An eerie fog coiled through the pitch-black surroundings on all sides.
With every step forward, a gut-wrenching dread crept in.
'A spirit creature is still just a bug at the end of the day.'
Hyeol-u steeled his heart and moved forward slowly.
The larvae that had been constantly crushed underfoot had vanished at some point, making the walk easier--but the tension only grew.
Silence.
With Tang Ga-ryeong keeping her mouth shut, nothing but quiet hung over the group. Every so often, a strange odor seemed to ride the wind blowing from deeper in the cave.
He had blocked his nose and mouth with something like a handkerchief, but there was no way to completely shut out the smell seeping into his nostrils.
His head throbbed and dizziness set in.
But the moment those sensations arose, the inner elixir of the Yin-Yang Twin-Headed Serpent--stuck fast beside his qi center--seemed to dissolve, shrinking in size.
The melting elixir's energy filled his qi center, and a portion of it rose along the meridians.
On one hand, it traced the contours of both sides of his face--ascending through the Lower Gate, Wind Screen, Auditory Palace, and Celestial Passage acupoints.
Then along the line dividing the face in half--rising through the Supporting Pool, Philtrum, Welcome Fragrance, and Bright Eyes acupoints, passing through the Celestial Eye acupoint between the brows, up to Spirit Court, Spirit Meeting, and finally the Hundred Meetings acupoint at the crown.
A cool, purifying energy coursed up and down through every meridian.
"The smell is strange. I feel like I'm going to be sick."
Captain Yeo Bul-wi retched and threw up what he had eaten.
His face went white and he slumped to the ground--clearly infected by the poison.
Tang So-pyeong carefully produced several pills from his robes.
The pills, glossy white and as large as chestnuts, gave off a remarkable fragrance that seemed to purify mind and body of its own accord.
'My! What a wonderful smell.'
Hyeol-u's eyes lit up at Tang So-pyeong's next words.
"This is the Gentleman's Soul-Reviving Pill. Take it and circulate your qi."
"Th-thank you!"
Tang So-pyeong gave one to his sister and took one himself, then glanced over at Hyeol-u.
"Give me one too."
It might come in handy someday. No point standing on ceremony.
"Hmph! Do you even know what this is, asking for one?"
"Just an antidote, isn't it?"
The look of utter exasperation in Tang So-pyeong's eyes shifted several times before Tang Ga-ryeong let out a huff of a sigh.
"Give him one."
"......?"
"Consider the debt repaid with this. Understood?"
Hyeol-u shrugged.
"Sure, whatever you say."
The Gentleman's Soul-Reviving Pill--compounded from over a hundred rare ingredients including century-old Solomon's seal, snow ginseng, and hundred-year turtle eggs--was an elixir said to revive even the dying.
For a martial artist who possessed inner arts, a single pill was worth a solid ten years of cultivation. For an ordinary person, it promised a long life free of illness.
A secret Tang Clan recipe requiring ingredients so scarce that records described it as rarer than stars in the sky.
And he had just gotten his hands on an elixir the jianghu believed to be extinct.
His grin must have stretched nearly to the tip of his chin.
After a brief pause, Geum-a stirred in his robes and poked its head out with a coo.
'Wait. How did it get this big?'
Hyeol-u's eyes went wide as Geum-a emerged from his robes.
The bird stretched its wings as if yawning, then hopped right up to perch on his shoulder.
From a chick to a half-grown bird, and from there to the size of a full rooster--all in just a few days.
Perhaps it was from monopolizing all those spiders earlier and absorbing their nutrients, but the growth was far too fast.
He felt a twinge of wistfulness.
As a chick it had been adorable and cute; now it looked like an awkward teenager with a head too big for its body.
Its mother had been as large as an eagle, so it still had a ways to go before reaching full size.
The deeper they went, the thicker the fog became--dense as smoke--and the stinging smell grew even worse.
"You should stop being stubborn and take the antidote."
Tang Ga-ryeong had stuck close beside him as though they were traveling together, sneaking glances at Geum-a perched on his shoulder.
Why was she fretting like some old nursemaid? It did not suit her at all.
"If it gets too hard to bear--"
Just then.
SKRIEEE!
A threatening cry echoed from somewhere within the fog.
'Hm?'
Geum-a hunched its body tight.
A taut tension radiated from it, like a bow drawn to full stretch.
Geum-a tapped his shoulder with its beak, quick and insistent.
Its breath was ragged, as if with excitement.
'Could it be?'
As though facing a natural enemy, the bird's fighting spirit blazed.
"Go!"
Geum-a immediately pushed off his shoulder with both feet and spread its wings skyward.
WHOOOOSH--!
Fired like a cannonball, Geum-a's form vanished from sight in an instant.
"What is that? Not a gyrfalcon or an eagle--but that golden plumage is gorgeous."
Tang Ga-ryeong swallowed hard, her eyes sparkling.
"Hey. Never mind that--keep your guard up. Like the people behind you."
Come to think of it, Tang So-pyeong and Yeo Bul-wi were clearly maintaining taut vigilance without letting up.
"You're one to talk--you don't seem too worried yourself."
"Don't kid yourself. You and I aren't traveling together."
Not traveling together--they were enemies.
That part, he kept to himself.
The circumstances were still unclear: whether these Tang Clan members had been hired by the Huizhou Merchant Guild, or were pursuing their own objective, or whether Tang Mi-hwa--the Namgung Clan's inner matriarch--had pulled the strings.
And Blood Sand Wind would hardly sit by and watch the Namgung Clan's march with open eyes, either.
There was much to worry about, one way or another.
It would all come to light soon enough.
In that instant, Hyeol-u shivered.
From inside her sleeve, a pair of eyes burned like fire, boring into him.
'What's......?'
Among the Tang Clan members, armed to the teeth with every manner of poison and hidden weapon, plenty kept venomous snakes or scorpions on their person like pets.
He had assumed the Thousand-Hands Rakshasa was a woman specializing in hidden weapons, yet she carried a venomous creature on her body as well.
That was mildly unsettling.
"Hey, back off."
"What?"
"You carry a venomous creature on you, don't you?"
"Ho ho. What nonsense. You carry a raptor around, and I carry my cute little snake. What's the difference?"
"......!"
"Here, look at it. So cute and pretty."
On her palm, bobbing its head back and forth, was a flower-patterned snake barely half a handspan long.
Between its two red eyes, a dot like a water-palace mark made it look as though it had three eyes.
"......That's a Three-Eyed Fire Spirit Serpent?"
"Heh heh. Not bad--you even know the name."
Three-Eyed Fire Spirit Serpent.
True to its name as the spirit of fire, a mature Fire Spirit Serpent spewed fire-qi from its maw with an intensity fierce enough to melt iron.
Somewhat like Geum-a, in a way.
"So you carry magma around inside you?"
"Ho ho heh. Keep being cheeky and you'll melt in the flames. Watch it!"
"You're the one who should watch it."
"What?"
"That thing's still a baby. It'll take at least a few years to mature."
Her lips pressed together in a firm, tight line.
She had realized she had never once won a war of words against him.
A truly insufferable brat.
FWAAH--! SKRIEEE!
What was that sound?
Unmistakably, two creatures were fighting.
Hyeol-u, who had been bringing up the rear, launched himself forward--
WHOOOSH.
A fierce wind blew from deep inside the cave, scattering the fog and revealing an astonishing sight.
Enough to take one's breath away.
In a space thick with smoke billowing from a volcanic vent, two spirit creatures of similar size were locked in a ferocious battle, evenly matched.
WHORL-WHORL-WHORL.
Amid the sound of air currents twisting wildly, blue venom sprayed from the maw of the Five-Colored Spider as it rode its transparent webs.
HISSSS--!
The rock underfoot melted like candle wax.
From the beak of Geum-a, wheeling through the air like a bat, a torrent of scarlet flame poured out--igniting the very stone that had melted.
An earth-shattering clash.
But gradually, as if their strength was flagging, the fight shifted from long range to short range, then to close combat.
'Geum-a's in danger!'
Still not fully grown, Geum-a seemed to be struggling against the mature Five-Colored Spider.
The gap was starkly apparent in their wounds.
Blood streamed from wounds all over both their bodies.
Geum-a's wing joint was soaked in blood, while the Five-Colored Spider's body was a gore-smeared mess where scales had been ripped away.
HAAK, HAK. HRAA, HRAA.
Only the ragged breathing of the two creatures echoed through the space.
STRIKE!
Geum-a loosed a burst of flame from its beak, then shot upward and began pecking furiously at the Five-Colored Spider clinging to the ceiling.
Its target seemed to be the spider's head or throat.
But Geum-a's beak kept bouncing off the spider's body as it bobbed and weaved.
SKRIEE!
The Five-Colored Spider's head whipped around, and its maw clamped onto the feathers at Geum-a's rump.
CRACK-CRACK--!
In a blind panic, Geum-a kicked off the ceiling and dove downward.
It was clearly losing strength.
In that instant, Hyeol-u's eyes flashed.
The two spirit creatures had landed right at his feet, of all places.
'Now!'
Almost on reflex, the Black Dragon Ink Cane danced.
SMACK--!
The Five-Colored Spider's head burst.
CRACK--!
Its maw fell away.
CRUNCH--!
Its neck lolled limply.
Hyeol-u pried Geum-a's body from under the Five-Colored Spider and was catching his breath when--
SWIIISH--!
The fog surged like a tidal wave, and a sharp lance of qi pierced toward him.
***
THWACK-THWACK--!
Hyeol-u rolled to dodge the qi lance. In the same moment, the Five-Colored Spider floated upward.
A fishing line?
He swung the Black Dragon Ink Cane first, spinning it as he struck the rising spider's head.
CRACK.
The Five-Colored Spider's half-shattered head dropped into his arms as if settling there.
COO-COO!
Geum-a let out a triumphant cry and drove its beak into the spider's head.
"Grab it!"
Only then did Tang Ga-ryeong grasp the situation, shouting as she launched herself forward.
Typically, an inner elixir was attached to the coronary arteries of the heart or the alveoli of the lungs.
So naturally, their attention would be drawn to the body rather than the head.
But Hyeol-u had no intention of chasing after them.
Inside the head that Geum-a had pried open, part of a five-colored orb peeked out--like the sun cresting the horizon at dawn.
COO-GOO-GOO.
The bird held the five-colored orb in its beak and looked up at him uncertainly.
It seemed to be debating whether to eat it or not.
And the blood streaming from its wounded wing joint was pitiful, too.
Hyeol-u pulled out the Life-Restoring Pill from his robes, placed it in the bird's beak, and took the five-colored orb in exchange.
It was slippery with Geum-a's saliva, and for an instant it seemed to soften and dissolve--but that passed quickly.
Well, there was no time to admire or savor the inner elixir anyway.
Any further delay and everything would be for nothing.
GULP!
Hyeol-u swallowed the Five-Colored Spider's inner elixir in one go and sat down cross-legged.
Just as when he had first taken the Yin-Yang Twin-Headed Serpent's inner elixir, he felt nothing at all.
He was about to rise in disappointment when his qi center began to churn and roil, and his insides heaved.
"That's it!"
He quietly observed the changes in his qi center, steeling himself to endure the pain.
But the upheaval in his belly ended almost as soon as it began.
"Huh......"
His qi center expanded to the size of a fist and divided into five regions.
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water.
The Five Elements.
Five-colored energies had partitioned his qi center in equal measure.
Mutual generation and mutual overcoming.
True to that principle, the fire-qi and metal-qi he had previously accumulated no longer held dominance.
It was something he had never anticipated, and a mix of regret and gratification washed over him.
He now sensed that merging the five distinct elemental energies would be the key to his next breakthrough.
***
Having endured an entire night of ordeals that most would never face in a lifetime, Hyeol-u hurried out of the cave.
He truly did not want to spend another moment in that underground hell of flowing magma and erupting pillars of fire.
Outside, stars had set and dawn was breaking in a hazy glow along the eastern horizon.
Swimming out of the lake, Hyeol-u was struck with astonishment at the sight: the once-round lake was now mangled like a sickle missing its teeth, and a path had been blasted through the cliff face, sending lake water cascading down like a waterfall.
'They say the world changes beyond recognition.'
If even nature's shifts were this hard to predict, how much harder must it be to foresee human affairs?
His steps grew a little heavier as he made his way back toward Heaven-Reaching Pass.
Returning to the Three Patriarchs Temple, he discovered that his master, who had been sitting cross-legged atop the altar, was gone.
He had spent the entire night in the lake cave, true--but that should not have been the reason for his master's disappearance.
Above all, the master still needed to collect the two promised pills.
As he scanned the room for changes, a crumpled sheet of paper on the altar caught his eye.
'What's that?'
<Namgung Seong. If you want to save Mucho, come to the Flower Mountain Labyrinth Caves. Great Wilderness Raft.>
Great Wilderness Raft?
Beside the characters, a drawing of a dung wasp.
Hyeol-u recalled the contents of the Absolute Invincible Martial World Travelogue.
A name nearly forgotten--one that only murim historians would remember. A faction of the demonic path that had vanished three hundred years ago.
At its peak, it had warred with the nearby Tianshan Demonic Cult for supremacy over the world, only to be swallowed by the earth in a great earthquake. A faction whose fate was as tragic as it was dramatic.
'Ha, this is a headache.'
The "Great Wilderness Raft," appearing out of nowhere like a rolling pin out of a drawer.
Was it a ploy to cultivate an air of mystery?
Seeing a name buried in the sands of time resurface meant the Namgung Clan's march had stirred up an enormous storm across the Central Plains--orthodox, unorthodox, and demonic alike.
'Phew. I don't know whether to welcome this with open arms.'
Things had gone as intended, but the ripples kept spreading.
Now it was like riding a tiger's back.
One wrong step and he would plunge into the abyss.
Hyeol-u bit his lip until it hurt.
The one who survives is the victor. Fight and kill whatever comes.
Just then.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK! TWANG, CRASH-CLANG--!
The sound of hidden weapons flying.
Arrows being loosed, and iron bars clanging with a metallic ring--over and over.
CLANG-CLANG-CRASH!
The sharp clash of blunt weapons striking each other rang out.
'That sound......?'
How could he not recognize it?
It was coming from the shed where the iron-barred wagon was parked.
STRIKE!
Hyeol-u drove every ounce of inner arts into the Bubbling Spring acupoints on the soles of his feet and took flight on the wind.
'It's working--it works!'
He cheered inwardly.
Though still at a rudimentary level, his body was executing the Black Dragon Temple's Black Dragon Storm Movement Art of its own accord.
At its peak, the mere use of this movement art would allow one to pass through hundreds--even thousands--of warriors as though moving through a windless void. An absolute movement art.
FWAAASH--!
With a roar like a sudden gale, he covered dozens of jang in the blink of an eye.
TWANG! CLANG--!
Beneath the shed roof, which had already been torn clean off, a dozen throwing stars flew and several crossbows fired bolts at the iron-barred wagon.
Grrgh.
Golden Swordhand So Se-gi's face was flushed to the point of bursting.
He was giving everything he had against the enemy's onslaught, but a perfect defense was beyond him.
KCH!
One of several arrows tore a chunk of flesh and rib from So Se-gi's flank, and an eagle-claw throwing star embedded itself in his thigh.
"Grrghh."
As So Se-gi dropped to one knee, his eyes caught sight of a blue-bladed sickle on a chain sweeping toward his neck.
He could not dodge.
The sickle was too fast--his body would not move.
Any moment now, red blood would spray upward and his neck would burn as though seared by a brand.
How futile.
Thirty years of life in the Namgung Clan, ending this senselessly.
A single tear moistened the rim of his eye.
SWISH--!
The sound of a neck being severed.
CRASH--!
Was that the sickle striking the iron bars after taking his head?
And yet, something was strange.
He had expected his neck to burn, but all that passed over it was a cool breeze.