Wudang Sacred Scriptures

Chapter 190

Kwak Yeon’s words left the Four Evils of Heaven aghast.

“You mean to leave us like this—to be torn apart alive by crows?”

At Ma Geollyang the White-Eyed Fiend’s furious demand, Kwak Yeon answered with an icy counter-question.

“You did the same. Why should I not?”

“Kh...!”

“There was warmth left in several of the merchants’ bodies. They died while birds pecked them alive. Feel that pain exactly as they did.”

Ma Geollyang grasped, at last, what Kwak Yeon had meant when he said there was something they would have to do.

“I left you enough inner true qi to last three days. And I sealed your dantians to stop you from using the Reverse Acupoint Method to kill yourselves, so do not waste your effort.”

Ma Geollyang ground his teeth at Kwak Yeon’s words.

“You’re a devil unmatched under heaven, wearing a Taoist’s mask.”

Kwak Yeon spoke evenly.

“Thanks for the praise. Long ago I resolved to be the worst devil in the world—toward villains like you.”

Kwak Yeon recalled the day he left the Disciplinary Court, his name cleared of being a Demonic Sect spy thanks to Instructor Hyeonmun.

“To do righteousness, you must become ruthless; only then are you a gentleman.”

He had never misunderstood the true meaning of his instructor’s teaching. He did not think what he was doing now fit that teaching.

But just this once, he wanted to do as the blaze of anger roaring in his body led him.

If not, he would not be able to lift his head before the traveling merchants and the elderly couple of the roadside tent-inn who had suffered misfortune precisely because they had offered him their blessing.

Casting a glance at the horrified Four Evils of Heaven, Kwak Yeon turned and began to walk.

“Hey!”

“Dark Cavern Taoist! Stop there!”

“You can’t just leave us like this!”

Ma Geollyang bellowed at his three younger comrades as they shouted in panic.

“Be quiet, all of you.”

When the three, who had been raging and cursing, shut their mouths, Ma Geollyang continued.

“He’ll be back soon.”

Ga Yu, the Red-Blooded Judge, twisted his bluish face with effort toward Ma Geollyang and asked,

“Elder Brother, what do you mean?”

“This is all a ploy to scare us into opening our mouths. Do you think he would truly leave without asking who hired us?”

“Ah! Put that way, it does make sense.”

As Ga Yu nodded, Deuk Gigon, the ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Blood-Cleaving Demon, spoke in a voice thick with pain.

“I hope he hurries back. Those filthy crows are already gathering beneath me.”

Blood leaking from the wound at Deuk Gigon’s dantian pooled on the ground, drawing the crows.

Unlike her two brothers, who accepted it calmly, Yeong So, the Ghost-Wind Harpy, asked in a voice full of worry,

“Elder Brother, what if you’re wrong? What if the Dark Cavern Taoist truly went away?”

“That cannot be. Whatever else he is, he is a Wudang Taoist. Would he really act like the very worst Demonic warlord?”

Only then did Yeong So, to a degree, relent.

The Four Evils of Heaven, bound to the wooden stakes, could do nothing but watch the blazing flames.

Toward evening, the blaze dwindled, and only puffs of smoke trailed upward.

As the smoke died, their desperate hope, too, faded away.

Darkness fell on every side, and the cawing of crows subsided—a small comfort to them.

But when night passed and dawn light came, that comfort turned nightmare.

The birds had not left through the night. No—there were even more than at dusk.

Every tree was black with crows.

Deuk Gigon’s groans, heard all night, had gone silent. From the faint sound of his breathing, he was not yet dead.

—Flap!

Under the morning sun, a crow swooped in.

It settled on the head of the limp Blood-Cleaving Demon and pecked at his eye.

—Rip!

“Ghhhk!”

Startled by the pain-choked moan, the crow took wing.

Ma Geollyang sensed that the gate of hell was about to open.

It had been the rash act of a hungry crow, but it gave courage to the others that had hesitated.

Crows are cleverer than any other bird. They would quickly realize that humans tied to stakes and unable to resist were nothing but prey.

Ma Geollyang’s mind began to blur.

With inner true qi gone, he had hung on a wooden stake all night in a feeble body; it was only natural.

The Dark Cavern Taoist is not coming back.

What he had told his three younger brothers yesterday had been only to keep them from despairing on the spot.

In that cold gaze of the Dark Cavern Taoist, he had seen a cutting insight.

Those eyes had said he could discover the one who had commissioned them on his own.

If the Dark Cavern Taoist changes his mind and returns, I will tell him everything and beg for the mercy of death.

He saw crows dropping down one after another around the stakes.

In that instant, he finally cast aside the pride he had kept as a great Demonic warlord.

“Dark Cavern Taoist! I yield—now come out and end it!”

At his cry wrung from the last of his strength, the crows burst up in a clatter of wings.

But no matter how long he waited, the Dark Cavern Taoist did not come.

So he truly left.

Hope vanished completely.

Ma Geollyang realized that his three younger brothers had not responded at all to his shout.

All but himself had suffered grievous wounds; they could no longer endure.

Ma Geollyang wished that the three had died.

If not, they would die after tasting a living hell.

From the corner of his eye he saw a crow settle again atop Deuk Gigon’s head.

—Thud!

When the crow pecked at the eye, the body twitched.

Though the Blood-Cleaving Demon moved, this crow did not fly off.

Then other crows dropped, one by one, onto the Blood-Cleaving Demon.

He kept writhing, but the crows, having learned, no longer feared him.

Now they latched onto the other two younger brothers as well—the Red-Blooded Judge and the Ghost-Wind Harpy.

Ma Geollyang felt a crow alight on his own head.

I have to drive it off.

But he could only let out a faint groan.

Skkrrk!

His brow hurt as if struck by a chisel.

And when the next wave of agony crashed over him, he saw a searing light.

Ma Geollyang knew he would never again be able to use the Soul-Seizing Demon Eye.

With eyeballs pecked by a beak, he could no longer roll his eyes white.

When the sun had fully risen, each stake was black with crows.

They fought to tear the flesh of the Four Evils of Heaven.

Just then, a figure appeared before the stakes.

—Flap-flap-flap!

Sensing the intruder’s arrival, the keen crows broke off their feast and took wing as one.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

Amid the furious cries of birds robbed of their meal, a man looked upon the four bound to the stakes.

He frowned at their ghastly condition.

“...Kill me.”

A faint sound leaked from Ma Geollyang’s mouth.

“Jegal... Seungsu...”

The man’s eyes widened.

Jegal Seungsu!

It was a name he knew.

“Who did you say?”

“...Jegal Seungsu... Strategist of the Hidden Dragon Command.”

The man started—Ma Geollyang knew precisely the Strategist Jegal Seungsu of the Hidden Dragon Command.

At the groaning words that followed, the man was several times more shocked.

“Jegal Deok... Elder Council Lord... Please...”

The man realized the one bound to the stake was confessing the commission—mistaking him for the Dark Cavern Taoist.

“Who are you people?”

“...The Four Evils of Heaven... Now kill me.”

His pain was so great he was begging for death.

The man nodded.

“I have heard astonishing news by chance. I will grant your wish.”

It was information his lord had to know.

He had stumbled into great merit; he could not fail to repay it.

It was, in any case, something he had to do.

—Slash!

—Thud!

With a single cut, the man took Ma Geollyang’s head.

The other three had long since died; there was no need to lift a hand.

For them, at least, the time of suffering had been shorter.

“In any case—a commission? My lord will be furious when he hears of this.”

The man paused as he moved to sheathe his sword.

A razor edge of killing intent ran up his spine.

“So you’re not entirely without human feeling.”

Turning slowly, he saw Kwak Yeon standing before the charred ruins of the roadside tent-inn.

When did he—?

The man realized, with stark clarity, that he had stepped into a trap laid by the Dark Cavern Taoist.

“Why not sheathe that sword?”

“...?”

“You were not ordered to kill me, were you?”

“That is so.”

Once a shadow’s identity is exposed, evasion is pointless.

The moment the one he followed knew, the mission had failed.

Besides, as the Dark Cavern Taoist said, he had not been ordered to kill this opponent.

—Click.

The man sheathed his sword and asked,

“But how did you know that?”

Kwak Yeon answered without hesitation.

“I had a fair idea who sent you, so I tested it. Your reaction confirmed it.”

The man said,

“You know I cannot speak my lord’s name. Then how did you know I was behind you?”

“Do not reproach yourself. I knew thanks to the Sangwan Clan Master’s counsel. He told me that he did not think I was the one who killed the Yama Envoys of the Gold-Fort Command and that there seemed to be a string pulling from the shadows.”

“...”

“Hearing that, the edge I had felt for a moment at the Gijeong Pavilion gate in Deokseong no longer seemed ordinary.”

The man spoke with a look of admiration.

“Heh. I did not think my tail would be caught that way. So you set this snare and waited for me?”

Kwak Yeon nodded.

“Since I had lit a fire, I thought it would be good if you showed yourself. If humans do not satisfy their curiosity, they feel stifled, do they not? You are human. I reckoned even you would be curious about sudden flames in the mountains.”

“...”

“Even so, when I waited quite a while and you did not appear, I worried you had missed the message I left.”

“How could I? You left such noisy messages that carrier pigeons rained down on every Hao Sect branch.”

The man shook his head and went on,

“It was so noisy it was a headache. And more than once on the road you seemed to be searching for me, which made me all the more cautious. Once I was nearly exposed, but a herd of boars happened to appear just then.”

“Ah—so it was you I sensed that time.”

The man bobbed his head and asked,

“Since you suddenly left Sangjeon Village, it seems you’ve learned that pursuit art, have you not? I had never felt such a presence from you before.”

“In the meantime, fate led me to that discipline.”

Kwak Yeon readily admitted he had learned Solitary Moon Illumines the Boundless Skill, then continued.

“It seems we’ve traded answers to all the questions we had. Let us speak to the point.”

At his words, the man nodded readily.

“I am all ears.”