The Hidden Cave of the Demoness
The Demoness of Dark Flames, Cheongsa-wol, had reached the Murim Alliance headquarters. She slid her hand into her bosom and pulled out a long needle.
She stared at it as if in a trance.
“How is this metal so beautiful? And how on earth did that human make such a hard object into a needle?”
Cheongsa-wol turned her gaze sideways. Next to the bed lay dozens of Heavenly Meteorite Stone fragments arranged on a silk pouch.
Just looking at it made her cheeks plump with the beauty of the metal!
One day she had spotted those blue wave-patterned metals and fallen in love, collecting them ever since.
Of course, all of them had been stolen.
“One day I will create a statue with these. It will be magnificent, won’t it?”
A soft, satisfied smile curved her lips. She placed the new acquisition among the Heavenly Meteorite Stones, then slipped out of the chamber.
It was time to visit the residence of a high-ranking official in Luoyang. The dead of night was the perfect time for her to act.
Finally she glanced back at the cliff.
‘Perfect. No one will ever know if anyone approaches.’
The array she had painstakingly installed years ago would protect her hidden chamber completely.
***
Yuseong stood before the cliff, carefully scanning his surroundings.
The moonlight tonight was especially bright, allowing him to see clearly.
A massive boulder. Thick trees that looked ancient. Earth that bore not a single footprint.
Nothing looked out of place.
“Perhaps the thief used some kind of trick to shake us off, don’t you think?”
“That’s possible… It could be. What if he buried the needle in the ground?”
“It would be a shame to turn back without checking. Let’s dig anyway.”
Godeong-jin’s words prompted Tang Harin to exchange a brief thought with her spiritual beast.
“I don’t think so… but let’s at least try that.”
The voices of Godeong-jin and Tang Harin rose and fell.
Yeomul no longer moved forward and simply circled in place.
Once he suspected a formation, other details became visible.
Regularly placed thick trees and the position of the boulders.
The trees had clearly been planted in their original spots, so the boulders were suspicious.
They were placed in perfect symmetry with the cliff in front of Yeomul.
It looked deliberate.
Yuseong assumed a formation had been laid here.
‘I see it.’
The axis connecting the cliff to the trees.
The axis connecting the boulders to each other.
Overlapping between them.
‘Three centers.’
Yuseong’s mind spun rapidly.
To unravel the formation, he only needed to find one central artifact.
Using what he had learned from Jegal Yeong-yeong, he quickly located the answer.
‘That’s it.’
Among countless trees and boulders, one boulder the size of a human head connected every axis.
The thief must have chosen that boulder as the central artifact to make the formation easy to cast.
“Yurin-ah, don’t touch anything else. Let me push this boulder.”
“This one?”
“Yeah, that one. It feels like the formation is active.”
“A formation? I don’t sense anything.”
It was said that masters with strong inner energy could detect the aura of low-level formations.
But that was separate from actually unraveling one.
“Nothing?”
The formation must be higher level than he expected. It was a pity he couldn’t feel it directly.
“Yes, but I’ll push it anyway.”
Yuseong watched to see if his guess was correct.
Without an artifact, formations never lasted long.
The reason was simple: the positions of the components kept changing.
But…
Trees and large boulders hardly ever moved.
Using them as mediators allowed formations to last for a long time.
When Namgung Yurin shifted the boulder’s position…
“Ah…?”
In the center of the cliff, where air should have been thick, the space suddenly twisted and a cave entrance appeared.
“It really is a formation!”
“No, Lord of the Clinic. I knew about the formation test you performed earlier, but you found one I couldn’t detect!”
Godeong-jin gazed at Yuseong with admiration for unraveling the formation without inner energy.
“The level of the formation appears quite high. It made the empty cave look like a solid cliff. If it also blocks aura, it’s definitely advanced.”
“But Lord of the Clinic unraveled it immediately.”
“Because Yuseong is simply better at it!”
Tang Harin puffed up her chest and shouted without reason.
Normally, forming a formation was far harder than unraveling it. If you touched the wrong artifact, the formation tangled even more, but unraveling still required only precise calculation.
“The thief must be hiding inside. Let’s go in quickly. Yeomul is moving again.”
The moment the cave opened, Yeomul surged forward once more. The group stepped inside.
“…”
Only a few steps in and Yuseong’s vision darkened.
Outside, moonlight had barely let him see; inside, he couldn’t see at all.
But with the others around, he stepped in without worry.
“Be careful. There’s something on the floor.”
“Oh, thank you, Yurin-ah.”
“No, grab me instead.”
When two people walked side by side in the narrow cave, Yuseong pressed close to Namgung Yurin until their shoulders brushed.
Masters concentrated their internal energy, making their pupils faintly glow.
In the darkness, a glimpse of Namgung Yurin’s blue eyes appeared.
And then…
A faint green light ahead stopped. It turned its gaze this way.
‘Now that I think about it, Yurin and Harin haven’t said a word to each other. Why?’
They had been close once…
The cave inside was longer than expected.
They had believed the nameless formation at the entrance and encountered no other arrays or traps.
Installing traps in such a narrow space would have been troublesome.
Of course, with Yuseong along, even serious injuries were no concern.
“There’s a door ahead!”
Godeong-jin announced.
Yeomul stopped in front of it and scratched furiously with its claws.
Scrch-
A chilling sound.
“It looks like an iron door. No handle.”
“No hinges either.”
Godeong-jin pushed and pulled with all his strength, but the door didn’t budge.
Yuseong’s buffs made no difference.
It was either locked from the inside or sealed with some special device. The group, lacking experience with mechanisms, found no solution.
“I guess we’ll have to cut it. Step back.”
Tang Harin moved aside. Godeong-jin stepped forward, his sword sheathed in sword qi.
Sword qi could easily slice through a simple iron door.
A flash of light.
Everyone present had believed the blade would slice cleanly.
Zing-!
With a sharp metallic ring, the sword slid off.
“What?”
“What? No scratch…”
“No way…”
Tang Harin muttered.
“Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron…”
“What?”
“This door seems to be made of it.”
“Now that I look again, the panel is especially dark. It must be Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.”
“It feels cold and refreshing to the touch. Confirmed.”
Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.
A pitch-black metal that naturally emitted cold, refreshing energy.
Not as rare as Heavenly Meteorite Stone, but still incredibly valuable.
A blade made with just a little of it became an exceptional sword. A solid one was called legendary.
The drawback was the difficulty of processing it…
“A solid Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron door? This place must be insanely rich…”
“That’s not the problem. Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron can’t be cut by anything except sword qi?”
“We should go back and fetch the others. Still, it’s encouraging. We should bring even the Vice Leader or the Clan Leader. Just this door is worth an enormous fortune!”
Godeong-jin shouted in excitement.
He had secretly resented being dragged out here to search for a single needle at night, but now that they had a huge success…
“That’s the way to go, Yuseong. If he’s guarding up ahead, the thief can’t escape, right?”
“Correct. I’ll guard here. You go quickly. There might be enormous treasures inside.”
A place guarded by a Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron door.
Something felt off.
“We don’t know what’s inside and you want to leave one person behind?”
If unlucky, there might be a master inside who could not be handled alone.
Godeong-jin could find no words when Yuseong pointed this out.
He had ventured out bravely only because he believed they could handle even a Transcendent master together.
At that moment, Namgung Yurin’s voice rang out.
“I’ll do it.”
Namgung Yurin had once used sword qi during the Sichuan expedition.
Many eyewitnesses had been present, but most now thought it was something similar rather than true sword qi.
Yet anyone would recognize that she had cut Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.
Her willingness to endure a little commotion.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I wasn’t trying to hide it on purpose. And if we go back, the thief might escape in the meantime.”
There was no guarantee the exit was only here.
There might be another way in or out.
But breaking through here was the fastest option.
“Alright, I’ll leave it to you.”
“Ready.”
Namgung Yurin turned slightly, exposing her back.
Yuseong pressed his palm against the holy bloodline on Namgung Yurin’s neck.
Divine power spread evenly. A sustained healing skill activated instantly.
Thanks to her training, she could now cast it effortlessly.
“Done.”
“Everyone, step aside for a moment.”
Because the cave was narrow, Namgung Yurin had asked the escort warriors to move.
“Oh, right.”
They stepped aside without understanding.
Tang Harin moved aside silently.
Crack-!
Blue sword qi erupted with thunder.
Yeomul, who had been scratching the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron door, was startled and hid behind Tang Harin.
“Sword qi!”
“It really was sword qi!”
In an instant the cave brightened. Yuseong’s eyes widened at the sight of the warriors’ faces.
He even saw Tang Harin’s embarrassed expression as she clenched her lips.
‘There must be something going on between them.’
Namgung Yurin swung her sword without a care.
Swish-!
A light, clean slicing sound—nothing like the heavy strike Godeong-jin had made.
The door panel cracked diagonally.
“It’s done!”
Unlike the narrow cave where shoulders brushed when walking side by side, a vast chamber opened before them.
Even without torches, the interior was clearly visible to Yuseong’s inner-energy-free eyes.
Thanks to over a hundred glowing amber beads embedded in the walls and ceiling.
“Amber beads this expensive… how many are there!”
The formation using aging artifacts and the careful use of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron for the door.
Looking at the expensive amber beads and the neatly arranged items beneath, it clearly wasn’t a simple temporary hideout.
“Yuseong, you said the woman might be the Demoness of Dark Flames, right…? We seem to have found an enormous place.”