have assumed that the trap was set by the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon himself, or by the Demonic Cult.
Realizing this, a nasty little smirk spread across Il-mok's face.
‘Serves you right, you bastards.’
Their plan had gone up in smoke, so now it was their turn to be hunted by the Murim Alliance.
***
Shortly after Il-mok left the altar.
Pop!
An old man in Qingcheng’s martial robes climbed out through the small hole in the center of the altar.
His body was covered in wounds, his face flushed red with rage, and his eyes were swollen red as if he'd been crying.
He was an elder of the Qingcheng Sect who'd entered the Heavenly Demon Secret Cave with his disciples.
They'd passed through forks in the road and traps, fought battles with greed-blinded warriors as they pressed forward.
Then suddenly, a strange energy spread through the cave, and nightmares engulfed them.
The nightmare was so horrific that he didn't even want to think about it. But as a master who'd trained in Taoist martial arts for decades, he didn't succumb easily.
He recited Taoist sutras and circulated his pure internal energy to push away the nightmare for a long while.
The elder finally managed to escape the nightmare.
But before his eyes lay a hellscape beyond any nightmare.
"Die, demon!"
"Gyaaaah!"
His disciples, deceived by the nightmare, were swinging their swords at each other.
He, as an elder, could escape the nightmare, but they hadn't been so lucky.
Most of them were already dead.
And even his own sword was stained with blood.
While fighting off the nightmare, he'd cut down one of his disciples.
"Ah... Ahhh..."
The elder's face went pale as he realized this. The Qi Deviation that he barely resisted in the nightmare struck him now.
"Kugh."
But he forced himself to cough up the dead blood and rushed toward his disciples.
If he stood there falling apart, what few disciples were left would kill each other.
He spent what felt like an eternity knocking his disciples out, disarming them, and physically throwing himself between their swords.
Then that strange energy reappeared, and the disciples who were suffering from nightmares stopped moving.
The glazed look in their eyes soon cleared, then immediately clouded over with darkness and horror.
Like him, they'd realized what they'd done.
"Break!"
Ignoring the risk to his own body, the elder poured his pure energy into a powerful roar.
Having snapped his surviving disciples back from the brink of Qi Deviation, the elder commanded them.
"Follow me."
Collecting the disciples' bodies would have to wait.
If he made them do that now, they'd all fall into Qi Deviation and lose their minds for good.
Leading the few remaining disciples, the elder soon reached the end of the tunnel.
There was nothing there. Just writing in dark red.
"Those damn Demonic Cult bastards..."
After reading all the curses and mockery left by the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon, the Qingcheng Elder concluded this was all a trap set by the Demonic Cult.
To pursue the enemy, he burst up through the hole in the ceiling of the cavity.
"..."
The Qingcheng Elder frowned at the complete chaos before him. He couldn't make sense of the situation at all.
While examining the area littered with about a dozen corpses, he realized someone was still alive.
It was someone he knew.
"Elder Beggar Chaser?"
Noticing Beggar Chaser's condition was extremely serious, the Qingcheng Elder placed both palms on the old beggar's back and began circulating his qi to heal him.
The Qingcheng disciples who'd followed him into the clearing formed a protective circle around him.
After about an hour passed.
"Kugh."
Elder Beggar Chaser coughed up blood once and regained consciousness.
‘I'm alive.’
Thanks to the excruciating pain throughout his body, Beggar Chaser could tell he was alive.
But his meridians were twisted throughout his entire body and his dantian was shattered.
Then a familiar voice came from behind him.
"Elder Beggar Chaser."
"Ugh... Taoist Cheongmok."
"What in the world happened here?"
To his question, Beggar Chaser answered while enduring the pain.
"It was all... a trap set by the Blood Cult..."
"The Blood Cult? You mean it was the Blood Cult's doing, not the Demonic Cult?"
When Taoist Cheongmok asked again with murderous intent rippling in his eyes, Beggar Chaser nodded.