Chapter 1144
—"To prove one's path amidst the multitudes,
One must seek him with wandering knights in accord."
'So that's why I was told to mingle with vagabonds.'
Bu Eun-seol nodded as he recalled Dal-ri's message.
Unexpectedly, he had easily obtained a clue to finding Pa Hon.
"I've listened well to your story."
"So, will you join us?"
"May I ask one more thing?"
At that, the tattooed giant from the Thunder Strike Squad standing behind Jeong Jin-bang scowled and grumbled under his breath.
"Honestly, so many conditions."
"Shh."
Jeong Jin-bang quickly silenced him.
After all the effort to set the stage, he couldn't let it be ruined now.
"Go ahead."
"I was just curious—why are you seeking the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede?"
Jeong Jin-bang, who had braced himself for some grand question, let out a faint chuckle.
"Does one need a reason to obtain a rare treasure of the world?"
The Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede measured anywhere from over a hundred to several hundred feet in length, and its blood and flesh could enhance Internal Power and grant longevity free from illness.
There wasn't a single martial artist in the world who wouldn't desire such a treasure.
"It just seems like there's a story behind it."
To anyone's eyes, the Thunder Strike Squad was a gathering of people who didn't quite fit together—yet they appeared to have built a bond over a long time.
"What wandering knight in this world doesn't have a story?"
Jeong Jin-bang's gaze grew somber.
Just that look alone made it clear this wasn't merely about chasing sudden wealth.
But Bu Eun-seol didn't press further.
"I see."
"Your decision?"
"I'll join."
"Good choice."
Jeong Jin-bang smiled brightly and introduced the members of the Thunder Strike Squad.
The tattooed man was Beon Rang, a hunter from a minority tribe in Jiaozhi.
The woman carrying a whip was Geumhwa, a woman of the Miao tribe.
And the slender, plain-looking youth was Wol-yeong, originally from India, who had wandered Beyond the Frontier studying medicine before settling here.
"But even if we capture the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede, how do you plan to divide it? It seems many vagabonds are already waiting their turn."
At Black Serpent Tower, there had to be at least several hundred vagabonds eyeing the centipede.
"Take as much of its flesh as your skill allows—that's all."
Jeong Jin-bang gave a weak laugh.
"Such concerns are only worth worrying about after we've caught it."
Though they challenged it often, they had never succeeded.
No—truthfully, few vagabonds even believed they could bring down the Black Centipede in the first place...
So far, they hadn't even discussed how to divide it.
"If we bring it down, we'll each take what flesh we can. But the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede spews venom, so we absolutely need a Poison Person who can protect the team."
"So my only role is to block the poison?"
"Exactly. Wol-yeong's medical skills are exceptional, but it'd be far better if we could neutralize the centipede's venom beforehand."
Then Beon Rang spoke in his deep, rough voice.
"Just because he took down the Golden Scale Serpent King doesn't guarantee he's a Master of Poison Art."
His fluent Han speech carried as he eyed Bu Eun-seol.
"Besides, we don't even know if he can withstand the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede's venom."
The Golden Scale Serpent King was notoriously hard to catch—it sensed human presence easily and burrowed underground like a mole—but its venom wasn't considered particularly potent.
"He is an extraordinary Master of poison."
Wol-yeong, who had been silent until now, spoke up.
"Though the Golden Scale Serpent King's venom isn't formidable, it's called the king of serpents because it would rather die than be tamed by humans."
His gaze fixed on Bu Eun-seol as he continued.
"Yet he wrapped it around his arm as easily as one would a pet dog. He must have mastered an exceptional Poison Art to subdue it."
His claim of medical expertise wasn't baseless.
Wol-yeong had not only displayed sharp observation but also deduced that Bu Eun-seol had mastered a formidable Poison Art.
"That's not what Brother meant."
Geumhwa cut in.
"He's worried this guy might disrupt the unity of our Thunder Strike Squad."
"Right."
Beon Rang admitted bluntly.
"Until now, we've worked together and overcome everything just fine. Bringing in unnecessary people might..."
His face darkened.
Clearly, the Thunder Strike Squad had its own unspoken history.
"You needn't worry."
Bu Eun-seol spoke then.
"I won't be living as a vagabond here for long anyway."
"Why?"
At Jeong Jin-bang's question, Bu Eun-seol replied.
"I only have brief business in this place."
"A brief matter...?"
At those words, Jeong Jin-bang and all the others let out a collective sigh.
"Wrong guess. We've wasted our effort."
He shook his head and spoke with a tone of lamentation.
"My apologies, but please forget the proposal I made earlier."
"Suddenly changing your mind like this?"
"I'm sorry."
"Don't we deserve to know the reason?"
When Bu Eun-seol pressed for an explanation, Jeong Jin-bang shook his head again.
"We don't want to get tangled up in unnecessary affairs. All we want is the blood and flesh of the Black Centipede."
Not just Jeong Jin-bang—every member of the Thunder Strike Squad wore twisted expressions.
Some even had looks of outright contempt, as if they were staring at a filthy insect.
'I've made them misunderstand.'
Only then did Bu Eun-seol grasp the situation.
Jiaozhi was teeming with fugitives in hiding.
Sometimes, disguised as wandering mercenaries, government agents would come here to capture criminals.
When Bu Eun-seol, after traveling all the way to this remote land of Jiaozhi, mentioned having "a brief matter" to attend to, they must have assumed he was a government operative on some covert mission.
"I'm not with the government."
Bu Eun-seol waved both hands dismissively, but Jeong Jin-bang shook his head.
"It makes no difference. If you have business here, it can only be about settling grudges."
In a place crawling with criminals, having "business" here could only mean seeking revenge on someone.
From their perspective, getting entangled in someone else's vendetta was just as troublesome.
'Hmm.'
Bu Eun-seol swallowed a sigh.
Even if he denied being a government agent, there was no way they'd believe him.
After all, no one came to Jiaozhi—a den of outlaws and rogue tribes—for just "a brief matter."
'I must join their mercenary band.'
According to Dal-ri's letter, finding Pa Hon required mingling with wandering mercenaries.
Of course, he could approach other groups, but if word of this conversation spread...
The best course was to negotiate successfully with the Thunder Strike Squad.
'If I'm neither a government agent nor here for revenge...'
After a moment of thought, Bu Eun-seol spoke again.
"Actually, I'm here to find my father."
"Your father?"
"My mother was a courtesan. She spent one night with a wandering mercenary from Jiaozhi and bore me, or so I was told."
Bu Eun-seol's expression twisted with anguish.
"Now that I've grown, I thought it was time to seek out my bloodline—so I've come all this way to a foreign land."
Even the hardened warriors of the Martial World held the bonds of kinship sacred.
Unless it involved an irreconcilable blood feud, invoking family ties was rare—and treated with utmost caution.
At Bu Eun-seol's mention of a father-son connection, Jeong Jin-bang and the others grew solemn.
"I see."
Jeong Jin-bang cleared his throat and asked carefully,
"Do you have any leads? Geumhwa knows the mercenaries here inside out."
"Nothing stays secret forever. If I start asking around, word might leak where it shouldn't."
Bu Eun-seol kept his voice calm.
"There are identifying marks only I would recognize. I'd rather search quietly on my own."
"Hmm."
After a brief silence, Jeong Jin-bang huddled with his squad, then nodded.
"Can you really neutralize the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede's venom?"
Truthfully, the Thunder Strike Squad had no better options.
Without a way to counter the poison, they couldn't join the hunt.
"Of course."
"You might take this poorly, but the atmosphere here is more ruthless than you can imagine. Most mercenaries are criminals, and it's common for them to kill each other over greed."
He spoke bluntly.
"Plus, after what you said earlier, some mercenaries at the inn might see you as an enemy—or suspect you're a government agent and try to kill you."
Bu Eun-seol nodded.
Surviving in such a cutthroat place required constant vigilance.
And if they took in Bu Eun-seol—already a target—it could spark unnecessary conflicts.
"Fine."
After a long pause, Jeong Jin-bang finally nodded.
"Let's give it a try. We must take down that centipede."
The squad's eyes burned with resolve—nothing like the greedy mercenaries chasing quick riches.
'They have their own story.'
In the Martial World, everyone carried burdens.
Bu Eun-seol was no exception.
This was merely a fleeting intersection of their paths.
"Understood."
Bu Eun-seol dipped his head.
"I'll do my best."
At last, he had taken the first successful step toward finding Pa Hon.
Finally, the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival arrived—when the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede would emerge.
Despite the crisp autumn air, the forest was unnaturally sweltering, the ground baking under a stifling heat. A clinging humidity threatened to rust their weapons.
The stench of damp earth, the perfume of blooming poisonous herbs, and the whirring of nameless insects' wings mingled into a haze that dulled the mind.
A low, ominous hum filled the air.
At the edge of the forest where the spirit beasts dwelled,
three hundred wanderers had gathered.
Some wore the garb of the Central Plains, while others were Jiaozhi hunters, their bodies covered in tattoos, standing barefoot.
There were Siamese warriors with metal plates strapped to their elbows and knees, and Easterners from Japan with long, razor-sharp swords hanging at their waists.
Though their origins and tongues differed, they had united under a single burning desire—to slay the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede.
"Seems everyone's here."
Originally, command of the Wanderer Unit had belonged to the Jiaozhi wanderer known as Ghost Blade, a veteran who had survived the hunts year after year.
But last year, he had finally fallen to the Black Centipede's venom, and this time, leadership had passed to Baldhead, who led the Storm Breakers.
Will he manage?
Just as the wanderers began to silently doubt, Baldhead bellowed:
"Then we move in!"
With Baldhead at the forefront, the wanderers began slipping into the forest like shadows.
This hunt was no competition—it was about pooling their strength to bring down the Black Centipede.
Even with three hundred fighters, success was uncertain, and none could guess how many would survive.
Yet the wanderers' expressions remained unshaken.
A wanderer's life is but a wave in the storm.
Their existence was like duckweed adrift on the world's violent tides—
if fortune favored them, they'd survive and strike it rich; if not, they'd die without earning a single coin.
Halt.
Baldhead, who had been leading the charge, suddenly raised his hand and stopped.
A faint tremor had rippled through the earth.
In an instant, the wanderers tightened their grips on their weapons—
gleaming swords, razor-sharp spears, strangely curved blades, even massive war hammers.
The clatter of metal briefly shattered the silence, but not a single voice rose.
Like beasts, they communicated through glances alone, crouching in the dark.
Thrum... thrum...
The earth was trembling.
At first, it was a mere whisper, but soon the vibrations grew strong enough to be felt even atop a saddle.
Thud! Thud!
Forest creatures shrieked and fled as birds erupted into the sky in unison.
A few wanderers—those skilled in the Heaven's Sight and Earth's Hearing Art or the Empty-Strike Sound-Thievery Art—pressed their ears to the ground.
But soon, even that became unnecessary.
From deep beneath the earth, the deafening sound of something massive scraping against bedrock echoed forth.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede had arrived.
Nod.
Scattered through the forest, the wanderers exchanged silent nods before cautiously advancing toward the source of the tremors.
Before long, they reached a vast basin.
Surrounded by sheer cliffs, its center was unnaturally flat, devoid of even a single blade of grass.
It reeked of something foul, as if a colossal beast had lain there for ages. The air hung thick with a sinister energy.
The three hundred wanderers maintained formation as they slowly pressed toward the basin's heart.
Just as sweat began drenching every palm—
SCREEEEEEE—!
The earth shrieked and split apart, and the ground at the basin's center began rising like a colossal grave.
BOOM! CRACK!
Dust and shattered rock exploded outward.
Even in broad daylight, the surroundings darkened as a monstrous shape—as massive as a tree ten arm-spans in girth—surged skyward.
A massive head, armored in pitch-black chitin.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede.
A head the size of a grand hall, crowned with dozens of compound crimson eyes that burned like hellfire.
A jaw dripping venom potent enough to melt steel.
As just its head alone—large as a house—burst from the earth, the three hundred wanderers forgot to breathe.
RUMBLE—
Then, like a mountain range writhing to life, an endless black body crawled from the depths.
A segmented torso over ninety meters long, flanked by hundreds of sickle-like legs.
For the first time, fear flickered in the eyes of the wanderers, who had until now burned only with greed.
"ATTACK!"
At the shout, the wanderers unleashed a barrage of hidden weapons.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
But the Black Centipede's carapace was harder than steel—the projectiles didn't even scratch it.
SKREEEEE—!
The centipede swept its hundreds of crimson eyes over the insect-like humans, then reared its massive head back.
The air was sucked into the Black Centipede's maw with a sound like the moment before a typhoon strikes.
"It's the Black Centipede's demonic poison!"
Before the shout could even fully fade—
Kwaoooooo!
A miasma of demonic poison—a swirling mix of green and purple—sprayed out like fog from its gaping jaws.
The toxic mist silently engulfed the mercenaries at the front, yet few collapsed.
Most had prepared Poison-Avoiding Pearls as a countermeasure, or deployed Poison People among their ranks who could withstand the venom.
The Thunder Strike Squad was no exception.
Oomph.
Bu Eun-seol channeled the power of the Saint Among Poisons, effortlessly blocking the demonic poison spewed by the Black Centipede.
—Aaaaargh!
But then, screams erupted from somewhere.
A handful of reckless mercenary groups—those who'd joined thinking somehow, it'll work out without any poison defenses—had collapsed.
Bubble, bubble.
Those who failed to resist the poison...
Their bodies, along with their clothes, began to boil and melt into black liquid.
Even the grass and trees where they stood blackened and withered.
—Krrrrrr.
Seeing the mercenaries largely unharmed, the Black Centipede seemed to grow enraged and began to move.
Hundreds of sickle-like legs churned in unison, surging forward like a massive black tidal wave crashing over the extermination force.
The sword of a brave mercenary leading the charge tore apart like paper.
Where a bladed leg swept past, human bodies split apart like soft tofu.
Where its colossal body plowed through...
Only shattered bones, torn flesh, and broken weapons remained, littering the ground like a living hell.
Krrrrrr.
Satisfied, the Black Centipede burrowed back underground.
Strangely, unlike before its emergence, no tremors spread through the earth this time.
—It's toying with us!
The creature clearly had intelligence—luring the mercenaries into this basin with deliberate noise, only to hunt and torment them.
"......"
The expressions of the mercenaries, now battle-worn, had changed drastically from before.
Though they'd survived, they now understood the true might of the Ten-Thousand-Year Black Centipede.
—The reason it appears every year...
And they realized anew:
Why the Black Centipede had reigned as king of this forest for so long.
Why it emerged periodically.
—It's been hunting us in cycles.
Just moments ago, it had moved without a single tremor or sound.
Yet it had made a grand, noisy entrance at first—solely to lure the mercenaries into the basin for a satisfying hunt.
"I can track it!"
Someone suddenly shouted.
"I coated my hidden weapons with Ten-Thousand-Li Root—I'll definitely find the Black Centipede!"
"Fool."
Jeong Jin-bang shook his head.
"People have tried that for years. The Black Centipede burrows too deep—Ten-Thousand-Li Root is useless."
Thud, thud.
But then, something bizarre happened.
A strange vibration pulsed through the ground, followed by—
Rustle, rustle...
Something began shaking the forest violently.
Not an earthquake, but the unmistakable tremor of something massive moving en masse.
"Aaaagh!"
Mercenaries at the flank of the formation suddenly screamed in agony.
A pack of black tigers—Ironclad Tigers, each the size of a house—had appeared out of nowhere, attacking with brutal force.
Growl!
Their sulfurous eyes flashed as steel-like claws tore through mercenaries like paper.
But that wasn't all.
Screeeech! Screeeech!
Ear-piercing shrieks split the air as shadowy figures shot through the branches like streaks of lightning.
A horde of Bloodridge Demon Apes, their bodies covered in blue fur and eyes glowing crimson, descended.
As if mocking human martial arts, they leaped between branches, exploiting blind spots with terrifying speed.
Their claws were as sharp as daggers, their movements ghostly swift.
To make matters worse—
Sssslither...
A wet, creeping sound emerged from the swampy thickets.
Slithering forward, their bodies exuding a nauseating miasma, were giant Unicorn Serpents, their single horns glinting ominously.
—Hsssss!
As they opened their jaws, black poison mist spread like fog, choking the mercenaries' breath.
Above them, hidden among dense leaves...
Dozens of Human-Faced Spiders grinned grotesquely, their eerie human visages peering down.
They crept slowly toward mercenaries caught in their webs, venom dripping from their fangs.
Suddenly, the forest's Spirit Beasts had emerged all at once, launching a coordinated assault.
—So many Spirit Beasts, appearing all at once...?
The mercenaries were stunned.
Spirit Beasts—rare even in ones or twos—were now pouring out in droves?
How could this be happening?