Chapter 305 : The Grasslands (5)
Chapter 305: The Grasslands (5)
While Jeong Hyeon took deep breaths to calm her flushed face, the rest of the group finally caught up on horseback and carriages.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. It's them we should be worried about."
Il-mok turned his head and saw several nomads approaching.
The oldest-looking among them spoke first.
"Thank you for saving us."
After Ohalak translated the old man's words, Il-mok responded.
"I was worried we might have stuck our noses where they didn't belong. Were you guys hunting that Spirit Beast by any chance?"
The elder shook his head.
"How could we ever hunt a Spirit Beast like that? We suspect it's the rumored lord of the Khangai Mountains, but it attacked us out of nowhere, so we were at a complete loss."
Il-mok had a feeling things would work out more smoothly than expected.
'Well, at least I won't have to argue over who gets to keep it.'
The very first thing that had crossed Il-mok's mind when he spotted the Spirit Beast was its horns.
With those horns, the stopgap measure he'd been thinking of for Jeong Hyeon would be much easier to realize.
But killing a Spirit Beast only to take the horns and hand over the inner core would have been stupid.
He'd been mulling over how to negotiate, but given the current mood, negotiation didn't seem necessary at all.
"In that case, we'll be taking the Spirit Beast. Oh, and it looked like some of your people were injured by it. We have excellent physicians on our side, so we'd be happy to help with treatment."
"Hahaha. Your help alone was more than enough, and now you're offering medical care too. I don't know how we could ever repay this kindness."
When the elder smiled warmly in response, Il-mok turned to look at Seo Jae-pil.
"Hahaha. Leave it to me, O’ Incarnation."
After giving his enthusiastic reply to the masked Il-mok, Seo Jae-pil grabbed the medical supplies with his team and hurried off to the settlement.
Il-mok and the rest of the party followed, walking alongside the elder who appeared to be the tribal chief.
Several of the martial artists trailed behind, hauling the Spirit Beast's carcass.
After reaching the settlement, Il-mok gave them their orders.
"Make sure it isn't poisonous. If it's safe, we'll save the meat for food. Just process the carcass and bring me the horn, tendons, and the inner core."
"As you command!"
Maybe it was because they had just seen Il-mok's overwhelming strength firsthand, but the Divine Cult's martial artists responded with absolute fervor.
While Il-mok was giving instructions, Seo Jae-pil and the physicians were already tending to the wounded.
The leftovers martial artists, along with Jin Hayeon, Ju Seo-yeon, and Jeong Hyeon, were assisting the physicians in treating the patients, and the nomads were also helping them.
Il-mok approached the elder, who stood nearby watching the physicians work.
"Excuse me, but are you by any chance the Jarchigud tribe?"
When Ohalak translated, the elder looked at Il-mok with a hint of wariness.
"We are the Jarchigud. Did you come all this way just to find us?"
"I apologize for startling you. The truth is, we came after hearing rumors about the stolen corpses. I think I might know who the culprit is."
"Is that really true!?"
The elder's startled eyes swirled with a complex mix of emotions.
The most prominent was regret.
They had once commanded the northern grasslands. How had they ended up driven to a place like this?
The death of their Khagan, who'd been titled as a Baatar, was part of it, but the greater blow had been the disappearance of his body.
That incident had sparked the conflict with the Merkit tribe, and most of their capable warriors had lost their lives as a result.
'If the Khagan were still alive, our warriors wouldn't have been so easily battered today.'
With all their skilled fighters dead, the elder had been forced to take on the role of chief. The reality that a Spirit Beast had nearly wiped out his tribe filled him with nothing but grief.
Il-mok gave the elder a moment to collect himself, then asked.
"Could someone draw the face of the Khagan whose body disappeared? If it matches the face I'm thinking of, I'll be certain of who the culprit is."
The elder looked puzzled but nodded, desperate enough to grasp at any thread of hope.
He called over one of the tribespeople, a woman said to be the most skilled artist among the Jarchigud.
Following the elder's instructions, she drew the Khagan's face from memory.
Il-mok took one look at the finished portrait and nodded. "Just as I suspected."
The face bore a striking resemblance to the Jiangshi he'd seen during the Heavenly Demon Secret Cave bloodbath in Sichuan.
Meeting the old man's gaze that was full of doubts and chaotic emotions, Il-mok spoke. "Recently, there's a vile group called the Blood Cult operating in secret down south in the Central Plains."
Il-mok told him about the atrocities the Blood Cult had committed across the Central Plains and the Jiangshi that had appeared in the Secret Cave.
The elder's expression had grown increasingly uneasy from the moment he heard the word "Jiangshi."
"And the face of that Jiangshi closely resembles the face in this portrait."
The moment he heard Il-mok's final words, he clutched his head and staggered.
"How can this be..."
Il-mok quickly reached out and steadied the elder before he could collapse.
Learning that their great chief's body had not only been stolen but turned into a Jiangshi by a wicked group was more than the old man could bear.
After struggling with dizziness for a moment, the elder managed to regain his composure and looked up at the masked man supporting him.
"Who are you people that you know so much about this Blood Cult?"
"We are the Maitreya Luminous Cult, and I am the Incarnation of Maitreya. We've tangled with those vile Blood Cult bastards several times in the Central Plains, which is how we know."
"Maitreya Luminous Cult..."
The elder murmured the name several times, as if committing it to memory.
Il-mok added a few more words, as if to put the old man at ease. "The Blood Cult is currently a public enemy of the Central Plains. Not just our Maitreya Luminous Cult, but the entire Central Plains is desperate to hunt them down. The Khagan's vengeance will be realized soon enough."
In reality, the martial artists of the Central Plains were just busy fighting turf wars among themselves using the Blood Cult as an excuse, but Il-mok wants to keep things positive for now.
"...That's a relief to hear. If it were up to us, we would love nothing more than to join that war."
"Don't worry. Our Maitreya Luminous Cult will deliver divine punishment upon them on your behalf."
Il-mok said it with absolute confidence.
After all, it was Il-mok and the Maitreya Luminous Cult who had fanned the flames of war between the Blood Cult and the Orthodox Faction in the first place.
So if the Orthodox Faction defeated the Blood Cult, wasn't that ultimately the Maitreya Luminous Cult's doing?
"You've had quite a shock. You should go inside and rest."
"I'm truly grateful."
The elder bowed to Il-mok and retreated into a yurt to rest.
Afterward, Seo Jae-pil and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's people continued tending to the wounded for a good while.
From applying salves to broken skin to setting fractured bones, Seo Jae-pil finished up his rounds of treatment. He wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm and let out a satisfied sigh.
"Phew."
When the nomads showered them with endless thanks for their hard work, Seo Jae-pil flashed them a wide grin.
"Hahaha. We simply helped you in accordance with the teachings of the Maitreya Luminous Cult."
Somehow, that smirk of his was starting to look an awful lot like Il-mok's.
Just then, the martial artists who'd been tasked with processing the Spirit Beast approached Il-mok.
"O’ Incarnation, here are the horns, tendons, and inner core you requested."
They knelt on one knee and presented the items with both hands.
'That thing is ridiculously huge.'
Staring down at the absurdly oversized horn, Il-mok picked it up and called out to Jeong Hyeon.
"Miss Jeong. Can you come here for a second?"
"O-okay, Young Master."
When Jeong Hyeon approached with a puzzled look, Il-mok held the massive horn up right next to her to measure its length against her height.
"???"
While Jeong Hyeon stood there baffled, Il-mok nodded to himself.
"It's a good thing you're pretty tall for a woman, Miss Jeong."
"?????"
"Hold on to these horns and tendons. We'll need to work on them once we're back in Lanzhou."
After handing the bewildered Jeong Hyeon the horns and tendons, Il-mok picked up the goat's inner core.
"Hmm."
He pondered what to do with it for a moment, then called Jin Hayeon and Ju Seo-yeon over as well.
"I think it'd be best if the three of you split this inner core equally."
"Since you're the one who slew the Spirit Beast, Young Master, it's only right that you consume it."
Jin Hayeon said so without a shred of hesitation, but Il-mok shook his head.
In truth, Il-mok's internal energy was on the low side relative to his realm.
Internal energy generally corresponded to how long one had practiced martial arts, but Il-mok had grown at an absurdly accelerated pace compared to his years of training.
The early absorption of the Explosive Demonic Pill, receiving the Heavenly Demon's Bone Marrow Cleansing, the millennium-old fleeceflower root he'd consumed after dealing with the Heavenly Orchid Society, and the fact that his arts were fast-growing Demonic Arts all masked the deficit.
In that sense, consuming the goat's inner core himself wouldn't have been a bad choice.
However.
'My internal energy grew quite a bit during the Overhaul Body Transformation. Plus, I think I might've found a way to boost my internal energy without relying on elixirs if I play my cards right.'
Just moments ago, when he'd pierced the goat's skull with the Ascension Sword, Il-mok had glimpsed a certain possibility.
It needed a bit more testing and researching, but still.
"I'm not short on internal energy at the moment, so it's better if the three of you split it. You're my attendants and my guards. Your internal energy growing is good for me too, don’t you think?"
As the three women exchanged glances, unsure of what to do about the core, the noticeably less stammering Jeong Hyeon quickly turned her head and scanned the surroundings as if signaling Il-mok.
"Young Master."
Il-mok seemed to have noticed something too and turned to follow her gaze.
Beyond the wide-open horizon, well over a hundred figures were advancing in a circular formation to encircle them.
As Il-mok, his guards, and the martial artists readied themselves for a fight, the able-bodied nomad men also started grabbing their weapons one by one.
"Take your families and the injured inside the yurts and stay there to protect them."
Ohalak translated Il-mok's instruction, but the nomads hesitated.
"Still don't trust this Incarnation's skills?"
When Il-mok pressed them, the nomads recalled the sight of the masked man killing the goat just moments ago.
"Th-thank you."
They expressed their gratitude, then gathered their families and the wounded and retreated into the yurts.
Meanwhile, the nomads who had encircled them drew closer. One of them rode forward on horseback and bellowed with internal energy behind his voice.
"Did you think you could steal the prey of the great Mangud tribe and live!?"
Il-mok glanced at Ohalak, who quickly translated the man's shouting.
"Their prey?"
Il-mok looked puzzled for a moment, then understood and let out a wry laugh.
'Nowhere to be seen when the Spirit Beast was being killed, and now they show up with demands. Unbelievable.'
Just then, the man at the front apparently spotted the inner core in Il-mok's hand and roared again.
"Hand over the inner core, and I'll spare your lives!"
Instead, the brazen and repeated threats only made the smile on Il-mok's face twisted even worse.
It went from detached amusement to cold contempt.
No matter where you went in this world, there were always thugs like underworld gangs and fanatics trying to rob people blind.
'Good thing I haven't taken off the mask yet.'
For there is only one thing that the Maitreya Luminous Cult had to offer such people.
Divine Punishment.