Chapter 219
Chapter 219
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 219
Chapter Title: Monsters of the Demonic Realm
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“Forgive me, Daoist. I let him get away.”
I bowed my head to Daoist Hyunjin, who stood there with a rigid expression.
He shook his head as if to say it was absurd.
“...This is nothing for you to apologize for, young hero. If anything, I should be thanking you. Thanks to you... thanks to you, I’ve at least recovered a part of my senior brother.”
Daoist Hyunjin’s voice caught midway, choked with emotion, but he managed to finish.
In his arms was the head of his senior brother, just severed from the tiger monster’s horn.
“Guh... guhuk...!”
Daoist Hyunjin clutched the coldly chilled head tightly and bowed his head deeply.
His body trembled, tears falling one or two drops to the ground.
Knowing the depth of his grief, I couldn’t find words to say.
Then Ye So-ha approached us.
“...It looks like we can’t move any further today. We’ll have to spend the night here.”
At her words, I looked up at the sky.
It had already turned a deep crimson.
Deep in the mountains, it would soon be too dark to see even a step ahead.
With no telling what other monsters we might encounter, pushing on in the dark would be suicidal.
“Yeah. I think that’s best.”
With my agreement, we quickly prepared camp.
We took out the necessary gear from the spatial pouch and lit a campfire in the center.
Finally, I drove the Merit Pagoda into the ground, and we could take a proper rest.
-Grrrrumble.
Right on cue, a loud stomach growl echoed.
As all eyes turned to her, Seol’s face flushed bright red.
“...Now that the tension’s eased, I’m suddenly starving....”
She mumbled, ducking her head to hide her face. I almost chuckled but held back after glancing at Daoist Hyunjin.
*
“...Hoo.”
I took a deep breath, finishing my meditation and breath regulation, then slowly opened my eyes.
Feeling the pleasant fullness in my previously empty dantian, I unfolded my legs and stood.
Hwa-ryeon, who had been standing guard, spoke to me.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“It’s nothing. Not just me, anyway.”
I gave a small smile at her warm encouragement and looked around.
My master sat in meditation, sword in hand, lost in thought—perhaps from some realization gained in the recent battle with the monster.
Nearby, Seol dozed off, nodding her head.
On one side, the three women from the Hao Clan whispered among themselves with grave expressions.
Narrowing my eyes at the sight, I finally turned to the last one: Daoist Hyunjin.
“.......”
He still clutched his senior brother’s head.
His half-dazed expression stared blankly at the campfire, which was pitiful to see.
“He’s been like that the whole time?”
“Yeah. He barely touched his dinner. I’m not sure he’s okay.”
With a frustrated sigh at Hwa-ryeon’s reply, I approached him carefully.
“Daoist, do you have a moment?”
“.......”
“Daoist?”
“...Ah! Yes, yes. Of course.”
...His condition is worse than I thought.
I clicked my tongue inwardly at Daoist Hyunjin’s sluggish reactions.
Then I pulled a small cloth from the spatial pouch and held it out to him.
“How long are you going to leave Daoist Hyun-un’s remains like that? Here.”
“Thank you... thank you.”
Stammering his gratitude, Daoist Hyunjin took the cloth and carefully wrapped his senior brother’s head.
But soon enough, he broke into sobs again.
“Guh-huk...! Senior Brother Hyun-un...!”
Tears blurring his vision, he barely tied the cloth before clutching the wrapped head once more.
Sighing, I scolded him, figuring this would go on forever otherwise.
“I get how you feel, but pull yourself together now. How are we supposed to find the rest of your brothers like this?”
At the mention of his remaining brothers, Daoist Hyunjin slowly lifted his head.
“...Do you think my other juniors survived?”
“.......”
It was a question I couldn’t answer with any certainty.
Daoist Hyunjin didn’t seem to expect one anyway, just rambling on.
“Senior Brother was a master swordsman who could laugh off all of us juniors ganging up on him. If even he ended up like this....”
A sigh laced with lament finished his words for him.
Racking my brain, I offered awkward words of comfort.
“But we don’t know for sure yet, right? Don’t give up hope prematurely....”
“No, no. Even if they did, my juniors are probably already...!”
“We don’t know that yet.”
A third voice cut in.
I’d already sensed her approaching, so I turned to Ye So-ha without surprise.
“What do you mean we don’t know?”
“Just what I said. Daoist Hyunjin’s senior brothers aren’t being digested inside those monsters.”
I frowned at her blunt words, devoid of any tact, but decided to hear her out.
“We’ve encountered those mutated monsters before.”
Settling casually beside me, Ye So-ha explained her reasoning step by step.
“So we know. Once they mutate like that, no creature needs to eat anymore.”
“Eat... you mean they don’t need to consume anything?”
She nodded lightly at my question.
I pressed further, unable to accept it easily.
“Even so, how can they stay active without eating? That doesn’t make sense.”
“To be precise, it’s not that they don’t eat—it’s that they don’t need to. They draw all the vital energy their bodies require from the bloodwood.”
The bloodwood—she must mean the saplings planted deep in Mount Wudang.
The culprits that turned the mountain into this demonic realm.
And now they’re supplying vital energy to the monsters too.
“B-But...! If they don’t need to eat, then why did those monsters attack us?”
Daoist Hyunjin, who had been listening intently to Ye So-ha, spoke up.
Her reply was casual, but laced with more cynicism this time.
“Simple. Malice.”
“M-Mal...ice?”
“Yes. Malice. Malice toward humans... no, toward all life. That’s what drives them.”
Daoist Hyunjin looked bewildered at the unexpected answer, while Ye So-ha smirked at him.
Her cold tone and demeanor were utterly unlike anything I’d seen from her before.
For a moment, I wondered if she was someone else.
That aside, the answer itself rang true.
The tiger monster I’d fought earlier.
It had laughed in delight at Daoist Hyunjin wailing over his senior brother’s head impaled on its horn.
Using a human corpse as decoration, mocking someone lost to grief.
The word “malice” fit infuriatingly well.
“So, they haven’t devoured your senior brothers. They’ve probably just torn them apart and scattered the pieces everywhere.”
“.......”
I stared at Ye So-ha in disbelief.
Is that something you say right in front of people?
Even under my sharp gaze conveying that, Ye So-ha kept a straight face.
Just as exasperation led me to a hollow laugh, Cheong hurriedly interjected from behind.
“That’s right! What Lady Ye means is, through this part of the senior brother’s body—his head—we can locate the other remains and recover them for you.”
“...Pardon? Is that... really possible?”
Daoist Hyunjin shot to his feet, asking again.
Cheong nodded vigorously twice.
“Yes. We have just the right spell for it.”
“Cheong, now’s not the time for...”
“The lady! The lady may not show it, but she’s deeply saddened by your plight, Daoist. That’s why she wants to help recover the remains at least.”
Cheong jabbed Ye So-ha’s side to silence her protest.
She didn’t exactly look sympathetic, but Daoist Hyunjin was profoundly moved regardless.
“To think you’d go that far for us...! Thank you so much.”
“...No, it’s only right.”
Ye So-ha glanced awkwardly at Cheong’s insistent looks and replied.
Watching, I clicked my tongue inwardly.
See? She’s forcing it.
I just don’t like her.
If only she were half as decent as Cheong.
*
Far from where Ja-seong’s group camped, in a certain cave.
Inside, the tiger monster—once a spirit beast called the Mountain King by the Wudang Sect—groaned in pain and rage.
-Grrrrr...!
The Mountain King pawed at its right eye with a massive forepaw.
The gash was so deep that even now, quite some time later, it hadn’t healed.
And it wasn’t just that.
The wounds on its forepaw and snout showed no sign of closing either.
This was incomprehensible to the Mountain King.
After the sky turned blood-red, its body had undergone massive changes.
Its already enormous frame had doubled in size, its whiskers sharpened, and a horn sprouted from its forehead.
Its regenerative powers had reached miraculous levels—most wounds vanished without a trace in less than half a shichen.
So why wouldn’t this human’s wound heal?
Even if it did, the right eye might be lost forever.
To suffer such injury from a mere human.
The Mountain King let out a roar filled with fury.
-Roaaar-!
Its roar—the bellow that once struck terror into every beast in the mountains—echoed through the peaks.
After venting its rage for a long while, what followed was none other than fear.
In the Mountain King’s mind flashed the scene of a mere human wielding a storm, a sight that could only inspire shivers.
The razor-sharp winds swirling before its eyes.
A natural disaster, uncontrollable, manipulated at one man’s whim.
How could that be?
A human without sturdy claws or fangs—how did it command such power?
The questions filling its head were soon crushed by resurgent fear.
Death, inescapable, had been right there.
If it hadn’t fled before the storm hit, it would have vanished without even a corpse.
Shuddering at the recalled terror, a voice echoed in its mind.
-Kill the living. Hate all life in this world.
The voice that had dominated its mind since its body transformed that day.
It erased the fear and filled it with hatred.
-Grraaah-!
As the Mountain King roared in hatred at the voice’s command, it suddenly slammed its head into the ground.
Unbearable pain surged in its crown, following the right eye.
The source was something jagged protruding right behind its horn.
None other than a sword hilt.
One engraved with pine patterns on the handle.
A Pine-Grain Sword, used only by Wudang warriors, was embedded in its skull.
The fatal mark left by the human who dared fight it just days ago.
The man, one arm severed and drenched in blood, dying—had seized its moment of carelessness to ram the broken blade into its head.
In retribution, it had torn the corpse to shreds.
But since then, it couldn’t touch it, enduring periodic agony while leaving it be.
And that pain only fueled its rage toward humans further.
-Rooooaaar-!
Roaring was no longer enough to vent the fury.
It needed blood. Human blood.
The Mountain King’s crimson gaze turned yonder, to the peak of Mount Wudang.
Where countless humans gathered: the Wudang Sect headquarters.