Chapter 98: You Will Know When You Go to Hell
[What a disciple who does not know style.]
[Style, my ass. Just hearing it makes me cringe to death.]
Master Heavenly Demon grumbled at my appearance of being embarrassed while mentioning self-loathing.
Master Zhang Sanfeng took my side by dissing Master Heavenly Demon, but his awkward displeasure was the same.
But rather than that, I was concerned about the martial art I had just unleashed.
‘It has improved tremendously, hasn’t it?’
Even just a while ago when I was in Go County, I had prepared for death while using the Heavenly Demon Kalpaless Hand. It was so even when drawing out only a fraction of its power.
Of course, even now, it was not at the level of fully drawing out the power of the Heavenly Demon Kalpaless Hand.
However, even if barely, I controlled and unleashed it properly.
The help of the divine power of fire and the gauntlets Master Heavenly Demon reportedly used was immense.
‘At this rate, I should be able to face even an ordinary Peak Master.’
It was an astonishing rate of progress.
“It’s a monster!”
“It’s a demon!”
While I was assessing my own growth for a moment, the villagers who were watching from afar screamed and fled.
Having seen the Seonhwa Sect (?) martial artists coughing up blood and collapsing, and buildings crumbling without even being touched, it was no wonder they were terrified.
To those people, I must have looked like a demon king of ancient myths.
“An odd alias won’t be made or anything, right?”
[You mean something like the rising star of the Demonic Cult, the Minor Demonic Emperor?]
“……”
Master Zhang Sanfeng? You seem very displeased though?
[Tsk!]
Seeing Master Zhang Sanfeng clicking his tongue, it seemed I was not far off.
“What martial art is that?”
Perhaps equally surprised, Baek Mu-ho stared and asked.
This was troublesome to answer in its own way.
Since I could not tell the truth, I had to at least strip away the word ‘Heavenly Demon’.
“Kalpaless.”
“‘Kalpaless’… Well, it certainly didn’t feel ‘light’.”
“……Did you get hit in the head while fighting?”
He wasn’t a guy with such terrible humor before.
“Shut up.”
Baek Mu-ho’s response was blunt. With his lips pouting, he looked displeased.
To the point that I wondered if Master Zhang Sanfeng would look like this if he were in front of me right now.
‘There are only displeased people all around.’
Dealing with them in this situation would only be exhausting.
I averted my eyes.
I saw insects crawling on the ground.
They were trivial dregs of evil.
In plain terms, they were trash of the Demonic Cult who were about to draw their last breaths.
‘…This feeling is going to last a while.’
I felt like the sensation from when I unleashed the Heavenly Demon Kalpaless Hand was still lingering.
Anyway, those trying to escape by crawling on the ground somehow struggled desperately.
“Cough! Hack! Urgh!”
They coughed up blood continuously between ragged breaths.
It meant their internal organs were torn to shreds somewhere.
[That is what happens when the lungs are crushed and ruined. Keep it in mind, as it is a sight you will frequently see if you use the Heavenly Demon Kalpaless Hand the way you just did.]
I had merely unleashed it as the flow of power directed, yet this was the result.
It was a martial art with power beyond imagination.
‘Crush… completely.’
That was the mental image I had constructed in my mind when unleashing the martial art at the time.
The power manifested according to that will crushed even the internal organs inside. The will itself exerted a power no different from an internal striking technique.
That was why they were crawling on the ground, unable to keep their bodies upright.
‘Wait, then this…’
Since I was in the middle of unleashing Master Heavenly Demon’s martial art, Baek Mu-ho had instinctively swung his sword to redirect my force. That meant Baek Mu-ho might have suffered the same fate otherwise.
A shiver ran down my spine.
‘Let’s be careful. Let’s really be careful.’
I was very proud when I successfully unleashed the Heavenly Demon Kalpaless Hand, but once I regained my senses, a sense of caution arose once again.
‘Because I can’t be lucky forever.’
As my excited heart settled down, the damn bastards, who were already annoying, became even more unpleasant.
Fortunately, perhaps because my head had cooled down, my thoughts returned to being rational.
‘I feel like there must be a better way…’
The initial plan was to disguise ourselves as Demonic Cult demons to attack the Seonhwa Sect, wipe out the disguised demons, and burn the remaining corpses.
Officially, it would remain as something the Demonic Cult did, so it would prevent them from disrupting the agreement between the orthodox and unorthodox.
However, calmly assessing the situation, a better way seemed about to come to mind.
While I was connecting various methods that came to mind, a demon who had his head pinned to the ground spoke.
“T-this minor demon is a humble one… named Gu Ji-hwang… cough… belonging to the Demonic Eight Banners Regiment.”
Despite the severe injuries that made it difficult to keep his body upright, he tried to show manners somehow.
“Being humble and foolish… cough… stupid… cough cough… I followed behind unworthy ones for a while, but… seeing the Great One’s power… this minor demon realized his foolishness. Cough!”
Prostrating with all limbs to the ground while coughing up blood looked almost solemn.
“And?”
“Although this minor demon is foolish… cough! and stupid… I know many things, so… I will surely be useful to the Great Ones… hack! hack! Please take this minor demon in… cough! If you do, I will certainly achieve satisfactory merits.”
Although he was speaking desperately, to sum it up in one word, it was a request to spare his life in exchange for surrender.
‘So, he thinks I’m a demon from a different faction.’
[Pfft! What a mess.]
[…See you in hell, you bastard.]
Thinking this was the right moment, Master Zhang Sanfeng sneered.
Master Heavenly Demon, for his part, ground his teeth at that guy named Gu Ji-hwang.
It seemed that if that guy died and went to hell, he would be ground to pieces mercilessly.
“I don’t need you.”
“I am useful… cough cough… indeed! I… urgh!”
Seeing him cough up blood by the bowlful in his agitation looked precarious.
‘I could save him if I wanted, and coaxing him would be easy, but… that won’t do. I don’t think he’d be useful either. It’s also shameful to the people of the Seonhwa Sect. And there is the request from the blood-vessel-obsessed lady.’
The option of keeping this guy alive to utilize him did not exist in the first place.
“No matter what you know, I can extract all of it before long.”
“What… do you mean by that…”
“You’ll know when you go to hell.”
There is someone grinding their teeth, wishing to grind you to dust there.
Confirming my firm stance, the guy trembled violently.
“I am… not someone… cough!… who will end here! Hack! Urgh!”
The suppressed pain and surging humiliation seemed to break down his bodily control.
He had talent and probably had grand dreams of his own.
Unable to accept the moment when all of that crumbled, he abruptly raised his upper body, as if he had lost his mind.
Whether he no longer felt pain, what looked like pieces of his internal organs spilled from Gu Ji-hwang’s mouth.
“Why don’t you talk about such a grandiose dream with your real face?”
I approached the trembling Gu Ji-hwang and scraped at his face.
“Instead of doing it while wearing someone else’s face.”
With the human skin mask fallen off, Gu Ji-hwang, returned to his original face, collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
As the life force slowly drained from Gu Ji-hwang’s body, the struggles of the remaining demons gradually subsided.
Just like that, five corpses lay before us.
“Hmm…”
After organizing my thoughts while looking back and forth between the human skin masks and the corpses, I asked Baek Mu-ho for his opinion.
“What do you think?”
“Your determination to chase him down to hell and crush him? It’s solemn, but let’s postpone it for about a hundred years. I plan to kick the bucket around then anyway. Since that guy will be full of resentment towards you, he will wait that long.”
His banter seemed to have fully returned.
What a relief. If his already bad head had gotten even worse because of me, I would have felt deep guilt.
Anyway, I didn’t mean that.
“Should we just expose everything and end it?”
“Expose?”
“This. The human skin mask.”
“Oh? Hmm… Ah?”
Tilting his head, Baek Mu-ho soon understood and clapped his hands.
“That’s not bad either?”
“Right?”
Both the orthodox and unorthodox factions knew the Demonic Cult was behind this conflict. In such a situation, if the Seonhwa Sect incident were to be known, both orthodox and unorthodox factions would guard against spies and tighten their internal discipline. Especially for the orthodox faction, there was already a precedent with the Mount Hua Sect.
In such circumstances, fighting external enemies became a burden.
Consequently, it increased the likelihood of an agreement between the orthodox and unorthodox factions.
Moreover, there was another effect.
Demons of the Demonic Cult stopped the work of the Demonic Cult!
This was something I realized while talking to Gu Ji-hwang just now. If such rumors spread, the internal factions of the Demonic Cult would become even more sharply divided.
“The Demonic Cult bastards will be dumbfounded too. When they hear rumors that it was Demonic Cult demons who ruined their own work. Since they’re going to suspect each other anyway, I wonder if a civil war will break out? That would be more amusing.”
‘They are already infighting.’
Thinking it over again, the picture was perfect.
Beyond the sharpening of factional discord, there was a possibility that they would fight each other and develop into a civil war.
In terms of the various effects that could be expected, it was better than simply letting it be known that the Seonhwa Sect was destroyed by an attack from the Demonic Cult.
“Then let’s set it up nicely.”
Judging by the villagers’ reactions, they wouldn’t just leave the corpses alone.
We just need to make these perpetrators look like vicious demons who wore the face skins of the Seonhwa Sect disciples.
“Let’s tear the face skins of about two of them halfway.”
“We leave that stripped guy as is, and make the others slightly torn.”
Naturally, when they recover the bodies and see the torn face skins, they will check them.
Then the villagers will examine the faces of the others.
The feeling of accepting something is completely different when the result is revealed through their own direct investigation compared to simply being told.
The villagers will spread vivid rumors based on their own experiences.
“We must also leave traces that look like they were made by the Demonic Cult.”
Leaving a few prints of domineering traces around the corpses will do.
Since we are at it, we should probably leave them on the collapsed buildings too.
With that thought, as I approached the collapsed building, something caught my eye.
“A statue?”
Amidst the debris was a bronze statue depicting a goddess.
It looked like a deity enshrined at home like folk belief, and I could find a ten-character inscription on a nearby ancestral tablet.
Divine Seat of the Nine Spirits Supreme Mysterious Guishan Golden Mother ( 龜金)
Divine Seat of the Nine Spirits Supreme Mysterious Guishan Golden Mother
“Wait, this…”
As I communicated with my masters in heaven, I had studied the deities of the immortal realm in my own way. This alias refers to a very famous person.
The leader of all goddesses who possessed a leopard’s tail and a tiger’s teeth, and who commanded the giant blue birds and nine-tailed foxes.
The holy mother of the immortal realm whom all immortals greet morning and night, as she is the mistress managing the Flat Peaches containing the power of longevity and the best elixir of the immortal realm.
A great deity whose power and influence rivaled those of the Jade Emperor.
“…That person is the Queen Mother of the West?”
Uh… um… I didn’t say anything wrong, did I?
Although I had thought of an extremely rude title, I had never spoken it aloud. Surely not. Definitely not.
Fortunately, recalling the memory of her leaving in great amusement, I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Uh… but didn’t she say she would give me something good if I resolved this matter?’
What on earth will she give me? Hehehe.