Chapter 35. A Second-Rate Warrior Searching for a Legend (7)
The destination was the unidentified area at the end of the map.
The one who had roamed the cave said he had seen Mita Sacred Water beyond that unidentified area and returned.
The cave confused people even more because it took the form of rooms of all different sizes connected to one another.
There were especially many cases where people fought in a room, retreated, then wandered through the rooms incorrectly, only to encounter the enemy from moments earlier again and be killed.
“A fight has broken out ahead. We will take a detour.”
I avoided battles as much as possible and went round and round toward the destination.
“……You heard that already?”
Seong Mo-ran, who had somehow drawn close beside me, listened for a moment and spoke with a surprised expression.
“How deep are your inner arts, exactly?”
The ability of the five senses was influenced by inner arts, so expanded senses were also proof of vast inner arts.
But I could not tell her everything, so I gave her a vague answer.
“It is probably because my inner arts are pure. The Taeul Heart Method is famous for its purity, is it not? What you gave me last time helped as well.”
“Ah…….”
She nodded while saying, ‘That is a relief,’ and followed me without any further comment.
As I moved forward while examining the entire cave, I was able to roughly grasp the pattern of the fighting.
But at the same time, I could not easily understand why five thousand people had died here.
Sporadic battles kept breaking out, but they were not desperate enough for people to kill the wounded to silence them. Since these people knew their own losses would not be small if the fighting escalated, they often stopped at a suitable contest of nerves.
“……This is not good.”
As I was thinking about this and that, I stopped at a forked path.
At my troubled look, the warriors all began tightening their grips on their swords.
“What is wrong?”
“One side has a fierce battle under way, and on the other side, a group of people are waiting.”
“And?”
“The side with the waiting group has a rather thick scent of blood.”
“……!”
“What shall we do?”
“We did not come here only to keep avoiding people.”
When Namgung Seon-hwa drew her sword, the Namgung Clan warriors emitted a rough presence.
This was exactly why bringing them along had been a good choice.
“I will take the lead.”
The Iron Sword Sect, including Seong Mo-ran, took the rear, and the Namgung Clan stepped forward.
“We have to go left, correct?”
“Yes.”
When we entered the chamber, three men in splendid clothes and more than ten men in red martial arts uniforms were standing in the middle of a mountain of corpses and sea of blood.
‘Nine-Finger Divine Beggar Ma Go-san, Golden-Horned Bronze Man Sa Mu-in, Paradise Child Seo Hyeon-jae.’
Among the Black Path members I had seen on Yueyang’s streets, the masters I needed to be especially wary of were planted squarely in the cave.
“My, my. The young lady of the Namgung Clan has come all the way to such a rough place.”
Paradise Child Seo Hyeon-jae, known as the Yin Demon, licked his lips as he spoke.
“Did you not enter to search for Mita Sacred Water? Even if you are from the Black Path, is it acceptable to commit such meaningless slaughter?”
“In truth, we did not wish to spend time in such a place either. We simply have unavoidable circumstances.”
“And what would those be?”
“The map disappeared during battle.”
“……That is not what happened, is it?”
It was obvious that they had lost it or damaged it while fighting someone.
“In any case, we need a map to find Mita Sacred Water. At this rate, we may be so disappointed at failing to obtain Mita Sacred Water that…… we may continue killing people.”
Seo Hyeon-jae’s eyes flashed wide, and he smacked his lips.
“The Namgung Clan must seem quite laughable to you.”
All three of them belonged to the Blood Serpent Gang, a massive Black Path force based in Guiyang, Guizhou Province.
Even so, they should not have been able to face the Namgung Clan, one of the central pillars of the Murim Alliance. I was rather curious what sort of confidence let them act like this.
“Of course not. On top of that, we lost quite a number of people in the river channel, so we are in this shabby state. That is why we prepared something else.”
The bastard pulled a sphere the size of two human fists from inside his robes.
Someone among the warriors groaned out the object’s identity.
“A Thunderbolt Bomb……!”
“!”
“!”
Namgung Seon-hwa’s and Seong Mo-ran’s eyes also widened, unable to hide their shock.
The Thunderbolt Bomb was Military property, so it was not something easily obtained even on the Black Market.
Moreover, it was an object that absolutely should not fall into the hands of Black Path members.
“If you use that, you will not be safe either.”
“If we cannot obtain Mita Sacred Water and leave, it would be better for us to die here.”
“Even so, did you think the Namgung Clan would yield to threats?”
I tilted my head as I looked at the Thunderbolt Bomb.
When the Thunderbolt Bomb first appeared, I was quite surprised, and I wondered whether it was the object responsible for the deaths of five thousand people. But once I sharpened my eyesight and checked its size, I could not help finding it strange.
The destructive power of a Thunderbolt Bomb was indeed tremendous, but with a size like that, it could not collapse the entire cave.
At the very end of the Great Righteous-Demonic War, Sojeong Squad had truly been driven into an all-or-nothing situation and had even raided Military warehouses to deal with those bastards using Thunderbolt Bombs. That was why I knew for certain.
Furthermore, the stone of Demon Spirit Plateau’s cave was fairly hard, so it did not seem likely that the collapse of one place would lead to another.
“Prepare the sword formation.”
At Namgung Seon-hwa’s cold words, Seo Hyeon-jae pulled a fire taper from inside his robes and lit it.
And then I cut in.
“Did you truly come this far by reading the map?”
Seo Hyeon-jae glared at me with a frown.
“Who the hell are you?”
Just as expected of an ill-bred Black Path bastard, he observed courtesy only when the person suited him.
“I am with this party. The one managing the map.”
“Why are you curious about that?”
“Because if you came by reading the map, you would know the destination is not far from here.”
“……Hmm, is that so? Because the bastard burned the map as he died, we could not confirm it.”
“Did you perhaps lose the map while betraying someone? And because of that, you lost the path you saw on the map?”
“……!”
The bastards exchanged glances without a word.
“It appears I am right.”
“Shut up. If you do not want to die here as well, you had better hand over the map in your robes.”
“Very well.”
Startled gazes flew from Seong Mo-ran and Namgung Seon-hwa’s group.
I ignored those gazes, pulled a map from inside my robes, and threw it to them.
“This is a map marked to the destination. Do not ask where this place is.”
“Hmph! We also know roughly where each place is.”
After saying that, Seo Hyeon-jae licked his lips with a regretful expression and put the Thunderbolt Bomb back inside his robes.
“A pity, my lady. Even so, I would prefer that you not follow too closely behind us. One never knows when the Thunderbolt Bomb might explode.”
Seo Hyeon-jae and his group slowly took a guarded posture and entered the leftmost of the three forks.
“Young Master Jin, what in the world are you trying to do?!”
Namgung Seon-hwa approached me with her face gone ashen.
“Ah, do not worry. They will not be approaching Mita Sacred Water anyway.”
“What does that mean?”
“The map they took is a fake map.”
“Pardon?”
“A fight over maps was bound to break out inside the cave, was it not? Of course, I did not know there would be a madman who even brought a Thunderbolt Bomb to a place like this, but in any case, I deliberately prepared a few extra maps for that.”
I spoke while showing them several scrolls from my baggage, and Namgung Seon-hwa, Seong Mo-ran, and Yu Ji-ryang looked at the scrolls hidden inside their robes with eyes that could not trust what they were seeing.
“Ah, those ones are real. You do not have to worry.”
“By the way, is it true that we are near the destination?”
“It is.”
“Then let us hurry.”
When we began moving again, Namgung Seon-hwa, rather than Seong Mo-ran, drew close beside me this time.
“Young Master Jin, may I ask you a favor?”
“A favor……?”
“Yes. After hearing it, you may refuse if you do not wish to.”
“I will hear it first.”
“If by chance Young Master Jin obtains Mita Sacred Water, could you sell me the rest, excluding Young Master Jin’s share?”
“If we are moving together, would your chances not be higher, my lady? Why say such a thing?”
“For some reason, I feel that Young Master Jin will obtain Mita Sacred Water.”
I had separately prepared a water flask that could hold Mita Sacred Water, but I knew how the matter of this Mita Sacred Water had ended in my previous life.
In this incident that produced five thousand victims, Mita Sacred Water never showed itself in the end.
“Why do you think so?”
Namgung Seon-hwa pointed at my water flask.
“Because Mita Sacred Water has an Extreme Yin nature, one must never hold it directly with the human body. Because it freezes everything around it, it also cannot be carelessly placed in just anything. Yet on the way here, I have not seen even ten people who prepared this sort of water flask.”
It seemed that she had kept glancing at me all along because she had been guessing the purpose of this water flask.
“I refuse.”
“Pardon? Why?”
“I intend to give it to a suitable child among the children of my sect.”
“Ah……. Has something happened?”
“I intend to take the Murim Academy Regular Exam.”
“From Taeul Sect?!”
“…….”
Only after Namgung Seon-hwa let out that exclamation did she realize that she had made a mistake.
Asking whether Taeul Sect would take the exam was no different from looking down on the other party.
“Ah…… I-I am sorry.”
“I understand.”
After saying that, I began walking a couple of steps ahead.
Her reaction was not at all new, but being used to something did not mean it did not bother me.
After we passed through several caves like that, a group with a tremendous presence was approaching from one path.
I stopped the party for a moment and went forward alone.
Since we could reach the destination once we passed this place, I intended to gauge the other party and let them pass first.
SWISH—! THUD—!
At that moment, a Finger Wind shot past right beside my face, and several shattered stones from the ceiling fell to the floor.
At the same time, Yong So-ah and the Daoist priests of Wudang Sect approached in orderly ranks.
Not a single drop of blood stained Yong So-ah’s body, and the Daoist priests’ robes showed no sign of any major fight.
However, the parties of Ha Min-jung, Ak Mu-heun, and Yang In-su who had followed them had been reduced by half, and they did not look particularly well either.
“So you had some petty tricks and survived on your own?”
Yong So-ah swept his gaze over me and said that, and behind him, Ha Min-jung’s group chuckled as if my misfortune delighted them.
I ignored Yong So-ah and shouted toward the back.
“Come out. They do not seem to be enemies.”
When Namgung Seon-hwa, Seong Mo-ran, and their party began coming out one by one from the cave behind me, a faint crack appeared in Yong So-ah’s expression, and Ha Min-jung’s group twisted their faces as if they had chewed shit.
“It was fortunate after all that we did not follow you.”
“…….”
At my words, Yong So-ah shot me a chilly gaze.
“……I will watch until the end.”
Ha Min-jung and his party looked at the Namgung Clan’s group like cattle being dragged to a slaughterhouse, then followed Yong So-ah.
When we finally reached the destination, an enormous cavern unlike any we had seen so far appeared.
A cavern large enough to hold hundreds of people had, on the contrary, not a single person in sight.
That was not the only strange thing.
Unlike the other cave rooms, which were circular, this enormous cavern sat as if one side had been sliced cleanly away. In the sliced-away portion, a dark shadow sat squarely in place of a wall.
“It seems everyone went in here.”
Yu Ji-ryang lightly put his hand into the black shadow.
Then his hand was completely hidden by the shadow and could no longer be seen.
“Fortunately, the formation set up here does not look very dangerous. It also seems somewhat like a Natural Formation…….”
“Is there something strange about it?”
“Not that. The energy forming it is quite powerful. Even for a formation maintained for three or four hundred years, it is too powerful.”
“Could that become a problem?”
“I am accounting for the possibility. Since it has the form of a Natural Formation, it should break quickly under any fairly powerful impact.”
As if he had been listening to Yu Ji-ryang’s explanation as well, Yong So-ah immediately moved his feet.
Namgung Seon-hwa was alarmed and tried to stop him.
“Great Hero Yong So-ah! How about entering after waiting just a little longer, once the analysis is finished?”
“It is a formation even an herb gatherer escaped from. There is no reason a martial artist cannot pass through it.”
With those words, Yong So-ah and the Daoist priests of Wudang Sect vanished into it, and Ha Min-jung’s group also entered the formation one by one after them.
“As Great Hero Hyeoncheong said, there may be no major problem. This is all merely preparation for the worst case.”
But then a voice echoed so loudly that it shook the cave.
“Namgung Clan! That name is wasted on you. How dare you pull such petty trickery!”
It was the voice of Seo Hyeon-jae, whom we had met just moments earlier.
“Deploy the Firmament Sword Formation!”
At Namgung Seon-hwa’s shout, the warriors began moving all at once.
Within their ranks, the three spell practitioners of Maoshan Sect swiftly thrust their hands into the shadow and studied the formation, then busied themselves with calculations as they wrote diagrams and numbers on the floor.
“You bastard who handed over the map! I will pluck out your eyeballs and eat them!”
The voice began to sound closer and closer.
Then Yu Ji-ryang sprang to his feet and spoke.
“The calculations are finished. We may enter.”
“Move quickly!”
This time, Yu Ji-ryang stood at the very front, followed by me, then Seong Mo-ran and Namgung Seon-hwa in that order as we began entering.
It was a place filled only with pitch-black darkness where one could not see an inch ahead, but after walking left and right for quite a while, Yu Ji-ryang eventually found an exit from which faint light was emerging.
The instant we crossed the exit.
A sword blade suddenly rushed in, so I quickly kicked the back of Yu Ji-ryang’s knee and knocked him down while drawing my sword at the same time.
CLANG—!
The instant our swords met, I realized the opponent did not have much inner arts, and at the same time, I drew up eighty percent of my power and cut through the bastard’s neck.
SPURT—!
“GURK!”
The Black Path member collapsed, spraying a fountain of blood.
What appeared beyond the formation was the sight of people fighting while spraying fountains of blood inside a huge cavern the same size as the one we had just passed through.
“Maintain the sword formation!”
“Iron Sword Unit! Deploy the Ninefold Sword Formation! Eliminate the blind spots.”
We stood to one side and watched the state of the battle.
There was something strange about the members of the two sides fighting fiercely against each other.
Especially the people standing opposite those who had entered with us were all gaunt, and their clothes were filthy, as if they had not changed them for days.
“Lady Namgung!”
At that moment, Yu Ji-ryang called out to Namgung Seon-hwa, excited for the first time.
“This is serious!”
“What happened?”
Namgung Seon-hwa, who was watching the state of the battle, answered without turning her gaze.
“It seems we are trapped.”
“Pardon?”
“The formation inside and the formation outside are different.”
“I do not understand what you mean. Please explain simply.”
“The Natural Formation outside seems to be an accidental byproduct created when the original formation collapsed.”
“!!!”
