Ziiiing.
As Bu Eunseol raised the Void Heart Command, the extremely faint and bizarre traces of a unique formation art and sorcery spread outward.
"They weren't installed when the vault was built."
He could sense traces of formation art and sorcery within this place.
They had been created recently, not when the secret vault was first constructed.
"Then, just as I thought..."
The vault had not been empty from the beginning. Someone had removed everything inside it.
A-Yeon had clearly said that the Empress Dowager had only located the vault and had been unable to enter it.
But that information had been false.
"Was it a trap?"
Bu Eunseol released a sigh.
―'No. I can think later.'
Before coming here, several colors of light had swept through Bu Eunseol's eyes as he contemplated something deeply.
He had already considered the possibility that the secret vault might be a trap.
"That must also be why she raised Young Lady A-Yeon as an assassin."
Countless masters of immense skill served beneath the Empress Dowager.
Even so, she had deliberately raised A-Yeon of the Sword Pavilion as an assassin, likely because doing so offered two advantages.
Whenever upheaval arose in the martial world, the Sword Pavilion secretly dispatched disciples to resolve it.
And if it were A-Yeon, the successor of the Sword Pavilion?
She would have found it relatively easy to identify the Emperor's direct warriors who operated under imperial orders while disguised as martial artists.
The second advantage was...
"A disposable pawn."
Once the Emperor's direct warriors were eliminated, someone trusted by the Emperor would inevitably begin pursuing the culprit before long.
It did not matter whether A-Yeon killed that person or failed.
In the process, the Empress Dowager could discover the identity of the blade sent by the Emperor.
What if she also placed in A-Yeon's hands an orb that revealed the location of the secret vault created by Baekri Muha?
She could lure that person into the vault and either capture or eliminate them.
"It isn't as though I never anticipated this situation..."
A profound stillness flowed through his eyes.
Even so, part of him had hoped that this truly might be a secret vault created by his father.
Perhaps he would obtain a clue concerning the contract with the Primeval Dragon or a way to enter the Baekri Family.
He had hoped for even some small piece of information capable of overturning the situation.
"In the end, I suppose I've become fully embroiled in the Imperial Family's struggle."
The Imperial Family's clandestine conflicts were like a swamp of unfathomable depth.
The instant one set foot within, escape became impossible, and the passage of time only dragged one deeper into the mire.
"This entire area must already be surrounded."
Nevertheless, he had no intention of fleeing or avoiding the fight.
"Since the door opened with the Baekri Family's key, it can't be a false vault..."
As he murmured softly,
Screeech.
An unpleasant noise tore through the silence from the darkness behind him.
Bu Eunseol slowly turned.
A man emerged at a measured pace from the pitch-black darkness more than ten jang away (1 jang = 3m), where not even a trace of light penetrated.
Glossy leather clothes that seemed to have been made from flayed snakeskin clung tightly to his gaunt body.
Against skin so pallid that it had turned bluish like a corpse, only his torn-looking red lips stood out.
Sensing the evil energy pouring from the man's entire body, Bu Eunseol knew instinctively.
'True Demon Palace.'
This man was undoubtedly a master of the True Demon Palace.
"You came inside instead of prowling around the sewer..."
A hoarse, piercing voice like metal scraping against metal emerged from the man's mouth.
"So you aren't one of the Emperor's men, but a rat from the Baekri Branch Family who came to steal this Palace's knowledge."
Bu Eunseol had discovered the hidden vault and entered it.
The man seemed to have mistaken him for a blood descendant of the Baekri Branch Family like Baekri Jaha.
"No matter how often these vermin are trampled, they keep sprouting like weeds."
The man's serpentine eyes gleamed with contempt and killing intent.
This was the view from the True Demon Palace.
To them, the Baekri Family was nothing more than a parasite that stole the knowledge of their great ancestor.
"Who are you?"
The man suddenly recognized Bu Eunseol's face and formed a peculiar smile.
"You aren't some dreg of the Baekri Branch Family... Aren't you the one who broke the restrictions and allowed the masters of this Palace to enter the martial world?"
Clicking his tongue, the man approached slowly.
"You helped us in your own way."
He bared his fangs in a cruel smile.
"I'll kill you without pain."
As he extended both arms, his glossy sleeves spread like enormous wings.
Flap, flap, flap.
Then, from the darkness behind the man, hundreds, no, thousands of bats poured forth all at once.
The bats rushing forward with crimson eyes blazing seemed to have been created from Soul Demon Dharma Energy.
Even as they flew, they pulverized the vault's inner walls.
Screeech.
The vast secret vault filled with the beating of bat wings and ear-splitting shrieks.
Thrum.
Light suddenly erupted from Bu Eunseol's eyes.
At the same time, transparent waves spread in concentric circles and faintly erased the colors within the vault.
The power of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction, an absolute domain that returned every supernatural power, whether enemy or ally, to nothingness, had unfolded.
Ziiiing.
As the authority of the Void Extreme Realm swept over the swarm, the bats' colors also faded.
If they had been illusions composed of Soul Demon Dharma Energy, they should have dispersed like smoke and vanished.
Flap! Squeak! Squeeeak!
Yet even after the waves of the Void Extreme Realm swept through them, more than a third of the bats continued hurtling toward Bu Eunseol.
His eyes narrowed when he saw their distinct teeth and claws.
'Living bats.'
The man had not merely created bats from Soul Demon Dharma Energy.
He had cleverly mixed real, living bats among them and controlled every one with complete freedom.
Boom!
Bu Eunseol immediately unleashed the Seven Fist Demon Forms.
However, the swarm repeatedly scattered and converged, evading his fist-force with ease.
Astonishingly, there were hundreds of them.
Every one displayed movements as profound and swift as those of martial arts masters.
'There is an easier way.'
Shhing.
With a reverberation like thunder, Bu Eunseol's Silent Tiger Soul Sword revealed itself.
Shudder.
The blade began vibrating without end, and needle-like strands of keen sword aura spread toward the onrushing bats.
Unfolding the Return to Origin, he pierced the eyes of the attacking bats in an instant.
"...!"
The expression of the man who had looked down arrogantly upon Bu Eunseol turned cold and rigid.
The Soul Demon Dharma Energy flowing through his body had vanished at once.
Worse still, Bu Eunseol was precisely destroying the eyes of the Black Savage Bats he had painstakingly raised for decades.
Cutting down bats that moved unpredictably and chaotically in the darkness was no simple feat.
Bu Eunseol had chosen an ingenious and straightforward method.
He targeted the bats' red eyes as they flashed through the darkness.
Thud, thud, thud.
By aiming at their eyes, which formed clear targets in the dark, rather than trying to cut through their bodies, he easily disposed of the bats.
"You bastard..."
The man's body trembled.
The Black Savage Bats he had raised were not only covered in Soul Demon Dharma Energy.
They had also been trained to move in ways that surpassed the profound principles of the current martial world's martial arts and could not be stopped through swordsmanship.
Yet when Bu Eunseol eliminated them in moments, a strange emotion the man had never experienced began spreading within him.
Its name was fear.
'I cannot face him.'
Paaat!
Before realizing it, the man had retreated dozens of jang.
He instinctively understood that once every Black Savage Bat vanished beneath Bu Eunseol's sword, he would no longer be able even to flee.
'Wait.'
Yet after he withdrew more than thirty jang, the vault's scenery slowly regained its vivid colors.
Even the Soul Demon Dharma Energy he had lost began returning.
"This is..."
As if realizing something, the man formed a faint smile.
"Yes. There was a restriction on its range."
Without the Black Savage Bats, his head would have fallen in an instant.
However, they had bought him enough time.
He had perceived a weakness no one had easily discovered until now: Bu Eunseol's Void Extreme Realm had a limited range.
"Hmm."
The man did not flee.
Instead, he began coolly observing how Bu Eunseol's power functioned and precisely how far its effective range extended.
"So that's how it is."
Having grasped everything, the man spread both hands with an ominous smile.
"Anywhere else, I would have been defeated without even having the chance to act... but this secret vault has belonged to our Palace for a long time."
The man's sinister smile deepened as he murmured.
"Be erased where you stand."
Paaat!
Just as Bu Eunseol finished bringing down every Black Savage Bat, millions of black lights poured across his vision.
Black radiance settled throughout the space around him.
"Useless."
Bu Eunseol snorted.
As long as he remained within the Realm of Destruction and Extinction, no supernatural power could harm him, regardless of what the man attempted.
"Is that truly so?"
The man formed an inscrutable smile.
"Even if I blow away the entire vault?"
Without showing the slightest concern, Bu Eunseol pointed the Silent Tiger Soul Sword toward the man.
"Did you come from the True Demon Palace?"
The man's method also contained a paradox and contradiction.
The power of the Void Extreme Realm was akin to an absolute domain.
Even if the man used Soul Demon Dharma Energy to obliterate the entire vault, the space extending dozens of jang around Bu Eunseol could only remain intact.
"Heh heh heh. Ask such questions after you defeat me."
Thrum.
As soon as he finished speaking, the black lights floating around Bu Eunseol began clinging to his body.
There were two variables Bu Eunseol had failed to consider.
The True Demon Palace had controlled this secret vault for a long time, covering its interior in Soul Demon Dharma Energy.
Second, the man could use Eternal Erasure Without a Trace, one of the True Demon Palace's secret arts.
Shaaaa.
The man did not simply pour out the power of destruction and annihilation.
He began collapsing the binding force that sustained the very space within the secret vault.
The domain in which the Void Extreme Realm operated remained invincible, and no supernatural power could penetrate it.
However, Eternal Erasure Without a Trace was causing the very foundation that maintained the Void Extreme Realm's absoluteness to disappear.
Rushhh!
Before long, black light had completely enveloped Bu Eunseol's body.
The solidity that allowed stone to be stone began unraveling without resistance.
The flow that allowed water to be water followed.
The fundamental principles defining all creation were dissolving into nothingness.
The power did not break, destroy, or burn the body.
By erasing the secret vault itself, it erased even the origins of everything that existed within.
Shaaaa.
As the black light continued pouring down, Bu Eunseol's skin vanished, revealing the red fibers of his muscles.
Of course, this was merely a manifestation of the process of erasure. His skin had not actually disappeared to reveal the muscles beneath.
Nevertheless, the image of his bones gradually appeared.
If even those vanished, Bu Eunseol's existence would be completely erased as though it had never existed anywhere.
'So each manifestation of Soul Demon Dharma Energy possesses its own power.'
Even with his life hanging by a thread, Bu Eunseol continued analyzing the man's power.
Soul Demon Dharma Energy was not merely a form of strength.
It was closer to a cursed authority born beyond the laws of the world, one that devoured the origins of all creation.
'But the Void Extreme Realm is not merely power. It is a realm of martial arts.'
A soft murmur escaped his lips.
Millions of points of light began flowing from Bu Eunseol's body to oppose the black radiance.
"What?"
The man's eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.
Bu Eunseol's body should have been erased at once by Eternal Erasure Without a Trace, yet it had suddenly begun regenerating without end.
The Void Extreme Realm was not a technique or a form of power, but a path and realm of martial arts.
It followed the harmony of yin and yang, the natural order of the five elements, and the laws between heaven and earth.
The man poured forth a power like a decree of reversion to extinction, stripping all things of the meaning behind their existence and returning them to the primordial void.
He forcibly overlaid a new law called "erasure" upon the existing laws of the Void Extreme Realm.
Yet the Void Extreme Realm was erasing even that, the very force that scoured space itself clean so that it could no longer exist...
No. It was regenerating it in perfect form.
Shaaaa.
The muscles that had disappeared beneath the Soul Demon Dharma Energy began filling Bu Eunseol's skeletal form once more.
Skin grew over them again.
"How...?"
As the man cried out, his mouth hanging open in disbelief,
Whoosh.
Bu Eunseol escaped the sorcery of Eternal Erasure Without a Trace and recovered his intact body.
"If the Void Extreme Realm were some technique or power..."
Walking slowly toward the man, Bu Eunseol continued in a low voice.
"I would have died without even resisting your power."
"The Void Extreme Realm?"
"It is a realm unknown to your kind."
"Nonsense!"
The man spread both arms.
Ziiiing.
A black demon suddenly appeared before Bu Eunseol's eyes.
Its oval face was set upon black skin and possessed nothing but a mouth filled with pointed teeth.
It stood more than ten cheok tall, and its gaunt limbs writhed like snakes.
This demonic figure composed of Soul Demon Dharma Energy was the true form of the Eternal Erasure Without a Trace that had tried to erase Bu Eunseol's existence.
―'Kikikikiki.'
When it realized Bu Eunseol could perceive its existence and saw him staring directly at it, the demon bared its pointed teeth and roared.
―'Aaaaaaagh!'
Everything touched by its light and roar began melting away.
This power was hundreds of times greater than the Eternal Erasure Without a Trace it had unleashed before.
While the restrictions upon the True Demon Palace remained unbroken, this was a forbidden martial art that must never be unleashed in the martial world.
He had unleashed it without hesitation.
Chime.
Yet as that power shot forward, a clear metallic note spread from Bu Eunseol's left hand.
The Chains of Samsara.
The authority of the True Demon implanted within his body resonated with the secret art and revealed itself of its own accord.
Claaang.
Bu Eunseol instinctively seized the chain.
Crack.
Then he swung it with all his strength toward the roaring demon.
Booooom!
An incandescent light erupted brightly enough to erase every surrounding sight.
At the same time, a deafening explosion shook the ceiling and walls as though they would shatter into pieces.
The flash born at the center surged upward as a colossal pillar of flame, filling the secret cave.
The scorching wind spreading in every direction melted everything inside.
As the ceiling collapsed and dust and debris poured down like a deluge, the interior became tangled in gray fog in an instant.
Rrrrumble.
The impact reached even the ancient underground sewer surrounding the secret cave.
The sewer that had supported the interior for countless years began collapsing.
Rrrrumble.
The surging water mixed with falling stones and became a muddy tempest that swept through the sewer in an instant.
How much time had passed?
The man who had been within the secret cave now floated high in the air, looking down upon the collapsed underground sewer.
"Just what was that bastard...?"
He could not see the Chains of Samsara.
From his perspective, Bu Eunseol had merely thrust out a hand with a battle cry.
Then the secret art of Eternal Erasure Without a Trace, a manifestation of Soul Demon Dharma Energy that no one could stop, had been destroyed.
"For this Law Envoy to perish so futilely..."
Sssk.
His body began vanishing as though evaporating into the air.
"But that bastard cannot be unharmed either."
At the last moment, the man had poured forth all his remaining power.
He had pierced Bu Eunseol's heart with a keen spear created from Eternal Erasure Without a Trace.
Therefore, Bu Eunseol could not possibly have survived.
"But if someone else possesses such power..."
Recalling the terror of the Void Extreme Realm, the man extended his hand with every trace of strength he possessed.
Flap.
A single Black Savage Bat formed and flew into the sky.
Fsssh.
At the same time, the man's body crumbled into powder and scattered upon the wind.
* * *
"Huff... huff..."
Bu Eunseol crouched among the wreckage of the collapsed underground sewer and panted for breath.
The underground sewer had collapsed.
Bu Eunseol had swiftly found a gap in the ruins that had not caved in and taken shelter there.
Vwoom, vwoom, vwoom.
A gentle light flowed from the area around his heart as he leaned against the rubble.
A transparent chain was wrapped around it.
There was another chain.
It had protected his heart from the man's Eternal Erasure Without a Trace.
"So the Heavenly Emperor saved my life."
This chain was now coiled around his chest.
He had obtained it when he risked death to use the Golden Needle Grand Method and restore the Heavenly Emperor's lucid mind.
Had he not obtained the Chains of Samsara then, his heart would have been pierced.
He would now be wandering the Nine Springs.
"It seems summoning a demon-god idol was only the lowest stage."
Most who used Soul Demon Dharma Energy had created colossal demon-god idols in the sky.
The man, by comparison, had summoned a small demon in human form.
Yet its power had surpassed that of every member of the True Demon's kin Bu Eunseol had encountered until now.
―'Aren't you the one who broke the restrictions and allowed the masters of this Palace to enter the martial world?'
Moreover, the man who had summoned the bats claimed that Bu Eunseol had broken the restrictions upon the True Demon Palace.
"Was it because I defeated the Three Attendants and the Four Divine Heavens?"
The old man of the Sacred Domain had once told Bu Eunseol something about this.
The True Demon delighted whenever his kin fought or disappeared.
Perhaps Bu Eunseol's defeat of the True Demon's kin had somehow created an opportunity for the restrictions upon the bloodline of the True Demon Palace to break.
"Haaah."
Drained of strength, Bu Eunseol sprawled out completely among the ruins.
The Chains of Samsara could never ordinarily be used by a human body through which blood and flesh flowed.
In the past, he had tried to oppose the Martial Venerable's power.
When he swung the chain on instinct, had he not lost his strength in an instant?
If he had not absorbed the Profound Divine Technique Qi of Baekri Yeha and the Soul Demon Dharma Energy of the one who imitated the Law Envoys of the Sacred Domain at that time, he might still have been unable to recover his body.
'There must be a separate method of controlling the chain.'
Trickle.
Blood continually streamed from his cracked skin, but fortunately, his power had not disappeared, nor had he suffered fatal internal injuries.
Unlike before, he had entered the new realm known as the Void Extreme Realm and could offset the chain's backlash to some degree.
"I should get going."
The sewer had collapsed, and the man's presence had vanished.
However, the Empress Dowager's subordinates could charge in once again.
He needed to leave this area immediately and recover his strength.
Just as he began rising,
Chime.
The chain hanging from his left arm suddenly felt as though it had fused with the ground.
It was as if the chain connected to his hand had become magnetically attached to something beneath the collapsed floor.
"What is this?"
With great difficulty, Bu Eunseol slowly lifted his left arm.
Cracks spread across the floor where the chain had been attached, revealing an enormous space leading farther underground.
"Were the Chains of Samsara the key that opened the hidden vault?"
The Empress Dowager had discovered the secret vault.
However, it seemed she had failed to find this hidden space because she did not possess the Chains of Samsara.
"I suppose I should thank the Empress Dowager."
Had Bu Eunseol tried to find the secret vault created by his father through the Death Spirit Corps' intelligence network, it would have taken years.
However, because the Empress Dowager had placed a trap within his father's true vault, he had found it with ease.
"At last."
Bu Eunseol drew a deep breath.
He had finally discovered the true space within the secret vault said to have been created by his father.
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