The Baek Manor Massacre
The underground prison beneath the Murim Alliance was a place of suffocating darkness. Cold dampness seeped into the skin, biting straight to the bone. The straw scattered across the floor had rotted and stank, while cockroaches and rats scurried through it at will. The only marker of time was the steady drip of water from the walls—ploc, ploc, ploc.
Baek Un-hyeon lay chained, unable to lie down, a cold blade collar locked around his neck. His pain-filled groans echoed through the cell like a dirge.
The price of detonating his Source True Qi had been devastating. His dantian was hollow, sending waves of tearing agony through his chest with every breath. His meridians were twisted beyond recognition; he could not even move a single fingertip at will. Whether it was misfortune or a twisted mercy, the torture disguised as interrogation never came. Consideration? Or simply neglect? He could not tell.
Even so, the prison environment offered no aid for recovery. Once a day they gave him nothing but a bowl of watery gruel. His strength ebbed away. Day after day his body grew heavier, his thoughts more sluggish. The initial numbness from the incomprehensible situation lasted only a moment. Soon, rage began to rise in its place.
Am I simply to be abandoned here?
Then worry took root. He had heard the rumors about the Murim Alliance’s underground prison. In its deepest levels, they said, demonic fiends were locked away for life, left to rot until death claimed them. Though no one else seemed to be in the nearby cells now, nothing guaranteed he would not eventually share their fate.
More than anything, his family weighed on his mind.
In the dimness, Baek Un-hyeon focused every scrap of will he possessed, trying to mend his broken body. Then one day, as always, a bowl of gruel arrived. With a trembling hand he lifted it. As he brought the spoon to his lips, something hard and foreign touched his tongue. A tightly folded piece of paper.
With shaking fingers he opened it.
Escape tonight. Baek Manor—life or death.
The handwriting was deliberately crude, an attempt to disguise the writer. Baek Un-hyeon’s heart slammed against his ribs.
Escape…? Who would dare?
Breaking out of the Murim Alliance’s prison? Suspicion flared instantly. Was this another trap? Another ploy to wring a false confession from him?
Yet the mention of his family’s fate lodged in his chest like a splinter. If he had truly been framed as a Demonic Human, could Baek Manor possibly remain untouched? The Murim Alliance could erase a single rural clan without a second thought. Even knowing the risk, he could not simply remain chained in the dark.
Using what little clouded judgment remained to him, he made his choice. He swallowed the note and waited in silence, barely breathing.
Night deepened. The prison grew deathly quiet. Then, from somewhere distant, faint screams pierced the silence.
“Urk…!”
Two short, sharp cries in rapid succession.
Kill them to silence witnesses?
The brutality was unexpected. Baek Un-hyeon’s heart thundered. He gripped the chains, trying to summon strength, but his fingers only trembled violently.
Clank.
The heavy door swung open. Pale moonlight spilled into the underground cell. Masked figures slipped inside like shadows. They severed the blade collar from his neck and gripped his shoulders to support him. Baek Un-hyeon staggered upright.
Outside the cell, the guards lay dead, throats slit, their blood still warm and glistening on the stone. The metallic stench filled his nostrils. This was no mere deception.
One of the masked men whispered, voice low and urgent.
“Follow us.”
Baek Un-hyeon obeyed. His heart beat like a war drum.
The masked men led him to the rear mountain behind the Murim Alliance and released him. They pressed a pouch of silver into his hands before vanishing into the night.
Baek Un-hyeon ran for home without hesitation. No matter how he examined it, the situation reeked of a trap, yet his family’s faces rose first in his mind. If things went wrong, he resolved to protect them even at the cost of his own life.
The road to Shaanxi and Baek Manor was not long, but he had to grit his teeth the entire way. His internal energy still refused to circulate properly. The aftermath of burning his Source True Qi had left his dantian empty and his meridians warped; every breath brought fresh agony. Without proper treatment, his condition had only worsened over the days. Each step sent tremors through his entire body.
Using the cover of dawn, he reached a larger town and used the silver to join a merchant caravan. Carriage, borrowed horses, asking directions—he passed through one chilling moment after another, certain pursuers would appear at any second.
Finally he arrived at the foot of the Jinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province—Wungye County. Home.
Baek Un-hyeon descended from the carriage and staggered forward. He offered a respectful fist salute to the merchants who had dropped him off and were already hurrying onward.
If things go well, I will never involve myself in the murim again.
This was the hometown he had longed for with desperate intensity. His heart pounded, but not with joy. A thick, acrid stench suddenly assaulted his nose. Baek Un-hyeon’s face drained of all color. He forced his partially recovered legs into a run, heading for the county boundary.
Thick black smoke rose from the center of Wungye County. Locals stood in small groups, faces grim, whispering among themselves—all of them staring toward Baek Manor.
The manor was in ruins.
The main gate had been smashed to splinters. The inner residence was burned black. The training hall had collapsed until only charred pillars remained. In the courtyard, bodies lay piled high—servants, family retainers, guard warriors. The ground was stained black with dried blood.
Baek Un-hyeon collapsed where he stood.
“No… why…”
Tears blurred his vision. He crawled forward like a broken animal. Familiar faces appeared one after another. The severed head rolling across the ground belonged to the old steward who had served the clan his entire life. A woman clutching a child in death was the maid who had given birth only weeks earlier. A young disciple with a spear still lodged in his back had joined the manor only recently.
Numbly, he dragged himself toward the family quarters.
“Father…”
Baek Cheon-geom. Six swords protruded from his chest. His eyes remained open in eternal grievance. Both arms had been severed so he could not even grasp his sword in his final moments.
“Mother…”
Seol-ran. Her clothes had been torn away completely. She had died crawling toward her husband’s corpse.
Baek Un-hyeon sank to the ground. Trembling, fighting to remain conscious, he crawled the final distance to his parents’ bodies. When he finally reached them, their skin was ice-cold.
Rage surged. Grief crashed over him. And beneath it all, bottomless despair.
“…Why……”
He bared his teeth at the heavens and screamed.
Thud.
Several figures descended around him.
“A fiend without blood or tears! To commit such atrocities!”
“Is this all you do after leaving home—slaughtering your own family? Are you even human?”
“Was this your work, Murim Alliance?!”
“Tsk tsk. Not a shred of remorse.”
Among them stood Jin Mu-gak, an elder of the Murim Alliance from the Mount Hua Sect, along with several other elders and a contingent of alliance warriors.
“I’ll kill you all!”
Baek Un-hyeon detonated his Source True Qi once more, prepared to burn away every last ounce of his life force.
Explosive power gained at the cost of total destruction of the dantian and meridians. A final, suicidal surge of primordial life force.
Wungye County, Baek Manor. Baek Un-hyeon stood amid the blazing ruins of his family home. The scene was pure hell. Flames painted the night sky crimson. Smoke clawed at every throat. Fresh corpses lay piled atop those from the dawn massacre. The stench of blood saturated the air.
“Such cruelty, and still he kills more! This is the work of the Cheonsalseong itself!”
“Elder Jin is correct. The bastard truly is a fiend.”
“Yet I sense no demonic energy…”
“Hah, you can say that after witnessing such savage aura?”
“He must have erased the traces to infiltrate the Alliance.”
“At this point, it no longer matters.”
Every time Murim Alliance warriors fell to Baek Un-hyeon’s hands, the remaining group simply hurled more accusations. All his previous pleas of innocence, repeated endlessly before his imprisonment, had fallen on deaf ears. They had already branded him a Demonic Human.
“Kill them… all…”
His low growl rolled through the flames. He seemed to have lost half his sanity. Yet when his gaze fell upon the corpses of his family, the rage receded and grief flooded in.
Who? Why? For what possible reason?
No. He could not die here. If he perished meaninglessly, what would become of his unjustly slaughtered family?
“Cough!”
He vomited a mouthful of blood. The eyes of his encirclement brightened with greedy hope—merit seemed within reach.
Baek Un-hyeon retreated warily. This was Wungye County, the land of his birth. Every building layout, every slope of the rear mountain, was etched into his memory. He turned and ran with everything he had left.
“He’s fleeing?”
“After him!”
The chase began. Baek Un-hyeon poured every remaining ounce of strength into his legs. His body was one breath away from total collapse; only sheer obsession kept him moving. He could not shake the pursuers.
Even after reaching the deep recesses of the Jinling Mountain Range behind Wungye County, the chase continued without pause.
“Haa… haa…”
“A stubborn one.”
“They say a Demonic Human cannot escape the doctrines of the Demonic Cult even in death. He probably wishes for release.”
Eventually, Baek Un-hyeon was driven to the edge of a cliff. Below lay not an ordinary abyss, but a place forbidden by every county bordering the Jinling Mountains.
Yeon-yeon Blood Valley.
From ancient times, sinister, bone-freezing demonic energy had swirled in the valley beneath the precipice. Endless thick mist rose from the depths, obscuring everything. No one who entered ever returned alive. Even now, condemned prisoners were regularly cast down as punishment.
Baek Un-hyeon turned to face his pursuers one last time.
"I will return without fail."
"And I will chew your blood and flesh while they are still warm."
With those words, Baek Un-hyeon threw himself from the cliff. His body vanished instantly into the thick white fog.
“Th-that—!”
“No! Do not follow!”
The local guide hastily explained the valley’s dreadful history. The Murim Alliance elders clicked their tongues and ordered a few warriors lowered down the cliff to confirm his death.
“In the end, we learned nothing from that fiend…”
“It may be meaningless now, but I still have doubts about all this.”
“Yet Elder Jin confirmed he was a Demonic Human, and he slaughtered more than ten of our warriors. He is a fiend, plain and simple.”
“More to the point, Elder Jin, have you no more reason for anger? Weren’t we told all those children had died, which was why we captured the boy? Yet now you say they survived?”
“The children explained it themselves. They noticed the trap early and chose another route. That is why they returned late. Had they followed Baek Un-hyeon’s orders, they would have been annihilated.”
“Enough, enough. Did I not say it? The boy was a pawn of the Demonic Cult. The absence of demonic energy is merely camouflage for infiltrating the righteous sects. How many times must I repeat myself?”
…
In this place, no one dared contradict Elder Jin Mu-gak, blood brother of the Mount Hua Sect leader. That was all that mattered.