Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 171 - Jo Tae-cheong (2)
Chapter 171 – Jo Tae-cheong (2)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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-Paang! Paang!
Something like an invisible barrier blocked Earth Ram’s hooves.
‘What is this?’
He could feel spell power from the barrier.
It was then.
“Hey!”
‘!?’
A pretty short-haired girl in maid’s clothes, forming a hand seal with one hand, urgently beckoned to Mok Gyeong-un and said,
“Follow me at once!”
“Who are you?”
“Is this really the time to be asking that? Hurry!”
At her words, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes narrowed.
The spell power he felt from the girl was almost on the level of a Square Moon.
But why was this girl dressed like this?
While he was still finding it odd, Mok Gyeong-un looked upward.
-Kwooooooooar!
-Paang! Paang!
The demon beast Earth Ram roared and tried to break through the barrier with its hooves.
Mok Gyeong-un clicked his tongue inwardly.
At this level of commotion, it seemed he had already failed to kill the creature.
With a disturbance this great, others would gather from nearby, and before long things would become chaotic.
So Mok Gyeong-un said to the girl,
“Very well. But where exactly am I supposed to follow you?”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, the girl kept the hand seal with one hand and pulled something from her waist with the other.
She slipped it onto a finger, then turned it in empty air.
-Sssssss!
‘Ah?’
Amazingly, something like smoke flowed out into the air and formed a round opening.
“I cannot maintain it for long. Hurry.”
With those words, the girl entered the round opening first.
Mok Gyeong-un, still puzzled, followed after her.
-Srrk.
Soon the smoke scattered and the opening disappeared.
Not long after that, crimson haze rose exquisitely from the first-floor ground, and then grains of sand all shot upward at once, filling the place where Mok Gyeong-un had stood.
-Papapapapapapap!
* * *
A voice tinged with irritation came from the mouth of the occult practitioner Jo Tae-cheong, who was holding a hand seal with his right hand.
“Now you little…”
That voice was extremely hoarse.
Occult practitioner Jo Tae-cheong soon shook his head from side to side and clicked his tongue.
He had meant to make them pay for daring to target him, yet they had already vanished.
‘…So that was an occult practitioner?’
For an instant below, he had felt spell power at a considerable level.
That would be enough skill to be considered nearly at the level of a Square Moon.
Then had that too been an occult art?
-Slide!
Jo Tae-cheong touched the back of his neck.
The foreign sensation that met his palm.
It was the feel of the blood that had run down and stained his hand.
-Grit!
Jo Tae-cheong ground his teeth and spoke in a rasping voice.
“If I had not switched over, your neck would have been cut off on the spot.”
At those words, Jo Tae-cheong’s body trembled slightly.
As if it were reacting to anger.
Letting out a snort, Jo Tae-cheong looked at the hole that had been smashed open in the floor.
‘Was it that fellow?’
In the effort to protect himself, he had not properly seen the fellow’s face.
Jo Tae-cheong looked at the hole in the floor and found the situation absurd.
“Haah…”
Just what was that fellow?
Though he had broken free from Space-Time Total Deception Transformation Method in the old shrine because of the variable called a resentful spirit, he would not have been able to perceive exactly what had happened up to that point, since every sensation and his awareness of everything but consciousness had been taken away.
And yet he had come here straight afterward?
Could it be that his consciousness had remained intact?
‘Or… did he realize it because of that resentful spirit?’
Whatever the case, one thing was certain.
That fellow had recognized what happened in the old shrine and had then come for him.
If so, he had to be found quickly.
An ordinary person would never dare target him so recklessly, yet judging by this daring act, he was a highly troublesome one.
Then someone came rushing up the stairs and appeared.
“Are you all ri…”
It was one of the guards stationed at the stairs leading to the third floor.
Startled by the sudden roar, the guard had come up and then, upon seeing Jo Tae-cheong’s face, could not hide his bewilderment.
“What in the world is that on your forehe…”
“My, my… so you saw it.”
“Pardon?”
The instant those words ended,
-Thrust!
“Ghk!”
Something sharp burst out through the guard’s chest.
The guard, his chest pierced through, gasped with his eyes stretched wide, then at last let his head drop once his strength gave out.
Looking coldly at him, Jo Tae-cheong then spoke while gazing into empty air.
“Find him. He could not have gotten far.”
-Flap!
The moment the order fell, the giant sound of wings beating rang out and the shadow cast around them vanished.
* * *
-Srrk.
‘Hm?’
Mok Gyeong-un looked at the entrance, which scattered away like smoke and disappeared, with puzzlement.
He had learned a number of occult arts, yet he had never seen a technique like this.
While he was marveling at it, the girl behind him said,
“What exactly are you?”
At the question, Mok Gyeong-un turned his head.
The short-haired girl in maid’s clothes had crossed her arms and was staring at him with round eyes, as if she found the whole thing absurd.
In response, Mok Gyeong-un looked around.
“This is?”
“The kitchen.”
Even without her saying so, he thought he could tell well enough that it was a kitchen.
With its hearth, iron pots hanging on the walls, and kitchen knives, anyone could see it was a kitchen.
“Yes. It is, isn’t it.”
“Is that all you have to say after actually experiencing Smoke-Linked Shrinking Ground? …No, that is not what matters right now. I asked what your identity is first. Um. But you are really handsome, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
At the girl’s disjointed words, Mok Gyeong-un tilted his head.
Then the girl walked up to Mok Gyeong-un and stared fixedly at his face without hesitation.
-What is with this wench of a sentient being?
Blue Spirit said in a tone that clearly found her displeasing.
At that, Mok Gyeong-un asked in puzzlement,
“Are you going to keep staring like that?”
“It is not like looking at you will wear you out, so can I not have a look?”
“…”
At her brazen manner, Mok Gyeong-un simply shrugged.
Then he focused his senses and checked whether anyone was approaching nearby.
Yet he felt no one’s presence in the vicinity.
At that moment the girl smacked her lips and said,
“Aaah. What a pity. What a pity. Looking at your face, your physiognomy shows you are fated to die young, not even making it to proper adulthood.”
“Pardon?”
“I said you are fated to die young. Your fate is to have your neck broken, or else cut off. If it were not for that, you would be exactly my type for a husband.”
With those words, the girl covered her flushed face with both hands as though embarrassed and giggled.
At her impossible-to-read behavior, Blue Spirit spoke irritably.
-This wench of a sentient being does not sit well with me at all.
-Is that so?
To Mok Gyeong-un, she merely looked like a lively, eccentric girl.
Of course, to call her merely a girl was questionable, given the pronounced curves of her body.
She had a very cute face and seemed at a glance to be around seventeen or eighteen.
She appeared to be around his own age.
Then the girl spoke.
“Anyway, what are you exactly? Judging by your clothes, you are not from Origin Kill Pavilion, and you look like an ordinary person, so why was that thing targeting you?”
“If by that thing you mean?”
“That thing? Ah… how should I explain this? It is really troublesome to explain things like this to ordinary people, and they usually do not believe it either.”
“If you just tell me, I will decide for myself how to take it.”
“That will be difficult. Ordinary people cannot accept things like this in the first place.”
“If I were unable to accept them, there would have been no reason for me to follow you through that smoke-made entrance just now.”
“Ah! That is true, isn’t it? On what did you base your trust in following me?”
“…”
Was she not the one who had told him to follow?
She seemed to be someone with a thoroughly erratic personality.
So Mok Gyeong-un said,
“You are dressed as a maid, but from that technique just now and the rest, are you perhaps an occult practitioner?”
“Oh? So you are not an ordinary person after all?”
At her question, Mok Gyeong-un answered with a faint smile,
“I know a little.”
“A little? Even though it was targeting you? That would only make sense if you were at most at the stage of entering the path.”
“By that thing, do you mean that strange entity from earlier?”
“…So it is not just a little. You really are someone from this side as well, aren’t you?”
“This side?”
“Yes, this side. Looking at how that thing targeted you, you are not from Origin Kill Pavilion, right?”
Though her way of speaking was hard to follow, Mok Gyeong-un was able to infer two things from her question.
It seemed that by this side she meant those who handled occult arts.
And she herself did not seem to be from Origin Kill Pavilion.
If she had been, there was no way she would have helped him in the situation earlier.
So Mok Gyeong-un nodded and said,
“No. I am not.”
Strictly speaking, since he was the disciple of the late Jo Ui-gong, the current lord of Origin Kill Pavilion, it might be said that he did come from there.
But in this atmosphere, if he said so, it felt more likely to make the girl wary of him instead.
Mok Gyeong-un’s response hit the mark.
The girl let out a sigh of relief and said,
“Whew. That is a relief. I was worried I had gotten mixed up in some internal struggle of Origin Kill Pavilion for no reason.”
“Is that so? In that case, you need not worry.”
“It certainly looked that way. Otherwise there would be no reason for that cursed Three Eyes bastard to try to kill you.”
“Three Eyes?”
At her words, Mok Gyeong-un repeated the term.
Had she just said Three Eyes?
At Mok Gyeong-un’s question, the girl nodded and said,
“Yes. Three Eyes. The Red Falling Star of Mount Kunlun from earlier is also a shikigami handled by that Three Eyes bastard, isn’t it?”
‘!?’
At those words, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes narrowed.
That occult practitioner he had tried to kill just before, or rather Jo Tae-cheong, was Three Eyes?
Suddenly the incident in the archives of Corpse Blood Valley came back to Mok Gyeong-un’s mind.
[So what exactly is this thing called Three Eyes?]
-Exactly what it sounds like. A three-eyed one. A malformed vessel born from the womb of a human. There is a saying that when one is born, ruin follows.
[Ruin?]
-Still, it is interesting. In the age of antiquity, if a Three Eyes were born, it would not survive even a day before being killed.
[I do not quite understand what you mean, but does that mean the occult practitioner in Daoist robes with Three Eyes is the one who left you in here?]
-Yes. I do not know what that fellow did, but after he came and went, no one could perceive me anymore.
It was part of the conversation he had had with the monstrous raccoon dog sealed inside that hanging scroll.
Then did that mean Jo Tae-cheong, Square Sun and eldest disciple of the former Origin Kill Pavilion lord, was the very man who had shut that monstrous raccoon dog, with its tremendous demonic force, inside there?
At that moment Blue Spirit’s voice rang in his ear.
-…Sentient being. If what this wench says is true, then it seems you may have touched something far greater than expected.
-Greater?
-That spirit beast. An occult practitioner who can seal such a spirit beast is absolutely no ordinary one. At that level, he would be a monster worthy of being called one of the Fang Gods, the summit of occult practitioners.
-One of the Fang Gods?
Among occult practitioners, titles were granted according to the level of their spell power and occult techniques.
Divine, Sun, Moon, Mysterious, Skill, Conveyance.
And the title granted only to the top six among them was the title of Divine.
In all the Central Plains there were only six occult practitioners who had received that title, and they were the Six Fang Gods.
‘A Fang God…’
Had that occult practitioner called Jo Tae-cheong truly reached the level of a Fang God, just as Blue Spirit said?
Feeling puzzled, Mok Gyeong-un asked the girl,
“Has the man you called Three Eyes reached the level of a Fang God?”
“What are you talking about?”
At that question, the girl suddenly pushed out her lips and said,
Why was she reacting like that?
“How could a malformed vessel no different from a strange entity be placed on the same level as my master?”
“Pardon?”
One of Mok Gyeong-un’s eyebrows rose.
Did those words, on the same level as my master, mean perhaps?
“…Is your master a Fang God?”
At that question, the girl suddenly shrugged, then said with proud self-importance,
“Ahem. Well, yes.”
“…”
He had suspected as much, but it truly was the case.
He had guessed she was no ordinary girl, but to think she had one of the Fang Gods, the summit of occult practitioners, as her master.
That was more surprising than expected.
Then the girl said,
“Since you work in this field, you surely know, right? You have heard of the Lord of Sea Immortal Pavilion, haven’t you?”
“The Lord of Sea Immortal Pavilion?”
There was no way Mok Gyeong-un would know.
Although he had learned basic common knowledge through Square Moon Jo Ui-gong, he had not been taught which groups of occult practitioners were famous or who the Six Fang Gods were.
Naturally he could not know, but when he failed to recognize it, the girl looked dumbfounded and said,
“Whhaat? You really do not know? The Red Eyebrow Old Immortal of Sea Immortal Pavilion?”
“Red Eyebrow Old Immortal?”
“No, you really do not know? Are you truly someone from this field? Just which pavilion do you come from, not even to know who my master…”
“Quiet.”
“Mm!”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s word, the girl involuntarily held her breath and shut her mouth.
He was wondering why, when Mok Gyeong-un looked toward the northeast.
Then, soon after,
-Flinch!
The girl furrowed her brow.
That was because of the very faint demonic force she could feel outside the building.
It was the demonic force emitted by a strange entity.
The girl looked at Mok Gyeong-un with startled eyes.
‘What is with this man? He noticed that demonic force before even I did?’