Novel Bin Chapter 136. Trying to Row a Boat On Land (7)
Chapter 136. Trying to Row a Boat On Land (7)
During his leisurely journey, he worked on creating a cultivation technique for Ra Mi.
As the Martial Arts Fundamentals left behind by his grandfather also included information about the Sixth Sense Sword, Woo-Moon used the information within the Martial Arts Fundamentals along with what he had personally seen of Ra Mi’s cultivation of it to create a cultivation method that suited her circumstances.
Various bandits and thieves appeared along his leisurely path without fail, and Eun-Ah was put in charge of dealing with them.
Eun-Ah had grown to be a moderately strong combatant. Her strength had reached roughly the equivalent of a First-Class expert, leaving thieves no choice but to run away as if their lives depended on it.
After walking for what seemed like ages, Woo-Moon and his party finally arrived at Hefei.
“What’s going on? Why is everything so hectic?”
Hefei seemed as if it was being overturned. The warriors of the Baek Family and the figures of the Leebi Merchant Guild, with Jo Mu-Jae at the helm, seemed as if they were searching for something throughout the city.
Suddenly, Woo-Moon caught sight of Mu-Jae and Ye-Ye conversing with grave expressions on their faces.
"What\'s the matter?"
While Ye-Ye was surprised and delighted to see Woo-Moon, Mu-Jae ran up to him immediately and knelt on the ground.
“Young Hero Song, please! Please find the guild master!”
The guild master?!
Naturally, there could only be one guild master that Mu-Jae would be so worried about: Si-Hyeon, Woo-Moon’s junior sister.
“What’s going on?!”
Instead of Mu-Jae, Ye-Ye responded calmly.
“This morning, I went to Young Lady Yeon’s quarters to discover that she disappeared after working at the Guild until late yesterday evening.”
“What? Was she kidnapped?”
“While we don’t exactly know what’s going on... I don’t believe she was kidnapped.”
“Why?”
“People around her say that she’s been acting strangely lately. She seems to have moments where she just stops in place and stares blankly while muttering, ‘I have to go there.’ Also, according to one of her maids, she suddenly appeared walking around the manor in the middle of the night like a sleepwalker in nothing but a nightgown.”
Woo-Moon smelled something suspicious.
Moreover, he felt anxious. For some reason, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something absolutely terrifying was about to happen.
This was a feeling that he had never experienced before, not even on the battlefield while fighting the Black Bull Gang.
“Ma-Ra, I need your help. You don’t have to get out of the carriage. Just teach me the tracking technique so I can find Si-Hyeon.”
“Mmm.”
“Where’s Si-Hyeon’s residence?”
“It’s this way, Young Hero Song! Please follow me.”
The moment Woo-Moon entered Si-Hyeon’s room, all he could sense was demonic qi.
He was sure of it; it was definitely demonic qi.
‘But it’s different from the demonic qi signature of the Blood Cloud Devil Emperor. Then, what sort of demonic qi is this? Could it be the remnant aura of that bastard who kidnapped Si-Hyeon? Or some sort of demonic spell used to control her?’
Anger blazed from within him like fire. This was the second time something like this had happened to him—a situation in which someone close to him suddenly disappeared and he was forced to find them.
If this was similar to the last kidnapping...
‘This time, whoever is responsible for this will die. All of them, every single one. I will leave no stone unturned.’
The anger he felt right now was so enormous that it was incomparable to what he had felt when Baek Ryeong was kidnapped.
“Woo-Moon, observe surroundings. Careful. If anything strange, tell me.”
“Okay."
Thus, Woo-Moon began to track down Si-Hyeon with Ma-Ra’s help.
***
Si-Hyeon was walking barefoot in a forest.
Fortunately, she was fully clothed in travel wear—afraid of her strange unconscious behavior, she stopped wearing her translucent nightgown to bed and instead made sure to stay properly dressed regardless of the time of day.
Still, she was a beauty who was wandering alone in the mountains. Her presence was like a beacon for mountain bandits.
In fact, even a wandering herb gatherer would have been instantly struck with lust at her sight, let alone these bandits.
Sure enough, bandits eventually appeared around her, laughing lewdly while blocking her path.
She simply ignored them, however and as she continued to walk her way, one of the bandits teased her about being so stony and tried to hug her.
At that time, a technique appeared in Si-Hyeon’s mind, almost like an illusion.
‘Empty Hand Demonic Art.’
Her hands lost their color, becoming transparent.
Squelch!
The next moment, Si-Hyeon’s hand pierced the heart of the bandit in front of her.
“W-what’s with this bitch?!”
“Just kill her!”
Hot blood spewed over Si-Hyeon’s face. However, she continued to walk forward with a blank expression.
As the eight remaining bandits swung their weapons at Si-Hyeon, her transparent hands seemed to multiply, flying in all directions.
Squelch! Crack!!
Under her grip, heads were crushed and chests pierced, blood gushing in all directions from the corpses of the bandits.
Si-Hyeon continued to walk toward a mysterious destination with a blank expression on her face, seemingly having absolutely zero concern over the people she had just butchered.
“I have to go... to the Heavenly Demon Mound...”
***
One day passed, then two.
During that time, Woo-Moon traveled far and wide, observing and identifying any faint footprints left on the ground, sensing the rapidly fading energy within each mark. Carefully analyzing the marks on the bushes and branches around him, at first, he would ask Ma-Ra questions one by one.
However, as time went by, he began to ask fewer questions.
Three days passed, then four.
Now, Woo-Moon no longer had to rely on Ma-Ra for help, and he was moving forward while looking for traces of Si-Hyeon at a speed entirely incomparable to his first day of tracking.
***
“Huff, huff, huff.”
Baek Sang-Woon was uncharacteristically tired, and his hands were drenched in blood and brain matter. They belonged to the members of the Black Bone Battalion.
The Black Bone Battalion, a force ranked highly within the Black Hand, was an independent unit that did not take orders from anyone but a select few.
The overall cultivation of the members was so high that not even organizations such as the Justice Coalition could easily touch them.
Yet here, on this day, the famed Black Bone Battalion had perished at the hands of the Palm Martial Emperor.
And as he was trying to catch his breath, another group of enemies appeared in front of him.
“And who the hell are you supposed to be?”
The new figures had cultivations that were no inferior to those of the Black Bone Battalion members. Moreover, they appeared in equal numbers as well.
“Martial Heaven.”
Following this short reply, the figures attacked Sang-Woon without saying anything else.
‘Damn it! And here I was, trying to talk to them and buy some time to recover some qi.’
As he fought against the newly appeared enemies, the Palm Martial Emperor’s anger began to skyrocket.
Everything was the same.
They used the same martial techniques of the Black Bone Battalion, the same formations, everything. In other words, they were a perfect replica of the Black Bone Battalion.
This was truly strange.
Although Sang-Woon couldn’t figure out what purpose they had, Martial Heaven seemed to recruit groups of martial artists with unique martial arts and take their techniques to train their own martial artists.
‘Seeing as they appeared only after the Black Bone Battalion died, it seems as though they hid this new force from the Black Bone Battalion and trained it in secret.’
Even though Sang-Woon was an Absolute Master, the battle became increasingly difficult as he continued to fight against another enemy at the same level as the strong Black Bone Battalion.
However, as if the heavens themselves were aiding him, a helping hand appeared.
Thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip!
Five throwing darts flew out and struck the roughly dozen members of the duplicate Black Bone Battalion who were charging at the Palm Martial Emperor and exploded, pulverizing them all.
“You really look like shit, don’t you, Palm Martial Emperor.”
The person who appeared had black clothes and held a long spear in one hand. He was none other than the Night Spear Devil, Gyeong Hong.
“Hehe... How funny! I never expected to be happy to see you for once. How did you know to come here?”
“I thought you knew that I travel all over the world in order to find a cure for my son’s illness. I heard the commotion by chance while passing near here and figured out there was probably an interesting battle going on, so I came here to check. And here you were, looking like absolute shit.”
“And your son is in a safe place, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Then I’ll be relying on you for a bit.”
As soon as they finished speaking, the two Absolute Masters launched forward together.
A palm covered the sky as a spear pierced dozens of people in a single move. As if they had been working together for ages, the Palm Martial Emperor and Night Spear Devil showed excellent collaboration, sweeping away the enemies within just a minute. Sang-Woon was able to recover his qi somewhat, and even someone like him had to admit that, with the help of the Night Spear Devil, the battle had been much easier.
“Who are these bastards? They’re using the martial techniques of the Black Bone Battalion.”
Sang-Woon pointed toward the corpse of a Black Bone Battalion member.
“They’re some bastards that call themselves Martial Heaven. They’re a dark force with an extremely long history and incredible power, a force that not even I knew about. It seems that they took the Black Bone Battalion under their wing, then proceeded to steal the battalion’s martial arts and formations and raised these bastards.”
“Are you going to keep chasing them?”
“That’s right.”
“Then, I’ll accompany you for a while.”
“No, you can’t. You don’t have to worry about me. Go hurry back to your son.”
“Who the hell’s worried about you? If they’re this strong and they have a long history, as you say, then they must have a lot of good medicines. I might be able to find something useful.”
After bickering for a while, the two continued, following Martial Heaven’s traces.
There was another person heading in the same direction they were, Si-Hyeon.
Soon, the Palm Martial Emperor and his grand-disciple would meet again in the center of the Myriad Great Mountains.
***
While chasing after Si-Hyeon, Woo-Moon continuously ran into numerous corpses, slaughtered through demonic arts.
They were all bandits and thieves killed by Si-Hyeon.
“Just who could’ve done something like this? This is definitely a sign of demonic arts.”
Woo-Moon wracked his brain, but he couldn’t possibly make any connection between the traces of demonic qi and Si-Hyeon.
It was only natural; after all, they’d been apart for just a couple of months. He could never expect that Si-Hyeon, who had only entered the murim after becoming a disciple of his grandfather, had cultivated his level of demonic qi?
No, there was no possible universe where that made sense.
It was possible that someone could have made the connection if they didn’t know her. However, as the tracker was Woo-Moon, there was no way for him to think about that.
“I’m coming quickly. I’m coming as fast as I can to help you. I’ll save you. Just wait for me, Si-Hyeon!”
It had been six days already, and Woo-Moon hadn’t slept or rested.
In the beginning, when he needed Ma-Ra’s help, Woo-Moon had to sleep for her sake, as she was injured and her strength had not recovered yet.
However, his own tracking skills had continuously improved, while the tracks were only getting clearer. Thus, he now continued to chase Si-Hyeon even as Ma-Ra slept, running ahead of the carriage in which Ma-Ra was riding.
Right now, he too was getting closer and closer to the Myriad Great Mountains, and as time passed, the number of corpses he discovered kept increasing.
“Just what the hell... what the hell is going on?”
Si-Hyeon had passed through the center of this fierce battle.
Woo-Moon was terrified with every step, afraid of finding Si-Hyeon’s body among the corpses.
What made Woo-Moon even more confused was that, at some point, the dead seemed to belong to two different forces. It seemed as if these two forces were fighting as Si-Hyeon passed through them. Moreover, everyone had an incredible level of cultivation and martial arts skills.
***
“Stop her! Catch her! She must never be let into the Heaven Demon Mound! If you can’t catch her, kill her!”
“Protect the Heavenly Maiden! Kill those dirty Martial Heaven bastards!”
Si-Hyeon continued to walk forward with a blank expression.
Around her, the warriors of the Heavenly Demon Cult were fighting tenaciously with the Martial Heaven warriors, hell-bent on protecting her at all costs. In contrast, the Martial Heaven warriors pushed forward with all their might, trying to get to Si-Hyeon. They had to catch her, and if they couldn’t, she had to die.
“You’ll never be able to enter the Heavenly Demon Mound, you witch!”