Chapter 213
Chapter 213
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 213
>Chapter Title: Gongdong (4)
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Il-mok, his face cold and stern, issued orders to the group.
“Put on your masks.”
At his command, the group immediately pulled out the masks they had brought and covered their faces without a moment’s hesitation.
Every one of them wore an expression of fury or icy detachment.
They had realized just how horrific the deeds unfolding around them truly were.
Once the group had finished preparing, Il-mok stepped forward with a frigid expression.
He had been closely observing the formation from the moment the Illusion Dream Formation had first been deployed, committing every flow of qi to memory.
This was thanks to his innate qi sense, honed further by the lessons from his time at the Demonic Path Academy.
‘Compare the flow of qi felt from outside the formation with the flow circulating within.’
Recalling the teachings of Instructor Jin Son-bang, who had visited as a temporary lecturer, Il-mok took the lead.
‘The greatest danger in the Illusion Dream Formation is relying on your own eyesight. You must find the path through qi sense, not your eyes.’
The path toward the formation’s weak point.
Dazed people loitered about everywhere with vacant expressions, but Il-mok shoved them aside without a care.
They were drunk on the pollen anyway and wouldn’t even remember them.
Before long, Il-mok, leading the group, came to a halt.
‘This is the spot where the formation’s flow is most unstable.’
The Illusion Dream Formation laid over this area had never been meant to kill anyone to begin with.
It was merely a trick to dupe the masses into inhaling the pollen and prevent their escape. That was why there wasn’t even a proper life gate.
Knowing this from the start, Il-mok had sought out the most unstable point in the qi flow.
“Ha!”
With a sharp kiai, Il-mok swung his sword, a brilliant sword aura already cloaking the blade.
Crack!
His sword clearly cleaved empty air, yet a faint cracking sound echoed as a fissure split through the qi flow.
To Il-mok’s keenly sensitive qi sense, it looked just like glass shattering.
The Illusion Dream Formation crumbled in its wake, revealing the gentle hill and night sky before his eyes.
“What!?”
“Who the hell are you!?”
The Taoists who had confined the villagers within the formation shouted in shock.
The fiends were scattered one each at the four cardinal directions, likely to maintain the formation.
Flash!
Having pinpointed the Taoists’ positions, the group swiftly dispersed and leaped into action.
“How dare you disrupt the gathering!”
“Kill them!”
Regaining their wits, the Taoists began forming hand seals in the air or pulling out talismans to unleash their sorcery.
A sorcerer flung talismans one after another toward Il-mok, who had launched himself to the left. The papers ignited, transforming into fiery birds that swooped at him.
Il-mok swung his sword with a cold expression.
It was a swing of minimal motion, yet profoundly subtle.
In just three strokes, he neatly severed all seven talismans.
Thanks to that efficient movement, Il-mok reached the fake Taoist without slowing in the slightest.
“!!!”
The startled fake Taoist frantically moved his hands to form seals.
Slash!
A beat too late, the cutting sound rang out. The Taoist’s hands dropped to the ground with a thud as he tried to complete his seal.
Whoosh.
Blood fountained belatedly from his severed wrists.
“Gaaahhh!!”
The fiend finally screamed as the pain hit him.
Thud.
Il-mok, still expressionless, flicked his hand to seal the fiend’s acupoints.
He sealed the vital and meridian points, then the wrist acupoints to staunch the bleeding gushers.
After subduing one Taoist for interrogation, Il-mok turned to check on the others.
“Guh….”
The first thing to catch his eye was a Taoist already riddled with black threads piercing his body in key spots, bound like a marionette puppet.
Dan-bin’s handiwork.
Jin Ha-yeon and Hyeok-ryeon Seon-a were double-teaming another Taoist, while Gu Yang-mun and Ju Seo-yeon were doing the same to yet another.
Screee!
An arrow loosed by Jeong-hyeon pierced the leg of the Taoist being chased by Gu Yang-mun and Ju Seo-yeon.
“Gaaahhh!”
With his leg crippled, the Taoist was ultimately captured and subdued by Gu Yang-mun and Ju Seo-yeon.
“P-Please… sp-spare my… life….”
The Taoist struck by Jin Ha-yeon’s ice arts soon followed, his face drained pale as he trembled and begged for mercy.
As groveling pleas and agonized screams poured from the Taoists’ mouths in succession.
Il-mok felt not a shred of pity.
“Ehehehehe.”
“O Primordial Heavenly Venerable~”
Their cries and groans were mere drops compared to the voices of the pollen-drunk people echoing from all directions.
* * *
After subduing the Taoists, they relocated to a spot some distance away in case the people snapped out of it.
Il-mok then ordered the group to search the fiends’ belongings.
A few talismans and sorcery-related trinkets turned up, along with a small pouch containing some powder.
Il-mok took the pouch and approached one of the subdued Taoists.
The wretch, writhing in pain, paled in terror at the sight of Il-mok holding the pouch.
But Il-mok impassively signaled Jin Ha-yeon, who grabbed the man’s jaw and forced his mouth open. She dumped the powder inside.
The fiend, who had been suffering moments before, suddenly rolled his eyes wildly and twisted into a bizarre, flushed expression.
Only then did Il-mok release his vital point seal and pose a question.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Gurgle.”
Having overdosed on the pollen, the wretch could only foam at the mouth and gasp incoherently.
“Tch.”
Il-mok glared down at him like an insect before approaching the next sorcerer.
Crunch.
Il-mok crushed the man’s foot, snapping the toes. The Taoist’s eyes bulged as if they might pop out.
Il-mok belatedly released the vital point seal on the wretch, who couldn’t even groan with his meridian points sealed, then asked again.
“Why are you doing this?”
It was the first question that came to mind once his head had cooled a bit.
Using pollen and an Illusion Dream Formation to masquerade as a cult and breed fanatics.
Was there any reason to go to such lengths just to turn ordinary folk into cultists?
If it was for money, it didn’t add up financially. That pollen they used wasn’t cheap.
“W-We’re… sending them to paradise.”
Before Il-mok could react to the nonsense from the now-unsealed Taoist.
“After a few experiences, allow me.”
Dan-bin stepped forward, exuding an eerie aura once more, likely from deploying her arts.
She drew a single black thread from her sleeve and began stitching into the Taoist’s body with a smiling face.
“Hehehe. I know the positions of the death blood and organs, so he won’t die.”
Until the fiend gave a proper answer, her black thread poked tiny new holes across his body.
“Gaaaaahhh!!”
Soon enough, the pain-broken Taoist spat the truth.
“F-For use as sacrifices!”
“Sacrifices? What kind?”
“F-For ritual implements and formations, s-sacrifices. H-Human vital blood… holds spirit energy far richer than animal blood. W-We’ve been extracting the f-fresh vital blood from those drunk on pollen to craft ritual implements and f-formations.”
“…All of them over there?”
“Th-They’re just p-preparation. From those who come to believe in paradise, we select a few at each gathering and t-take them to Gongdong Mountain for the work.”
From the fiend’s answer, Il-mok grasped their general method.
“They turn them into fanatics with pollen and the Illusion Dream Formation, then lure a few away promising paradise. Then drain the blood from those taken to Gongdong Mountain. Right up until they’re mummified, withered husks.”
These lunatics were treating Pyeongryang County like a livestock pen.
Something no one who saw the county’s people as fellow humans could ever do.
And now, unsatisfied with just Pyeongryang County, they were expanding their territory bit by bit.
The Taoists who had shown up in Jeongseo County were proof of that.
“P-Please spare me! I didn’t w-want to do it! It was m-my master!”
Unable to endure the torture, the Taoist eagerly betrayed his master to save his skin.
According to him, their master was an old Taoist known in the world as the Ghost Valley Hermit.
He had originally lived in an obscure mountain in Shanxi Province, researching sorcery and formations while teaching disciples.
But after hitting a wall at some point, his temperament grew sharp by degrees until he finally crossed the unforgivable line.
To refine his sorcery and craft superior ritual implements, he turned to human sacrifice.
At first in secret, and later even using opposing disciples as offerings.
“I-I didn’t want to either. I was just scared I’d end up a s-sacrifice too if I didn’t obey my m-master.”
Whether to justify himself or not, the Taoist spouted lame excuses.
Il-mok could only scoff inwardly, having seen the wretch eyeing the masses like prey.
But since he needed information, he decided to hear more for now.
“So, how did you end up here?”
The fiend continued.
Having tasted human sacrifice, they deployed a formation on that nameless mountain and kept using lost travelers as offerings.
Inevitably, rumors spread of it being a haunted mountain, and people stopped coming entirely.
Not content with that, when martial artists or sorcerers suspicious of the rumors started visiting the mountain, they abandoned Ghost Valley Mountain and came to Gongdong Mountain.
Drawn by tales of plentiful prey passing through Gongdong Mountain.
And while crafting formations for human sacrifice on Gongdong Mountain and studying its qi flows.
One disciple discovered a certain flower growing there.
Butterfly Grass. A dangerous bloom known to induce butterfly dreams when its pollen is inhaled.
As expected of a twisted mind, the Ghost Valley Hermit devised their current scheme the moment he heard about it from the disciple.
Breeding fake cultists with the Illusion Dream Formation and pollen, then duping them into becoming offerings.
Il-mok and the group’s faces grew even colder upon learning the full extent of their atrocities.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s most sacred tenet was slaying evil for the sake of sentient beings.
“Including the Ghost Valley Hermit, how many more are left on Gongdong Mountain?”
To them, these were trash that needed purging from the world immediately.
After releasing the vital points on the remaining two Taoists as well, they interrogated all three, probing their forces and the formations on Gongdong Mountain.
To counter any lies, they even force-fed them pollen at the end to cloud their minds and cross-verified their stories.
No pity stirred at the sight of them turned into bloody messes from torture, writhing like maggots in Butterfly Grass stupor.
Compared to what they had done, this was a drop in the bucket.
Once they had all the needed information.
Il-mok turned his gaze toward Gongdong Mountain, faintly visible in the moonlight.
Renowned as a sacred peak, yet tonight it exuded an unusually ominous aura under the moon’s glow.
Even so, Il-mok stepped forward without hesitation.
“Looks like tonight, there’ll be quite a bit of trash to clean up.”
The seven incarnations, masked in wrath, set off toward Gongdong Mountain.