Chapter 143
Chapter 143: Battle (3)
Pyeong Wi-rang was curious but held back for now.
He had no authority to interrogate Soldier Eccentric. The position of Secret Service Lord of the Murim Alliance was so significant that outside the Murim Alliance, it could exercise the authority of the Alliance Leader.
In fact, he had only just learned this time that Soldier Eccentric was a Secret Service Lord of the Murim Alliance.
Secret Service Lords were literally secret service lords, so no one except the Alliance Leader could know about them. Even Secret Service Lords didn't know each other's identities.
The fact that Soldier Eccentric had broken that unspoken rule and revealed his identity before them was shocking enough in itself.
About a month ago, the Ten Pavilions had received a missive from the Alliance Leader and stopped their skirmishes with Heavenly Demon Castle, with more than half their forces returning to the Murim Alliance. Then at the entrance of Xinmi, not far from Zhengzhou, they encountered Soldier Eccentric.
[There's no time. Those who are swift, follow me first.]
They didn't really know how he had found them. What mattered was the fact that he had shown the Ascending Dragon Dagger, the mark of a Secret Service Lord, and issued orders.
They immediately selected those with fast Lightness Arts. Then they departed straight away following him to the Murim Alliance.
Just the fact that the Alliance Leader urgently summoned Ten Pavilions personnel to the Alliance and that a Secret Service Lord personally stepped forward meant some serious incident had occurred at the Alliance.
'If they're calling in even the Ten Pavilions who are directly crossing swords with Heavenly Demon Castle...'
"What are you doing? Hurry and follow!"
Pyeong Wi-rang's thoughts were cut off there. Soldier Eccentric, who had been far ahead, turned his head and urged them to run faster.
"Yes, Secret Service Lord!"
Pyeong Wi-rang now had no choice but to focus only on his Lightness Arts.
'Young friend, sometimes ignorance is bliss.'
Soldier Eccentric knew well that Pyeong Wi-rang and the elite of the Ten Pavilions were curious about what was happening at the Murim Alliance right now.
However, he deliberately didn't tell them the details. It wasn't certain yet.
Judging from the current tremors and roars, it was almost certain, but he hadn't confirmed it with his own eyes yet.
He simply kept his mouth tightly shut and steadily moved toward Cheongsin Mountain. Soldier Eccentric glanced at Pyeong Wi-rang once more and merely answered inwardly.
'Asura True Jiangshi... Has the Extreme Yin Star of Heavenly Calamity truly appeared with those things?'
Since ancient times, the Martial World had been born, and since then the Martial World had experienced countless crises.
The descent of Heavenly Demon, the Star of Heavenly Calamity rising in the heavens, extreme confrontation with the government, the rampant spread of the Blood Cult, and so on.
However, among these, the most vicious and cursed crisis originated from the invention of Jiangshi Arts.
Jiangshi Arts referred to the Great Method of artificially blocking all blood passages of a corpse to stop the flow of life energy and continue the flow of death energy, forcibly opening the upper Dantian of the dead. When this Great Method succeeded, an incomplete spirit wandering the mortal world would enter the corpse. If this spirit's nature matched well with the corpse, the corpse would rise and begin activity.
This was called Living Jiangshi. Literally, a moving stiff corpse.
Living Jiangshi had such stiff bodies that they could only hop around and couldn't think at all. So even if created, they weren't threatening to martial artists at all. They were merely like ordinary people with slightly hard bodies.
However, if various additional Great Methods were performed on this Living Jiangshi, it could be remanufactured into different Jiangshi.
Iron Jiangshi, whose bodies were harder than iron.
Blood Jiangshi, which contained terrible blood essence and whose power was several times that of Living Jiangshi.
Poison Jiangshi, whose entire bodies were armed with poison, and so on—there were various remanufactured Jiangshi, called Secondary Jiangshi.
However, these Secondary Jiangshi were only slightly better than Living Jiangshi and weren't actually very useful. This was because they still had stiff bodies, which posed a fatal obstacle to movement.
Up until this point, excluding the revulsion of handling corpses, Jiangshi Arts weren't such a fearsome technique. In fact, they were just one of many common research subjects, studied openly even in sects of ambiguous standing between righteousness and evil like the Tang Family.
The real problem arose when a sinister group called the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult appeared.
When this organization first appeared in the Central Plains, no one paid attention to them. To martial artists, they were merely an insignificant evil cult.
Immortality without aging.
The ultimate goal pursued by countless rulers since time immemorial, including the First Emperor of Qin, and absolute masters of the Martial World. But equally an illusory mirage.
However, no one could deny that this mirage also fascinated people immeasurably.
Eternal life and immortality.
Nothing could be more attractive than this.
Living forever while commanding the world. How magnificent.
The Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult was a kind of pseudo-religion that bewitched people with this immortality as bait.
But as with previous pseudo-religions, these cults were only temporary. Eventually they faded and disappeared from the world.
Unless they actually achieved true immortality.
Therefore, the shamans and priests of the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult truly challenged this impossibility.
The method they chose to achieve immortality was Jiangshi Arts. They believed that if the original owner's spirit descended into a dead corpse to move exactly as in life and recover original memories, that would be the completion of immortality.
Thus they researched Jiangshi Arts and Descent Arts in the shadows for hundreds of years, and finally developed Tertiary Jiangshi, which no one had achieved before.
Unlike previous Jiangshi, Tertiary Jiangshi didn't have stiff bodies and could even walk or run. They could also move under their own judgment.
That wasn't all.
The truly terrifying aspect of Tertiary Jiangshi was that they could use their martial arts from life intact. The fact that their joints moved freely, their physical strength was incomparable to life, and they felt no pain was truly tremendous progress and shocking.
The priests of the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult gave these cursed monsters the splendid name True Living Jiangshi. It was a commemorative name marking the first step toward immortality.
Up until this point...
They didn't know how terrifying these monsters they had created were.
They were only obsessed with the idea of using True Living Jiangshi to expand their cult's influence. Furthermore, they were excited by the dream that they could become a state religion.
The cult leader of the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult grandly announced to the various Martial World sects and wealthy merchants the birth of Living Jiangshi, their research achievement. The Martial World sects, completely unaware of its danger, flocked like clouds to the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult's headquarters.
To see the True Living Jiangshi, the Tertiary Jiangshi...
That was the beginning of the calamity.
In reality, the True Living Jiangshi that awakened there were completely uncontrollable.
The martial artists who had visited the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult and the wealthy who desired eternal life were slaughtered in an instant, and the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult also completely collapsed. From the cult leader to the priests, shamans, and even ordinary believers—all died.
Afterward, the True Living Jiangshi burst out into the Central Plains.
A tremendous blood calamity swept through the Martial World.
Blood flowed to become rivers, and corpses covered the land.
People began calling the True Living Jiangshi, Asura Blood Jiangshi.
Whether government or Martial World, regardless of Orthodox, Hall of Gathering Evil, or Demonic, all Central Plains people united to destroy these Asura Blood Jiangshi.
The battle was fiercely intense, and countless people died.
The casualties at that time were beyond counting.
On the other hand, the number of Asura Blood Jiangshi was...
'Only ten.'
After that, Jiangshi research was completely halted and only continued secretly in a few sects.
However, information and stories about these Asura Blood Jiangshi remained as legend together with Heavenly Demon and the Extreme Yin Star of Heavenly Calamity.
Also, while most books left by Jiangshi researchers at that time were burned, parts of their secrets were passed down orally among the Murim Alliance's Secret Service Lords.
One such book reportedly contained these words:
[If Asura Blood Jiangshi could be controlled, I would call it Quaternary Jiangshi. And since the corpse would finally be perfected as a human weapon, I would name it Asura True Jiangshi.]
The ultimate living corpse.
According to that book's author's theory, if there existed someone capable of mental resonance enough to perfectly control corpses, Tertiary Jiangshi could easily become Quaternary Jiangshi.
However, the Sacrificial Illusion Blood Cult was destroyed and all their research results disappeared. For this reason, Jiangshi research completely regressed and was buried forever.
Or so it was believed.
But traces of those forgotten Asura Blood Jiangshi...
Were accidentally discovered by Soldier Eccentric, who had been tracking traces of the Extreme Yin Star of Heavenly Calamity on Hyeoncheon Jinin's orders.
Along with traces of the devil called the Extreme Yin Star of Heavenly Calamity, no less.
Those traces clearly showed...
'They were controlling Asura Blood Jiangshi at will.'
If what he saw was certain, then the theoretically existing Asura True Jiangshi had appeared in the Martial World.
And.
The direction their traces were heading was...
'The Murim Alliance!'
His steps quickened further. Or rather, he tried to.
Thud.
In a situation where he should accelerate even more, Soldier Eccentric instead stopped his feet.
"Why are you stopping?"
Though puzzled, Pyeong Wi-rang stopped following him. Then he soon understood why he had stopped.
"Those... people are..."
When had they appeared?
What seemed like hundreds of bamboo-hatted people were waiting for them at the entrance of Cheongsin Mountain.
It was easy to guess they came from a single organization. Just as they all wore bamboo hats pressed down, the clothes they wore were all pitch-black.
Usually, people with such appearance fall into one of three categories.
Bandit gangs, assassin groups, and evil cult crowds.
Whichever they were, they were clearly a group with bad intentions. Pyeong Wi-rang slowly extended his hand to his waist. There was his beloved sword that had tasted plenty of Heavenly Demon Castle disciples' blood on the frontier.
Just as the cool feeling of the scabbard stimulated his hand.
"Damn it. Too late... Already."
Thud thud thud.
With Soldier Eccentric's low curse, the black-clothed bamboo-hatted people began to move.