Yeouido Gate
The moment I crossed the Gate, the air changed.
Seoyeon and I had experienced something similar back in the D-Rank Gate, but this was a different beast entirely. It wasn't just that the air was humid and heavy — the atmosphere itself was steeped in a thick, cloying scent of blood.
The scenery had transformed completely as well. If the inside of a D-Rank Gate felt like the depths of some deep forest, this place was nothing but desolate, empty plains stretching to the horizon. The only thing visible in the distance was a single weathered castle, standing there oddly out of place — and even that was barely discernible, half-swallowed by the crimson fog that blanketed everything around it.
Well, what do we have here?
A smirk curled across my lips as I studied the blood-red mist obstructing my vision. For an ordinary person, that fog alone would have been more than enough to strip away any sense of direction. For me, it was nothing of the sort — because I could sense blood, faintly mingled into the mist itself.
Never thought I'd see something like this here.
The Blood Cult hadn't earned its name for nothing. Shaolin's arts bore the imprint of the Buddha, a Wudang sword carried the ebb and flow of the Taiji within its arc, the martial techniques of Huashan bloomed with the fragrance of plum blossoms, and the demonic arts of the Demonic Cult gave rise to azure flame — all for one simple reason. When a particular symbol manifested in the martial arts of Murim, it was because the enlightenment achieved by that school's founding master was woven into the very techniques themselves.
And the enlightenment of Hyolma, founder of the Blood Cult, lay in blood.
"Of course it's blood. Is blood not the very wellspring of life itself?"
When I'd asked him why, out of all the countless things in the world, it had to be blood, that was the answer my master had given me. His explanation had gone on at length, but in the end, what he was really telling me was that blood was one of the things I understood best.
I felt movement stirring within the fog, and a faint, bloodless smile ghosted across my face. It was laughable, honestly — like watching a moth flap its wings before a storm. These creatures actually dared to play games with blood, of all things, in front of me.
Thirty-two in total, is it?
After counting the enemies steadily tightening their encirclement around me, I moved without hesitation. Waiting for them to come to me had never suited my temperament.
Swish—.
As I closed in on the nearest presence, its identity came into view. Pale skin, blood-red eyes, and long, jutting fangs. The creature wore the unmistakable visage of a vampire, and I couldn't help but find the coincidence exquisite. Of all things, the primary enemies of the Gate where my brother-in-law might be trapped were vampires.
And I was beginning to understand, roughly, why Korea's Awakened had avoided raiding this Gate for so long. The creatures' numbers, which had been a mere thirty-two, were climbing fast.
"Sorry, but you're a bad match for me."
"Kiiik—!"
The vampire, startled by my voice, hissed and hacked — and that was the exact moment it lunged, reflexively raking its long claws toward me in an attack that looked agonizingly slow to my eyes. I simply reached out and seized the creature's body.
In that same instant, the blood flowing through its veins began to race, faster and faster, until it was outright boiling.
The Myriad Blood Condensation Art. One of the supreme martial arts of the Blood Cult — a blatant cheat of a technique that allowed its wielder to manipulate the blood coursing through an opponent's body. Naturally, my master had created it, and back in Murim, employing such a technique would have drawn condemnation as the vilest of demonic arts. But this wasn't Murim.
POP—.
The vampire's head swelled up of its own accord and burst like an overripe fruit. The blood that came gushing out of its body condensed midair, hardening into a cluster of small projectiles.
I should head for that castle first.
Keeping the distant fortress in mind, I began accelerating at full speed. The creatures seemed to read my movement and threw themselves at me, but my stride never faltered for even a moment. The blood rounds I'd harvested from the first vampire's body were doing the work of chasing off the swarming mosquitoes for me.
Hold on just a little longer, brother-in-law.
All I could do was murmur those words inwardly as I watched the old castle draw steadily closer.
"This is going to require some explaining, don't you think?"
Inside the Cheongseol Guild's headquarters in Yangcheon-gu, Jin Dohyuk — Guild Master of the Heukchi Guild, the man they called the Berserker — delivered the words with a glacial smile. He was, unmistakably, smiling, yet anyone could tell he was on the verge of detonating.
"W-well, you see..."
"He's coming, you said? Jang Yeongsu, you son of a bitch. You said it yourself, with your own mouth, didn't you?"
Dohyuk kicked out savagely at the table. With a thunderous crash, the steel table crumpled like wet paper. But from Jang Yeongsu's perspective, this was madness of the highest order. The man he'd spoken with on the phone had sounded like he would come looking for him at any moment. If not for that, Yeongsu would never have swallowed his pride and begged not only the other guilds but every guild in the vicinity as well.
"He definitely said he'd come, so if you could just wait a little long—"
"It's been over two hours already. You think I've got nothing but time to burn? I came here because I heard there was some Returnee bastard to kill, not to sit around wasting my day with the likes of you."
At Dohyuk's words, Yeongsu let out a short, weary sigh. He knew the Berserker's reputation all too well — the moment the man caught wind of anyone strong, he came snarling after them like a rabid dog. That was exactly why he'd hoped spreading the rumor about a Returnee would lure him in. What he'd never dreamed of was that the plan would curdle into poison like this.
"Come on, there's no need to get this worked up."
The one who butted in while Yeongsu was still floundering was his one and only friend, Yoon Jiseok. However unshakably calm Jiseok's temperament was by nature, he was hardly dim enough to stand there grinning while another guild's master wrecked his own guildhall. The problem was that, by every measure Yeongsu could calculate, Jiseok was simply no match for Jin Dohyuk. Dohyuk was a Returnee rated as S-Rank. No matter that Jiseok was an A-Rank Hunter, bridging that single rank of separation was nowhere near as easy as it sounded. After all, the only reason Yeongsu had dared to scheme about tearing into Kang Iseol's White Night — another guild rated S-Rank — in the first place was because Dohyuk existed within his calculations.
"Ha. Look at this bastard. You throw in with me for five minutes and suddenly you think we're friends?"
The instant those words left Dohyuk's mouth, Jiseok's forehead twitched.
For the love of god, shut up, buddy.
Yeongsu strained every fiber of his being to beam that message across, but sadly, Jiseok had never been one to read the room.
"Friends? Fuck that. I'm way older than you, jackass."
"Ha. Hahahahahaha."
Laughter burst from Jin Dohyuk's lips at the provocation — and the moment it died away, scarlet killing intent came boiling out of his body. True to the Berserker's name, his eyes were already half-rolled back into his head.
"Gkk—."
Dohyuk's hand clamped around Jiseok's throat before anyone could blink. For all that Jiseok was an A-Rank Hunter in his own right, the man was too fast for him to manage so much as a proper reaction.
"All this A-Rank, A-Rank business has gone to your head, huh? Made you think you're actually strong? Where I came from, pieces of trash like you were Meat Shield Number One."
"Guild Master Jin. Please, let's all just calm down first—"
Yeongsu threw the plea at Dohyuk in desperation. This was no situation to be standing on anyone's pride. If Dohyuk decided to snap Jiseok's neck right here, the Cheongseol Guild would collapse before that troublesome Returnee ever showed his face.
Perhaps thanks to Yeongsu's groveling, Dohyuk clicked his tongue and flung Jiseok down onto the floor.
"Jang Yeongsu. So — how do you plan to compensate me for the wild goose chase?"
Watching Dohyuk crack his neck joints and grin down at him, Yeongsu knew it in his bones in that very instant: he had run from a wolf straight into the jaws of a tiger.
Though, of course, that was only true in Jang Yeongsu's mind.
The deeper I pressed into the old castle, the stronger a strange sense of dissonance became. The vampires that had sprung up without end outside were conspicuously absent as I made for the castle's central hall. I discovered the reason only upon reaching the great hall within.
Hah. So this is where everyone was hiding.
Before the massive iron gate barring the hall stood dozens of vampires, frozen mid-motion in grotesque tableaus. One hung suspended in the air mid-leap. Another remained locked in the exact posture of reaching for the gate's handle. It was as if someone had pressed pause on a video.
I narrowed my eyes and flicked a finger.
Ping—.
A droplet of blood shot toward the iron gate — and the moment it crossed into a certain region, its speed began to bleed away until it stopped dead. Though, to be precise, it hadn't stopped entirely. When I drew my qi sense up to its highest pitch and examined it, I could see the droplet inching forward, ever so slowly, but surely.
Time... has slowed down?
My heart began to pound as I stared at the iron gate that had to be the boss chamber. It felt as though that thread-thin hope — the possibility that my brother-in-law had truly survived — had grown just a shade thicker.
Admittedly, the situation here differed somewhat from Oh Pilsang's testimony. The man had sworn up and down that my brother-in-law's skill was a spatial ability, something along the lines of an Inviolable Sanctuary.
Well, there's one way to find out.
The real question was how to get through that time-warped barrier.
If time is slowed in there, then I simply need to wrap myself in a barrier that its influence can't touch.
In Murim, the commonly understood essence of the Body Protective Astral Qi lay in deflecting external energies. But my master had taught me that this was not the whole of it. The true extremity of the technique, he'd said, was to isolate the practitioner's own body as a self-contained microcosm — a perfect, independent universe unto itself. My enlightenment hadn't reached that far, but resisting the influence of the barrier before me seemed well within my grasp.
Energy drawn up from my dantian spread into a thin membrane that lightly enveloped my entire body. An absolute domain forged from pure true qi. I set my foot slowly across the invisible boundary before me.
Crackle—.
Where the surface of my astral qi collided with the boundary, a peculiar friction shrieked into being. It felt like forcing my way through soil compacted to the density of stone — a heavy, grinding resistance.
But it lasted only a moment. I pushed through the boundary, and soon enough I was closing the distance to the iron gate where my brother-in-law was presumed to be.
Screeeech—.
The massive iron gate groaned open with a sound that set my teeth on edge. And beyond it, a familiar face and a stranger's face stood glaring at each other with murderous intensity. A stillness hung over the great hall, as though time itself had seized. The only thing moving within that frozen space was me.
I approached the stranger's face first, for no reason more complicated than proximity — the creature stood closer to the entrance. It was actually rather handsome by any reasonable standard, but the deathly pallor of its skin and the fangs jutting from its lips marked it plainly as the boss that had claimed this space as its own.
Tap.
I gave the creature's body a light push — then turned and walked toward my brother-in-law. The face I remembered stood there before my eyes, unaltered. He looked like he'd aged a touch, perhaps, but not so much that I couldn't recognize him.
"...Thank you for staying alive, brother-in-law."
I spoke the words to my frozen brother-in-law, then gathered my true qi into both hands once more.
CLAP—!
The instant my palms met, the strange pressure that had hung over the great hall dissolved, and time within the space began to flow at its proper speed once more.
"...Hhk. Br-brother-in-law?"
My brother-in-law's eyes trembled as if an earthquake had just torn through his world, and that was all he could manage to say.