Chapter 429
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 429
Chapter Title: Let's Go Together
"Hmm. This is... quite..."
Ma Jin-gi, the Supreme Elder Protector of Seonyugok and a master sorcerer.
With the bearing of an immortal sage, he stroked his long, snow-white beard and let out a hollow chuckle.
His lengthy white eyebrows twitched.
Celestial Star Myriad Blossoms Monster-Repelling Technique.
It was the sorcery he had perfected by devoting his entire life to it—finding even that insufficient, he had relied on an additional otherworldly power.
All to safeguard Seonyugok.
Thanks to it, Seonyugok had emerged unscathed from the recent war.
He had deployed the technique across the Mountain-Crossing Great Wall to confine the jiangshi.
Yet a letter had arrived claiming a jiangshi was attempting to shatter that very sorcery.
Hence the hollow laugh.
He had publicly announced that the technique was calibrated to the power of the Dark Blood Jiangshi from back then.
But in truth, Ma Jin-gi had poured every ounce of his lifelong vital energy into it.
By his calculations, it could contain even a Dark Blood Jiangshi twice as powerful as So Hwi-woong, the Righteous Heaven Alliance Leader at the time.
That being the maximum projected capacity, he had conservatively informed others that it could handle specimens perhaps thirty to fifty percent stronger than So Hwi-woong's martial prowess.
'Were my calculations off? Heh heh.'
For a man who had spent his life immersed in sorcery, this was a blow to his pride.
'Or has a jiangshi appeared that exceeds everything I accounted for?'
Ma Jin-gi promptly shook his head at the notion.
Better his pride suffer a bruise.
A jiangshi twice as strong as So Hwi-woong from the war would herald the dawn of another calamity.
"Elder. It's me."
Seonyugok Lord Gong Son Mu-oe.
He had returned just one day after delivering the letter.
From yesterday until now.
Ma Jin-gi had been utterly absorbed in the letter's contents.
"Come in. Valley Lord."
Gong Son Mu-oe stepped through the door.
"You appear deeply troubled."
Gong Son Mu-oe ventured cautiously.
Ma Jin-gi nodded.
"How could I not be? Lives were sacrificed to create that sorcery."
A shadow clouded Ma Jin-gi's face.
It was inevitable.
Even back then.
Ma Jin-gi had been Seonyugok's premier sorcerer.
Yet he had fretted helplessly, unable to devise a sorcery capable of repelling even the Dark Blood Jiangshi.
The Blood Cult's influence grew relentlessly.
Completion of the sorcery dragged on.
That was when he opened it.
The Divine Scripture—a grotesque entity that granted answers to questions in exchange for human lifespans.
Ha Mu-baek had once learned its true nature and dubbed it the Demonic Scripture.
The price: two of Ma Jin-gi's senior sorcerers had reached the end of their allotted years and ascended to the heavens.
Armed with that key to the sorcery, Ma Jin-gi had expended his lifetime of vital energy.
And forged the most potent incantation he could muster.
He had not revealed the full truth to others.
At Ma Jin-gi's words, Gong Son Mu-oe's expression darkened in kind.
"This calls for action, Valley Lord. I must go verify it myself."
Gong Son Mu-oe started in surprise.
The venerable Ma Jin-gi proposing to journey not just anywhere, but to the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest.
A new jiangshi had surfaced there, sparking this chaos—and now Seonyugok's foremost elder intended to head straight into it.
"No, Elder."
Gong Son Mu-oe shot to his feet in protest, but Ma Jin-gi merely smiled gently.
"How many days remain to me that I should huddle here in the valley? I need to inspect it personally. In truth, I haven't reexamined the Celestial Star Myriad Blossoms Monster-Repelling Technique since deploying it on the Great Wall. The man who crafted it and the man I am now are not the same."
Indeed.
Afterward.
To seek a cure for Gong So-yu's affliction, he had opened the Divine Scripture once more.
Each invocation showered him with fragments.
Ma Jin-gi had weathered it twice, amassing vast knowledge and delving into its study.
Through his current eyes, something new might reveal itself.
He might even fortify the sorcery further.
Even so, Gong Son Mu-oe gazed at him with eyes full of concern.
Before long.
He nodded resolutely, as if having steeled himself.
"Very well, Elder. In that case, I'll accompany you."
Ma Jin-gi blinked in astonishment.
"No, Valley Lord, there's no need for you to come. The valley cannot stand empty once more."
Gong Son Mu-oe smiled warmly.
"It's time I yielded my seat anyway. I'll entrust the Valley Lord position to Woo-kyeong. Then I'll attend you. Kindly bear with me for a short while."
Ma Jin-gi started to dissuade him but quickly abandoned the effort.
He had seen it.
The resolve shining in Gong Son Mu-oe's eyes mirrored his own reflection in a flawless mirror.
"Whew. Understood, Valley Lord. My deepest gratitude."
"Think nothing of it, Elder. If anything, I am the one forever in your debt."
With that, the two exchanged gentle smiles.
Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest.
Beneath the Blood Cult headquarters.
In its very deepest recess.
Deeper even than Gae Seo-ak's current location.
In a direction utterly divergent from Gae Seo-ak's tunneling path—a place he could never reach.
Il-no entered alone.
No one save Il-no could enter here.
Only Il-no.
Glass vials and earthenware jars lined the walls, brimming with myriad elixirs.
One wall groaned under stacks of ancient tomes; the opposite bore heaps of unidentifiable herbs.
Il-no fixed his profound gaze on the solitary wooden coffin at the room's heart.
'Not much longer.'
Il-no lifted the coffin's lid.
Within sprawled a corpse, its heart cavity brutally hollowed out.
"It's been ages, Cult Leader. You're looking better by the day. Splendid."
Il-no murmured.
Yet the corpse offered no reply.
Blood Cult Leader Gae Hong-cheon.
Slain by Ha Mu-baek's final sword strike.
His death sealed the Blood Cult's doom.
His remains.
Lay here now.
In that climactic duel with Gae Hong-cheon.
The drained Righteous Heaven Alliance martial artists had failed to claim his body.
Ha Mu-baek himself had expended every last drop of energy on that decisive blow.
The sole figure still mobile, So Hwi-woong.
Could not impede the Blood Cult devotees as they recovered and spirited away Gae Hong-cheon's corpse.
Il-no produced a fresh vial from his robes.
"I owe Yeon Ja-kyeong a debt of thanks. Who would have thought this weed held such virtue."
The vial held juice refined from White Flower Radiant Grass.
A potent essence of energy dissolution.
He had never imagined such a herb lurked within the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest.
Only after prolonged observation of the Demon-Sealing Corps' ceaseless harvesting—and exhaustive research—did its properties come to light.
"To overlook what I so desperately needed right at hand... I was no better than the blind. Heh heh. But now it's found. Only a little remains, Cult Leader."
With those words, Il-no poured the White Flower Radiant Grass juice into Gae Hong-cheon's ravaged heart cavity.
In that instant.
The edges bubbled and frothed violently.
Then the once-pallid corpse began to suffuse with crimson.
Il-no beamed with delight.
"Magnificent! It works. Ha Mu-baek—that accursed wretch's lingering internal energy has scattered!"
Il-no cried out in glee.
Reverse Heaven Blood Flow Destruction Blood Art.
A secret technique known solely to the Blood Cult Leader.
Blood Art.
Destruction Blood Art.
Destruction implied the enemy's ruin.
But also one's own.
Not even the Cult Leader knew this truth.
Nor did his predecessors.
Only.
The Blood Cult Il-no.
Handed down from Il-no to Il-no across generations.
The Blood Cult's paramount jiangshi artisan.
The keeper of all jiangshi lore.
Such was the Blood Cult Il-no.
Upon each leader's demise.
A fragment enabling their transformation into jiangshi lay embedded within the Reverse Heaven Blood Flow Destruction Blood Art.
Yet.
It had never been invoked.
No prior Il-no had dared proclaim the conversion of the fallen leader—laid to eternal rest before the faithful after naming his successor—into a jiangshi.
But this era's circumstances diverged sharply.
The Blood Cult lay in ruins, its dead leader's body secured intact.
The successor cared naught for revival.
Il-no had no recourse but to employ the ancestral jiangshi rite.
Asura Blood Heaven Jiangshi.
Un chronicled even in Blood Cult annals.
The pinnacle of Blood Cult jiangshi, transmitted solely by word of mouth from Il-no to Il-no.
Fashioned from the leader's very corpse.
Il-no now wrought that taboo abomination.
Truth be told, completion should have come ages ago.
Gae Hong-cheon's heart pulverized though it was.
Ha Mu-baek's residual internal energy clinging to the body.
Had thwarted it.
Stalling midway.
Myriad energy-dispersing toxins proved futile against it.
How it endured defied comprehension.
The internal energy vanished tracelessly—only to manifest spectrally and interfere upon commencing the rite.
A conundrum even for Il-no, jiangshi mastery incarnate.
He had agonized endlessly, seeking the precise energy-dispersing toxin to eradicate it.
And found salvation whence least expected.
Yeon Ja-kyeong's cherished White Flower Radiant Grass.
There, at last.
'He sought to halt the Ho-gyo-shin's rampage?'
That was already in motion—no concern.
Yet the Ho-gyo-shin had nearly derailed the field training to the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest.
A shiver-inducing prospect.
How he had anticipated that training.
'And So Hwi-woong himself is coming?'
Il-no bared a venomous grin.
The Asura Blood Heaven Jiangshi required much more time to finish.
Impossible before their arrival.
But preparations to greet So Hwi-woong were essential.
He had devised them already.
Though So Hwi-woong's personal advent was unforeseen.
All the better.
Il-no concluded the day's labors and sealed the coffin.
He shut the door and ascended.
This sanctum, forbidden to all Blood Cult members.
Reactivating the midway traps, he climbed upward, ever upward.
Ha Mu-baek received a letter from Seonyugok.
A missive from Gong Son Mu-oe after a long interval.
It left Ha Mu-baek scratching his head, face etched with worry.
"Hmm. The sorcery on the Mountain-Crossing Great Wall..."
He was no stranger to the sorcery.
Merely lacked personal experience of its might.
The incident of the novel jiangshi battering the wall.
Prompting Elder Ma Jin-gi to journey personally to the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest for inspection.
Gong Son Mu-oe, Valley Lord, would relinquish his post to his eldest son and join him.
Yet lingering unease over the new jiangshi breed—a courteous plea for aid, should it not burden.
By the timeline.
It aligned neatly with the Fierce Dragon Corps cadets' graduation from the Dragon Training Pavilion and dispatch to the forest.
Circumstances converging with eerie precision.
"Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest... Hmm..."
Ha Mu-baek sank into contemplation.
"Another worry?"
Han Seol-bing.
"The Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest feels amiss."
Her nod to his curt reply.
Truthfully, when had it ever been anything but?
Perpetually ominous.
"And so?"
"No idea."
Ha Mu-baek's terse response.
Yet the turmoil beneath was transparent to Han Seol-bing's eyes.
"Truly?"
Han Seol-bing pressed.
"Might need to visit Elder Gong once more."
Han Seol-bing's eyes gleamed.
"Let's go together."
To her words.
"Why bother?"
Ha Mu-baek responded indifferently.
"Back then. I feel I should see the Strategist too."
Han Seol-bing flashed a bright smile.
Her true motives eluded him entirely.
Though she saw straight through Ha Mu-baek's.
'Fierce Dragon Corps' leader and deputy posts vacant. And it's under Heavenly Eye Pavilion.'
A little-known fact.
More precisely, utterly ignored by all.
Ha Mu-baek included.
He himself was unaware of its affiliation with Heavenly Eye Pavilion.
"Fine. We'll head out once the Summer Combat Festival begins."
The Summer Combat Festival loomed just two days hence.
And today marked.
The Fierce Dragon Corps cadets' inaugural training wielding sword qi against jiangshi.
Cadets of the Fierce Dragon Corps began filing one by one into the vast, empty training ground.