Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 275 - Blood Saint (1)
Chapter 275 – Blood Saint (1)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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[The foundation of illusion technique is to deceive the five senses.]
[What are the five senses?]
[Just as the words say. They are the five senses you possess. They may be sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch.]
[And how is one to deceive them?]
[A human can unconsciously recall a sensation he has once experienced.]
[What do you mean by that?]
[For example, when you think of sour food, why does saliva automatically gather in your mouth?]
[Ah……]
[That is the unconscious recollection of a sensation.]
[Then when you say illusion technique deceives that, you mean?]
[It means making one unconsciously imagine a situation and accept it as natural.]
She had learned everything about illusion technique from her master.
Except for that person who had taught this secret art to both her master and herself, she had been confident that no one could match her in this field.
Holding her nose, she stared at Mok Gyeong-un with eyes that said she could not understand.
‘Why did it not work?’
Illusions that drove one to extreme self-harm were, because the flesh or the mind unconsciously rejected them with stubborn resistance, extremely difficult.
But temporarily redirecting hostility like this was unexpectedly easy.
One simply needed to make the unconsciousness choose a target of hostility.
Yet with this bastard, the illusion technique itself had not taken effect.
‘That should be impossible.’
Of course, illusion technique was not absolute.
If the opponent had reached the extreme of enlightenment and cast everything off, or if the opponent possessed stronger mental force than oneself, then it might fail.
But having crossed hands with him, she did not think it was the former, and the latter was even more impossible.
After being locked in the underground prison, she had lost track of the passing years, but even by the years she had counted before being imprisoned, she had already passed one hundred sixty.
Considering the number of years she had lived, and the mental force with which she had never yielded despite enduring torture and even going without food for so long, there was no way a brat like this could surpass her.
‘Was it a mistake?’
With that possibility in mind, she stared hard at Mok Gyeong-un, recited a formula inwardly, and snapped her fingers.
-Ttak!
‘From now on, go kill your companions.’
“……What are you doing?”
“Ha?”
She was left speechless in disbelief.
The illusion technique truly had not worked.
For someone like her, who could cast illusions on opponents merely with the sound made by her hand even with eyes and mouth both blocked, this was a situation she could not understand at all.
To such a woman, Mok Gyeong-un said,
“I do not know what you were trying to do, but would it not be better to stop at this point? If I were truly one of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, I would have tried to stop you one way or another.”
“……”
“On the contrary, I helped free you, so attacking me like this seems rather discourteous toward a benefactor.”
“Nonsense!”
“It is not nonsense.”
“Do you think this lady would believe the words of a bastard like you?”
“There is no reason not to.”
“No reason not to? The reasons overflow. In order to extract what they wanted from me, your lot used every possible method. Interrogation, torture, all sorts of schemes of persuasion. Yet because this lady would not open her mouth, that still was not enough, so in the end you even cut off my food and starved me for decades upon decades.”
“D, decades?”
Mok Gyeong-un frowned.
Had she really just said with her own mouth that she had starved for decades?
Was her mind wandering?
How could anyone survive after going hungry for decades rather than mere days?
A human would grow gaunt after only a few days without food, and if that continued long, the flesh would waste away until the body was nothing but skin and bones.
Yet there was not the slightest trace of that on her.
As he found this strange, she said,
“It seems you deliberately released me while pretending it was a mistake, intending to give me hope and then suppress me again to break my will, but I shall make you realize that this is your foolish mistake.”
-Gooooooo!
No sooner had those words ended than force surged up from her.
The true qi was so strong that even wind pressure arose.
Seeing this, Mok Gyeong-un let out a sigh.
He had thought she might be a useful card to exploit, but it seemed that because she had been locked away so long, her mind was unstable and she trusted people not at all.
‘Does she take this whole situation itself to be a trap?’
If that were the case, no words at all would seem likely to reach her.
So Mok Gyeong-un looked at her as though she had become tiresome.
He needed to hurry, yet his foot had been caught in an absurd place.
‘Ah.’
Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes sharpened as he looked at her.
Then he muttered quietly,
“It cannot be helped.”
It seemed best simply to kill her as quickly as possible.
At that, Mok Gyeong-un was about to take up a stance when he turned his head at the presence felt behind him.
Looking back, he saw an Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman standing there with a flustered expression.
The shock from the claw astral energy had been great enough to shake the cave corridor, so it would have been stranger had he not come.
“This damned…”
The Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman was greatly startled at the sight of her, the escaped prisoner.
It was right then.
-Ttak!
The sound of fingers snapping rang out.
At that instant, the eyes of the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman suddenly went blank.
Then, with a shout, the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman charged toward Mok Gyeong-un.
“Die!”
‘Hm?’
The man had been standing there flustered at the sight of the escaped prisoner, so Mok Gyeong-un could not hide his puzzlement when he suddenly came charging at him, brimming with killing intent.
However, the guardsman’s martial level was at best only around the entrance of Peak Realm.
Naturally, there was no possibility at all that he could be a match for Mok Gyeong-un.
-Swoosh!
After lightly avoiding the slash aimed at his neck,
-Pahk!
Mok Gyeong-un struck down on the man’s wrist and made him drop the blade.
And before that falling blade could even touch the ground, he kicked it toward the woman.
-Chwak!
The blade hurtled toward her brow as if it would pierce straight through.
“Hmph.”
When she sharply turned her head to the side, the blade struck the long hair carrying true qi and was then embedded in the wall.
-Thud!
But it did not end there.
“Ueogh.”
The Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman, caught in her illusion, came flying straight at her.
‘Hm?’
For an instant she frowned.
Then, toward the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman flying at her, she unfolded claw astral energy with her blood-red hand and shredded his whole body into pieces.
-Chwakwakwakwak!
As the body was torn into dozens of pieces, blood splashed in every direction.
Yet through that spray of blood, someone passed through and stabbed sword-finger toward her throat.
It was none other than Mok Gyeong-un.
-Thrust!
Caught by that unexpected strike, she was stabbed in the left shoulder by the sword intent carried on the sword-finger.
‘This bastard?’
An odd light entered her eyes.
To throw his own comrade to obscure her vision and use that gap to attack?
What kind of bastard was this?
-Chwak!
The woman, puzzled, avoided the sword-finger that next came for her throat with a fluid movement step, widening the distance between them.
-Papapapapak!
Even as she widened the distance, the area of her shoulder that had been stabbed began to squirm and the bleeding stopped.
At the sight, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes narrowed.
‘The wound?’
Its healing speed far exceeded the human range.
His own wounds also healed quickly, but her speed greatly surpassed even that.
If it healed almost immediately after being stabbed, then it was beyond mere recovery and in the realm of super-regeneration.
‘Even against death aura, it heals?’
Death aura scattered force.
Yet it seemed unable to prevent her flesh from recovering.
At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes saw thunder power leaping up through the wounded part of her body.
Apparently it was that force that was driving the regeneration.
It was as he was marveling at that.
-Chwak!
Mok Gyeong-un twisted his body aside to avoid the claw astral energy counterattacking him.
Then he tried to drive his elbow into her wrist, where she was unfolding a killing move with claw astral energy.
Yet she changed forms and slipped away from it, then came for Mok Gyeong-un’s throat.
-Papapapapapapak!
In the instant of a moment, the hands of the two collided six times or so before both were driven backward.
-Chwarrrrrrr!
-Chwarrrrrrr!
Having been driven back, she raised one eyebrow and looked down at her own blood-red hands.
‘I am using both Blood Jade Hand and astral qi together, yet at every instant he is blocking it with a strange sort of astral force.’
The martial art that dyed her hands the color of blood-jade was the divine art called Blood Jade Hand, a union of claw technique and palm technique whose power was enough to shatter rock and tear iron with bare hands.
When astral qi was added to such a Blood Jade Hand, it was no exaggeration to say that it was difficult to find an equal in empty-handed combat.
And yet, at every fleeting instant, a fierce and bizarre kind of astral force had been blocking it.
Its power was wholly unlike ordinary astral force.
‘What in the world is this bastard?’
By outward appearance he did not even seem to have reached twenty.
Even if her body was not fully loosened and she was not yet drawing out her full strength, it was unbelievable that a brat who had not even lived twenty years could stand nearly as an equal to her.
She had thought she could suppress him easily, but now it seemed that without doing this properly, it would be difficult.
Clicking her tongue inwardly, she soon opened her mouth.
“You are no ordinary bastard.”
“That is what I would like to say to you.”
Mok Gyeong-un too was inwardly astonished by her martial ability.
It was hard to believe she was truly someone who had been confined in the underground prison for such a long time, her movements were so nimble and alive.
Even her internal energy and force were beyond imagination.
They flowed endlessly like a spring that never ran dry, to the point that one had to wonder how in the world they had managed to imprison such a monstrous woman.
According to Blue Spirit, in terms of force, she had come infinitely close to the Profound Realm, so that aside from the Six Heavens, who stood at the current summit, there were few in the martial world able to match her except the Eight Stars, the so-called greatest masters of the age.
Yet it seemed he had met such a person rather quickly.
‘……The Old Blood Cult, was it?’
Come to think of it, both Mong Mu-yak and Blue Spirit had said that in the old murim, the martial level of experts had been much higher than it was now.
Seeing this woman, that certainly seemed true.
‘I will have to do this properly.’
Because this was a deep underground cave, Mok Gyeong-un had been restraining his force as much as possible.
For that reason, he had only raised demonic aura at the instant their attacks clashed.
Yet that much now seemed insufficient to face this woman.
So Mok Gyeong-un released the restraint he had been maintaining and circulated demonic aura through his whole body.
At once,
-Gooooooo!
A savage black force flowed out from Mok Gyeong-un.
At the sight, wariness appeared in her eyes.
‘Well now?’
She had thought he was decent, but even so she had believed that if she brought out her real strength she could kill him within some thirty exchanges.
But after Mok Gyeong-un revealed demonic aura, that thought changed.
Even if she went all out, this was no longer a level where victory could be decided within thirty exchanges.
‘Now this will require some tension.’
-Pachichichichik!
At that moment blue flames exploded all across her body and thunder and lightning wound around her.
The instant she revealed the thunder power she had kept hidden, Mok Gyeong-un moved first.
He meant to decide the outcome before she could fully exert her strength.
-Tatak!
When Mok Gyeong-un kicked off the ground twice, his figure split into two amid a gust of wind and rushed toward her.
This was Wind God Steps, stolen and learned from Mara Hyeon, the masked Thousand-Household Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
At the wondrous lightness art by which Mok Gyeong-un’s body divided into two, her eyes widened.
‘T, this is?’