Venom Demon’s poison.
The poison Venom Demon infused into Twin Moon had a faint volatility—a tendency to vaporize and scatter through the air. Venom Demon could create all kinds of poisons, but the poisons he put into weapons carried the same cruel edge as his nature.
By his way of thinking, killing someone on the spot was practically a kindness.
The realm of poison Venom Demon pursued was this: the victim feels agony from poisoning, and then dies slowly, bit by bit.
That way, wouldn’t you be able to toy with them—and mock death itself?
Twin Moon had been a poison-sect weapon from the beginning, made to be used with poison.
When the poison soaked into the hilts receives the stimulation of inner energy, the poison flows along the spine of the blades. Then, heated by that yang-aspected inner energy, it scatters into the air.
In other words, it becomes a poison mist burned out by inner energy.
That was why Venom Demon had explained the poison he put into Twin Moon to Jin Sohan like this.
“This time, what I put into Twin Moon is Walk-to-Death Mist Poison—a poison that makes you walk slowly through the fog until you die.”
Because Jin Sohan knew what Walk-to-Death Mist Poison did, he hadn’t drawn Twin Moon all this time. It was also why he told Choo Sahyeok to fall back.
Because once you use it, a massacre happens.
*****
Jin Sohan landed in the middle of several hundred soldiers and, without a shred of hesitation, spread Walk-to-Death Mist Poison. Even the method of spreading it was a way only Jin Sohan could unleash.
‘The Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe’s dance.’
The Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe’s Dream Kid had begun to spread poison through a sword dance.
And so Jin Sohan started to dance.
Of course, it was the beginning of the bloodbath, so the resistance was fierce.
Men driven rabid were charging in line after line, so packed there was nowhere for Jin Sohan to even plant his foot. It was probably because they’d witnessed the Northwind Unit’s carnage before coming here. The Blood-Whisper Sect Master wasn’t a man who had taken West Black Road for free, either. He’d gotten it because he could seize people’s minds and stoke fear.
“Don’t fall back!”
“If even one strike lands, after that we can kill him easily!”
The unit leaders’ shouts were driving their men into death. The unit leaders themselves had retreated to the rear, waiting for Jin Sohan to tire.
As Jin Sohan came down, drawing the blades straight down in a vertical stroke, the Blood-Whisper Sect’s weapons split in half first, and then a bloodline was carved across the face of the man gripping the weapon.
SPIT!
But the depth the blade bit was strangely subtle.
About the length of a pinky nail…?
It was as if the tip had simply brushed past his face.
If it were normal, he would’ve lived, left with a scar on his face. But the raw liquid of Walk-to-Death Mist Poison—before it dispersed as mist—had seeped into his body, and he couldn’t stay standing.
“Ghk…”
When one man collapsed after letting out a bizarre, clipped cry, Jin Sohan was already gone. Once you were poisoned by Walk-to-Death Mist Poison, your whole body weakened first, so there was no need to worry about it.
To break through the encirclement blocking his way to the Blood-Whisper Sect Master, Jin Sohan moved without pause, Twin Moon in hand.
That movement was light and lively from start to finish.
Because he didn’t need to deal fatal wounds to the enemy.
If he grazed them, he could kill them.
And so Jin Sohan’s dance was no different from a Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe performance. The fluttering Gauze Dance Robe swayed, and along the path of Jin Sohan’s movement, pink flower petals scattered beautifully.
Along that trajectory, two crescents moved as if they had transcended time and space.
From east to west, from sky to ground.
Each time, the blades flawlessly sliced past the opponent’s body with exquisite precision.
SPIT! SPIT! TSSS!
Since he never needed to drive the blades deep, there was no reason for Jin Sohan’s speed to slow. That was because the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe’s dance had originally been a technique meant to slice away an opponent’s clothing.
Jin Sohan knew the spacing.
How much to swing to cut only cloth—and how much to cut flesh…
The reason Jin Sohan had been called a genius was being carved into the enemy’s bodies as blade marks. As Jin Sohan kept raising the speed of his lightness art and his dance, the Blood-Whisper Sect men, as if competing to chase that speed, began spraying bloody water in a frenzy.
The amount of blood varied, and the arcs were even more of a chaotic mess. In that asura-like scene, the Blood-Whisper Sect men with Walk-to-Death Mist Poison seeping into them screamed and slumped to the ground. With a dull, aching pain through their bodies, weakness came crashing in.
“Gggh…!”
Fear was spreading a little late. Many people had wondered why the ones hit first were screaming like that. There were simply too many people; the outer ranks, who still hadn’t even managed to swing a blade once at Jin Sohan, frowned as a dirge began to burst out around Jin Sohan.
“Hhhaaa…”
“My body… won’t… move…”
“Shut up! Shut your mouth!”
Who could stop the screams of people swallowed by the terror of death?
Only after living through the horror did their rage at the superiors who had driven them into death explode.
“Help us! Unit Leader!”
“Unit Leader! We can’t handle him!”
“It’s poison! Poison’s spreading in the air—!”
Pandemonium.
What a joke. How were you supposed to “be careful” of poison? You could, if you didn’t breathe.
Even Jin Sohan was breathing in Walk-to-Death Mist Poison, adding madness to his ash-gray eyes.
But Jin Sohan’s body had immunity to Walk-to-Death Mist Poison. Whether the poison mist spread or not, he swung, sliced, cut, and ran.
Jin Sohan’s stamina and inner energy were still overflowing, as if he hadn’t used anything at all… while the enemies, feeling the pain of poison spreading through their whole bodies, stared at Jin Sohan—wearing a dancer’s robe as he moved—and now they were suffering hallucinations.
‘The Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe woman came back as a ghost.’
‘A ghost.’
‘We’re all going to die.’
‘If this keeps up, we’ll be wiped out.’
The living, wandering through thick fog, collapsed as if they’d stepped into a swamp.
As frightened men began backing away whenever Jin Sohan approached… the defensive line guarding the Blood-Whisper Sect Master itself was becoming worthless. When that fear hit its peak, someone shouted this time as if rebuking the Blood-Whisper Sect Master.
“Spare us! At this rate we’ll all die! Sect Master! Kuhk!”
A crescent passed across the throat of the man who had shouted.
Jin Sohan looked over the eyes and expressions of the Blood-Whisper Sect men—now with the mood flipped upside down—and said,
“Who do you think can spare you?”
Anyone who remained within the radius where Jin Sohan stood was already a corpse.
From the start, the Blood-Whisper Sect already knew Jin Sohan was strong.
‘Dozens will die pointlessly.’
‘No—maybe a hundred will die horribly.’
That was what they expected.
But they didn’t understand Jin Sohan as a person at all.
Jin Sohan was not an honest man to begin with.
He was someone who hid his heart, someone who practiced lying. To acquaintances, the Divine Art of Lies might have been amusement—but to enemies, it was no different from a noose tightening around their throats.
Jin Sohan was a man who deceived.
This clash had been, from the very beginning, time for Jin Sohan to take revenge one-sidedly.
“You son of a bitch!”
One sect man, driven mad by a comrade’s death, charged in. Jin Sohan avoided the straight saber rushing into his torso, rotated his body, and with the blade in his left hand, cut across the man’s face.
“Kraaa!”
Even as he did that, Jin Sohan called for the next opponent, to press them psychologically.
“Who’s next…”
The enemies’ psychological defensive line was collapsing, too. Now no one was going to stake their life to block the Blood-Whisper Sect Master. With so many people, some even began slipping past the Blood-Whisper Sect Master, mixing into the crowd of comrades.
Jin Sohan viciously dug into that psychological gap.
“If you don’t want to die, fall back and circulate your energy right now. Before the poison spreads through your body… I came to kill the Blood-Whisper Sect Master. Open the way.”
Jin Sohan’s lies were no different from poison.
As people opened the path, some of the timid, without even doubting Jin Sohan’s words, slumped down and started circulating their energy as if they were injured.
But with poison mist filling the air, what “circulating your energy” was there to talk about? Fear had blurred their judgment. The moment the men who’d slumped down took deep breaths, the poison energy spread faster instead, and they crumpled to the floor.
When the ones who tried to circulate their energy died following Jin Sohan’s words, even Cheon Amyeong, the Blood-Whisper Sect Master watching it, stared at Jin Sohan with a flustered expression.
In that moment, Cheon Amyeong realized it.
Cheon Amyeong was someone who thought he wasn’t a common villain. But here, truly, a villain of an entirely different grade—twin blades in hand—was looking at him.
Jin Sohan stared into Cheon Amyeong’s eyes and approached slowly.
“Seeing you’re not running, it looks like you still have a hidden card.”
“……”
“For example, your little brother…”
Jin Sohan stepped close enough that Cheon Amyeong’s wrinkles were visible.