Chapter 217: Moving in the Shadows (5)

"Show no mercy! Draw your swords!"

Flower-Haze Hall was engulfed in flames.

Amid the inferno, Myeonggon swung his Plum Blossom Sword, spilling blood.

Everyone could describe what was happening in a single sentence.

It's happening again, just like it did to the Ak Family.

The Demonic Cult's hidden agents had risen up, setting fires everywhere...

And driving their blades into the backs of people who, until yesterday, had been their comrades, their own people, their fellow disciples.

Shouts and screams rang out from every direction.

Myeonggon struggled to keep his composure.

He had to save the young disciples of the Cheon generation at Flower-Haze Hall, those who had not been corrupted by the Demonic Cult.

And that meant...

Some of them had to die.

Slash—

The longsword in Myeonggon's hand was stained with another child's blood.

A child who had charged at him with the whites of his eyes dyed red, wearing an expression Myeonggon had never imagined he could make.

Myeonggon barely managed to suppress the inner demon threatening to rise within him.

"...Haa."

Who in the world had conceived of something so wicked?

Was it really true that every member of the Demonic Cult had abandoned all sense of human decency?

Myeonggon knew a thing or two about the Demonic Cult.

He knew what their so-called Demonic Energy was, too.

It was not merely distorted internal energy. It was something unprecedented, descending from something sinister and horrific high above the heavens.

There was no reason to expect someone who had accepted an inhuman entity into themselves to retain their identity as a human being.

Especially if that entity came from somewhere beyond the distant night sky, beyond the unfathomably remote stars...

That made it all the less likely.

There was a reason they were called Demonic Humans and Demonic Beasts.

But to think he would witness it with his own eyes.

And in the bodies of third-generation disciples whose faces he knew, every last one of them.

"...I don't know anymore."

Myeonggon steadied his mind and swung his sword with an empty heart.

They were only in their teens.

Most had not even reached the Apex realm.

Even if they accepted Demonic Energy and released torrents of internal energy several times greater than they normally possessed...

They were still children who had not finished growing.

How could their small, immature dantians withstand such enormous quantities of Demonic Energy being forced into them?

They would simply lose their reason and intelligence, degenerating into something less than human.

Myeonggon had witnessed every moment of it.

Because Flower-Haze Hall had been entrusted to his care.

"...When this is over, perhaps I should enter closed-door training myself."

Another young disciple, blackened by corruption, lost his head to Myeonggon's blade.

Thud. Rumble, rumble.

Their bodies were already losing even the semblance of human form.

Surely he should have felt no guilt about cutting such creatures down...

Their extremities had swollen grotesquely, their eyeballs protruded and rolled across the floor, and their fingernails had twisted into hideous shapes...

Yet every one of those blackened, bloated, distorted figures was still wearing the shredded remains of a Mount Hua martial uniform.

The plum blossoms embroidered on their clothes were so distinct that he could not have ignored them even if he had wanted to.

Every last one of them carried a sword.

Every last one...

A sword forged at Mount Hua, engraved with Mount Hua's plum blossoms.

They stubbornly clutched swords that no longer even fit their swollen, deformed limbs...

And attacked along sword paths Myeonggon knew all too well.

The Flower-Haze Sword.

The sword art that disciples first learned upon entering the sect, hoping one day to master it.

Of course, none of their techniques followed their proper paths or sword trajectories.

Everything had become warped and twisted. Not a single movement retained its original intent or form.

And yet Myeonggon recognized them all.

Every last one.

Not a single form escaped him.

It was the sword art he had learned, that his disciples had learned, and that their disciples had learned in turn.

He had practiced it so many times that he had grown thoroughly sick of the repetition, and even after mastering it himself, he had continued to watch others perform it countless times.

"Even after turning into beasts... you still can't forget the movements ingrained in your bodies? If this was how it would end, why did you ever come here...?"

Just as they were burning Mount Hua...

Mount Hua, too, must have become deeply rooted within them.

Perhaps they themselves had never known.

They might never have realized that remnants of the Demonic Cult lay buried deep within their young, undersized dantians, their true nature and energy concealed so completely that even they were unaware.

Myeonggon tightened his grip on the Plum Blossom Sword.

Who in this world had ever lived a life without a single thing worth pitying?

In the eyes of the children whose bodies were twisting into horrific shapes, whose eyeballs were swelling and bulging from their sockets, tears of blood had gathered.

Myeonggon could not know whether any trace of their consciousness remained in their final moments.

He had no way of knowing whether the children he remembered still existed somewhere deep within those bodies.

But if they did...

If even the smallest fragment of their former selves was still awake and weeping...

Then at the very least, he would not allow them to suffer until the bitter end.

With every flash of his longsword's tip, pale plum blossom petals burst into bloom and scattered.

As he unleashed the forms of the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, one after another, the children fell without even the sound of a blade cutting through flesh.

Blackened, corrupted blood soaked into the birch floorboards, spreading in dark stains.

There was so much of it...

Before long, the entire floor had turned black.

How long had he been swinging his sword?

Myeonggon could feel himself slowly being dragged down into the deepest mire of his own consciousness.

He tried instead to devote every ounce of his concentration to his sword forms.

After all, even though they had become Demonic Beasts, these were third-generation disciples who had scarcely reached First-Rate, let alone Apex.

They were so weak that simply executing his forms properly would be enough to sweep them aside and kill them...

But reality was not kind enough to let him turn away.

No matter how desperately he wanted to close his eyes, he could not.

In the end, he had to strike precisely the right place with precisely the right cut if he wanted to grant them a painless death.

That tiny measure of vulnerability was what allowed a person to remain human...

And at the same time, it was what could break them.

The inner demon he had been struggling to suppress began to raise its head from the depths.

It crept upward from the disintegrating mire of his consciousness.

Each time it stirred, hot blood surged up from deep within his chest.

And just as the self-loathing threatening to destroy him became almost more than he could bear...

"That's enough, Brother Myeonggon!"

BOOM—!

A tremendous explosion rang out, sending plum blossom petals scattering in every direction.

Myeonggon recognized the technique.

There were only a handful of fist practitioners at Mount Hua.

It was Myeonggwang, the Monster Plum Blossom, inheritor of the Falling Blossom Meteor Fist.

"...Myeonggwang?"

"We've already taken care of everything at the main gate. And you... you don't look particularly well, Brother."

"It's because... my training is still lacking."

Myeonggwang swung his thin arms and fists with a strength that seemed impossible for such a slender frame, swiftly disposing of all the creatures still surrounding them.

Despite their swollen and grotesquely distorted bodies, his fists followed uncanny trajectories, striking each creature precisely at a vital point.

They collapsed the instant his fists touched them, falling motionless one after another...

They appeared to have passed just as peacefully as those Myeonggon had dispatched with the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

What followed was a dreadful, oppressive silence.

The stillness was so cold that it was almost frightening.

"...It's quiet."

"Brother. You should stop dwelling on those thoughts."

Fresh blood was already trickling from the corner of Myeonggon's mouth.

Myeonggwang knew what that meant.

Myeonggon might have reached the mature heights of Transcendent Apex, but how could even he hope to suppress every disturbance of the heart?

There were masters who had entered the Transformation Realm only to suffer from their inner demons until they eventually succumbed to deviation.

And these children...

Every one of them had been a disciple of Mount Hua, just like him.

He had cut them down, one by one, with his own sword.

Unlike Myeonggwang, who had concentrated on training a disciple to inherit the Falling Blossom Meteor Fist, Myeonggon had often visited Flower-Haze Hall.

Not as frequently as the disciples of the Eun generation, perhaps.

But he had come to know the names and faces of those gathered there.

They were those very children.

Children he himself had taught from time to time.

"...Yes. That would be better. But my heart won't listen to me."

"You should rest. We've nearly finished dealing with everything..."

"What do you mean, nearly finished?"

The crackling of flames could still be heard outside.

It was the sound of pavilions burning and collapsing in the inferno.

Screams were rising once again.

The brief silence had ended almost as soon as it began.

Myeonggon suppressed his inner demon once more.

Quietly reciting the verses of the Primordial Origin Clear-Heart Method, he drove away the corrosive feelings of self-loathing that had assailed him.

It was time to deal with what remained outside.

"Follow me."

"...Are you truly going to be all right?"

Myeonggon nodded slowly.

The pure, untainted internal energy of the Primordial Origin Clear-Heart Method was gradually circulating through his meridians and blood vessels, calming the turmoil within him.

Most of those rampaging outside would be attendants or servants.

Of course, they, too, were people with whom he might have formed bonds over the years...

But he could not leave them as they were.

More importantly, they were not children.

Most of them had probably known what they were doing from the beginning.

Even if they had sealed away their own memories through sinister evil rites, they were undoubtedly spies of the Demonic Cult.

He had no intention of leaving a single one alive.