"Some fate this is. What a fucking mess."
The hunting hound of the Sichuan Tang Clan, Tang Un-hyeok, thought to himself.
'Can I never escape in the end?'
WHOOOOSH—!
Torrential rain poured down across the field, and Un-hyeok's face twisted in agony.
"Ugh!"
His right arm had been severed, and the bones in his legs were shattered.
Countless blades and hidden weapons lodged throughout his body.
'If only it weren't for Heaven's Dragnet......!'
The hound that had once chased prey had, at some point, become the prey being hunted.
Today marked the hundredth day.
Though he had already reached his limit, Un-hyeok struggled to his feet.
'Get it together. The moment I show weakness, it's over.'
If he didn't move quickly, the pursuers would catch up.
The moment he took a limping step forward.
Assailants in green leather coats surrounded Un-hyeok in an instant.
'They've already chased me this far?'
In the center of each assailant's chest, the character Tang was embroidered in gold thread.
As they parted to clear a path, a middle-aged man wearing a bamboo hat revealed himself.
"It's been a while."
The man strode out leisurely and tilted his bamboo hat up slightly, revealing his face.
"Myriad Poison Mad Hound."
"......Tang Wi-hyeon."
The master of the hunting hound called Un-hyeok.
The current patriarch of the world's greatest family, the Great Sichuan Tang Clan.
Tang Wi-hyeon kicked Un-hyeok across the face.
"Gkh...."
"A mere dog, daring to bare your fangs at your master. Do you have any idea how many elites the main family lost trying to capture you?"
No fewer than a thousand martial artists had fallen to Un-hyeok's poison arts.
The Flame King Corps, the Soul Chaser Corps, the Dart Shadow Corps, the Poison Dragon Corps, and more.
Too many to count one by one.
"Heh heh heh...."
Un-hyeok staggered, wiping the blood from his lips with his sleeve.
"Is that why you brought even your precious personal unit, the Seven Soul Poison King Corps?"
"You even purged the parasitic venom I planted in you. To put down a mad dog slipped off its leash, one must make fitting preparations, no?"
Thorough bastard, through and through.
Then again, a collateral nobody who hadn't even been a candidate for succession becoming patriarch — that was precisely because of this temperament of his.
Un-hyeok scanned his surroundings from the corner of his eye.
'Damn it. There's not a single opening to slip through.'
Not just the Seven Soul Poison King Corps — every martial artist Wi-hyeon had brought was a master at the pinnacle or beyond.
Had his body been whole, dealing with them would have been child's play, but in his current state, it was beyond him.
'In the end, the only option is to charge straight through......'
A hopeless situation.
Un-hyeok decided to buy even a sliver of time to recover, and attempted conversation.
"Unbelievable."
"?"
"Repay kindness tenfold, grudges a hundredfold. Isn't that the Tang Family's principle? After how long I slaved like a dog under you, this is how you repay the debt?"
"You bastard...."
"Let's be honest here. If I hadn't landed a blow on the Blood Calamity Heavenly Demon during the War Between Realms, do you really think the Tang Family could've risen to become the world's greatest?"
Roughly a decade ago.
The Blood Calamity Heavenly Demon, Cheon Yeon-hwa, had unified the entire martial world beyond the Central Plains and then invaded.
They swept through with unstoppable force, occupying two-thirds of the Central Plains. In response, the Heavenly Righteous Alliance recruited masters from across the realm.
Un-hyeok had gone to war as the Sichuan Tang Clan's representative.
"Insolent cur!"
Unable to listen any longer, the Captain of the Seven Soul Poison King Corps, Tang Ja-heon, pressed his blade against Un-hyeok's throat.
"That foul mouth of yours runs wherever it pleases. Do you wish to die?!"
"Enough."
Wi-hyeon raised a hand, and Ja-heon stepped back.
Wi-hyeon took a step closer to Un-hyeok.
"Then are you not curious? Why I drove you into death's jaws time and again?"
"Heh heh heh. It's obvious without even asking. Your pathetic inferiority complex, isn't it?"
"......"
"You always had to be the best. When I mastered the poison arts and they started calling me the greatest of the Tang Family, it must've twisted your guts."
"......So you knew."
Wi-hyeon pressed his foot down hard on Un-hyeok's wound.
"GAAAAH—!"
"Then perhaps you should have known to keep yourself in check."
"You son of a bitch......!"
"Then again, you were always like that. A mere dog who thought himself above his master. I never cared for that attitude."
Wi-hyeon remembered.
That Un-hyeok had been extraordinary from the very beginning.
"I will acknowledge it. You were the finest hunting hound I ever raised. Too useful to dispose of carelessly."
And so Wi-hyeon had devised a scheme.
He assigned Un-hyeok only missions with high risk of failure — but immense reward upon success.
"Success meant all the glory went to the main family. And even failure would rid me of you, that thorn in my eye. A profitable venture no matter the outcome, would you not agree?"
"So that's why...."
Un-hyeok steadied his breathing.
"You ordered me to take on the Poison Demon Sect alone during the War Between Realms?"
"You were never supposed to come back alive."
The Six Great Demon Sects.
The six pillars that upheld the Demonic Cult.
Among them, the Poison Demon Sect had inflicted particularly devastating casualties on the Heavenly Righteous Alliance during the war.
Even Wi-hyeon had been certain Un-hyeok would die that time.
But.
"Tenacious wretch. Not only did you claw your way back alive, you even earned the title of Myriad Poison."
Wi-hyeon clenched his molars tight.
"Despite me — the patriarch of the Great Sichuan Tang Clan — standing above you!"
"So that's why you're so desperate to kill me? Even with the Heavenly Righteous Alliance watching?!"
Un-hyeok was, in every sense, a war hero of the War Between Realms.
No matter how powerful Tang Wi-hyeon was, killing him without justification should have been impossible.
Yet Wi-hyeon threw his head back and laughed.
"Kahaha—! Your time truly has come, it seems. I deployed Heaven's Dragnet just to capture you. Surely you did not think I failed to account for that as well?"
"......What?"
"That nameless art you cultivated. The Heavenly Righteous Alliance has officially recognized it as the demonic art of the Cosmos Poison Demon."
The Demonic Cult's invasions of the Central Plains had not been limited to the present day.
Among them was one invasion that had shaken the people of the Central Plains to the marrow of their bones.
The Fourth Heavenly Demon of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult — the Cosmos Poison Demon.
Astonishingly, Un-hyeok's nameless art bore resemblance to his.
Yet Un-hyeok could swear he had never studied any demonic art.
"Bullshit. You think anyone's going to fall for a lie like that?"
"Does that matter?"
"What?"
"From the moment the Heavenly Righteous Alliance decreed it."
Tang Wi-hyeon pointed a finger toward the sky.
"It became Heaven's will."
In that instant, Un-hyeok felt his heart plummet.
What utter horseshit was this?
The Heavenly Righteous Alliance had sided with killing him?!
They were supposed to be the guardians of justice and chivalry!
"You could never imagine — not even in your dreams — how much effort I invested in the Heavenly Righteous Alliance."
"Ha!"
"With gold. Or with something of equal value."
Wi-hyeon smirked.
"Paying the price for your life nearly broke my back."
Those sons of bitches.
No wonder every sect he had begged for help had turned him away.
Was this why?
Un-hyeok felt a betrayal beyond words.
After the War Between Realms had ended.
They had praised him as a hero, declared the realm owed him its life, heaped on every honeyed word in existence.
Un-hyeok ground his teeth.
'......The entire world has turned its back on me.'
Public Enemy of the Martial World.
Un-hyeok realized it then.
There was nowhere in the entire world left for him.
Even if he were lucky enough to escape the Tang Family's pursuit, death was his only destination.
'Fuck.'
How amusing must it have been for Wi-hyeon?
Watching him thrash and struggle to survive.
'Broke my back through every hardship there was, and all I got in return? The hare's caught, so boil the hound.'
Un-hyeok hung his head low.
Wi-hyeon cackled.
"This day has come at last. The great you, finally giving up."
SHING—!
Wi-hyeon raised his sword high.
"Yes, accept your fate quietly and...."
WHOOSH—!
Wi-hyeon swung his blade.
"Just die already—!"
"Says who."
Un-hyeok snatched Wi-hyeon's ankle, throwing him off balance.
The blade lodged in the ground.
"Pointless struggle!"
"Like hell I'll die with this injustice unsettled!"
HUMMM—!
Green haze shimmered from Un-hyeok's body.
"This is...."
Wi-hyeon furrowed his brow.
"Poison arts?!"
Panicked, Wi-hyeon kicked wildly at the hand gripping his ankle.
"Let go of me!"
"Idiot. Would you let go if you were me?"
"Ngghhk—!"
The poison spread through the sweat glands.
A pain as if every acupoint along the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and Twelve Standard Meridians were being seared alive.
Wi-hyeon's face darkened to a sickly black in an instant.
"Let's go together, Tang Wi-hyeon!"
"You damned bastard......!"
Just then.
"YOU WRETCH—!"
SLASH—!
The Captain of the Seven Soul Poison King Corps, Tang Ja-heon, severed Un-hyeok's wrist clean off.
"GAAAAH—!"
"My lord, are you all right?!"
Wi-hyeon gasped for breath.
He tried to expel the poison, but its potency was beyond measure.
Wi-hyeon's own mastery of poison arts was second to perhaps none in the world.
But Un-hyeok's poison was on an entirely different level.
Merely suppressing it was the best he could manage.
"This will not do, my lord. Please attend to your body first. I will finish that wretch off."
"Unhand me! No matter what, I will take that damned wretch's life with my own hands!"
Wi-hyeon shoved aside the supporting arms.
Staggering, he stood before Un-hyeok once more.
The cold bite of the blade's tip pressed against Un-hyeok's neck.
"Vermin. This is truly the end."
Was it from all the blood he had lost?
Wi-hyeon's figure appeared blurred.
In that moment, Un-hyeok sensed his end had come.
'Tang Wi-hyeon, you won't die peacefully either.'
Resolved to die, he shattered his poison core.
He had infected Wi-hyeon with the deadliest of deadly poisons, forged over the course of Un-hyeok's entire life — he was certain no one in the world could cure it.
Not even the White-Robed Divine Healer — one of the Three Great Healers of the Realm — could possibly save Wi-hyeon now.
'I'll go first, but you'll follow soon enough.'
And until the very moment of death, Wi-hyeon would endure agony as if his entire body were rotting from the inside.
A swift death like Un-hyeok's might have been the kinder fate.
Yet Un-hyeok felt no relief whatsoever.
"......Fuck. There are so many bastards left to kill...."
Eyes burning wide.
Un-hyeok seared the image of Wi-hyeon and every warrior bearing the Tang name into his memory.
But they were not the only ones who had betrayed him.
'The Heavenly Righteous Alliance — no, the entire Central Plains.'
Those who supported my death.
Those who stood by in silence.
To Un-hyeok, they were all the same — targets for revenge.
"The world cast me out?"
Un-hyeok let out a low laugh.
"Heh heh heh heh—!"
BOOM, CRACK—!
A flash of lightning briefly illuminated Un-hyeok.
Coughing up blood, screaming like a vengeful ghost.
"Then I shall cast out the world in turn!"
You lot think you're the heavens?
Just because you decreed it my fate, I should obey?
'Go fuck yourselves.'
I'll defy the heavens themselves and overturn it all.
"If you're going to kill me, make sure I'm dead."
Because if not.
"I'll crawl up from the very bottom of hell and shove poison down your throats."
THWACK—!
And so Un-hyeok's head flew from his shoulders, and his vision went dark.
***
A feeling of floating through empty space.
'Is this death?'
Then his consciousness was suddenly pulled somewhere unintended.
"......Gasp!"
Un-hyeok's eyes flew open.
An unfamiliar ceiling above him.
"Where the hell......? Ngh......"
He clutched his throbbing head and sat up.
Looking around, he saw scattered drinking tables and disheveled women lying about in disarray.
Un-hyeok recognized the place at once.
"A pleasure...... house?"
Wait — did the afterlife have pleasure houses?
Un-hyeok was dumbstruck.
He had clearly lost his life at Tang Wi-hyeon's hands.
So what was going on, waking up like this?
'Let me assess the situation first. I need to figure out what happened......'
The moment he struggled to rise.
A full-length bronze mirror sitting in one corner.
His eyes met the reflection staring back at him.
"Wh-what......? Why does my face......?!"
"Mm, mmm......"
The courtesan beside Un-hyeok rubbed her eyes.
"Young master, what's wrong? Why aren't you sleeping in my arms anymore...... Kyah!"
Un-hyeok pushed the courtesan aside and stood before the mirror.
He touched here, prodded there.
He even pinched himself.
It hurt?!
"Th-this is......"
A body as thin as bare winter branches.
Pale skin and an appearance steeped in decadence.
Un-hyeok recognized the man in the mirror instantly.
"Dok Un-hyeok?!"
In the past, Un-hyeok had studied every piece of information on the Poison Demon Sect in preparation to face them.
Back then, he had only seen through a wanted sketch — the Fifth Star of the Poison Demon Sect, Dok Un-hyeok.
The face reflected in the mirror was identical to that man's.
'Why did I wake up in this bastard's body?'
As Un-hyeok recalled, Dok Un-hyeok had died before the War Between Realms even began.
Cause of death: alcohol and opium addiction.
His senses were vivid and sharp.
'Well, this doesn't seem like a dream.'
Just as he was utterly lost trying to make sense of it all.
CRASH—!
The pleasure house door burst open as if about to shatter, and a brutish man stormed in shouting.
"Dok Un-hyeok, where are you?!"
Who the hell is that?
In that moment, Un-hyeok felt a splitting headache.
But the skull-splitting pain vanished as quickly as it came.
Memories surfaced — not his own, but those of this body's original owner.
"Found you."
The man snorted and stomped toward Un-hyeok.
"You damn bastard. You haven't even paid me back, and you've got the nerve to be fooling around at Moonlight Pavilion!"
"Wha—?!"
Grabbed by the collar, Un-hyeok Tangled helplessly in the air.
He understood now.
Who the man before him was.
'Black Bear.'
A loan shark notorious for his cruelty even within the Golden Dragon Chamber.
Thanks to Dok Un-hyeok's memories, Un-hyeok recognized him despite never having seen him before.
"Pay me back right now!"
A shout that snapped his mind to attention.
Only now could Un-hyeok accept it.
'I'm alive again.'
Then Black Bear screamed, spit flying.
"If you can't pay me today, you're dead by my hands!"
That wasn't going to happen.
Not when he'd been given a chance like this.
'Just you wait.'
Un-hyeok's eyes blazed like fire.
'Central Plains — I'm coming back.'