Chapter 262 : Let Them Kill Each Other (4)
Chapter 262: Let Them Kill Each Other (4)
'This can't keep going like this.'
The moment the Tang Family's name got dragged into this mess, the whole incident was in danger of getting twisted into something else entirely.
While the Blood Cult was a formidable foe, it was possible that the situation could be framed to look as though the Tang Family was the reason for the immense casualties.
Gongsun Hyeon furrowed his brow as he mulled it over, then fired back with a question.
“If the Tang Family went so far as to attempt murder to silence them, by what means could those young disciples have possibly learned the truth and revealed it?”
It didn't make any sense.
The Tang Family weren't idiots, how could they fail to deal with a handful of young prodigies and let it blow up into this mess?
The answer that came back included yet another unexpected name.
"Experts from the Maitreya Luminous Cult saved those junior disciples, sir."
"...The Maitreya Luminous Cult again?"
"???"
When Gongsun Hyeon emphasized the word "again," the subordinates who'd just arrived with the urgent report looked confused.
But Gongsun Hyeon had no intention of explaining the full situation to him. Right now, his top priority was figuring out how to pin this entire mess squarely on the Blood Cult.
"I need to report this to the Alliance Leader. You can head back now."
After dismissing his subordinates, Gongsun Hyeon left the Military Strategy Hall and made his way toward the Alliance Leader's quarters.
"Hahaha! Come in, come in, Chief Strategist Gongsun."
The Alliance Leader welcomed him warmly despite the sudden visit.
"I heard urgent news came in. Is it about the Blood Cult?"
"Yes, Alliance Leader."
"Hahaha! Everything's unfolding just as you planned, Chief Strategist. That's exactly what I'd expect from you."
Gongsun Hyeon quickly bowed his head.
"I apologize, Alliance Leader. There's been a slight... complication with the plan."
"A complication... Tell me more. Let's hear the details."
Gongsun Hyeon uncharacteristically swallowed nervously and began explaining with tension written all over his face.
Once Gongsun Hyeon finished his explanation, the Murim Alliance Leader just sat there with that usual good-natured smile of his.
"I see. So that's how it is. Hmm. Well then, Chief Strategist, what's your plan to resolve this? Knowing you, I am sure you would not have come without a solution in mind."
Gongsun Hyeon forced himself to maintain a calm expression as he answered.
"We need to form a joint investigation team and dispatch them to the Heavenly Demon Secret Cave's location. We need to determine whether this was truly the Tang Family's doing or if it was actually the Blood Cult's scheme. Until we know for certain, we can't let any sect or clan act rashly. I ask that you, Alliance Leader, send letters to each sect and clan to keep them in check."
Gongsun Hyeon's thinking was clear.
Before attacking the Blood Cult, they first had to prevent the Orthodox Faction from fragmenting and turning on each other.
***
Around the same time Chief Strategist Gongsun Hyeon was dealing with a splitting headache, Il-mok was also suffering from a headache of his own.
"Young Warrior Ouyang."
"Yes, Young Master."
After arriving in Lanzhou, Il-mok called the source of his headache into his room. He'd sent everyone else far away so no one could eavesdrop on their conversation.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"What do you mean by that, Young Master?"
"Just pick one. Just one."
"???"
When Ouyang Mun looked completely lost, Il-mok let out a deep sigh.
"Do you actually want to take responsibility for what happened with Squad Leader Dam Bin?"
"What are you talking about, Young Master?! As a man, how could I possibly ignore something like that?!"
Ouyang Mun declared passionately, as if offended that Il-mok would even question his sincerity.
"...Then why do you keep apologizing to Miss Jin?"
That was the real reason for Il-mok's headache.
For the entire five-day journey from Guangyuan County to Lanzhou, Ouyang Mun had been persistently pursuing Dam Bin just like he'd done with Jin Hayeon before.
The problem was that throughout that whole process, he'd also been apologizing to Jin Hayeon here and there.
Il-mok was seriously starting to wonder if this bastard had actually lost his damn mind.
“A man has to be responsible, doesn’t he? I spent years telling Hayeon how I felt. Now that I’ve… changed my mind, I thought the right thing to do was to at least say I’m sorry.”
"......"
Yep. He'd definitely lost it.
'Though I guess I already knew that.'
Il-mok let out another deep sigh before asking again.
"Responsibility aside, do you actually have any romantic interest in Squad Leader Dam Bin? Like, actual feelings of affection?"
Ouyang Mun looked genuinely confused at that question.
"Affection? What does that have to do with taking responsibility?"
“...Trying to be responsible for a woman you’re not even into is just a recipe for making you both miserable.”
Il-mok had seen this pattern way too many times in his previous life.
Among his high school classmates and other acquaintances, there were often those who had ‘accidents’ when they were young.
Some of them worked out fine, but nine out of ten guys who got married purely out of "responsibility" ended up fighting constantly with their wives, and divorce was pretty damn common too.
"But..."
"I'm not done talking yet. Listen to the end."
"Yes, Young Master. No, Master."
When Il-mok got serious in a way that wasn't typical for him, Ouyang Mun quickly shut his mouth.
"First of all, Squad Leader Dam Bin herself stepped forward and firmly classified this whole thing as just a 'medical treatment.' So if you, Young Warrior Ouyang, just keep your mouth shut, this can simply pass by like nothing happened."
"But Young Master, how can I turn my back on a woman I spent the night with...?"
"That's right. If you do that, you'll be a man without a sense of responsibility. But isn't that just for your sake? Your purely selfish desire to be seen as a responsible man?"
"!!!"
“You keep speaking as if this is for Squad Leader Dam Bin’s sake, but this is purely for your own sake. Not for Squad Leader Dam Bin at all."
"......"
“Tell me, has Squad Leader Dam Bin ever once said she wants you to be responsible?”
"...No."
Ouyang Mun shook his head with an unusually serious expression.
Il-mok watched him intently for a moment before speaking again.
"From the start, this isn't something where you get to decide whether to take responsibility or not. Yes, your Qi Deviation was the cause, but this wasn't something you did to Squad Leader Dam Bin. It was something Squad Leader Dam Bin did to you, wasn't it?"
"Wh-what do you mean by that?"
When Ouyang Mun looked genuinely baffled, Il-mok could only swallow his sigh internally.
'This damn medieval era.'
He was in an era where if a guy and a girl had sex, it was automatically the guy’s job to take responsibility. It was a crazy time where if a man didn’t step up, the woman got all the blame for being ‘easy.’
If the man didn't take responsibility, only the woman got blamed for being "loose"—it was absolutely insane.
The only problem here was that the one who made the first move was the woman, not the man. Not that ‘made a move’ was the right way to put it, since it was just medical treatment. And that is the problem.
"So what I’m saying is, if you just drop it, this whole thing can be written off as a 'medical treatment' and nothing more. But that doesn’t mean you have to drop it entirely.”
"Then what should I do?"
“Look back on yourself. Do not worry about things like responsibility or the opinions of others; I am telling you to look back on your own emotions. Consider whether you have feelings for Squad Leader Dam Bin as a woman. And whether you're confident you can completely let go of your feelings for Miss Jin for her sake."
"......"
"Keep thinking about it until you're absolutely certain. Until then, don't talk to Squad Leader Dam Bin or Miss Jin. Got it?"
"...Understood, Young Master."
With a conflicted look on his face, Ouyang Mun gave a formal salute and left the room.
Il-mok shook his head at the throbbing pain, then let out a sigh and stood up.
'I'd honestly feel better just swinging a sword around right now.'
That thought made Il-mok chuckle to himself.
‘Wow, I really am a martial artist now.’
To think he would want to swing a sword just because his head hurt.
When Il-mok left his room and arrived at the training grounds, he found Dam Bin and a few others from their group already training there.
"Young Master."
Il-mok casually acknowledged their respectful greetings, then looked around the training grounds, spotted a practice sword, and picked it up.
The reason he grabbed that sword instead of the Ascension Sword was simple.
Even though he’d managed to calm the angry ghosts in his head last night, their ghostly energy was still clinging to the sword. Because of that, he didn't want to draw it unless it was for actual combat.
After getting a feel for the practice sword with a few light swings, Il-mok began freely executing the forms of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword in random order regardless of their actual sequences.
After loosening up his body, Il-mok positioned himself in the center of the training grounds, closed his eyes, and recalled the past.
He was reflecting on what he'd realized during the final moments of his life-or-death battle with the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord a few days ago.
"Phew."
After regulating his breathing, Il-mok extended his sword forward. Demonic energy that originated from his dantian gathered into the blade.
The demonic energy that traveled through his palm and into the sword took the form of Sword Qi for just a brief moment.
Swoooosh!
The Sword Qi then split into dozens of strands and spread in all directions like a spider's web before shooting toward one corner of the training grounds.
'Hmm. As expected, I can't control it once it goes beyond about 1.5 meters.'
He kept experimenting by pulling out threads of Sword Qi and whipping them through the air in different patterns.
Once he felt like he had a decent handle on it, he leapt into the air and shot a whole mess of the energy threads down at the ground.
Screech!
Thud!
The sword energy spread like a fishing net cast by a fisherman and carved up the training ground floor.
"Hmm. This should be good enough to call it the Heavenly Net Sword."
The technique's name came from the phrase "the net of heaven is vast and its mesh is wide, yet nothing escapes it." Though he wasn't sure if he could even call this a proper technique yet.
Most importantly, he still wasn't used to manipulating Sword Qi like threads.
The second it got more than a few meters away, he lost all control. It just flew straight ahead on its own momentum.
That was why he had only been able to create the net shape by simultaneously forming dozens of Sword Qi bundles and throwing them at various angles, allowing them to spread out in the process.
To make it a real Heavenly Net, he’d have to be able to steer the threads after he shot them.
'If I could pull that off, I'd probably actually achieved Transcendence.'
After organizing his thoughts to that point, another technique surfaced in Il-mok's mind.
It was the final move he'd used in his bloody battle with the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord.
The problem was, he'd only been able to execute it back then because the Blood Qi had been going berserk.
‘And it’s not like I can just go gather a mass of Blood Qi and cause it to rampage on purpose to practice.’
After pondering for a moment, a rather bizarre idea occurred to Il-mok.
‘Hold on. When it comes to being a pain in the ass to control, Blood Qi and demonic energy are basically the same thing, right?’
A rather dangerous method had come to mind.
Il-mok aimed his sword toward an empty area and closed his eyes to concentrate.
'Since I won't be fighting for a while, there's no harm in practicing this now.'
With his mind made up, Il-mok pulled up the last of the demonic energy in his dantian.
Then he violently agitated it.
He was deliberately trying to make his demonic energy go berserk just like with the Blood Qi last time.
As the demonic energy flowed unnaturally and raced through his meridians, the colliding energies grew angry and rampaged.
And just before the rampaging demonic energy completely broke free of his control—
Il-mok's eyes flashed open, and he simultaneously concentrated all the demonic energy raging through his entire body's meridians into his sword.
Bzzzzzzzzzt!
At the tip of the sword he held, a Sword Force of a bizarre shape began to form.
It was less a Sword Force and more a Sword Force that looked like lightning.
But the Sword Thunder only lasted for an instant.
CRACK!!
The moment the Sword Thunder formed, the practice sword Il-mok was holding shattered into pieces and exploded in all directions.
It wasn't like when he'd killed the Flying Dragon Pavilion Lord, where Il-mok had deliberately detonated the Sword Thunder.
The sword simply couldn't withstand the power of the Sword Thunder and burst apart on its own.
BOOM!!!
A massive explosion erupted in succession, and everything in the direction Il-mok had been pointing his sword was completely obliterated.
It made no distinction between the floor of the training ground and the walls that surrounded it.
"...I almost died just now."
Because of the unintended explosion, Il-mok himself had nearly gotten caught up in the storm of Sword Force fragments.
'I can only use this with the Ascension Sword.'
Or with a famous sword or divine sword of similar caliber, it seemed.
Otherwise, it was less a finishing move and more of a suicide technique.
After finishing that thought, Il-mok suddenly coughed and spat out a handful of blood.
By forcibly making his demonic energy go berserk, Il-mok had suffered internal injuries.
'...I should only use this when I can't think of any other solution.'
The power was definitely there, but it was dangerous in multiple ways.
If he could freely control it, it would become a definite weapon, but...
"Maybe it'll be possible once I achieve Transcendence..."
Il-mok muttered as he wiped the blood from his mouth and looked down at the sword that was now nothing but a handle.