Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 84 - Corpse Blood Valley Master (3)

Chapter 84 – Corpse Blood Valley Master (3)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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[Grandfather. Is our Li Clan truly the family of traitors?]

[Ji-yeom, does that question have something to do with the scars on your face?]

[……..]

Eleven-year-old Yi Ji-yeom gave no answer at his grandfather’s question.

At the Society’s martial hall, such things were all too common.

Traitor. A family of betrayal.

He was ignored and bullied while hearing all manner of things.

He had tried ignoring it, and he had also resisted by fighting back against their bullying.

But it had no meaning.

It was a shackle that had come down from his grandfather, who had sworn loyalty to the vanished Moon Meridian, and the price of that oath.

[…….Is this not a shackle our Li Clan can never escape for all eternity?]

[Ji-yeom…]

His grandfather looked at Yi Ji-yeom, who was covered in wounds, with sorrow.

Then he warmly drew him into an embrace and soothed him in a gentle yet firm voice.

[Do you remember what this grandfather told you?]

[Sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall.]

Sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall.

It meant to sleep on thorn-filled brushwood and chew bitterness while enduring hardship for the sake of the future.

His grandfather used to say those words to him habitually.

And with good reason. As one of the ten founders who had once strode through the skies, his grandfather’s honor had fallen to the ground after that day.

[……..]

[Why are you not answering?]

[I do not know anymore.]

He had tried to endure it just as his grandfather told him.

But no matter how he tried to piece back together his heart as it broke down more and more, it was useless.

Why did his grandfather, his father, and he himself all have to suffer like this?

Though it was not a crime they had committed, was the Society really going to reject them this far simply because they had once sworn loyalty?

[Grandfather, then perhaps we should swear eternal loyalty to the Society Leader…]

[Enough!]

That day, for the first time, he saw a frightening expression on his grandfather’s face.

His grandfather, who had never shown it before, became this angry at the suggestion that they swear loyalty to the Society Leader and escape this branded shackle.

Why was he angry at him?

Had he said something wrong?

With a swelling heart, a spirit of rebellion arose in him for the first time.

[Have I… have I said something so wrong? We are a family that rendered merit in founding the Society, so why…]

[Silence!]

At the pain that felt like his ears were tearing, Yi Ji-yeom could not continue speaking.

To the boy writhing in pain, his grandfather said with eyes full of engorged veins,

[Whatever the result may have been, it is only natural for a retainer to trust the lord to whom he swore loyalty to the end! Did this grandfather teach you otherwise?]

[That so-called lord went down the wrong path and even caused our family to be branded traitors. Then what meaning does that have? And did you not also accept that wrongdoing when you accepted being confined in Corpse Blood Valley and demoted to Valley Master until the fourth generation?]

The more he thought about it, the more resentful he became.

Why had his grandfather not strongly declared that they had nothing to do with that person?

Why did they have to inherit that person’s sin along with him?

Was it because they were retainers?

‘I cannot accept this!’

From that day on, Yi Ji-yeom no longer spoke with his grandfather.

And gritting his teeth, he devoted himself to training in martial arts.

He could not endure unless he immersed himself in something.

So devoted to training, he became the first in the family to succeed in reaching the fifth star of the divine skill, the Awaiting Flame Skill, from the Red Flame Sword Method before reaching twenty.

Taking this as a turning point, Yi Ji-yeom became even more fired up.

‘I can do it.’

Among the ancestors of his family, there had been no one who had completed the Red Flame Sword Method.

Even his grandfather had been limited to the eighth star.

That was because the more one cultivated the Awaiting Flame Skill, the stronger the blazing yang energy became.

And it did not merely grow stronger, but also burned the practitioner’s own body.

But he was certain that if it was him, he could go beyond the eighth star to the ninth, and then to the realm of the tenth.

And was this excessive greed what became poison?

-Until the fifth star is completely settled into your body, do not challenge the sixth.

[Aaaaaargh!]

Ignoring his father’s warning, Yi Ji-yeom forced himself to challenge the sixth star, and his body burst into flames.

Once one reached the sixth star of the Awaiting Flame Skill, one could carry blazing yang energy within the Red Flame Sword Method, but he failed in that and suffered a backlash.

In an instant, half his face was engulfed in flames starting from his arm, and he could not regain his senses.

The blazing yang energy that had run wild had already passed beyond the point he could control.

[Aaaaargh!]

Was he going to die like this for having overreached?

At that moment, someone grabbed hold of him as he raged out of control.

Then that person absorbed the blazing yang energy and gradually stabilized it.

‘!?’

The one who absorbed the blazing yang energy from his burning body was none other than his grandfather, Li Hwamun.

Yi Ji-yeom, who barely came to his senses through the agony, could not suppress his horror.

Neither his grandfather nor his father could perfectly control the blazing yang energy within their bodies, so if one were to forcibly take it in,

-Hwarrrrr!

The resulting disaster would turn upon that person himself.

Thanks to taking away the blazing yang energy, Yi Ji-yeom’s body was able to stabilize, but his grandfather Li Hwamun was not.

In an instant, his whole body was engulfed in flames.

It was on a level that could not even be compared to Yi Ji-yeom’s.

[N-no! Nooooo! Grandfather! Grandfatherrrr!]

Yi Ji-yeom rushed forward and tried to calm Li Hwamun’s blazing yang energy.

But because his grandfather Li Hwamun used his deep internal energy to prevent him from entering the radius around him, he could not get close.

[Grandfather! No, Grandpa!]

To meet face to face like this for the first time in nearly four years.

Thanks to his deep internal energy, his body was being prevented from burning away too quickly, but his grandfather’s skin had already turned red and fluid was flowing from it.

[Grandpa! Please! Please!]

Yi Ji-yeom tried by force to break through his grandfather’s internal energy.

Toward him, his grandfather Li Hwamun slowly shook his head with a bitter expression.

He could tell from the shape of his lips.

‘Do not come, my grandson.’

That sight tore Yi Ji-yeom’s heart apart.

His feelings as he watched his grandfather gradually burn away right before his eyes were nothing but grief itself.

He waited for his grandfather’s internal energy to weaken so that he could somehow calm the blazing yang energy, but this was unbearably painful.

[Please! Please!]

He begged his grandfather to withdraw his internal energy.

But his grandfather did not withdraw it even as all his flesh burned away in the fire.

Only when his breath was cut off did the wall of internal energy disappear.

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!]

Yi Ji-yeom screamed.

The grief of watching his grandfather die because of him from beginning to end was a tragedy.

If it had been possible, he would have wanted to exchange his life with his grandfather’s.

But he could not.

[Ughh…]

Only after screaming and crying for more than half a day until he was exhausted and collapsed unconscious did Yi Ji-yeom finally stop.

After he awoke, everything moved in a complicated rush.

That was because they had to conduct the funeral for his deceased grandfather.

He confessed to everyone in the family, including his father, that his grandfather had died because of him.

Yet no one blamed him.

[Even if you were hasty, that is not your fault. It is the fault of all of us for failing to teach you properly and for giving too weak a warning.]

[Please… please punish me.]

His father, who had become the clan head, shook his head and firmly refused.

The reason was that his grandfather Li Hwamun would not have wanted it.

[But…]

[If your grandfather bore even the slightest resentment toward you until the moment his breath stopped, then I will do so.]

[………]

He had not.

Even while suffering that terrible pain of his body burning away, his grandfather had not shown it even once.

As if it would pain him if Yi Ji-yeom worried, he had simply kept his mouth shut with as expressionless a face as possible.

All of it had been consideration for him.

Throughout the funeral, Yi Ji-yeom shed only silent tears.

Then, after carrying out his grandfather’s funeral in sorrow, Yi Ji-yeom came to see the lines his grandfather had left behind in his final writing.

It was like the dead man’s last will.

-Ahhh. The day I followed behind the black robe while gazing at it always returns vividly to me. No matter how much time passes, could even dreams forget those days?

It had seemed there would not even be any tears left to flow out.

But seeing this, painful tears came again as though wrung from him.

Though he was one of the ten founders, because of the branded infamy, most of the executives, including the Society Leader, had not come to the funeral, and yet he had insisted on loyalty to the end.

Did that mean he had believed in that person that much?

‘……..’

His heart became complicated.

Yi Ji-yeom had found the existence of that person deeply hateful.

Yet after seeing the lines in which his grandfather, even in his final words, revealed longing for his old lord, he felt conflicted.

That existence called that person, in whom his grandfather had never lost faith until the end.

And yet he, the grandson who had inherited the direct line of the Li Clan, had insulted that loyalty and will of his grandfather.

‘Grandfather.’

At that time, Yi Ji-yeom made up his mind.

He would continue his grandfather’s will, the will with which he had endured everything through sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall while even laying down his honor.

‘This unworthy grandson… will carry on that loyalty.’

Even if it was a terrible brand.

Even if it was an age of forbearance.

He resolved to continue that will, if only to restore the honor of his late grandfather.

* * *

‘This is… impossible.’

Yi Ji-yeom, the Valley Master of Corpse Blood Valley, could not suppress his shock at the scene unfolding before his eyes.

At first, he thought Mok Gyeong-un was using some bizarre sorcery.

But upon seeing the being taking shape from the blood, he was left speechless.

A matchless beauty with blood-red eyes, wearing a ceremonial crown and holding a long pipe.

That face in which arrogance and dignity coexisted.

The moment he saw it, it naturally overlapped with the figure of that person, of whom his late grandfather Li Hwamun had spoken until his ears rang.

[Do not hate that person too much. The lord this grandfather served for half his life was not the vile traitor you think. That person was stronger and more beautiful than anyone else in the Society.]

He had once let those words from his grandfather pass lightly.

That was because he believed they were not heavier than the wounds he himself had received while growing up.

But the instant he saw her, he understood his grandfather’s words.

There was a saying that those who ruled were born so.

‘Ahhh!’

The being before his eyes looked literally like one born to reign.

At the sight of that downward-looking gaze, from which one could feel a shuddering awe from that alone, reverence naturally arose in him.

Just then, Mok Gyeong-un’s voice sounded by his ear.

“How do you find seeing that person directly?”

“That person…”

Yi Ji-yeom’s heart pounded heavily.

Was the being before his eyes truly that person whom his grandfather had longed for until the end?

At that moment, as though his legs had given way, Yi Ji-yeom dropped to one knee.

-Thud!

It did not matter whether the being before him was a ghost or something else.

He had sworn before his grandfather’s spirit tablet.

That he would inherit that loyalty which had been upheld nobly until death.

Yi Ji-yeom lowered his head and joined both hands in salute.

“Yi Ji-yeom, head of the Li Clan, pays his respects to his lord, the master of the Moon Meridian!”

At this utmost respectful greeting from Yi Ji-yeom, a strange light appeared in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes.

Blue Spirit, on the other hand, cast him a proud sideways glance.

‘Do you see, mortal?’

She had boasted to Mok Gyeong-un.

That whatever else had rotted away, if it was the blood descendant of Li Hwamun of the Li Clan she had known, then he would still be protecting that loyalty.

At those words of hers, Mok Gyeong-un had sneered inwardly.

A full hundred years had passed.

Yet to think that the will of that loyalty would still remain was laughable.

‘You became a resentful spirit, and yet you still trust humans?’

He had thought it truly foolish.

In only a few years, everything faded.

So after the person in question had died and vanished, was it not the very definition of futile expectation to think that such loyalty would continue?

And yet something truly unexpected happened.

‘This turned out differently from what I intended.’

Mok Gyeong-un smacked his lips.

He had wanted to see her reaction when her futile expectations were crushed and she could not hide her disappointment.

Yet instead he had only made her grow smug.

‘That is regrettable.’

Well, that did not mean it was only bad.

If that loyalty had been handed down even after a hundred years, then that meant it had value that could be used.

Just as that was happening, Blue Spirit was about to speak.

-It has been a long…

It was at that very moment.

-Pak! Pak! Pak! Pak!

With one hand, Mok Gyeong-un formed a hand seal and thrust the wooden doll toward Blue Spirit.

“By command of the golden daughter, let there be no empty form within me, by law swift as decree, seal!”

The very instant the spell ended,

Her spirit body, which had just emerged with difficulty, was sucked back into the wooden doll in an instant.

Then the Domain of Ghost Intent, stained with blood and formed by Blue Spirit, disappeared, and in an instant the office returned to its original state.

-Start!

Sensing that change, Yi Ji-yeom furrowed his brow and raised his head.

Where had that person who had been there just a moment ago disappeared to?

Of course, Blue Spirit was inside the wooden doll.

-Pa-jik!

The wooden doll wriggled, and Blue Spirit’s voice rang by Mok Gyeong-un’s ear.

-You damned mortal bastard! What do you think you are doing?

She had gone so far as to reveal her spirit body and confirm his loyalty.

Then he should have drawn this man in and given him commands, so why on earth was he suddenly sealing her back into the wooden doll?

As that happened, Mok Gyeong-un said,

“Did you see? That person remains with me like this, having become a resentful soul filled with regret.”

“You…”

Yi Ji-yeom rose to his feet and looked at Mok Gyeong-un.

That figure of that person from just moments ago had absolutely not been some illusion.

Yi Ji-yeom asked Mok Gyeong-un,

“Where is that person?”

“I just told you. She is with me.”

“…….Then let me see that person again. There is far too much I wish to ask.”

At Yi Ji-yeom’s request, Mok Gyeong-un pointed to himself with his thumb.

“Is she not right before your eyes?”

“What?”

At Yi Ji-yeom’s question asking what in the world he meant, Mok Gyeong-un smiled and said,

“I am that person’s possession vessel. It may be hard for you to understand, but as that person came over me, that person is me and I am that person.”

-Ha!

At those words from Mok Gyeong-un, Blue Spirit, inside the wooden doll, found it absurd.

Now she understood why, after going so far as to show her form, he had sealed her back inside.

Mok Gyeong-un’s purpose was starkly clear.

‘That loyalty that transcends generations. I shall take it for myself directly.’