Chapter 26
Chapter 26
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 8
>Chapter Title: Aura of Death (1)
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“The dagger’s internal energy belongs to you too.”
‘!?’
Gam Escort’s pupils trembled at Mok Kyung-un’s words.
The dagger embedded right in the center of his chest.
The internal energy loaded onto that dagger was his own?
Did that mean this guy had forcibly taken his internal energy and used it?
‘......Impossible.’
Internal energy had its own unique properties.
Even if you stole someone else’s internal energy, due to the variations in qi shaped by different sects and factions, it would essentially just become poison.
Even when passing internal energy between fellow disciples of the same sect, unless it was refined through a circulation method to make it one’s own, there was no way to use it immediately.
And yet, he had used it?
‘Just what the hell is this guy?’
He was definitely no ordinary commoner.
Gam Escort had thought that even as a death row convict, since he wasn’t a martial artist, he could be controlled.
But that had been a miscalculation.
This guy possessed bizarre abilities he knew nothing about.
He even wielded monstrosities.
‘It was a mistake.’
Bringing this guy along had been a mistake.
To think he could be controlled just because he hadn’t learned martial arts.
How foolish.
He was a guy with a brilliant mind sharp enough to draw out his attention using a monstrosity, then hurl a dagger infused with the absorbed internal energy to inflict a fatal wound.
That might be what made the guy truly terrifying.
“Hoo...... hoo......”
Gam Escort barely managed to steady his breathing.
Breathing was agony with the dagger lodged in his chest.
His body temperature was dropping, centered around his chest.
The location was too fatal.
The moment he pulled it out, the bleeding might be so severe that recovery would be impossible.
-Swish!
Gam Escort raised his head and glared at Mok Kyung-un.
In any case, he and this guy were fated never to walk the same path.
He had to see this through somehow.
He was in bad shape himself, but the guy should be just as hampered by the dagger between his ribs and the one in his thigh......
‘!?’
Gam Escort frowned.
The dagger this guy had thrown was the one embedded in his own thigh.
So why was there only that much bleeding?
At that spot, not just around the thigh but his pants below should already be soaked in blood.
Yet aside from that area, no blood seemed to be flowing.
‘There’s no way he sealed the bleeding or controlled the acupoints.’
He had never seen anything like it.
So what the hell was it?
Gam Escort stared at Mok Kyung-un in disbelief, as if looking at a monster, then bit his lip hard.
He couldn’t fathom how he had ended up crossing such a freakish guy.
But he still had an ace up his sleeve.
He hadn’t used it yet precisely for a time like this.
“......You......forgot......about the Poison Pill......?”
It was the Poison Pill.
To prevent him from slipping control or running away on his own, he had fed him the Poison Pill in advance.
At Gam Escort’s words, Mok Kyung-un licked his lips.
“Oh? The Poison Pill?”
“Yeah.”
“I almost forgot.”
“Ha.”
Gam Escort was dumbfounded by Mok Kyung-un’s response.
How could he forget that his life was held hostage?
It didn’t matter what he was thinking.
There was no way such a cunning guy had truly forgotten.
“Haa...... haa...... Let’s make a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Stop this fight and hand over the manual, and I’ll let you go.”
“Let me go?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? Staying here is just living a fake life anyway, with the constant risk of being exposed at any moment.”
Mok Kyung-un nodded at those words.
“Well. That’s true.”
“......So I’ll give you the antidote recipe and some startup money. Any decent physician should be able to make it, and with the money, you can start anew. Cough, cough.”
As his words dragged on, Gam Escort’s throat grew hoarse.
He needed to hurry with emergency treatment and circulate his qi, or it would be dangerous.
Even enduring with internal energy had its limits.
“Choose. Fighting like this will just hurt us both.”
“That does make sense.”
Mok Kyung-un showed signs of agreement.
Seeing this, Gam Escort was about to breathe a sigh of relief.
Putting out this immediate fire, then dealing with the guy later wouldn’t be too late.
For now, he needed to reassure him.
“I’ll give you a stabilizer first. We each treat...... Cough......”
At that moment, a cough escaped Gam Escort’s mouth.
It was a cough mixed with blood.
It could happen with his injury, but here Gam Escort felt something off.
‘The blood......’
A foul smell wafted from the blood.
Startled, Gam Escort tried to rip open his chest area.
But his hand trembled violently and wouldn’t move.
‘Why won’t my hand......’
-Thud!
That wasn’t the end.
Soon after, Gam Escort’s legs gave out, and he dropped to one knee on the ground.
Then,
“Gurk!”
Gam Escort vomited up a clump of black blood.
He had thought his internal energy was protecting his chest and organs, but something was rapidly spreading through his five viscera and six bowels, causing damage.
‘No way?’
Gam Escort’s eyes widened.
These symptoms were unmistakably poisoning.
Something was wrong.
This guy hadn’t used poison, so why was he poisoned?
As he wondered, Mok Kyung-un staggered slowly toward him, who was writhing in pain.
“Hoo. Having this dagger stuck here hurts a lot.”
“You bastard...... what the hell...... did you do?”
“There was something I forgot to mention earlier.”
“What?”
“Besides the dagger and internal energy, I gave you my blood too.”
“Your blood?”
“Yeah. It was too tight on time to wipe off the blood from the dagger in my thigh and give it to you. Well, it was intentional anyway.”
“What the hell are you......”
Mok Kyung-un smirked and spoke to Gam Escort, who couldn’t comprehend.
“Of course you wouldn’t know. I only told Go Chan Escort about it.”
“Go Chan?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing much. For some reason, ever since I was little, I’ve eaten a lot of poisonous herbs and such, so my blood is toxic.”
‘!?’
Gam Escort was utterly flabbergasted.
His blood was toxic? What kind of nonsense was this?
Did that mean this guy was like a Poison Human from the Sacheon Tang Clan?
‘This bastard....... ha!’
It was absurd.
Just how much was he hiding?
But that wasn’t the important thing right now.
He needed to somehow block the poison spreading not just in his chest but everywhere with his internal energy.
He didn’t know what poison it was, but it burned fiercely.
“Cough, cough.......”
“Painful, right?”
“You bastard...... you think you’ll get away...... scot-free......”
“Padoo, Gae-dang-gwi, Bok-su-cho, Banha......”
‘!?’
Gam Escort’s pupils shook wildly at the herbs named by Mok Kyung-un.
They were all ingredients used in the Poison Pill.
“Jari-gong, Wood Ear Mushroom, Hoehyang-cho.”
“You...... how......?”
“Well, aren’t simple herbs like these identifiable just by a slight taste from the tongue?”
You can tell by the taste?
Just what the hell was this guy?
Mok Kyung-un knelt down in front of the bewildered Gam Escort, meeting his gaze, and said,
“Truth is, you don’t need any antidote or whatever.”
“You bastard....... were you...... cough, cough...... toying with me?”
At the question, Mok Kyung-un tilted his head slightly and stared intently at Gam Escort’s face.
His pale face, and eyes filled with fear and terror.
Seeing this, Mok Kyung-un smiled faintly and said,
“Whether martial artist or first-rate expert, in the face of pain and death, there’s not much difference from ordinary people.”
-Chill!
The moment he heard those words, goosebumps rose along Gam Escort’s spine.
How could someone wear a human skin and say such things, with the eyes of a dead man?
It didn’t feel like a human was in front of him at all.
This guy was a devil.
-Tremble!
Gam Escort’s trembling wouldn’t stop.
His breathing grew ragged, and fear made it hard to breathe.
The human heart was truly cunning.
Just moments ago, still believing he held the advantage, he had looked down on him with no tension.
But now it was completely different.
“You’re trembling.”
“Sp...... spare me.”
Gam Escort cast aside his pride and begged for his life.
He couldn’t die like this.
He had dreamed of a stable life after escaping the brutal world of assassins where death could come at any moment.
Dying like this was too unfair.
Mok Kyung-un stroked his own chin.
“Spare you?”
“I swear...... loyalty. No, I swear it. Please...... please spare me.”
Seeing him plead, Mok Kyung-un smiled and said,
“Now your attitude is to my liking.”
“I, I will live only for Young Master.”
“Then that’s good for me.”
At Mok Kyung-un’s words, Gam Escort’s expression began to brighten.
But then,
-Stab!
“Gahk!”
Just when he thought he was being spared, Mok Kyung-un pressed down hard on the dagger in his chest, pushing the hilt all the way in.
Whispering into the ear of the agonized Gam Escort, Mok Kyung-un said,
“Someone who can switch sides so easily depending on convenience—what loyalty is that?”
“Grrrr.......”
“It’d be more helpful if you just died.”
-Swish!
“Urk!”
With those words, he clamped his hand over the gasping man’s mouth and nose.
Gam Escort’s eyes bulged with blood vessels as he flailed his hands and feet in agony, but Mok Kyung-un watched him with an expressionless face.
It didn’t take long.
The twitching throughout his body soon stopped.
Gam Escort, veins bulging in terrified eyes, had breathed his last.
Mok Kyung-un looked at him with apparent disinterest, then soon lifted the palm that had covered his nose and mouth.
‘Handled it faster than I thought. Lucky, I guess.’
He had intended to kill Gam Escort one way or another from the start.
No point in keeping alive someone who knew he was a fake—it would just be a hassle.
Mok Kyung-un pondered.
‘Should I kill Go Chan Escort too?’
If he took care of Go Chan as well, no one would know the truth anymore.
But soon Mok Kyung-un shook his head.
‘Might as well keep him alive.’
Go Chan still had his uses.
Good for handling cleanup and such.
And,
‘His mouth seems pretty tight.’
He liked that he’d kept silent to the end even under torture.
Whether out of fear of him or the poison didn’t matter.
As long as he didn’t stab him in the back, he was willing to use him plenty.
-Twinge!
Mok Kyung-un glanced at the dagger lodged between his own ribs.
Even with his bizarrely strong recovery, having this stuck in continuously was unavoidably painful.
But he couldn’t pull it out now.
He needed to keep up appearances.
‘Wish someone would hurry up and come.’
It was cumbersome.
“Ah!”
He had almost forgotten.
Mok Kyung-un placed his palm on the area of Gam Escort’s dantian, now dead.
Then he performed the Grasping Form.
To confirm one thing.
The internal energy from the dispersing dantian of the dead man was sucked into Mok Kyung-un’s body through the Grasping Form.
It was an amount incomparable to Jo Il-sang’s.
‘A pie in the sky.’
But this internal energy would scatter and vanish anyway.
What he was more curious about was something else.
Soon, the inflow of internal energy stopped.
No reaction as he had hoped.
‘Not this time?’
As he thought that,
At that instant, a chilling yin death qi flowed in from Gam Escort’s abdomen.
It was strikingly similar to the energy he had absorbed from Jo Il-sang.
No, even more abundant.
‘Ahhh!’
There it was.
The death qi within the dead Gam Escort’s body gathered toward the area below his navel in the abdomen.
And it began to take shape bit by bit.
He didn’t know exactly what it was, but Mok Kyung-un was growing fond of this chilling energy.
-Hoo.
Red eyes watched such a Mok Kyung-un with interest.
They belonged to Cheong-ryeong, who held a pipe in her mouth amid the thick smoke.
Cheong-ryeong whispered softly to the Demon Monk beside her.
-Baldy. I think I get why you’re being led around by that mortal.
That guy wasn’t an ordinary human.
She could instinctively tell as much.
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