Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 249 - Noble Consort Ho (2)
Chapter 249 – Noble Consort Ho (2)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Ordinary anomalies were often recorded only in books known to exorcists, such as the Introductory Text on the Anomalies of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
But the being with nine golden tails was different.
Its records remained not only in ancient texts, but even in the Records of the Grand Historian.
The first time it appeared in those official histories was during the Shang dynasty.
[The fox anomaly Daji, who devoured King Zhou’s concubine Suyang and took her form, corrupted the king and caused him to create a lake of wine and a forest of meat, indulging in luxury and pleasure. Because of that tyranny, Shang perished at the hands of King Wu of Zhou.]
True to the title Hundred-Faced Person, this fox demon had been called by countless names.
Daji of Shang.
Bao Si of Zhou.
Lady Huayang of Tianzhu.
Yakjo of Dongying.
Tamamo-no-Mae.
Appearing in countless forms and under countless names, it had controlled the fate and history of entire nations.
And so exorcists and sentient anomalies called this worst of calamities by the following name.
The Hundred Faces King, the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox.
-Slither, slither.
Nine golden tails exuding an immense demonic aura of the most ominous kind.
This anomaly, with its matching golden hair and golden eyes, was mysterious and even beautiful.
‘T-this is… this much?’
Blue Spirit, possessing Prince Gyeong, was left speechless.
Noble Consort Ho, no, the Hundred Faces King Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, was radiating a level of demonic power that was impossible to gauge.
It could not even be compared with the monster raccoon, the Sea-Slaying King, that they had seen in Corpse Blood Valley.
To begin with, the Sea-Slaying King had been sealed and weakened.
But this worst great-calamity spirit beast, said to be close to a divine beast, did not merely crush the will to fight. It bent down every scrap of one’s will itself.
‘…We absolutely cannot fight this.’
Even if one broke past wall after wall and reached the ultimate peak of martial arts, it would be impossible.
The anomaly before them had existed since the age of high antiquity itself. Their fundamental order of existence was different.
The situation was so bewildering it was almost absurd.
How could they encounter a being like this in the imperial palace, of all places?
‘Ah!’
Blue Spirit’s eyes shook.
Come to think of it, this Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, the great calamity, was said to appear when the fate of a nation was nearing its end.
And the current Central Plains were exactly in such a state.
Long famine had left the land ruined in many places, yet the Emperor and powerful ministers pursued luxury and fought over power while squeezing the common people dry.
Even the martial world, which had once opposed the authorities for the sake of chivalry and martial arts, had now colluded with them and was plundering the people as well.
The state of the Central Plains was such that it would not be strange for them to erupt at any moment.
If that was so, then perhaps this worst anomaly had appeared to bring the exhausted national fate of this country to its end.
-Crack.
Blue Spirit bit down hard on her lip.
This was nothing like when the monster raccoon Sea-Slaying King had still been trapped and not yet fully unsealed.
Now they had an opponent they could neither flee from nor defeat.
This was the first time she had ever felt such utter despair.
And yet,
-Slide.
At that moment Mok Gyeong-un was settling into his stance.
With sword-form fingers raised, he was once more gathering demonic aura into a single point.
Blue Spirit could not help but be bewildered at the sight.
‘sentient being, you…’
Was he not afraid?
Even after feeling this crushing demonic power, so immense that breathing itself was difficult, was he still thinking of fighting?
‘What are you thinking?’
Mok Gyeong-un was cold and rational in all things.
That was why she knew he must already understand that nothing could be done against this worst of beings.
And yet she could not understand how he still burned with fighting spirit like that.
“Oh?”
Noble Consort Ho, no, the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, felt the same.
Even after she had properly unveiled her demonic power, not in her true body but sufficiently enough, he still did not let that sharp spirit directed at her diminish in the slightest, and that interested her.
So she opened her mouth.
“Because you made me bleed, even if it was only a single drop, I will kill you.”
“Do as you please.”
“Are you not afraid, human?”
“If one dies because one is weak before another, then that is only the natural order. Why would that be something to fear?”
At those indifferent words, a strange light entered her eyes.
Over the long ages she had met countless humans.
Naturally, among them there had also been some so strong they scarcely seemed human at all.
But even such people, when crushed by her and driven to the brink of death, had shown ugly faces and revealed fear and pain.
“Hmm.”
The corner of the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s mouth twitched upward.
Seeing a human who seemed to have lost the concept of fear after such a long time stirred both curiosity and interest in her.
She wondered whether this human, who spoke so calmly of the natural order, would truly be able to maintain that composure even before genuine pain and misery.
‘I have never once seen such a thing.’
For thousands of years she had made a game of others, yet the conclusion had always been the same.
Every existence was alike in the end.
Humans were endlessly weak before desire, and before fear and death they always yielded in terror.
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox smiled radiantly and said,
“Human. I am curious how long that proud bearing of yours will last.”
-Slide.
She pointed her index finger at Mok Gyeong-un.
At once a pale light of gathered demonic power flickered and shot toward Mok Gyeong-un’s head in the blink of an eye.
-Pat!
Mok Gyeong-un dodged by moving his neck in the space of an instant.
‘Oh?’
She had launched that lump of demonic power after predicting the speed at which he would move.
Yet he had dodged it lightly.
“Not bad. Then how about this?”
-Swoosh! Papapapapang!
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox fired demonic power one shot after another with her fingers.
They were so fast that they could not be distinguished with the naked eye.
Yet,
-Slide. Slide. Slide.
Mok Gyeong-un narrowly avoided them all with only the slightest movements.
‘I cannot take my eyes off them.’
Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes did not leave her fingers for even an instant.
The shots were far faster than ordinary high-speed movement, but because he had not taken his eyes off the direction of her fingers, he had been able to predict the trajectory.
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s lips curled upward.
“Ah. So that is how you dodged. Clever child. Then what about this?”
-Shwaaaaaa!
In an instant, countless marble-sized spheres of demonic power surrounded Mok Gyeong-un from all directions.
“Try dodging this too.”
The moment the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox mimed clenching her hand,
-Papapapapapapapapapapang!
The tiny spheres of demonic power encircling him all shot at Mok Gyeong-un at once.
There were so many that he was covered in an instant and his figure was almost impossible to see.
‘sentient being!’
-Crack.
Even a single sphere of demonic power had enough force to blast through the earth, making its destructive power hard to comprehend, and now he was being bombarded by an impossible number of them.
That was not something anyone could evade or endure.
Blue Spirit’s face changed to anger as she hesitated in despair over what to do.
-Slide.
Then she cast aside Prince Gyeong’s body and emerged.
And she gathered all her spiritual power into her hand and struck it toward the floor.
‘Blood Boundary.’
-Wooooooooosh!
At once blood began to bead up from the floor around her palm.
-Drip, drip.
Blood droplets floated upward as if falling in reverse.
As the blood droplets streamed up throughout Prince Gyeong’s residence, the whole place was dyed red.
This was the Blood Boundary of the Domain of Ghost Intent she created through the intense force of her thoughts.
She knew they could not win, but rather than vanish without doing anything, she had decided to help Mok Gyeong-un.
However,
-Crackcrackcrackcrash!
Cracks spread through the residence that had been dyed in blood.
Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the Blood Boundary of her Domain of Ghost Intent vanished.
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox sneered.
“How insolent. In front of whom do you think you are unfolding a domain, vengeful spirit? Do you want to be destroyed first?”
-Slide.
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox stretched out a hand toward Blue Spirit.
At once, with a violent suction force, Blue Spirit’s spirit body was forcibly dragged toward that hand.
Blue Spirit’s expression twisted.
‘She is too strong.’
She had known from the start that she was no match, but this gap was too great.
To the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, she was literally no more than a bug crawling on the ground.
-Pak!
“Ugh!”
Blue Spirit’s face twisted in pain as the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s hand seized the throat of her spirit body.
The demonic power was so strong that with only a little force, it felt as if she would be obliterated at once.
And then, right at that instant,
-Boom!
A black line shot upward by piercing through the floor.
-Slash!
The black line split open the back of the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s hand.
Because of that, the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox, who had been about to destroy Blue Spirit, involuntarily let go of the hand gripping her spirit throat.
‘sentient being?’
In that instant Blue Spirit’s eyes widened.
That was because she saw Mok Gyeong-un, his whole body soaked in blood.
Even though his appearance had been ruined by the bombardment of demonic-power bullets, the light in his eyes had not faded in the least.
-Pang!
“Ah?”
When Mok Gyeong-un thrust out his left hand, Blue Spirit’s spirit body was flung straight backward.
Immediately after doing so, he brought down the hand-blade of his right hand toward the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s head.
But,
-Pak!
Before he could, one of the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s tails bound his body, and another tail wrapped around his wrist.
-Crush! Tremble, tremble.
Mok Gyeong-un’s bound hand shook violently.
A curious light entered the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s eyes as she looked at him.
‘Well, now.’
She was holding him with her tail, yet the force contained in Mok Gyeong-un’s hand-blade was far from ordinary.
She immediately realized why.
An enormous mass of demonic power had gathered in Mok Gyeong-un’s right hand.
And that demonic power was none other than her own.
“You are interesting.”
The corner of the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s mouth twitched.
She did not know by what method he had absorbed demonic power, but it seemed that while withstanding the countless spheres of demonic power rushing over his whole body, he had gathered as much of that power as possible.
Then, in the instant when her attention had shifted to that vengeful spirit, he had not missed the opening, burrowing down through the floor and launching an ambush.
-Drip, drip.
Blood ran down from the wound on the back of her right hand.
Seeing it, the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha!”
She had intended to drive this brat to the utmost extreme and show him the fear of death.
But not only had he struck back under those conditions, he had managed to wound her a second time.
That truly had never happened before.
-Lick.
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox licked the flowing blood with her tongue, then fixed Mok Gyeong-un with a cold smile.
In her golden eyes she saw Mok Gyeong-un’s blood-soaked face beneath his disheveled hair.
The moment she saw his face, her gaze changed.
“You?”
She had known he was hiding his face with something, but she had not expected the face concealed beneath it to be this young.
No matter how one looked at it, he had not even reached adulthood.
And that little brat had wounded the body she had maintained for thousands of years twice?
‘This one is truly extraordinary.’
Rather than unpleasantness, she felt even greater interest.
-Creak. Creak.
The veins in Mok Gyeong-un’s right hand swelled as though they were about to burst.
That was what happened when one concentrated so much demonic power into a single hand that the blood vessels could no longer endure it.
-Pupuput!
And because he could not discharge that power, blood vessels burst here and there in Mok Gyeong-un’s right hand and blood ran out.
Even so, Mok Gyeong-un’s expression did not change in the slightest.
He only looked regretful.
At that,
-Crush!
The Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox tightened the tail wrapped around Mok Gyeong-un.
The force was so great that veins rose even in the face of the already bloodied Mok Gyeong-un, as though he might burst at any moment.
And yet,
‘Look at this.’
Though he stood a single step from death, Mok Gyeong-un did not even groan. Instead, he stared straight back at the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox.
Seeing that utterly expressionless face, she said,
“Are you truly not afraid of death?”
“……..”
Mok Gyeong-un only glared at her in silence.
There was not the slightest fear in his eyes.
As she watched him, the corner of the Golden-Furred Nine-Tailed Fox’s mouth twitched.
She had seen countless humans, yet in the end there had not been a single one who had overcome fear. This was the first.
So she raised the corner of her lips and said,
“In the thousands of years I have watched humans, I think you are the first who truly seems unafraid before death.”
“……..”
“Seeing such unwavering, upright eyes makes me curious.”
“…Curious about what?”
“Whether a human like you would still fall when faced with desire.”
“Fall?”
The instant those words ended, the radiant garments wrapped around her body slipped down.
And with them, her overwhelmingly beautiful naked body was revealed.