‘Too fast.’
Sensing something odd, Bu Eunseol glanced out the window once more.
Yet what he saw rushing toward the shrine was not the warriors of Ghost King Valley, but the villagers themselves, swarming in a mob.
Their eyes burned red, and in their hands they gripped sharp sickles and blades.
“You were shown kindness!”
Village Chief Jang Pyeong, whom he had met at the village entrance, shouted loudly as though he had already seen through Bu Eunseol’s hiding in the shrine.
“Why have you destroyed our village’s sacred ground!”
“Sacred ground?”
Bu Eunseol found it absurd and slowly opened the shrine door to reveal himself.
“This place is your sacred ground?”
“Of course it is!”
Jang Pyeong cried out in fury.
“It is the holy site where we offer prayers to the god who grants our village health!”
In that instant, Bu Eunseol’s gaze turned razor-sharp.
Though every ounce of power within his body had vanished due to the energy flowing from Ghost King Valley, his insight—the ability to pierce through the human heart—remained untouched.
By observing Jang Pyeong’s eyes, expression, and voice, he instantly saw through the man’s true thoughts.
“You already know the entire truth.”
“…”
“That this is not a place of prayer, but a place where the villagers’ essence is harvested.”
Jang Pyeong was greatly startled, yet he stammered out, “What nonsense are you spouting?”
“The so-called village chief incited the people with talk of a strange plague… and took the lead in allowing Ghost King Valley’s warriors to extract essence?”
Jang Pyeong tried to lie but when he met Bu Eunseol’s blazing red eyes, he could no longer conceal his emotions.
“So what if that’s true!”
He spoke with a twisted face.
“Ghost King Valley has given us that many elixirs and spiritual medicines in return!”
“Those elixirs and medicines are merely tools to drain your essence. Your essence does not recover.”
“What does it matter!” Jang Pyeong uttered words that made no sense. “The outside world is a hell where greedy people claw and fight to survive. But here, under the protection of Ghost King Valley, we can live happily!”
Bu Eunseol let out an incredulous laugh.
“This place—where innocent children suffer such pain and agony—is happy?”
“If this were the outside world, those children would have starved to death before reaching five or six years old, or been exploited by wicked people.”
Jang Pyeong spoke with brazen confidence.
“But here, only a little blood is drawn. In exchange, they can live happily while taking elixirs, can they not?”
Bu Eunseol looked at the elders surrounding him.
He noticed the gleaming eyes of Jang Pyeong and every single old man, and let out a deep sigh.
At first he had thought Jang Pyeong, too, had been brainwashed by Ghost King Valley and was incapable of normal judgment but now he understood clearly.
The elders of Ghost King Village were sacrificing the younger generation simply to preserve their own comfort and safety.
“Since you are already old, you can live comfortably without offering your essence.”
As Bu Eunseol gazed at Jang Pyeong and the elders, contempt shone in his eyes.
“You think it only natural for the young to suffer pain.”
These decrepit, lustful old men and this greedy village chief had sacrificed the next generation for their own ease and self-preservation.
“Silence!”
Jang Pyeong shouted loudly.
“Do you think we have dealt with outsiders like you only once or twice?”
Within the territory of Ghost King Valley, no internal energy or power could be used.
In contrast, the people of Ghost King Village had long consumed elixirs and wondrous medicines, possessing strength and stamina rivaling that of martial masters. Some of the younger ones had even learned fragments of the martial manuals provided by Ghost King Valley.
Though they lacked essence in their bodies, that was merely a matter of lifespan.
If they attacked in earnest, they could easily dispose of any martial artist rendered powerless here.
“Attack!”
Just as Jang Pyeong raised the sickle he held high,
Splash!
With the sound of water pouring, blood fountains erupted—not from everyone surrounding Bu Eunseol, but only from the necks of the elders.
Bu Eunseol was a grandmaster thoroughly versed in the orthodox martial arts of the righteous sects, having fully comprehended the profound mysteries of supreme martial learning.
Even without internal energy or the Three Divine Energies, he could still unleash formidable power using only the principles of martial technique up to a certain level.
Thud thud thud.
The moment the leading elders fell dead in an instant, Jang Pyeong’s body froze like ice.
Countless martial artists had come here before, yet not a single one had ever died by their hands.
So how could this man unleash killing moves that could not even be seen?
“How…?”
Martial artists were strong not only because of the subtlety of their techniques, but because they wielded the mysterious power called internal energy.
When that power vanished, they could not endure the sense of loss, fear, or confusion.
Yet the young man before him had displayed overwhelming sword techniques even after losing all power.
“It seems only third-rate martial artists have come before.”
Until now, abyssal forces had constantly employed methods to restrict or nullify internal energy in martial artists. As a result, Bu Eunseol had repeatedly fought life-and-death battles without internal energy or the Three Divine Energies. He had even defeated enemies using only martial principles despite suffering mortal wounds.
Losing power caused him no sense of loss or fear whatsoever.
Step, step.
Jang Pyeong, witnessing Bu Eunseol’s terrifying prowess, did not dare to approach.
“What are you afraid of! Kill him now!”
“Come at me yourself.”
Bu Eunseol pointed the Silent Tiger Soul Sword at Jang Pyeong.
“Stop hiding behind the young as shields. Step forward yourself.”
Jang Pyeong swallowed hard as he stared at the sharp sword tip.
In truth, he was not someone who had lived in Ghost King Village from the beginning—he had been a wandering herb gatherer from the outside. Having squandered his youth on drink and gambling, he eventually became a vagabond drifting from place to place.
By chance he entered Ghost King Valley, caught their eye, and was made caretaker of the children they abducted and raised.
As time passed, the children grew up, formed families, and he—demonstrating exceptional ability among the caretakers—rose to become village chief.
For so long he had brainwashed the children, offered their essence to Ghost King Valley, and lived in comfort.
“I have raised and guided those children until now!”
Jang Pyeong shouted loudly.
“Without me, they would have died! So what is wrong with treating them as consumables!”
Jang Pyeong let out a monstrous, hideous laugh.
“Anyway, those brats were orphans who would have starved to death outside! Having their essence drawn here is instead a happy life!”
At his cry, the expressions of the young people twisted in misery.
All this time they had followed Chief Jang Pyeong like a father. Even knowing that the prayers here were harmful to the body… they had desperately denied it, bringing their children and praying fervently.
They had clung to the hope that if their devotion reached the heavens, the children’s sick bodies would truly be healed.
But seeing him declare so brazenly that they were mere consumables and that drawing their essence was only natural, they felt indescribable rage and disappointment.
“We won’t do it anymore.”
Clang.
In the end, all the young people dropped their sickles.
“What are you doing right now!”
Jang Pyeong shouted in panic at the sight.
“Even if you rebel, do you think Ghost King Valley will stay silent?”
At that moment, one man spoke with a pained expression.
“It would be better to die.”
“What?”
“We have had our blood drawn our entire lives, so it no longer matters to us. But what crime have the children committed?”
The man spoke with utmost earnestness.
“Why must even those pitiful children suffer for the rest of their lives?”
Despair and resignation filled the faces of the young people.
Once Bu Eunseol forced them to confront the truth they had tried so hard to ignore, the desperate wish for their children to live whole lives burst forth.
“You bastards!”
Jang Pyeong roared and pulled something from his robes.
Piiing. Boom.
It was the signal flare Ghost King Valley had given him to use in emergencies.
“You are finished now!”
Jang Pyeong shouted with bulging eyes.
“You pathetic beggars! We raised you, and now you bite the hand that fed you? You filthy ingrates!”
Rumble.
At that moment, a bizarre vibration echoed from the distant sky.
Thud.
A warrior clad in red armor engraved with grotesque patterns descended before the shrine.
He wore a ghost mask, his eyes gleaming with a yellowish light, resembling nothing so much as a general who had died on the battlefield hundreds of years ago rising from his grave.
“My Lord! Look!”
Jang Pyeong pointed at Bu Eunseol and the young people as he cried out.
“These bastards have finally begun to rebel-”
But his words were cut short.
Dozens of red lines had been drawn across his entire body.
Shhh shhh shhh!
Only after the red lines vanished did the sharp sword wind begin to blow.
Dozens of sword strikes had torn Jang Pyeong’s body apart.
Splash!
Now reduced to a lump of meat, Jang Pyeong twitched once before collapsing to the ground.
Thanks to the elixirs he had consumed from Ghost King Valley over the years, his life did not end instantly, but he had suffered wounds so grievous they could never heal.
“Why… exactly…”
“A swine like you couldn’t even control a bunch of vagrants properly and let the treasures of our valley be destroyed.”
The warrior of Ghost King Valley looked down at Jang Pyeong’s blood-soaked face and spoke irritably.
“Those were valuables that could not be repaid even with hundreds of your worthless lives.”
Jang Pyeong’s eyes bulged wide.
Until now he had believed himself a loyal servant of Ghost King Valley.
He had ruled the village and brainwashed the children to willingly offer their blood exactly as they wished.
But in their eyes, he had been nothing more—nothing less—than livestock tasked with managing the abducted children.
“You damned bastards!”
Jang Pyeong raged like a madman.
He had thought himself special yet in the end, he was being treated no differently from the livestock of Ghost King Village?
“How much loyalty I showed you!”
They say an evil man remains evil until the very end.
At the moment of death, ordinary people reflect on and regret their sins.
But Jang Pyeong—who had regarded the children he raised as mere livestock—realized that he himself had ultimately been livestock.
All he could do was curse the wickedness of Ghost King Valley’s warriors.
“You filthy scum of the world…”
Crack.
But with that, his consciousness was severed.
The warrior of Ghost King Valley had stomped on the head of the screaming Jang Pyeong.
That was the end of the village chief who, for thirty years, had raised and brainwashed hundreds of abducted children in Ghost King Village.
“Who are you?”
The warrior who had killed Jang Pyeong turned his gaze to Bu Eunseol.
He was Jo Jagi, the Lord of the Precept Garden—responsible for managing Ghost King Village and guarding the outer perimeter of Ghost King Valley.
‘Such arrogance.’
Normally, ringing a bell or firing a signal flare would bring at least the elite forces of the sect rushing in yet Ghost King Valley had sent only a single hall lord wearing a ghost mask?
“…”
As Bu Eunseol remained silent, Jo Jagi studied his face closely.
Though Ghost King Valley did not reveal itself to the world, it possessed an outstanding information network and was well-versed in the affairs and figures of the martial world.
Yet the face beneath the human-skin mask was completely unknown to him.
“A mere fly has flown in.”
Because he memorized the appearances of all the supreme experts who dominated the martial world, he sneered, assuming Bu Eunseol was some nobody.
“Even those who shake the world lose their power the moment they step here. Yet a nameless small fry dares to put on such an arrogant face.”
“Should I have worn a fearful expression instead?”
At Jo Jagi’s words, Bu Eunseol gave a faint smile.
“If I ever need to infiltrate another sect in the future, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Swish!
And he immediately unleashed swordsmanship.
If he did not deal with this man quickly, the full force of Ghost King Valley’s warriors might soon arrive.
With all power gone from his body, he had to swiftly kill Jo Jagi, seize whatever item allowed passage, and infiltrate Ghost King Valley.
Slash!
As he thrust out a single strike, Jo Jagi let out a mocking laugh and lightly evaded the sword move.
“With only this much-”
But he could not finish his sentence.
In an instant Bu Eunseol had closed the distance and was stabbing toward his throat.
“Get lost!”
Greatly startled, Jo Jagi unleashed the essence of Ghost King Valley martial arts—Yin Wind Bone-Piercing Palm—in a single burst.
But Bu Eunseol had already anticipated the palm force and was stabbing directly into the outstretched right palm.
“You bastard!”
Jo Jagi, unprepared for the speed and subtlety of Bu Eunseol’s swordsmanship, hurriedly withdrew his hand and retreated.
Slash slash slash.
Yet as though he had predicted it, Bu Eunseol closed the gap further and drew an arc through the air.
“Kuht.”
Unable to escape the range of Bu Eunseol’s sword momentum, Jo Jagi continuously drew circles with both hands.
It was the ultimate technique of the Bone-Piercing Yin Wind Palm—Bone-Piercing Fear-Destroyer, a move where merely entering the spreading range of the palm force would allow bone-freezing yin-cold energy to invade the meridians.
Swoosh!
But before the Bone-Piercing Fear-Destroyer could fully extend, the Silent Tiger Soul Sword abruptly thrust out from empty air, aiming to pierce both his Jianjing acupoints at the shoulders.
“You know the martial arts of our valley!”
After Bu Eunseol preempted his attack path twice, Jo Jagi judged that the man knew the techniques of the Bone-Piercing Yin Wind Palm and was disrupting them midway.
“If you dare enter our valley alone, you must have studied our arts to some extent!”
Boom!
An explosive sound erupted from Jo Jagi’s body as razor-sharp energy poured in all directions.
It was the final ultimate technique of the Bone-Piercing Yin Wind Palm—Soul-Seizing Wind and Rain.
Unlike divided forms, this was a technique that scattered palm energy in every direction across heaven and earth, impossible to block even by preempting the path midway.
“Urrk.”
Yet something strange occurred.
Jo Jagi, in the midst of unleashing his ultimate technique, suddenly clutched his abdomen and vomited blood.
“Ugh…”
His body staggered.
The Soul-Seizing Wind and Rain had been on the verge of fully unleashing, and his internal energy had surged to its peak. Whether the Silent Tiger Soul Sword struck his Jianjing or not, he had intended to pour out the palm force, but in truth, that had been Bu Eunseol’s feint.
Anticipating that Jo Jagi would unleash the full force of his palm, Bu Eunseol had changed the sword path midway and stabbed his Qihai acupoint instead.
Though the lack of internal energy prevented piercing through the thick protective true qi, the technique was interrupted in an instant, and the backlash caused him severe internal injury.
“I… I surrender!”
Staggering, Jo Jagi placed both hands on the ground to signal surrender.
“Do not attack any further.”
It was such a pathetic display that one could only laugh.
A warrior of the mighty Ghost King Valley, merely because of internal injury, was trembling and begging for his life?
Ziiing.
Yet at that moment, an insidious, undetectable palm force burrowed into both of Bu Eunseol’s flanks.
‘Heh heh, how about that.’
It was the most cunning move of the Yin Wind Bone-Piercing Palm—Yin Wind Hidden Current.
Pretending to submit by placing both hands on the ground in defeat, he actually unleashed insidious palm force to ambush the enemy from behind—an utterly vicious technique.
“Urrk.”
In that instant, a pained groan rang out along with a spray of blood.
But it was not Bu Eunseol—it was Jo Jagi himself.
“How is this possible…”
His body trembled violently.
He had clearly executed the perfect Yin Wind Hidden Current yet once again his technique was interrupted midway, causing all his internal energy to reverse-flow.
A scorching heat surged into his chest, spreading indescribable agony.
“How do you know every single technique of our valley’s martial arts?”
Ghost King Valley rarely engaged in martial world activities or clashed with other martial artists, so their martial arts were almost entirely unknown to the outside world. Yet the young man before him had perfectly analyzed the techniques of the Bone-Piercing Yin Wind Palm and preempted them.
“I did not preempt your techniques. I preempted your movements.”
Swish.
Flicking the blood droplets from the blade, Bu Eunseol spoke calmly.
“Your actions are so obvious that I can already tell which technique you will use.”
“What does that-!”
Jo Jagi’s shout was cut short.
Pssht! Gush gush.
In that moment, blood was surging into his own heart.
When Bu Eunseol had flicked the blood from the blade earlier, it was because he had executed a lightning-fast piercing sword form that ran straight through the heart.
“You… who are you?”
Jo Jagi’s eyes bulged wide.
Those were his final words.
In all his life, he could never have imagined someone possessed such supreme swordsmanship.
Thud.
In the end, he fell like a log.
Though his body held no internal energy, Bu Eunseol had used the entangling and spiraling principles of swift swordsmanship to pierce through Jo Jagi’s protective true qi with the Silent Tiger Soul Sword and run a single thrust through his heart.
Click.
Sheathing the Silent Tiger Soul Sword, he thoroughly searched Jo Jagi’s body but there was no spirit plaque or sacred item that would allow entry into Ghost King Valley.
“Then it must be a formation with a unique method after all.”
The formation set up ahead was too complex to unravel easily and since he could not exert power from within his body, he could not simply destroy it either.
“It’s the mask.”
At that moment, one of the young men pointed to Jo Jagi’s corpse.
“All the warriors of Ghost King Valley wear those masks. If you wear the mask, you can easily pass through the areas they block.”
“I see.”
Bu Eunseol tried to remove the iron mask from Jo Jagi’s face.
But the iron mask seemed fused to the skin and would not come off at all.
Then the young man approached, sliced his own wrist with a sickle, and poured blood onto the mask.
Sizzle.
As red blood dripped down, a faint light emanated from the mask, and it separated from the face.
“All sorcery in Ghost King Valley uses blood containing essence as a medium.”
“How did you know that?”
“I was his son.”
The young man pointed with an utterly bitter expression at the miserably dead village chief, Jang Pyeong.
“Though not his real son.”
He had been Jang Pyeong’s adopted son.
He had repeatedly tried to persuade Jang Pyeong—who extracted people’s essence to suit Ghost King Valley’s tastes—to stop but each time he received only severe beatings, filling him with indescribable self-loathing.
When Bu Eunseol killed Jang Pyeong, he was finally freed from that cycle of evil.
“Thank you.”
Click.
When Bu Eunseol put on the removed iron mask, it adhered perfectly to his face.
Fortunately, Jo Jagi was tall and had a similar build to Bu Eunseol.
After donning the red robes and armor Jo Jagi had worn, Bu Eunseol instantly transformed into Jo Jagi’s likeness.
“What do you plan to do now?”
“We will leave this place.”
The young man spoke with a bitter smile.
They had lived their entire lives under the protection of Ghost King Valley and feared going outside.
But now they had found the courage to leave.
It was because Bu Eunseol had provoked Jang Pyeong and revealed the truth to them.
“You will do well.”
Bu Eunseol nodded.
“If you have nowhere to go, seek out the Geumran Manor in Jinan.
He told them the location of Geumran Manor, where Bu Bok-un resided.
“Lord Bu will spare no effort to help you settle.”
“Thank you.”
The people of Ghost King Village took their children and all departed from the place.
Though their essence had been drained, leaving them weak and perhaps with shortened lifespans, their children could now live ordinary lives. For parents of those children… that alone was enough to bring smiles to their faces.
‘Ghost King.’
Bu Eunseol gazed at the distant mountain and clenched his fist tightly.
He cared not whether they captured or commanded ghosts.
But abducting ordinary commoners and draining their essence was a crime deserving death ten million times over.
‘He was someone who had to die anyway.’
Even without Han Sangja’s request, the Ghost King was an evil that had to be eliminated.
He slowly turned his body toward Ghost King Valley.
He would now go to sever the head of the fiend who committed such atrocities without hesitation.
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