Chapter 90
Chapter 90
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 90
Chapter Title: Raid on the Clan
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I grumbled inwardly, racking my brains on how to escape this situation.
Since it was a mental world, it was only natural, but I couldn't use any internal energy at all.
No, even before that, I couldn't properly move this body on my own.
I looked down at my body.
A body so emaciated from prolonged illness that it was nothing but skin and bones entered my view.
It had been ages since all traces of body hair had fallen out.
Just the body of someone on borrowed time, waiting only for the day of death.
Escaping Chilji while avoiding pursuit with a body like this was utterly impossible.
For now... I should play dumb?
*-When a person is strangled to death, a mark called a ligature furrow remains. This ligature furrow allows us to distinguish between suicide and homicide...*
I held my breath, vaguely listening to the TV droning in the hospital room.
Until some clever idea came to me... without letting that woman catch on...
"Is there nothing you're curious about today?"
"...Pardon?"
I lifted my head at the sudden voice from right in front of me.
There sat an elderly man on the bed across from mine.
The grandfather who would flawlessly answer any unfamiliar Chinese character I asked about while reading wuxia novels.
Since I wasn't asking my usual questions, it seemed he had taken the initiative to speak up.
Normally, I would have been delighted, but right now it was the opposite.
I didn't want to draw that woman's attention for no reason, so I wished he would just stay quiet.
"If there's anything you're wondering about, I'll answer it."
But Grandfather showed no intention of stopping until I posed a question.
No matter how much I signaled him to be quiet, he wouldn't stop trying to engage me.
In the end, I gave up and tossed out a half-hearted question.
"I want to escape from here, but I don't know how. Even walking is hard with this body."
Expecting a few words of comfort in return, my ears caught something entirely different.
"Set your will firm and think."
"...What do you mean by that?"
I reflexively countered the cryptic statement that seemed to cut straight to the point, leaving out all context.
He then explained it a bit more plainly.
"Clearly envision your goal. Then picture yourself achieving that goal in your mind's eye."
But his response remained just as murky.
"Goal... Me achieving the goal..."
Vague as it was, I couldn't stop repeating it in my head.
Something that had sunk into the corner of my unconscious felt on the verge of surfacing.
Just a little more, if I think just a bit harder...
"Found you?"
"...!?"
In that instant, a chilling voice sounded right beside me.
I whipped my head around to see Chilji grinning at me, her eyes glowing red.
Her right hand clamped down on my neck in a flash.
I dangled helplessly in midair, unable to do a thing.
"Kuhk...!"
"Strange, so strange. This is clearly the body of a patient on his last legs, yet it's that man's past?"
Muttering to herself with me right there, Chilji soon shrugged it off like it was no big deal.
"Well, once the mental domination is complete, I'll know naturally."
Hearing that, even with my neck in her vise grip, I smirked.
"Kuk...! So that means the soul-seizing technique is still in progress, right?"
"Kyaaak?!"
Chilji's reaction to my question was explosive.
She shrieked in panic and hurled me straight into a corner of the hospital room.
*-Thud!*
"Ah, ouch...!"
Clutching the back of my head and groaning in pain, I heard Chilji's trembling voice.
"H-how...? How are you still maintaining your consciousness? The Soul-Loss Brew should have worked!"
Soul-Loss Brew? Was she referring to that orb from earlier?
An orb that strips away the soul—what a vicious name.
Thinking that to myself, I struggled to haul my body upright.
Chilji flinched in terror and staggered backward.
...What the hell?
Her smug demeanor from moments ago had vanished like a lie.
I could tell that my retaining consciousness wasn't part of her plan, but was that any reason for such a drastic shift in attitude?
Puzzled as I was inside, I kept up a calm front on the outside.
With no internal energy or healthy body, my one and only weapon right now was bluffing.
I dragged my near-collapsing frame toward Chilji.
It turned into a slow game of tag, with her retreating a step for every one I advanced, until her back hit the hospital room wall.
"I-if you kill me, not just you, but every last person in the Nangong Clan dies."
With no further room to flee, she stammered it out in a quivering voice.
If you kill me...?
Her tone carried the certainty that I could end her whenever I pleased.
Setting aside the baffling parts for now, I focused on her next words.
"Everyone in the Nangong Clan dies? That's why you came here in the first place. What are you suddenly..."
"Not in that sense! I've deployed a formation across the Nangong Clan. No one but me can dispel it."
Desperate to avoid ending up dead by my hand(?), Chilji hurriedly explained the formation she had set.
**Mara Phantasmagoric**
She claimed it was a horrifying formation that, once activated, trapped everyone inside forever, preventing any escape to the outside world.
"The most terrifying thing about the Mara Phantasmagoric isn't that. Anyone not soul-linked to me who enters gets plunged into nightmarish illusions."
"Illusions?"
"Exactly. By now, the others are exhausted from battling the endlessly resurrecting Cheon-gwang Corps. Eventually, they'll all drop dead."
So you can never kill me—she twisted her lips into an anxious, distorted smile.
Her words made me furrow my brow in thought.
If she was telling the truth, then my companions were right now locked in a grueling fight, ensnared in illusions against foes that kept reviving without end.
This wasn't the time for me to be sitting around like this.
But how the hell was I supposed to break out of here?
Frustrated, I clamped my mouth shut, and Chilji's frantic voice rang out.
"W-what are you doing? I told you your comrades are all going to die!"
Her face was etched with some inexplicable anxiety.
She must have been fretting that I didn't believe her and was just going to kill her anyway.
But she had no reason to worry—my current self was far too feeble for that.
My bluffing had its limits, after all.
She might catch on any second now...
"...Don't tell me?"
...Damn it, already?
*-Crunch!*
Her slender hand seized my neck again, hoisting me into the air.
She stared at me for a moment with eyes full of disbelief, then a savage smile crept across her face.
"I suspected as much, but you're just barely conscious...? Ha!"
Furious at having been duped even for a moment, she flung my body roughly aside.
A brief sensation of weightlessness, followed by a jolt of impact.
*-Boom!*
"Ugh...!"
After rolling ignobly across the hospital floor, I groaned and struggled to prop up my upper body.
Ah, she's got eyes like a hawk.
"Ha, haha...! For a second there, I thought you'd cultivated some Shaolin deep meditation technique or other, but it was just a freak constitution after all?"
Muttering something only she seemed to understand, Chilji sprang onto me from above, pinning me down flat before clamping her hands around my throat.
"Gek, kuhk!"
And before my eyes floated two crimson full moons.
"If I can't fully dominate you, then I'll just shatter your mind instead. Sure, you'll end up as a mindless puppet obeying only commands, but I can't walk away now after wasting such a precious treasure...!"
Even as my neck was crushed and my breath cut off, those words jolted me wide awake.
If I devolved into someone's marionette, it would all be over.
For Hwa-ryeon and the others, for the Nangong Clan folk.
And above all, my dream would scatter into worthless oblivion.
That could never be allowed.
I'd only just taken my first real step forward.
This path stretched on endlessly, with no telling when—or if—I'd ever reach its end.
To have it all end after a single step? Absolutely not.
Gritting my teeth, I desperately churned my thoughts.
Come on, think. There has to be a way to break through this.
I recalled Chilji's behavior from earlier.
She had feared me as if her very life hung in my grasp.
What if, without realizing it, I truly held such power over her?
But what could it possibly be...!
"Set your will and think. Draw it in your mind's eye."
In that moment, the familiar voice echoed again.
I rolled my eyes, and Grandfather turned his head to stare straight at me.
Grandfather spoke to me.
"What you draw is the self you desire."
No—my unconscious was speaking to me.
You already know the answer.
"...Ah."
It felt like lightning had struck inside my skull.
And with it came realization. Of what I could do.
*-Grab!*
"Ha, resisting now is pointless... Aaaak!?"
Chilji's shrill scream reverberated through the hospital room.
Small wonder, with her wrist bones crunching to pieces.
"T-this all of a sudden... Heuk!"
Chilji, thrashing to wrench her wrist free from my grip, gasped as she looked at me.
Her red eyes reflected my image.
The frail invalid awaiting death was gone.
In his place stood a single martial artist, hale and robust of body.
Chilji's eyes bulged as if they might split open, beholding my form as Goon Ja-seong—my current self—restored in an instant.
"How... how...?"
"Once I thought it through, it was simple. This is my mental world, isn't it? Of course everything bends to my will here. Right?"
The hospital room vanished in a blink.
We now stood in a clearing amid the woods.
My private training ground in Gunkang County, complete with a cave in one corner.
I released Chilji's wrist and booted her away.
*-Thwack!*
"Kuhk!"
Chilji tumbled across the dirt.
With her wrist pulverized, she couldn't even brace herself properly.
"Uheuk..."
As I slowly rose, fear began flooding her red eyes once more.
I advanced on Chilji at a leisurely pace, drawing my sword.