Southern Barbarian Beast Palace (3)
The rain of fragments that streaked down from the sky like falling meteors was nothing short of a catastrophe for the martial artists of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace.
No matter how they tried to evade them, shards seemed to read their intent and plummet straight toward their heads. Forced to scramble just to block or dodge, they could make no real progress forward.
And in that interval, the Super Experts who walked the sky reached them. Screams and sprays of blood erupted on every side.
Yet the warriors of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace had no leisure even to look back. They drove their beasts on with everything they had, focused solely on escaping this place alive. With the formation shattered, the veil of fog that had blanketed Dang-ga-ta had vanished as well, so there was no need to search for an exit — they only had to run.
Of the fleeing force from the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, roughly seven-tenths had already died. Most of the remaining three-tenths staggered out of Dang-ga-ta wounded. Even that much survival was deliberate — the masters had chosen not to kill them all, so they could track the escape routes and uncover the location of the main force. To that end, several Super Experts erased their presence and slipped after the fugitives.
With the arrival of the masters, the raid was over. Now came the work of recovery.
Cheonhwa steadied his breathing and surveyed the surroundings. Not a single person was unscathed — himself included. Everyone bore wounds, large or small, and more than a few had fallen during the fighting.
I knew it would be bad, but the damage is severe.
Strictly speaking, the scale of the losses was not that great. The ordinary folk inside Dang-ga-ta had not been harmed; the casualties were confined to the martial artists who had gone out as the interception force. That the damage had stopped at this level could almost be called fortunate.
Even so, Cheonhwa could not reduce the dead to mere numbers. As he gazed across the battlefield with a heavy heart, Gakhyeon approached, clapped him on the shoulder, and spoke.
"I heard from Inwol. When the formation threw everything into chaos, you got the people to safety — and when the assault came, you stood at the vanguard. In my absence as deputy leader, you led your fellow disciples well as the senior disciple. You've done hard work."
"I only did the best I could with what was within my power."
"How many people do you think can manage that in a crisis? All the more so for a third-generation disciple short on experience."
To handle a sudden emergency required experience piled high, and those who could respond with seasoned skill without it were vanishingly rare. Had Cheonhwa not stepped forward, the losses would have been far worse. His conduct deserved praise.
Yet Cheonhwa could not simply rejoice in the compliment. His eyes refused to leave the scene of the masters from each sect moving to restore order.
"Carry the wounded into the inner compound of the Sichuan Dang Family!"
"Sort the bodies by sect and gather them in one place."
"The aftermath of the battle has left debris everywhere. Disciples who can still move, lend a hand."
The wounded were borne away. The dead were gathered. The wreckage of shattered buildings was cleared. Among those coming and going were Taoists of the Zhongnan Sect as well.
Zhongnan had suffered the lightest losses among the interception forces — precisely because they had fought the hardest. Light losses, however, were not the same as none. Among the bodies being moved to a corner of Dang-ga-ta were faces Cheonhwa knew.
Death was common in the martial world. In a battle of this scale, it was stranger when no one died. One was supposed to grow used to killing and being killed — yet Cheonhwa did not want to grow used to it. The moment he went numb to death, he felt certain the deaths of his own brothers and sisters of the sect would start to feel inevitable as well.
Come to think of it — what about the Medical Hall?
Watching fellow disciples carried on stretchers toward the Medical Hall brought the faces of those who had been staying there to mind. The patients who had been under care were safe, at least — but the infiltrators who had secretly seized the hall had fled, and Myeonghwa was still pursuing them. The traitor-hunting party would be following the trail of markers Myeonghwa had left behind.
I only hope Senior Brother Myeonghwa is all right.
The collapse of the formation and the emergence of the masters meant the formation investigation team had done their part splendidly. The beast-interception force had taken casualties, but they had somehow succeeded in driving off the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace. So Cheonhwa chose to believe the traitor-hunting party would also be unharmed.
After that he joined the others in clearing the field, and once the work was done, he returned to the inner compound of the Sichuan Dang Family. What awaited him there was the hunting party in a wretched state.
Barely half of those who had set out remained. Those who had returned were, every one of them, pale and hollow-eyed.
Where is Senior Brother Myeonghwa?
Cheonhwa searched the ranks for him and, before long, found Myeonghwa uninjured and whole. He let out a quiet breath of relief and went to him.
"Senior Brother Myeonghwa — are you all right?"
"Ah. Junior Brother Cheonhwa."
At Cheonhwa's call, Myeonghwa — who had been staring into nothing with a dazed expression — finally reacted. His face was as ashen as the rest of the hunting party. What on earth had happened to leave them all like this?
"What happened to the hunting party?"
"Well…"
With a heavy sigh, Myeonghwa began to recount what they had endured.
The traitors had loaded the physicians of the Medical Hall onto carts and hauled them away. Myeonghwa trailed them with careful stealth, leaving markers for those who would follow.
Are they managing to keep up?
From time to time he glanced back along the path he had come. He had left signs, yet he could not be sure anyone was actually tracking them. The constant fear of discovery only sharpened his unease. Even with the Wind Cloud Divine Form pushed to its utmost, this kind of pursuit was not something he had ever been trained for.
Fortunately the enemy was too intent on flight to notice him. Before long they brought the carts to a halt — a place deep within the Sichuan Dang Family's inner compound, far from the usual thoroughfares. Ideal for a secret ritual.
They dragged the captive physicians from the carts and laid them out on the ground. Myeonghwa watched from a distance, waiting for reinforcements. Ideally they would arrive before the preparations were complete — but the ritual was ready far faster than he had expected.
If I just sit here, the captives will die.
After a hard struggle with himself, Myeonghwa made his decision. He could not simply watch people die. At the very least he could disrupt the ceremony and buy time until help arrived. He snatched up a nearby tree branch, wrapped it in sword qi, and charged.
The enemy, however, already seemed aware of him. They casually turned the ambush aside.
"Damn it…!"
His plan to knock even one of them unconscious with a surprise attack collapsed at the first step. Still Myeonghwa did not give up. He pressed in again — only for the agents disguised as martial artists of minor sects to bar his way.
What followed was a coordinated assault by two fighters. Unlike the proper weapons in his enemies' hands, all Myeonghwa held was a spindly branch. He reinforced it with qi-infusion to give it durability, but it was no true weapon, and he was hard-pressed from the start. At best he could hold a defensive stance with the soft-sword principles of the Clear Wind Sword Art.
By the time he was tattered with wounds from maintaining that defense, the hunting party at last arrived, following the trail of his markers.
"Strike!"
"Save Daoist Myeonghwa!"
The hunters surrounded the two agents in an instant. Outnumbered, the infiltrators were quickly subdued. A martial artist of the Sichuan Dang Family who led the hunting party approached Myeonghwa.
"You've done well, Daoist Myeonghwa."
"Thank you. But where are my fellow disciples from my sect?"
"They headed outside the inner compound for the interception. Beasts were pouring in."
"Beasts?"
"Yes. Didn't you hear the roaring?"
"Now that you mention it, I did hear something like howling while I was fighting, and it made my skin crawl. At the time I thought I was imagining it…"
In the next moment Myeonghwa's words died in his throat. Not only his — every member of the hunting party froze where they stood, overwhelmed by a bone-chilling aura that had erupted without warning from not far away.
The captive agents reacted to that ominous, alien power.
"This dense demonic energy…?"
"Yes — the Heaven-Defying Grand Art has succeeded!"
From their reaction Myeonghwa understood at once: the ritual they had planned had worked. The party raced toward the source of the surging demonic energy.
The first things that met their eyes at the scene were corpses withered like mummies. They were so desiccated that no living features remained, but their clothing made clear they had been the physicians. At the center of those husks stood a man radiating demonic energy — Dang Baek-seon, a direct descendant of the Sichuan Dang Family, a physician of the Medical Hall, and the traitor who had betrayed his own clan.
"Ha… hahaha… hahahahaha…!"
Standing among the shriveled corpses, Dang Baek-seon laughed at the top of his lungs. Uncontainable joy filled that laughter, and the sight of him cackling while pouring out sinister demonic energy was grotesque beyond measure. Sensing the approaching party, he finally cut short his mad laughter.
"Ah — so you've come. Sooner than I expected. Natural enough, with a tracker on our trail. Still… you're far too late."
Dang Baek-seon was utterly at ease — even with a host of First-class martial artists arrayed before him. That composure made Myeonghwa tighten every nerve to full alert, and the others were no different.
"Why are you all just standing there staring? I am a villain who murdered innocents and a traitor to a great family. Why hesitate when the man you ought to cut down on the spot is right in front of you?"
It was a blatant provocation. Those who could still judge the situation coldly saw through it — but not everyone could.
"You dare run that mouth of yours!"
Several of the Sichuan Dang Family's martial artists charged with bloodshot eyes. Their faces were so steeped in rage and hatred that not a scrap of reason remained. They must have been close to the murdered physicians.
With that impulsive assault by the Dang Family warriors, the battle against Dang Baek-seon began.
"And as you can see, the fight ended in our defeat."
"Dozens of people couldn't beat a single man?"
"Under ordinary circumstances it wouldn't make sense. But Dang Baek-seon was no ordinary martial artist. True to the Dang bloodline, he used poison arts — and a venom so vicious that even the Sichuan Dang Family's own fighters couldn't endure it."
Originally Dang Baek-seon had been born with a constitution that made it impossible to accumulate inner energy — and that held true even for the toxic qi of poison arts. Yet Myeonghwa testified that the man had not only wielded internal energy openly but handled poison techniques with complete freedom. Through some demonic rite that offered human lives as sacrifice, he had finally overcome his Cheonhyeong.
"We still tried to press him with numbers, but then a leopard burst out of the shadows and hit us in a pincer attack. There was nothing we could do."
"A spirit beast appeared where you were as well, Senior Brother?"
"That reaction — don't tell me one showed up on your side too?"
When Cheonhwa nodded, a long sigh escaped Myeonghwa's lips.
"Between the poison arts and that spirit beast running wild, we were helpless. We were lucky the formation broke when it did and we managed to bolt. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here — and neither would anyone else from the hunting party."
Listening to Myeonghwa's account, Cheonhwa sank into thought. A double formation, the full strength of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, and identical spirit beasts appearing in separate locations… The Mysterious Faction had poured vast resources into pressuring the Orthodox Path gathered for the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering. Yet for all the effort invested, the results could hardly be called satisfying.
Just what are they after?
The fact that he could not read the Mysterious Faction's true intent left Cheonhwa deeply unsettled.