Chapter 261
Chapter 261
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 261
Chapter Title: Part 4. Time Changes Many Things (2)
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“Pant! Pant!”
Rough groans escaped through Eun Yugyeong’s lips. Her gray uniform was stained red with blood in several places.
The Five Elements Fiends were no easy opponents. They were quintuplets born on the same day and hour. They shared an almost telepathic bond.
With just a glance or a gesture, they perfectly understood each other’s intentions and attacked in unison, leaving no openings. And when they deployed the Five Elements Heavenly Formation, which held the secrets of soul subjugation, its power doubled.
“Saintess? You filthy whore who’d fuck a dog. Just give up already. Then we’ll show you paradise.”
“Why don’t you untie your skirt yourself? Once you taste this old man’s cock, you’ll never want to let go.”
They spat out vulgar obscenities too filthy to repeat as they unleashed their martial arts.
“Ugh!”
As time passed, Eun Yugyeong’s face grew paler.
‘My internal injuries are flaring up again.’
Before arriving here, she had crossed countless brushes with death. The toll had left her with serious internal wounds.
She had kept them suppressed until now, but the fierce battle with the Five Elements Fiends was bringing them back. Her organs churned, and nausea welled up.
Eun Yugyeong barely held down the urge to vomit. But the Five Elements Heavenly Formation continued to worsen her condition.
“Heh heh! Looks like you’ve reached your limit.”
The Five Elements Fiends didn’t miss the opening and pressed their attack.
Boom!
A powerful palm strike shot out.
It was the moment Eun Yugyeong unleashed an advanced technique of the Falling Moon Divine Sword to counter the palm force.
“You bitch!”
Whoosh!
With a sharp cry, the White Moon Fiend hurled a hidden weapon. The tiny projectile, too fine to see with the naked eye, rode the wind and flew toward Eun Yugyeong’s back.
By the time Eun Yugyeong sensed the hidden weapon, it was already too late.
Thud!
“Huhk!”
It embedded in the back of her hand. The impact caused her to drop her sword.
It was a golden opportunity for the Five Elements Fiends.
“Hyaah!”
They tightened their encirclement and unleashed palm strikes in unison. Accompanied by thunderous roars, tremendous energy engulfed Eun Yugyeong.
Eun Yugyeong shot her body into the air to evade the Five Elements Fiends’ attack. But at the critical moment, her internal energy flow cut off. On top of that, the formation’s attractive force took hold.
In the end, Eun Yugyeong couldn’t escape the Five Elements Heavenly Formation and plummeted. And then the terrifying palm force closing in.
‘Give flesh to take bone.’
Eun Yugyeong bit her lip until it bled.
She intended to sacrifice at least one arm. For a woman to lose an arm was a heavy price, but she had no choice.
The Black Moon Fiend sneered at the sight.
“Heh heh! Some saintess—you’re nothing special. Gahk!”
Chomp!
The Black Moon Fiend suddenly stopped mid-sentence and thrashed about.
The vivid world suddenly went dark. All he could see was pitch blackness.
“W-What?”
The Black Moon Fiend flailed.
Like a radish being yanked from a field, his body was pulled straight up into the air. His short legs kicked futilely at empty space.
“Big brother?”
“What is it?”
Only then did the other Five Elements Fiends notice the anomaly and look toward the Black Moon Fiend.
The Black Moon Fiend was dangling in midair, head gripped in someone’s hand.
“W-What?”
“Who’s there?”
Behind the Black Moon Fiend’s small frame loomed a black shadow. No, it was a man shrouded in darkness. He stood there, clutching the Black Moon Fiend’s head in his massive hand.
In an instant, the air in the area grew chillingly cold.
A chill raced up the Five Elements Fiends’ spines. Their bodies, heated from the intense fight with Eun Yugyeong, cooled in a flash.
The Black Moon Fiend struggled and shouted.
“L-Let go of me, you bastard! I’ll never forgive... Kek!”
Crack!
The man’s hand tightened, and the Black Moon Fiend’s head shattered like a pancake.
Blood and brains splattered everywhere, dripping down the man’s hand as well. He tossed the corpse aside like trash.
“B-Big brother?”
“No way!”
The remaining Five Elements Fiends’ eyes widened at the utterly surreal scene. The Black Moon Fiend, who had fought and breathed in sync with them until moments ago, now lay sprawled with his head smashed—a sight so unreal it bordered on absurd.
“You bastard!”
“We’ll never forgive you.”
The Five Elements Fiends lost their reason and charged at the man.
Eun Yugyeong stared blankly at the scene, forgetting even the hidden weapon in her hand.
The man moved.
Boom!
The ground shook with a massive roar the instant his foot hit the earth, as if an earthquake had struck.
Eun Yugyeong felt the ground’s wail through her soles.
She thought the earth itself was crying.
That was the moment.
The man struck toward the Five Elements Fiends.
KABOOM!
Eun Yugyeong had the illusion of a volcano erupting right before her eyes. The volcano bursting from the man’s fist swallowed the Five Elements Fiends whole.
“Kek!”
“Kraaak!”
Two of the Five Elements Fiends who had hounded her so relentlessly were pulverized like minced meat and sent flying.
“Hiiik!”
“What?”
The White Moon Fiend and Yellow Moon Fiend, barely clinging to life, let out metallic shrieks in terror. They had no time to mourn their brothers and retreated. But before they could take a single step back, the man’s body stormed in like a gale.
A massive storm battered their small bodies.
BOOM!
Another thunderous explosion rang out.
The White Moon Fiend and Yellow Moon Fiend perished without even a scream. Their bodies, flung far away and crushed like ground meat, could no longer be called human.
“Ah!”
Eun Yugyeong stared blankly at it all.
From the man’s appearance to the annihilation of the Five Elements Fiends, it had all happened in the blink of an eye. It was so unreal that it felt like a dream.
Eun Yugyeong stared dazedly at the man.
The man was approaching, limping on one leg. His shoulder dipped slightly with every step of his left leg.
Despite his unbalanced body, the man exuded an ironclad pressure. There was only one such overwhelming presence in the world.
“You’re... Dam... Ho.”
The man who had felled the Five Elements Fiends in an instant was Dam Ho.
Even before, Dam Ho had been called a monster. But now, three years later, he had surpassed her limits so vastly that she didn’t know what to call him anymore.
‘This man has become even more terrifying.’
A sudden chill washed over her.
Finally, Dam Ho stood before Eun Yugyeong. He gazed at her steadily.
Eun Yugyeong spoke first.
“Long time no see.”
“Indeed.”
An awkward silence flowed between them.
It was their first meeting in three years.
A short time, perhaps, but to people who had lived entirely different lives, the gap felt vast.
Dam Ho spoke first this time.
“What brings you here?”
“I have something to discuss.”
Dam Ho stared intently at Eun Yugyeong’s face.
“You look exhausted. Let’s head up to Mount Hua.”
“Thank you.”
With Dam Ho’s permission, Eun Yugyeong finally let out a sigh of relief. She had achieved her goal in coming here.
Dam Ho turned around.
The corpses of the Five Elements Fiends littered the area, but they stirred no emotion in him.
Suddenly, Dam Ho’s gaze stopped on the bushes to his left.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Dam Ho shook his head at Eun Yugyeong’s question and walked on.
He was still limping on one foot, yet his pace was unbelievably fast. Even Eun Yugyeong, employing lightness skill, struggled to keep up.
Eun Yugyeong gazed at Dam Ho’s back with eyes full of dismay.
Three years ago, his only weakness had been his lightness skill, hampered by his limp. But in the time she hadn’t seen him, Dam Ho seemed to have found a way to compensate.
Dam Ho’s figure vanished into the dense forest of Mount Hua in an instant. Eun Yugyeong sped up to follow.
A long while after the two disappeared into Mount Hua, rustling sounds emerged from the bushes, and two men crawled out.
“My goodness!”
“What in the world has happened to the Mount Hua Sect?”
The two men, looking around in bewilderment, were Mun Su-gyeol and Jo Won-myeong.
They had secretly tailed Silver Flower Pavilion’s merchant group to this place. And they had witnessed an unbelievable sight.
Over a dozen Plum Blossom Swordsmen of the Mount Hua Sect wiping out a hundred members of the Five Elements Annihilation Squad, and Dam Ho massacring the Five Elements Fiends in seconds.
Tremble!
They were still shaking from the shock.
Jo Won-myeong rubbed his shoulders with his palms as he scanned the surroundings.
The Five Elements Fiends, who had displayed such terrifying prowess against Eun Yugyeong, now lay in pathetic heaps on the ground.
“Who the hell was that woman?”
Jo Won-myeong and Mun Su-gyeol didn’t know Eun Yugyeong’s name. They had only started watching right after her fight with the Five Elements Fiends.
The battle between Eun Yugyeong and the Five Elements Fiends had been ferociously beyond their imagination. Even Mun Su-gyeol, who prided himself on having seen every kind of battle as a deputy leader of Dark Cloud, had never witnessed such brutality. And if Mun Su-gyeol was like that, Jo Won-myeong went without saying.
He was gripped by intense fear now. Especially Dam Ho’s display at the end had gone beyond shock to pure terror.
“Now I understand why everyone fears the Fist Demon so much. The moment he looked at the bushes we were hiding in at the end, I really thought I’d piss myself.”
Jo Won-myeong shuddered, recalling the scene. He’d truly thought he was dead.
He’d heard Dam Ho’s gaze was fearsome, but facing it firsthand felt like standing naked before a tiger—an extreme terror unlike any he’d felt since learning martial arts.
“We’re lucky he didn’t spot us and just passed by.”
“Did he really not see us?”
“What? You mean he knew we were there and ignored us?”
“That’s the feeling I get.”
“No way...”
Jo Won-myeong was at a loss for words. He wanted to refute it, but Mun Su-gyeol’s guess felt more plausible.
“Why would he pretend not to see us?”
“Who knows? Maybe we didn’t register as any threat in his eyes.”
“Ugh!”
“Anyway, this is bad. They were quiet for three years, but now the Demonic Cult is on the move again.”
Mun Su-gyeol’s expression darkened utterly.
Anyone could see the Five Elements Annihilation Squad and Five Elements Fiends were elites of the Demonic Cult.
Three years ago, when Mount Hua suffered its great massacre, people thought the Demonic Cult would launch a full invasion. But oddly, after Mount Hua’s tragedy, the Demonic Cult restrained its external activities.
At first, they assumed the Cult was taking time to regroup. The damage they took attacking Mount Hua wasn’t light. But as one year, two years passed, the Demonic Cult showed no large-scale movements like before.
The Murim Alliance breathed a sigh of relief but didn’t drop their guard.
Seizing the lull in Demonic Cult activity, they replenished forces and ramped up intelligence.
There were occasional clashes with the Demonic Cult, but only small-scale skirmishes. This was the first time such a large group of Demonic Cult warriors had appeared. That made it all the more unsettling.
And the Mount Hua Sect, thought to have fallen, had revealed astonishing strength. Even setting aside Dam Ho, the Plum Blossom Swordsmen’s prowess was chilling enough.
Jo Won-myeong looked at Mun Su-gyeol.
“Uncle.”
“This seems beyond our pay grade.”
“Then?”
“Let’s report to the Alliance and await orders. No need to tangle with the Fist Demon and invite disaster.”
“Yes!”
Mun Su-gyeol feared little in the world. But Dam Ho terrified him. That ferocious gaze from moments ago was still burned into his mind.
“The Mount Hua Sect led by the Fist Demon.”
Mun Su-gyeol’s eyes shook as he gazed at Mount Hua, shrouded in clouds.