Chapter 654

If someone asked whether I could kill three Peak masters with a single move, I would nod without much hesitation.

But subduing three Peak masters in a single move was another matter, especially if they had the mindset of assassins.

In that case, persuasion was a better way to bring them under control than force. To stop them from killing themselves, I had to convince them they would survive—not that they would be tortured and die in agony.

But…

Crunch.

Apparently, my promise hadn’t convinced them. Or perhaps they feared their master even more.

Ssshhh! Thud!

The Finger Qi I fired a half-beat too late struck their acupoints, but the damage was already done.

Their bodies went rigid as their Paralysis Acupoints were struck. Blood sprayed from their seven apertures, and all three began to collapse.

Papap! Grab.

I crossed several zhang¹ in an instant, caught them, and laid them on the ground.

Sticky blood welled from their mouths beneath their masks.

“Grrrk, cough…!”

Damn it. This was bad. No, it was the worst possible outcome.

Severing your own heart meridian was like setting off an explosion inside your body.

If the Eight Extraordinary Meridians—the most important meridians in the human body—as well as the hundreds of acupoints throughout the body were severed and blocked, there was no way to survive.

Especially for a Murim practitioner.

High risk, high return, as they say.

Through qi accumulation, a Murim practitioner gained abilities that surpassed those of ordinary people. But if their heart meridian was severed, they also got a bonus one-plus-one event called qi deviation.

Just like now.

“Cough. Kueeegh!”

Splaash!

Eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Dark-red blood and pale lumps that looked like internal organs poured endlessly from every opening I could see.

Namho and Taishan hurried over, only to stop short at the sight.

“Ugh. Taishan doesn’t want to look. Losing my appetite.”

“W-What is this?”

Namho swallowed hard and asked in a subdued voice, “Can they be saved?”

It was a pointless question. Things had already gone too far.

Before I could answer, the heads of two of the men, whose entire bodies had been twitching and convulsing, fell limply to the side.

Thud.

They were dead. No need to check.

But it was still too early to give up. I grabbed the last masked man’s wrist and poured my internal energy into him with all my strength.

Sssaaaaah.

As the heat of my Scorching Yang Qi flowed through him, I could feel the ruin inside his body.

Not one of his organs was undamaged. Even the qi pathways that should have been broad and sturdy in a Peak master had crumbled like the walls of an abandoned house.

And qi deviation on top of it…

Even Mungyeong, the greatest Divine Physician under Heaven, couldn’t have guaranteed this man would live. I knew he was beyond saving, and I clenched my teeth.

I have to find out. No matter what.

I needed just one name: the person who had ordered today’s attack.

I poured in more internal energy, not to bring the chaos inside him under control—that was impossible now—but to make his last ember flare.

Rumble!

His entire body struggled violently as an even greater flow of internal energy entered him.

Then, like water settling after a violent storm, the masked man at death’s door regained a brief moment of calm and clarity.

A final rally.

This was my last chance. I stared into his newly focused eyes.

“Who was it? Tell me.”

I pulled the mask away from his mouth to hear his answer—and realized that everything I’d just done was pointless.

“Cough. Hhh. Haaah.”

“……!”

“Grrk. Uhh…”

His jaw moved as though he were trying to speak, but no words came out.

No. He couldn’t speak.

I froze. Above me, Namho muttered something that sounded like a groan.

“Vicious bastards. Their tongues…”

He couldn’t finish, and the masked man had almost no time left.

“Grrk.”

A death rattle took the place of his last words. His pupils went vacant, and the shortened tongue that had been moving inside his open mouth fell still.

I stared silently at the man who had finally met his death, then spat out the curse I had been holding back.

“…Fuck.”

I’d known these men were no ordinary attackers. I hadn’t imagined their tongues had been cut.

That was why they hadn’t spoken a word from beginning to end, apart from their screams. Even if they’d wanted to, they couldn’t.

“Hmm. The others are the same. Judging by how the severed ends of their tongues have healed, it looks like this was done a long time ago.”

Namho quickly examined the corpses like the Hidden Shadow Pavilion agent he was, then let out a low groan.

“These men… They’re all Nanman.”

“No Han Chinese?”

“Not one. They’re dressed alike, so I can’t tell which tribes they came from, either.”

The most reliable way to distinguish the Nanman was by their clothing and eating habits. But since every one of them wore black clothes and a mask, it was only natural that they were difficult to identify.

Besides, there was only a subtle difference between the appearances of Han Chinese and Nanman. Trying to identify their tribe at a glance was practically absurd.

“…Damn it.”

As I muttered a curse mixed with a sigh, Namho fixed me with a deeply serious gaze.

“When you tried to persuade them, you named three Great Chieftains as possible culprits. Was it Heugung who sent the missive?”

I stared at him in surprise. That was answer enough.

“I see. So that’s what happened.”

“How did you know, Elder Namho?”

“Baeksang and Yohi were both people who could reasonably be named as culprits. But Heugung was different. Thinking about it, there could only be one reason you would have thought of him in this situation.”

His tone was calm and sharp. “Was it him?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “He was waiting for me at the place in the missive.”

“He chose to hide in the forest instead of behind a rock. But even in a crowd, a man of Heugung’s size would stand out. Did he come in person?”

“He had learned the Bone-Shrinking Technique. At first, I didn’t even suspect that he was Heugung.”

“Hah. The Bone-Shrinking Technique. He had more secrets than he let on. Fooled us all. Then again, if he were the man everyone thought he was, he’d never have sent you that missive.”

Namho seemed to be speaking to himself. Then his expression grew heavy.

“Go on.”

My account of Heugung was brief, but Namho listened to every word without interrupting. By the time I finished, the furrows between his brows had deepened.

“What a goddamn mess.”

I agreed. An attack had taken place, and we were no closer to identifying who had ordered it.

Baeksang, Yohi, Heugung. I couldn’t rule out any of them. And behind today’s attack lay another name: Dark Heaven.

I can tell just from the fact that they severed their heart meridians instead of taking a poison pill.

A deadly poison would have been easy to find in Nanman. You could go on a picnic in the grass outside the Outer Palace and find venomous beasts crawling everywhere.

But the masked men had chosen to sever their own heart meridians. Compared with a quick death by poison pill, it meant suffering several times more pain.

I had no choice but to assume that they already knew about it.

The Myriad-Poison Ring. Dark Heaven must already know that I have it.

Dark Heaven had sent the Blood Lord to cause the Shaolin Bloodshed. In Sichuan, it had sent the Western Heaven Demon Lord to seize the divine artifacts of the Emei Sect and the Sichuan Tang Clan.

For those artifacts, it had committed Supreme Peak masters who could match the Ten Kings—perhaps even the Three Saints—along with elite troops.

But even immediately after the Sichuan Blood Tragedy ended, nothing happened to the Sichuan Tang Clan.

The Sichuan Tang Clan had staggered after suffering more severe damage than any other sect in Sichuan during its battle with the Western Heaven Demon Lord. But the follow-up attack from Dark Heaven that everyone had feared never came.

I suspected the Myriad-Poison Ring was the reason.

So they made sure these men severed their heart meridians instead of taking poison. They didn’t want to leave even the slightest chance.

A drop of cold sweat ran down my spine.

My enemies were watching my every move, while I could not even identify the person hiding in the darkness.

The mere fact that an attack like this had taken place in the Inner Palace of the Nanman Beast Palace—the heart of Nanman—was threatening enough.

“When did the attack start?”

“I don’t know exactly. I woke up in the middle of it, but… It seems to have started less than half a shichen² after you left. I went to check because I wondered what was happening, and everything outside was in chaos. That bastard Sama Pyo was fighting while covered in blood.”

He pointed to Sama Pyo, lying on the ground, and looked at me with concern.

“But is he all right? He seems to have lost a lot of blood fighting them.”

“I’ve stopped the bleeding. He should be fine. I didn’t find any wounds that looked immediately dangerous, and most of the blood on him seems to be theirs.”

Taishan returned from dragging the corpses into a pile and blinked his enormous eyes.

“Pavilion Master, true? Taishan’s Lord okay?”

“Yeah. He collapsed because he used too much strength.”

Tears filmed Taishan’s eyes.

“Sniff. Taishan was worried. If Lord died, Taishan wouldn’t eat meat for three years. Sniff.”

“……”

“……”

I’d heard of mourning for three years. Giving up meat for three years was new to me. Wouldn’t that make him the strongest vegan in Murim?

I swallowed the words and patted his Ural-Mountains-sized shoulder.

“Yeah. You worked hard too.”

“Sniff. Taishan used lots of strength. Taishan hungry.”

“…Yeah. Okay.”

Should I just punch him?

But as I was deep in thought, countless footsteps began approaching from far away, accompanied by torchlight.

And with them came the familiar roar of a beast.

—Rooar!

Ssshhh! Pap!

A silver figure, unmistakable against the darkness, reached the clearing first.

Yayul Mok sat astride the White Tiger, his face as stiff as a wooden doll.

“…I’m late.”

I answered evenly. “Yeah. Late enough that it’s hard to believe this happened inside the Inner Palace.”

A collapsed pavilion. Pools of blood scattered across the ground. A heap of corpses.

Yayul Mok bit his lip.

“The warriors on patrol were dead. We didn’t find out until half a gak³ ago. And…”

What he said next made me wonder if I’d heard him right.

“Heugung and Yohi. Both Great Chieftains have disappeared.”

…What?