Chapter 65
"Kraaaah!"
"Krorararara!"
"Shaaaa!"
As the goema were battered by fragments raining down like hail, Sama Ryeong spat out a curse and sprang into the air.
"Damn it!"
The goema troops that Geom Mujin had just wiped out were one of the cult’s key strategic weapons.
They were supposed to stand at the forefront of the cult’s revenge campaign, the force that would announce the Heavenly Demon Sect’s rebirth someday—and now they had been reduced to nothing more than dead goema troops.
Do you have any idea how much money and time it takes to make just one goema soldier?
Turning a demon into a goema wasn’t the end of it. Before they even became goema, they had to be fed hallucination drugs at every meal to dull their minds, then kept under constant brainwashing.
And that still wasn’t the end.
To infiltrate enemy lines, they had to be disguised with sorcery to look human in ordinary circumstances, and that ate up absurd amounts of money and manpower.
They were a bottomless money pit, pure and simple.
But the special value of goema made those drawbacks worth swallowing.
Grade A was too much to hope for, but even one standard-grade goema was fine; a Grade B goema was a jackpot.
No matter how much money it took, all you had to do was make enough Grade B goema to make up the difference!
In that sense, the goema troops he’d brought weren’t even especially elite among goema—just standard-grade.
Wolfmen, giant serpents, and battle green demons.
Among goema, they were fairly common types.
And now even the fish-man goema is dead!
But the fish-man goema were different.
Low-ranked in terms of raw strength, sure, but they were rare types, which made them valuable.
Not to mention they were far superior in underwater combat to anyone trained in ordinary hand techniques.
For those guys to get their skulls caved in and die—it ignited a furnace inside Sama Ryeong’s chest.
I don’t know what kind of bastard you are, but I’m going to kill you.
The instinct he’d felt when their eyes met for a split second back there had been bad. He should have killed Geom Mujin then.
"You bastard! Where do you think you’re going, leaving this lord behind?"
Bang Dupil immediately gave chase from behind.
The sudden appearance of the goema troops and Geom Mujin had put things into a temporary lull, but he had no intention of forgetting why he’d come in the first place.
Just as Sama Ryeong wanted to beat Geom Mujin to a pulp—whether that was possible was another matter—he wanted to smash Sama Ryeong just as badly.
The moment his hand reached for Sama Ryeong’s leg—
"You sickening bastard! I’ll tear you into pieces!"
He swung his sword, extending its blade qi like a whip.
The dancing blade qi crashed over Bang Dupil.
This was on a different level from the earlier techniques that had only torn at his skin.
Slash—!
The blade qi swept across his left arm, severing it cleanly.
"Enough playing around."
Once Geom Mujin stripped the teasing from his hands, Bang Dupil was crushed without mercy.
No matter how fiercely Bang Dupil had hardened his resolve, the gap between them was simply too vast to bridge.
Shhrrk—!
"Khuuugh...!"
Bang Dupil coughed up blood and toppled backward.
His will absolutely did not want to fall, but his body—hacked apart all over—refused to obey.
"Hmph. Filthy little insect."
Clack—
"This should be fine here."
Snorting at the collapsed man, Sama Ryeong hid the cage containing Baekdu Cheongak-eung inside one corner of the ship and moved again.
For some reason, there had been some kind of poisonous mist at the back of the ship, but while he was dealing with Bang Dupil it had vanished without a trace.
It had appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as suddenly. He must have been seeing things.
"Not only did you dare ruin our cult’s ceremony, you damaged property too! I’ll dismember you for this!"
And just like that, he made the same lunatic choice Bang Dupil had made when he charged him earlier.
Watching him, the other man swung his sword.
* * *
"What, is that idiot for real?"
I tilted my head at the demonic sect bastard diving down from the sky.
Why the hell was he attacking like that?
If you’re going to ambush someone, do it quietly and keep out of sight.
That kind of move is only allowed for wuxia GOSU, okay?
"I’ll tear you apart!"
The guy wielded the whip—no, the sword wrapped in a whip-like blade qi—and slashed it through the air.
Whoosh—!
The whip traced a spiral around its center.
No way...?
Just seeing that spiral made my chest heat up for no reason, a weird surge of excitement rolling through me.
Ryujan Sword Formula.
Spiral Descent Piercing Strike.
The violently rotating spiral didn’t fall toward the sky.
It fell to pierce me.
"Honestly, this works out."
I’d been wondering what the hell to do about it, and now the problem had basically handed itself over to me.
Geom Mujin tightened his grip on the sword held in reverse.
Crack—! Crack crack—!
Tendons and veins in his right arm twitched and bulged.
Mujin Sword Style.
Chenyin Sword.
Reverse Dragon Slash.
Wooooong—!
The rotation of the Hoahyeol, which had been spiraling inward around the blade, reversed direction.
The essence of the Chenyin Sword in the Mujin Sword Style lies in circulation and rotation.
It takes the pull and repulsion born in that circulating rotation and packs them into the sword.
The dragon that spits, and the tiger that devours.
If the Hoahyeol draws everything around it in, then the Reverse Dragon Slash unleashes it all in one go!
"Hup!"
The sharply swung blade drew a crescent moon through the air.
At the same moment, the air bound around the blade was released as a cutting wave.
BOOOOM—!!
With a blast that sounded like a cannon going off, the Reverse Dragon Slash shot upward in an instant and slammed into Sama Ryeong.
"As if something like that...!"
He’d thought a mere cutting wave—neither blade qi nor sword gang—would be easy to punch through in one shot, but that thought didn’t last long.
KRK-RK-KRK—!
The spiral wrapped in blade qi failed to pierce the slash and was stopped cold.
No—worse than that, it was being pushed back.
Even with the force of its descent added on, the sheer power of that compressed, bursting cutting wave was beyond imagination.
At this rate, he was going to get cut to ribbons!
"Kraaah...!"
The pressure of the slash felt like it was going to burst his eyeballs, but Sama Ryeong clenched his teeth and twisted the tip of his blade, angling the spiral sideways.
KRK-CRACK-CRASH—!
Only then did Sama Ryeong barely manage to divert the Reverse Dragon Slash.
"Hah...! Hah!"
He landed on the deck and gasped for breath, having just barely survived.
Crackling—!
His mask of illusion began to fracture and break apart.
Relief nearly escaped him on instinct at the realization that he was still alive, but that was far too early.
"Cough! Cough!"
Dark blood spewed from his mouth.
Not only that, but his head swam and his limbs grew heavy.
"Poison!?"
He cried out in shock at the textbook symptoms of poisoning.
Since when...!?
"Idiot. You should’ve dodged instead of blocking it."
The poison mist he had gathered together was mixed into the Reverse Dragon Slash he’d just unleashed.
What did he expect, blocking a poison-attribute attack head-on—of course he’d get poisoned instead of just cut.
"!?"
Startled by Geom Mujin’s voice coming from point-blank range, Sama Ryeong tried to step back.
"Oh? You’re not leaving already."
Geom Mujin grinned and held something out toward Sama Ryeong.
"You’re the one I picked. Poison spitting!"
"Kekheek...!"
Smack—!
As Geom Mujin slapped her back, Dang Yulin—no, the poison left over in Dang Yulin’s body—sprayed out like a misting bottle.
"Aaaagh...!"
Sama Ryeong screamed as the poison hit him full in the face.
Watching that, Geom Mujin snickered and tucked Dang Yulin under his arm.
"Khk...! You bastard! Do you even know who I am to be pulling crap like this? What the hell are you?"
With poison in his eyes and his vision still refusing to clear, he tried to buy time.
If you thought about his opponent’s identity, maybe it would have been better if his sight never came back at all.
"Me? I’m the hidden existence of the Eight Demon Generals, and the ninth Demon Lord, Lyugeumma."
"W-What?"
Sama Ryeong momentarily forgot his pain and panicked.
The Eight Demon Generals had all perished in the last Orthodox-Demonic War except for one.
The hidden existence of the Eight Demon Generals, and the ninth Demon Lord?
It was a strangely romantic combination that stirred something deep in the chest, but it was still hard to believe.
"D-Damn you! What kind of nonsense are you spouting!? I’ve never heard there was someone like you!"
"Hmm... looks like Hwanma didn’t tell you."
"Th-Then—hk!?"
The moment he started to agree, he clamped a hand over his mouth.
How did that bastard know His Excellency was alive!?
Officially, the Eight Demon Generals were all supposed to be dead!
It was a fact only a true, true cultist could know, and that made his suspicion wobble.
"So, what exactly do you do?"
His tone had subtly become more respectful when he asked that, in the hope that maybe this would all make sense somehow.
He didn’t ask why the man had suddenly appeared and started harassing him.
A demonic cultist being a total psycho was nothing new.
Even other cultists acknowledged that much, so it was easier to just think, Yeah, another demonic cult bastard being a demonic cult bastard.
"What do I do?"
Geom Mujin lowered his voice, as if about to reveal some top-secret information.
"Since fate brought us together like this, I’ll give you a special lesson. I do something very important for the cult."
"...And what is that?"
Sama Ryeong leaned in, ears pricked.
"Me?"
Geom Mujin opened his mouth in a hushed tone.
"I check whether your mother is alive or dead."
"What?"
Either poison had gotten into his ears too, or he’d just heard complete nonsense.
His mother? The mother he knew about?
"W-What do you mean by—"
"Ah, you don’t get it from my epithet being Lyugeumma? Yeo-geum-ma... no, Lyu. Geum. Ma."
Geom Mujin explained with all the patience of a man speaking to someone hopelessly slow, but that only made it more incomprehensible.
What did Lyugeumma have to do with whether his mother was alive or dead?
"Unfortunately, there are a lot of our cult brothers who don’t have mothers. You’re one of them too."
"......"
Sama Ryeong answered with silence, which counted as agreement.
He thought Geom Mujin had somehow seen through him, but men who went around doing this kind of thing usually had miserable family lives; even a blind guess got you seven or eight out of ten right.
"Still not convinced, huh? Then let me hit you with the deluxe bloodletting service. Do you know about the previous cult leader’s mother?"
"I do."
As far as he knew, the previous cult leader’s mother died after giving birth to him.
Not just the previous one—almost every cult leader had no mother.
It sounded ugly when put that way, but it was true.
Apparently Heavenly Demon seed was just too strong, and the mothers couldn’t survive childbirth.
"Actually, the previous cult leader’s mother didn’t die after giving birth to him."
"What? Then why—"
At the mention of the demonic cult’s superstar and his hidden story, Sama Ryeong showed interest.
"She was so shocked by the baby she’d given birth to that she slipped, buried her face in the seaweed soup, and died."
"......"
At that moment, Sama Ryeong’s brain completely stopped working.
Three... two... one.
About three seconds later, his mind finally processed what had just been said.
"KRAAAAAAH!! YOU BASTARD!! How dare you! How dare you insult the sacred bloodline of Heaven!"
Sama Ryeong rushed him, forgetting even that the skin on his face was melting away.
This was the advanced form of the Heavenly Demon roasting technique he’d used before—the Heavenly Demon parent-bashing technique.
Heh. No matter how many times I watch demonic cult freaks go into a seizure, it never gets old.
Sama Ryeong came at him in full berserk mode, but—
Thunk! Thunk!
"Khuuuuugh...!"
Fists slammed into his head, chest, and stomach.
No matter how angry he got, he couldn’t possibly hold a candle to the Seven Martial Stars.
I-I’m really going to die like this...!
The solid force of those fists brought back the part of his mind that had been driven out the door.
He quickly rolled his eyes around.
If he stepped on the debris floating on the river, he might be able to make it back to the ship he’d come on.
Click—! BOOM—!
A smoke bomb, one of the essentials for anyone skulking in the shadows, dropped from his sleeve.
Now!
While Geom Mujin hesitated in the smoke, Sama Ryeong turned and fled.
"Hey! You demonic cult bastard!"
The moment he tried to escape toward the ship, someone called out to him.
"If you’re going to leave, you should at least take this with you...!"
It was Bang Dupil, one arm severed, spitting blood as he shouted.
With his remaining right arm, he shook something in the air.
"!"
Sama Ryeong’s face stiffened as he tried to ignore it and run.
There, tossed on the deck, was the cage containing the Baekdu Cheongak-eung—the whole reason they’d come here today.
"I’ll leave it there for you, so go on and take it! No signature required! Kahahaha...!"
Bang Dupil hurled the cage.
"Damn it!"
Sama Ryeong clicked his tongue and chased after the cage.
Just as he reached for the cage rolling alone across the floor—
"Oh, nice. Free delivery."
The prey that had run off had come back on its own, and Geom Mujin’s eyes curved into a smile.