Chapter 149
Chapter 149
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 149
Chapter Title: Heavenly Annihilation Division (4)
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"Four Thousand Four has vanished."
"Hohoho! That guy's always coming and going like the wind, isn't he? What's so surprising about that?"
"Ah, yes. And... um..."
The man giving the report began to stutter.
"What? You got something else to say? Spit it out already. Don't waste my time."
"T-Two of them... Two of them..."
"What?"
"Vanguard and Hanbi... they've vanished."
"No, no, no. That's not the right answer. Say it again. What did you say?"
"......"
The reporting man couldn't open his mouth and stole a glance at Villa Lord Gokgang.
Gauging the mood of someone half-man, half-woman—neither fully male nor female—was incredibly difficult. But he had to try with everything he had. He needed to say what the villa lord wanted to hear.
"Speak up. Come on, tell me. It's fine, so say everything."
The villa lord asked with a beaming smile.
"W-Well... Vanguard and Hanbi set off together, and Fox and Jaja moved as a pair, but after that..."
"You've lost track of them?"
"Yes. But we'll find them soon. Those bastards..."
Crack!
A dull thud echoed through the air.
The man didn't finish his sentence. His eyes rolled back, and he toppled over backward.
Blood poured from his shattered skull.
His upturned eyes showed only the whites, the black pupils vanished. He was dead!
"What an idiot! Hmph!"
Villa Lord Gokgang snorted derisively at the fallen man.
"What happened?"
Gokgang asked while pruning a bonsai with scissors, speaking into empty air.
"We sent out the White Demon Ants, but they couldn't find them."
A far more composed voice came from the void, unlike the reporter's.
"That can't be."
"It is."
"No, no, no. That's impossible. How could the White Demon Ants fail to track their own spawn?"
"We haven't confirmed that far yet."
"Hah! Everyone treats the White Demon Ants like dirt these days. Have they lost their edge too?"
Villa Lord Gokgang plucked a white ant from between the bonsai branches and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly.
"Chupyeong. Figure out exactly what happened. I'm losing my mind over this."
"Understood."
The solemn voice rang out from the air once more, then all presence vanished.
"How could they fail to track their own spawn? Hah!"
Villa Lord Gokgang picked up another white ant from the bonsai and stared at it intently.
The stalk leaders could never escape.
Even someone like Fox, who could hide perfectly, would be found effortlessly if the Heavenly Annihilation Division wanted them. As long as the White Demon Ants and Blood Demon Ants existed, those pests were Sun Wukong trapped in Buddha's palm.
Of course, there had been one who evaded both the White Demon Ants and Blood Demon Ants, the division's greatest treasures: Four Thousand Four!
Just once, just that one guy had slipped free.
But such miracles couldn't happen twice in a row.
Even knowing there were three top aces among the seventeen stalk leaders didn't change that. They couldn't escape the White Demon Ants.
What was going on?
"Hmph!"
Villa Lord Gokgang glared fiercely at the corpse.
The dead man had taken the White Demon Ants for Vanguard and Hanbi, only to return empty-handed, having lost them.
It was the most infuriating situation imaginable for the villa lord.
"Since Chupyeong's on it..."
The villa lord bit the White Demon Ant in his hand with his front teeth, snapping its body in two.
"R-Reporting, sir."
A terrified voice called from beyond the door.
Villa Lord Gokgang scowled deeply.
He'd received the report about losing Vanguard and Hanbi just an hour ago. Now this fearful voice again. He could guess the contents without asking.
"You lost them too?"
Gokgang demanded bluntly.
"W-Well... We deployed the White Demon Ants, but they suddenly vanished."
"What?"
"The White Demon Ants burrowed into the ground and never came back up."
Villa Lord Gokgang ground his molars together.
This was no coincidence. Someone was meddling seriously, and unfortunately, it was working.
The White Demon Ants could no longer track the stalk leaders.
Chupyeong had rushed off to uncover the truth, but there was probably little to find.
'That bastard Four Thousand Four!'
Gokgang's first thought was Four Thousand Four.
If not him, no one else could tamper with the White Demon Ants. Vanguard, Hanbi, Jaja, Fox... He hadn't seen them, but none were clever enough to touch the ants.
'Come to think of it, they said the Poisoner got hit too. Something neutralized the Life-Death Lord. That punk...'
Snap!
The bonsai suddenly splintered apart.
His rage toward Four Thousand Four had shattered his most prized possession without him even noticing.
The vanishing White Demon Ants was a gravely serious matter.
The Heavenly Annihilation Division's separate villa raised only ants.
Only White Demon Ants and Blood Demon Ants.
With that one skill of breeding ants, Villa Lord Gokgang had become one of the division's Ten Executives, treated as an equal to the Heavenly Commander or the Lesser Hive Lord. The White Demon Ants were that vital.
But if they were starting to disappear...
"Repeat yourself. Tell me exactly how you tracked those bitches, where you released the White Demon Ants, and how you lost them. Leave out nothing. If anything seems off, you're dead."
The villa lord whirled toward the door.
"We have no way to control the stalk leaders."
Chupyeong's report filled Villa Lord Gokgang with despair.
"The White Demon Ants... lost their way?"
"The ones tracking Vanguard and Hanbi converged at one spot."
As the words ended, a sheet of paper fluttered down from the empty air.
Gokgang caught it.
A map was drawn on the paper.
"Where's this map of?"
"The labor camp."
"La-Labor camp?"
"Four Thousand Four hasn't moved a single step from the labor camp. Neither have Vanguard and Hanbi."
"Hm!"
Villa Lord Gokgang stared piercingly at the map.
Two dotted lines were marked on it. They started from different points but merged at one location—a bend in the river, curved like a hook.
"Did Vanguard and Hanbi cross the river?"
"There's a land spirit mound by the riverbank. The White Demon Ants vanished there."
Villa Lord Gokgang's face drained of color.
"You searched the mound?"
"No traces of the White Demon Ants... at all."
"The scent! What about the scent?"
"I'd have reported it if any lingered."
Villa Lord Gokgang was at a loss for words.
Chupyeong's report was eerily similar to the one from the man who lost Jaja and Fox. No, identical. That guy had said the ants burrowed into the earth and didn't emerge, but that was wrong. It only looked that way—they'd been lured away by someone.
The same at the land spirit mound.
Someone had drawn the White Demon Ants inside. Ants that never took their eyes off the queen had been tempted by something even more enticing.
First, it was crucial that the White Demon Ants had been distracted from their queen.
Second, not even their scent remained in the mound.
Those who raised White Demon Ants and Blood Demon Ants long enough could smell them.
A sharp, acidic tang, perhaps?
Chewing a White Demon Ant gave a powerful sour bite, expressed as a scent. That's how someone like Chupyeong could detect it from afar.
Yet no scent at all.
The ants had clearly entered the mound, but left no trace afterward.
Just like the cases where they burrowed into the ground.
There was only one explanation: they'd been eaten.
What could have devoured the White Demon Ants?
They had no natural predators. Even ant-eaters that fed on ants avoided them.
White Demon Ants were fiercely communal—one touch, and the horde swarmed, tearing the intruder apart. Even an ant-eater would be stripped to the bone in seconds.
They carried a trace poison.
Harmless to humans, but lethal to beasts.
No animal except humans could touch them.
So what creature had swallowed them whole? The ants tracking four people numbered nearly ten thousand. Who could eat that many?
"Chupyeong, we're thinking the same thing, right?"
"Yes."
"It's that guy?"
"Yes."
"That bastard Four Thousand Four! How do I chew him up? I want to eat him alive. What should I do?"
Villa Lord Gokgang clenched his fists, trembling with fury.
The only human who could make the White Demon Ants vanish without a trace was Four Thousand Four.
Four Thousand Four said,
"Tonight, we assassinate Villa Lord Gokgang."
"Wh-What? Are you in your right mind...?"
Four Thousand Four didn't answer and instead stared into the deep ravine.
His resolve was firm. Even without Vanguard and Hanbi's agreement, he would act tonight.
"Is this the easiest path?"
Hanbi asked.
Four Thousand Four merely nodded.
"When Zhuge Soso talked about the main force, I was there too, and there was no mention of Villa Lord Gokgang, so..."
As Hanbi started to continue, Vanguard raised a hand to stop him and asked,
"I don't know much about the villa lord either. I had no idea there was a separate villa here. How did you know?"
"Villa Lord Gokgang is the Poisoner's priest."
"Wh-What!"
"I know a bit about poisons. I've read about the Poisoner and Gokgang."
Four Thousand Four said it casually, as if it were no big deal.
"Never heard of the Poisoner having a priest. Though... to run a separate villa, he'd need to be at least that. The White Demon Ants aren't ordinary things."
Vanguard furrowed his brow.
Villa Lord Gokgang was a well-known figure within the Heavenly Annihilation Division.
Everyone knew the man who created the White Demon Ants that immobilized division members. But more than that... a man with a male body but feminine mannerisms had piqued everyone's curiosity at least once.
Yet he was one of the division's Ten Executives.
No stalk leader or random underling dared gossip about him. Curiosity about the man-woman villa lord simmered, but none voiced it.
Four Thousand Four seemed to know a great deal about him.
Probably knowledge passed down from Teacher Nok...
As a man who was also a woman, the villa lord's lover had to be a man.
The man who rushed to the labor camp, investigated the White Demon Ants thoroughly, and returned... a master with stealthy, eerie lightness skill... He was likely Gokgang's lover.
Four Thousand Four hadn't moved until that man appeared, then shadowed him immediately.
Meaning he knew a lot about the villa lord.
Honestly, without tailing that man, Four Thousand Four wouldn't have known about this hidden ravine villa of the Heavenly Annihilation Division—or that it was another passage into the division.
Indeed, infiltrating through here might be the easiest route. Though assassinating Villa Lord Gokgang was no simple task.
Vanguard asked,
"Alright, what now? What do we do?"