Chapter 36
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: God's Art of Poison
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Nemeth could tell at a glance that Deyan was just bluffing.
How could he possibly be fine?
The poison had melted even a knight who had honed that body his entire life in an instant.
And yet he claimed to be okay?
Even for a poison master, that was impossible.
'He dares try to fool the continent's greatest poison artist?'
He had become the top poison master in his family before even reaching adulthood, devouring every forbidden text in the house and slaughtering all other poison masters.
And now his poison didn't work?
Ridiculous. He seemed skilled enough, but it was time to break that arrogant nose of his.
"Fine. I'll give you my all..."
Toppling the poison beast had been unexpected, but that wasn't all Nemeth had.
If it were, he wouldn't be this confident!
"I've changed my mind. You're an insolent fool who can't appreciate art."
"Oh ho...?"
"I'll kill you and use your blood to brew my poison."
Nemeth's form vanished in an instant.
By the time Deyan opened his eyes again...
Shaaaaack!!
Nemeth's poison claws lunged for his throat. But Nemeth's hands grasped only empty air, mocking him.
"...!!"
Where is he!
Where did he go!
"Looks like your eyes are getting dim."
Nemeth looked up. Deyan stood atop the demon statue's elongated tongue.
"You dare...! You dare trample my artwork?!"
Nemeth lost his reason. He transformed into a cloud of poison smoke and soared.
In an instant, Nemeth and Deyan were engulfed in black smoke.
Through the haze, glimpses of their shadows fiercely clashed.
Suddenly... a powerful gust pierced the black smoke, transforming Nemeth's body into a bat-like shape that shot toward the ceiling.
"...!!"
Nemeth stared blankly at his arm, scratched as if by a beast's claws.
It was a wound from their recent exchange.
Deyan still stood with arms crossed, simply watching him.
But more humiliating than the wound or pain was that attitude.
No matter what move he made, it was as if Deyan was saying, go ahead, show me.
That gaze—like looking at a dimwit!
"Kieeeaaah...!!"
Nemeth let out a monstrous screech.
Countless poisons and venomous insects erupted from his black smoke, swarming Deyan... but Deyan let them come, as if savoring it.
The insects trying to burrow into his skin couldn't pierce it and fell away hollow, while the poison qi slowly absorbed into Deyan's body.
Deyan said with a satisfied expression.
"To lay out such a feast... I hardly know what to do with myself."
He shook his hand once.
A splashing sound came from his palm, followed by a flash of light.
'Danger...!'
Nemeth hurriedly leaped from his spot and retreated further. His judgment was spot on.
Flashes erupted where he'd stood, cratering the floor.
"Huuuuh!"
Nemeth panted heavily as he landed atop the demon statue's head.
He thought he'd dodged it all, but then a faint fluttering came from beside him.
"Butterflies...?"
Countless butterflies swarmed in beside him.
They suddenly descended onto the demon statue.
And then...
Kwajijijik...!
Hidden weapons struck like lightning, embedding into the statue.
Cracks spiderwebbed across it, mirroring Nemeth's shattered heart.
"Keheeeuk...!"
Nemeth had already been flung from the statue, his body pathetically crashing to the floor.
This couldn't be happening.
To be toyed with like a child?
Did such a person exist in the world?
No great mage could match him without risking their life.
Not even a knight who slayed dragons.
And yet this leisurely demeanor!
'I can't forgive him... I won't forgive him...!'
Nemeth unleashed his energy, flinging the embedded weapons from his body.
Deyan tilted his head at the sight.
"Is that all? Too anticlimactic..."
He didn't know what method Deyan used.
But the more they exchanged moves, the more it felt like the poison in his body was being sucked away.
Now he was certain.
This guy absorbs poison qi!
He didn't know the constitution, but a prolonged fight would put him at risk.
Who could have guessed his greatest strength—poison—would become his poison?
Deyan's arrogant gaze crushed Nemeth's pride and twisted his guts.
'He dares...! He dares!!'
In rage, Nemeth began chanting an incomprehensible incantation.
His eyes turned pitch black.
"Heh heh heh heh..."
A power he shouldn't use due to its instability.
But unbearable fury led him to taboo.
Poison drooled from Nemeth's mouth in drops. He descended from the ceiling again.
Unlike his earlier flustered state, he cracked his neck before Deyan with a tuduk sound.
This boy was no longer a match for him.
He twisted his head grotesquely and curled his lips.
"Heh heh heh heh..."
A chilling, immense power flowed from Nemeth's body.
This was the power of the ancient demon...!
The Evil Society.
They sought the power of the exterminated demons to claim it for themselves.
Even this unstable ritual-born demon power was this ferocious...!
Now he could do it.
God's art.
He could let this boy taste the pinnacle of poison!
"Praise be..."
Nemeth raised both arms high. The stained glass windows shattered spectacularly.
If only the sunlight would pour down fiercely.
As if to strip away even the faintest hope from Deyan.
Like falling raindrops, shadows slowly descended.
Nemeth looked at the boy again.
Why had he been so excited earlier?
Why had he hounded this boy so?
'All futile.'
Seeing the boy as a rival had been pathetic.
Like a snake shedding its skin, he discarded his former self. Now the boy looked so small.
Had he truly fought such a child?
"Why bother struggling so?"
He'd preached so fervently to a child ignorant of art's path—how foolish he seemed.
"Third son of Pador..."
At his call, Deyan uncrossed his arms and swallowed hard.
"Just... turn to ash."
No need for him now. Pleas for mercy would be useless.
Nemeth extended his hand. The writhing shadows from the walls stretched long, engulfing Deyan.
"...!!"
Deyan unleashed Shadow Step, escaping once more and deploying every technique he could muster, but it wasn't enough.
The blackness slowly consumed him.
Soon Deyan slumped against the throne, his skin melting away until only bones remained.
"Do you know? House Pador walks the path of ruin, and the princess will never become emperor. That's the natural order. Just as you can't defeat a god... that's the natural order. A cruel fate, child who struggled. Had you taken this body's hand, that fate might have changed."
Then that throne would have been the boy's seat.
He would have inherited his essence and lorded over others!
Rejecting a god's hand meant he couldn't escape his fate.
"Poor thing..."
As he pitied the child whose talent never bloomed and turned to leave.
"Interesting."
"...?"
In the darkness, the skeleton Deyan's lips moved.
How...?
"Such feeble poison."
Nemeth snapped his fingers.
"Stubbornly clinging to life."
The darkness tried to swallow him again, but...
"You said it yourself. Poison is most beautiful when the victim doesn't notice."
"...?!"
Doesn't notice...?
What?
That moment.
The blackness washed away like filth as sunlight poured in from all sides. Nemeth frantically scanned the inexplicable phenomenon.
Soon he realized who caused it.
The throne swallowed by darkness reemerged.
It was Deyan.
He sat as before, chin propped on his hand, looking down at Nemeth. Deyan murmured.
"On that, I agree. Quite the ridiculous sight."
His voice echoed like awakening from a dream.
A splitting headache briefly gripped him.
Nemeth's vision blurred then sharpened.
"Wha... haha... ha?"
Everything was unchanged.
The powdered demon statue, the shattered stained glass, the wrecked chapel.
Not a single scratch anywhere.
Nemeth looked at his hands. They were melting. Poison...
"Kueeek...!"
Nemeth vomited black blood.
Since when?
His eyes caught the lit candles on the massive tree-shaped candelabras.
Those candles, that scent?
Wasn't it the poison he used to drug the duke?
No, precisely... it was different from his.
A purer, pristine white...
Capable of such a scent?
"How... how did you make this?"
"The poison you used on the duke was decent. I just tweaked the formula."
"Impossible... this is that poison? How?"
"Don't limit poison. The limit is you."
"Heh heh... is that so? Then, poison master, what's this poison called?"
"An on-the-spot refinement, no name. Just one of many hallucinogenic poisons."
"Hah... nameless, eh."
He'd been utterly toyed with.
Only now did he realize the vast gulf between himself and the boy on the throne.
The boy gazed down from the heavens.
Had he been the insignificant one all along?
As he lost his senses.
Deyan spoke.
"Blame your opponent. The Ten Thousand Poisons Heavenly King Divine Art turns all poisons into nourishment."
Deyan leaned forward.
"Thanks to you, I safely passed the Hungry Ghost Realm, bug."
The core art Deyan cultivated was an ancient divine technique rooted in poison.
Ten Thousand Poisons Heavenly King Divine Art. Its second stage.
A mummified, starvation-like state requiring endless poison supply.
The Hungry Ghost Realm—a name that fit perfectly—and Nemeth had let him cross it in one go.
He was just unlucky.
His opponent was the lord of poisons.
"...Ha... haha ha ha."
Nemeth laughed vacantly.
Bug?
Him?
In a lifetime as a poison master, he'd never suffered such humiliation.
He thought he'd conquered the world.
Yet he'd never seen the heavens.
"An illusion from the start?"
This wasn't his poison domain anymore.
Once the boy entered, he'd lost his claim as lord.
Naturally deceiving the eye, ravaging undetected.
What chilling art!
The lord of poisons.
This was someone who had reached its pinnacle!
"Heh heh heh... Your true name is Deyan?"
"Call me the Dark Venerable."
"Dark Venerable... uncanny. Yet so... beautiful..."
From his toes up, Nemeth's body stiffened. Even as true hallucinogenic poison paralyzed every nerve, he stared at Deyan.
As if trying to etch a god's art into his soul.
"This is the true god's ar..."
Nemeth's voice cut off. His eyes, lips, fingertips—all froze.
Yet Nemeth would suffer endlessly in hallucination...
Until his mind shattered,
his body rotted,
and true death claimed him.
Deyan clicked his tongue at the rigid Nemeth.
The poison master Nemeth.
No weakling by any means.
Had Deyan not been a poison master, he might not have come alone.
But Nemeth wielded poison.
And so.
"The Sichuan Tang Clan can't lose to poison."
He was the Dark Venerable.
The one who ascended to the pinnacle of Murim with poison and hidden weapons.
A warrior of the great Sichuan Tang Clan.
I clicked my tongue at Nemeth, his body rotting away.
"God's art, huh..."
The madman who saw poison as art called me that before dying.
But he had no right to speak of gods' art or whatever.
Despite his personality, Nemeth was a true powerhouse in skill, but in Murim terms, he fell short of the top in poison.
Murim had the Demonic Cult's Pyeongwol Poison Sovereign, Yunnan's Five Poisons Palace, and above all... the supreme Sichuan Tang Clan.
Had the vicious lord of Yunnan's Five Poisons Palace or the Pyeongwol Poison Sovereign heard Nemeth?
All hundred would say the same.
-That's god's art? Any dog or cow can do that!
Of course, "dog or cow" is nonsense. Murim would be a poison swamp otherwise.
But Nemeth's poison arts weren't worthy of "god's art"—I agreed wholeheartedly.
The only thing Murim's poison masters called god's art was one.
A fantasy to poison masters, an unachieved dream.
The Body of Ten Thousand Poisons.
That alone was poison's end, worthy of god's art.
The dream realm I pursued in the Tang Clan.
I cultivated the Ten Thousand Poisons Heavenly King Divine Art to achieve it, so in a way, he and I chased the same.
But even with eternal life, he'd never reach the Body of Ten Thousand Poisons.
Why?
Poison arts here hadn't advanced like in Murim.
Everything else aside, poison had a gap between Murim and this world.
Plus, only one way to achieve it: the Ten Thousand Poisons Heavenly King Divine Art. So he'd have chased illusions forever.
"Still, thanks. Didn't expect to cross the Hungry Ghost Realm this easily."
The hell those cultivating the Ten Thousand Poisons Heavenly King Divine Art face.
The Hungry Ghost Realm demands massive poison qi. Only a poison-flooded place like the Tang Clan dares attempt it.
No doubt.
You eat poison like rice.
I figured it'd take me at least five years of constant intake...
But look—Nemeth solved it neatly.
I absorbed all his poison qi and that of his domain.
This place was like a cozy hot spring.
I took a deep breath.
"Refreshing."
Now, time to investigate?
First up: the demon statue.
He didn't worship poison by coincidence. And too many suspicious things to call this a chance find.
Especially that eerie form before death.
Like a demon itself.
Plenty of reason to check.
Looking around, I saw scriptures scattered on the floor.
I picked one up...
"Hm?"
This... looks like scripture written by some lunatic.
Tried reading, but ancient text?
Can't make heads or tails.
But the creepy illustrations scream demon-related.
Demonic Cultists would worship it as holy.
Definitely. Tied to demons. And he's from the Evil Society?
Evil Society and demons—connected. Worth digging more.
Take it for now?
As I pocketed the demon scripture.
"...?"
Found a letter slipped inside.
What?
I unfolded it immediately.
But.
Is there no issue with the poison supplied to that child? I'd appreciate confirmation.
Why does this handwriting feel so familiar?
"Huh?"
I knew why it felt familiar.
No signature, but I knew the writer.
If I didn't, I wouldn't be me.
This is...
"Ian, your letter?"