Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 9 - Strange Phenomenon (2)

Chapter 9 – Strange Phenomenon (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Mok Gyeong-un’s pupils did not move, like those of a dead man.

Because it was the first time he had ever seen a living person with such eyes, occult practitioner Myo-shin could not pull his gaze away from them for a moment.

‘How can a human have such ghostly…’

But then he came to his senses at someone’s voice.

“What? What in the world is this?”

It was Bodyguard Gochan.

Bodyguard Gochan, who had guided Mok Gyeong-un there, could not make sense of the sight in the Manor Lord’s room, which was covered everywhere with red thread strung with silver coins.

He had already thought it was strange that there was no one around the main hall.

But who exactly was this man, and why was he doing something so bizarre here?

“Excuse me. Who are you to be doing this here…?”

“It certainly does not look like you are a physician.”

Mok Gyeong-un said as he looked around the room.

At this, occult practitioner Myo-shin waved his hands urgently and said,

“I do not know who you are, but it seems you did not receive word from the First Madam. This is an important moment, so leave at once.”

“The First Madam?”

“I mean it is a moment when you must not interfere.”

In truth, it really was an important moment.

While he was controlling the strange phenomenon burrowing into the Manor Lord’s heart, a contrary force had entered because of the killer aura.

When that happened, the killer aura instead made the strange phenomenon even stronger.

“Leave at once!”

There was no time to waste like this.

At Myo-shin’s urging, Bodyguard Gochan frowned and muttered,

“Could it be you are an occult practitioner?”

“Hoo. Yes. I am indeed an occult practitioner, so hurry and…”

“Then why is that person like that?”

At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un asked, tilting his head toward the bed.

At this, occult practitioner Myo-shin turned his head.

“Keh, keh!”

There was someone there, his waist bent like a bow, coughing harshly.

“M-Manor Lord?”

‘The Manor Lord?’

Mok Gyeong-un wore a puzzled expression.

The state of the Manor Lord, whom he was seeing for the first time, was bizarre beyond words.

His back was bent so far that his chest faced upward, and his throat was bulging and writhing, making him look to be in great pain.

“No. Why is the Manor Lord like that?”

“Leave! I said leave!”

Myo-shin shouted and tried to push Mok Gyeong-un and Gochan out the door.

It was right then.

-Gulp!

A loud swallowing sound, loud enough for everyone to hear, came from the Manor Lord.

When they looked toward him, his waist was still bent like a bow, but the bulging in his throat soon disappeared.

The painful expression on the Manor Lord’s face looked relieved.

Then suddenly the Manor Lord, whose eyes had been shut, snapped them open.

“Huh? Manor Lord?”

Could it be that the Manor Lord had regained consciousness?

At that moment, Myo-shin spat out a rough curse under his breath.

“Damn it!”

Then, in haste, he pulled out a talisman from the pouch at his waist, with the character for Suppress written in red, and ran toward the Manor Lord, who seemed to have awakened.

Then the Manor Lord’s head suddenly twisted to the side in a grotesque way.

-Crack, crack!

‘!?’

Gochan’s eyes widened.

The Manor Lord’s horrifying eyes were bloodshot red everywhere except for the pupils.

And on top of that, with his waist still bent, only his head was twisted in that fashion, making it chilling to behold.

At that moment, occult practitioner Myo-shin formed a one-handed seal with his left hand and chanted a spell.

“One talisman reaches the heavens, one writing startles ghosts and spirits, Supreme Above transforms into Three Purities, swift, swift by decree!”

-Flap!

The yellow talisman looped around the fingers of Myo-shin’s right hand snapped straight.

Myo-shin tried to stick that stiffened talisman to the Manor Lord’s twisted forehead.

Then,

“Kaaak!”

The Manor Lord let out a grotesque cry and shouted.

“Ugh!”

As the booming shout rang out like an echo, Myo-shin staggered backward.

He was not the only one affected by the shout.

Gochan too clutched his ears at the sudden pain in his eardrums.

‘H-his inner power was in that shout.’

The Manor Lord was an internal-path expert, so his inner power was deep.

Naturally, such a shout could not help but carry inner power, and that wave brought pain to everyone who heard it.

Bodyguard Gochan, clutching his ears, looked at Mok Gyeong-un.

But then,

‘No, this fellow has not even cultivated inner power, so how is he fine?’

Mok Gyeong-un was only slightly furrowing his brow.

Could it be that he had simply endured the pain?

While Gochan was still wondering that, the shouting Manor Lord turned his head and then stretched his bent waist straight as he tried to rise from the bed.

However,

-Bang!

The red threads wrapped around both wrists and both ankles pulled taut, and he could not properly stand, ending up in an awkward posture instead.

-Ssssss!

From the places where the red threads were tied, a faint haze and a pungent smell flowed out.

“Kaaaaaa!”

The Manor Lord, with his bloodshot eyes, let out a howl like a beast rather than a human.

Then he pulled hard with all his strength on his right hand.

Then,

-Boom!

The open door panel tore away, and the red thread snapped.

“Damn it!”

Occult practitioner Myo-shin, who had been staggering from the shout, could not hide his alarm.

He had secured the red thread firmly, but because these two had opened the door and entered, the matter had been ruined.

-Bulge! Bulge!

Black veins rose on the Manor Lord’s bloodshot forehead and face.

‘He has been seized by the strange phenomenon.’

People used the expression “possessed” for this sort of thing.

At this point, it could be said that learning the location of the Manor Lord’s seal and secret manual, as Madam Seok had requested, had gone up in smoke.

-Clink, clink! Craaack!

While he stood there flustered, the Manor Lord tried to snap all the red threads strung with silver coins.

“Ugh!”

This was no longer a time to worry about the commission.

Occult practitioner Myo-shin rushed at the Manor Lord once more, trying to paste the talisman onto his forehead.

However,

-Smack!

“Ugh!”

At a careless swing of the Manor Lord’s hand, occult practitioner Myo-shin tumbled across the floor.

‘W-what strength…?’

Myo-shin was completely flustered.

Those seized by strange phenomena did become stronger than ordinary people, but this was at a level that could scarcely be compared.

There was no way he could hold the Manor Lord down.

-Clench!

The red thread binding the Manor Lord’s left wrist looked as though it would snap at any moment.

At this, occult practitioner Myo-shin shouted as he looked at Mok Gyeong-un and Gochan.

“Y-you two, help me. Hold the Manor Lord so he cannot break the thread!”

“You are telling us to hold him?”

Though he could not make sense of it, Gochan understood at least that the situation was serious.

There was no time to weigh things in his head.

So Gochan hurriedly rushed toward the Manor Lord.

Mok Gyeong-un did the same.

“Do we only need to hold him?”

“Even if you hold him, you must never meet his eyes, and if while holding him your hand turns cold and you get a chill down your spine, let go no matter what!”

Depending on how one heard it, it was rather ambiguous advice.

In any case, the atmosphere was such that if they did not hold the Manor Lord now, something bad was going to happen, so Gochan asked no more questions and quickly grabbed the Manor Lord’s freed right arm.

-Clench!

He wanted to grab the fixed left hand as well, but he could not bring himself to tell Mok Gyeong-un to do that.

But then a problem arose.

The Manor Lord was weakened, yes, but he was still an internal-path master whom even Guard Gam, his senior brother, could not handle.

Even Gochan could hardly endure the Manor Lord’s strength.

-Smack!

The Manor Lord shook off Gochan’s hand with absurd ease and instead seized his wrist.

“Huh?”

-The grip was so strong that it felt as though his wrist would break at any moment.

Flustered, Gochan instinctively tried to twist the Manor Lord’s wrist with a grappling technique.

Tap!

-At that moment, the strength in the Manor Lord’s hand loosened.

“Huh?”

He wondered why,

but by then Myo-shin had already pasted a talisman onto the Manor Lord’s forehead.

Then he formed a seal and chanted a spell.

“The Northern Emperor grants me the talisman to strike evil spirits, I unfold the divine writ, and those who dare not obey I bind in Fengdu City, swift by decree!”

(The Northern Emperor grants me a divine talisman with which to strike evil spirits. When the divine writ is spread wide, those who dare not obey shall be imprisoned in Fengdu City. By command, act swiftly.)

-Tremble, tremble, tremble!

As soon as the talisman was attached, spasms ran through the Manor Lord’s body.

Using that opening, Gochan tried to pull free the hand of the Manor Lord that was gripping his wrist.

But the moment he tried to pull away, the grip tightened again.

-Crack!

Gochan’s wrist twisted on the spot.

The bone burst right through the flesh.

“Aaaaagh!”

A scream burst from Gochan’s mouth.

It was astonishing enough that the bone had broken, but to have it burst out like that and still endure it was remarkable.

But when the blood that had come out through the torn flesh touched the Manor Lord’s hand,

-crunch, crunch!

the strange phenomenon protruding black from the center of the heart began to creep toward the Manor Lord’s right arm with the force of a raging wave.

“Hiiik!”

As it surged all the way to the wrist at terrifying speed, Gochan recoiled in horror.

At that moment, Myo-shin chanted the spell once more, more forcefully.

“The Northern Emperor grants me the talisman to strike evil spirits, I unfold the divine writ, and those who dare not obey I bind in Fengdu City, swift by decree!”

Then the strange phenomenon, creeping along, wavered back and forth between the wrist and the elbow while violent convulsions ran through the body.

Bodyguard Gochan urged him on while trying desperately to pry the Manor Lord’s hand off.

“P-please, do something somehow!”

“Even the killer aura has mixed in, and the impurity has grown too strong. Endure a little longer. If the strange phenomenon transfers over, you too will be in danger.”

“No, you should have said that from the st…”

-Creeeeping!

At that moment, the strange phenomenon, which had been going back and forth, tried to surge toward the wrist again.

“Gah!”

Startled, Gochan tried to free himself by twisting the Manor Lord’s hand with a grappling technique, even though it would not let go of his wrist.

-Shing! Slash!

At that moment, something wholly unexpected happened.

The Manor Lord’s wrist, the one gripping Gochan’s wrist, was cut off.

‘!?’

The one who had cut off the wrist was none other than Mok Gyeong-un.

The sharp sword in Mok Gyeong-un’s hand was one of the ones hanging on the wall.

Gochan was utterly flustered.

Though things were dangerous because of the bizarre phenomenon, he had never imagined that Mok Gyeong-un would actually cut off the Manor Lord’s wrist.

The same was true of occult practitioner Myo-shin.

‘He cut off the Manor Lord’s wrist? Just what is this bastard?’

The Manor Lord was the head of Yeon Mok Sword Manor, yet he had not shown the slightest hesitation.

-Creeeeping!

At that moment, with the wrist cut off, the strange phenomenon that had climbed that far tried to move back into the Manor Lord’s body.

‘Good!’

Another chance had come.

If the strange phenomenon aimed for the heart again, he intended to control it with talisman arts and somehow suppress the violent energy mixed with the killer aura.

But then,

-Slash!

It was just as the strange phenomenon was about to pass the elbow and move toward the shoulder.

Mok Gyeong-un suddenly took hold of the sword and brought it down before the strange phenomenon could climb higher, severing the arm below the shoulder.

Occult practitioner Myo-shin was beyond startled and shouted in alarm.

“You! You!”

He wanted to say something, but he was so dumbfounded that the words would not come.

To him, Mok Gyeong-un said calmly,

“Isn’t this better than sending it back into the body?”

-Papak! Papak!

From the severed arm lying on the floor, black veins burst out wildly, and it flopped and thrashed like a fish thrown onto dry land.

By contrast, color was gradually returning to the Manor Lord’s pale face.

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