Chapter 440
Chapter 440
-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 114
>Chapter Title: Ghost Sword (3)
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Get away from my father!”
At Chun-chu’s fierce shout, the first of the secret envoys of spring and autumn, Mok Kyung-un turned his head halfway and spoke.
“Father?”
“That’s right. He’s my father.”
“He doesn’t seem like the father I heard about.”
Mok Kyung-un had thought of Ghost Sword as something like siblings who shared blood with him.
However,
“I recall hearing you two had a relationship like that.”
“...Well, something like that. But wasn’t this the time for you to step in and persuade him?”
“You’re the one changing the story.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you’d convince him to get the information I want, so why are you threatening my father?”
At her question, Ghost Sword parted his lips with a somewhat darkened expression.
“Chun-chu. Why exactly did you come here?”
In response, Chun-chu snorted dismissively, as if disappointed.
“Is that something you say to the child you’re supposed to be saving?”
“This isn’t your place to interfere.”
“You’re really going to do this?”
Chun-chu’s voice rose sharply, genuinely angry.
But Ghost Sword was utterly resolute.
“Don’t get involved. This is my problem to solve.”
“Don’t make me laugh. That man you’ve all but abandoned—what did he say to make you throw away even your own child and go this far?”
“Throw away...”
-Swish!
Before Ghost Sword could finish, Mok Kyung-un released his grip on the collar and seized the sword scripture instead.
-Bzzz!
One of the formless swords protecting Mok Kyung-un shot toward Chun-chu.
Having personally felt the power of the formless sword, she hurriedly unleashed her lightness skill to widen the distance.
Fortunately, the formless sword didn’t pursue her fully.
Chun-chu shouted.
“You’re really going to play it like this?”
“Let me ask one thing.”
“What?”
“What makes him your father? Is he some adoptive father?”
“Adoptive father? What are you talking about...”
“Unlike the thick demonic energy emanating from you, Ghost Sword has none of it. What evidence do you have that you share blood?”
At Mok Kyung-un’s words, Chun-chu furrowed her brow and then looked at Ghost Sword’s forehead.
With a somewhat surprised look in her eyes, she asked.
“Don’t tell me... you removed the eye?”
Curious about her question himself, Mok Kyung-un also gazed at Ghost Sword’s forehead.
It was deeply sunken, as if something had once been there.
The size and position made it impossible not to think of the third eye of the Three-Eyed.
Mok Kyung-un asked.
“Were you Three-Eyed too?”
After a moment of silence at the question, Ghost Sword finally spoke.
“...I had the Three Eyes.”
“You had them? So like Mok Gan, a parasitic eye possessed you?”
“That’s right. I should have died along with the eye, but now I am purely human.”
What did that even mean?
Fragments of the past flashed through Ghost Sword’s mind in an instant.
* * *
On the day the Heaven-Earth Moon Society fell,
Gwak Dong-ha, the Signal Law Enforcer who served the young head of the Heavenly Vein, lost his sound mind and human life from that point on.
“Rejoice. You’ve been chosen, Dong-ha.”
“Y-Young... head... W-What are you doing? Why...”
-Grip!
“Gah!”
Signal Law Enforcer Dong-ha was at a loss for words as he watched the young head Pyo Eun-hyeon, gripped by madness, clutching his own throat.
How had things come to this?
Had it started after that day?
From the day he first lost to the one he admired, he had gradually changed.
Though he had a naturally bright and virtuous nature, so they thought he’d soon return to normal, the young head’s madness, darkness, and jealousy only grew.
Unlike the clan head who harbored madness within, they had thought he would become a wise ruler, but seeing him grow more like his father terrified him.
Yet now, he had the same eyes as the clan head.
“Y-Young... head... Please...”
-Crack! Slither!
In that moment, Dong-ha’s pupils shook wildly.
His forehead split open, revealing a grotesque eyeball within.
As he stood speechless at the eerie sight, someone approached.
That person also had a third eye on their forehead, just like young head Pyo Eun-hyeon.
The eye on that person’s forehead appraised Signal Law Enforcer Dong-ha.
Then, with a satisfied expression, it spoke.
“Indeed, an excellent body. Far better than the previous one. My lord.”
“Excluding the senile body you replaced and this current one, he’s the most usable.”
Bewildered by their conversation, Signal Law Enforcer Dong-ha’s eyes sharpened.
“You bastards... What exactly are you?”
“Who knows?”
-Pfshk!
With those words, the figure plucked out the eye from its own forehead.
“!!!!”
It then brought the eye to Dong-ha’s forehead.
Tentacle-like appendages burst from the eyeball, shattering the skin and bone of Dong-ha’s forehead as they burrowed in.
Dong-ha thrashed his head to avoid it, but once the tentacles pierced, there was no resisting.
Soon, the third eye settled completely on his forehead.
Pyo Eun-hyeon, who had been gripping his throat, released him and asked with a smile.
“Do you like it?”
“Stronger ego than expected.”
“Hoh. Is that so? Seems the death of his family wasn’t enough to fully shatter his mind.”
“Apparently. But that won’t last long.”
The third eye was confident.
To serve the being residing in Pyo Eun-hyeon, it had changed bodies just like him over a long time.
Humans, who barely lived a century, always succumbed to its will eventually—and this one would too.
But Signal Law Enforcer Dong-ha’s will was stronger than it anticipated.
Even without deliberately separating the consciousness or fully absorbing it, his didn’t vanish easily.
To plunge him deeper into despair,
“Do you see?”
“W-What are you trying to do now?”
“I’m giving a gift to your one remaining blood kin.”
“What?”
“The odds are extremely low, but if this succeeds, your daughter—no, our daughter—will be reborn as a being transcending humanity, just like us.”
“No! Stop! Please! Please stop!”
This was entirely different from parasitic possession.
It was an experiment transplanting the blood and flesh of the Otherworldly Demon into a human.
They had pursued this for centuries, succeeding only twice, with most humans dying from it.
Fundamentally opposed existences, humans and Otherworldly Demons could scarcely coexist in one body without parasitism.
Yet,
“Hoh.”
Defying those immense odds, the daughter survived.
That five-year-old lump of flesh endured the agony.
Though control of her body was seized, sharing memories with the parasite on her forehead, he knew well how miraculous this was.
Witnessing it, he steeled his resolve.
Even in this state, for the body-snatched young head and the surviving daughter, he would endure to the end somehow.
And after some eighty years, an unintended opportunity arose.
-Roar!
A being of pure black flame, chaos incarnate.
Contact with it changed everything.
He regained control of his body through his own will.
The chance had finally come.
* * *
“Human? How is that possible?”
Chun-chu denied it incredulously, but Ghost Sword spoke with a bitter expression.
“I hoped you wouldn’t know until everything was resolved, but things never go as planned.”
“Don’t tell me... you’re saying you became human for the sake of that body your lord discarded?”
At Chun-chu’s words, Ghost Sword let out a sigh.
Having shared memories with the eye that controlled him for over eighty years, Ghost Sword knew how dangerous and formidable the being possessing the young head’s body was.
That was why he had proceeded with utmost caution.
He had planned to reveal the truth once the foundation for counterattack was set, but everything had gone awry.
Thus, Ghost Sword painfully forced out the words.
“That’s not all of it. I can’t tell you everything now. So...”
-Stab!
“Urk!”
In that instant, the tip of a formless sword pierced above Ghost Sword’s collarbone, its sword force burrowing into his body.
Chun-chu cried out with murderous eyes, trying to stop Mok Kyung-un.
“Stop!”
-Swish!
But the formless sword in front blocked her approach, forcing Chun-chu to unleash her signature invisible demonic power to overcome it.
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
Even her power couldn’t easily breach the formless sword.
“Damn it!”
Meanwhile, Mok Kyung-un stared down at Ghost Sword and soon asked.
“Whether you became human or not, whatever schemes you’re plotting with the Heaven-Earth Society Lord—it’s none of my concern.”
Enduring the pain, Ghost Sword struggled to reply to Mok Kyung-un.
“Hoo... hoo... That... everything... involves the Incarnation... and you...”
“Incarnation?”
Pointing to himself at the word, Mok Kyung-un said.
“So what exactly is inside me that made you target Grandfather and try to harm him?”
Frowning at the question, Ghost Sword answered.
“You... don’t tell me you still haven’t fully realized your own existence?”
“Realized?”
“Haa... But how did you gain this power then?”
Ghost Sword looked at Mok Kyung-un with eyes full of incomprehension.
He had assumed Mok Kyung-un’s immense martial prowess had awakened him as the Incarnation, bringing self-realization.
But that wasn’t the case?
Then how had he grown this strong in a human body without any realization?
It was unbelievable.
‘Hae Young Pill Immortal... What have you done? Weren’t you the one who abandoned your duty as the Incarnation’s servant and raised him fully as a human?’
As he lay dying from the Sacheon Tang Clan’s formless poison, he had said as much.
Thus, Ghost Sword thought his attempt to oppose him with the Incarnation’s power had nearly failed.
That was why he sought other ways with the Heaven-Earth Society Lord.
Yet how could someone who grew up as an ordinary human, without properly awakening as the Incarnation, possess such power?
Ghost Sword recalled that moment.
* * *
“Gah!”
Having subdued Timber Sword Manor’s Clan Head Mok In-dan in a single technique, Ghost Sword looked indifferently down at him clutching his pant leg and begging.
“He’s... still just a baby. Please... please... show mercy.”
-Thud! Thump!
After knocking him out, Ghost Sword approached the shattered carriage.
This had to be the place.
The Incarnation was here.
-Waa! Waa!
But why was only a baby’s cry coming from inside?
Filled with doubt, Ghost Sword flung open the door of the broken carriage.
And there,
“What is this?”
Lying beside their bloodied, unconscious mother were two identical-looking babies, like twins.