I Am the Black Wood Old Demon
Eumgwerim shuddered, and resentful spirits came pouring in like a flood.
Bewilderment flashed across the faces of Hwan Mong and her companions. None of them had seen this coming.
The first wave struck Namyak Temple and burned to ash where it touched. The temple's sapphire light was steeped in a venom that unmade souls. But the spirits surged in again. They had to move.
Yi Yeok steadied his mind and stepped up to the Buddha statue. The instant his hand met the stone, a terrible force slammed down through his organs, as if it meant to crush him from the inside out. His blood spirit shoved back the Buddha-light, and he scraped through by a hair.
"Damn it—can we please take the easy road for once!"
He spat the words at the statue, and in the same breath understood that this job was no longer going to end cleanly.
The whole temple erupted in blinding light. Ghostly wails tangled with the roars of beasts, and a savage wind tore through the grounds.
Whoooosh—!
Buddha-light cascaded down like a waterfall and swallowed everything. Hwan Mong's party went deathly pale. Even with their formidable skill, they could not stand against a radiance like this.
Yi Yeok bolted from the Dharma hall.
"Bullshit. Nobody said a word about this. Who the hell fed you that information?"
The three of them kept their mouths shut. Their faces looked like they were hiding something.
There was no time to wring it out of them. Yi Yeok looked to the wall pouring blue light. That glare was erasing resentful spirits without mercy, and still the fearless dead kept coming, endless as the tide.
Something was wrong. The spirits were not trying to defend Namyak Temple. Yi Yeok's party had simply been caught between the temple and Eumgwerim, in a fight that was not theirs.
"We need to get out of here."
Hwan Do hesitated at the urgency in his voice.
"Fall back? We haven't even got our hands on the thing yet..."
"I don't care how precious it is. It isn't worth more than a life."
"Hwan-yeong's right. We get clear of this place first, then we think."
Hwan Rang sided with him, but Hwan Mong shook her head.
"There are more spirits out there than I ever imagined. Leaving won't make us safe."
Yi Yeok hauled his blood qi up at once and cast the Heavenly Dragon Flying Sand out beyond the wall.
Blood qi burst outward. The devouring void spilled past the wall and opened its maw.
A merciless feeding began. Split into more than a hundred streams, the Heavenly Dragon Flying Sand lanced out in every direction and swallowed the resentful spirits whole.
After roughly a quarter of an hour, Yi Yeok drew it back. His divine soul had strengthened by leaps and bounds, and his soul core had swollen to three times its former size.
"That's enough. We're leaving—now!"
A roar shook heaven and earth. They looked up. Hundreds of trees had knotted together into the shape of a man. The body stood well over three hundred meters tall; every shift of its weight shook the ground and the mountains, and resentful spirits whirled around it like a vortex, sucked inward until they vanished, as if they had become part of it.
For the first time, Hwan Mong's eyes wavered hard.
"That can't be... the Black Wood Old Demon?"
Yi Yeok stared, baffled.
"The Black Wood Old Demon?"
He had never in his life come face to face with anything this grotesque.
"A demon-beast native to Eumgwerim. Or maybe I should say it is Eumgwerim. Even the great masters of the Buddhist sects tried more than once, and they couldn't destroy it. I never thought we'd actually run into—"
Yi Yeok spun and charged for the outside, shouting over his shoulder.
"No time to stand around debating! Run!"
Hwan Mong tore after him.
"Go!"
Hwan Rang and Hwan Do had no room left to hesitate. They had to get out.
KWA-KWANG!
The Black Wood Old Demon hurled a thunderous blow at Namyak Temple. The monastery that had sealed Eumgwerim through ages beyond reckoning crumpled and shattered like soft tofu.
"Damn it, why did it have to be today?!"
Yi Yeok howled.
The Black Wood Old Demon was hideous and uncanny—a body of twisted ancient trees, with countless resentful spirits boiling inside it. Set against that colossal presence, the four of them might as well have been mosquitoes. They broke away as fast as they could.
A moment later, the Black Wood Old Demon—Eumgwerim itself—sensed them. The yin-monsters around them warped and, in an instant, rose into a wall.
Hwan Do snatched out a blade and drove it into a wooden pillar. The moment the edge bit wood, the screams of innumerable spirits rang out. In a flash the saber changed color and rusted through.
Brute force would not punch a hole. They leapt for the sky—only for branches to shoot out from every side, spreading like a black net across the air and cutting them off.
Yi Yeok twisted clear and shouted.
"Brother Heukmok! I'm just a decent fellow who happened to be passing through! Please, spare me!"
Rumble!
The earth heaved again. Thick branches and roots lashed in from all sides like whips.
"Brother Heukmok, how about some tasty fertilizer? I'll pull out whatever's sitting in my belly and hand it right over!"
Countless leaves came flying at him instead. Each one was sharp enough to pierce metal.
Hwan Mong stepped in. Her white hands fluttered through the air like butterflies; ripples ran through space, and every attack vanished.
Rumble!
The ground roared again. A massive root heaved up and began hurling boulders the size of houses.
Frictionless steps carried him clear of the falling stone.
Hwan Mong, Hwan Rang, and Hwan Do knew they could not dodge. They met the attack head-on.
Hwan Rang transformed into a gigantic wolf and howled, only to take a boulder full in the body, vomit blood, and go flying. Hwan Mong and Hwan Do were blasted just as far.
Yi Yeok did not so much as glance at them. He poured everything into speed. Whatever anyone said, he had no intention of laying down his life for them—and the roots kept erupting from the earth, hunting him.
"Brother Heukmok, this was all their scheme! I'll offer you the three of them! Just let me live, and I'll keep my head down forever!"
Hwan Mong and the other two were struck dumb.
In that instant the sky blazed bright, and a colossal staff dropped out of the heavens.
The Black Wood Old Demon roared in fury, drank in the yin-monsters around it, and thrust an enormous arm toward the sky.
BOOM!
The staff smashed into its body, and that mountain of a frame blew apart.
A tremendous shockwave tore through them. Hwan Mong's group vomited blood and were hurled even farther.
Yi Yeok was caught in it too. His body flew and slammed into rock. The stone shattered; his forehead split, and blood ran down his face.
A massive hand, shaggy with fur, reached toward the Black Wood Old Demon's remains. Its full form could not be seen, but the pressure alone was enough to stop the breath in his throat.