Chapter 29

Jun-gyeong’s gaze turned cold.
Their movements were stripped of anything unnecessary, their eyes unfocused, their bizarre formation filled with nothing but killing intent.
It was horribly familiar. He had faced people like this once, a very long time ago.

A cruel winter when sleet bit into the back of his neck. A village consumed by flames.
A pile of corpses stacked at the village entrance.
The stench of burning human flesh stabbed at his nose, mingling with the reek of blood carried through the air.

“Kill him!! He’s from Goryeo!”

The phantom-like shout tore past his ears. Mukhwa trembled in Jun-gyeong’s grip.
The barbarians that day had been the same.
They had moved not like people, but like starving beasts controlled by something else.
Even after losing heads and limbs, they had charged like ghosts without feeling pain.

[There is a Taoist deep underground issuing commands through sorcery.]

The Seonghwangsin’s cool voice snapped him back to the present.

[He is the leader coordinating the formation and controlling every puppet in this building.]

Jun-gyeong slowly adjusted his grip on Mukhwa.
Yes. It was the same as back then. This hell would not end unless he killed the sorcerer.
Which also meant this tragedy would end the moment he took that bastard’s head.

“I see. Nothing has changed, even after a thousand years.”
“Kill him!!!!”
“KUOOOOO!!!”

The thugs filling the lobby charged all at once with grotesque cries.
Unfocused eyes. Mouths stretched unnaturally wide. Saliva streaming between them.
They looked no different from the barbarians of his past.

“Disgusting things not even worthy of being called monsters.”

Mukhwa darkened to pitch black as it devoured Jun-gyeong’s pure internal energy.

SHK- SHHAAK-!!

The necks of the men charging at the front snapped violently as their heads flew into the air.
Severed arms and legs rolled across the marble floor like bowling pins.

Their reason may have been devoured by sorcery, but their bodies were still those of fragile humans.
The white marble floor quickly turned red and slick beneath the gush of fresh blood.
Their feet slipped in their own blood, sending them sprawling and tangling together in an ugly mass.
Jun-gyeong mercilessly stepped over their bodies, swinging Mukhwa and harvesting heads.

Human puppets with their souls seemingly torn away filled the space around him.
The moment he met their vacant eyes, that distant day of viciously blowing sleet overlaid itself upon the present.
He remembered roaring as he scattered Samadhi True Fire over the mound of innocent villagers’ corpses.
The fading cries of a child beyond the flames, and his own anguished voice through clenched teeth.

-I’m sorry I couldn’t bury each of you properly.

CRACK.
Jun-gyeong’s jaw clenched so hard it seemed ready to break.
He did not conserve his internal energy.
His internal energy flowed with his seething hatred, and Dokkaebi Power surged after it without restraint.

CRACKLE-!!

Blue lightning crackled violently over his fist.
At the same time, the heavens growled as though resonating with him.

RUMMMMMBLE-!!

Rainwater blowing through the open doors mixed with the blood they had spilled, forming a thin film of water across the floor.

“You will not have your way.”

After sweeping a merciless gaze over them, Jun-gyeong slammed his lightning-wreathed fist straight into the floor.

BOOM-!!

The instant his fist shattered the marble, blue lightning exploded outward through the blood and rainwater covering the floor, spreading across the entire lobby.

“GRAAAAGH!!!”

Struck by the high-voltage current, the thugs’ bodies were instantly paralyzed and stiffened all at once, trembling like leaves.
Jun-gyeong was not one to waste even that brief opening. His figure shot forward faster than lightning.

SHKAAAAAK-!!

Mukhwa carved through the darkness, drawing a massive black arc.
The necks of the three thugs forming the front wall were severed simultaneously along a single sweeping line.
Blood erupted like fountains and spread violently across the hospital’s white marble walls as though they were a canvas.

“Kgh, GRAAGH!”

The men recovering from the shock screamed and charged.
Jun-gyeong stepped back half a pace and twisted his grip on Mukhwa.

SLASH-!

The sword snapped upward in a short rising cut.
Blood spread in a long streak through the air along the black arc.
Brain matter and blood sprayed together through the air.
It was a horrific scene of slaughter, yet Jun-gyeong’s gaze remained endlessly cold.
Rather than avoid the blade coming from his left, he stepped closer and seized the man’s wrist.

CRACK!

As the joint snapped, Jun-gyeong tore the knife from his hand and drove it deep into the chest of another man lunging in from the side.

“Kgh…!”

Using the back of the collapsing man as a foothold, Jun-gyeong launched himself into the air.
As his body spun, Mukhwa traced a horizontal black line through the air.
The necks of five or six men standing in a line were severed one after another and fell to the floor.

Thud, Thud-thud.

The severed heads rolled through the blood.
The lobby no longer smelled like a place where humans lived.
With every step, thick red liquid sloshed up around his heels, while severed limbs lay scattered everywhere like stepping stones, making the floor treacherously slick.

Internal energy surged from his dantian and flowed along Mukhwa’s blade, shattering bone and bursting flesh wherever the sword passed.

They kept coming, even trampling over the corpses of their comrades.
There seemed to be no end.
It was a scene straight from the realm of hungry ghosts.
Blades flashed from the darkness, pressing against Jun-gyeong’s all-encompassing field of vision.

But Jun-gyeong’s sword never faltered.
He thrust Mukhwa straight into the forest of blades closing in on him.
Condensed sword energy exploded forward, punching straight through the chests of three men in front of him.
Jun-gyeong used the corpses impaled on his sword as a shield and drove forward.
The pile of bodies became a human barricade crashing into the enemies ahead, and Jun-gyeong slipped through the opening the instant their formation broke.
His left hand seized a man’s face.
Mukhwa swept across the man’s waist.

SPURT-! SLASH-!

The metallic smell of blood clung deep inside his lungs.
With even the lobby lights extinguished, only occasional flashes of lightning outside illuminated the carnage in flickering bursts.
Each flash revealed Jun-gyeong’s clothes stained an ever darker crimson with his enemies’ blood.

The last remaining large thug screamed and charged with his knife raised in both hands.
Jun-gyeong glided across the blood-soaked floor and slipped inside his reach.
Mukhwa pierced beneath the man’s chin and burst out through the crown of his head.

CRUNCH.

When Jun-gyeong pulled the sword free, blood erupted like a fountain and splashed across his cheek.
Drip. Drip. Red drops fell endlessly from the tip of the blade.
All movement in the lobby ceased.

KRAKOOOM-!

Once again, the world outside the lobby flashed bright as lightning struck.
In that instant,
the horror of the lobby was revealed like a frozen photograph.
Bodies piled atop one another.
Marble stained dark crimson with blood.
Severed limbs.
And in the middle of it all stood Jun-gyeong alone.
Only one thought remained in his mind.

Underground. The sorcerer. Kill him, and this ends.

[Your Majesty. You must hurry. He is preparing to flee.]
“Don’t worry. This won’t take long.”

Jun-gyeong roughly wiped the blood from his cheek and sprinted without hesitation toward the stairs leading underground.
Somewhere in his mind, the sleet was still falling.

The underground was vast. No, it was long.
The tunnels seemed to connect the basements of every building, stretching endlessly like an anthill.
Their length itself posed no real difficulty for him.
But there were more than enough obstacles to slow him down.
Countless Steel Jiangshi began emerging from every corner of the tangled passageways.

“This is maddening.”

No matter how many he cut down, more Jiangshi kept pouring out.
Even after losing arms or legs, they continued attacking.
The Steel Jiangshi were different from the human puppets.
Even impaling them with a sword did not stop them.
And dealing with them consumed that much more of his internal power.
No single strike drained much, but like clothes slowly soaking through in a light rain, his internal energy was steadily being consumed.

His dantian was rapidly emptying.
In the mortal world, there was nowhere left where he could expand and cultivate his internal energy.

Jun-gyeong’s brow was so deeply furrowed it looked permanently set that way.

“There’s no end to them.”

The moment Jun-gyeong muttered the words, a violent rush of displaced air came from the darkness to his left.

BOOM!

Before the sound of something rolling across the floor had even faded, a hulking Steel Jiangshi came flying at him like a cannonball.
Jun-gyeong instinctively raised his sword to block.

KLANG!

A deafening metallic clash rang out, sending sparks flying in every direction.
Its ten blackened fingers had hardened like iron spikes and scraped down Jun-gyeong’s blade.

“So now they’re turning beastfolk into Steel Jiangshi too?”

The Steel Jiangshi looked to be at least one and a half times the size of an ordinary human.

SKREEECH!

The skin-crawling sound of friction filled the underground passage.
Jun-gyeong drew power from his dantian and infused internal power into his sword.
Bluish Qi rippled along the blade.

THUD-!

A sound like kicking a heavy sandbag rang out as its body was driven backward.

SHHAAK!!

Its hardened nails and fingers were sliced cleanly in two.
There was no time to rest.
A Jiangshi wouldn’t retreat simply because it had lost a few fingers.
And it was not the only enemy.

“GRAAAAGH!”

At the intersections of the anthill-like passages, red eyes began lighting up one after another throughout the darkness.
They felt no pain.
To finish them for certain,
he had to infuse his sword with internal power every single time.
And with every strike, his dantian emptied faster.

SHKAAAAK!

Jun-gyeong’s figure moved like lightning.
His sword traced a diagonal line and severed the necks of two Steel Jiangshi as they burst from the passage.
No rotten blood spilled from the severed surfaces. Instead, dust like iron filings scattered through the air.

He kicked another beastfolk Steel Jiangshi charging at his back square in the chest, forcing it away, then thrust his sword into it.

THUD!

Jun-gyeong’s brow furrowed further at the dull sensation transmitted through the tip of his sword.
Even with a vital point pierced, the creature did not stop. It forced its own body farther onto Mukhwa and opened its jaws to tear into Jun-gyeong’s neck.
In the end, Jun-gyeong had no choice but to twist the sword and detonate his internal power.

KRAKABOOM!

The beastfolk Jiangshi’s upper body exploded into pieces.
Undeniable killing power.
But the cost fell entirely on his dantian.

“Haah… Haah…”

Ragged breaths escaped him.
His dantian was rapidly growing cold.

But it wasn’t over yet.
The strange footsteps from the darkness, sounding like chains being dragged across the ground, drew ever closer.
A vicious light entered Jun-gyeong’s eyes.
He launched himself once more toward the creatures whose eyes glowed in the darkness.
Cruel blue sword lines began carving through the dark underground passage once again.

CRUNCH! CRACK- BANG! KRAKABOOM-!

Running out of internal power was no reason he could afford to stop.
Jun-gyeong tightened his grip on Mukhwa.

“Come.”

A blue sword line tore through the darkness once more.