Provocation (1)

Has this man lost his mind?

Lee Geuk-gyeol, a Foundation Establishment Great Circle cultivator, glared at the man standing before him.

Traces of the miasma that permeated the lower floors of Ghost Head City still clung to his body.

Which meant this man had, until very recently, been living down in the lower floors.

There was a clear, unforgiving line between the middle floors of Ghost Head City and the lower ones.

The lower floors were crowded with Qi Condensation cultivators, and on the first floor even mortals made their homes.

The middle floors, beginning from the fourth, admitted only those at Foundation Establishment or above.

And so the middle floors were far more cutthroat and merciless.

They offered greater opportunities in proportion — but just as easily, one could lose everything and fall into ruin.

That was why plenty of cultivators, even after reaching Foundation Establishment, simply chose to remain in the lower floors.

This man, too, had clearly been one of those — too fearful of the middle floors to leave the safety of the lower ones.

And yet here he was, swaggering around with that insufferable confidence. On what, exactly?

"Why should I bother with something like that? Even if a small fry like you gathered your rewards, it would amount to—"

"Afraid you'll fall behind that small fry?"

Crack.

Lee Geuk-gyeol ground his teeth.

Had they not been on the verge of a critical operation, he might very well have struck the man down with a spell on the spot.

Their forces were already stretched thin as it was.

There was no reason to waste strength quarreling with this fool here.

"Fine. If that's what you want, so be it. If you're willing to serve as the decoy yourself, I have no reason to refuse."

That was the conclusion Lee Geuk-gyeol finally reached.

Gathering the rewards of a newcomer like this would hardly amount to much anyway.

The man clearly had no intention of following orders either, and dragging someone like that along would only weigh them down.

Far better to use him as the decoy in their pincer operation.

If this man drew the attention of the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect while acting alone, the others would have a far easier time moving.

"Then we each move as we see fit."

"Tch..."

Why was the man so calm, even after being told he'd be used as bait?

Perhaps he had only just broken through to Foundation Establishment recently.

Everyone who shattered that wall and ascended to Foundation Establishment gained an enormous swell of confidence.

After all, they could now wield power that made their Qi Condensation days look like nothing.

But that confidence was a grand delusion.

In the middle floors of Ghost Head City, an early Foundation Establishment cultivator was nothing more than the weak — someone whose head could leave his shoulders in the blink of an eye.

Praying the man would learn that lesson today, Lee Geuk-gyeol went off to gather the other cultivators.

Climbing this feels like hiking a mountain in autumn.

After agreeing to operate separately from Lee Geuk-gyeol's group, Cheon Woo-jin had begun climbing the mountain alone from the southwest.

Walking between maple trees ablaze with vivid color stirred an old memory of climbing a mountain famous for its autumn foliage, long ago.

The atmosphere is rather nice.

But the pleasant atmosphere was skin-deep, nothing more.

When he touched a maple leaf, it was hard and rigid, like an artificial thing molded from plastic.

These were spirit trees adapted to the extreme dryness of the fourth floor.

The spirit fields laid out across this mountain, likewise, existed to cultivate toxic herbs that grew only in such a climate.

As he approached the lowest of the spirit fields, he spotted a single Foundation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Establishment cultivator of the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect standing guard over it.

Cheon Woo-jin concealed himself behind a maple tree and drew the Black Rakki Sword.

He fed the blade the venom of the Dark Path Great King Wu Gong and infused it with spiritual power.

At once, microscopic black shards unfurled and scattered into the air.

The shards were so minute they were nearly invisible to the eye.

Anyone who noticed them would simply think a few gnats were drifting about.

"Ow!"

The cultivator slapped his own arm.

He must have assumed a mosquito or the like had bitten him.

But moments later, he vomited blood and collapsed where he stood.

Cheon Woo-jin emerged unhurriedly and made his way to the spirit field.

Then he hurled one of the flame talismans he had prepared in advance.

Like a thrown Molotov cocktail, fire engulfed the entire spirit field.

That's one spirit field dealt with.

Just then, a commotion rose from the south.

It seemed the band of loose cultivators led by Lee Geuk-gyeol had clashed with the guards on the southern slope.

With numbers that large, covert infiltration the way Cheon Woo-jin was doing it became impossible.

Lee Geuk-gyeol clearly intended to use Cheon Woo-jin as the decoy in his pincer maneuver — but in truth, it was Lee Geuk-gyeol's side that would end up serving as the distraction.

Time to find the next spirit field.

Cheon Woo-jin climbed the mountain path alone, dismantling the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect's spirit fields one by one.

Each field was attended by only one or two caretakers, so a surprise strike from the Black Rakki Sword dispatched them with ease.

Feels like strolling through an autumn mountain, gathering fruit.

Whenever he spotted a toxic herb of decent quality, he would dig up a few specimens before setting the field ablaze.

He lacked any real depth of knowledge in poison arts, but he had to find some way to put them to use.

He had to account for the possibility that the Dark Path Great King Wu Gong's venom would run out, after all.

"Was this place hit too?"

"Damn it! Who the hell is—"

Voices drifted up from below.

It seemed the Myriad Poison Six Fiends ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sect had finally begun hunting for Cheon Woo-jin.

Until now, the sect's guards had focused entirely on repelling the attackers streaming up from the north and south.

That was precisely why Cheon Woo-jin had been able to move so quietly on his own — but that window of opportunity was apparently closing.

Nothing to be done about it.

Sensing the sect scrambling into motion, Cheon Woo-jin slipped the Black Rakki Sword into his robe.

In its place, he drew the Five Thunder Heaven-Shaking Sword and shot up into the sky.

"Th-there he is!"

"It's him, no doubt about it!"

The Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect's cultivators reacted to the sight of Cheon Woo-jin soaring upward.

Keeping his expression cold and composed, Cheon Woo-jin mapped their positions.

Then he brought the Heart Fire and Kidney Water prepared within his body into mutual intercourse, recreating the collision of heaven and earth's yin and yang.

Using the resulting phenomenon as a primer, he drew in the yang qi and yin qi of nature itself as well — the principle of the resonance between heaven and man.

KRA-KOOM!

Lightning of an intensity beyond all comparison with what he had wielded in his Qi Condensation days came crashing down.

A falling thunderbolt born not only from Cheon Woo-jin's own spiritual power, but from the ambient energy he had pulled in from the world around him.

The Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect cultivators, still staring upward in a daze, were annihilated without even the chance to scream.

Several spirit fields were caught in the blast and razed as well.

The price, of course, was that stealth was no longer an option.

Friend and foe alike had now pinpointed Cheon Woo-jin's location.

He had to move faster than they did.

Cheon Woo-jin climbed toward even greater heights.

He had dealt with the minor spirit fields well enough — now it was time to destroy the most important spirit field on this mountain.

So it's here.

Cheon Woo-jin landed at the very summit of the spirit mountain.

A spirit field spread out there as well, where toxic herbs of such potency grew that even Cheon Woo-jin — hardly a connoisseur of poison arts — could feel their power.

But the one guarding this place was no ordinary cultivator.

"Rootless cur of a loose cultivator..."

A man draped in an ominous gray-green robe was glaring at Cheon Woo-jin with murderous eyes.

A vicious, feral aura radiated from him — one entirely unlike the other cultivators of the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect.

Dan Mok-gil. The Core Formation cultivator in charge of this entire spirit mountain.

Though he had only recently reached Core Formation, he was said to be a promising direct disciple upon whom the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect had pinned great expectations.

The original plan had been for the forces ascending from the north and the south to converge on the summit and assault Dan Mok-gil in a pincer.

Instead, Cheon Woo-jin had climbed to the summit alone — and now stood face to face with him.

"The stench of the lower floors drifts all the way up here, I see. A crawler from the gutters, then."

Dan Mok-gil looked down at Cheon Woo-jin with naked contempt.

"Did you luck into some new ability when you broke through to Foundation Establishment? Or did you get your hands on some fine magical tool somewhere? Either way, I'll grant you this much — making it up here is worth a compliment."

Cheon Woo-jin offered no reply. He simply raised his thunder qi.

He hurled black lightning at Dan Mok-gil, only for it to be blocked by a white barrier.

A glance at the ground revealed an intricate pattern inscribed in a wide circle around Dan Mok-gil.

He had prepared a defensive formation in advance, anticipating an assault.

As of this moment, Dan Mok-gil might as well have been standing inside an impregnable fortress.

"You who know nothing of your place — allow me to teach you the gap between our realms."

Within his barrier, Dan Mok-gil formed a hand seal.

Suddenly, the wind began to blow.

Whiiiiiing!

An unstoppable gust roared across the whole of the spirit mountain.

The disciples of the Forbidden Corpse Sect climbing from both sides, along with Lee Geuk-gyeol and the other loose cultivators, would surely have been caught up in it as well.

Within that raging wind, Cheon Woo-jin suddenly felt his eyes grow dry and gritty.

It wasn't just his eyes. His spiritual power was明明 shielding his body, and yet his entire frame was desiccating at terrifying speed.

It wasn't merely his flesh drying out in the parched wind.

The vital fluids within his body were vanishing of their own accord, from the inside out.

Dan Mok-gil had prepared more than just a defensive formation.

He had also readied a large-scale poison art designed to massacre any attackers wholesale.

"My dry poison shall wither you all where you stand."

Dan Mok-gil's triumphant voice carried over the wind.

"Swallowing an antidote will do you no good. This poison was not compounded from toxic substances — it was conjured directly from my own spiritual power."

"The Six Fiends Poison of the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect, is it."

"Hm? You know more than I expected."

Six Fiends Poison.

It was a school of poison arts that weaponized the Six Pernicious Influences as toxic force.

Right now, Dan Mok-gil would be channeling the power of Dryness among the six.

The Six Fiends... the six pernicious qi that ravage the human body.

Dryness originally corresponded to Metal among the Five Elements — yet it was also counted among the six pernicious qi that made up the Six Fiends.

In Eastern thought, all things were by convention classified into five categories according to the Five Elements.

But there were times when they were divided into six instead.

The human body possessed the six bowels alongside the five viscera, and the twelve meridians were composed of six meridians of the hand and six of the foot.

Whenever the division came in sixes, it rested upon the theory of the Three Yin and Three Yang — the tripartition of yin and yang.

Greater Yang, Yangming, Lesser Yang, Greater Yin, Lesser Yin, Fading Yin — these six expressed the waxing, waning, and transformations of yin and yang.

Among them, the qi corresponding to Yangming was dryness.

As a normal qi, it was called the Dryness Qi, one of the Six Climatic Qi; as a malign force afflicting the human body, it became Dryness, one of the Six Fiends.

By meddling in that law of waxing and waning — the cycle expressed through Greater Yang, Yangming, Lesser Yang, Greater Yin, Lesser Yin, and Fading Yin — and amplifying the dryness of Yangming to its extreme, one could generate a poison that withered the human body to death.

Dan Mok-gil's Yangming Dry-Poison Corpse Mountain Art was a highly refined poison art constructed upon precisely such principles.

But...

His body was withering away, moment by moment.

Just as a Qi Condensation cultivator on the fourth floor had his life force drain away, so now Cheon Woo-jin's vital fluids were escaping him, his vitality bleeding out with them.

And in that very state, Cheon Woo-jin sank deep into his own interior.

If I can understand the principle behind it, then it should be possible to construct a principle that unravels it.

The spiritual domain of the Body of the Dark True Abyss.

Within the endlessly unfolding black space, Cheon Woo-jin contemplated Dan Mok-gil's Yangming Dry-Poison Corpse Mountain Art.

This place had originally been a space that reflected Cheon Woo-jin's inner self.

At first, he had used it as a forge for the Heart Sword, honing it to spread his sword qi.

Afterward, it had become a workshop where he devised new techniques from his own knowledge and reflection.

It could be called, all at once, Cheon Woo-jin's workshop, laboratory, and testing ground — a space existing within his own mind.

But upon reaching Foundation Establishment, the meaning of the space had expanded.

Now he could observe and contemplate even concepts existing outside himself, here within its bounds.

This was a phenomenon one might call the extension of divine sense.

Able to gaze upon events unfolding beyond his body just as he once gazed only upon himself, his comprehension of others' arts had improved by leaps and bounds.

Armed with that understanding, all he needed to do was find the solution within this inner space and manifest it in the outer one.

Within the Three Yin and Three Yang, the counterpart opposite Yangming is Greater Yin. Greater Yin governs Dampness among the climatic qi — so by colliding Greater Yin's dampness against Yangming's dryness, I should be able to neutralize it.

Cheon Woo-jin drew up the water-natured sword qi he possessed.

It was an attempt to embody Greater Yin's dampness through the element of Water.

Of course, simply producing moisture would accomplish nothing — it would evaporate into nothing inside that raging wind.

The phenomenon was not what mattered.

He had to break the art that produced the phenomenon — the principle that gave rise to the art itself.

What conjured this desiccating miasma was the principle of Yangming embedded within the workings of the Yangming Dry-Poison Corpse Mountain Art.

So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he had to drive the principle of Greater Yin into the workings of that art, rendering the art itself void.

And for that, Cheon Woo-jin already possessed the means.

"..."

Cheon Woo-jin took up the Black Rakki Sword once more.

The blade shattered, and a black net unfurled into the air.

But this time he did not imbue the shards with poison. What he granted them instead was spiritual power.

The power of Greater Yin — dampness, and the principle behind it — rode the black metal shards and dispersed into the raging wind.

"What are you—"

Dan Mok-gil reacted, but it was already too late.

With his withering body, Cheon Woo-jin released his thunder qi.

It was not thunder meant to strike Dan Mok-gil down.

It served merely as a detonator — a spark to ignite an explosive chain reaction.

So that the Greater Yin energy he had seeded into the storm would resonate with the energy of Yangming and annihilate every last trace of it.

"...!"

KRA-KOOM!

Lightning tore through the heart of the raging wind.

The energy of Greater Yin answered the energy of Yangming, their collision birthing thunder qi — and that thunder qi accelerated the reaction, spawning ever greater thunder in turn.

The desiccating poison storm Dan Mok-gil had conjured... had, somewhere along the way, transformed into a thunder gale that danced wildly of its own accord.

"Y-you — you collided the principles of opposing qi and canceled them out? How is such a thing even—"

Dan Mok-gil was aghast.

Cheon Woo-jin had just performed a divine art that existed only in theory — something all but impossible to actually realize.

"Who — who are you, truly? Some whelp ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rolling around in the lower floors could never hope to pull off interference between advanced arts like this!"

Dan Mok-gil shrieked, his face contorting.

The spell he had painstakingly prepared — he, the most promising direct disciple of the Myriad Poison Six Fiends Sect — had been neutralized.

Unable to accept it, he had abandoned reason entirely.

Staring at the maddened Dan Mok-gil, Cheon Woo-jin composed an art with his shriveled, desiccated body.

With the spiritual power of a mere early Foundation Establishment cultivator, Cheon Woo-jin could not hope to pierce the defensive formation Dan Mok-gil had spent so long preparing.

But it didn't matter. If the spiritual power within his body fell short, he need only draw more from the world outside.

"Ghk—?!"

Dan Mok-gil belatedly looked up at the sky, but it was already too late.

The thunder qi born from the neutralization of the Yangming Dry-Poison Corpse Mountain Art's energy had, unnoticed, been gathering toward a single point.

A colossal thunderbolt, as if to skewer the entire spirit mountain, came crashing down as the sky shook and roared.