Seongcheon Yun Clan (1)
To become a practitioner who, rather than being satisfied with the chakra naturally acquired while earning a living, earnestly pursued the elevation of one’s realm was by no means an easy thing.
Chakra was a supernatural ability open to anyone with the possibility of entry, but that did not mean everyone could rise to a high realm.
That was especially true of lightning, a force that was exceptionally destructive even among the powers of nature.
In the Yun Clan, it was common to see people go out on stormy days holding lightning rods, deliberately getting struck by lightning. That said it all.
Lucette, born with innate talent, had adapted relatively quickly from the entry stage, but that aptitude and the pain she must have felt since childhood were separate matters.
After all, she had to repeat training that was no different from electrical torture for an ordinary person every single day without fail.
Something that would have been condemned as child abuse on Earth was only natural here in Sabacheon.
During that time, when she was in the midst of suffering through such harsh training.
There had been a presence that comforted her as she was slowly being crushed beneath the heavy expectations surrounding her innate talent.
It was a tiny baby who could not even properly support his own body on his own. [The situation looks quite serious, doesn’t it? That young master begged me so much that I came to take a look… If I hadn’t come, this could have been disastrous.]
The small, warm hand that had toddled toward her as if about to fall at any moment and patted her weary cheek.
There were many orphanages within the Yun Clan, and even more children living there, but the baby who approached her back then felt somehow different from the other children. ‘Perhaps it was a sense of kinship.’ Thinking back on it now, it may have been a kind of resonance born from possessing the same aptitude for lightning.
Considering what that child… Yun Sohoe, later accomplished, that interpretation was only reasonable.
In any case, what mattered was that, at the time, she had received a great deal of comfort from that child, and thanks to that, she had been able to reach her current position. [Hello? Miss Lucette? Are you listening?] […Yes, I am listening.] [Ah! That’s a relief. I wondered if the barrier was preventing proper communication. By the way, you seem very accustomed to sending thought intent.] [I’ve had a few similar experiences, you see. No, more importantly, what is going on? Why are you here, Mr. Hun…]
She had been waiting for support to arrive.
The reason she had endured and held out until now, dragging things out as much as she could, was all because she expected that once her regular reports stopped, support would be dispatched before long.
But she had never expected that support to be Hun, who had only recently entered the Yun Clan as a guest retainer. [There were various circumstances. It’s complicated to explain everything right now.] […I see. It seems less time has passed outside than I thought.] [You’re quick to catch on. The time difference with the space you’re in seems to be about eight times.] [Eight times…]
It was just as she had expected.
However, as Lucette exchanged thought intent with Hun, she suddenly felt a slight sense of dissonance. ‘Putting aside the fact that he connected communication through the barrier…’ In truth, that alone was already impressive enough.
Was this place not a trap so perfectly prepared that even she, a deep-tier practitioner, had been unable to find an opening and was trapped here? ‘But he does have a record of overwhelming numerous upper-tier ability users. He must have some special method.’ She could force herself to accept that much.
What gave her that sense of dissonance was what came next. ‘With that much of a time difference, how is communication this smooth?’ No matter how much it was not a conversation carried out by voice, it would have been normal for some sign of it to show at this level.
Yet the communication with him was so natural that she had not even been conscious of it until just now.
As if it were something so familiar it had already seeped into the body.
“…What is this? Who are you conversing with right now?”
But that line of thought did not last long.
A high, thin, androgynous voice burrowed into her ears.
Standing in confrontation with Lucette, General Buryeong, who had been focusing on her every movement, furrowed his brow as his green eyes, engraved with concentric circles, flashed.
The communication had been fast and covert, but it was impossible to completely deceive the senses of a powerhouse of his caliber.
“Kkeuk, it seems a rat has snuck in.”
Soon, having grasped the situation, he pulled up the corners of his mouth.
One might have expected him to panic, thinking that his tail had already been caught contrary to the plan, but he did not care in the slightest.
He already had countermeasures prepared for such a situation as well.
“A guest has come all this way. As the host, it would be improper to leave him standing outside forever. Now—
Come here. Jao Yeonhwan!”
A command that followed together with a complex hand seal.
At the same time, the chakra composing the barrier resonated, and a powerful suction force arose in a realm beyond the material world. [Uh, huh…?]
Hun, flustered by that, tried to respond somehow, but it was already far too late for him to do anything.
Thud.
—The sound of something falling to the ground.
Lucette and General Buryeong’s gazes turned in that direction.
“…Wow, so this works like that too.”
There, Hun, who had been forcibly sucked inside the barrier, was sitting on the ground, looking around with a dumbfounded expression.
He had pierced the barrier using the power of communication and made contact with Lucette inside, only for that connection to be used to pull him straight into the barrier before he could do anything about it.
Like a fisherman falling into the water from the force of pulling on his fishing line.
“Kkeukkeuk, a scout from the Yun Clan? To sniff this place out and come all the way here already. You seem to be quite the capable hunting dog…”
General Buryeong, laughing in his thin voice, glanced at Hun.
This space was solely his domain.
Once inside it, unless one was a powerhouse on Lucette’s level, there was no way to resist him.
The concentric circles engraved in his pupils rotated, laying bare every corner of his opponent’s inner self.
“Hmm? You’re only at the lower tier? How unexpected. Your body seems fairly well trained, though.”
There was no way someone of merely that level could have made it all the way here.
As he frowned at that discrepancy, his eyes widened as if he had realized something.
“I see. You are an otherworlder, aren’t you? In that case, it makes perfect sense.”
Beings who used various supernatural abilities not limited to chakra and, in some ways, displayed feats beyond those of practitioners.
The number of otherworlders sponsored by the Yun Clan alone exceeded ten, so there was nothing strange about that man being one of them.
“How unlucky for you. You seem to have some talent of your own, so under ordinary circumstances, I would have tried to win you over and put you to use somehow…”
But the other party had seen something he should not have seen.
The grand plan had already begun, so perhaps it did not matter much, but he had no intention of adding another variable he did not need to endure just because of one man like that.
“Blame yourself for meddling in needless affairs.”
“Mr. Hun!”
General Buryeong snapped his fingers.
At the same time, Lucette, her entire body wreathed in lightning, moved like a beam of light to block Hun’s path.
But just as it had been until now, her lightning changed nothing.
Pwaak—
The power brushed past as if completely ignoring her and tore Hun’s body to shreds.
His body broke apart until even its original form could no longer be recognized.
Beyond dozens, hundreds, thousands of pieces, the human body vanished as if scattering into smoke. Lucette, her face aghast, spat out her rage.
“Ghk, General Buryeong! You…!”
“…Huh? What is that?”
But her anger was forced to falter for a moment at the strangely flustered air about her opponent.
His face stiffened as the corners of his mouth twitched.
“He deceived me? In this domain of Gwirim?”
It did not take long for her to understand why he had reacted that way.
“Wow, that startled me. To launch such a vicious attack without warning.”
The familiar voice sounded once again.
She hurriedly turned her head in that direction and blinked blankly at the sight of Hun standing atop a tree.
“Hun-style Ninjutsu Secret Art, Clone Technique.”
Because he looked perfectly fine as he uttered that nonsense with a serious expression, roughly crossing his fingers to form a hand seal.
“…Just what trick did you pull?”
But General Buryeong could not simply laugh off the sight of his opponent behaving that way.
This Gwirim was wholly his domain.
And yet the man had completely deceived and toyed with his senses!
It was something he absolutely could not overlook.
“No, enough. In any case, it must be one of those unique skills or whatever, an ability only otherworlders possess.”
However, soon regaining his composure, he glared at Hun with sharp eyes.
It did not matter what method he had used.
After all, it would not work twice. ‘Yes, I was simply careless just now.’ Maintaining Gwirim while keeping Lucette in check was a considerable mental burden even for him.
On the surface, he seemed to be completely ignoring and overwhelming her lightning, but in truth, the effort he was pouring in beneath the surface was anything but ordinary.
In that situation, how could he fully concentrate on a small fry he had thought to be nothing special?
“This time, I will make certain to eliminate you.”
But now, the situation was different.
Even if it meant bearing a little more of a burden, he decided to first dispose of that unidentifiable slippery eel with certainty.
Wooooong—
Ripples arose from the concentric circles within General Buryeong’s eyes.
As the secret art of his sect, the Dongsiman, activated to its limit, the barrier maintaining Gwirim began to twist in all directions.
The full power of a deep-tier practitioner, exercised with the aid of the barrier’s strength.
Ghostly wails echoed from every direction as unidentified waves surged like a tidal wave.
“…Well, this is troublesome. I guess there’s no helping it.”
A force that crushed space itself surged toward him.
If he were caught in that, he would be ground into powder before he had any chance to respond.
Lucette, who had enough ability to look after herself, might be one thing, but for Hun, whose realm was still lacking, a more special method was necessary if he wanted to survive.
“Hun-style Ninjutsu Final Secret Art.”
He formed a hand seal once again.
In truth, the act itself had no great meaning.
He had simply felt like doing it. ‘It’s about time Hun developed some individuality too.’ Somehow feeling amused, he let out a faint laugh.
Then, facing head-on the storm that surged in all at once as if to shake all of Gwirim, he continued in a low voice.
“Thought Rampage.”
The name was grandiose, but in truth, it was not all that different from the previous 「Mental Resonance」.
However, that finishing move, used for the first time after opening the chakra of communication—
“Ghk!”
—contained power on an entirely different level from before.
And pierced straight through the enemy’s mind.
“Kkeugeuk! Keoook!”
General Buryeong staggered in place, his face bulging with veins, and bent over as he choked and retched.
The storm that had been surging in from every direction with ferocious momentum was already scattering to pieces.
No, it did not simply stop at that.
Jijijijik—
Jijik—
The sharp sound of something tearing rang out.
Because the center composing Gwirim had been shaken, the barrier began to slowly collapse.
“Auh, aaah. No. This is, impossible. Uuuh.”
General Buryeong’s face turned deathly pale as he stammered out incomplete words and clawed at his own face.
Bright red blood was already streaming from his seven orifices.
The concentric circles in his eyes, which had maintained fixed intervals, grew faint as if about to break, distorted badly and tracing irregular paths.
“M-Mr. Hun? What is this…”
Thought Rampage.
The situation had been overturned by that single phrase.
Lucette, who had drawn up a great amount of lightning, carefully addressed Hun with a bewildered expression.
She had already confirmed the result of that ability during Yun Sohoe’s kidnapping incident, but what she was seeing now was on a completely different level from what he had shown then. ‘Impossible. General Buryeong, of all people?’ An upper-tier practitioner and a deep-tier practitioner were only one stage apart, but their ranks could not even be compared.
The deep tier was a realm in which one could be said to have “completed” one’s inner image in one’s own way.
Naturally, they were not easily affected by external stimuli, and their firm minds did not collapse even when facing extreme situations.
“Auh. Aaaah! I’m. No. Aaaah—!”
Of course, even to her, that sight could only be unfamiliar.
No matter how one looked at it, wasn’t his mind completely broken?
An ability that could turn a deep-tier cultivator into a wreck with a single word? ‘Would opening the Heavenly Gate make such a thing possible?’ Perhaps it might.
For a cultivator who had reached the heavens through the demonic path.
She swallowed dryly despite herself. ‘As expected, it’s incredible. Honestly, with this alone, I might not need any other abilities.’ Hun looked around at the rapidly collapsing Gwirim and nodded in satisfaction.
He had been worried the output might be lacking, so he had mixed a bit of 「Limit Break」 into the chakra, and the effect was superb.
If the previous 「Mental Resonance」 had been on the level of injecting poison with a syringe, then the attack just now had been no different from ramming in a sharpened iron pipe. ‘Still, considering versatility, it’d be better to secure other means as well. This is too extreme.’ Hun’s sure-kill technique had no middle ground.
Either it didn’t work at all, or it shattered the mind completely.
Considering all sorts of situations, it seemed necessary to continue training 「Root of Ideals」.
“...Well, all’s well that ends well, isn’t it? In any case, I’m glad you’re safe. Sohwe was very worried.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes! Thank you so much, Mr. Hun. After that child, now even I’ve ended up receiving your help. I haven’t even repaid the kindness from before...”
Immediately after the gloomy forest scenery collapsed completely.
They found themselves standing side by side in the middle of a crimson-stained woodland.
“Ggh... G-General Buryeong!”
“Get the backflowing chakra under control first!”
“Impossible! How could something like this...!”
Along with the general, now practically writhing on the ground like an insect, and the many cultivators who had been supporting Gwirim.
Crackle—!
Lucette stepped forward, sparks flying from her entire body.
“...I will capture them.”
It was partly out of propriety, having been indebted to him at a dangerous moment, and partly to secure witnesses for interrogation.
Their leader, General Buryeong, was plainly in no state to testify about anything.
And naturally.
No matter how exhausted she was, there was no one present who could stop her, a deep-tier cultivator. ‘Thankfully, everything ended well. Lucette’s safe too.’ In truth, it was not a situation where he could simply rejoice that everything had ended well.
This incident had revealed that the upper echelons of Hongsan Kingdom, one of the two great powers, had tried to make a move against the Yun Clan.
He did not know how many within Hongsan Kingdom had agreed with this affair, but it was clear that things would not proceed smoothly from here on. ‘Of course, that has nothing to do with me, an outsider.’ Such complicated circumstances were a problem for the Seongcheon Yun Clan to resolve.
All he had to do was take what he could and focus on his own growth. ...That was what he thought.
Until he realized that the flames of war, poised to engulf the entire continent, had already crept right beneath his chin.