Chapter 227
Chapter 227: Broken Sword (3)
Scent knows no lies.
People craft expressions to deceive, alter their voices, disguise even their gait.
But scent—scent cannot be hidden.
Blood smells of blood, and fear smells of fear. Anger is bitter, sorrow is sour, and lies run cold.
Hyang-rang had lived his entire life through his nose.
From the day he accepted the spirit of the wolf, it was not sound or light but the language written in scent and nose that became his world. When the wind blew, battlefields dozens of li away were legible to him; when he stepped on soil, footprints from two days prior came into view.
The nose was his eyes.
The nose was truth itself.
Walking between the pine trees lining both sides of the mountain path, Hyang-rang's nostrils flared ceaselessly. On the surface it was nothing more than the sight of an ordinary young man walking a mountain trail, yet the nose beneath those amber pupils read the world without pause.
Blood.
Old yet thick—the scent of blood. Not one or two people. Dozens, no. At minimum well over a hundred people's worth of blood was tangled in the wind.
The scent of medicinal herbs was detected as well. Sanqi and Bletilla, used for staunching blood. The traces of hasty emergency treatment remained in the scent exactly as they had been left.
'A wounded group passed through this path.'
Several hundred or more.
The depth and variety of the wounds differed from one to the next, meaning it had not been uniform torture or an ambush. These were the remnant traces of a unit pushed back from a battlefield.
They could only be the defeated soldiers of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect.
Hyang-rang paid no great heed to this scent, unrelated as it was to his original mission. Whatever direction the Vast Heaven's remaining forces fled, they were destined for Nirvana in the end.
However.
The fact that something lay in the direction the defeated soldiers had headed—that needed to be kept in mind.
The smell of water.
A lake. Quite a wide expanse of water deep in the mountains. Around it, the smell of cooking smoke, the smell of iron being sharpened, the smell of wood being carved. A place where people had gathered to live.
Two Fragrance Disciples followed silently behind him. Among these three, words were unnecessary. When Hyang-rang changed direction, they followed; when Hyang-rang stopped, they stopped.
"South."
A single word.
The two Fragrance Disciples nodded simultaneously.
Hyang-rang quickened his pace while keeping his nose at work without pause. There was still no trace of the Sword Patrol Corps. The scent that had gone cold two hundred li north of Gangdo had not returned here on this mountain either.
That scene where thirty-one souls had vanished without a trace.
A place where there were no corpses, no smell of blood, not even the lingering scent of iron remained.
The Great Venerable himself had issued the command directly. Read again from the place where the scent had gone cold.
Hyang-rang read and read again. He read the wind and the soil, read even the faint traces soaked into moss and leaves, and read again. After ten days of tracking like that, he had arrived at this mountain.
The direction the Sword Patrol Corps had been heading. Gangdo.
The people gathered on this mountain not so far south of that Gangdo.
Perhaps there was a clue here.
It was then.
Hyang-rang's feet stopped.
The tip of his nose twitched. Once. Twice. Three times.
His brow furrowed.
Something is strange……
He was around the middle of the mountain. A stretch where the blood scent of the defeated soldiers still lingered thickly. A place where the smell of water and smoke rose on the wind from below.
Among all those scents, there was an empty space.
A place with no scent.
As though someone had emptied the air itself, a single circular domain was punching a hole through the map of scents.
'What is this……?'
A tremor rose up Hyang-rang's spine. Not the goosebumps of a human. The kind of tremor where the fur at the nape rises the instant a wolf steps into the territory of a greater predator.
A formation?
No.
Formations have scent. When energy moves, the residual scent of energy is always left behind. The formations of the Mountain Formation Division smell like a blend of metal and soil; the formations of the Thunder Formation Division are sharp like air scorched by lightning.
Whatever formation it is, so long as it operates energy, it cannot be free from scent.
But this was different.
It was not that scent was absent—it was that scent was being erased.
At the boundary of that domain, all information was severed. It was not only scent. Even the flow of wind was being minutely refracted around that spot as its center. Like a creek flowing around an invisible boulder, the air was gently being diverted.
And that domain was moving.
Toward him.
Hyang-rang raised his right hand.
The two Fragrance Disciples froze on the instant.
"Fall ba—"
That single syllable had not even finished.
Fwt—
The sound came from behind.
No. There had not even been sound. It was only that a sensation of air splitting had brushed the fur at his back.
Thud.
One Fragrance Disciple was slammed against a tree without a cry. His body bounced once and went limp. It was not that he had lost consciousness—his acupoints had been crushed before even that.
Swish—
The moment the second Fragrance Disciple reflexively moved to draw his sword, several strands of Formation Energy rope that extended from the void wound around and twisted his limbs. Nine Bindings. Formation threads that tightened like metal rings, taut and relentless, laid his body on the ground in an instant.
Precise and merciless suppression.
The technique of a Formation Taoist.
Hyang-rang lowered his body.
In a posture nearly approximating four legs, he reflexively leaped toward the rear. The speed of a wolf trained in martial arts. The beast's instinct erupting from within a human body.
Fwish-fwish—!
His nails lengthened in an instant and seized a branch to change his trajectory; his toes struck trunks in a chain of Lightness Arts, stepping across three trees in quick succession.
One.
The moment he kicked off the third tree and was about to land—
The air changed.
Density.
What came crashing over his entire body the moment his feet touched the ground was the resistance of air. As though he had leaped into water, his lungs grew heavy, and invisible pressure settled uniformly over his skin.
And then.
His nose died.
The sense of smell that had penetrated dozens of li until just a moment ago was cut off wholesale. The scent of wind, the scent of grass, the scent of soil, even his own body's smell could no longer be perceived.
'……!'
The world went flat.
Depth, direction, distance—all of it. Without his nose, nothing could be read. The sense he had relied on his entire life had been severed at the root.
This was the same as going blind.
His heart lurched. Pure terror, the bone-deep kind he had never once felt since accepting the energy of the Animal Realm, burrowing into him.
The beast knows. When trapped within a predator's territory, it must locate the enemy before it can flee.
Hyang-rang raised his head.
His sight was alive. His hearing too.
But they were only half.
Within that half-sight, a man was standing.
Ten or so paces ahead.
With a single sword resting across his shoulder. As naturally as if he had been there from the beginning. A young man in his mid-twenties. An expressionless face from which not a trace of emotion could be read.
And from this man—
No scent came at all.
As though even a living nose would have failed to catch it, precisely like that.
There was no flow of energy either. No ripple of internal power, no heat of vital force, not even the residual scent of life that any living human must exude.
Nothing.
A nothing of scent.
"……"
Hyang-rang's fangs pierced through his gums and rose. His nails extended fully. The Half-Change unique to Animal Realm embodiers—a beast's form seeping out from within a human frame.
Yet within this bizarre Energy Field, even the operation of energy within his body was being disrupted. Whenever the Animal Realm's energy tried to extend outward, an invisible membrane suppressed it in real time. The transformation stuttered. Like trying to strike a flint that had been soaked in water.
The man opened his mouth.
"This mountain is the territory of Hero Gate. For now, that is."
The first words were cold, then immediately shifted to something smoother. A tone impossible to gauge.
"An uninvited guest came calling on a dark mountain path, so I stepped out to do my duty as the host—"
The sword on the man's shoulder did not budge a hair. It had not come down yet. Which meant it had not yet been drawn.
"—and here are a few dogs making a racket?"
Yet Hyang-rang knew.
This man was dangerous. Dangerously so, beyond all measure.
One who has no scent is the most fearsome enemy to a wolf. Because they cannot be read. Because the next action cannot be predicted.
Fwish.
The sound of a fan opening came from behind him.
"Welcome, guest."
An unhurried, observational voice. Not the one who had knocked the Fragrance Disciple unconscious earlier—another person entirely.
From the left, Formation Energy spread across the ground like a spiderweb. The same texture of Formation Energy that had bound the Fragrance Disciple's limbs earlier. But the density was five times as thick. Not branches meant to confine an open space, but a level sufficient to raise walls.
"Ah, are these the uninvited brats? Turns out they're not quite human, are they."
This was the same direct, high-pitched voice as a moment before.
Three sides.
Front. The man with no scent.
Left. The Formation Taoist.
Behind. The man with the fan.
There was no path of retreat.
Hyang-rang did not run. A cornered wolf bares its teeth. That is the etiquette of the beast.
He set all four paws on the ground and lowered his stance even further, nearly flush to the earth. A shift of center impossible for a human. A thin exhale hissed out between his fangs.
The man tilted his head slightly.
"Certainly not human."
Hyang-rang's pupils contracted.
It had been Hyang-rang who tried to read—and it was Hyang-rang who had been read.
That too, perfectly, without so much as a nose.
Without scent and without Energy Sense, this man had read the Animal Realm energy dwelling within his body. The Field being warped around him was not simple defense. It was detection as well. A mirror that revealed the true nature of all that entered its domain.
Just as a beast fallen into water cannot hide its ripples no matter how it thrashes, within this man's Field, even concealed energy manifested its true form on its own.
The corners of the man's mouth rose by the tiniest fraction.
"How convenient."
From within the expressionless face bloomed a single thread of a smile.
There was no warmth. It was a smile close to frost, not sunlight.
"I had a few things I wanted to ask."
Hyang-rang's mind turned rapidly.
The Field spreading out from beneath this man's feet. That was the cause—the thing killing his nose, suppressing his energy, refracting even the flow of wind.
This was neither internal power nor a formation. It was a force of an entirely different dimension.
If one who possessed such a thing had been present two hundred li north of Gangdo—
Could it be that the thirty-one souls of the Sword Patrol Corps had disappeared without leaving any trace because of……
The absence of corpses.
The absence of blood scent.
Near this man, traces might simply be incapable of remaining in the first place.
Hyang-rang's amber pupils narrowed to slits.
'……Did this man swallow the Sword Patrol Corps—swallow that Sang Gwan-hwi?'
It was not certainty. Merely instinct.
If this man had been in the place where the scent went cold, everything aligned. Hyang-rang's nose had not been wrong a single time in his entire life. Where there is no scent, there is always one who has erased it. And right now, standing directly before him, this man was the most likely candidate.
He had to report this to the Great Venerable.
Alive, no matter what.
The remaining Animal Realm energy throughout Hyang-rang's entire body gathered into one. This man's bizarre Field was suppressing it, but for one instant—the explosive single burst that a beast stakes its life on to detonate—that much, it could not suppress.
He would wager everything on this one move.
Hyang-rang kicked off the ground.
Not toward any of the three sides—toward the fourth direction. Up.
Crash—!
Branches splintered as Hyang-rang's silhouette shot straight up. It was not the Lightness Arts of a human. It was the leap of a beast scaling a tree.
Clang!
A sword strike came up to meet him. The man's sword. A horizontal slash inserted without sound or wind grazed Hyang-rang's left flank. It was the spine of the blade, not the edge, but the sensation of two or three ribs cracking shot through his entire body.
'……Ggh!'
He clenched his teeth. He did not stop. He seized a branch, altered his trajectory, second leap. Third leap.
The sensation of breaking through the strange boundary was felt. The faintest trace, the scent of pine, began to return to the tip of his nose.
Just a little more.
Fwish.
The sound of a fan.
The fan of the man who had been behind him opened in midair, and the atmosphere suddenly contorted.
Lightning.
Metal sparks flashed through the air. Static electricity twisted and wrung every muscle in his body.
'……Ggghhk!'
Muscles contracted violently and joints locked. Nerves misfired as his limbs convulsed of their own accord.
A Field-type formation.
The arc of his leap collapsed.
The hand that had been reaching for a branch grasped empty air, and Hyang-rang's body plummeted to the earth as though poured from above.
Crash—
His back hit the ground first.
His vision blanked white for an instant, then returned, and when he barely managed to open his eyes—
The man's sword was in front of his throat.
An inch.
Exactly an inch of distance. The cold energy felt from the blade's tip was absent. This man's sword carried neither killing intent nor energy. Only the physical nature of iron was touching the skin of his throat, coolly.
That, perversely, was even more frightening.
"You don't have to answer."
The man's voice came down from above.
"However."
The sword drew one fraction closer.
"What you have caught scent of on this mountain—you will have to forget all of it before you leave. Won't you?"
Forget.
Hyang-rang did not answer. A beast does not offer false submission.
Only those narrowed amber pupils were clearly etching the man's face into memory.
This face.
The face of this man with no scent.
He would report it to the Great Venerable. Whether alive or dead.
It was then.
The ground trembled.
Faint but rhythmic vibrations. The sound of many feet striking the earth in a single beat.
Disciplined movement like the march of an army.
Hyang-rang's nose was still dead. Within this man's Field, nothing could be caught.
But his ears were alive. The wolf's hearing read the direction and scale of the vibrations.
The eastern foothills. Not dozens—over a hundred people were ascending the mountain.
And then.
Na—mu—A—mi—ta—bul.
Low and deep sutra chanting rising on the wind.
Hyang-rang's eyes widened.
He could not fail to recognize this chant. Had he not spent his entire life prostrating beneath it?
The Rakshasa Warrior Monk Unit.
The combat force that had been sweeping the remaining branches of the Vast Heaven under the Scarlet Rakshasa's command. Not some prayer formation, but actual combat troops. They had followed the blood scent of the defeated soldiers all the way here. Several hundred people were pushing up this mountain.
The man's head turned east.
It was only a moment, but Hyang-rang saw.
The expressionless face had not broken. Yet the sword that had been resting across his shoulder moved—barely, barely, only the most minute fraction.
"Quite noisy."
The man with the fan behind him murmured.
"Guild Master."
The woman to the left called out to that man. It was the first time even a trace of tension had mixed into her voice.
"They've come. Quite a few."
That man, Dong Bong-soo, did not look back.
The sword slowly withdrew from Hyang-rang's throat. An inch became a foot, and a foot became a pace.
Even in that moment, Hyang-rang did not run.
Because there was no longer any need to run.
Na—mu—A—mi—ta—bul.
The chanting was drawing closer. The merciful song of swords, where hundreds of voices were layered into one.
Dong Bong-soo brought the sword down from his shoulder and gripped it in his right hand.
The first time.
"Looks like it'll be an interesting night."
At those words, Hyang-rang was certain.
……That standing before the great force of the Dark Net Rakshasa Path, this man was not afraid—he was enjoying it.
A chill ran down Hyang-rang's spine.
The thing a beast fears most is not a predator stronger than itself.
It is a beast that hunts even when full.
And—
This man is such a beast.