Chapter 66

Bu Ping and his many warriors had escaped, and it didn’t seem to matter what they did.
As if they could sneak away at any moment.
“The Southern Palace.”
How could I have known.
Just as I was thinking that, the one in front of me twisted the corners of his mouth.
“I’ve never forgotten it, not since that day. It’s a very familiar aura. It’s the Southern Palace. It’s the Southern Palace…….”
Taoists. The Taoists, the ones he’d heard about, the crazy ones.
It was Yeogon, and his priest, Sang-tak. himself.
The first time I saw the mad taoist, I drew my energy from the dais as if in a seizure. They stared at me and my uncle with strange eyes. Their eyes were strange, not at all Taoist, and their arms, as Han Tae-moon had said, had turned to mush, not human.
“It’s a coincidence that there are men from the Southern Palace before me.”
The tone of his voice was far from that of a Taoist, and the aura that emanated from him was not that of a Taoist called the Qing Sheng Sect. I clicked my tongue at the sight of it. It had to be dropped, or else the two blackened arms would not be able to see me. Otherwise, I felt as if those two gnarled arms would crush my heart at any moment.
“So is Huang Bose, and so are you. Your reputation as a loyal sect has truly become a sham.”
That was what Huang Bo Gyum of the Walled City said.
“There is no point in discussing white and black.
Only the strong and the mighty are the logic of the mighty.
I’m still not convinced, and even the Taoists in front of me seem to agree.
Moreover, these men.
These are the men who tried to harm my master, Nan Gong Yue.
That was at a time when he was well known as a swordsman and as an ally of the Southern Palace.
So I opened my mouth and spoke.
“Do you mean to say that the one who struck him in the back instead of the front won fair and square?”
“Hoh. Do you know him?”
“Aldamada. My master.”
At that, the first crack appeared in the otherwise relaxed expression of one of the crazed Taoists, who was clearly the one who had stabbed my master in the back. It was a crack drawn like a chip on porcelain, but he shrugged it off and opened his mouth.
“I see, I see, you’re his apprentice.”
The boredom in his eyes grew intense.
“The more screams that come out of your mouth, the more tormented he will be. Nay, the more he will come to the North Sea in search of me. And you ask me if I won fair and square, child, I’ll tell you. It is not the strong that wins, but the one who wins that is strong.”
The giggling creature’s expression suggests that the world of competition is cold.
His eyes were like the eyes of ten thousand orbs, and his tongue was like the mouth of a serpent.
I could only ask myself.
“So did you win?”
At my words, the creature called Yogon frowned. I twisted the corners of my mouth, and without warning, shadows intertwined in the air, and we clashed.
Myself, my uncle, and the two Taoists became entangled. The one in front of me was not the one called Yeogon. In the moment of the charge, they had apparently decided to split up and fight separately.
Kagagagak.
A pair of pale arms clashed with my sword without delay. The tip of my sword formed a flowing blue aura, and I thrust it straight down at the Master Sangtak.
Kugkugkugk.
It was a creepy sound. They must have been two arms made of flesh, but they didn’t even flinch at the point of my sword. No wonder they were willing to crawl across the North Sea to get something.
They crossed their arms to receive my sword, and in the blink of an eye, they snapped their fingers deformedly, sending a blast of energy through my heart. I frowned as I caught a whiff of the foul odor emanating from the humming energy that enveloped both arms.
“……stink.”
“It’s an ecstatic scent.”
“Since you find the stench ecstatic, the latrine must be perfect for you.”
At the same time, an extreme negative energy froze the air in the room. I couldn’t even get a decent shot off against the poisonous scent and chill that made breathing uncomfortable with each flick of my arm. Gritting my teeth, I had to activate the Thunderbolt for the first time against a Yin Qi, and at the same time, I had to counter the incoming poisonous energy with the Thunderbolt Emperor’s Thunderbolt. The specialty of the martial artist in front of me was stronger than the level of the noble martial artist, and I couldn’t approach him.
Digging in!
“What a strange aura, a thunderbolt.”
“What do you know of running away from the Zhongyuan and hiding in the North Sea?”
At my words, the face of the so-called priest of the gods twisted like a sheet of paper. It was not pleasant to hear a man so much older than himself ranting at him, but what could he do?
This is me.
“I will rupture your heart with my strongest heart, and I will quench your thirst with its heated blood.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoo-hoo-hoo.”
I gasped at the words, but grinned at his reaction. But it wasn’t all good news.
“Don’t push yourself, kid.”
We’ve already gone back and forth dozens of times, sword to sword. Never directly, but with sword technique and sword wind. As I got closer, his breathing became ragged and his eyes began to spin. I had never experienced this before.
At the same time, the power of the short circuit began to rampage, some of it already out of my control.
Damn.
I shouldn’t be criticized for being a magus.
“The more you misbehave, the more the poison in your heart will eat away at you. Don’t be evil. You are dying. Just helpless.”
This was the first time I had ever encountered a martial artist like this. Even though I was an expert in poison, I had never been forced to breathe in the poisonous fumes of battle in my entire life, both in my previous life and in this one. Seeing him feverishly stretching out his heart, I continued to drop thunderbolts.
At the same time, I opened my senses and watched the confrontation unfold next to me.
* * *
Kaang! Ka-ka-ka-kang!
An Baek was also fighting the sword master named Ye Gong at a distance, spraying sword wind and sword qi. His hands were incomparably smaller than the one in front of him, and he wondered if they could be considered human arms. Even at a glance, the aura around them seemed extremely dangerous.
I wonder.
I could see why Elder Nan Gongyue had struggled against the Supreme Heart Magus.
As he approached.
The closer he got.
Countless poisonous smoke wafted out of thin air, permeating the air beyond recognition.
The air hid my form as it had always done, but An Baek could feel it.
The intangible poisonous smoke that was coming to invade, swallowing up this space like a swamp.
“Haat!”
And every time he struck out with both arms while simultaneously slashing five fingers into the air.
Huhhhhh!
With a sound that tore through the air, five black-red waves of energy rushed towards An Baek. It was a poisonous, sinister, and terrifying aura that could only be called demonic. An Baek’s expression hardened at the sight of it, and his sword slashed through the air one after another.
Clang!
The cages around him were cut down one after another, unable to withstand the aftermath and flung into thin air. The elderly man, who had managed to cut through the rippling waves, floated in midair and slashed sideways with his sword.
The first move of the Immortal Sword Technique, the I Am Nothing.
As if he wasn’t called the Iron Blood Sword King for nothing, the energy that had been sucked in in an instant was released through the tip of the sword, and the energy was directed not at Ye Gong but at the ceiling.
The ice jade was a separate space from where Han Tae-moon was imprisoned. The sword energy that had been traveling toward the stalactites, or rather, the ice crystals, that were clustered together in that space was cut off in an instant and poured down to where Ye Gon was.
“Hmph, you’re a remnant!”
He lightly brushed it off as if he were brushing something off his sleeve.
The Death Sword Technique, Jay Shik, Sack Moon.
The power of the crescent moon swept in front of Ye Gong’s eyes like a roadblock. At the sight of it, Ye Gong’s eyes widened and he instantly stepped back.
Quadruple quadruple!
“……kaaaaah!”
A gruesome sound could be heard, followed by a scream. It was the scream of someone who had been helplessly cut down by the power of the Xue Yue.
An Baek felt fortunate. Even he himself was unfamiliar with this monologue. How could such a vicious poisonous energy be contained within the martial art of the White Sword? Even against someone from the Tang Clan, it was not this bad.
But still, it’s a good thing.
“It’s a mess.”
If only he hadn’t said
Pow!
With a thud, a tattered corpse fell to the ground, and a shadow moved to target the other half of the southern army, and that shadow shouted.
“……Fuck you!”
It was Yogon. Chi shuddered. The power of the crescent moon had pulled the one he’d called his priest back.
How.
A priest who had followed him, trusted him, believed in him.
How could he send him out on a limb just because he was in danger?
Beyond party affiliation, beyond the White Way.
Beyond the position of Taoist.
This was a demon in human form.
And as Shade felt the crushing hand touch the right side of his heart in the southern half of his body, he burst the sleep that remained in his entire body.
* * *
Cozy.
It was obviously reading his qi, opening and closing it. At the same time, the confrontation with the Taoist named Sang-tak was not so bad.
But that was my illusion.
To cultivate, literally, to build up one’s inner qigong, is to breathe.
I became uncomfortable breathing. Nevertheless, I thought I was adjusting well to the poisonous qi, and I was fighting Sangtak.
Inhaling and breathing in the damp air prevented me from breathing not only through my nose and mouth, but through the pores of my entire body.
My movements became sluggish, my mind dulled, and I felt an overwhelming sense of weakness and lethargy due to the poisonous energy that interfered with my disconnection.
Then it happened.
At that moment, the body of the dueling Sangtak was torn apart by the power of the crescent moon, and he pounced on me.
The vicious magical ball, the one called the Supreme Heart, touched my heart.
Damn it.
My body shot up out of thin air. I was thrown backward, spraying blood from my nose and mouth at the same time.
Kudang-tang-tang-tang!
In his blurred vision, he saw the figure of the old man following him, and he used his momentum to hurry out of the ice cave, while the old man shouted at me in disbelief.
“……Mara!”
I said. Me Wenchang.
“……Don’t lose it!”
With my vision turning white as fog, I can barely hear her words.
“Don’t lose your mind!”
And then the moment.
Heartbeat, heartbeat.
A familiar aura began to stir in my body.
It was the aura of the Thunder Clan, the aura that my master had given up his life to pass on to me, the aura of the Thunder King Divine Duke.
The Thunderclan’s energy scattered throughout my veins.
It slowly began to rise in the face of my master’s danger.