Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 169 - Variable (4).txt

Chapter 169 – Variable (4)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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-Don’t tell me?

“Yes. I slept with her.”

‘!!!!!!!!!’

At Mok Gyeong-un’s blunt words, Blue Spirit’s expression froze.

She had thought he was a blockhead with absolutely no interest in relations between men and women, so she had never expected words like that to come out of him.

Even though she had become a resentful spirit, she could not help but feel embarrassed.

Yet the moment she thought of it, Blue Spirit’s face reddened and her expression twisted.

‘…Wait a moment. That wench of a sentient being looks like me.’

At this, Blue Spirit could not hide her bewilderment.

Though their atmospheres were different, if one looked only at their appearances, she and Wi So-yeon were strikingly alike, enough to pass as sisters or twins.

And yet he had slept with her knowing that?

At that moment, Blue Spirit found herself imagining her own face over Wi So-yeon’s.

Perhaps because of that,

-You! You! You really are shameless.

“Pardon?”

-That wench of a sentient being looks like thi…

Blue Spirit could not bring herself to continue.

She had been about to demand whether he had slept with her even knowing she resembled Blue Spirit, but she grew too embarrassed to finish the words.

‘Th-this brat really…’

Was he asking because he truly did not understand why she reacted like this?

If the girl had not resembled her, then it would have been one thing.

But when he looked at that wench of a sentient being, he must have been reminded of her, and the fact that he had still slept with her made Blue Spirit feel not merely embarrassed but unsettled and oddly uncomfortable.

Could it be that while he was sleeping with that girl, this brat had been thinking of her instead? That was the sort of thought she had.

Then Mok Gyeong-un said,

“Hmm. I do not know what you were trying to say, but it does not seem like there will be much of a problem. If there is one, it would be better dealt with before that.”

-…

At those words, Blue Spirit frowned.

Had she been the only one making too much fuss over it?

From the attitude he was showing, he looked just as cool-headed as usual in everything.

If that was true, then did it mean that no feeling or personal desire had truly mixed into his sleeping with that wench of a sentient being called Wi So-yeon, who looked like her?

‘…Was it stranger from the start to expect a fellow like this to possess such feelings?’

Come to think of it, aside from his murderous obsession with finding the culprit who had killed his grandfather, Mok Gyeong-un rarely showed any other emotions.

Even the smile on his face was merely a false emotion used to reassure others or make them lower their guard.

The only time he showed a smile with any sincerity in it was when he saw blood.

Taking that into account, it truly must have been no more and no less than sleeping with her for the sake of his objective.

Though to begin with, she did have to wonder whether this fellow even possessed desire toward the opposite sex at all.

‘Well, if that is all it was, then perhaps I can just stop thinking about…’

No, she could not. It kept bothering her.

She had thought that after becoming a resentful spirit, all emotions other than the desire to resolve her grudge had vanished, but apparently that was not the case.

If she had never known, it would have been one thing, but now that she did know, she could not help but feel bothered and unsettled.

Still, since he himself was acting perfectly unaffected, she also found it awkward to keep bringing it up when she alone was making such a fuss.

Then Mok Gyeong-un walked over to her, pointed at something, and said,

“By the way, what is that?”

-That?

“Yes. No matter how I look at it, the person in that hanging portrait looks like you, Blue Spirit.”

-…

At his words, Blue Spirit fell silent.

She had already expected that he would ask about her in that hanging scroll.

‘I should have just torn it up.’

For fear he would grow suspicious, she had even considered doing that.

But she simply could not bring herself to.

That was the last trace of herself left in this world, and of that person…

At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un gave a faint laugh and said,

“Wearing such a red and beautiful bridal robe with that golden coronet, you look just like a single peony blossom. Did you perhaps hold a wedding once?”

‘!?’

At those words, Blue Spirit’s eyes shook.

[You look like a single red peony blossom.]

A voice that rippled through her mind.

That voice, now so faint in memory that even after a hundred years it had begun to blur, surfaced again.

She slowly turned to look at Mok Gyeong-un.

How strangely coincidental. To hear those old words again through this sentient being of a brat.

It made her so wistful that her heart grew faint with longing.

‘Hm?’

A strange light appeared in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes.

He could not help but find it puzzling, seeing Blue Spirit wear such a wistful expression, one he had never seen before.

Could there be some sort of story connected to the hanging portrait?

With her making that kind of face, he could no longer ask anything more about the portrait of her in the bridal robe.

At that moment, however, something entered Mok Gyeong-un’s sight.

‘!?’

It was the censer before the old altar.

This was a shrine that looked as though no one ever visited it, with layers of dust piled up and cobwebs thick everywhere.

Yet the only things that were clean inside it were the portrait in the hanging scroll and that censer.

The traces of broken incense in the censer.

And the patch of floor before it where no dust had gathered.

‘Does someone come here regularly?’

There was no way only that place would look like that otherwise.

In this old shrine hung a portrait that seemed to be of Blue Spirit, and there was someone who came here regularly…

Could it perhaps be blood relatives or acquaintances connected to Blue Spirit?

It was right then.

-Flinch!

Mok Gyeong-un looked in a certain direction.

Then he quickly pulled the wooden doll from inside his robe and urgently sent Blue Spirit a voice transmission.

-Blue Spirit!

-I sensed it as well.

She too had sensed it at almost the exact same moment as Mok Gyeong-un.

It was a very faint force, but it was nearly identical to the wave of that spell power.

That meant the owner of that spell power had come very close.

Mok Gyeong-un formed a hand seal and softly recited an incantation.

At once Blue Spirit’s body turned to smoke, and then slipped into the wooden doll Mok Gyeong-un was holding.

-Sssssss!

After sealing Blue Spirit inside the wooden doll, Mok Gyeong-un tucked it into his clothes.

Then he was about to head outside, but stopped short.

He had sensed that faint spell power just beyond the shrine door.

‘Fast.’

Because of that, he first tried to use his body-lightening art to shoot upward toward the ceiling and hide himself.

It was at that very moment.

-Suuuuuuuuuu!

In that instant, the surroundings were covered in dark shadow, and Mok Gyeong-un’s body, which had been about to push off the ground, froze in place.

‘!?’

What in the world was this?

It was far too strange a phenomenon.

His body had frozen in that posture, just as it had been trying to leap upward, and would not move.

It felt as if every sensation in his whole body had disappeared, as though he had been paralyzed, while his consciousness alone remained intact. It was the first time he had ever experienced such a thing.

He had to hide himself at once, so what in the world was this?

He was still puzzling over it when

-Creeeak!

The door opened and someone entered.

Though the shrine was covered in darkness, Mok Gyeong-un could see clearly.

It was a man who looked to be in his early forties, dressed in a gray robe marked with yin and yang.

His appearance was that of a rather ordinary-looking man, but from the robe of the occult practitioners he wore, Mok Gyeong-un could tell he belonged to Origin Kill Pavilion.

‘Occult arts?’

If so, then was this frozen state of his body also due to occult arts?

If that was the case, it was truly astonishing.

What kind of occult art was this?

Every one of his senses had vanished except his consciousness.

-Sentient being? Sentient being? What is wrong?

Blue Spirit too, sensing the strange phenomenon that had overtaken Mok Gyeong-un, urgently questioned him.

But though his consciousness remained clear, he was unable to move his body at all, so Mok Gyeong-un could not answer her.

Why in the world could he not move his body?

-Step, step!

The sound of footsteps drew nearer as the occult practitioner approached.

At the sight of this practitioner, Mok Gyeong-un judged that whatever this technique was, it was more dangerous than anything he had known before.

To think there existed a fraudulent technique that could stop everything but a person’s consciousness.

If one wished it, was it not a method by which anyone could be killed?

-Sentient being! Sentient being!

Blue Spirit’s voice rang loudly.

Thinking Mok Gyeong-un’s condition dangerous, she was debating whether she had to break the wooden doll and come out at once.

He would be left to die with his eyes open at this rate.

-Damn it!

When the occult practitioner came to within nearly ten paces, she finally tried to break the wooden doll and come out.

At this rate they would simply be helplessly slaughtered.

-Crack!

As Blue Spirit roused her spiritual power to break the wooden doll, a crack formed in it.

It was at that exact moment.

-Stop!

-Hm? You?

Blue Spirit, who had been about to break the wooden doll and emerge, halted.

-Sentient being, are you all right?

-Yes. All my senses suddenly came back.

For reasons he could not understand, the moment Blue Spirit put a crack into the wooden doll in order to come out, all the sensations in his body returned.

But then something even stranger happened.

The instant his senses returned, the occult practitioner who had been walking toward him vanished.

It was not a matter of his moving too quickly.

It was more as if he had suddenly ceased to exist before his eyes from the beginning.

‘It is as if he can no longer be perceived.’

-What?

-…What in the world is this?

He had definitely sensed spell power beyond the shrine door.

And had he not walked all the way right before him?

Yet he had suddenly vanished.

Because his senses had been frozen, the practitioner had disappeared from right before him without a trace, and now it was difficult even to grasp whether any aura remained.

-We need to get out of here first.

-I agree. Hurry.

Whether it was a technique or something else, if they could not accurately understand it, there was no way to oppose it.

The only answer was to get away from this place no matter what.

-Flash!

Mok Gyeong-un at once sent his figure flying outside.

* * *

At the same time.

-Drip.

Jo Tae-cheong, Square Sun, who sat on the roof of the tall pagoda with a sword-finger hand seal formed, had blood running down from his forehead.

At the same time, he furrowed his brow with an incredulous look in his eyes.

What in the world had just happened?

Though there had been certain limitations, the forbidden art Space-Time Total Deception Transformation Method, which could not be released unless the caster himself undid it, had suddenly broken apart.

Fortunately, as he had not touched any living being in the middle of the technique, the backlash was small.

Still, this was an unexpected variable.

‘That fellow… just what is he?’

This was not the first time the forbidden art had broken midway, though not the first.

But the situation then had been entirely different.

That monster had been able to do so only because it had gone beyond the bounds of humanity.

Yet the boy he had glimpsed in the darkness through the Space-Time Total Deception Transformation Method just now.

Because it had been so dark, he could not see clearly even from within ten paces, but at a glance he was a mere brat of seventeen or eighteen who had not even come of age.

There was no way such a brat could have done anything.

From the moment one fell under Space-Time Total Deception Transformation Method, there was nothing one could do.

Then Jo Tae-cheong’s features twisted and his expression changed.

In a rasping voice he said,

“Do not overtrust forbidden arts. There is no perfect technique in this world.”

The moment those words ended, Jo Tae-cheong’s face returned to normal again.

Then,

“I know that much. Yet this technique does not include living beings among the targets of perception. You know that as well, do you not? Wait… could it be?”

-Crunch! Crunch!

Jo Tae-cheong’s face twisted again as he said in that rasping voice,

“Kheheh. So you have found the answer.”

No sooner had the words ended than his face returned to normal once more, and the corner of his mouth twisted up with a sinister smile.

“I see.”

That high-ranked resentful spirit that had been sweeping through the inner castle of the Heaven and Earth Society.

The place he had guessed it was hiding in by predicting the path of its spiritual power as it moved while shaking off his two shikigami had been that old shrine.

He had already been wondering what it was trying to conceal.

But now, it seemed he had found the answer.

* * *

Meanwhile, Mok Gyeong-un was moving quickly somewhere.

Blue Spirit asked him,

-Where are you going? First we should return to the Shadow Sect and…

-No. I need to hurry before that.

-What do you mean, hurry?

-That occult practitioner bastard who uses those strange techniques from before will be desperate to find both you and me, so until we think of a countermeasure, it would be better to lie low…

-That is exactly why we need to hurry.

-What?

-I saw his face, and he caught a glimpse of mine as well. It will not take him long to find me.

-Don’t tell me?

-If I can kill him, then I should kill him.

Killing intent flickered in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes as he said those words.

The place Mok Gyeong-un was heading for was none other than the vicinity of the tall pagoda where Origin Kill Pavilion’s manor stood.