Chapter 517
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 517
Chapter Title: He is Dead
How much time had passed?
The first to regain her senses was Jegal So-rin.
Her eyes had deepened noticeably.
Jegal So-rin surveyed the remnants of the overlapping formation around her.
"Indeed..."
She now understood even the secrets of the overlapping formation.
Why had this sudden enlightenment come to her?
It was a mystery, but at the very least, she felt she could now deploy the Radiant Returning Lord Thousand Radiance Formation.
Seventy percent of its full power might be her limit, but that was more than enough.
Just moments ago, she hadn't grasped even thirty percent of it, yet now she could execute it on the spot.
It was growth so rapid that even "leaps and bounds" fell short of describing it.
Ha Mu-baek was still deep in meditation.
Jegal So-rin gazed at him.
In her deepened eyes, a fleeting, subtle light flickered from the depths for an instant.
"Huh? Huh? What?"
Jegal So-rin blinked for a moment.
She tilted her head, looking around.
It felt as if, for just a fleeting moment, she had lost herself.
She had clearly only glanced at Ha Mu-baek briefly, and he was still in the same position. Nothing around her had changed.
Yet in that instant, had she felt some inexplicable daze?
'A side effect...?'
She wondered if it was a backlash from the enormous enlightenment that had suddenly flooded in.
And who could blame her? The amount of knowledge that had poured into her mind in that short time was staggering.
Could one person even hold it all in that brief span?
She had managed it, so a temporary side effect wasn't out of the question.
'I need to get back and rest soon.'
She wanted to hurry back to her quarters and lie down. Before sorting through the tidal wave of knowledge in her head, she needed rest first.
She was physically exhausted too.
But she couldn't.
Ha Mu-baek still hadn't emerged from his meditation.
This was a deserted mountain, but considering the kindness he had shown her for that short time, she had to stand guard here as his protector.
Rustle.
At that moment.
The sound of someone approaching reached her ears.
Jegal So-rin's gaze turned that way.
"Who...?"
"Huh?"
Before Jegal So-rin could shout, a figure emerged.
It was Jegal Go-pung.
"Uncle?"
"So-rin, why are you...?"
The two recognized each other and wore shocked expressions.
Jegal Go-pung quickly scanned the surroundings.
He was checking what had happened, since someone who shouldn't be here was present.
His eyes fell on the man sitting cross-legged.
Ha Mu-baek.
"Th-that man, how is he here...?"
Jegal Go-pung's voice trembled.
He knew exactly who Ha Mu-baek was.
As if realizing something, he hurriedly scanned the area again.
The one person who absolutely should be here was missing.
Jegal So-rin and Ha Mu-baek were here, but the clan head was not?
It was absurd.
This place, after the formation was complete, was somewhere even he couldn't easily approach.
For an outsider to enter such a place, the clan head would surely know.
Jegal Go-pung urgently asked Jegal So-rin.
"Wh-where is the clan head? Where is your grandfather?"
He asked Jegal So-rin, desperately denying what the surroundings suggested.
But Jegal So-rin couldn't answer easily.
She merely hung her head.
From that gesture, Jegal Go-pung sensed the truth.
"No, right? No, right?"
He asked desperately again.
"What are you talking about?"
A voice both unfamiliar and familiar rang in Jegal Go-pung's ears.
Ha Mu-baek had finished meditating and was rising to his feet.
"Jegal Nam-cheon? He's dead."
Ha Mu-baek stated it flatly, as if it were no big deal.
Like announcing the death of some stranger from the next village over.
"Wh-what did you say?"
Jegal Go-pung's eyes bulged.
He scanned the surroundings again.
He looked at Jegal So-rin, then at Ha Mu-baek.
"Ha Mu-baek. Was it you?"
Ha Mu-baek shrugged.
"It couldn't be helped. If not, he would've been possessed by the demon."
He couldn't explain the full chaos properly, so he lumped it together as a "demon."
At those words, Jegal Go-pung shuddered as if he knew something.
"Th-that's impossible! It wasn't a demon! It was another divine scripture, just like the one said to be in the Valley of First Encounters!"
He shouted desperately.
The nine-layered overlapping formation.
He recalled the formation's core, glowing faintly when Jegal Nam-cheon had revealed it.
He hadn't asked directly, but he'd sensed some communion between it and the clan head.
Jegal Go-pung knew of similar artifacts.
The divine scripture held by the Valley of First Encounters.
No one knew its form, but perhaps that was another one.
Just because the valley had one didn't mean the Jegal Clan couldn't.
Yet calling it a demon?
Jegal Go-pung couldn't accept it easily.
"Believe it or not, that's up to you. I only stated the facts."
Ha Mu-baek replied curtly.
Jegal Go-pung ground his teeth.
But there was nothing he could do.
He knew better than anyone that charging at Ha Mu-baek here would be a dog's death.
"From this moment, you are an enemy of the Jegal Clan."
Jegal Go-pung muttered in a voice laced with killing intent.
Ha Mu-baek smirked.
As if he weren't the least bit afraid.
"For that, it seems like you've caused too much trouble yourselves?"
At Ha Mu-baek's words, Jegal Go-pung's face twisted in disbelief.
As if that man couldn't possibly know everything.
"Why do you think I came all the way here?"
Disbelief flickered across Jegal Go-pung's face.
"Your hideout was next on my list anyway."
Ha Mu-baek had already sensed Jegal Go-pung's presence with his energy sense.
From where he had originally been.
The place where he suspected they were raising envoys for the Seseguanim Church.
He'd felt that presence there.
"Wh-what...?"
Ha Mu-baek made a face as if it wasn't worth answering and kicked off the ground.
His figure vanished in an instant.
Jegal Go-pung stared blankly before hurriedly turning around.
If those last words were true, the direction that man had gone was obvious.
"Hurry back to the clan and report the clan head's misfortune."
With those words left behind, he too launched himself forward.
He raced at full speed toward the hideout.
Ha Mu-baek was fast.
He arrived at the hideout in a time Jegal Go-pung couldn't even imagine, and here too he sensed the energy of a suggestion formation.
"Tch, this one I can feel, but..."
The nine-layered overlapping formation had been utterly undetectable.
Ha Mu-baek unleashed palm strikes toward where the energy emanated from.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
He smashed first and asked questions later wherever suspicious energy pulsed.
The source was to the west of the hideout.
So Ha Mu-baek thoroughly demolished that area.
Until the energy vanished completely.
It was a brutally straightforward way to break the formation.
But it worked perfectly.
The formation's energy cloaking the area had clearly dissipated.
"Guanyin God..."
"Guanyin God..."
Those with eyes closed, bowing and praying, froze at the sudden earth-shaking explosions.
Unlike before, the sounds came from right behind them.
When they hurriedly turned toward the noise.
They saw Ha Mu-baek revealed.
With the sun at his back, the energy he'd gathered to demolish everything rose like heat haze.
He looked like a heavenly god descending to earth.
His face wasn't clear.
The intense sunlight sinking westward was too blinding.
"Th-the L-Leader!!!"
Someone, entranced by the sight, cried out.
"It's the Leader!"
"Leader!"
"Oh! Leader!!!"
The envoys prostrated themselves toward Ha Mu-baek.
"You've finally come!"
"Welcome!"
"Thank you!"
The situation unfolded abruptly.
Jegal Go-pung, who had just arrived at the hideout, gaped in disbelief at the scene.
What in the world was this?
Calling the man who killed their Leader the Leader himself.
"No! Snap out of it! That man's the one who assassinated our Leader! He's not the Leader!!!"
Jegal Go-pung bellowed in fury.
His son hurriedly flew to his side.
"Father. What do you mean?"
He whispered.
He couldn't believe those words coming from his father's mouth.
"I'll explain in detail later. That man's Ha Mu-baek."
Jegal Go-pung whispered back.
It was a conversation in voices so low only the two could hear.
The son was stunned by his father's words.
That was the man he'd only heard about in tales?
And that man had killed the clan head?
What on earth was happening?
As confusion overwhelmed him.
One of the prospective envoys shouted.
"He descended from the heavens to slay the false Leader—the true Leader has come! The Grand Envoy was just a minion of the false Leader!!"
The man who had first called out "Leader" shouted again.
His actions weren't those of someone genuinely welcoming the Leader.
Rather, it seemed like he was inciting the others around him.
Ha Mu-baek saw through it instantly.
Jegal Go-pung, however, did not.
The reason was simple.
All the prospective envoys had turned toward Ha Mu-baek, so he only saw their backs.
"That man's a traitor! How dare he call the true Leader false and name the Leader's assassin as Leader! Envoys, seize that traitor at once!"
Jegal Go-pung roared.
The surrounding envoys hesitated, unsure what to do.
Both sides' arguments made sense.
But Jegal Go-pung frowned.
His words weren't getting through.
He knew why.
The landscape he'd seen rushing here.
Everything was destroyed and torn up by powerful forces here and there.
The suggestion formation over the hideout had been broken.
Jegal Go-pung's voice, tuned to the formation's energy with sonic arts, had acted as powerful suggestion on them before—practically brainwashing.
But with the suggestion formation shattered, it had no effect.
Of course, the inciting envoy had never been under the suggestion to begin with; he'd only pretended.
Unaware the formation was broken, Jegal Go-pung hadn't guessed that far.
Ha Mu-baek watched the man and Jegal Go-pung with an amused expression.
Now that their eyes had adjusted to the glare, people could see Ha Mu-baek's face.
"Oh! Look at that sacred smile! That's the Leader without a doubt!"
The man shouted fervently.
He didn't know the formation was broken. He didn't even know it existed.
He only suspected the Grand Envoy had brainwashed everyone here through some means.
Only those fully brainwashed via suggestion here were sent out as envoys to the world.
Having learned to set up the suggestion formation themselves.
Of course, it was packaged as a formation to spread the Guanyin God's words.
The brainwashed believed without doubt that as chosen envoys, they could enlighten the foolish masses, and they worked zealously to expand the faith.
That's why the man thought that, without the Grand Envoy, invoking a higher authority like the Leader would put the others under his sway via suggestion.
He'd guessed at some form of suggestion.
Though he didn't know it was the formation's power.
Then the Grand Envoy returned, so he was desperately trying to make Ha Mu-baek the Leader.
The water was already spilled; he knew he had to oust the Grand Envoy successfully to survive.
'Damn it. Why'd he come back so fast?'
He didn't care who Ha Mu-baek was or why he'd appeared with explosions.
He was solely focused on seizing the hideout by driving out the Grand Envoy.