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Chapter 36
It was the same for Wol as well, so Wol simply lifted the wooden bowl and gulped down what looked like porridge that Sohwa had made.
“It’ll probably take a while to get there. I hope there’s a village. We can’t keep camping with the young miss,” she said.
“There are several villages along the way,” the elder from the collateral line said at that moment. At those words, Sohwa’s expression brightened.
“That’s a relief!”
“It is. Continuing to camp could also interfere with honing one’s skills. If we travel all day tomorrow, we should be able to reach a village.”
“My back hurts so much from riding all day today, and I have to do it again tomorrow. Riding a horse really isn’t easy.”
“That’s true. Still, endure it just a little longer.”
“Yees.”
Saryeol thought it was a good decision to have brought her, watching Sohwa chat and quickly grow close to the collateral elder. And then, at that moment, Saryeol felt a chilling presence.
“……”
She silently looked at Wol, and Wol, as if he had sensed it too, was looking back at Saryeol.
“Great hero.”
“What is it, young miss?”
“There’s something nearby.”
“Something, you say……?”
At those words, the collateral elder checked the surroundings, but he couldn’t sense anything at all.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“It’s not a person.”
At Saryeol’s words, his face stiffened.
“It’s a gwi.”
“A gwi……?”
“It’s come fairly close. Wol and I will go take a look.”
“No, wait a moment—what do you mean the two of you will go? And more importantly, are you sure it’s really a gwi?”
Saryeol nodded. Wol pushed himself off the tree he had been leaning against and looked in a certain direction. Sensing that something was off from the two of them, the collateral elder looked at the other disciples with a serious expression.
“Everyone, get ready.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a gwi nearby.”
“R-really?”
“A gwi, here of all places…….”
The disciples rose from their spots with faces full of disbelief. Saryeol slightly furrowed her brow. Even if they came along, they’d only get in the way; it would be faster to just go with Wol and deal with it themselves.
“The rest of you, please wait here. Wol and I will scout ahead. It could be a mistake.”
“Is that all right, young miss?”
Saryeol nodded in agreement with Wol’s words. She was simply grateful that he was getting rid of the bothersome ones. After exchanging a glance, the two of them kicked off the ground in the same direction and leapt away.
Saryeol and Wol immediately headed deep into the forest where the presence of the gwi could be felt. It didn’t feel particularly strong, but the problem was that gwi were already appearing here and there. The two spread their qinggong and moved deeper, drawing closer to where the gwi should be.
Tap.
They stopped at the same spot. But there was no gwi there. Instead, only an incense burner stood there, sending up thick plumes of smoke—and from it came the presence of a gwi. Saryeol and Wol looked at it with cold expressions.
Thud—crash!
Wol kicked the incense burner aside.
“We were fooled.”
“We should head back as fast as possible.”
That incense burner was a fake that generated the presence of a gwi. If this was a ruse, it was obvious where the real gwi would be headed. Most likely, the campsite. The two immediately began racing back toward the camp, moving even faster than before with their qinggong. All they could do was hope that the others hadn’t fallen for it so easily.
Marwolhu was in quite a good mood. Even though the gwi he had repeatedly sent had been destroyed by Saryeol’s hand, he didn’t feel displeased—because Saryeol knew that they were gifts he had sent. In the first place, he had never intended to do anything to her with such cheap gwi.
‘More importantly, who was the one next to her?’
Marwolhu, who could see exactly what the gwi saw, was bothered by the blue-eyed man at her side. A face he’d never seen before, yet somehow unpleasantly familiar. He didn’t look young enough to be someone she’d had ties with in the past.
‘Well, whatever. I can just get rid of him while I’m at it.’
So that she would look only at him.
He pondered how he could make her think of him alone. Sending weak gwi one after another would only result in them being defeated one by one. He needed something that could draw out her emotions a bit more.
“Ah, yes—that’ll do!”
Marwolhu burst into loud laughter into the empty air. Then he awakened the more persistent ones among his gwi. They weren’t particularly strong, but defeating them required considerable effort, and without basic knowledge of gwi, it was easy to fall victim to them. They were perfect as another gift for her.
“It’ll be good when she leaves for Mu-han.”
He had already planted people around her by opening the gates of the Blood Palace, so he knew exactly where she would go. That was why he could prepare gwi along the paths she would pass.
“Now, go and play to your hearts’ content.”
Marwolhu sprinkled his own blood over the gwi. He gazed lovingly at the creatures as they drank the blood and began to stagger into motion. He was unbearably curious about what kind of expression she would make when she received this gift.
There were five gwi crawling along the ground in total. With limbs crudely stitched together in places, they crawled forward, letting out cries that were not quite proper speech. The limbs sewn onto their sides made them look like spiders. Their heads, from which the brain had been artificially removed and filled with poison, would envelop and kill anyone who cut them down, even in the instant their heads were severed.
“There’s no better gift for novices.”
Laughing out loud, Marwolhu ordered his subordinates to release them along the path Saryeol would take. And to sow further confusion, he prepared an incense burner in which an even stronger aura had been condensed, planning to have it lit at the right moment.
“If I can’t make her love me,”
He grinned until his mouth nearly split open.
“Then it’s only right to make her hate me to the bone.”
His mad laughter filled the Blood Palace. Marwolhu—he was the second son of the cult leader who had fled the Demonic Cult a hundred years ago. He had wanted to be the greatest, but upon realizing that he could never ascend to the position of cult leader, he had succeeded in seizing the Blood Palace all on his own. After that, his brother, who became the cult leader, seemed not to care about him at all.
“……He was a vicious bastard.”
After surpassing even the cult leader and reaching the realm of the Heavenly Demon, he became an existence even Marwolhu could not challenge. Yet there was one single being who could still move him.
“-…….”
He murmured a very old name. But there was no one left to answer that name now. Only she, reborn under the name Namgung Saryeol, remained. When she met her death because of the Heavenly Demon, he had fallen into slumber under a spell that would allow him to awaken on the day her soul returned.
‘Her soul was easy to find.’
So the Heavenly Demon couldn’t possibly be unaware either, yet for some reason there was no sign of him moving. That was why Marwolhu thought: perhaps that man, like himself, was also sleeping. Before he awakened, Marwolhu would somehow make her his own. The one she hated most was probably the Heavenly Demon, so in the meantime, he planned to steal her away and claim her as his.
“You wouldn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Isn’t that right, elder brother?
Marwolhu chuckled as he stared into empty space. Knowing all too well what mistakes his brother had made in the past, he let out a whistle. That arrogant personality—believing he could obtain anything—had ruined everything. Marwolhu would not act so foolishly.
“Would a foolish man who drove his own lover to death really change after a hundred years?”
Marwolhu believed that his brother, the Heavenly Demon—his own blood—couldn’t possibly have changed in a mere hundred years. That was probably why he had driven even the woman he loved to her death.
“This time, please give her up quietly.”
Because she won’t want you.
“Or else, die obediently by her hand.”
That was the only advice he could give to the last remaining member of his bloodline.
