Geom Ujin was fighting alongside him as well.
Though he had only been watching, in his heart he had shared his son’s battle.
He had thrust his sword with him, and blocked the swords that came flying in.
Because they had moved as one in that way, he was able to react faster than anyone.
The instant he felt every last bit of strength drain from his son’s body.
Geom Ujin’s figure was already cutting through the air like a bolt of lightning.
Before Geom Mugeuk could collapse, Geom Ujin had already caught his son in his arms.
With one hand he held his son, and with the Heavenly Demon Sword in his other hand, he sent it flying toward Hwa Mugi’s throat.
Shiiik!
Hwa Mugi did not dodge, standing rooted to the spot.
It was a situation in which Geom Ujin, swept up in emotion, might have pierced his throat with the sword, but Hwa Mugi was certain he would not kill him. He trusted in his opponent’s skill. Trusted that he would respond calmly no matter the situation.
Sure enough, the Heavenly Demon Sword stopped at a point that seemed just shy of touching his throat.
Gazing at Geom Ujin, who stood beyond the cold blade aimed at him, Hwa Mugi spoke calmly.
“If you kill me, your son dies.”
Geom Ujin could tell at a glance that there was almost no internal energy left in Hwa Mugi’s body.
‘That one move took everything he had.’
And as a result, his son lay unconscious in his arms.
“Even if you lay a hand on my body, your son dies.”
Geom Ujin merely stared at him with indifferent eyes and showed no reaction. Rather, now that things had come to this, he had grown even colder.
In the meantime, the Fist Demon approached and took Geom Mugeuk into his arms.
After carefully examining Geom Mugeuk’s condition, the Fist Demon spoke calmly.
“There are no external injuries, but he has completely lost consciousness.”
Jin Paecheon, Baek Jagang, the Pungcheon Cult Leader, the Poison King, and the Sword King also approached Geom Mugeuk. The sight of the ever-talkative Geom Mugeuk with his eyes closed and his mouth shut truly did not suit him. To varying degrees, each of them was worried about Geom Mugeuk.
Next, the Poison King stepped forward and examined Geom Mugeuk.
“He has not been poisoned.”
Unlike usual, the Poison King’s voice was slightly raised. Open irritation showed in his gaze toward Hwa Mugi. It was almost the first time he had ever revealed his emotions like this with Geom Ujin beside him.
Hwa Mugi said to Geom Ujin,
“Your son is inside my body.”
At those words, the Pungcheon Cult Leader guessed what Hwa Mugi’s secret art was.
“The Dark Heaven Soul-Binding Art! A secret art of the Dark Palace that traps a person’s soul inside the body.”
The Pungcheon Cult Leader added in a slightly tense voice,
“If it truly is the Dark Heaven Soul-Binding Art, he must break it and come out within one double-hour. If he cannot come out… he will be trapped inside that man’s body forever.”
As if to say he had guessed correctly, Hwa Mugi provoked Geom Ujin.
“I wonder. Can the Demon Cult Leader of this era truly kill his enemy when his child’s soul is inside that enemy’s body?”
Hwa Mugi spread both arms wide, as if daring him to kill him if he could.
Geom Ujin silently stared at Hwa Mugi. Now that his opponent’s internal energy had hit bottom, killing him would take no more than the flick of a hand.
At that moment, when taut tension filled the air, Jin Paecheon stepped forward.
“Cult Leader Geom is not someone bound by personal sentiment, so he may well kill you.”
Of course, he had not stepped forward to lend weight to Hwa Mugi’s provocation.
“But there is no need for that. The Young Cult Leader will certainly break your sorcery and come out.”
Hwa Mugi’s gaze moved past Geom Ujin to Jin Paecheon.
“Then there is no need to worry.”
Hwa Mugi’s confident demeanor was more than enough to make everyone uneasy.
If this side had Geom Mugeuk, the other side had the Heavenly Slaughter Star, who had come alone to the main altar of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
This time, the Pungcheon Cult Leader stepped forward.
“Are you sure about this? If the Young Cult Leader gets trapped inside you, he’ll be chattering away all day, every day. Are you confident you can live with him for the rest of your life? Don’t come crying later, begging us to take him back. Hurry up and hand over the Young Cult Leader.”
No one took the Pungcheon Cult Leader’s words as a joke.
“The Young Cult Leader is not someone a person can handle alone.”
They agreed wholeheartedly with the Pungcheon Cult Leader’s words.
Putting everything else aside, if Geom Mugeuk’s soul were to endlessly pour curses out from inside one’s mind? That would truly not be easy to endure.
Geom Ujin asked Hwa Mugi,
“What do you want?”
Hwa Mugi said something unexpected.
“Release me, and I will release the Young Cult Leader as well.”
Astonishingly, Hwa Mugi was trying to use Geom Mugeuk as a hostage to escape this place.
It felt unexpected. Whether he survived alone, or whether he killed them all, he had seemed like the Heavenly Slaughter Star who would see things through to the end here. And yet he was planning for the future.
“If you do not release me at once, the Young Cult Leader dies!”
The instant those words ended.
Thud!
Geom Ujin’s fist smashed into his face. Hwa Mugi flew through the air and rolled across the ground.
No one had expected Geom Ujin to strike him without warning, and they all looked at Geom Ujin in shock.
Fortunately, it had not been a fist infused with internal energy, so his head was not smashed apart.
He had said that even if they touched his body, he would kill Geom Mugeuk.
Geom Ujin was certain he could not do so.
Striding over, Geom Ujin grabbed him by the collar as he lay on the ground and hauled him up.
Though it had been a fist without internal energy behind it, Hwa Mugi had also taken the blow without protective qi, so he looked at Geom Ujin with his face wounded.
Geom Ujin sensed that this Heavenly Slaughter Star had not used this method simply to escape this place. He did not know what it was, but the bastard was plotting something. Some dangerous plan that stirred his instinct for crisis.
Without showing any of that, Geom Ujin said coldly,
“Whether Mugeuk breaks it and comes out, or fails to come out…”
After a brief pause, Geom Ujin spoke coldly.
“One double-hour from now, you die.”
The Fist Demon walked over and sealed Hwa Mugi’s acupoints. It was possible he might recover his internal energy even while standing there.
The Fist Demon knew that what Geom Ujin had just said was sincere. It was an action and words made possible because he trusted his son more than anyone. Because he believed Geom Mugeuk would certainly break it and come out.
But he also knew the opposite case was sincere as well.
Even if Geom Mugeuk failed to break it and come out, the Cult Leader truly would cut off Hwa Mugi’s head. Because he was a Cult Leader who would not allow his son to live inside the body of the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
Your son would not want that either.
Geom Ujin would surely think so.
That was why the Fist Demon sincerely wished it.
‘So, Mugeuk, you must get out.’
***
No one had expected Ju Gasin to step forward, so everyone’s eyes focused on him.
Geom Mugeuk asked him for a favor. The place in this world within Hwa Mugi’s mind that had changed the least.
“Can you guide us there?”
At Geom Mugeuk’s request, Ju Gasin nodded.
He had spoken up in the first place because he had intended to tell him the location.
“I can.”
When Ju Gasin readily agreed, Geom Mugeuk asked with an apologetic expression,
“But won’t there be any disadvantage to you if you help me like this? Like being locked up in some dungeon somewhere.”
Ju Gasin said nothing. The one who answered instead was the Martial Emperor Divine Sword.
“He may even receive a reward instead.”
The Martial Emperor Divine Sword did not trust Ju Gasin.
“Because we cannot be certain whether he is truly helping you.”
He could lead them to some absurd place and waste their time. The Martial Emperor Divine Sword was inwardly uneasy, thinking that might be the case. Even though they had spent such a long time together, he still did not really know what kind of person Ju Gasin was, or what he was thinking.
This matter was the same. He could not tell what his intent was in trying to help Geom Mugeuk.
Geom Mugeuk, on the other hand, was not uneasy.
“That will not happen.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because if that happens, it won’t be me, but Cult Leader Hyeok who torments him for years to come.”
Because Hyeok Docheon was desperate to get out of this place. Sure enough, Hyeok Docheon was glaring at Ju Gasin with eyes that said he would not let him off if he lied.
Geom Mugeuk looked at the others and said,
“Will you come with us?”
Aside from Hyeok Docheon, who had clearly demanded to be let outside, the others had yet to express any intention.
Naturally, Hyeok Docheon stepped forward and said he would go, and the Martial Emperor Divine Sword also intended to help Geom Mugeuk to the very end. The Cheonui Palace Lord likewise decided to go with them.
“We have no time, so let us go with qinggong.”
Geom Mugeuk held out his hands to both sides. Everyone was startled at the sight.
“Surely not? You want us to go holding hands?”
“You have no internal energy, do you? I can’t very well tuck you under my arms and carry you.”
In this place, the souls behaved exactly like living people, but they had no internal energy.
Geom Mugeuk, however, could still use not only internal energy but martial arts as well. If he put his mind to it, he could destroy this entire world within the mind.
Of course, since it was within the mind, all sorts of things would form again, but it would become a world different from the one before them now.
The Martial Emperor Divine Sword, who stood to Geom Mugeuk’s right, took Geom Mugeuk’s hand without hesitation.
By contrast, Hyeok Docheon, who stood on the other side, hesitated.
“Are you doing this deliberately to make things awkward for us? Use Void Grasping to take us along. With your martial arts, that should be more than enough.”
Geom Mugeuk rejected him at once.
“We do not know what might happen, so I cannot waste internal energy like that for no reason. If you do not like it, you may stay here. I will go with these two Alliance Leaders.”
In the end, Hyeok Docheon took Geom Mugeuk’s hand. Rather, taking this strange Young Cult Leader’s hand was comparatively easy. The problem was Ju Gasin’s hand, which he had to hold with his other hand.
But Ju Gasin took his hand without much deliberation. He could not have been pleased about holding Hyeok Docheon’s hand, yet he did not hesitate.
‘An incomprehensible bastard!’
Hyeok Docheon likewise did not know Ju Gasin’s true thoughts.
The final hurdle was the Martial Emperor Divine Sword and the Cheonui Palace Lord.
Under normal circumstances, she was someone he would not have held hands with even in death, but the Martial Emperor Divine Sword willingly extended his hand.
“Take it.”
The Martial Emperor Divine Sword placed helping Geom Mugeuk above his own feelings. He felt it. That fate had given him one final mission: to help this Young Cult Leader.
Had she sensed the Martial Emperor Divine Sword’s heart, so different from usual? Or perhaps she simply had no desire to be left out of this matter. The Cheonui Palace Lord also took the Martial Emperor Divine Sword’s hand.
“Now then, here we go!”
When Geom Mugeuk flew upward, all of them rose into the air with him. At first they thought it was madness, but the cool wind blew all such thoughts away.
How long had it been since they had flown?
How much had they wanted to fly freely like this?
Earlier, they had borrowed Hwa Mugi’s body and fought, but this was their first time flying through the air and soaring across their own world like this.
For the first time, they were holding hands with those they had spent three hundred years with, and for the first time, they were flying through the sky together. It was truly a strange feeling.
Just then, the weather suddenly changed, and dark clouds gathered in an instant.
As if they would never permit their flight.
With a flash, lightning struck.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang!
When Geom Mugeuk twisted his body in midair, the lightning brushed past them.
“What happens if we die here?”
At Geom Mugeuk’s urgent question, the Martial Emperor Divine Sword answered.
“We come back to life after some time. Sometimes immediately, and sometimes after several days.”
Though they had no internal energy, it seemed they had killed one another before. Perhaps those fights had been even more desperate.
“We absolutely cannot die within one double-hour!”
Geom Mugeuk made clear his determination to take them all out.
Flash! Flash!
Rumble! Kwa-kwang!
Whether it was Hwa Mugi interfering, or the Dark Heaven Soul-Binding Art itself interfering, lightning continued to strike down at them.
But the person flying while carrying them was Geom Mugeuk. Moreover, though they were flying by using Geom Mugeuk’s internal energy, they were all people who had been Cult Leaders, Alliance Leaders, and Palace Lords.
Lightning could not break their will to go forward. They became one and wove between the bolts of lightning. If someone had seen it, it would have been a sight impossible to believe.
“It is there.”
Geom Mugeuk descended with everyone to the place Ju Gasin pointed to.
They had literally flown through the sky and arrived there in an instant.
“I thought we would be going to that castle.”
He had expected to be taken to the castle on the hill far beyond the swamp. It was an ancient castle that looked as though it had been there for a very long time.
But the place Ju Gasin guided them to was not a mountain floating in the sky, nor a complex maze, nor that grotesque castle.
It was a village. The village beyond the field where corpses lay strewn about, where smoke had been rising. Corpses were strewn about there as well.
Hyeok Docheon looked around and said,
“Yes, come to think of it, this village was here from the beginning.”
The stench of rotting corpses had been so terrible that they had not gone near it. Furthermore, there was nothing special here. It was simply a small rural village, a place where corpses lay scattered about as though it had endured a war.
Then Ju Gasin suddenly said,
“This place has changed a great deal too.”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward Ju Gasin.
“The roads changed, and the houses and these walls changed little by little as well. At times the roads narrowed, and the walls grew higher or lower. But the basic terrain of this village remained the same.”
Geom Mugeuk could tell. Ju Gasin had come here many times.
Perhaps Ju Gasin was the one who had wandered through this mental world the most, searching for a way to escape.
“Alliance Leader, did you also want to get out of this place?”
Ju Gasin said to Geom Mugeuk,
“Who would not?”
Geom Mugeuk’s gaze turned back toward the village.
“If it has been here from the beginning, then this must be a place the Heavenly Slaughter Star cannot forget.”
At Geom Mugeuk’s words, everyone nodded.
“Could it be his hometown?”
At that, Hyeok Docheon spoke as if he had finally understood.
“The Dark Palace Lord must have massacred his family and the villagers when he took him away. In order to further stoke the killing intent of the Heavenly Slaughter.”
The Martial Emperor Divine Sword’s expression hardened. He was in pain. If that were true, then they could not say they had nothing to do with the massacre of this innocent village.
But words that would relieve his anguish flowed from Geom Mugeuk’s mouth.
“I think this place may not be his hometown.”
Everyone’s eyes focused on Geom Mugeuk at his unexpected words. He had a reason for thinking so.
“The Dark Palace Lord I experienced was a man who used everyone except himself. If the Heavenly Slaughter Star had a family, he would have used them instead of killing them.”
Meaning he would not have slaughtered them so indiscriminately like this. The Martial Emperor Divine Sword asked with a puzzled look,
“If it is not his hometown, then what is this place?”
If it was a place that had occupied his heart for so long?
“I believe it is the place where he committed his first murder.”