Chapter 323 : Potala Palace (3)
Chapter 323: Potala Palace (3)
Jin Hayeon watched Il-mok and Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang's retreating backs as they headed toward the building ahead.
She then turned and looked down at the monks swarming up from below.
Her expression was as cold as ever, but she knew herself well enough.
She was different from usual.
'Anger... is it?'
It was an emotion she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Ever since her White Hand Demonic Art had entered Extremity, she'd had no occasion to feel anger. And that utter lack of emotion had remained exactly the same even after she officially broke past that and was inching closer to Transcendence.
Because she hadn't quite crossed the threshold to achieve Transcendence yet, feeling genuine human emotion was an incredibly difficult task for her.
Not unless it concerned the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult or Il-mok.
But right now, a small flame was burning inside her.
Perhaps it was simply because she was a woman herself, ever since she discovered the sickening atrocities committed by the Potala Palace, that raging inferno in her heart absolutely refused to die down.
"Kill the men and just subdue the women!!"
The monks' voices rang out from right in front of her. Their gazes crawled over her face, dripping with lust.
"Huu."
With a deep breath, she unleashed the anger she'd been keeping buried.
THWACK!
Her frost-wreathed palm struck the chest of the monk charging at the front, and he froze mid-swing of his staff.
"Gkh..."
After a short groan, the monk solidified where he stood like a stone statue.
The cold that had bored through his chest had frozen his heart solid.
Starting with that monk, Jin Hayeon's hands began to dance.
For a martial dance fueled entirely by pure rage, her movements were eerily quiet and composed. Yet, out of all the monks who dared to cross blows with her, not a single one walked away with an intact body.
After freezing five monks to death in succession—
CLANG!
For the first time, a monk managed to block her strike.
"Pretty face to match the skills."
With a weathered face absolutely dripping with vile greed, the high monk relentlessly swung his heavy vajra at Jin Hayeon.
His attacks were vile. Every single time he thrust his weapon, the monk deliberately targeted her chest or lower abdomen.
While this was undoubtedly fueled by the high monk's own twisted perversions, it was also a calculated move designed to provoke her.
More often than not, when female martial masters were subjected to such deeply humiliating attacks, they would become blinded by sheer rage and commit fatal blunders.
And playing perfectly into the old monk's hands, Jin Hayeon was completely swept up in a tidal wave of anger.
Losing her temper, she fiercely thrust out her left palm to intercept the vajra flying blatantly toward her chest yet again. The high monk, who had been waiting for exactly this opening, violently channeled his internal energy into the vajra.
Immediately after, Force Qi flared to life around the weapon and Jin Hayeon's bare palm collided directly against it.
CLANG!!
The Force Qi pushed back her cold energy, tearing open several wounds across her palm as hot blood welled up from the cuts.
Jin Hayeon's brow furrowed.
However, it wasn't because of the stinging pain flaring from her hand.
It was because the roaring fury she had finally unleashed was now spiraling completely out of her control.
But at the same time, the more she vented her boiling rage, the colder the Demonic Qi pooling in her hands became.
A belated change appeared on the face of the senior monk who had been pressing Jin Hayeon with a lecherous grin.
Panic overlaid his features.
Before he even realized it, the hot blood dripping from her palm had frozen completely solid, and a terrifying chill was actively boring straight through his Force Qi and invading his vajra.
"You little bitch!!"
The panicked monk changed his mind.
Instead of subduing her, he'd kill her.
'I'll just butcher this bitch and aim for a different wench later!'
Whether it was that vile thought or the surge of scorching energy he'd cultivated through the Art of Yin Yang Harmony, the energy coating his vajra intensified.
But the moment the destructive aura swirling around his vajra violently intensified, a grotesque bulge simultaneously pitched upward in his trousers.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that grotesque sight never registered in Jin Hayeon's eyes.
Even as anger consumed her, her sense of self was calmly observing from within.
In her own enraged state, she found enlightenment.
'The Harmony of Yin and Yang...'
Funnily enough, the hotter her emotions burned, the stronger the freezing energy crystallizing in her hands became.
It was almost as if her martial arts told her that it needed a colder energy to freeze that scorching emotion.
And so she acted differently from her usual self.
'Who are they?'
Instead of forcing her emotions down like she always did,
'Scums who terrorized vulnerable women.'
She stoked them higher.
'Unredeemable bugs who dragged away girls too young to know anything!'
As she replayed her fury like a mantra of self-hypnosis, the freezing energy remaining in her dantian erupted outward.
"N-NOOOOO!!"
The senior monk who had been pressing his vajra against her palm let out one final scream before freezing solid where he stood.
"Huu."
After that explosive release of emotion, she exhaled deeply and turned to survey the battlefield.
More precisely, to the monks scrambling toward them in a frenzy.
'Scumbagsd. Trash who abandoned all humanity, blinded by lust.'
The anger that had been settling after killing the senior monk rose again as she deliberately provoked herself.
Perhaps it was a side effect of her long-frozen emotions finally thawing out and waking up. But suddenly, she felt intense disgust and self-loathe toward herself.
Because by intentionally forcing herself into a state of rage, it felt as though she was callously exploiting the horrific tragedies of those victimized women just to fuel her own martial arts.
Ironically, even that self-directed anger served as fuel for her now.
***
While the overwhelming cold energy exploding from Jin Hayeon actively flash-froze the entire battlefield, Il-mok’s other maids were likewise cutting down monks with fury etched across their faces.
The atrocities committed here were horrific enough to enrage any decent human being, but the burning fury felt by fellow women was inevitably far, far greater.
"Filthy bastards!!"
Ju Seo-yeon was practically going mad at this moment. She spat streams of curses like a seasoned sailor at the monks while butchering them with her spear.
She was even blatantly targeting the monks' groins. As if determined to remove the offending parts entirely.
"Th-that crazy bitch."
Faced with her ruthless offensive that targeted nothing but lethal vitals, the monks shuddered in horror.
But Ju Seo-yeon wasn't as skilled a fighter as Jin Hayeon, and despite her relentless attacks on their weak points, some monks managed to hold their ground.
They too had built considerable skill through their vile cultivation methods.
"Feisty little thing. Let's see if you're still like that after some education."
When the monk's staff blocked her short spear, Ju Seo-yeon gritted her teeth with a vicious expression.
"Grrr!!"
Apparently finding her vicious glare entirely to his liking, a lecherous smile crept across the monk's face.
Thwack!
The very next second, an arrow violently buried itself straight into the monk's eyeball.
"GYAAAAAAH!!!"
Ju Seo-yeon didn't waste the opening.
CRUNCH.
While Ju Seo-yeon finished off the monk, Jeong Hyeon stood behind her with bow drawn, as she scanned the entire battlefield nonstop.
It wasn't just her eyes; every single one of her finely tuned senses was actively monitoring the entire chaotic battlefield.
Creeeak.
The massive bow in her hands screamed under its enormous draw weight.
TWANG!
When Jeong Hyeon released, the freed bowstring spat out an arrow with violent force.
Her arrow grazed past the sword of a Hyeokryeon Family warrior and embedded itself in a monk's forehead.
But Jeong Hyeon didn't watch to confirm the result.
She didn’t need to.
The instant she released the string, she was already pulling another arrow from the quiver on her thigh and loading it into the arrow tube to draw again.
Her eyes were already fixed on a different target.
While the five elite warriors from the Hyeokryeon Family and Il-mok's three personal maids held the vanguard.
She was flawlessly covering all eight of them from the rear.
Thanks to that vantage point, she could read the flow of the entire battlefield.
'As expected, Senior Hayeon is incredible.'
Jin Hayeon's side needed no help whatsoever. If anything, the concern was that allies might wander too close and get caught in the crossfire.
The Hyeokryeon Family warriors and Ju Seo-yeon were also managing to hold the monks at bay.
They dispatched the weaker monks without difficulty and were locked in close fights with the more experienced ones.
Whenever they struggled, Jeong Hyeon's arrows were there to assist.
It was hard to believe they were fighting monks who possessed absurdly inflated internal energy for their age through the Art of Yin Yang Harmony.
Then again, the members of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult were also entirely capable of reaching incredibly high martial realms at a young age thanks to their own Demonic Arts.
But even among those who practiced Demonic Arts, some talents stood out.
'...The direct bloodlines of the Five Great Demonic Families really are different.'
In Jeong Hyeon's eyes, Hyeokryeon Seon-ah was exactly that.
Her eyes, her hair, and the energy crystallized on her fingernails.
The young girl scattered crimson energy across the battlefield as she rampaged.
She looked exactly like a demon born for the sole purpose of draining the blood from wicked men.
Her skill surpassed Ju Seo-yeon's despite being three years younger, and even Jeong Hyeon, also three years her senior, couldn't be certain of victory in a one-on-one fight.
'...Honestly, if it weren't for the Young Master's constant guidance, I wouldn't even be fit to hold a candle to her.'
And it wasn't simply because of the massive bow she now carried.
It was because the sheer number of martial enlightenments she had achieved under Il-mok's tutelage was too numerous to count.
Jeong Hyeon, whose pride had nearly taken a hit from Seon-ah's dazzling talent, quickly gathered herself.
'Right. The Young Master poured his effort into helping me, so it is my duty to be of use to him in return.'
There was no time for idle thoughts.
She steeled her resolve and focused solely on her bow and the enemy.
As she drew the string back, she recalled a specific piece of advice Il-mok had casually passed along to her.
Somewhere during their grueling, endless trek back and forth between Gansu and the Western Regions, Il-mok had handed her a clue.
A clue that might help her break free of Extremity.
'I have to live up to the Young Master's expectations.'
The arrow she loosed with renewed determination—
THUNK!
—Pierced another monk's body.
***
After leaving the rear to their companions, Il-mok and Hyeokryeon Cheon-gang reached the target building in no time.
SHRRK!
A single swing of Il-mok's sword sheared through the building's doors.
In that moment, two ferocious streams of energy violently blasted through the splintering wood and rocketed straight at Il-mok's face.
Il-mok had already sensed it coming the moment he swung his sword and moved instantly.
With minimal movement, he dodged one stream of energy while swinging the Ascension Sword to deflect the other.
CLANG!
After dealing with the ambush from inside with ease, Il-mok peered through the completely obliterated doorway, taking in the full view of the grand interior.
Standing firmly on the left and right sides of the room were two elderly monks possessing completely identical faces.
The very architects of the Potala Palace's corruption.
The Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones.
"How dare you defile the sacred grounds of esoteric Buddhism!?"
"It seems you wish to be torn apart and cast into Naraka."
Centered on the two monks and their un-monklike expressions, a suffocating wave of qi continuously leaked outward.
Internal energy so immense it couldn't even be compared to the senior monks they'd faced before.
But for some reason, Il-mok's gaze wasn't directed at them, but beyond the Left and Right Great Virtuous Ones.
Huddled together in the corner were two young girls, frantically clutching loose cloth over their bodies as they trembled in fear.
Even at the absolute most generous estimate, they couldn't have been older than their early teens.
The moment he confirmed that sight, something inside Il-mok’s head snapped with an audible crack.