Chapter 321 : Potala Palace (1)
Chapter 321: Potala Palace (1)
Two days later, they arrived at a place called Damxung.
It was a county located roughly eight to ten hours by horseback from the Potala Palace.
"We'll rest here for a day. Tomorrow at dawn, we depart and strike the Potala Palace directly."
After briefly outlining the plan to his party, Il-mok entered Damxung with them.
Stepping into the village, Il-mok felt something quite familiar.
He'd experienced it in the Central Plains before, and several times on the way to Tibet. The residents had an air of barely concealed terror about them.
Given what he'd heard about Tibet's situation in Anda County and the village's proximity to the Potala Palace, there was only one answer.
'The Potala Palace must be up to something here too.'
Sensing the tension in the air, Il-mok glanced over his shoulder and saw that the rest of his party also wore grave expressions.
Meeting their eyes, Il-mok gave them a firm nod and kept walking.
They strolled through the county as if they were tourists.
Before long, they spotted two esoteric monks.
The two monks were standing guard at the entrance of a building that looked like an inn or tavern.
Like most buildings of this era, the walls offered zero soundproofing. Because of that, stifled moans and coquettish cries could intermittently be heard from inside, accompanied by a very strange, cloying fragrance wafting out into the street.
The moment Il-mok and his group walked toward the building, one of the monks guarding the door glared at them viciously and barked.
"Get lost if you don't want to die!"
Both of them were already furious at having their turn stolen because they'd been assigned guard duty.
For the past several years, the Potala Palace had been actively kidnapping young girls and women from every corner of Tibet.
But Tibet was not exactly fertile land, the supply of young women was strictly limited, and every last bastard who followed the will of the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones was exceptionally greedy.
Unsurprisingly, the women brought into the Potala Palace were immediately hoarded by the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones and the senior monks.
After a few years of this, the lower-ranking monks inevitably found their own filthy workaround.
Whenever they were sent across Tibet to hunt down young girls to offer to the Palace, they would simply snatch up the young women in the local villages and use them for their 'cultivation' instead. They just made sure to avoid the ones meant for their superiors.
True to the saying that when the water upstream is muddy, the water downstream follows, the monks who had begun following the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones were all rotting from within.
Just then, the other monk's expression shifted from anger to something lecherous.
He pointed directly at the women standing behind Il-mok.
"Leave those women here and go. Do that, and we'll spare your lives."
Only then did the first monk look the women over, and an equally lecherous expression spread across his face.
"Hehehe. That one still looks young. We could teach her plenty about worldly pleasures."
The woman he was pointing at was Hyeokryeon Seon-ah, the youngest among them.
Seon-ah's expression turned frigid at their filthy words.
It was a cold face that could rival Jin Hayeon's, but she didn't need to act herself.
Thud.
For the finger that had been pointing at Seon-ah was already lying on the ground.
"Where do you get off waving that filthy thing of yours?"
It was Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang's handiwork.
He was not the kind of man to let someone who dared harass his granddaughter walk away.
"GYAAAAAAH!!!"
When the monk whose finger had been cut off screamed from the belated pain, Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang swung his sword again.
"I'll take that filthy neck of yours too."
Shrrk.
The monk's pained screams were abruptly cut off as his head separated from his shoulders.
"H-how dare you! Do you know who we are!"
The surviving monk, terrified out of his mind, tried to threaten them, but there wasn't a single person here who would flinch at the name of the Potala Palace.
Shrrk.
Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang looked at them like insects and swung his sword once more, dispatching the remaining monk with ease.
In the meantime, the panicked screams and shouts of the dead guards had clearly alerted the people inside as the chaotic sound of rushing footsteps echoed from within the inn.
"I'll wait outside and make sure no one escapes."
Il-mok nodded at Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang's words and entered the inn without hesitation. The rest of the party followed.
"Wh-who the hell are you!"
"How dare you! Do you know where you are!"
The inside of the inn was a spectacle.
The monks who had rushed out in the commotion were all half-naked.
It was a revolting sight that made it painfully obvious what they'd been doing.
"I'll keep the ones we need for interrogation alive. The rest of you, kill every last monk without exception."
The moment Il-mok's order fell, the party charged at the half-naked esoteric monks.
***
The ensuing battle of blood and screams concluded as a completely one-sided massacre.
The smell of blood mingled with the fragrance wafting from the inn, creating a foul stench that stung the nose.
Normally, the incense burned in Buddhist temples is designed to soothe the mind, but whatever these esoteric monks were burning was the exact opposite.
'Is this some kind of aphrodisiac?'
It was a scent deliberately designed to stimulate carnal desire.
"Open all the inn's windows and clear out the incense. Miss Jin, take the women and find the women being held inside. Get them dressed first and check their condition."
After issuing his orders, Il-mok turned and looked down at his feet.
Two esoteric monks lay there, squirming like insects.
Even though he already knew the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones were the masterminds, the reason he'd kept these two alive for interrogation was simple.
"Draw the layout of the Potala Palace."
"What do the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones look like? Describe their features."
Since he intended to launch a surprise attack, he needed to know the Potala Palace's layout, the Great Virtuous Ones' quarters, and their appearance in advance.
The two monks spilled everything they knew to save their own skins.
"P-please, spare..."
To the vermin clinging to their last hope and begging for their lives, Il-mok swung his Ascension Sword with an indifferent face.
Shrrk.
When Il-mok finished the interrogation and turned around, the women had already returned.
"We've dressed the women and used internal energy to purge the aphrodisiac from their systems. They should stabilize soon."
Il-mok nodded at Jin Hayeon's report and issued orders to the party.
"We rest and circulate our energy for two hours, then depart immediately for the Potala Palace."
He originally planned to camp here for the night, but the situation called for a sudden change in plans.
Considering they had just kicked up a massive storm barely a day's distance from the Potala Palace, dragging their feet would only increase the risk of word getting out.
Regardless of the horrific atrocities the Potala Palace had been committing lately, Tibet was still their home turf.
It wouldn't be surprising in the slightest if one of the terrified residents slipped away to warn the Palace.
***
Il-mok and his party left Damxung after sunset.
By the time the sun rose again, a massive monastery came into view.
Starting from the base of a hill, buildings in a style completely unlike those of the Central Plains stretched along the gentle ridgeline in an unbroken chain.
Il-mok and his party used their lightness skills to ascend the mountain where the Potala Palace sat. Before long, they reached the main gate that served as the monastery's entrance.
It was still early morning.
The two esoteric monks, who had been widely yawning while on guard duty, immediately scowled in annoyance when they spotted the group.
"Where are you from, and why are your faces covered?"
For monks, their attitude was remarkably disrespectful.
Il-mok stepped forward and answered their question.
"Maitreya Luminous Cult."
Maybe it’s because the name hadn’t reached this place yet; the monks at the gate murmured it as if trying to recall it.
"Maitreya Luminous Cult...?"
The next instant, white lines filled their vision.
SHRRK!
With a delayed slicing sound, the two monks' upper and lower halves separated.
CRASH!!
The gate itself was cleaved in two and collapsed to the ground.
After splitting open the Potala Palace's sealed gate, Il-mok launched himself with lightness skill, and his party followed close behind.
The moment he entered the grounds, the first thing that assaulted Il-mok's senses was a scent.
"Sick bastards."
It was the exact same scent he had caught wind of back in Damxung.
Behind its sacred exterior, the Potala Palace's grounds were saturated with the sinister fragrance of aphrodisiac incense.
The absurd part was that despite the incense hanging thick in the air, there were hardly any monks to be seen in the grounds.
Even for early morning, this was a rare sight for a Buddhist institution where dawn offerings were part of the daily routine.
Between the aphrodisiac incense permeating the grounds at this early hour and the deserted atmosphere, it didn't take a genius to figure out exactly what was going on.
Il-mok sprinted through the monastery, which was practically an empty house right now.
"Who goes there!!"
The handful of young monks who happened to be up early spotted them and drew their weapons with a shout.
SHRRK!
And not a single one managed to withstand a single strike from Il-mok and Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang who were leading at the front.
After sprinting past the endless rows of pavilions stacked along the mountain slope, the group had made it roughly halfway through the Potala Palace.
Only then did those in deep slumber seem to notice the commotion outside, stumbling out one by one in disheveled states.
"What is the meaning of this!!"
Then a large, white-haired old man stepped into Il-mok's path.
BOOM!!!
It was the first time someone had successfully blocked Il-mok's Ascension Sword. The high monk's right palm was entirely wreathed in a dense, heavily concentrated Force Qi.
Looking at the senior monk, Il-mok spat.
“Ptui.”
The monk was such a repulsive, ugly sight that it made Il-mok feel like his eyes were going to rot out of his skull. Despite being a high monk who was supposed to have spent decades accumulating Dharma, something was violently bulging from his lower abdomen, pitching a massive tent as if trying to tear right through his sacred robes.
"You filthy pieces of shit."
But what Il-mok found disgusting wasn't the engorged member.
This senior monk hadn't even reached the Realm of Truth, yet the sheer volume of his internal energy rivaled Il-mok's own.
And Il-mok knew exactly where that immense internal energy came from.
"My. Is the benefactor calling the ways of nature disgusting?"
Faced with the high monk's sickeningly smug grin, Il-mok instantly lashed out with his sword.
BOOM!!
Clearly overconfident in his own massive reserves of qi, the high monk wreathed both palms in thick Force Qi to block Il-mok's onslaught.
But the mockery and composure on the monk's face were shattered in just three exchanges.
Because even if their raw internal energy reserves were roughly equal, the actual martial realms they had achieved were worlds apart.
Faced with profoundly mysterious sword paths his eyes couldn't even hope to track, the high monk's hands and feet began to trip over themselves.
"Th-this can't be..."
In his blind panic, the high monk could only mutter to himself in despair as he stared blankly at the sword aiming straight at his heart.
CRUNCH.
Il-mok drove the Ascension Sword into the monk's heart. He deliberately paused for a split second to let the blade feast itself before ripping it back out.
When he swung the Ascension Sword at the next monk behind him, a crimson energy clung to the blade.
From that point on, every time Il-mok killed a monk in his path, he deliberately plunged his sword deep into their bodies to siphon away a bit of their Blood Qi.
It was subtly different from the swift, clean swordsmanship he'd displayed in Anda County and Damxung, where the monks hadn't even registered their own deaths.
In truth, Il-mok's recent preference for quick, clean swordwork was partly due to the Ascension Sword's influence.
The Ascension Sword's sharpness allowed him to cut through bodies cleanly, but it also meant he needed to kill enemies fast enough that the sword had no time to absorb blood.
Combine that with the intense germaphobia he developed as an aftereffect of learning the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, and his usual laziness, and the result was a fighting style centered on swift kills.
But now he had to consider a prolonged battle, so unlike his usual approach, he was gorging on Blood Qi as he slaughtered his way through the monks.
SHRRK!
After cutting down every monk that stood in his way for a while, they neared the summit of the Potala Palace.
Seventy-two esoteric monks formed a circular Formation and surrounded them.
"Deploy the Seventy-Two Vajra Lama Formation!!"
The moment the senior monk at the center of the Formation unleashed a roar, a massive wave of Qi slammed down onto Il-mok and his group.