Chapter 188: "The Inn Is Running Smoothly"
Chwaaak—!
Seo Yu-gyeom’s Heaven-Slaying Dagger left a long gash across Baek Li-cheon’s back. Blood sprayed into the air, and the martial artists of the Baek Li Clan rushed forward in alarm.
“Clan Head!”
Baek Li-cheon stepped back, and the gap was filled by the elders and other martial artists.
Seo Yu-gyeom clicked his tongue in disappointment and descended to Jin Seong-un’s side.
He had tried to cut off Baek Li-cheon’s breath with a surprise attack, but the man, being a clan head, had been unusually perceptive.
Suddenly, the clan’s martial artists joined in a combined assault.
Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom calmly met it.
They had no intention of overreaching. Their goal was not to kill everyone, but to stay alive until someone else arrived.
Chaechachaechang—!
The Baek Li Clan’s sword strikes came in a continuous barrage and were blocked by Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom. Because the two avoided a direct clash and blatantly deflected and parried the strikes, the attackers could not find an easy answer.
The battle dragged on sluggishly, and the Baek Li Clan’s warriors clicked their tongues in frustration.
‘How on earth…’
Especially Baek Li-joong, the clan’s eldest son, let out a long, inward sigh.
How could martial artists of his generation withstand the full force of the Baek Li Clan?
It wounded his pride deeply. Lately, everything had felt that way.
Seomun Ak, his lifelong rival, had grown suddenly and far beyond him, acting as if he no longer cared about people like Baek Li-joong.
He had never heard of things like the Five Dragons and Three Phoenixes, but when citing the era’s later-generation prodigies, Baek Li-joong’s name had often been mentioned.
He realized it now. Baek Li-joong had been proud in his own right. Even if he was not the best of his age, he had thought himself close.
But it all became meaningless. The moment a small inn’s name began to spread across the world, everything shifted.
Even those once called the best, like Ki-ryong Sima Hwi, were pushed aside by a single innkeeper. Baek Li-joong, who could not even enter the Five Dragons and Three Phoenixes, needed no further embarrassment.
‘Like a frog in a well.’
He had always wielded a greatsword, but today the blade felt heavier than ever.
It must have been from poison.
When that thought reached him, Baek Li-joong’s eyes sank low.
If the situation had come this far, it was too late to take an antidote. Those two would surely die in this place.
So he felt his own death was inevitable.
As soon as he accepted that, his mind calmed.
Thinking he had only a day or two left, all the recent turmoil that had disturbed his body and mind vanished, and he became like a still lake.
Baek Li-joong’s expression hardened.
Thick, wire-like veins stood out on his forearm as he gripped the greatsword.
His aura shifted in an instant, and the clan’s martial artists around him sensed it.
“N—no! What on earth—!”
The clan head Baek Li-cheon cried out in alarm.
His son, Baek Li-joong, had drawn out his innate qi. A martial artist who used innate qi could display martial feats far beyond short-term attainment, but they would surely die.
“In any case, it seems this is where I end, so I want to be of use to the clan until the last.”
Baek Li-joong accepted death.
He raised the greatsword and charged at Seo Yu-gyeom. He judged that even with Guest Dragon’s innate qi drawn, it would be woefully insufficient.
Of course, he did not believe he could kill Seo Yu-gyeom. But he intended at least to take an arm.
As he created a tremendous gust and surged toward Seo Yu-gyeom, the flustered Seo Yu-gyeom said,
“It was the Fasting Pill, that.”
Baek Li-joong’s face went ashen.
He recalled the Medical Hall Leader Baek Li-heon’s words that there seemed to be no poison at all.
In an instant, blood burst from Baek Li-joong’s mouth and nose. His charge, which had been like a rampant executioner’s, began to slow until, at last, he trudged to a halt.
A long silence filled the hall.
Plop, plop— the sound of the blood he bled from his seven orifices striking the floor sounded unusually loud.
Everyone knew Baek Li-joong’s condition clearly. He had thought he had taken poison and drawn out his innate qi, but in fact he had taken a mere Fasting Pill.
It was enough to plunge one into qi deviation.
Standing still for a moment, Baek Li-joong could not even bear the weight of the greatsword and it clattered to the ground.
For a short time his body twitched, and blood spread around him until even that motion stopped entirely.
“…….”
Even longer silence followed.
As the Baek Li Clan’s martial artists grew increasingly ominous, Seo Yu-gyeom offered an excuse.
“He died by himself.”
He tried to give voice to his sense of injustice, but it only increased the clan’s rage and killing intent.
The air tightened like a drawn bowstring.
Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom looked at each other.
‘Your Fasting Pill killed a man.’
‘Seo the Young Master’s tongue ended up killing a man.’
Their expressions matched.
Then, as if by agreement, the Baek Li Clan’s martial artists surged at once.
...
The battle continued long and seemed unable to end.
Blood covered Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom’s bodies, and the Baek Li Clan’s bodies lay scattered around.
Chaechachaechang—!
Jin Seong-un alone endured the combined assault from clan head Baek Li-cheon and two elders.
To be honest, it was a taxing situation.
The sword strikes of three peak-level masters, enraged at the deaths of their son and nephew, were truly fierce and potent.
If Jin Seong-un could have overwhelmed them, he would never have waged war on the Baek Li Clan alone.
‘This is bad.’
Despite that thought, his expression remained calm. Not a deliberate pose—Jin Seong-un’s face was simply like that.
Seeing him, the clan head and the elders looked at him as if they faced a monster. How could a martial artist about twenty years old withstand their combined force like this?
Then—
Cheng-graang—!
The sword Jin Seong-un had borrowed from Medical Hall Leader Baek Li-heon suddenly shattered. It was perhaps inevitable—four peak-level masters’ qi had collided on a single blade in rapid succession.
The clan head Baek Li-cheon and the elders’ eyes flashed. In that instant, their movements seemed to double in speed.
Swaek—!
Three greatswords surged with no avenue of retreat left, cutting in viciously.
There was no way to evade, no way to block that could be seen.
The three were certain of victory. Guest Dragon’s body would be cleaved cleanly into three parts, and this wretched fight would finally end.
It had to be that way.
Tuk—!
Jin Seong-un shoved his body forward. He grabbed Baek Li-cheon’s blade with his bare hand. Because of that, the elders’ swords only cut the air behind Jin Seong-un.
A brief silence passed.
Blood dripped from the hand that had seized the blade. But before the blood hit the floor it turned into a dark-red energy and hovered in the air around Jin Seong-un.
Seeing this, the Clan Head and the elders instinctively felt that that energy was extremely dangerous.
They also sensed that it was far removed from orthodox Baek-do martial arts.
The Clan Head and the elders widened their distance for a moment and shouted loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“He has mastered demonic art! Everyone be careful—!”
But that was a poor judgment.
Seizing the moment while the three had backed away, Jin Seong-un plunged into the middle of the Baek Li Clan’s martial artists.
Kwaaaaang—!
The dark-red blood-demon field shook the ground.
Blood and flesh from the nearby martial artists splattered outward.
Unlike usual, Jin Seong-un drove his Blood-Demon Art to the extreme. Not only his life but Seo Yu-gyeom’s life was hanging in the balance.
As Jin Seong-un tore through the Baek Li Clan’s ranks and reached out, things cracked and shattered at every touch.
He did not bother to block the incoming blades. Even as their swords cut and slashed his body, he paid them no mind.
It looked as if he wanted to kill one more person in the time it would have taken to stop them.
Kwak-!
Jin Seong-un broke the throat of the Baek Li Manor master as if wringing a chicken’s neck.
Meanwhile, two blades surged from behind, but Jin Seong-un had already stamped down and driven his foot forward.
How many people had he ripped apart like that?
Soon he realized something. From some point onward the situation had begun to feel pleasurable.
The sensation of bone and flesh splitting at his fingertips was welcomed, and the death rattle of a dying person sounded to him like the pleasing pluck of a seven-string zither played by Lingbo Immortal Maiden.
‘Because of the Blood-Demon Art?’
He recalled the image of the blood demon rampaging and attacking the martial gods. He also knew that there were no martial gods here to pull him back.
The stronger he burned the blood-demon qi, the more he surrendered his body and mind to that energy, the more he felt that something ominous was happening inside him.
At that rate his body and mind would not hold; they would collapse.
Yet he could not stop.
Like a gambler who continued to throw the dice knowing his life was ruined, like addicts who, with wasted bodies and minds, chased ever stronger stimulation—
Jin Seong-un could not stop killing and destroying, even though he was dying.
Swaek—!
Jin Seong-un kicked the ground roughly and surged.
His target was Clan Head Baek Li-cheon.
The elders struck from left and right.
Jin Seong-un found their swordplay trivial and did not react.
Puk, puk—!
A blade pierced his right chest and his left thigh.
In exchange, Jin Seong-un could seize Baek Li-cheon’s throat.
Jin Seong-un and Baek Li-cheon met eyes at close range.
For a moment Baek Li-cheon’s body flinched. The other’s eyes were not human. They were the eyes of a starving beast left with instinct alone.
The elders twisted their blades and gouged at Jin Seong-un’s wounds, and though blood gushed and poured, Jin Seong-un did not care.
Instead, he snapped the blade lodged in his thigh and pulled it free. Jin Seong-un grasped the broken blade with his bare hand and thrust it toward Baek Li-cheon’s heart.
A panicked elder swung a greatsword to cut off Jin Seong-un’s forearm.
Kang—!
A hastily rushing Seo Yu-gyeom swung the Heaven-Slaying Dagger and blocked it.
Thanks to that, Jin Seong-un’s blade proceeded toward Baek Li-cheon with no interference.
Thud— Baek Li-cheon grabbed Jin Seong-un’s wrist with both hands as if desperately trying to wrench it away. The broken blade was not long. The tip halted upright before Baek Li-cheon’s chest.
For the moment relief passed across Baek Li-cheon and the elders’ faces.
The dark-red blood-demon qi that had begun at Jin Seong-un’s hand climbed the broken blade quickly, then took the shape of a sword and extended outward.
Puk—!
The blood-demon qi formed as a qi sword and pierced Baek Li-cheon’s heart.
He trembled several times, then finally vomited a blackish tide of blood and slumped.
“Jin Seong-un.”
Seo Yu-gyeom called Jin Seong-un’s name.
Jin Seong-un turned his head and looked at Seo Yu-gyeom.
“…….”
Seo Yu-gyeom understood instinctively.
Those eyes were not Jin Seong-un’s.
As if Jin Seong-un had been devoured by murderous intent, he too was being swept by that energy.
Seo Yu-gyeom’s judgment was swift. He immediately put distance between himself and Jin Seong-un, and that proved the right choice.
The blood-demon qi that burst from beneath Jin Seong-un tore and smashed everything nearby.
From a short distance Seo Yu-gyeom watched Jin Seong-un. The man was butchering the Baek Li Clan’s martial artists.
He seemed not to care at all even as dozens of blades cut and pierced his body.
The number of Baek Li Clan warriors fell rapidly, and in proportion Jin Seong-un’s body became a wreck.
To Seo Yu-gyeom it looked like killing itself—or rather, destruction (破壊)—had consumed him.
If Seo Yu-gyeom’s blade, carried by murderous intent, moved to crave human blood, Jin Seong-un’s was the kind that shredded and smashed whatever it struck.
There was a fundamental difference between murder and destruction.
Seo Yu-gyeom thought, “The inn is running smoothly,” for a moment, then made up his mind.
Left as-is it would be a contest to see whether the enemy destroyed the other first, or whether his own body and mind were destroyed before that.
Seo Yu-gyeom would not gamble his friend’s life on luck.
He surged forward and drove the Heaven-Slaying Dagger deep into Jin Seong-un’s abdomen.
Even so, Jin Seong-un exploded a blood-demon field to kill three of the Baek Li Clan’s martial artists.
Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom met eyes at short range.
Seo Yu-gyeom felt a chill along his spine, but he spoke in a deliberately calm tone.
“Your eyes are weird right now, man.”
When Seo Yu-gyeom had been swept by murderous intent and could not tell heaven from earth as he killed, it had been Jin Seong-un who brought him back to his senses.
Now it was Seo Yu-gyeom’s turn to help Jin Seong-un.
Seo Yu-gyeom wielded chill to the extreme.
Just as the murderous heart of the Heaven-Slaying Star had been restrained by the coolness of Ice Arts, he hoped the same cold might work on Jin Seong-un.