“…I’ll tell you.”
In the end, the old woman lowered her head and obediently revealed everything she knew.
Gyeondonwoo.
The Blood-Drinking Madman.
Cheon Uibaek.
She named the three along with the locations where they lived.
As expected, one was missing.
Even when faced with the threat of death, the old woman had not mentioned Jin Yeonhwa, the female demon beast known as the Military Strategist Among Flowers.
Ise suppressed his feelings toward the old woman who had deceived him and calmly organized his thoughts.
Everything he had seen so far.
The phenomena he had overlooked at the time, but which had left him with a sense of incongruity.
Various hypotheses mixed together like pigments, and from among them he derived the conclusion that best fit the evidence.
Rather than interrogating the old woman about her schemes, Ise decided to seek out Jin Yeonhwa himself.
Instead of blindly trusting the information coming from someone who had already deceived him, he judged that it would be safer to verify everything with his own eyes.
According to the information he had obtained from Wang Gyu, Jin Yeonhwa occasionally appeared at an inn near the entrance to Area 4.
He spread his divine sense wide and went through the cultivators it encountered one by one, checking their identities and appearances.
Even though it was relatively easy for demonic cultivators to reach the Foundation Establishment Realm, most of the demonic cultivators in Area 4 remained at the early stage.
Simply estimating the size of their divine senses should make finding Jin Yeonhwa relatively easy.
Unless they were deliberately concealing themselves, Foundation Establishment cultivators normally spread their divine senses as widely as possible.
Reducing one’s divine sense was like holding one’s breath for a cultivator.
Ise moved rapidly, fast enough that his targets had difficulty reacting, checking the divine senses of the Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators one after another.
Eventually, he encountered a divine sense whose size suggested a late-stage cultivator.
The instant their divine senses touched, the other side immediately contracted its divine sense as though fleeing.
Ise nevertheless walked steadily toward its center.
He was standing in the middle of a street.
The mysterious divine sense was beneath his feet, underground.
Looking around, he saw a street lined with several inns that were impossible to tell whether they were operating and a number of empty houses.
The most conspicuous place was one perfectly intact inn.
The same inn Ise had first chosen upon entering Area 4.
The inn supposedly operated by an exceptionally beautiful yellow-sashed demonic cultivator.
‘There are watchers.’
Even when he had first entered Area 4, he had occasionally felt strange gazes.
Now they had become even more pronounced.
His suspicion became certainty.
Jin Yeonhwa, the Military Strategist Among Flowers.
She had deliberately approached him.
She had known about his presence from the moment he entered Magok City, deliberately sent the Rotting Ones to arouse his curiosity, and guided him into investigating them.
She had intended to use Ise, who had been drawn in this way, to eliminate her other competitors.
She was probably also the one who had created the Rotting Ones.
He needed to determine exactly why she had deliberately approached him.
Whether there was another reason.
How much she knew about him.
If necessary, he was even prepared to eliminate her.
Ise entered the inn without hesitation.
A wooden sign reading “Closed” had been placed on the reception counter.
Looking again, it seemed as though the inn had never truly been operating in the first place.
He tore open the locked door leading to the guest rooms, revealing a staircase leading to the second floor.
And beneath it lay a double formation.
A secret passage concealed by a Foundation Establishment Illusion Formation and blocked by a barrier formation.
The most valuable possessions were usually stored in places locked up this securely.
Ise created an opening in the barrier with a Formation-Breaking Talisman and entered the passage.
Beneath a dead-end wall created by the illusion, a staircase appeared.
He continued down the passage.
Before long, a vast underground facility spread out before him.
Who would have thought that such a large lair had been excavated beneath a shabby inn?
There were quite a few demonic humans within the range of his divine sense.
Judging from nothing more than the number of subordinates under her command, it was easy to estimate Jin Yeonhwa’s position within Area 4.
At the end of the passage, which grew wider and wider, two female Qi Condensation demonic cultivators wearing yellow and white sashes blocked his path.
“Senior, what brings you here?
I’m sorry, but unless you have an appointment in advance, you cannot go any farther.”
“I never gave you permission to block my path.”
As he spoke, he released spiritual pressure and slammed the two demonic cultivators into the ground.
It was an amount of pressure that Qi Condensation cultivators could never withstand.
The two demonic cultivators were pressed flat against the ground without even managing a proper groan.
Ise continued walking as though nothing had happened.
As he ventured deeper, several early-stage Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators emerged and blocked the way.
‘They’re all female demonic cultivators.’
Ise realized that every demonic cultivator within the underground facility was female.
He spread his divine sense throughout the facility, located Jin Yeonhwa hiding somewhere deeper inside, and sent her a Voice Transmission.
– Do you think you can stop me?
He gripped the Black-Scale Axe threateningly and took one step forward.
The Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators blocking his path slowly retreated to either side, their expressions twisted as though they had bitten into something rotten.
At the deepest part of the underground facility—
Jin Yeonhwa was seated inside a spacious chamber.
Beside her, a late-stage Qi Condensation female demonic cultivator who appeared to be her personal attendant quietly served her.
The chamber was neat and orderly, without any unnecessary decorations.
Seeing an interior that looked almost like the residence of a noble family from the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula in the middle of the vicious Magok City only made the unsettling feeling stronger.
Jin Yeonhwa was desperately trying to control her expression, but she couldn’t conceal even the slightest disturbance in her state of mind.
Ise calmly gazed at Jin Yeonhwa and spoke almost as though murmuring to himself.
“He said you were different.
You’re not particularly beautiful either.”
“…”
Jin Yeonhwa said nothing, merely staring at him with an unreadable gaze.
Objectively speaking, his master and Lord Uyuhui were both far more beautiful.
He had deliberately thrown out the remark to slightly disturb her state of mind, borrowing the words of one of her subordinates, but she maintained her composure.
“Who are you?
What brings you here?”
At Jin Yeonhwa’s gesture, the subordinate who had been standing quietly brought some water and placed it on the table before Ise.
Ise pushed the cup aside and quietly called her by name.
“Jin Yeonhwa.”
Even though her own name had been spoken, her expression remained as calm as a lake.
That composure only strengthened Ise’s certainty.
“Yes.
I am Jin Yeonhwa.
What brings you here?”
“Why did you approach me?”
“My, what makes you say that?”
“The demon beast at the inn I entered.
You planted it there, didn’t you?
You must have sent that beggar afflicted with the Rotting Disease too.”
“Me?
Weren’t you the one who came to the inn of your own accord?”
At her shameless denial, Ise twisted one corner of his mouth in a mocking smile.
“The venomous hostility I sensed from that old woman is practically pouring from your demonic qi too.
Where are you going to run with that excuse?
It didn’t matter which inn I entered anyway.
You had informants planted everywhere.”
He hadn’t noticed it at the time because he had hurriedly withdrawn his divine sense, but there had clearly been no one inside the inn that his divine sense could detect.
Contrary to what the demon beast had told him about the innkeeper being upstairs dealing with her inner demon, there had been no one there from the beginning.
There was only one reason she would have bothered lying.
To lure him in and buy time to make use of him.
She had infiltrated the place specifically to approach him from the beginning.
Jin Yeonhwa had planted someone there specifically to deliberately leak information about the Rotting Ones and their location.
“Are you connected to the valley?”
“Why do you think that?”
“You couldn’t have known about my presence beforehand unless the sentries had reported that a new late-stage Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator had entered Magok City.”
“Hmm.”
“When a new late-stage Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator appeared, you put me under surveillance, didn’t you?
‘A wandering cultivator with no home or sect who has reached the late stage of Foundation Establishment.
He must have considerable strength.’ That’s what you thought.”
This wasn’t a chain of contrived coincidences.
Southern Area 4 was Jin Yeonhwa’s sphere of influence.
She had meticulously cast a net that he was bound to fall into and simply waited.
The inn and the Rotting Ones were only pieces of that net.
Through surveillance that had continued since Area 5, she had quickly assessed Ise’s personality and carefully devised a way to entangle him.
She assumed he would become curious upon seeing the Rotting Ones.
She even predicted that he would withdraw his divine sense if he heard that someone was upstairs engaging in dual cultivation.
An ordinary demonic cultivator would have tried to peek instead.
And even if that failed, she would undoubtedly have prepared additional measures layered on top of one another.
Perhaps the entire process had been designed to observe and evaluate him.
Her title of Military Strategist Among Flowers was certainly not an exaggeration.
There was only one mistake.
“…”
“If you were a wandering cultivator, you’d naturally want to go deeper inside and obtain a Heart-Severing Art.
You tried to use that psychology to make me naturally intervene and eliminate your competitors.
Even if you failed, you had nothing to lose.”
She had simply chosen the wrong target.
That was the method of hunters who laid traps and waited for their prey.
And Ise was a proper hunter who had been raised as a spirit exorcist from the age of ten.
“The Rotting Ones were your creation too, weren’t they?
You threatened them to extract profit from them.
At this point, I’m curious. Get faster updates on g.com.
What else are you doing here?”
Instead of questioning Jin Yeonhwa, Ise pressured the subordinate beside her.
“You answer.
Isn’t that right?”
But when directly confronted with his gaze, the subordinate lowered her head and played dumb.
“I know nothing.”
A lie.
Ise used Mind-Reading Art and relentlessly pressed her.
“Then deny it if I’m wrong.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Senior.
This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Even as she said that, her pupils trembled slightly.
There was no need to use Mind-Reading Art to dig through her thoughts any further.
Of course, the result of the Mind-Reading Art had been a lie.
“Soyang.
That’s enough.
He’s using Mind-Reading Art.”
“…”
Only then did the demon beast called Soyang fall silent.
“Hmm.
An intelligent person has entered, unlike the thick-headed fools of Magok City.
Some of what you said is correct.
I did try to use you to eliminate them.
I never dreamed you’d see through it so quickly.
Is that why you came here for revenge?”
“There’s no reason for revenge.
You haven’t done anything harmful to me yet.
Of course, I’d like nothing more than to cut off your head, but consider the rules of Area 4 what saved your life.
Do you have a Heart-Severing Art manual?”
“Yes.”
She readily admitted the truth.
“I’ll give you 10,000 spirit stones.
Sell it to me.
Then I’ll overlook the fact that you deceived me.”
“I’ll decline.
But how about we make a different deal?”
When Ise silently listened, Jin Yeonhwa continued in a slightly excited voice.
“If you eliminate the other late-stage Foundation Establishment demon beasts, I’ll simply give you the Heart-Severing Art.
And if there’s anything else you need, you can ask.”
“Why would I take the long way around when there’s an easier path right in front of me?”
On the surface, she pretended to be gentle and composed.
But the demon beast before him was a vicious demonic cultivator who had even inflicted the curse of the Rotting Disease upon ordinary people.
She was the quintessential demonic cultivator who couldn’t be trusted, having approached him and schemed against him from behind the scenes.
For his own safety, it was better not to become entangled with someone like this.
In truth, even letting her off this easily required a fair amount of patience.
If this weren’t Magok City, Ise wouldn’t have left a single one of Jin Yeonhwa’s subordinates alive.
“I’ll say it again.
Hand it over while I’m asking nicely.
I’ve already assessed your forces.
Even combined, they’re weaker than Wang Gyu alone.”
“…”
“Aren’t you curious what happened to Wang Gyu?”
Ise gradually raised the pressure he was releasing.
Demonic qi greedily surged around him, as though screaming that it wanted to devour the demon beast before him immediately and seize her power.
Soyang’s body began trembling under the growing pressure, while Jin Yeonhwa swallowed hard from the tension.
Just as Ise felt his patience nearing its limit, Jin Yeonhwa opened her red lips with a faint sigh.
“I haven’t been watching you for very long, but you seemed like someone who still upheld certain principles, even as a demon beast.
Could you tell me why you’re refusing?”
“After seeing me properly, what explanation do you need?”
A helpless laugh escaped Ise.
She dared speak of principles without even considering what she herself had done.
“You watched me without permission, schemed behind my back to use me, and even dragged unrelated ordinary people into this, causing them to contract the Rotting Disease, then threatened and exploited them.”
The lives of the Rotting Ones were utterly horrific.
Their flesh rotted away, they lived surrounded by foul stench and filthy conditions, and even attempting to beg for food meant being prepared to endure people throwing stones at them.
The crippled demonic cultivators were one thing.
But most of the ordinary people among them were elderly or children.
He didn’t even expect them to possess a true moral heart.
But anyone who still had a human heart simply could not behave that way.
“I’ve seen plenty of self-indulgent demon beasts, but you’re the worst among them.
You’re completely untrustworthy.
What makes you think I’d work with someone like you?”
Even beneath Ise’s scathing condemnation, Jin Yeonhwa merely maintained her calm expression and silently accepted his sharp words.