The Victor (4)
"Y-Yuhee, listen to me carefully."
Song Mu-yeol's voice trembled.
"I don't know what your uncle did to you. But surely there has been some kind of misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding?"
Song Yuhee tilted her head to the side.
"What exactly is the misunderstanding, Father?"
"Well, that is……"
Before the words could leave his mouth, Song Yuhee smiled.
"Father, have I done everything you asked of me until now?"
"What?"
"From the time I was nine until this very moment—a hundred and fifty years. Have I not done exactly as you asked?"
"……"
It was true. Song Yuhee had always done as she was told.
She would occasionally spout something absurd and leave him at a loss, but she had never once refused a command.
"I did as you asked this time, too. I stopped my training and rushed straight to the Hwangryeol Flying Archipelago. And then I ran here and there, fighting hard for the sake of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect."
"Yes, and I'm grateful for that, but……"
"But you see."
Song Yuhee cut him off again.
"When we first met, that man said something to me."
"That man?"
"He asked me—why on earth would I submit myself to someone else's commands?"
"What the……"
"He said that with power like mine, I ought to be living exactly as I please…… That's what he told me."
The instant he heard those words, Song Mu-yeol bellowed.
"Shin Hyeok! That bastard said that to you?!"
There was no doubt about it.
From the very beginning, Shin Hyeok had approached Song Yuhee with black intentions hidden in his heart, infiltrating the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect.
"Song Yuhee! You are being deceived by that man right now!"
"Father."
"He infiltrated our sect from the very start with the aim of destroying it! He's a depraved, wicked dark cultivator! Even just now, that vermin I should tear limb from limb—"
Shunk.
Without warning, a surge of green qi erupted from the ground and pierced straight through Song Mu-yeol's Nascent Soul.
Perhaps it was coincidence, but the attack was strikingly similar to the one Shin Hyeok had landed on him earlier.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't speak ill of him, Father."
"Y-You…… what on earth has gotten into you……"
Song Mu-yeol could not understand it.
It had been less than a month since Song Yuhee first met that man.
If you counted only the time they had actually spent together, it was less than ten days.
He could not comprehend how, in so short a span, his daughter had been swayed so completely.
"D-Don't tell me—have you fallen for him?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Have you developed feelings for that man?!"
At Song Mu-yeol's demands, Song Yuhee covered her mouth with her sleeve and laughed, elegant and unhurried.
"How pathetic you are, Father. Is that the only shallow thought you're capable of?"
"Wh-What did you say?"
"If I had to put a name to what I feel for him, I'd say it's closer to admiration."
"A-Admiration?"
"Yes. I wanted to be like him."
Song Yuhee spoke from behind her sleeve.
"A life bound by nothing—free to wander the world at will, living without hesitation or restraint. It all looked so magnificent to me."
"What in the……"
"So I decided I wanted to live that way too. Like him."
"……"
What could possibly have been so magnificent about it?
Song Mu-yeol could not fathom it at all.
"But to live like him, I'd have to abandon the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect."
Song Yuhee let out a small sigh.
"I do have some sense of shame, you know. I've owed the sect a great deal over the years—walking away without a word would make me a heartless person."
"Th-That's right, so you understand, then……"
"However."
Song Yuhee lowered the sleeve that had been covering her mouth.
And on her lips…… a cold, merciless smile had appeared.
"Imagine my surprise when I learned that the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect had already betrayed me first, and was planning to make me its sacrificial lamb."
"W-Wait, just a moment, that was——"
Thunk!
Once more, the green qi surged upward and skewered Song Mu-yeol's Nascent Soul.
"So I concluded that I owed the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect no loyalty at all. That's all."
"……"
There was no point in making excuses anymore.
Song Yuhee had already seen completely through his schemes.
Continuing to lie and cajole would only backfire.
"Song Yuhee…… think this over."
Song Mu-yeol decided to try a different approach.
"If you go through with this, the Supreme Patriarch will not stand idle. Think of everything the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect has done for you all these years——"
"The Supreme Patriarch? Heh heh."
Song Yuhee shook her head, laughing.
"The Supreme Patriarch has no interest in trifling matters like this. He doesn't even know we're here right now, does he?"
"Ugh……"
"Unless the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect vanished from the face of the earth entirely and the annual offerings ceased, he wouldn't so much as blink—certainly not over the disappearance of one person like me."
When on earth did she become so shrewd?
Song Mu-yeol felt a chill crawl up his spine.
Had he been in his physical body rather than his Nascent Soul, cold sweat would have been pouring down his face.
"It would be the same even if the leadership of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect—you included—vanished."
"Ghhh——!"
In that instant.
Song Mu-yeol's Nascent Soul, still skewered by the green qi, scattered into nothing.
It had not reached its limit. He had been waiting for his chance to counterattack.
His scattered Nascent Soul converged into a single bolt of lightning.
Song Mu-yeol's dispersed Nascent Soul gathered itself into one, becoming a streak of thunder.
It was a technique that converted the Nascent Soul itself into lightning to pierce the enemy—a trump card Song Mu-yeol kept jealously hidden at all times.
Even Song Yuhee could not possibly respond to this attack in time.
But at that very moment.
Song Mu-yeol felt the world around him change.
'Huh……?'
At first, he thought night had fallen.
The surroundings had suddenly gone dark in every direction.
Yet no matter how he looked around, he could not see the ruined halls of the palace anywhere.
There was only one thing visible.
A grotesque, pitch-black tree rising without a single leaf on its branches……
'Th-This is the Great Void Divine Sandalwood Domain……!'
It was Song Yuhee's pseudo-Dharma Domain.
But its refinement far exceeded anything Song Mu-yeol had accounted for.
'This girl—when did she come so close to wielding a true Dharma Domain……'
Whish!
Branches and roots burst outward in an instant.
They coiled around Song Mu-yeol's Nascent Soul—now a single bolt of lightning—and began to devour its power.
'St-Stop! This power is meant for the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord! Not for me——!'
Song Mu-yeol tried to send a message of entreaty to Song Yuhee.
But his thoughts went nowhere.
They were simply sucked into the tree of the Great Void Divine Sandalwood Domain along with his Nascent Soul.
'N-No, this can't be happening!'
Feeling his Nascent Soul being drained of every ounce of power, shriveling as it withered, Song Mu-yeol screamed inside.
'I am Song Mu-yeol! Sect Master of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect—leader of one of the Three Great Powers of Weijin Country and sovereign of the Orthodox factions! I cannot perish in a place like this!'
But no one heeded that scream.
Even Song Yuhee, glimpsed through the gaps in the tree roots, wore an indifferent expression—the look of someone who had lost all interest.
'How did it come to this? Was accepting that Shin Hyeok the mistake? Was everything wrong from that point on?'
At that very moment.
He suddenly recalled the technique Shin Hyeok had unleashed earlier.
That technique, which had spewed waves of black lightning, had undoubtedly been the Black Thunder of the Fire Call Lightning Art.
And surely—he had heard somewhere about a man who wielded such a technique.
'A lightning cultivator believed to possess a Water Spirit Root…… said to ravage everything with black lightning……'
The man who killed Jin Si-hyeok of the Flame Emperor Sect—another of Song Mu-yeol's own offspring.
The man who stole the Heaven-Subduing Shadow-Cloak Treasure and utterly wrecked the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect's plans.
The name surfaced in his mind.
'Cheon Woo-jin……?'
The reason Song Mu-yeol had first taken an interest in Shin Hyeok was that he'd been told the man was someone worth deploying to kill Cheon Woo-jin.
Once this affair was over, he had intended to dispatch Shin Hyeok to Ghost Head Castle to have him eliminate Cheon Woo-jin.
But…… what if Shin Hyeok and Cheon Woo-jin were one and the same?
'Then all of us have been dancing in the palm of his hand since before this affair ever began……'
Song Mu-yeol could think nothing further.
Seized by a terror of a being that transcended comprehension, he withered away completely within the Great Void Divine Sandalwood Domain and vanished.
Such was the wretched end of a man who had sought to seize Weijin Country and elevate the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect into something like a supreme sect.
"……"
After confirming that Song Mu-yeol's Nascent Soul had been completely annihilated.
Song Yuhee checked the energy her body had absorbed.
Only a portion of it could be made wholly her own, but even so, it was more than enough to challenge the Mid Nascent Soul Realm.
"So-woo, I am free now."
Looking around, she saw that all the elders of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect lay dead.
While Song Yuhee had been draining Song Mu-jin and Song Mu-yeol, they had been swept up in the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord's attacks and killed.
"Nothing can bind me anymore. Not you, Father. Not the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect. Not anyone."
Song Yuhee spread her arms wide and drew in a deep breath.
Feeling a liberation she had never once experienced before, she whispered to the empty air, alone.
"At last, I can travel with you, So-woo."
That had been her plan from the very beginning.
To cast off the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect and roam the continent alongside that man, living as freely as she pleased.
"But……"
Song Yuhee glanced around.
No matter how far she looked, all she could see were the corpses of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect's people.
The man she wished to see right now was nowhere to be found.
"So-woo, where on earth did you go?"
Behind Song Yuhee as she murmured to herself, the fully awakened Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord soared up toward the heavens.
"Kwahahaha……!"
Laughter erupted from the nape of the golden dragon as it climbed into the sky.
A smear of reddish liquid was clinging there.
"The Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect bastards—destroyed fighting amongst themselves! I worried they might actually muster their strength and stop the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord, but everything worked out beautifully!"
The voice belonged to Soehon Hyeolma of the Blood World Mara Sect.
He was the mastermind who had feined defeat at the hands of Yu Mu-gi and Jongni Cheol, descended into the depths in his Blood Body form, and forcibly roused the slumbering Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord.
Of course, Soehon Hyeolma's Blood Body had been caught up in the divine lord's awakening and obliterated.
The smear clinging to the dragon's nape now was Soehon Hyeolma's Nascent Soul, which had been lying in wait near Nakyeong Island unbeknownst to anyone.
At present, Soehon Hyeolma had embedded part of his Nascent Soul into the back of the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord's skull.
By sending signals into its mind, he could crudely steer the direction in which the divine lord flew.
"O Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord! Let us begin by sweeping away Gongnyeong Island and Pyeonghwang Island!"
Many cultivators had gathered across the Hwangryeol Flying Archipelago to take part in the great upheaval.
In the course of hunting them down, countless innocents with no connection to anything would be slaughtered as well.
That strayed far from Emperor Taejo's original intent—but the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord of today was nothing more than a monster incapable of telling such things apart.
Soehon Hyeolma intended to turn the Hwangryeol Archipelago into a sea of blood first, then send the divine lord across the Jinhwang Sea to ravage every corner of Weijin Country.
"And thus I shall create a Blood World…… and fulfill the long-cherished desire of the Blood World Mara Sect!"
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
As if answering Soehon Hyeolma's cry, enormous waves surged up from the Jinhwang Sea.
The waves rose to swallow the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord, but the yellow radiance pouring from its body shattered them to mist.
"Magnificent……!"
Soehon Hyeolma marveled at the sight.
Ordinarily, the Jinhwang Sea was impassable even for a Nascent Soul cultivator without protection, but riding upon the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord, there was nothing to fear at all.
"Good! Now, onward to Gongnyeong Island——"
Just as he was about to signal the divine lord and send it charging toward Gongnyeong Island.
Soehon Hyeolma sensed a strange presence.
"……?"
Turning his attention behind him, he saw something approaching from the direction of Nakyeong Island.
It was a crescent-shaped wooden boat, as if carved from a single massive tree.
It was flying through the air, skimming across the sky above the Jinhwang Sea.
"A flying Dharma Treasure? You mean to tell me there's a treasure capable of crossing the Jinhwang Sea?"
Soehon Hyeolma studied the flying vessel closely.
Its surface was engraved with intricate patterns, extraordinarily delicate and beautiful.
"Hold on—that couldn't be…… the Ghost Wood Boat, the prototype of the Sea-Crossing Ships?"
The Ghost Wood Boat was a flying Dharma Treasure said to have been created by the Yin Soul Ghost Bone Palace.
Legend claimed it could traverse any treacherous terrain at will.
The Sea-Crossing Ships had been built with this very boat as their model.
"But why is no one aboard?"
If cultivators of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect or the like had been riding it, he would have moved the Guardian Golden Dragon Divine Lord to intercept it at once.
But the Ghost Wood Boat carried no one at all. It was simply drifting closer through the sky of its own accord.
"How peculiar. Why on earth would it……"
The Ghost Wood Boat drew ever nearer, until it finally approached the dragon's nape where Soehon Hyeolma clung.
Even at close range, there was clearly no one aboard.
"Perhaps I should take a closer look……?"
He could hardly pretend not to notice such a rare treasure.
From the smear of Soehon Hyeolma's Nascent Soul clinging to the dragon's nape, a human head sprouted forth.
Stretching his neck out as far as it would go, Soehon Hyeolma tried to peer inside the Ghost Wood Boat.
But at that very moment.
There came a sharp flap—the sound of something being flung away.
"Ugh……!"
Slaash!
A blade came flying out of nowhere and split Soehon Hyeolma's skull in two.
"H-How……"
With his half-cleaved head, Soehon Hyeolma scanned his surroundings.
And he beheld a man who should not have been there, suddenly appearing with a single blade in hand.
He was in the middle of shrugging off and casting aside the bark-like hide he had worn over his whole body.
Soehon Hyeolma recognized at a glance what that discarded thing was.
"Th-The Heaven-Subduing Shadow-Cloak Treasure?"
The supreme stealth Dharma Instrument said to have resided in Ghost Head Castle.
The Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect had once tried to secure it through the Flame Emperor Sect, but had ultimately failed.
If the rumors were true, then the one who now possessed the Heaven-Subduing Shadow-Cloak Treasure was……
"Why is Cheon Woo-jin here……!"
Toward the shrieking Soehon Hyeolma, who could make no sense of it, the merciless blade surged toward him once more.