Chapter 185
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 185
Chapter Title: One-Eyed?
"You said it was from that ancient text. It described a forbidden study that transcended human limits—something that shouldn't exist in this world—so they burned the secret manual recording the Blood Poison Art. We can't verify if it's true. It was from the ancient texts my grandfather collected, as I mentioned. It was like a memoir, written by an unknown author."
Who on earth was that old sage?
Someone capable of burning the Blood Cult's secret manual.
At the very least, he couldn't have been one of the Blood Cult's people.
"There were no such things as Eating Corpses during the last war."
Han Seol-bing said, rummaging through her memories.
The ancient text was either true from start to finish or a complete fabrication.
The undeniable fact was that neither Ha Mu-baek nor Han Seol-bing had ever encountered beings called Eating Corpses.
Even though they'd faced zombies endlessly in the war against the Blood Cult.
"The text said it was a poison made by combining the Blood Poison Art with blood toxin, but since they couldn't reveal the method to make the blood toxin, they only eradicated the Blood Poison Art itself."
"You mentioned the Moon Dragon Inn's poison was a combination of poison technique and toxin."
At Dang Ji-yeon's words, Han Seol-bing murmured softly.
"It was an utterly inscrutable poison technique and toxin, but Instructor Ha mentioning the Blood Cult brought it to mind."
Ha Mu-baek quietly crossed his arms.
Even if that was the case, it was still a problem.
The Blood Poison Art was supposed to have been lost, yet here it was manifesting.
"In the end, we'll have no choice but to gather the poison again and analyze it."
The explanation had been long, but the conclusion was simple.
Dang Ji-yeon nodded.
"In that case... I suppose I can go alone now."
At Ha Mu-baek's words, Dang Ji-yeon tilted her head. Extracting the poison would require her Purple Flower Bewitching Poison Art, after all.
"To check if it contains blood arts traces, there's no need to extract it."
"Still, I'll come along just in case. I should study it to make an antidote, at least."
And so the three headed back to the Moon Dragon Inn.
The difference this time?
Ha Mu-baek devoured an enormous amount of food. Enough that six grown adults would have been needed to finish it.
"Why did you eat so much?"
Han Seol-bing asked as they left the Moon Dragon Inn.
"To find traces of the blood arts, I need a lot of poison. If it's mixed in small amounts with the food, the more I eat, the more I'll get."
A straightforward reason.
"Can you handle that much poison energy?"
Dang Ji-yeon asked worriedly.
She knew the method well enough. She'd simply never used it herself, as the amount she could suppress was about the size of that meal.
Ha Mu-baek just smiled brightly.
In that way, Ha Mu-baek ate that much for lunch and dinner too.
After each meal, Dang Ji-yeon rapidly grew and extracted the poison energy with his help.
Ha Mu-baek merely ate a lot; he left the poison energy untouched.
Hyeong Ui-cheon tilted his head at the report from the East Supervisor.
Ha Mu-baek had suddenly started acting strangely.
He'd reportedly devoured a massive amount of food at the Moon Dragon Inn. Three meals a day, no less.
Hyeong Ui-cheon calculated the amount of Latent Soul Poison contained in the food list.
"This much amount..."
"Once the poison energy fully forms, he'll go berserk, won't he?"
A sinister smile crept across Hyeong Ui-cheon's lips.
"In two days, the poison energy will form, and before he knows it, he'll lose his reason, scavenging for food like a madman..."
The process played out vividly in Hyeong Ui-cheon's mind.
Latent Soul Poison.
A poison that corrodes the soul.
And it turns the victim into an Eating Corpse.
An Eating Corpse that endlessly craves food.
No martial arts master could easily detect it.
Hunger and addiction.
The mind gets consumed by those two symptoms.
The true purpose is to infiltrate the brain with poison energy and steal the human soul.
Ha Mu-baek had already ingested more than enough.
"Heh heh heh."
Laughter bubbled up involuntarily.
The Blood Cult's greatest enemy turning himself into an Eating Corpse like this.
He'd probably sensed something off in the Moon Dragon Inn's cooking and tried to investigate by eating more.
But that was suicide.
Discarding his own soul.
Hyeong Ui-cheon hadn't expected his dilemma to resolve so easily.
The Latent Soul Poison had two fatal weaknesses.
One was its difficult production.
It required Blood Poison Art energy, and the process was incredibly delicate and sensitive.
The second was that it had no immediate effect on those with internal energy.
At least a day or two.
It needed that incubation period for the poison's effects to manifest.
That's why he'd specifically instructed the Cult Leader to use crippled martial artists as test subjects when sending samples.
He'd been researching ways to overcome these, but with no breakthroughs.
The Cult Leader urged completion, but Hyeong Ui-cheon believed this was the limit.
So he'd shifted focus to finding the optimal dosage for maximum efficiency.
The result was the Moon Dragon Inn and Moon Dragon Tower in Wu City.
And he'd achieved some success.
The minimum dosage for martial artists, and for ordinary people.
Based on that, with the current Latent Soul Poison stock left after experiments...
"I can turn three hundred martial artists into Eating Corpses. A thousand if they're without internal energy."
More than enough to plunge Wu City into chaos.
Gazing at the dark night sky, Hyeong Ui-cheon's eyes turned toward the Dan Mok Clan estate.
"That much chaos... even those beggar scum won't stand a chance. Keh heh."
Laughter escaped him.
In two days, Ha Mu-baek would become an Eating Corpse.
That day.
Sprinkle Latent Soul Poison across Wu City.
A thousand ordinary people turned into Eating Corpses.
They'd turn Wu City into a cauldron of chaos.
In that gap, he'd snatch Yeo Hwa.
"Looks like I really do need to lift the seal."
He'd been mulling it over that morning.
But now, he'd fully decided to do it.
Today, things were suddenly going exactly as he'd hoped.
You seize opportunities when they come.
Who'd have thought Ha Mu-baek would ingest that much Latent Soul Poison himself?
For once, the heavens were on his side.
Deep into the night.
Ha Mu-baek left the Dragon Training Pavilion and headed to the mountain where he usually trained.
"Gluttony, huh."
The amount of food he'd eaten today was considerable.
He still wasn't sure if it was the Prohibited Gluttony Blood Poison Art, but he had to prepare.
For the off chance he couldn't overcome the poison energy.
Of course, he was confident it wouldn't happen.
Ha Mu-baek sat cross-legged and slowly circulated his internal energy.
The seed of poison energy had already formed.
With his internal energy, he gently stimulated and nurtured it.
The poison energy grew steadily.
It surpassed the size of a grain of rice, becoming like a soybean, then soon expanded to the size of a peach pit.
Ha Mu-baek frowned slightly.
Compared to the amount of food he'd eaten, the poison energy was too large.
'It's not just proportional to the food amount—it's stacking up.'
That explained why the intervals and symptom severity varied from person to person.
Poison energy accumulation.
Proportional to what he'd eaten today, it should've been eighteen grains of rice worth.
One peach pit was nearly equivalent to four hundred grains.
And its shape was bizarre. It mimicked the tongue, with a thin tail stretching from the back of the neck toward the head.
The deeper the poison energy penetrated toward the head, the stronger the impulses seemed to grow.
So the impulses Ha Mu-baek felt now were tremendous. incomparable to when it was just grain-sized.
For a split second, he clenched his teeth hard.
He wanted to devour something right now.
Not any specific food.
Just cram anything in sight into his mouth indiscriminately.
He barely suppressed the urge.
'Whew.'
The moment he sighed inwardly in relief.
"Urk."
A groan escaped through his gritted teeth as an overwhelming impulse dominated his mind.
Along with the sensation of the tail toward his head slowly igniting upward.
An urge to shovel even the dirt in front of him into his mouth surged up.
He truly wanted to eat anything, felt like he could eat anything.
As gluttony flared, saliva pooled in his mouth.
Bloodshot veins burst in Ha Mu-baek's eyes.
Crunch.
His clenched teeth ground together, producing a grating sound.
Veins bulged across his body.
'Damn it.'
The impulse far exceeded expectations.
Even Ha Mu-baek felt like surrendering to the desire.
No—he wanted to incinerate this poison energy right now to escape the craving, but he couldn't.
He had to find traces of the Blood Poison Art here.
'Gluttony.'
The two characters floating in his mind.
An impulse that stripped away sanity.
Based on the symptoms, it was over ninety percent likely to be the Prohibited Gluttony Blood Poison Art Dang Ji-yeon described, but he needed to confirm to the end.
Ha Mu-baek gritted his teeth and poured all his mental energy into suppressing the desire.
'Just one moment.'
The instant he escaped the impulse.
That's all the time Ha Mu-baek needed now.
His eyes felt ready to burst.
Even his muscles swelled massively.
The moment those bloated muscles seemed about to rupture.
He succeeded in operating the Infinite Carefree Mind Method.
The maddening impulse subsided somewhat.
Seizing the gap, Ha Mu-baek focused even more on the Infinite Carefree Mind Method.
The internal energy circulating through his limbs overwhelmed the poison energy trying to dominate his mind.
And it located the poison energy hidden throughout his body.
'Enormous.'
The tongue-shaped clump had scattered into the meridians beneath it.
Now, suppressed by the Infinite Carefree Mind Method's energy, it was powerless.
Ha Mu-baek scoured every bit of the poison energy beneath his tongue with the Infinite Carefree Mind Method.
Where did it originate from?
Was it truly the Blood Poison Art?
If it was the Blood Cult's martial art, he should sense its traces.
Ha Mu-baek concentrated on the Infinite Carefree Mind Method and the poison energy.
How thoroughly did he dissect and search?
He found a tiny mote, like a single millet grain.
It seemed like the core of the poison energy.
But at that small size, even its traces had been undetectable.
Utterly murky.
Among that murkiness, he faintly sensed blood arts traces.
'Found it.'
It differed slightly from the blood arts Ha Mu-baek knew, but he thought it might be due to the Blood Poison Art.
If he could, he'd show it to Dang Ji-yeon, but there was no way.
He lacked the ability to liquify and extract poison from his body.
Nor could he feed this amount to Dang Ji-yeon.
He'd barely endured the impulse himself. One slip, and he'd have fallen.
Dang Ji-yeon would surely succumb to gluttony.
Having examined everything, Ha Mu-baek now incinerated all remaining poison energy in his body.
It resisted fiercely, but couldn't withstand the Infinite Carefree Mind Method's energy. He slowly burned it away to nothingness.
This poison energy had no business being in a human body.
What if that tail extending toward the head reached the brain and fully corrupted it?
"Eating Corpse."
Ha Mu-baek murmured softly, following the thought.
Indeed, this poison was meant to create Eating Corpses.
The Blood Cult bastards had recreated the vanished poison and were experimenting on random people in Wu City.
Ha Mu-baek opened his eyes and rose.
Dawn was breaking before he knew it.
He'd spent the entire night here.
It had been that grueling. Even for Ha Mu-baek.
A foul stench rose from his clothes. The burned poison energy had seeped out through his pores and soaked into the fabric.
Truly vile poison.
Experimenting with something like this in Wu City.
Ha Mu-baek glared toward Wu City with killing intent in his eyes.
"You Blood Cult bastards..."
The beggars of the Beggars' Clan gathered at the Dog Shrine were scrutinizing countless portraits.
On orders from Thunderclap Dog.
There were rumors of Gwang Hoe-cheon at the Moon Dragon Inn, but no one matched his appearance.
Of course, he could be disguised and hiding.
Even accounting for that, they couldn't find him.
So they were hiring skilled portrait artists to test how appearances might change within humanly possible limits.
It cost a fortune.
Beggars spending money to hire people, instead of begging.
They were truly going all out to find Gwang Hoe-cheon.
They'd gathered portraits of everyone connected to the Moon Dragon Market, Moon Dragon Inn, and Moon Dragon Tower.
In just one day.
Since they'd been collecting from the moment the Moon Dragon Market entered Wu City, it hadn't taken long.
"Eliminate all the women first."
Only men's portraits remained.
"Cut out anyone shorter than Gwang Hoe-cheon."
You could pad height, but not shrink it.
The artists were sketching modifications onto each portrait, turning them into Gwang Hoe-cheon's likeness.
"No. The eye corners are different here. This one's slanted sideways, but that guy's go upward."
"Can't you alter the eye corners?"
"Even Stream Valley Pavilion couldn't do that."
The beggars debated as they examined the drawings.
Impossible ones were discarded one by one.
"One-eyed?"
"Could be just an eyepatch over a good eye."
"Or maybe he really gouged out an eye."
"No way?"
"Better than dying, right?"
The beggars discussed one portrait.
"Painter Choi. If we slim down this thick flesh, what do you think?"
The painter revised the image.
"Huh? The eye shape changed."
"Losing fat reduces padding, making the eyes appear larger."
Painter Choi answered a beggar's question.
As they refined the portraits one by one.
"Th-this..."
The beggars' eyes widened.
Dawn was brightening in the east.
One beggar grabbed three portraits and bolted from the Dog Shrine.
Racing toward where Thunderclap Dog was.