Chapter 170: Running Rampant (4)

“What? Where did he go?”

Cheongak looked around in bewilderment.

Cheonjeong was also searching the residence, though with slightly more composure.

Eunsong had vanished without a trace.

“......Eldest Brother, did he say anything to you?”

Cheonju asked Cheonjeong in a low voice.

Cheonjeong turned and stared at him for a moment, then shook his head.

“He did not tell me anything.”

“......It is rare for him to leave without even informing you.”

“It certainly is.”

That was when Cheonhwa burst out of the kitchen in a great commotion.

“I know! I figured it out!”

Cheonju narrowed his eyes.

Cheongu was not paying attention to anything Cheonhwa said, while Cheongak listened despite knowing how often her theories proved utterly ridiculous.

“Touch the ash in the furnace. It’s still warm! That means he had to leave before he could even put out the fire. Which means......!”

“Which means?”

Her reasoning sounded surprisingly plausible, and Cheongak leaned closer.

Cheonjeong and Cheonju, however, already looked as though they were waiting to hear what nonsense she would spout this time.

Cheongu was no different.

“He was kidnapped!”

Cheongak’s eyes immediately narrowed.

His entire expression crumpled with them.

His disappointment was so blatant that Cheonhwa flinched when she saw it.

“Y-you—your Sister is speaking, and you......!”

“Then why does my exalted Sister only say things fit for a dung heap?”

“W-what did you say?!”

Cheonhwa’s ears flushed bright red.

Cheonjeong stopped them all with a quiet command.

“Enough.”

He had just opened Eunsong’s drawer.

The black gat and Black Outer Coat were gone.

At that moment, Cheonjeong could roughly guess what had happened.

“It seems Master has gone somewhere beyond Mount Hua.”

“How can you be sure he wasn’t kidnapped?”

“Cheonhwa.”

Cheonjeong turned and looked steadily at her.

The weight in his gaze nearly made Cheonhwa hiccup.

At times like this, even her own brother Cheonju would not protect her.

“Try to say something that makes sense.”

“Okay......”

“If he had been kidnapped, he would not have had time to take his black gat and coat. If there had been a struggle, the room would not be this orderly. And if someone had taken him away, they would have left footprints, yet there are none.”

Of course, it was not impossible.

The most skilled assassins of the old Kill Veil—and certain hidden arts now remembered only in legend—could occasionally accomplish such feats.

But such techniques were far from common.

All the more so because they belonged to the lost traditions of the old Kill Veil.

“Master will return if we wait.”

“So when will that be......?”

Cheongu quietly raised his hand and asked.

Cheonjeong fell silent.

He had nothing more to say.

“......Why are you all standing around instead of training?”

“Ah.”

Cheonjeong’s narrowed gaze settled on Cheongak.

Cheongak immediately realized that his day was well and truly ruined.

*****

The ceiling was red.

A deep, blood-soaked crimson like the inside of the monster’s mouth that had swallowed him.

Ak Jupae sat up, drenched in cold sweat.

He was lying on an unfamiliar bed in a room he had never seen before.

“......I lost consciousness.”

Once his thoughts cleared, he felt an unpleasant energy gnawing away inside him.

He did not need to think hard to identify it.

Demonic Energy.

“Ha......”

The fact that it still revolted him meant he had not yet lost his mind.

But how long would that last?

He was Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae, an absolute master who had entered the early stage of the Transformation Realm.

He would not be consumed in an instant like dry wood catching fire......

Even so, this was effectively a death sentence.

And Ak Jupae had no intention of becoming a mindless Demonic Beast, not even for the sake of revenge.

Once his vengeance was complete—

he would end his own life.

......I refuse to become some Demonic Beast.

He slowly rose from the bed.

His clothes had been neatly folded on a table.

They were spotless, free of dust, and completely dry. He must have been unconscious for quite some time.

His enormous treasured weapon was also resting against the table at an angle.

The Flame-Saber Lord slowly wrapped his hand around its hilt.

Then he drew it.

Shrrring—

The thick, heavy saber had been forged so that blade and hilt flowed together like the body of a single dragon.

It was a treasured saber.

Though it bore neither jewels nor gold, it had been forged from Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.

At first glance, a great saber of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron might seem ill-suited—even absurd—in the hands of Ak Jupae, master of the Flame-Dragon Saber Canon.

In truth, the opposite was the case.

Only Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron could withstand such ferocious flames.

He slowly ran a hand along the saber’s cold, gleaming edge.

The flawless blade gave off a razor-sharp glint.

Ak Jupae raised it and drew internal energy from his dantian.

“......Ha.”

An unpleasant sensation mingled into the flow.

He could feel the Demonic Energy lodged firmly within his dantian.

His internal energy was no longer as pure as it had once been.

It was not yet pitch-black and ominous like true Demonic Energy......

But it had already begun to mix with it.

Someday, it would devour his dantian and all his internal energy.

Then it would devour him as well.

Perhaps that was why the massive saber, which had known nothing but pure internal energy throughout his life, now emitted a skin-crawling sound.

A blade’s shriek.

“......This is enough to drive a man mad.”

How long had it been since he had heard a weapon cry like that?

It was the mark of a martial artist who had reached the First-Rate realm.

For a man who had already attained the Transformation Realm, it was a relic of a past so distant he could barely remember it.

He forced more internal energy into the Flame-Dragon Saber.

Only then, filled to the brim with power, did the saber begin to radiate razor-sharp Sword Qi.

No—

something beyond Sword Qi.

Scarlet Sword Force burned around the blade like fire.

Yet threads of black burned within it.

The Sword Force should have surged with the pure, violent intensity of Samadhi True Flame.

Now it no longer burned as brightly as before, and rather than roaring fiercely, the flames merely clung to the saber.

The Flame-Saber Lord slowly walked outside.

The door was not locked.

They must have known how meaningless a lock was before a Transformation Realm master.

More importantly, he had already swallowed the hair.

Ak Jupae had accepted Demonic Energy and joined the Demonic Cult. It was difficult to imagine that he would leave the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains before learning which martial art had killed his son.

Outside lay a garden.

It could hardly be called elegant, but it contained everything one might expect.

Grass covered the ground. Trees had been planted, and a few flowers were in bloom.

A still pond rested in one corner.

“Sinister bastards, doing things that don’t suit them.”

He slowly approached the thickest tree in the garden.

Then he swung his burning saber, dense with Sword Force, at the base of its trunk.

KRRRRAAAK—!!!

He had not put much strength into the blow.

But a saber wrapped in Sword Force was already something far beyond a mere weapon.

The casual swing split through the base of the massive pine.

The tree began to topple.

“My, my. You are awake already?”

Left Luminary Guardian Seon Byeok-il caught the falling tree and held it upright.

Ak Jupae had not even sensed his arrival.

Seon Byeok-il might have reached the middle stage of the Transformation Realm......

But it was still strange that Ak Jupae, himself an early-stage Transformation Realm master, had failed to detect even a trace of his presence.

“......When did you get here?”

“Just now.”

There were two reasons for it.

The first was likely the insidious Demonic Art Seon Byeok-il cultivated.

The second was that Ak Jupae had not yet adapted to the changes in his body.

Internal energy tainted with Demonic Energy raced through every meridian in him.

Each time it did, he felt his channels twist with a strange pain and an alien discomfort.

Ak Jupae had yet to acclimate to any of it.

“You will adjust in time.”

“What would you know about it?”

“Very few people are born into the Demonic Cult.”

Ak Jupae narrowed his eyes at Seon Byeok-il’s answer.

That meant......

The Left Luminary Guardian had not originally belonged to the Demonic Cult either.

“Were you one of the righteous factions?”

“Yes.”

“I have never heard your name.”

“The worthless martial arts taught by my worthless sect were not enough to earn even empty fame.”

After learning Demonic Arts, he had risen to become the Demonic Cult’s Left Luminary Guardian.

Ak Jupae did not know why he had joined the cult.

But he could hear a peculiar hatred at the edge of Seon Byeok-il’s words.

A hatred that had yet to be fully resolved.

“You must hate your former sect.”

“Hate...... No. It is a little different from that.”

Seon Byeok-il gave a faint smile and released the tree.

Astonishingly, the severed surfaces had fused back together, leaving the tree standing as though it had never been cut.

Only then did Ak Jupae realize that both the soil of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains and every living thing growing from it were steeped in Demonic Energy.

Seon Byeok-il had poured Demonic Energy into the tree, forcing the severed parts to rejoin and regenerate.

“To be precise, I despise it.”