Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 26 - Death Aura (1)

Chapter 26 – Death Aura (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“The dagger and the internal power are both yours.”

‘!?’

At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Guard Gam’s eyes trembled.

The dagger embedded in the very center of his chest.

And the internal power riding on that dagger was his own?

Then was this bastard saying he had made use of the internal power he had forcibly taken from him?

‘……Impossible.’

Every type of internal power had its own unique nature.

Because of the corruption of qi altered by sects, schools, and all manner of branches, even if one took another person’s internal power, in practice it was no better than poison.

Even when fellow disciples from the same sect inherited internal power from one another, there was no way to make immediate use of it unless it was refined through qi circulation and made one’s own.

Yet he had used it?

‘Just what is this bastard?’

He absolutely was not an ordinary commoner.

Even if he was a death-row convict, Guard Gam had thought he could control him since he was not a martial artist.

But that had been a miscalculation.

This bastard possessed bizarre abilities he knew nothing about.

He even handled strange phenomena.

‘A mistake.’

He should not have brought this bastard here.

To think he had believed he could control him just because he had not learned martial arts.

How foolish.

He had used a strange phenomenon to draw his attention, then thrown a dagger filled with the internal power he had absorbed and struck him with a fatal wound. This was a bastard with an extraordinary mind.

That might have been what made that bastard truly frightening.

“Hoo…… hoo……”

Guard Gam barely steadied his breathing.

With the dagger lodged in his chest, it was becoming hard even to breathe.

Centered on his chest, his body temperature was cooling.

The location was too fatal.

The moment he pulled it out, the bleeding alone might become so severe that recovery would be impossible.

-Shhk!

Guard Gam lifted his head and glared at Mok Gyeong-un.

In any case, there had never been a fate in which he and this bastard could walk together.

He had to see this through somehow.

Then again, just as he himself was in trouble, the bastard would also be in no condition to move easily with a dagger lodged between his ribs and another in his thigh……

‘!?’

Guard Gam frowned.

What that bastard had thrown was the dagger that had been stuck in his own thigh.

Then why was the bleeding only that slight?

At that position, not just around his thigh but all the lower part of his trousers should have already been soaked in blood.

Yet except for that area, it seemed as if no blood was flowing.

‘He couldn’t have staunched the bleeding or controlled the acupoints.’

He had seen no sign of such a thing.

Then what was it?

Looking at Mok Gyeong-un in disbelief as though he were looking at a monster, Guard Gam bit down hard on his lip.

He could hardly believe he had ended up making an enemy of someone so strange.

But he still had one hidden card left.

Had he not made him take it for this very situation?

“…….You bastard….. have you…… forgotten the poison pill?”

That hidden card was the poison pill.

He had fed it to him in advance to prevent him from slipping out of control, acting on his own, or trying to flee.

At Guard Gam’s words, Mok Gyeong-un parted his lips.

“Ah? The poison pill?”

“That’s right.”

“I had forgotten about it.”

“Ha.”

At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Guard Gam was dumbfounded.

Did it make any sense to forget that his own life had been taken hostage?

It did not matter what he was thinking.

There was no way that sly bastard had truly forgotten it.

“Haa….. haa….. let’s make a deal.”

“A deal?”

“If you stop fighting here and hand over the secret manual, I will let you go as well.”

“Let me go?”

“Is that not what you wanted? If you stay here, it is only the life of a fake, and you will always bear the risk of being exposed.”

At those words, Mok Gyeong-un nodded.

“Well, that’s true.”

“…….Then I will give you the formula for the antidote and traveling money. If you find physicians with some skill, they should be able to make it, and with traveling money you could make a new start. Koff, koff.”

As his words grew longer, Guard Gam’s throat became raw.

If he did not receive emergency treatment and regulate his breathing through qi circulation at once, it would become dangerous.

There was a limit to how long internal power alone could hold out.

“Choose. If we keep fighting like this, both of us only lose.”

“That certainly makes sense.”

Mok Gyeong-un was showing agreement.

At the sight, Guard Gam was about to breathe a sigh of relief.

It would not be too late to put out the immediate fire and deal with the bastard afterward.

For now, he had to put him at ease.

“First I’ll give you the stabilizer. We each treat our own wound…… koff……”

At that moment, a cough burst from Guard Gam’s mouth.

It was a cough mixed with blood.

That could have happened because he was injured, but at that moment Guard Gam felt something strange.

‘The blood…….’

There was a foul odor coming from it.

Flustered, Guard Gam tried to pull open his chest.

But his hand trembled so badly that it would not move.

‘Why is my hand…..’

-Thud!

And that was not the end of it.

Before long, Guard Gam’s leg gave way, and he dropped to one knee on the floor.

Then,

“Kuek!”

Guard Gam vomited up a mouthful of black blood.

He had failed to notice because he had been protecting his chest and organs with internal power, but something was rapidly spreading through his five viscera and six bowels and damaging them.

‘Could it be?’

Guard Gam’s eyes widened.

These symptoms were unmistakably those of poison.

Something was wrong.

This bastard had not used poison, so how had he become poisoned?

As he was bewildered, Mok Gyeong-un staggered slowly toward him.

“Hoo. Having a dagger stuck here really does hurt quite a lot.”

“You bastard…… just what….. did you do?”

“There’s something I forgot to mention earlier.”

“What?”

“Besides the dagger and internal power, I also gave you my blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yes. There wasn’t enough time to wipe off the blood on the dagger that had been stuck in my thigh before giving it to you. Though in truth, I intended it that way.”

“What in the world are you talking……”

To the uncomprehending Guard Gam, Mok Gyeong-un gave a faint smile and said,

“Of course you wouldn’t understand. I only told Guard Gochan.”

“Gochan?”

“Yes. It’s nothing much, but perhaps because I’ve eaten a lot of poisonous herbs since I was young, my blood is poisonous.”

‘!?’

At those words, Guard Gam was dumbfounded.

His blood was poisonous? What was that supposed to mean?

Then was this bastard like one of the poison men of the Sichuan Tang Clan?

‘Just what in the world is this bastard……. ha!’

It was absurd.

Just how much had he been hiding?

But that was not the important part.

With internal power, he had to somehow block not only the area around his chest but the spread of the poison as well.

He did not know what kind of poison it was, but it burned viciously.

“Koff, koff…….”

“Does it hurt?”

“You bastard…… as if you’d…… get away wit….. uh……”

“Wedelia, angelica, adonis, pinellia……”

‘!?’

At the names of the medicinal herbs that came from Mok Gyeong-un’s mouth, Guard Gam’s eyes shook violently.

Those were all the ingredients used in the poison pill.

“Pokeweed, death cap, fennel herb.”

“Yo….. you….. how?”

“Well, aren’t ingredients this simple something you can roughly identify with just a light touch of the tongue?”

He could tell just by tasting it?

Just what the hell was this bastard?

Mok Gyeong-un came right up in front of the stunned Guard Gam, bent his knees, met his gaze, and said,

“The truth is, I don’t need any antidote.”

“You bastard……. were you…… koff, koff….. toying with me?”

At that question, Mok Gyeong-un tilted his head slightly and stared straight at Guard Gam’s face.

His face was pale, and fear and terror had settled into his eyes.

At that sight, Mok Gyeong-un smiled softly and said,

“Whether they’re martial artists or first-rate masters, in front of pain and death they’re really not much different from other people.”

-A chill!

The moment he heard those words, a shudder ran up Guard Gam’s spine.

How could someone wear a human skin and say such things, and how could someone have eyes like a dead man?

It did not feel as though he was facing a human at all.

This bastard was a demon.

-Parrrrrr!

Guard Gam could not stop trembling.

His breathing grew ragged, and it became hard to breathe from fear.

The human heart was truly treacherous.

Just a moment ago, he had still believed he held the advantage over his opponent, so he had looked down on him and felt no tension.

But now it was completely different.

“You’re trembling.”

“Sp…… spare me.”

Guard Gam threw away his pride and begged for his life.

He could not die like this.

He had dreamed of a stable life after leaving the brutal world of assassins, where one never knew when one might die an ugly death.

To lose his life here felt unbearably unjust.

Mok Gyeong-un stroked his own chin.

“Spare me, is it.”

“I…… I swear loyalty. No. I swear it. Please….. please spare me.”

Looking at him pleading, Mok Gyeong-un smiled and said,

“Only now do I like your attitude.”

“I, I will live only for you, Young Master.”

“Then I would be grateful.”

At those words, Guard Gam’s face was about to brighten.

But then,

-Thunk!

“Kehk!”

He thought he was being spared, but Mok Gyeong-un pressed down hard on the dagger embedded in his chest until the handle sank in as well.

Bringing his mouth close to the writhing Guard Gam’s ear, Mok Gyeong-un whispered,

“Someone who changes allegiances this easily whenever it’s convenient doesn’t get to talk about loyalty.”

“Guhhh…….”

“I think it would be more helpful if you just died.”

-Shhk!

“Mmmp!”

With that, he covered Guard Gam’s mouth and nose with his hand as the man gasped.

Guard Gam’s eyes bloodshot, he flailed his hands and feet in agony, but Mok Gyeong-un watched him expressionlessly.

It did not last long.

The writhing of his whole body soon stopped.

Guard Gam died with the blood vessels standing out in his eyes, his gaze frozen in terror.

Mok Gyeong-un looked at him as if the excitement had already faded, then took away the palm that had been covering his nose and mouth.

‘I dealt with him sooner than I expected. Maybe I’m lucky.’

From the beginning, he had intended to kill Guard Gam one way or another.

There was no point in keeping alive someone who knew he was a fake, because it would only become troublesome.

Mok Gyeong-un considered it.

‘Should I kill Guard Gochan too?’

If he dealt with Guard Gochan as well, then there would be no one left who knew the truth.

But soon Mok Gyeong-un shook his head.

‘I’ll leave him alive.’

Gochan was still useful.

He was good for making him handle all sorts of cleanup.

And besides,

‘his mouth seems fairly tight too.’

Mok Gyeong-un liked the fact that, even while being tortured, he had kept his mouth shut to the end.

Whether it was because he feared him or because of the poison did not matter.

As long as he did not stab him in the back, he was willing to use him as much as he liked.

-Throb!

Mok Gyeong-un looked at the dagger stuck between his own ribs.

No matter how unusually strong his body’s recovery was, it could not help but hurt with this still stuck in him.

However, he could not pull it out now.

He needed to keep up a plausible appearance.

‘I wish someone would come quickly.’

It was cumbersome.

“Ah!”

He had nearly forgotten.

Mok Gyeong-un placed his palm over the dantian area of the dead Guard Gam.

Then he used the Form of Attachment.

It was to confirm one thing.

The internal power from the dead Guard Gam’s dantian, already scattering after death, was sucked into Mok Gyeong-un’s body through the Form of Attachment.

It was an amount that did not even compare to Jo Il-sang’s.

‘It’s a pie in the sky.’

But this was internal power that would scatter and disappear anyway.

What he was curious about was something else.

Before long, the flow of internal power stopped.

The reaction he had been expecting did not appear.

‘Was I wrong?’

He had just thought that.

At that moment, a cold, yin death aura flowed in from Guard Gam’s abdomen.

It was clearly similar to the energy he had absorbed from Jo Il-sang.

No, there was even more of it.

‘Ahhh!’

There it was after all.

The death aura in dead Guard Gam’s body gathered below his navel.

And little by little, it began to take shape.

Mok Gyeong-un did not know exactly what it was, but he was growing more and more fond of this cold energy.

-Hoo.

There were crimson eyes watching him with interest.

It was the Blue Spirit, holding a smoking pipe in her mouth amid thick smoke.

The Blue Spirit whispered quietly to the Demon Monk beside her.

-Bald monk. I think I understand why you are being jerked around by that sentient being.

That bastard was not an ordinary human.

She too could instinctively understand that.

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