The Scramble (3)
That's Seo Seol-ryeong.
There was no mistaking it. Beyond the advancing cultivators of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace, her back was visible, moving steadily through the chaos. At first glance she'd been hard to pick out — the Ice Palace disciples all wore white robes, and Seo Seol-ryeong wore white as well, rendering them nearly indistinguishable at a distance.
Has she allied herself with the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace? Or…….
At times she looked like their vanguard, leading the charge. At other times, like a fugitive being hunted by them. One thing, however, was certain: the person furthest ahead right now was Seo Seol-ryeong.
"You bastards……!"
A roar erupted from behind him. The survivors of Cheon Woo-jin's Black Thunder Crush — the ones who had somehow clung to their lives — were climbing back to their feet and charging at him again.
"Leave securing the treasure to the senior disciples! We take this one down first!"
Crack-crack-crack!
Firing volleys of ice arrows, the Foundation Establishment cultivators of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace swarmed toward Cheon Woo-jin. As its name implied, the sect trained its members in ice-attribute arts — though the true ice-and-snow techniques were passed down only to the Palace Lord's bloodline, and the ordinary disciples were said to learn nothing but inferior methods with no real advantage over any other art.
Which meant they posed no threat to him whatsoever.
He hurled a sphere of condensed thunder qi like a hand grenade. It burst mid-flight, lightning erupting outward to swallow the ice arrows and the Ice Palace cultivators whole.
Cheon Woo-jin paid the survivors no further attention and turned his gaze forward again. Some of them might live through it, but Wi Ju-seon was following behind — he could simply leave the cleanup to her.
"Who do you serve!"
"How dare you……!"
This time it was some of the Core Formation cultivators who had been leading the Ice Palace's charge that moved to block him. Half had gone ahead to secure the Banner of the Ghost Summoning Hunt from Yoo Gwi-hun; the other half had stopped in their tracks to bar his path.
Cheon Woo-jin scanned the status windows of the two men barring his way. One at Early Core Formation, the other at Middle.
The Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace drilled every disciple who reached Core Formation in a single technique, intensively and exclusively. Their Core Formation cultivators relied almost entirely upon it.
That was how the game had worked — and this world would be no different.
The two Core Formation cultivators wove their hand seals, and a blizzard began to swirl around them. At first it seemed like nothing more than ordinary falling snow — but as the wind rose, a lethal cold seeped into it, and the shape of the dancing snowflakes changed. Soon the snow became something better called hail: blades of frost-gleaming ice whirling in a shrieking maelstrom, a white storm that painted itself crimson with blood.
Simple, but a devastating area attack.
Cheon Woo-jin knew exactly how dangerous this technique was — he had faced it countless times in the game. He knew, too, that when two cultivators unleashed it in tandem, its power doubled.
But he also knew precisely how to counter it.
BOOM!
Sheathed in thunder qi, he charged straight ahead — straight through the blizzard of ice blades.
Breaking head-on through a storm full of hailstone knives was no different from carving his own body apart. But the thunder qi sheathing him from head to toe shielded Cheon Woo-jin's flesh. His lightweight armor tore in places and blood seeped out, but not a single wound ran deep.
"This bastard……!"
The two Core Formation cultivators panicked at the sight of him advancing without a moment's hesitation. Eom Heun, the Early Core Formation one, frantically moved to loose an ice arrow — but trying to cast a second art while maintaining the Blossoms of Ice made his spell construction sluggish. Before Eom Heun's technique could take form, Cheon Woo-jin's black thunder flashed first.
CRACK!
A hole punched clean through his torso, Eom Heun rolled off the roof without so much as a scream.
The other one — Han Yeong, at Middle Core Formation — saw it and his eyes flared wide.
"Not bad, I'll give you that!"
A shield of ice bloomed into being around him a heartbeat later. He abandoned the Blossoms of Ice entirely and chose to hunker down behind solid defense.
Defense over offense. In truth, it was the most effective strategy anyone could adopt against Cheon Woo-jin.
Cheon Woo-jin had already cut down countless Core Formation cultivators — yet his own realm remained mere Foundation Establishment. If a Core Formation cultivator committed everything to defensive arts, his spirit power alone could not break through.
So what then? Should he dig into his trump cards and borrow the offensive power of the Core Formation realm, if only for a moment?
Not the right cards to spend at this stage.
The real fight hadn't even begun. The true powers that ruled the 6th Layer had yet to show their faces. The trump cards Cheon Woo-jin carried were meant for the decisive battles still to come — wasted on scraps like this.
So, here and now…….
THUD!
Kicking off the roof and surging forward, Cheon Woo-jin plunged all five fingers into the ice shield. It risked freezing his hand solid in an instant, but he delayed the frost by concentrating his Water spirit power into his fingertips.
On the far side of the ice, the man's eyes went wide at the sudden move — but Cheon Woo-jin couldn't have cared less about his expression. His gaze was fixed solely on the ice shield beneath his hand.
Ice-attribute arts make sense to me now.
The brief exchange with the Ice Palace disciples had taught him that much. Ice-attribute arts were, at their root, built upon Water spirit power — which made them easy for Cheon Woo-jin to grasp.
Take the water-blade construct from the Shui Tian Huan Zhen Art, and invert it…….
A counter-spell assembled itself in his mind in an instant. He realized it through the Water spirit power in his fingers and drove it home with force.
KRAK!
Cheon Woo-jin's fingers crushed and shattered the ice shield like brittle glass.
Watching his defensive art dismantled in a way he had never conceived of, Han Yeong's eyes went wide — but Cheon Woo-jin still spared his face not a single glance. He reached through the hole in the shield, poured black thunder inside, and lifted his head.
The distance has opened up.
Leaving Han Yeong to tumble away in ruins, Cheon Woo-jin accelerated once more. At this rate, Seo Seol-ryeong would reach Yoo Gwi-hun first. Not that she would simply march up and threaten the man into surrendering the Banner, of course……
"Hm?"
At that very moment, an explosion thundered in the distance — from the direction of Yoo Gwi-hun's shops. What in the world had happened?
"Khekhek……"
Out of the chaos of the blast strode a figure utterly at his ease. A lizard-man, his face covered in scales, grinning as he licked the blood from one dripping hand.
"Chasing that scent was the right call."
It was Na Chwi-ryang of the Yin Scale Spirit Needle Sect — the same one he'd crossed paths with in the sewers. Cheon Woo-jin had assumed he was stuck down in the underground waterways, but he had evidently handed the aftermath to his underlings and climbed to the surface alone.
And in his hand…… a great flag, wrapped tight in binding talismans.
"That Yoo Gwi-hun bastard — I ripped one of his arms clean off and he went blubbering like a child, pulling the treasure right out of its hiding place for me. Should've gone for him from the start."
Delighting in his prize, Na Chwi-ryang chortled alone, shoulders bouncing. At the sight, the Core Formation cultivators of the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace bristled.
"That lizard has stolen a march on us yet again……!"
"Did he outpace us with his beastly nose this time too!"
They had apparently suffered at his hands often enough before. Reacting with raw emotion, they charged. The Blossoms of Ice unfolded, a lethal blizzard bearing down on him — and Na Chwi-ryang merely snorted, unleashing a torrent of spirit power from his entire body.
"HYAAAP!"
KWAANG!
Na Chwi-ryang's whole frame swelled outward. Flesh that surpassed the human baseline was the defining trait of the yao clans — and among them, a lizard of the Stone Reed King Physique like Na Chwi-ryang, with its monstrous strength, stamina, and agility, possessed a body purpose-built for close combat.
Drawing the hand that held the Banner back behind him, he swung his free right arm. Clenched in that grip was a pillar torn from a nearby shop.
KUWOONG!
The massive pillar slammed into an Ice Palace cultivator. The man tried to shield himself with ice, but was sent flying all the same. Another cultivator lunged at Na Chwi-ryang from the opposite side — and Na Chwi-ryang swung a leg thicker than the pillar itself, sending a blade of foot-wind howling through the air.
"Out of my way!"
Just as Na Chwi-ryang was bellowing in triumph, the Banner he held behind him was seized by something.
"Hnnm?"
SNAP!
Na Chwi-ryang's entire body froze solid. Even with his monstrous physical power turning a numerical disadvantage into an even fight, he found himself entombed in ice in the blink of an eye — and the Banner of the Ghost Summoning Hunt slipped free of his grip and soared away.
Into the hand of someone who had witnessed the Banner's appearance, immediately concealed herself, and watched the clash between Na Chwi-ryang and the Ice Palace while lying in wait for her moment.
"……"
A woman, both eyes covered by a cloth inscribed with intricate patterns.
Seo Seol-ryeong. She had finally claimed the Banner of the Ghost Summoning Hunt.
"Daoist Seo! Hand it over!"
"That treasure belongs to the Ten Thousand Nights Ice Palace!"
The very cultivators who had been attacking Na Chwi-ryang moments ago now turned their sights on Seo Seol-ryeong. They had never been allies cooperating with one another — only rivals, each searching for the Banner on their own.
The Ice Palace cultivators assailed her with ice-attribute arts, but Seo Seol-ryeong did not counterattack; she simply turned to leave.
"HRGH!"
It was at that exact moment that Na Chwi-ryang shattered his ice prison and raised both arms. He tore an entire storefront from its foundations and hurled it at her. The building disintegrated mid-flight, raining down like a natural disaster — a trajectory nearly impossible to answer while evading the Ice Palace's onslaught.
But in that very instant—
KRAKOOM!
Black thunder fell from the sky and pulverized the building to dust.
Every onlooker held their breath. Even Seo Seol-ryeong. And the man who had dropped that black thunder from the heavens landed at her side.
"You……"
He hadn't spoken a word, yet from his presence alone she had known at once that it was Cheon Woo-jin.
"Why are you here……"
"Seo Seol-ryeong."
She was flustered — far more so than when Cheon Woo-jin had vanished for a month while challenging the Foundation Establishment realm and then reappeared. But he cut through her words and spoke.
"I have a great deal I want to say to you, but let's set it all aside for now."
His voice was cold and clipped. Sitting her down and explaining things gently at length simply wasn't in his nature.
"I don't know what your objective is. But the Banner of the Ghost Summoning Hunt is not the right choice."
"What?"
"Think of another means. Perhaps I can become that means."
"……"
Right before their eyes, Na Chwi-ryang and the Ice Palace cultivators were glaring daggers at the pair of them. And cultivators could be felt converging from every direction — the forces of the three great powers gathering to claim the Banner of the Ghost Summoning Hunt at last revealed.
"Seo Seol-ryeong. Some time ago, I took on a commission."
"A commission……?"
"Not having you at my side cost me dearly — gathering information, and a dozen other things besides."
With that, Cheon Woo-jin fell silent. Seo Seol-ryeong was a clever woman. She would understand without another word.
"I have a great deal I want to say as well, but let us set that aside for now."
A cool voice flowed from her lips. From that voice alone, one could tell she had already finished deliberating.
"Daoist Cheon — may I ask for our partnership once more?"
"We've been partners all along."
KU-KWOOM!
Leading the charge, Na Chwi-ryang and the cultivators of the three great powers came surging in from every side. At the heart of it all, Cheon Woo-jin and Seo Seol-ryeong stood back to back.
Cheon Woo-jin refined the pure spirit power deep within his body through his Body of the Dark True Abyss; Seo Seol-ryeong did the same through her Guye Zhenren Physique. And without a word about who would move first, both released their power and sprang into motion.
At the resonance of their spirit power, heaven and earth themselves trembled.