Free Web NovelThe word “today” snagged in Namgung Hyun’s mind, but he could not ask.
No wind stirred indoors, yet the lantern suddenly went out.
His breathing became difficult, as if he were trapped underwater, and his movements grew sluggish.
It felt as if his life force were being sucked out.
The unknown pulling force grew stronger and stronger.
It was the opposite of being unable to hide one’s presence. It was as if a piece of the world had been cut away and every trace of existence had vanished.
Wind and warmth were swallowed into the darkness, and the world felt hollow and empty.
Namgung Hyun’s gaze moved to the window.
Perhaps because his sight had grown used to the dark, or because the moonlit outside was brighter than here, the Blood Demon’s shadow appeared on the window.
Hair fluttering in the wind and long fingers settled smoothly against the window lattice.
Tap. Tap.
The sound of his fingers tapping the frame cut through the silence.
For such an overwhelming being, it was a cautious gesture. That was why it felt like mockery.
Creak.
The slowly tilting window revealed the Blood Demon’s face. A voice tinged with laughter came from beyond the windowsill.
“So, you were here.”
Namgung Hyun felt the hair all over his body stand on end. But Tang Sohwa, standing with only a single pace between herself and the Blood Demon, seemed unaffected.
She met the Blood Demon’s gaze and asked in a calm voice,
“You must have come a long way. Shall I at least offer you tea?”
“As expected, you knew I would come.”
Both he and she already knew the question, and the answer. Even so, the Blood Demon had enough leisure to waste time on pointless talk.
His dark red pupils rolled, taking in Namgung Hyun standing behind her.
“What are you plotting, that you are even holding a hostage?”
Suddenly the Blood Demon drew in a deep breath and let it out, closing his eyes.
He spoke in a loose voice, as if savoring something.
“You are a child with no connection to laziness. Not all those born with talent let it blossom, but if you work this diligently, one day your talent will fully bloom, just like your name.”
Namgung Hyun could not understand what he was talking about. But Tang Sohwa seemed to.
The expression on her face changed in a subtle way.
From the Blood Demon’s words, Sohwa realized he had been poisoned by the poison smoke.
It was because she understood that poison smoke had the same effect as Blood Jade.
She carefully moved her hand and emptied the water from the cup.
One gak.
From now, the poisoning would probably hold for one gak.
But there was a point that caught on her mind.
Even though he had noticed the poisoning, the Blood Demon did not move his body away from the window, did not hold his breath. He did not even try to get rid of the poison smoke.
At the moment when a fierce stench surged in, Sohwa realized why the Blood Demon’s mood had improved.
Snap.
Sohwa immediately grabbed Namgung Hyun’s arm and fled out the door.
Shaaah.
By a hair’s breadth, the dispensary where they had been vanished. The wood had rotted away from the wind that came from the Blood Demon’s palm.
For whatever reason, the Blood Demon kept opening his acupoints and expelling several kinds of energy as if discarding them.
Namgung Hyun must have felt that energy as well, because without hesitation he continued running down the corridor, following Sohwa. freёwebnovel.com
Darkness clung to the two of them as if to swallow them, devouring everything around them.
Boom.
When a column vanished, the railing set upon it came crashing down and exploded with a roar.
‘So much for handling this quietly.’
The plan was already off track, but she could not immediately think of an alternative.
The stink numbed her nose, and the scorching heat made it hard to breathe.
Whatever kind of body the Blood Demon possessed, even as he opened acupoints to discard energy, he was forming new channels.
Sohwa bit her lip.
She wanted to stop running.
She wanted to observe his body, to see how the inner energy inside it collided, yielded the path, and became one.
At this distance, she could not clearly perceive those minute movements.
Greed brought a strange light into Sohwa’s eyes.
When Namgung Hyun was about to go out of the pavilion, Sohwa pulled him back and went up the stairs with him.
He was startled, but perhaps thinking she had some intent, he quickly followed without complaint.
Once they had climbed up to the third floor and Sohwa did not go any higher, instead heading toward the side where the Medical Division had been, he called to her.
“Young Lady Tang!”
But Sohwa, as if she had not heard, let go of Namgung Hyun’s hand and ran down the corridor.
Entering the room directly two floors above the Medical Division, she hurriedly stuck her head out the window.
Perhaps thanks to the closer distance, she already felt that something in the Blood Demon’s energy had changed.
First, the stench was gone.
At that moment, an enormous chill surged up from the floor.
Snap.
Sohwa sprang up reflexively and grabbed onto a ceiling ornament.
Soon the color of the floor and walls changed subtly. A thin frost had formed on the surface.
The chill rose like heat haze, just about to brush her skirts.
Whoosh.
From outside the pavilion, a pillar of fierce flame rose up, wiping out all the cold.
Sohwa dropped back down onto the railing and carefully surveyed the situation.
The surroundings had grown as bright as midday, so the full view came into sight.
Flames rising like a curtain had opened a gap between the pavilion and the Blood Demon. Beyond that heat, she could see someone dressed in black night-clothes, their face covered meticulously, clashing with the Blood Demon and drawing away.
It looked like simple movement, but thanks to the waves of heat that rose sharply and then vanished, Sohwa realized that the Blood Demon and the Crimson Blood Hall Lord were trading blows at a speed the eye could not catch.
A fight with nothing visible and no sound continued.
The Crimson Blood Hall Lord was moving just as he had promised, so as not to draw attention.
As she watched him, Sohwa’s eyes lifted slightly.
In her obsidian-like pupils, the red curtain of flame was reflected.
The flames were high enough to be seen even from a thousand li away, and Sohwa muttered without realizing it,
“......But if it is like this, it is pointless, is it not?”
The fire even spread to the pavilion.
It had not yet been half of half an incense time since the Blood Demon had appeared.
Rubbing her forehead, Sohwa looked out beyond the forest.
She felt presences approaching quickly.
There were more than one or two coming.
The elders of the Tang Clan who had returned upon receiving the carrier pigeons that demonic warriors had attacked were also currently staying in the main compound.
There was no way those with good sensing ability would fail to notice this chaos. And with some pavilion on fire, even those whose aura sense was not good would have reason to rush over.
The leading energy drew close to within barely three jang.
It was a very familiar energy.
The flaring, uneven waves of qi shot through her whole body like Heukcheon Amgui’s talkative voice.
The situation she had feared appeared before her eyes.
But Sohwa had not started this recklessly.
In a place where so many martial artists were gathered, it was impossible to stand against the Blood Demon for one gak without being discovered.
Just then, the approaching presences suddenly turned left.
Sohwa closed her eyes and felt them receding.
Fortunately, it seemed the Crimson Blood Hall had done its job properly.
The poison powder deployed in the bamboo grove appeared to have spread on time.
Once exposed, it distorted the senses and confused sight, sound, and even touch.
They probably thought they were running straight here, but in reality, they were getting farther and farther from the pavilion.
Because they were martial artists with excellent aura sense, paradoxically they did not doubt that their own senses were wrong, and so they ran off all the faster.
However, it was not a poison that would last long.
Soon they would come to their senses and come back.
‘By then, the Blood Demon’s body will have recovered......’
She had to kill the Blood Demon before they arrived.
Sohwa wanted to shout at Hae-rak to hurry.
But because they were doing something impossible, she gathered all her patience and swallowed the words, keeping her eyes on the situation.
Though she could not grasp it with her eyes, she could feel the tide of the battle on her skin.
Sohwa felt pain as if her cheeks were melting. She had never seen the Crimson Blood Hall Lord pour out such fierce inner energy.
Even so, the Blood Demon did not dodge.
Poisoned as he was, he took the Crimson Blood Hall Lord’s full power. Knowing he would not recover, he did not fear his flesh melting.
On the contrary, he was throwing out energy his body did not need and using the Crimson Blood Hall Lord as a trash bin.
Watching his body grow clean, it was like seeing someone thoroughly wash their hair.
In fact, as time passed, the Blood Demon’s movements grew lighter and lighter, while Hae-rak’s momentum began to sag little by little.
Sohwa was seeing the Blood Demon move in earnest for the first time.
The hair on her whole body stood on end.
The Blood Demon did not lose the upper hand for even a single moment.
In the meantime, he even completed the Small Heavenly Circuit.
This was something impossible.
To circulate inner energy while moving was a very dangerous act.
But the Blood Demon did not care. He opened all his acupoints, discarding energy, and for some energies he drew them into his meridians to deliberately induce his own internal confusion.
Sohwa leaned her body farther over the railing.
The yellow qi seated at an acupoint in his meridian was being drawn along a pathway, forming a long line.
That was not all.
Qi of other colors as well was being sucked one after another into the route the Blood Demon had formed.
And the useless energies flew outward to harass the Crimson Blood Hall Lord, or stretched their bodies thin to open a path for other energies to pass through.
Even for a human who had devoted a lifespan close to immortality to inner energy, it was a ridiculous technique.
But since it was unfolding right before her eyes, she had no choice but to believe.
At the moment when the strands of qi, twisted together like threads, reached the lower abdomen, the beginning and end of the meridian pathways,
The fine stream of energy curled in on itself and filled the dantian. Before long, the various colors merged into one.
The purple bead that formed in the dantian did not flow along the meridians but spun rapidly in place. Its size swelled as if it were inflating.
Boom.
Unaware of this, Hae-rak made a dangerous move against the Blood Demon.
As he believed was the way to put himself in the superior position, Hae-rak seized the Blood Demon’s hand.
But the moment their two palms met, the spinning purple bead stopped moving.
Sensing something, Sohwa shouted loudly,
“Let go!”
But it was already too late.
Boom.
The heat in Hae-rak’s body, which had been surging into his palm, reversed course and attacked its owner. His blood vessels bulged as if they would burst, and his internal organs took a massive beating.
“Khk.”
Hae-rak doubled over, spitting blood.
The Blood Demon had not carelessly offered his hand to him. He had deliberately lured Hae-rak in to join their blood.
In an instant, the purple stream that had protruded all the way to his palm slowly drew back again. Fortunately, it seemed the Blood Demon’s inner energy had not pushed into Hae-rak’s body.
Sohwa flinched as if to move through the flames, but could not go forward. It was because Namgung Hyun, who had somehow come up beside her, grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
