The Shadow of Gluttony
Jekyeong immediately lashed out toward the direction of the voice. A tidal wave of fire swept across the area, melting the very earth and turning it into a bubbling volcanic wasteland.
"Am I wrong?" Standing atop the earth that now boiled like water, Jekyeong sneered openly.
"You are right. I am no dragon. But only because I have not become one yet. I know what I am. Becoming a true dragon is merely a matter of time for me. But you..."
Jekyeong shook his head with exaggerated pity, as if ensuring Jo Baek, wherever he was hiding, could see him.
"But not you. Your path to immortality has already been severed. Actually, even that is too generous a description. You are nothing but dregs. Am I wrong? You have already fallen into the cesspool with absolutely no hope of crawling out. All you can do now is grab at the ankles of others, desperately trying to drag them down into the same miserable state."
At first, Jekyeong had assumed Jo Baek had succumbed to deviation. But as they clashed, he naturally discarded that theory. While a cultivator who fell to their inner demons could sometimes gain power far exceeding their realm, Jo Baek's case went far beyond that. Moreover, his power was too alien. It was as if he had literally become one with the darkness of the Secret Realm.
"Dregs? Dregs?!" Jo Baek, who had been whispering craftily like a demon trying to unhinge Jekyeong's mind, finally lost his composure. The darkness, which had been radiating a cocktail of negative emotions, was suddenly consumed by a terrible, suffocating rage. In that instant, Jekyeong felt an overwhelming pressure crush his mind and body. It felt as if the world itself had grabbed him by the shoulders, glaring down at him with murderous intent.
"Arrogant fool! You know nothing! You talk as if you are so high and mighty, but in the end, you are no different from me!"
Something materialized from the shadows. It did not simply step out from a hiding place; rather, the darkness itself writhed and coalesced into a physical form. Like a newborn tearing its way out of a womb, it crawled out from the deepest, darkest abyss, shrieking a bizarre cry that was half-scream, half-howl.
Countless faces bubbled to the surface of its flesh and vanished. Among them were the faces of beasts, humans, and grotesque monsters of unknown origin. Some faces roared in sheer misery, while others glared at Jekyeong with raw, murderous intent.
"You..." The last face to surface was Jo Baek's. He glared at Jekyeong with eyes full of malice, only to burst into tears and wail in despair. Then... he too was sucked back into the darkness, vanishing from sight.
"You." From the absolute void where everything had vanished—a deeper darkness born from within the shadows—something suddenly thrust itself forward. It was a massive mouth. It was a grotesque lump of flesh with no eyes, no nose, and nothing but a single, gaping maw.
"You... you... You dare laugh at me? A mere insect... laughs at me? How dare... how dare you!" The voice was slurred and clumsy. Its pitch fluctuated erratically, cracking and breaking multiple times within a single sentence.
"It was almost complete! It was almost done! I... I am not dregs! Oh, Taotie! Please, grant me... grant me just one more chance!"
Jekyeong's expression hardened, his face turning an ashen gray. Despite the creature's seemingly unhinged and pathetic state, he felt an overwhelming sense of crisis. The incomprehensible, mad babbling faded into background noise. He could not afford to lose focus for even a second as he warily watched his writhing, agonized opponent.
"No, no! It is not... not too late! If I offer you... as a sacrifice! Yes, that is it!" A sticky, sickening ecstasy seemed to cling to the madman's shrieks.
Thud! The creature dragged the rest of its body completely out of the darkness. Only then could Jekyeong see its full, horrific form. A massive, gaping mouth sat where a head should be, attached to a thick, elongated trunk. It resembled a giant caterpillar, but its body was covered in a chaotic mess of appendages—arms, legs, tails, snouts, raw flesh, and chitinous shells. It looked as if a thousand different creatures had been violently mashed together into a single, writhing mass.
Jekyeong felt a wave of intense revulsion and dread wash over him from a single glance. He immediately realized this was no ordinary emotional reaction; it was a form of spiritual contamination.
"You! You arrogant insect! Ascend the Altar of Taotie!" The monster, as massive as a small mountain, lunged directly at him.
While Jekyeong clashed with the abomination that had once been Jo Baek, a similar scene was unfolding in another corner of the Secret Realm.
"Fo-forgive... forgive me!" Another mountain-sized monster suddenly aborted its charge, thrashing and twisting its body in agony.
"..." Myeong-ha watched the creature, his lips twitching into a tight, grim line. Inside, however, his heart was cold with dread. The monster's erratic behavior was absurd, but the raw pressure it radiated was anything but a joke. I cannot fight this thing. Far from fighting back, simply standing in its presence felt as if it were draining the very life from his soul. If he did not actively force himself, he would forget to breathe.
I have no choice. Myeong-ha grit his teeth and swept his hand through the air. Instantly, four Foundation Establishment cultivators with vacant, unfocused eyes materialized before him. Each of them radiated the powerful aura of at least the Foundation Establishment Middle Stage. The moment these Lost-Soul Puppets appeared, the monster's chaotic, rolling eyes locked onto them.
"A sa-sacrifice..." the monster mumbled, snapping its massive jaws in the empty air. With a sickening crunch, the entire upper torso of one of the Foundation Establishment puppets was instantly sheared away. Myeong-ha's eyes twitched at the sight. Suppressing his horror, he hastily commanded the remaining Lost-Soul Puppets to draw the beast's attention while he quietly slipped away into the shadows.
"Damn it! What the hell is that thing?!" a rough-looking man roared, cursing as he leaped desperately through the air. Pursuing hot on his heels was a colossal, centipede-like abomination with thousands of writhing legs. As if possessed by a singular, mad obsession, it tore through the terrain, obliterating every obstacle in its path.
"It's no use! It's catching up!" Beside the cursing man fled an old cultivator with a sage-like appearance. Though he possessed the refined, dignified features of a classic immortal, his face was currently twisted in sheer terror and desperation, stripping him of any transcendent grace.
"We must strike it again!"
"Damn it! You make it sound so bloody easy!"
"Do not speak as if I have been idling! Do you not understand? If we cannot shake this thing off, we are dead!"
"Fine! I get it! You had better not hold back your strength! If I fail, old man, you are going down with me!"
"Hmph! I do not need you to remind me!"
The rough-looking man reached out, and a long, golden staff materialized in his grip. Clutching it tightly, he took a deep breath and spun around. *Thump! Thump!* The sight of the colossal beast filling his entire field of vision made his face pale. Yet, grit his teeth, he swung the staff. The weapon, which had been barely longer than his own height, elongated in a flash. By the time it slammed down toward the monster's head, it had grown into a towering pillar massive enough to prop up the heavens.
"Begone!" As the staff—now thousands of times its original size—smashed into the monster's head, a bell that had floated up into the air unleashed a radiant, multicolored light. *Gong—!* The man's roar and the thunderous impact of the mountain-sized staff were completely drowned out by the beautiful, resonant chime of the bell. Yet, a sinister, insidious power lurked beneath that sweet melody. The monster, which had barely flinched from the physical blow, shrieked in agony and writhed the moment the sound waves washed over it.
"Now!" At the old man's signal, the rough-looking cultivator unleashed another full-power strike. The golden pillar, towering high enough to pierce the heavens, crashed down once more. Caught completely defenseless, the monster was driven deep into the earth. Without wasting a single second, the two cultivators fled at their absolute maximum speed.
From their very first clash, they had realized with absolute certainty that this abomination was not something they could defeat. Its bizarre, overwhelming strength was terrifying enough, but the worst part was that it simply could not be killed. This was no figure of speech; it was a literal, horrifying fact. They could unleash their ultimate techniques to slow it down or even temporarily incapacitate it, but the respite never lasted. By the time they had caught their breath, the monster would rise again, completely unscathed as if it had never felt pain in the first place.
"It will be back on our tails soon!" the man panted heavily, tossing several alchemical pills into his mouth. "Old man! How many more times can you pull that off?"
"Two more times at most. And you?"
"Damn it! About the same!"
It was a pointless exchange. Even putting aside the fact that neither would ever give a completely honest answer to the other, whether they could endure two more clashes or three made no difference. Unless they solved the root of the problem, the end result would be exactly the same.
"A mountain!" In the outside world, they could have scanned miles away with their Divine Sense without moving an inch. Here, however, they were forced to rely entirely on their physical eyes. To make matters worse, this wretched place was shrouded in pitch-black darkness, severely limiting their vision. Case in point: they had only noticed the massive peak looming before them when they practically ran into its base.
"Perfect! We can catch our breath for a moment!" Even that horrific abomination possessed a weakness—or perhaps a flaw was a better word. Its mind was utterly fractured. In the middle of combat, it would suddenly shriek and thrash about as if fighting invisible foes, or endlessly mutter incoherent gibberish. Consequently, its tracking capabilities were remarkably poor. Whether its own spiritual senses were suppressed like theirs, or its shattered psyche simply prevented it from utilizing them, the monster always took a considerable amount of time to relocate them once they broke line of sight.
*Cough!* Hiding at the foot of the mountain, they gasped for air, desperately trying to stabilize the chaotic backflow of their Dharma Power and the volatile medicinal energy in their veins. The backlash of their Dharma Power was a natural consequence of the relentless, high-intensity combat. The medicinal backlash, however, was a direct result of Pill Poison, triggered by their reckless consumption of alchemical pills to replenish their depleted reserves.
As Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivators, the pills they consumed were of at least mid-grade quality. While this meant the concentration of Pill Poison was relatively low, it was far from nonexistent. Furthermore, swallowing them by the handful instead of the recommended dosage of one or two at a time was a surefire recipe for disaster.
"Did they not say this place has been sealed for over seven thousand years? How can such an abomination even exist here?"
"It is likely one of two things. Either a native beast of this Secret Realm was corrupted by the residual malice of the two Core Formation masters, or..."
Before the old man could finish his sentence, the entire mountain shuddered violently.
*BOOM!*
The mountainside exploded outward in a shower of rock and debris, and a monstrous entity large enough to blot out the sky burst into view. No, upon closer inspection, it was not a single creature. Two colossal beasts, locked in a savage, tangled embrace, had torn clean through the mountain.
"What in the...!"
Both the rough-looking man and the sage-like elder gaped in sheer disbelief. They recognized at a glance that one of the two combatants was of the exact same nature as the horror that had been pursuing them. But a moment later, a chilling realization struck them.
"No, wait! It is the same kind of creature... but a different individual!"
The aura was identical—the same grotesque, ominous pressure. Yet, its physical form was distinct. Furthermore, the beast they had been fleeing was supposed to be hot on their heels from behind. How could it possibly burst out from the front, let alone locked in a death match with another titan?
"But... what on earth is that other thing?"
They stared at the second beast locked in combat with the abomination. In terms of sheer mass, it was even larger than its opponent, yet its overall form was infinitely more natural, resembling a majestic, living creature rather than a stitched-together nightmare.