Chapter 168 – Let’s Talk After Surviving (2)
I faced off against the elder and his lackeys, ignoring the astonished gaze of Hwangbo Hyosun.
“You’ll hide until the bitter end, just to come out and rush me needlessly.”
“As an old man who will soon die, how about not bothering young people with your orders…!”
As I spoke, I secretly raised my power and bounced off the Hyeon-eum-ji, but the elder mockingly dissipated my strength and immediately attacked me.
“Forgive me for not being able to match your wit!”
“Because there’s no bastard to bury in the coffin who can’t hang out with young people!”
Oh, the effect of the vulgar language is good.
The elder’s eyes widened as a thick magi burst out of him and made my skin tingle.
“Tear him apart!”
“Like your bastard?”
I felt an enormous amount of energy concentrated in his palm, which seemed to be aimed at killing me in one shot.
Although not as strong as Gang-gi, the technique of concentrating energy was almost as effective.
It was clear that if I collided head-on, I would definitely break, so I tried to keep my distance, but the room was too narrow.
“Fucking hell.”
Shweeek!
The sound of the air splitting was chilling, and I focused on evasion as much as possible.
Even one effective hit would be fatal. I had to use my divine power as much as possible to avoid it.
Jang-yeong, who was covered in a thick green magi, drew sixteen lines in the air, most of which aimed at my head or chest.
“He really wants to kill me.”
It was fortunate that I was able to draw aggro, but it was still not enough to distinguish between real and fake in the scattered magi.
I piled up my divine power like gloves, and faced Jang-yeong in the same way.
Of course, there was no way to avoid it, but I had to find a way to distinguish between real and fake… Damn it!
“Ugh!”
As I tried to erase the fake magi, I felt a sharp pain in my side from the real magi aimed at my chest.
Tadadak!
I had to step back several steps from the pseudo-Gang-gi that grazed my side.
I managed to protect my chest by moving my hands, but I didn’t think I could endure it more than a few times with my hands feeling stiff.
“Gusiji-hwamun, the door that brings disaster to those who enter, is really like that.”
The elder chattered on. He wanted to keep talking, but unfortunately, he wasn’t that stupid. He raised his hand, which was now stained with green again.
“You insulted my daughter, pay with your life!”
I didn’t even know if the dead person was a daughter or a son. Without any time to investigate, I fought against the elder and his lackeys with all my might.
Even as the magi that had seeped in through my side writhed and twisted like a snake, I focused all my power on avoiding the damn fake Gang-gi.
“Yeong-ho-gyeong…”
He still couldn’t get up. Even as he groaned in pain while trying to fend off the intense magi, he couldn’t move an inch.
There was no way out, as the opponent occupied all the space. Above all, if they could surround me from all sides, Hwangbo Hyosun would be finished in no time.
“I could even kill Yeong-ho-gyeong.”
Completely blocked from the option of running away, I had to do my best to survive.
The technique was intricate, but the ultimate destination was mainly my head or chest, which was fortunate.
Although it occasionally aimed for my thigh, shoulder, or side, thanks to the fact that it aimed for places where I could be killed in one blow, I managed to hold on somehow.
“This bastard…!”
I laughed.
Even as the fake Gang-gi that hit me made my head spin, and the magi that was swept away by my inner power continued to gnaw at my body, I could still clearly hear the elder’s annoying voice.
“What a damn bastard.”
A dirty relationship that started with him looking down on me from the beginning.
Just hearing that loser’s voice gave me a burst of energy, despite my exhausted body.
I didn’t know.
The fact that my martial arts had slowly started to break through the wall that had never been broken before.
The elder felt his breath becoming short.
This technique was not meant to be sustained for a long time.
He had chosen this technique, which forcibly summoned a large amount of internal energy, to quickly kill Gang-yoon, who had insulted his daughter, rather than achieving enlightenment.
“Is this guy… a monster?”
Breath is equivalent to internal energy. As his breath became short, his internal energy did not follow, and the power of the forced technique he had summoned began to rapidly diminish.
This made it increasingly difficult to kill this man.
There was no time. After killing this man, I had to kill Hwangbo Hyosun and make it look like she killed the head of the So-gyoju…!
“There’s no time… right?”
Even with a face that had become numb and lifeless, Gang-yoon grinned and raised a pill.
“That son of a bitch bit the master’s daughter… we have to quickly deceive them by saying that the neighbor’s dog did it before the master comes…!”
“Shut up!”
After spitting out a curse, I scattered the gathered energy and rushed forward with agile movements, forcing the novice to retreat in an instant.
Although the novice’s internal energy, which was evident in his fingertips, was cutting off my veins quite sharply, this much was nothing to me…!
“Wait a minute…”
Cutting off veins?
The elder took advantage of the moment when Gang-yoon’s posture was disrupted by the scattered energy and grabbed the short sword he had pulled out from his back waist in reverse grip and swung it down.
But seeing that the opponent was skillfully stepping on the Bodhisattva’s path to avoid fatal injuries, the elder groaned inwardly.
“I have to kill him!”
He was a supreme master.
The novice in front of him had reached the pinnacle of martial arts right before his eyes.
The term “supreme master” referred to someone who had established their own world of martial arts.
It was a term that referred not only to those who learned martial arts as they were, but also to those who began to reinterpret it in their own way.
“How, how…!”
The novice, who only knew how to wield deep internal energy recklessly, had grown so much in just half a year?
“Eek…!”
The elder raised his internal energy again. His breathing was uneven and much weaker than before, but his internal energy was still gathered at the tips of his fingers, forming a strong force.
He had already survived once in the Poisonous Twin Sect. But this time, he must catch him no matter what.
With his index and middle fingers stretched straight out, just like the name of the Poisonous Twin Sect, he narrowed the distance towards the novice like two fangs.
The Poisonous Twin Sect was a martial art that could pierce into various directions, turn the opponent’s consciousness, and pierce their weaknesses to kill them.
“He’s probably not letting his guard down like before.”
Was it to face him, or was it to imitate the elder, there was a corner of the novice’s movement that seemed to resemble the elder.
Like a snake, his fingertips moved sharply and agilely, changing positions slightly to block all directions in order to deflect attacks.
Except for the back.
When the lump of internal energy connected to the Jin-gi, which was followed by the Hwa-gi, silently and roundly turned to aim at the back of Gang-yoon’s head, it was already too late to avoid it.
“Die!”
The lump of internal energy was believed to pierce through Gang-yoon’s head, but the elder could only doubt his own eyes.
Swoosh!
One of the novice’s feet moved as if it were a separate creature from the novice, hitting vertically and breaking the Jin-gi that was connecting the Hwa-gi and the Gang-gi, and then throwing away the Gang-gi.
With sharp energy emanating from his movements, the elder stood still for a moment, his attention diverted.
“Sire!”
The cries of his subordinates made the elder realize too late that a signal had been received from outside.
“They must leave!”
The signal meant that the First Elder or the disciples of the sect leader had departed. If they hadn’t finished their work by then, they had to flee.
The young man, Gang-yoon, was pointing his messed-up hand at himself.
It was too late. He was feeling the bone-chilling realization that he wouldn’t be able to kill him in time.
He had made a mistake, driven by emotion.
“What’s the name of that technique?”
“…The Dragon Claw of the Ascending Dragon Technique.”
“Ha…”
The sharp energy that spewed out in three directions was indeed worthy of being called a dragon’s claw.
“…It was a dragon, not a snake.”
“Isn’t that something that everyone in the Gangho region knows? Were you the only one who didn’t know?”
He couldn’t even muster up the energy to be angry or disappointed at his own foolishness.
He had believed that if he killed those two, he would surely be able to kill the disciples of the sect.
He had thought he was being deceived by a strange illusion, but it turned out that the illusion was a dragon.
“Retreat. Let’s meet again… alive.”
But this wasn’t the end. If he didn’t have any other ties besides the sect, he wouldn’t have done such a reckless thing.
He would start again. In a new nest, anew.
At least in that nest, he would be able to fly faster than in this sect.
“And you… I will definitely kill you too.”
The elder left those words behind and disappeared.
He wanted to say that he would kill him, but in reality, just standing there was too difficult for him.
If he fought again in that state, he might not be able to endure even a few seconds and might really die.
“Yeohyeop, are you okay…?”
While I was fighting with the elder, Hwangbo Hyoseon was also struggling with four masters.
There were visible cuts and bruises all over her body, but it seemed like she hadn’t suffered any fatal injuries.
I was more worried about Yeongho Gyeong, who was collapsed next to the table, than Hwangbo Hyoseon, who was sitting on the ground with her sword dropped.
He was lying on the ground, groaning in pain, but he was still alive. His face was twisted in agony, and he was sweating profusely, indicating that his condition was still the same or worse.
But I had nothing left to do now.
“Sect Leader!”
From afar, an old man with an immense presence, the First Elder, appeared, and I pointed my finger at Yeongho Gyeong’s location. The First Elder urged his subordinates and brought a doctor with him.
Meanwhile, as I was taking a moment to catch my breath, one of the subordinates of the Elder appeared with a doctor and gave a diagnosis.
“Excessive consumption of the Holy Blood Pill…?”
“That’s right. The Holy Blood Pill is supposed to be taken only once…”
“I know that much too! Damn it, then there must be a way to fix this. Hurry up and make him throw up!”
The Elder, who acted quite comically like an old man despite coming to kill me, urged the doctor in a tone that sounded like a beggar. But when I heard the doctor’s response, I felt like I was going crazy.
“There is an antidote, but the Elder took all the stock recently, saying he needed it for something. We were planning to make a new batch by gradually collecting the ingredients since we don’t usually need it anyway…”
When the doctor revealed that the Elder was behind this, the subordinate waved his hands in contemplation.
“I, I had no idea! I would never dare to harm the Sect Leader while consuming the Sect’s medicine…”
“You son of a bitch! Even throwing you to the beasts won’t be enough! How dare you harm the Sect Leader…!”
Meanwhile, the Elder, who was unaware of the situation because he was too focused on the Sect Leader, was venting his anger to the absent Elder. In the meantime, I approached the doctor and asked him.
“Is there no other way besides the antidote?”
“T-There is theoretically one way. The patient needs to control the magic that is excessively swelling up his body and release it outside of his body, but…”
The doctor said that it would be too painful to endure as the magic eats away at the body, making it impossible. The Elder grabbed the doctor’s shoulders and shook him, asking what the point of that was.
But I had an idea.
“If the Elder permits it, there is something I would like to try.”
Now was the time to overcome the clash between the Sword Master and the Magic Master.
