Boom!
Thunder repeatedly boomed across the clear, dry sky.
Unfolding the sky-treading flight art, Bu Eunseol soon reached the vicinity from which the scream had come.
Clash! Clang!
The clash of weapons rang out incessantly from deep within the forest.
He hurried toward the sound.
'...!'
Bu Eunseol's gaze sharpened.
A woman lay collapsed in a forest clearing, her clothes torn.
Before her, three men with sinister eyes were fighting a blood-soaked old man armed with a stick.
It was obvious at a glance.
The old man appeared to be the fallen woman's master, while the three men were plainly flower-plucking thieves.
The old man's clothing was exceedingly shabby, but his sword movements were fairly agile.
Judging by his use of the Pungyang Sword Sect's First Light Sword Art, he appeared to have once been a disciple of that sect.
"The old bastard is tenacious!"
One of the three bare-armed men sneered and spread his fingers.
Five finger strikes shot forth and bored toward the old man's vital points.
Ping!
But the finger strikes vanished in an instant before they could touch the old man's body.
Bu Eunseol had intervened.
"More of the Empress Dowager's subordinates."
First the battle involving the Heavenly Star Sect, True Dragon Pavilion, and Black Slaughter Sect, and now the sudden appearance of flower-plucking thieves?
The odds made no sense.
"You came after all."
The three flower-plucking thieves smiled lewdly as Bu Eunseol descended to the ground.
"Martial Soul Command Lord, it is time we brought this to an end!"
They surrounded Bu Eunseol in a triangular formation, their eyes flashing.
At that moment, a pitch-black demon-god idol appeared behind Bu Eunseol and pierced through his back.
They were experts of the True Demon Palace who wielded Soul Demon Dharma Energy.
After perfectly predicting when and where he would arrive, they had unleashed this vicious method.
Swoooosh.
Then something strange happened.
The demon-god idol abruptly vanished in an instant.
"A-Aaargh!"
With their screams, the bodies of the Empress Dowager's subordinates masquerading as flower-plucking thieves suddenly burst into flames.
Bu Eunseol's eyes glowed red-hot.
Without even needing to lay a hand on them, he had immediately unfolded the Yeolha Great True Energy and was burning their bodies away.
"How?"
The men stared down at their blazing bodies in disbelief.
They were all experts of the True Demon Palace.
Conventional martial arts of the martial world had no effect on them whatsoever.
How, then, had all their strength vanished in an instant, leaving their bodies to burn beneath mere extreme yang martial arts?
"You became so engrossed in that convenient power that martial artists must have seemed laughable to you."
It was the Void Extreme Realm.
Bu Eunseol had already determined that the men masquerading as flower-plucking thieves were experts of the True Demon Palace.
He had immediately unleashed the power of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction.
After all, even with only two sixty-year cycles of internal energy, he could use the Yeolha Great True Energy as much as he pleased.
Squelch.
But then an unexpected situation unfolded.
A sharp pain pierced his back, and his body went numb.
The blood-soaked old man who had been fighting them had suddenly drawn an ancient dagger and stabbed Bu Eunseol in the back.
"Zhanlu."
It possessed the ability to render a person incapable of so much as twitching a finger and scatter all their power the instant it entered their body.
It was the Zhanlu Sword, one of the Ten Great Swords of the Martial World.
"So you truly are using a bizarre martial art that erases not only your enemies' strength, but your own as well."
One of the Empress Dowager's blazing subordinates laughed triumphantly.
"That is why we placed the old man and his disciple from this remote mountain valley under a Soul-Seizing Technique and induced them to ambush you."
Some time ago, Bu Eunseol had encountered an assassin of the True Demon Palace who used bats inside his father's secret vault, then dealt with him using the Void Extreme Realm and the power of the Chains.
But with some inscrutable method in the throes of death, the assassin had reported the power Bu Eunseol attained in the Void Extreme Realm to the Empress Dowager.
"You must have thought an ordinary old man's ambush unworthy of caution and intended to block it at your leisure."
Though his body burned, the Empress Dowager's subordinate continued speaking with a sinister smile, as if he felt no pain.
"But you could never have expected him to use Silent Qi Concealment with the Zhanlu Sword."
It was an exquisitely thorough plan.
The old man was, in every sense, merely a disciple of a second-rate sword sect.
He had never cultivated internal energy even once.
His presence therefore posed no threat whatsoever to Bu Eunseol. Even if he aimed a sword at him, Bu Eunseol could have blocked it with time to spare.
The Empress Dowager had exploited that very opening.
After seizing the old man's will with a Soul-Seizing Technique, she had placed the peerless ancient blade Zhanlu in his hand.
Then she had made him use Silent Qi Concealment, perfectly erasing his presence before unleashing a sword form as swift as lightning.
"You were struck by the Zhanlu Sword while maintaining a domain that reduced even your own power... Your body must be paralyzed, and every scrap of your energy drained away. Am I wrong?"
It was said that once the Zhanlu Sword struck, even the greatest master under heaven could not move and their internal energy would scatter.
If its blade sank completely into the body, they would die on the spot.
"Heh heh heh. Hahahahaha!"
The man, whose nearly incinerated skin left him looking like a skeleton, threw his head back in wild laughter as he stared at the motionless Bu Eunseol.
"You will soon be dead as well."
Fwoosh.
The Empress Dowager's subordinates, blazing like skeletons, finally collapsed to the ground as handfuls of ash.
"Hrrrgh."
At that moment, the old man twisted the Zhanlu Sword buried in Bu Eunseol's back, the whites of his eyes showing.
Though all those men were dead, the mind-seizing art had not been released.
The old man intended to tear apart Bu Eunseol's body while he could not move a finger.
Crrrk.
The old man drove the sword in with all his strength.
If he could force its tip through the Protective True Qi and into an acupoint, Bu Eunseol would die at once.
"It is all right."
Bu Eunseol, whose body was supposedly paralyzed, slowly reached out and lightly pushed the old man to the ground.
"I deliberately took one stab because I wanted to hear what they might say."
He had already suspected that all of this was the Empress Dowager's trap, and he had also seen through Silent Qi Concealment.
But he knew perfectly well that capturing or torturing those men would not make them reveal what they knew.
That was why he had deliberately pretended to fall victim to the ambush.
Only then would they feel certain he was going to die and perhaps let some piece of information slip.
"So there was nothing to gain."
But the Empress Dowager's subordinates had merely hurled curses without divulging anything useful.
Tingle.
Feeling the area around the embedded Zhanlu Sword slowly go numb, Bu Eunseol sighed.
"A famous sword indeed."
When the Zhanlu Sword struck him while he maintained the Void Extreme Realm, it truly numbed his body until it tingled.
Even releasing the power of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction had been difficult.
'Was discovering one weakness of the Void Extreme Realm my only gain?'
He had only just entered the Void Extreme Realm, so its marvelous applications came with many restrictions.
The very process of identifying those restrictions one by one would elevate his martial realm.
Only by recognizing each restriction precisely could he naturally break through those conditions as his realm rose.
Flash!
A keen light bloomed in Bu Eunseol's eyes.
With only a mouthful of true energy, he unleashed Severing Reversal Counterattack, a method that returned an enemy's power, and thrust the encroaching Zhanlu Sword away with all his might.
Crunch!
Though he possessed only two sixty-year cycles of internal energy, Bu Eunseol's Ban-Geuk Method had already entered the seventh level.
Thud, thud, thud.
Cracks spread across the blade of the Zhanlu Sword buried in his back.
It soon crumbled into powder and fell away.
One of the peerless divine swords passed down through generations of the martial world had been destroyed forever at his hands.
Trickle.
As the Zhanlu Sword shattered, blood ran from the old man's mouth.
"Huh?"
Clarity returned to the old man's clouded eyes, and he regained his senses.
"What in the world is this?"
The old man looked around. When he finally discovered his disciple lying in a wretched state, he screamed.
"Doha! Doha!"
He hurriedly gathered her into his arms, only to lose his strength and tumble to the ground.
"Great Warrior!"
Only then did the old man notice Bu Eunseol and plead with him.
"Please save this child!"
Without delay, Bu Eunseol immediately examined the condition of the woman named Doha.
Fortunately, only her clothes were torn.
She bore no other injury or abnormality.
But no matter what he tried, she would not regain consciousness.
Thrum.
He infused her with Ban-Geuk true energy, but she still did not respond.
'Strange.'
If she had fallen victim to a Mind-Seizing Secret Art, there was no possibility that he would fail to recognize it.
Yet though her body was perfectly sound, the woman did not wake.
'Remaining with them will only bring them harm.'
The Empress Dowager was expending tremendous manpower and wealth to test him.
If he stayed with them under the pretext of providing treatment, he would only place them in greater danger.
"I will take you to a physician in the village. Let us go there."
Without hesitation, Bu Eunseol lifted the old man and the woman into the air and unfolded the sky-treading flight art.
Trickle.
Blood still flowed because the wound left by the Zhanlu Sword had not healed, but he paid it no mind as he unfolded his movement technique.
Now that he had attained the Void Extreme Realm, most wounds healed on their own.
But the energy embedded within the Zhanlu Sword had been too powerful for this wound to heal easily.
Tap.
Upon reaching a nearby physician's clinic, Bu Eunseol laid the woman inside. He then drew out a bank draft and placed it in the old man's hand.
"This money will be more than enough to treat your disciple."
The old man and the woman had suffered this ordeal solely because of him.
Bu Eunseol spoke with an apologetic expression.
"Once you recover, do not return to the remote valleys. Live comfortably in the city."
He unfolded the sky-treading flight art once more and departed. Yet less than half a quarter-hour after he began using his movement technique...
―'Aaaaargh!'
A harrowing scream carried from somewhere far away.
It had come from the very village he had just visited.
'It cannot be.'
Overcome by an ominous premonition, Bu Eunseol immediately turned back toward the village.
It was in utter chaos.
The first thing he saw upon returning was the old man's corpse lying before the physician's clinic.
A deep wound had been carved into his neck. His eyes remained wide open, his expression frozen in disbelief.
The clinic door had been shattered, and screams mingled with the thunderous sound of something breaking inside.
Bang! Thud!
People were attacking one another throughout the village.
Neighbor attacked neighbor, friend attacked friend, and even parents swung blades at their own children.
Bright red blood streamed alike from all their mouths, and their eyes were bloodshot.
"Kaaaargh!"
A middle-aged man wielding a sickle lunged at a woman who appeared to be his wife, while an old woman raised a stone to smash the head of the child next door.
Thud! Slash!
Five or six people had become entangled in the marketplace, biting and clawing at one another.
Their faces and bodies were already drenched in blood.
Even so, they did not stop, but attacked one another with ever greater savagery.
Craash!
Madness had engulfed the entire village.
Screams, wails, and the sounds of slaughter had transformed the peaceful village into hell.
At its center stood the woman who had failed to regain consciousness earlier, her eyes stretched wide.
"They intended for me to bring her into a village."
Only then did Bu Eunseol grasp the situation.
The woman had not been unconscious. She was a vessel that spread the Mind-Seizing Secret Art.
The moment he brought her into the village, she had released her evil energy as though awaiting a signal and made the villagers fight one another like madmen.
Everything would now be blamed on him.
Even if it was not, he would still be burdened with guilt.
Grin.
When the woman saw Bu Eunseol, a blood-soaked smile spread across her face.
With pallid skin and eyes in which only black pupils remained, she looked exactly like a ghost that had appeared in broad daylight.
Ziiiing.
As the situation turned dire, Bu Eunseol's right eye began to burn.
The power of the Ancient Sword Forest had activated.
"Those are..."
Then he beheld a bizarre sight.
Tens of thousands of transparent strands of energy extended from the woman standing there.
Each was connected to the head of a villager.
"So that was it."
To stop this grotesque calamity, he had to kill the woman.
But if he killed her, the villagers' spirits would be destroyed as well.
"She has grasped my weakness perfectly."
Previously, the Empress Dowager had tampered with the women around him using the secret arts of the True Demon Palace in order to seize hold of his weakness.
She had since determined that not only was he vulnerable to affection, but he also walked an exceedingly righteous path...
Now she intended to place common people who had no connection to him in danger and drive him into another predicament.
―'Now, what will you do?'
He could almost see the Empress Dowager smiling slyly.
If he left now, the disturbance in this village would spread all the way to the city.
Countless people would be injured or killed.
"You have risen to the position of Empress Dowager, yet you still regard the people as game pieces?"
Conflict filled Bu Eunseol's eyes.
"If I kill that woman, no method will clear me of the charge that I harmed innocent people."
Would he kill the woman and the common people here to save even more lives, accepting the stain upon his name?
Would he become a hero who protected his reputation for the sake of the greater cause, even at the cost of a few sacrifices?
Or would he accept a vile infamy and become a villain to save as many lives as possible?
Tap.
Unfolding his movement technique, Bu Eunseol instantly appeared a dozen jang before the woman named Doha.
"I reject both choices."
Murmuring in a low voice, he released his power with all his might.
Trickle.
Like an ink-wash painting drained of color, Bu Eunseol's hair, eyes, and clothing slowly turned achromatic.
At the same time, the common people who had been fighting one another under the waves of the Mind-Seizing Secret Art suddenly turned.
Rumble, rumble.
They all charged toward Bu Eunseol.
Slash! Paaat!
With the blades and stones in their hands, they began stabbing and striking him.
He would draw upon three powers: the Ancient Sword Forest, the Void Extreme Realm, and Illusion Upon Illusion.
Having used the power of the Ancient Sword Forest to grasp the situation, Bu Eunseol unfolded the domain of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction.
He confined the power of the Mind-Seizing Secret Art spreading from the woman to the space around himself.
Then, through the secret art of Illusion Upon Illusion, he redirected the rage binding the woman to the villagers' minds.
He made all of them pour that rage upon him instead.
This should have been an inescapable trap.
Yet Bu Eunseol possessed a mysterious power passed down through generations of the martial world.
He also wielded the finest Mind-Seizing Secret Art of the age, created by the Human Demon, Great Grandmaster of peerless martial arts.
To those, he added the power of a martial realm born for the first time in the history of the martial world.
Together, those three powers wrought this miracle.
Slash! Paaat!
As if bewitched, the villagers madly swung their blades at Bu Eunseol.
Seizing the spirits of so many people would never have been easy even for Ak Muryeong.
But when Bu Eunseol sought to restore Yeon Soha's mind, he had studied and comprehended the method of the Heart-Captivating Studies inside Han Sangja's secret vault.
In the process, Illusion Upon Illusion had also advanced by leaps and bounds, and his attainment had deepened without limit. That was what made this possible.
Spurrrrt! Trickle.
Because Bu Eunseol had surrounded himself with the domain of the Realm of Destruction and Extinction, even simple attacks inflicted grievous injuries upon him.
The power of the Void Extreme Realm might restore his wounds, but it did nothing to dull the agony of tearing flesh and rattling bones.
Yet Bu Eunseol merely closed his eyes.
Deflecting only fatal attacks, he stood rooted in place.
At that moment, he was unfolding Illusion Upon Illusion with all his might.
If he made any large movement or used the profound principles of another martial art, the secret art controlling their minds might be disrupted.
How much time had passed?
"..."
At last, he completely severed the connections of the Mind-Seizing Secret Art. The villagers escaped the emotion of rage and slowly regained their senses.
"U-Uhhh."
They stared at the sight before their eyes.
Bu Eunseol had been reduced to a mass of blood, and the villagers recoiled in shock.
Trickle.
He had lost so much blood that his head spun, but seeing the villagers unharmed, he breathed a sigh of relief.
'Whew.'
The Empress Dowager must have used the True Demon Palace's secret arts and innocent common people in this fashion.
Through them, she had corrupted people who possessed righteous hearts.
But Bu Eunseol had not only created a new martial realm. He had also mastered a host of Ultimate Secret Arts.
Such a method would not work on him.
"An affair like this could not have been planned in a short time."
From the Red Blade Sect's atrocities to the all-out war between the Heavenly Star Sect and True Dragon Pavilion, the Black Slaughter Sect's ambush, and finally this trap using common people...
None of it could have been planned and carried out in a matter of days.
"She has executed a plan like this before."
In other words, the Empress Dowager had once used this sort of trap on someone who was not a demonic path practitioner, but who followed righteous convictions.
Now she was using the same method again.
"In that case..."
A flash passed through his eyes as something occurred to him.
But then...
Rumble.
Another calamity erupted.
―'Kaargh!'
―'Urgh!'
More than three hundred assassins slaughtered the villagers as they surged toward him in unison.
"Heh heh heh heh."
The sheer absurdity made Bu Eunseol laugh.
The Empress Dowager had even prepared for the possibility that this plan would fail.
She had stationed troops nearby to erase every trace of the Mind-Seizing Secret Art used upon the villagers and to attack him.
"You would even sacrifice your own people just to drive me into a corner!"
Black mist rose from his entire body as fury seized him.
"Very well. I will play along."
He could not simply walk past the atrocity of slaughtering the villagers.
No, he could not forgive it.
Crrrack.
Three emotions surged within him: killing intent, madness, and demonic energy.
Those uncontrollable emotions coursed through his blood and spread across his entire body.
Clack.
Bu Eunseol pressed the Silent Tiger Soul Sword flat against his back and lowered his stance.
It was the distinctive opening stance once assumed by the Seven-Finger Demon Blade, though Bu Eunseol himself had not realized it.
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