What greeted Ise after he entered the fortress was the owner’s silence.
More than a dozen steel puppets surrounded him from every direction, yet Wang Gyu, standing inside the main residence, could not bring himself to order them to attack.
He merely glared at Ise.
It was almost as though he wanted to avoid fighting.
That behavior didn’t match the man who had been enveloping his divine senses on me so confidently just moments earlier.
“You don’t look like you want to fight.”
They were both in the late stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
It was a battle in which neither side could easily guarantee victory.
When Ise spoke first, Wang Gyu ground his teeth.
“I could crush someone like you with my puppets.
It’s just… a shame to waste the puppets that would be destroyed!”
Wang Gyu rattled off excuses, as though trying to justify his hesitation.
Even constructing a single puppet must have required a considerable amount of spirit stones and effort.
Using all those expensive resources in a fight against someone of the same realm would mean that even if he won, he might not recover his investment.
For Ise, that was actually convenient.
“Then you could have simply opened the door politely.
Why didn’t you agree to the deal?”
“You lunatic!
Who in Magok City barges into someone else’s home and proposes a trade?”
Wang Gyu’s face reddened with rage.
“Get out of here immediately!
You don’t want to risk your life fighting someone of the same realm either!”
“No?
I do want to fight.
I’ll give you one last chance.
Let’s make a deal.
If you have a Heart-Severing Art manual, hand it over.
I’ll give you 10,000 spirit stones.”
Only then did some of the blood drain from Wang Gyu’s eyes.
He had thought some madman had wandered in from who-knows-where, but apparently Ise truly had come here intending to make a deal.
“…I don’t have one.
If I did, I would’ve entered Area 3 long ago.”
“Open your Storage Pouch.
I need to see for myself whether you really don’t have one.”
Wang Gyu immediately corrected his assessment.
This bastard really was just insane.
“You lunatic!
Are you really looking for a fight?!”
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, one of the puppets swung its blade toward the back of Ise’s head.
An ambush while pretending to have a conversation.
As expected of demonic cultivators, it was a despicable move.
Ise spun the Black-Scale Axe and slammed it into the puppet’s head.
Clang!
Only a resounding metallic noise rang out.
The puppet didn’t even have a scratch.
Its sharpened arms crossed toward Ise’s neck.
Ise wrapped Vajra Shattering around the Black-Scale Axe and barely blocked them, but the impact forced him to slide backward.
The puppets rushed in one after another.
It felt as though his entire field of vision had been dyed black.
Every single one possessed the toughness and power of a Foundation Establishment-level cultivator.
Judging by the power contained within them, they were capable of cutting through the bodies of Foundation Establishment cultivators.
However, they were somewhat slow and incapable of using Arts, so individually they weren’t particularly threatening.
The problem was their sheer number.
Steel limbs came crashing in from every direction simultaneously.
Ise swung the Black-Scale Axe to knock away the puppets in front of him while retreating.
Whenever he tried to destroy one, two more filled the gap it left behind.
Ise summoned Fire Release Art and attempted to melt the puppets with flames.
But apparently they weren’t made of ordinary steel, because they continued charging through the blazing red flames without a care.
Ise used the Floating Art of the Wind-Shattering Qi Art to lift his body into the air before firing Wind Blades in succession.
Sharp currents of wind scraped across the puppets’ surfaces, but they merely left small scratches.
“Wahahaha!
Die!”
Wang Gyu shouted excitedly.
Like someone watching a fire across the river, he merely controlled the puppets with his divine sense.
Perhaps that alone was taxing enough, because he never directly joined the battle.
‘What a nuisance.’
There were too many puppets to use primordial qi, which required time before and after deployment, and Ise didn’t want to reveal that trump card before suppressing Wang Gyu himself.
It was a lesson he had learned from his spar with Cheongun.
A hidden trump card had to remain hidden until the very last moment.
‘Should I sever his divine sense?’ You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Ise stepped on the puppets and leaped upward.
He enlarged the Black-Scale Axe with Size-Altering Art and used Severing Art to sever all the connections between the puppets and Wang Gyu’s divine sense at once.
The puppets’ movements stopped for an instant.
Taking advantage of the opening, Ise charged toward Wang Gyu like a bolt of lightning.
Thud!
A burning pain shot through the sole of his foot.
A puppet that had been hidden beneath the floorboards had thrust its blade upward.
The blade pierced through the sole and came out through the top of his foot.
The puppet was quite cunning.
Ise stomped down again to pull his pierced foot free.
Apparently, the blade had been tampered with somehow, because the moment he lifted his foot, a chunk of bone and flesh tore away with it.
Just before another puppet thrust its opposite blade toward Ise, his Small Axe severed Wang Gyu’s divine sense first.
The puppets that reconnected their divine sense a moment later rushed toward him and surrounded him.
‘Quite troublesome.’
It was practically a walking one-man army.
And this was merely a Foundation Establishment puppet master.
What kind of monsters existed at the realms above this?
Ise once again made up his mind that he would avoid getting entangled with puppet masters whenever possible.
Ise took out the Twin-Curtain Spirit-Domain Sealing Banner and drove it into the ground.
Once the demonic qi wandering through the space was sealed, the movements of the puppets that had been borrowing that energy gradually slowed.
Sensing the abnormal flow of energy, the puppet master hurriedly began rummaging through his Storage Pouch.
Before he could do anything, Ise’s Black-Scale Axe, enlarged with Size-Altering Art, began spinning fiercely like a top.
Gaaaaaaar—
The enormous axe tore through the puppets with a deafening roar.
The sturdy steel puppets were reduced one after another to heaps of scrap metal, rolling across the ground.
At the sight of the puppets being swept away like fallen leaves before an autumn wind, Wang Gyu’s eyes bulged as though they might pop out.
Ise took advantage of the opening, sharpening his spiritual qi as he strode forward and closed the distance.
Wang Gyu hurriedly tried to use a talisman he had pulled from his Storage Pouch, but he was one step too late.
Ise spread both hands wide and infused Vajra Shattering into the edges of his palms.
The next moment, slash—
Both of Wang Gyu’s hands were severed at the wrists.
“Aaaagh!”
Before his scream had even finished, Ise tripped him, knocked him to the ground, and firmly planted a foot on his chest to pin him down.
He then retrieved the Black-Scale Axe that had been circling through the air.
“If you want to live, you’d better stay still, right?”
Wang Gyu, his demonic qi sealed, his wrists gone, and his body pinned to the ground, looked up at Ise with a bloodless face.
“Spare me.
I truly don’t possess a Heart-Severing Art manual.
…I’ll hand over my Storage Pouch.
Just spare my life…”
Ise responded to Wang Gyu, who had acknowledged his defeat and become respectful, with a benevolent expression.
“I heard there are rulers in Areas 4 and 5.
Tell me their names and locations.”
It was a question meant to cross-check the information.
Wang Gyu readily spilled everything, as though there were nothing left to hide.
There were five late-stage Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators.
Puppet Master Wang Gyu.
Gyeondonwoo, called Ox-Head and marked by a black shoulder sash.
An expert in Blood Arts, known simply as the Blood-Drinking Madman.
Cheon Uibaek, who lived hidden in Area 5.
And the female demonic cultivator nicknamed the Military Strategist Among Flowers, Jin Yeonhwa.
“Gyeondonwoo?
How can someone’s name be Dog, Pig, Ox?”
Ise let out a hollow laugh at the names and nicknames that came out of his mouth.
The fact that one was called the Military Strategist Among Flowers instead of the Commander Among Flowers was amusing enough, but Dog, Pig, Ox?
“Are you sure there are five?”
“Yes, yes…”
That was one more than the number the old woman had mentioned.
Had she deliberately hidden one, or had she simply not known?
He would need to verify it.
“Has any new demonic cultivator risen to prominence recently?”
“No!
They’re all old hands who have been here forever!”
She had deliberately hidden it.
A cold light settled in Ise’s eyes.
“I see.
Thank you.
“Th-then will you let me live now?”
“Of course.
You cooperated honestly, so I’ll spare your life.
However, you’ll have to abandon your Dharma-Transformation Dantian and live as an ordinary mortal.”
“What?!”
For a demonic cultivator, having one’s Dharma-Transformation Dantian abolished meant suffering worse than death.
Was there any demonic cultivator in this place that hadn’t accumulated at least one irreconcilable grudge in the course of living here?
“How can you do this?
What grudge do you have against me?!”
“Then you should have taken the opportunity when I gave it to you.
I don’t normally kill someone who doesn’t attack me first.
But there are exceptions.
As for demonic cultivators, I kill them whenever they appear before me.
That’s my principle.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Still pinned beneath Ise’s foot, Wang Gyu gritted his teeth and tried to rise.
Ise’s hand was faster.
The Great Exorcist Order’s secret technique for definitively cutting off the lifeline of a completely subdued demonic cultivator.
The Root-Severing Meridian-Cutting Art.
When Ise pressed his palm against Wang Gyu’s forehead, the man’s Dharma-Transformation Dantian exploded into fragments.
The path of cultivation he had spent his entire life building was brutally severed beneath that palm.
“Guh… aaaargh—!”
Wang Gyu thrashed in agony, tears and mucus streaming down his face.
‘I’d like to eliminate him cleanly for the sake of avoiding future trouble, but… rules are rules.’
The law of Area 4 prohibited killing.
What Ise had done was practically equivalent to killing him, but technically, he had still obeyed the rules.
Ise left Wang Gyu unconscious from the shock and checked his Storage Pouch.
There was no Heart-Severing Art manual.
Ise sighed in disappointment, but instead found two cultivation manuals related to puppet manipulation.
One was a puppet artifact-refining cultivation manual that was close to an orthodox technique.
The other was a modified version that Wang Gyu had altered into a demonic art after falling into corruption.
There was also a pile of magical artifacts used for controlling puppets.
‘I’ll give these to Seoryeong.’
Ise stored Wang Gyu’s Storage Pouch in one corner of his Universe Pouch.
She was weak, so they would be of considerable help to her.
Since he was already there, Ise thoroughly searched the main residence.
A full 20,000 spirit stones came pouring out.
He had been a demonic cultivator with even deeper pockets than most city lords of Foundation Establishment cities.
After finishing with the spoils, Ise surveyed the fortress where the formation had been installed.
‘This place looks good.’
It was reasonably large and spacious, already had a formation array in place, and since it had belonged to one of the area’s rulers, random troublemakers would be unlikely to casually target it.
Ise decided to use it as his new temporary residence.
His gaze turned toward Wang Gyu.
He was certainly a demonic cultivator who deserved to die, but Ise had promised to let him live, so he intended to at least uphold his side of the bargain.
Instead of using a Regeneration Pill, he placed a cheaper Healing Pill into Wang Gyu’s mouth and slowly regenerated his arms.
He shaved his head completely bald and removed his eyebrows as well.
Then he crushed his cheekbones and jawbone, altering the shape of his face.
His appearance changed so dramatically that he looked like an entirely different person.
Finally, Ise used the Memory-Erasing Talisman he had purchased in Tiandaogyeong in preparation for infiltrating the valley, erasing all of Wang Gyu’s memories.
He then slapped his cheek and woke him.
“Hey.
You shouldn’t sleep in someone else’s house.”
Wang Gyu looked bewildered as he was thrown out of his own home.
***
After infusing the formation array with magical power and changing its owner, Ise immediately headed toward the village of the Rotting Ones.
He intended to investigate the old woman who had lied to him and tried to deceive him.
The old woman looked at Ise nervously, and he immediately used Mind-Reading Art.
But it didn’t work.
‘Mind-Reading Art doesn’t work on an ordinary mortal?’
This place was unquestionably suspicious.
But he needed to proceed carefully.
He had no idea who was connected to whom.
“Wang Gyu didn’t have a Heart-Severing Art.
Tell me the remaining targets.
It’s troublesome to keep coming back and forth.”
“As I told you—”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you.
Not only you, but everyone here.”
It was mostly an intimidation tactic, but if necessary, Ise was prepared to make an example out of one or two crippled demonic cultivators.
The old woman endured Ise’s emotionless gaze before slowly lowering her head.