The Trap (3)

“I fled Kunlun as soon as day broke the next morning. I could not give my daughter to such an old man. Naturally, I could not believe in reverse aging either, nor did I believe that old man’s talk about yin energy and such. I thought everything was that old man’s trick.”

“…….”

Neung Je-gang only continued listening. What he wanted was only his enemy, but Dam Ja-cheon unfolded the story of himself and his daughter as though he were complaining to himself.

But he could not stop him. Neung Je-gang could feel it. By pouring out his complaints like that, Dam Ja-cheon wanted to end his life…

That was the best for him.

Dam Ja-cheon again forgot about what had happened in Kunlun. He did not think Dam Yeo-yeong would become sick again. But the following year, Dam Yeo-yeong once again began complaining of pain.

In the end, Dam Ja-cheon had no choice but to seek out Kunlun again. And he ended up promising that, three years later, she would marry in Kunlun. For the time being, saving his daughter, who seemed about to die, came first.

But when he returned home, his thoughts changed. He felt that he absolutely could not bear to see Dam Yeo-yeong marry such an old man.

He searched for a groom for Dam Yeo-yeong. The first one to enter his eyes was the eldest son of the Neung Family, one of the foremost wealthy households on the eastern outskirts of Seon-yeong.

“But you opposed that marriage. I do not know why you did, but I could not back down either. So in the end, I decided on the marriage between your younger brother and my daughter.”

“Then you thought of me or my younger brother as a tool to prolong your daughter’s life?”

“I did. I ended up doing such a thing in order to save my daughter. But heaven was not on my side. As you know, on the day of the marriage, those evil spirits rushed in.”

“Who were they?”

From this point on was the part Neung Je-gang truly wanted. He closed his mouth so as not to miss a single word. He did not even breathe loudly.

“Kunlun. Byeon Bong of Kunlun! He was the disciple of that old Taoist.”

“Byeon Bong!”

Neung Je-gang repeated that name as if chewing it and spitting it out. In order not to forget it, in order to engrave it into his mind, he gritted his teeth and repeated the name again and again.

“Kunlun! You mean it was Kunlun. You mean Kunlun is my enemy. Uahahahaha! Kunlun—!”

Rumble, kwakwakwakwakwaang!

Unable to control his rage, Neung Je-gang fired the Heaven-Shattering Thunderbolt Sovereign from his hand. At the destructive force of the thunderbolt that exploded in one side of the underground area, Heart-Cleansing Cave began to tremble as if it would collapse at any moment.

“Cough, cough! My story is not over yet. Listen to my story. Please!”

It had to be called a miracle that Dam Ja-cheon’s desperate voice reached the ears of Neung Je-gang, who was about to go completely berserk.

Neung Je-gang looked at Dam Ja-cheon. Afraid that Neung Je-gang would not listen to his story, Dam Ja-cheon hurriedly opened his mouth.

“After that incident, we were forcibly relocated to Kunlun. We completely vanished from the world without leaving any trace.”

Dam Ja-cheon, who had been forcibly moved to Kunlun, lost all motivation for everything and wasted away in sickness. But there was someone who passed away before him.

It was his wife. But before she died, his wife told Dam Ja-cheon an astonishing truth.

“Do you know what that was? Kuhuhu! Cough!”

“…….”

There was no way Neung Je-gang would know.

“It was that my daughter was not my biological daughter.”

“Ah…!”

“Everything began in Kunlun. Everything…”

The old Taoist made one proposal to Dam Ja-cheon’s wife, who had gone to Kunlun to pray because she had no child. It was that Dam Ja-cheon’s constitution made him originally unable to have children, so another method had to be used.

Because of Dam Ja-cheon, who so desperately wanted a child, his wife eventually fell for the old Taoist’s temptation. And the one born that way was Dam Yeo-yeong.

“Then are you saying your daughter’s biological father was that old Taoist?”

“Cough! That is not it. It was not that old Taoist, but the old Taoist’s son. That outrageous old Taoist had secretly fathered and raised a child no one knew about.”

“How could that be…!”

Neung Je-gang could not suppress his fury at the shameless old Taoist’s conduct.

After hearing those words his wife left behind before dying, Dam Ja-cheon was nearly driven mad. But he had no ability to take revenge. Even Dam Yeo-yeong, who had been so beautiful, became something he no longer wanted to look at. In truth, not a single drop of his blood flowed in her.

He no longer cared whom Dam Yeo-yeong married. In any case, she was the bloodline of his enemy. But he could not forget the frustration, humiliation, and resentment he had suffered until then.

So he waited until Dam Yeo-yeong married. He had no interest in who the other party was. In any case, he thought that only after the marriage would the old Taoist trust him.

“Certainly, after the marriage, the eyes watching me decreased. I frequently went in and out of Kunlun. I became acquainted with the Taoists and grew friendly with them. If the Taoists occasionally asked me for something, I granted it by any means necessary. Then one day, I finally seized an opportunity. A Taoist I was close to said he was going to clean the residence of the old Taoist who had undergone reverse aging.”

Dam Ja-cheon managed with difficulty to coax the Taoist and was able to go to the residence of the old Taoist who was nominally his son-in-law. And while saying he would help clean, he searched the place. Whatever it was, if it could harm the old Taoist, he would have been satisfied.

But there, Dam Ja-cheon discovered something truly shocking. It was a record of the old Taoist’s dream and the descendants who had inherited that dream.

“The old Taoist’s name was Deung Gak. His son was Deung Hyeon, and his grandson’s name was Deung Myeong. Reverse aging was a lie. They were merely having the grandson imitate the grandfather.”

“……!”

Now not even an exclamation came out. A swindle of the age spanning three generations had been taking place in Kunlun. A swindle that deceived the entire Central Plains.

Deung Gak had begun preparing that swindle from the time he happened to meet a dying old man during the destruction of the Necromancer Cult.

When Deung Gak learned that the old man was the Cult Leader of the Necromancer Cult, he returned to Kunlun with the Spirit-Command Mind-Seal Technique he had obtained from him. He did not reveal to the world that the Necromancer Cult Leader had died. He had heard from the dying cult leader that the Necromancer Cult had not been completely destroyed.

After mastering the Spirit-Command Mind-Seal Technique and the Necromancer Cult Leader’s martial arts, he sought out the Necromancer Cult and took control of it. From then on, he began raising disciples. He thought that the only things that could become his strength later were bloodline and disciples.

Deung Gak obtained a woman and had a son. After that son grew up, he obtained a woman and saw a grandson as well. The number of Necromancer Cult followers also gradually increased. He began to grow greedy.

“Deung Gak wanted to become emperor. No, he wanted to pass the imperial throne on to his descendants. But he realized that he himself had grown too old.”

“So he committed the fraud called reverse aging.”

“That is right. He wanted to pass down everything he had achieved to his descendants intact. Even his own identity.”

“Then the current Deung Gak is his grandson Deung Myeong? And Dam Yeo-yeong is his half-sibling? What a completely broken family.”

“But what I discovered while cleaning was not only that.”

“There was something else?”

“Kuhuhu! Cough, cough!”

Dam Ja-cheon’s coughing grew even worse.

“In the book he had been reading, I learned why he had been so obsessed with Dam Yeo-yeong. That astonishing secret…”

Deung Gak happened to see Dam Ja-cheon’s wife praying and could not hide his surprise. It was because her constitution was a Pure Yin Body with powerful yin energy. A Pure Yin Body has strong yin energy and cannot bear children. In the end, it was not Dam Ja-cheon who was flawed, but his wife who had a constitution that could not conceive a child.

Deung Gak grew greedy when he saw her. Among the Necromancer Cult’s secret arts, there was a sinister secret art that caused a woman with a Pure Yin Body to conceive a Primordial Yin Body.

The body of a girl with a Primordial Yin Body was no different from a miraculous medicine to a martial artist who practiced martial arts. Deung Gak wanted to give that primordial yin to the grandson who would be swapped in for him.

He made his son perform that secret art. And as expected, Dam Yeo-yeong, who possessed a Primordial Yin Body, was born.

“Deung Myeong, who is now acting as Deung Gak, absorbed the primordial yin of Dam Yeo-yeong, his own half-sister, and trained his martial arts. That was why no one noticed that it was not reverse aging. Because they sensed that powerful inner energy.”

“Cough! That is right. When one thinks about it, Yeo-yeong is the most pitiful one. Only after being imprisoned here did I realize that.”

“Before coming here, I saw that Dam Yeo-yeong was pregnant. Then is that child Deung Myeong’s child?”

“No. Just as a Pure Yin Body cannot have children, a Primordial Yin Body cannot have children either.”

“Then what was Dam Yeo-yeong’s swollen belly?”

Because Neung Je-gang had seen it with his own eyes, he could not understand it all the more.

Kunlun Record Keeper descended the mountain and entered Dam Yeo-yeong’s house. None of the villagers pretended to know him. They treated him as if he did not exist.

When Dam Yeo-yeong saw him, she was startled and sprang up. Perhaps because she had been shocked by Neung Je-gang yesterday, she did not even think of working in the vegetable garden and had merely been staring blankly at the sky.

“You have come?”

“Yes.”

For some reason, Dam Yeo-yeong’s behavior was unnatural. There was an awkwardness that was different from how one treated a husband.

“Do you know that you no longer have any value of existence?”

“What? What do you…?”

“I am saying there is now nothing more for me to obtain from you. Your Primordial Yin True Energy has already been completely absorbed by me and is no longer useful. So I intend to send you elsewhere.”

“W-where…?”

“I will send you to your hometown.”

“Hometown…!”

Dam Yeo-yeong could express neither joy nor sorrow and merely murmured the word hometown.

“Thank you for everything. Thanks to you, I gained my current abilities, but we have no choice but to part like this. I did become attached to you during that time, but what can be done? You and I are of the same bloodline. Go back to your hometown, rest comfortably, and forget the hardships you suffered during that time. And remember this. You were not actually pregnant. You were never pregnant. Farewell, my younger sister.”

As Kunlun Record Keeper finished speaking, he tapped Dam Yeo-yeong’s forehead with his finger.

Dam Yeo-yeong lost consciousness just like that and collapsed sideways with a thud.

Kunlun Record Keeper struck the major acupoints all over Dam Yeo-yeong’s body several times back and forth. Then something miraculous happened. Her belly, which had been swollen like a balloon, slowly shrank. Dam Yeo-yeong, whose belly had completely returned to its original state, had a much thinner figure than she appeared to.

“Soul Hunter! Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Take this child to her hometown. Make sure she has enough to live on.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your family?”

“They have finished moving to the second hiding place.”

“Are you angry? That you cannot deal with Secret Shadow with your own hands?”

“No.”

“Do not mourn your family’s deaths. From now on, we will see far more blood than that.”

“I know.”

“Hurry and take her away.”

“Yes.”

Together with the answer, a black shadow appeared beside the bed, lifted Dam Yeo-yeong, and disappeared again like a shadow.

The Kunlun Record Keeper looked around the house where Dam Yeo-yeong had lived, then stepped outside.

“Now, even my final sentiment has disappeared like this.”

He murmured softly, then launched himself toward one of the peaks of Mount Kunlun thick with trees.