Chapter 127
Chapter 127
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 127
Chapter Title: Interlude. War in the Darkness
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Poyang Lake, northern Jiangxi Province.
A sneeze suddenly echoed from a small boat drifting idly across the vast lake.
“Etchoo!”
“What’s with the sneeze? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”
Soha shrugged at Hong’s puzzled chatter from beside him.
“Someone must be talking about me.”
“Come on, who isn’t? The leader of the Hao Gate, shrouded in mystery with even his age and gender unknown—curious folks are everywhere across the Central Plains.”
“No, it’s not like that. It feels like someone suddenly thought of me...”
Soha and Hong chatted leisurely.
But the pleasant time ended with Cheong’s low voice as he rowed.
“We’ve arrived.”
At Cheong’s words, the two turned their eyes forward.
Beyond the mist veiling their view, a dark shadow loomed.
The shadow drew closer, gradually revealing its true form.
“There really is an island over here.”
Indeed.
Just as Hong murmured, what emerged from the mist was none other than an island.
Poyang Lake was the largest lake on the Central Plains continent.
So vast that the uninitiated might mistake it for the sea, it was no great surprise to find a tiny island or two within it.
However, the blatant evil qi permeating the entire island was anything but ordinary.
“It doesn’t look good at first glance.”
Soha muttered as he gazed at the island, his face slightly tense from the ferocious energy brushing past his body.
Hong, her expression equally rigid, asked for confirmation.
“The Green’s energy cut off from over there, right?”
Green.
Like Cheong and Hong, she was one of their kin who had come to this world with Soha in search of the prophesied warrior.
Soha had brought six of his kin in total.
Unlike the usual pair that stuck with Soha, the other four operated separately, each carrying out their missions.
Green’s mission was to track the Bloodwood Cult’s covert activities.
The Bloodwood Cult, successor to the Ming Cult, had begun under false pretenses but had since truly devolved into an exemplary evil sect.
Even now, they lurked in the shadows, seducing the common folk across the Central Plains into the path of evil.
They often gathered at specific sites to perform wicked rituals, and Green’s last report had been of discovering traces of such a ritual on one of Poyang Lake’s islands.
But after that, the response from the guardian stone Green carried had abruptly vanished.
Sensing something amiss, Soha turned his steps from the Hao Gate headquarters and headed here, to Poyang Lake.
The boat carrying the three docked at the island.
Aside from the shore touching the lake, the island was a dense forest of trees, and with the eerie evil qi added, it gave off a chilling atmosphere.
“Ugh... I don’t even want to go in after just looking at it.”
The three entered the forest, soothing Hong as she shuddered.
But the moment they stepped into the woods, the evil qi exploded as if they had entered an entirely different space.
“This is...!”
“It’s a formation. Seems like the type that prevents internal energy from leaking outward...”
Hong’s eyes widened in shock, while Cheong calmly analyzed the situation.
Soha’s face hardened further at Cheong’s words.
“...Let’s hurry. This doesn’t feel good.”
Soha strode ahead into the forest depths, a cold glint in his eyes.
*
Pressing on without rest, the three soon reached the island’s center—and they couldn’t hold back their shock at the sight before them.
“Good heavens...”
Blood and madness.
Those two words perfectly described the scene unfolding before their eyes.
-Kyahahaha-!
-Great Divine Tree!
At the island’s heart stood a massive altar.
Behind it loomed a gigantic tree, every branch from root to tip gleaming a dark crimson, as if soaked in blood.
Hundreds of people centered around the altar and tree shrieked and cheered in frenzy.
Fanatics who had stripped naked and smeared their entire bodies in blood.
“Eek...!”
Hong let out a shrill scream and recoiled in horror.
Unlike her, Cheong coldly scanned the surroundings before finally turning to the tree behind the altar.
“Gate Leader, that tree is...”
“Yeah, it’s Logog’s sapling.”
The term “sapling” seemed mismatched for the towering giant at the forest’s core.
But the three knew well how immense its origin truly was, so they didn’t find it strange.
“With Logog’s sapling here, this is a huge find... but where on earth is Green?”
Calming herself, Hong belatedly scanned the area in search of her kin.
Her eyes locked on a spot and slowly widened.
“Th-there...!”
Cheong and Soha’s gazes followed.
Upon finally spotting the one they sought—and her condition—their faces twisted unpleasantly.
“Ugh...!”
“...Good thing we came looking.”
The sight of Green reflected in their three pairs of eyes was wretched.
Like the other fanatics, her clothes had been stripped away, her body a bloody mess as if slashed by sharp blades.
Arms bound, unable even to stand properly, Green was being dragged toward the altar.
At the sight, the three simultaneously thought the same word.
Sacrifice.
The fiends intended to offer one of their own to Logog’s sapling.
“Those damn bastards...!”
Hong gnashed her teeth in rage.
Cheong held her back from charging in, then asked Soha.
“But how did Green get caught? In this world, the ones who could subdue her can be counted on one hand.”
Soha pondered Cheong’s halting question, spoken while restraining the thrashing Hong.
As Cheong said, few in the Central Plains could subdue Green.
For her to end up in such a pitiful state meant only one thing.
“Someone capable of taking down Green must be here.”
At that very moment, a man appeared atop the altar.
His face was hidden by a wooden mask, but the ferocious demonic qi emanating from his body could not be concealed.
From the demonic qi, Soha instantly sensed the man was one of the Bloodwood Cult’s core executives.
‘Probably one of the Stems. But who?’
As she guessed at the man’s identity, he surveyed the tree-worshipping crowd and spread his arms wide.
“Children of the great Divine Tree!”
His shout echoing in all directions silenced the cheers and shrieks in an instant.
The crowd, enveloped in silence, gazed up at the masked man with quiet but fervently burning eyes.
Breathing deeply as he met their wordless stares, the man shouted once more.
“The vile unbeliever who dared steal the sacrifice for the Divine Tree and tried to burn its incarnation has been captured.”
With those words, Green—who had been hauled onto the altar—was forced to her knees before the man.
“Urgh...!”
Green groaned in pain as she clutched her mutilated wounds.
Yet even then, she lifted her head and glared fiercely at the man.
“Hmph.”
Displeased by her gaze, the man stomped down hard on her head.
-Kwachik!
“Aaak!”
The scream reached even the three onlookers.
Hong thrashed even more furiously in complete fury, and even Cheong, holding her back, had eyes sharpening with anger.
Soha felt the same—nay, a fiercer rage boiling within, which he suppressed as he observed the situation.
‘No way some lowlife like that subdued Green. There’s definitely more to it.’
The energy from the man suggested he’d been empowered by their cult’s strength.
But even so, it wasn’t enough to overwhelm Green so thoroughly.
Soha pondered what had truly brought Green down.
But the situation allowed no time for leisurely thought.
“Hoist her up!”
“Ugh, let go! Let me go!”
The ones who dragged Green fixed her atop the altar.
The masked man picked up a dagger from beside the altar and slowly approached her.
“Now, we offer this unbeliever who defied the great Divine Tree as sacrifice!”
-Divine Tree!
-Lead us to the beautiful crimson world!
Amid the fanatics’ cheers, the man raised the dagger high.
Green faced imminent peril as it poised to plunge into her body.
“Gate Leader...!”
At Cheong’s urgent call, Soha rose.
“You two stay here and prepare for any contingencies.”
Soha’s eyes blazed golden.
Behind her, a figure of pure white light materialized.
Wings of light.
From the endlessly deep, dark crimson, pristine white streaked across the sky and struck the masked man head-on.
-Kwaaang!
“Kruk!?”
The man dropped the dagger and crashed to the ground.
When his mask was torn off, the grotesquely twisted face of a leprosy patient was revealed.
Seeing Soha and her white wings, the man twisted his lips into a grin.
“Puh, puhahaha-! You’ve appeared! Just as He predicted!”
“...He?”
So there was more to it after all.
Clicking her tongue briefly, Soha grabbed the man by the throat and hurled him down from the altar.
“Kruk!”
“Third Stem!”
Third Stem, huh.
One of the Stems after all.
From the Hao Gate’s investigations, the Bloodwood Cult operated in three divisions.
Branches, Stems, and Roots.
The Branches, including the Seven Branches, had infiltrated Patcheon Castle to blind the emperor,
While Stems like this Third Stem seduced the populace with the cult’s doctrines.
And the Roots...
“G-Gate Leader...!”
Soha snapped from her thoughts at the weak voice and approached the altar to free Green.
“You okay? I’ll treat you right—”
“R-Run... It’s a trap...!”
At that exact moment, as Green spoke urgently,
A shiver ran down Soha’s spine.
An unprecedented wave of demonic qi assaulted her from behind.