Chapter 156: v7c6 - Old Hounds (3)
Volume 7 Chapter 6 – Part 6 Old Hounds (3)
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A few weeks ago.
Walnut Village, a board shack.
Yeon So-hyeon stood in the middle of the desolate board shack.
Through the loose cracks of the clumsy board shack, the thick light of the sunset leaked in and colored the interior.
“…We have no face to show.”
The two directors of the Walnut Village House of Benevolence and Love bowed their heads toward Yeon So-hyeon.
“We did check as you said, but the situation had already unfolded, as you can see.”
Yeon So-hyeon asked in a low voice.
“What of the body of the child who is the retired soldier’s younger brother?”
“Well…”
The priestess of the Fairy Cult mumbled her wrinkled lips for a moment, choosing her words, before finally spitting out the answer like a sigh.
“…Although the neighbors ‘mutilated’ some parts, we managed to recover the remaining portions and hold a funeral.”
Yeon So-hyeon stared at the small iron pot rolling on the floor dyed red by the sunset.
Naturally, there was not even a trace of the watery porridge that had been contained inside.
Those who mutilated the retired soldier’s brother’s body would have licked and devoured even what spilled on the dirt floor.
“….”
He found the pieces of a broken wooden statue gathered carefully in another corner of the floor.
“…This.”
Bending his knees and sitting, he picked up the head of the statue.
“The retired soldier’s younger brother made this.”
“It is said he was a child named Yeong… Since he had a talent for carving, there were some among our people who remembered him.”
“…I heard he was a very good and gentle child.”
“It is said he supported his family alone until his older brother returned from the Northern War…”
Yeon So-hyeon listened to their words, gathering all the fragments by hand.
And then, bending his waist, he passed through the low entrance of the board shack and stepped outside.
Stepping outside, white smoke was fluttering along with a pungent smell.
A group of Fairy Cult priestesses gathered at the spot where the retired soldier’s ‘ashes’ were found, lighting firewood and conducting a ritual.
“….”
Yeon So-hyeon threw the fragments of the statue made by the child named Yeong into the blazing pile of firewood.
The flames reflected in his eyes were burning fiercely.
* * *
In the eyes of Yeon So-hyeon watching Yang O-dan, the flames of that day were burning.
Beyond red, they were burning pale-blue, more intensely, more violently.
Though Luoyang was full of people who were satisfied with a single bowl of warm porridge to eat that day.
Even though Yeon So-hyeon endured like that, put effort into preparing, and carried it out.
Even though he personally fed them such undeserved ‘bait,’ coaxed, soothed, and humored them.
There were those who ultimately did not know the meaning of satisfaction.
Even going beyond not being satisfied, there was one who was already harboring other thoughts and concocting schemes behind the back.
‘If I followed my heart, I would want to annihilate them all in this spot…!’
[Kill them!]
The voice of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens became an echo and resounded inside his head.
As if responding to that voice, Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth gaped wide open, revealing the awl-like teeth filling its interior.
“Argh, ugh…!”
Yang O-dan snapped to his senses at the pain of his captured body part being compressed as if crushed.
It was no time to be spaced out by the bizarre phenomenon and abnormal killing intent that made his mind hazy.
‘I will be done in at this rate!’
He had to create distance.
Though he could not execute normal silk-reeling force or stamp his feet properly while caught by physical strength that overwhelmed him, it did not matter.
His boundary and accumulated experience skipped the process without wasting any time and found the answer.
“Hup!”
Just one breath.
The magnificent internal energy surging from his dantian rapidly concentrated along the meridians of his right arm in just a single breath.
If it were an ordinary martial artist, it was a concentration of a massive amount of internal energy in a single moment, to the extent that all the meridians of his right arm would be destroyed immediately.
But was he not some ordinary martial artist?
His palm pressed against Yeon So-hyeon’s abdomen looked to the point of glowing white-hot.
And before the opponent sensed something unusual and could even react, the concentration of power reached its limit.
Yang Family Secret Transmission,
Thunderous Sky-Piercing Cannon.
An release of force unfolded while closely adhering to the opponent, without stamping feet or distance.
It was the moment the art commonly known as inch force was perfectly executed in the hands of someone who had reached the heights of his boundary.
‘Now is the time!’
The opponent’s physical strength that had bound him loosened for just a single moment.
And at that moment, even more and stronger internal energy had already gathered in his right hand than before.
It was an internal energy control method that was like a lie.
Thunderous Sky-Piercing Cannon, Triple Volley!
Amidst the surroundings shaking as if an earthquake had occurred along with an ear-splitting roar suited to the name Thunderous Sky-Piercing Cannon, Yang O-dan distanced himself from the opponent like a ray of light.
Executing footwork that had reached its peak five times and doing two somersaults in the air, he landed on the ground.
“Huff!”
As he drew in a deep breath and operated his mind art, the boiling meridians regained tranquility in an instant.
At the end of his gaze, the figure of Yeon So-hyeon standing amidst the dirt dust was visible.
Behind him, the aftermath of destruction originating from the internal energy released four times was unfolding.
The floor of the garden was dug up in four streaks, as if it were scars struck by a giant, and along those paths, old garden trees were all shattered and scattering.
Dirt piles of the high-quality garden poured like rain from the sky, and grass and leaves fluttered in all directions as if meeting a typhoon.
“….”
Unable to endure, several trees were uprooted and fell over with a loud sound.
But Yahoo O-dan’s face, who had showcased such formidable power, was filled with shock.
‘This makes no sense?!’
His technique was executed perfectly.
But the result was not so.
The Thunderous Sky-Piercing Cannon, which had reached its peak, did not merely end as inch force that could be executed at zero-distance.
It was a “penetrating force” that concentrated all that impact into “a single point” inside the opponent.
If it were the “normal result,” the opponent’s body should have been shattered by the force bursting from within.
But how was the result he was seeing now?
It was merely that the surroundings were destroyed, as if the opponent had “let it all slip away!”
Moreover—
“Ugh!”
Vomiting, Yang O-dan spilled black blood from his mouth.
Before he could even properly feel it, the opponent’s single move had struck his abdomen.
“What on earth…!”
“Is this all you have got?”
A voice like boiling molten iron flowing from over there cut off his words.
The dirt dust settled.
“Pathetic.”
There, standing tall in the exact same spot without receiving any shock, the figure of Yeon So-hyeon was revealed.
“Do you even remember when was the last time you went through a proper real battle?”
Behind Yeon So-hyeon, who stood scattering black energy like an ominous figure, the landscape was gradually distorting.
“Can you recall when was the last time you shed blood and sweat to train?”
Trees tangled as if screaming in pain, and overgrown bushes floundered as if crying out.
The sky was gradually darkening.
‘I am certainly protecting my upper dantian even now?!’
Yang O-dan’s eyes blinked rapidly.
Each time he blinked, the opponent’s face repeatedly looked like the Swordless One Yeon So-hyeon, then like the shape of a ghost again.
By that point, he should have at least sensed that something was going seriously wrong.
Already, the demonic energy of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens was seeping to his very bone marrow as if mocking him, rendered protection of the upper dantian by internal energy useless.
What on earth was happening to Yeon So-hyeon, and what was happening to himself.
There was not the slightest mental leeway left for him to even argue.
“Because others praised you for crossing the wall, did you think that was everything?”
“Cut the nonsense!”
Having his sore spot hit by Yeon So-hyeon’s words, he burst into an angry roar.
“I, Yang O-dan, have not even begun yet!”
As the furious Yang O-dan stamped his foot, a pole that was leaning precariously near him soared into the air and was sucked into his hand.
It was an iron pole used to hang oil lamps to light up the depths of the garden filled with garden trees.
“Hup!”
As he swept the iron pole around his body, a gust of wind arose, scattering the black energy laid low like mist.
“I do not know what kind of bizarre thing you are pulling, but…!”
Although he merely held a simple iron pole, as if his entire body had become a single divine spear, he exuded an unprecedentedly sharp momentum.
“We shall see if you can still boast and chatter in front of the spear of this Yang Family!”
Indeed, when speaking of the Yang Family, it was the spear.
When speaking of the spear, was it not the Divine Spear Yang Family?
Meanwhile, his twisted left hand and his struck abdomen were also rapidly improving in condition according to the operation of his true qi.
“Ridiculous.”
But the opponent in front of him did not care about such things in the slightest.
“Having thrown those countless young lives onto the front lines…”
Now, “something” whose very body shape looked distorted, enveloped in black energy soaring high into the sky, mocked Yang O-dan.
“Neither the front lines, nor the command headquarters of the North…”
The appearance of the monster revealing awl-like teeth and the appearance of Yeon So-hyeon sneering at Yang O-dan crossed rapidly.
“…a spear of someone who merely brandished a baton standing before a map of the safe Imperial Palace ten thousand li away.”
Trees that grew as if soaring into the sky huddled together as if coiling in the air, completely blocking the sunlight.
Yang O-dan screamed as if having a fit.
“Shut up!”
The ultimate secret of Pierce was executed from the hands of the Yang Family’s former patriarch.
It was a spear strike so powerful and mysterious that the previously completed form of inch force was laughable.
That spear strike ignored distance, vibrated the air, overturned the earth, and pierced the opponent as if ignoring the passage of time.
No, it looked as if it had pierced.
“?!”
Yang O-dan’s iron pole was caught in the opponent’s black grip all too futilely.
“Hup!”
He twisted his body, shook it, and sent force to pull the pole out.
Caught in the hand of the opponent where pointed nails had sprouted, glowing enveloped in black flames, the iron pole screamed.
But no matter what technique he mobilized, it showed no sign of coming loose.
“Argh!”
Before he knew it, blood was trickling down from the spots where his severed ears had been.
Each time Yang O-dan shook his head and strained himself, blood splattered in all directions.
But Yang O-dan, who was drawing and using his energy to the limit, did not even feel such a thing.
The slender and soft rays of sunlight that had barely remained all hid their appearances once the sun turned its head away.
Night fell upon the vast and luxurious forest garden.
“And yet, the spear of a profiteer who pursued only personal interest and self-preservation rather than the military’s victory is not even worth a single reed stem.”
Yang O-dan recoiled in fright, letting go of the pole and backing away.
By some strange magic, the pole made of iron melted like candle wax, flowing down into the black smoke laid thick on the floor.
“D-damn it…!”
Jumping to open up distance, he hurriedly pulled out another pole nearby.
A few of his fingers were already missing before he opened up the distance, but he did not even feel that.
‘Not yet! Not yet!’
Even though the boundary of the Unity of Body and Spear, which was absolutely not a lie, had not left him either.
Yang O-dan was bothered by the cold sweat trickling down uncontrollably.
But there was no leeway to wipe it.
In truth, that was also not cold sweat, but his own blood flowing down from his slashed forehead.
The hand holding the iron pole was trembling precariously due to losing several fingers.
“In the face of the resentment and grievances that follow tens of thousands of deaths, a mere boundary is meaningless.”
At the voice that sounded like twisting metal, his head ached as if splitting.
“Blegh!”
He had now practically vomited dark-red pieces of organs.
Though it was pain remaining in his abdomen that he had thought was no big deal.
The demonic energy of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens that had dug in using the principle of penetrating force had already torn his insides to shreds.
“Ughhh…”
He somehow lifted his head with the last remaining pride of a warrior.
Yang O-dan’s pupils, which constantly contracted and dilated in an instant, reflected the opponent’s face.
A white mask wailing in place of the original face.
Although the mask of the artisan, who lamented that he could not bear to open his eyes and look at the world, had no eyeholes.
Pale-blue ghost fire was soaring from that distorted mask.
As if replacing the wide-open eyes of those who had been dragged to the war and had to lose their lives because of that war, filled with resentment.
The chosen one of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens, who had now perfectly revealed his grandeur,
“The great sinner, Yang O-dan.”
The Dark Venerable spread both hands where long nails, dyed blacker than night, had sprouted.
“Now is the time to pay for your sins.”
Then, black thorns sprang up from the demonic energy that flowed laid on the floor.
“Arghhhhh…!”
A desperate scream burst out from Yang O-dan, whose entire body was pierced by the thorns soaring into the sky.