episode_0031

If you stay in the Demonic Cult, you will hear all sorts of stories, but they are not all stories from the West.

-You know, Journey to the West?

A boy, now dead, brought a book.

-There’s a man named Tripitaka who says that monsters are after the monks of Shaolin Temple. The reason is that if they eat the monks with strong magical powers, the monsters can achieve immortality!

Although I am not from Shaolin Temple, the content of the book Journey to the West actually contains such a development.

Immortality.

There was no reason for the monsters not to target him, and indeed, Tripitaka was attacked by numerous monsters.

Even some female monsters do not just eat Tripitaka, but also go after his energy, that is, his virginity. It is said that if you take away his accumulated energy by avoiding sex for a long time, you can instantly become a sage.

That story came to mind.

Just as the monsters ate the body of Tripitaka and achieved immortality.

My body may have gained some influence over martial artists or even ordinary people.

If you wish for it, it will come true.

Eat my flesh and blood and let your desires come true.

Even if it goes against common sense and natural order.

“After.”

I found out for sure.

“My body seems to have become the elixir of the sage.”

This was made known through various experiments.

Although Yoo Ki-yeon was never able to open her eyes again, she became more aware of herself thanks to that.

“The existence of the country has become something that is far removed from the common sense of the existing martial arts world. Maybe…it may not be human.”

“That can’t be true.”

Mo Yongseol confidently hugs me.

“When you get this close, your heart starts beating faster and red blood flows through your body.”

“The color of blood is red, but what it contains is extraordinary.”

I put a needle on the tip of my finger.

When a person is sick, if they prick their finger and a drop of blood comes out, doesn’t the sick energy go away?

The blood drop at that time was bound to disappear, but I made it so that the blood drop fell into the mouth of exactly someone.

Stop.

As soon as blood drips from the kidnapper’s mouth, his body begins to change and make strange noises.

A person who was previously split in half by a sword.

A person whose blood vessels were already severely damaged and whose blood flow could not be controlled even with acupuncture.

“Look, my lady.”

Sararak.

A miracle is happening to him.

“This is neither a cure nor a revival. Something… is happening. I don’t think I can express it any better than that right now.”

Turn back time?

Calling back to your past self?

Regarding the dead body, the remaining spirit wishes to ‘come back to life in a complete form’?

“To put it in the best language I can, if you wish to go back to the moment before you die, you go back to that moment. Just the body.”

“…….”

Mo Yongseol’s expression hardened as he watched the kidnapper’s body slowly regenerating.

“When is that moment? If the body thinks according to its instincts, it will probably think of the most ‘perfect state’ according to the instincts of the flesh.”

Everyone has to do that.

“A complete state where the body remembers. Before being killed and killed.”

If you see the person you killed come back to life after absorbing a single drop of that person’s blood, you will not only be shocked, but you will also reach for the sword at your waist again.

“The kidnapper will probably change back to how he was before he entered the room we were in.”

“Congressman. I will kill you as soon as I see you come back to life.”

Because he wasn’t just a dead person, he was someone who tried to manipulate me.

“Just as Yoo Ki-yeon ‘gave up’, I will make the kidnapper do the same.”

“…um.”

While Mo Yongseol focused on the kidnapper, I looked to the side.

Yoo Ki-yeon is asleep.

The body is not one that had its throat cut, but rather one that is sleeping peacefully, as if it had suffered a heart attack.

It was her wish.

Through the process of dying and being resurrected over and over again, Yoo Ki-yeon gave up on living on her own.

I just wanted to be ‘dead’.

She desperately wanted to die, to the point of giving up on living, so she died even after drinking my blood.

As time passes, maybe my mind will change and I will come back to life.

That might be the case, so I tried dropping a drop of blood again after 15 minutes, but Yu Gi-yeon never got up again.

After being killed by Murong Xue several times while lying in a coffin, he realized that he could not survive no matter how hard he struggled, so he chose to die.

We made it that way.

If we make our wishes come true, we can make the phenomenon we want happen by appropriately controlling the ‘direction’ in which the wish occurs.

The same goes for kidnappers.

“Ugh, ugh…!”

The kidnapper slowly opens his eyes and speaks.

As he was much more skilled than Yoo Ki-yeon, the kidnapper quickly released some of his own blood and began to speak.

“Wh, what the…!”

“That’s what I wanted to ask.”

“I, I definitely…!”

“Dead.”

“……!!”

The kidnapper’s eyes roll rapidly.

“Okay, wait…! Let’s talk!”

No matter how stupid a plan you make, once someone dies and comes back to life, their mind seems to open up.

“Me, I am…!”

“If you don’t want to die completely, answer the questions correctly. If there’s even a little bit of a lie, you’ll die again.”

“…….”

“And you will never wake up.”

Permanent death.

Even if you have experienced death once, being in a state where you cannot think about it usually means that in most cases, you cannot help but fear another death.

“Just one. Just one question.”

Just like he did with Yoo Ki-yeon, he aims the needle at her and asks.

“What is the devil’s cult to you that you did such a thing to Mo Yong Se-ga?”

“…….”

“What did the Demonic Cult do for you?”

“That’s….”

The kidnapper frowned and tried to answer-

“…Huh?”

Just like that, he stops with a puzzled voice.

“Why on earth am I…?”

And then his eyes start to shake violently, as if he can’t understand, as if something unbelievable has happened.

“I, I am a demon….”

The moment I tried to say something.

Crunch!

Mo Yongseol swung his sword in an instant and cut off the kidnapper’s head.

“Young lady?”

“Damage!”

Then he threw his sword aside, rushed towards me, and attacked me.

As if he was protecting himself from a wall bomb exploding with his own body.

and.

Hurrruk!!

The kidnapper’s body suddenly caught fire.

The flame was no ordinary flame, but a ‘crimson flame’.

An abnormal flame that is clearly not normal to anyone.

A flame mixed with magic, an ominous flame that could be called a devil’s flame.

“…….”

Instead of exploding, the flames started to burn the kidnapper’s body, creating a sizzling flame inside her body. I hugged Murong Xue and consoled her.

“It’s okay. You’re not hurt. Rather, it’s fortunate that it didn’t ‘explode’ because you killed it.”

“Explosion…is it?”

“That’s right.”

That’s magic.

It is the most vicious of all magic arts.

“The kidnapper, and Yoo Ki-yeon. I wondered why he had such a mentality, but it turns out he was the one who was attacked by Cheonma.”

Even though the current Cheonma was defeated by Geomseong, it is a martial art that still exists at the top of the Demonic Cult.

“Black Yang Divine Art.”

In the Demonic Cult, this is called the ‘Black Sun’.

“You were under the spell of a concubine.”

There was a reason why he seemed to lack intelligence.

“Maybe there’s only one person who has used that magic spell.”

It hurts.

My heart is pounding.

Loneliness, something of that extreme polarity that dwells within me, responds softly.

“Cheonma.”

Cheonma cast a spell on the kidnapper and Yu Gi-yeon.

“Instead of making them loyal to him, he lowered their intelligence to his level.”

* * *

[At that moment, the Demonic Cult.]

A luxurious room.

A large room filled with expensive fabrics and ornaments imported from the West.

The woman sitting cross-legged on a large bed in the middle of the room, not anywhere else – the Archduke of the Demonic Cult – slowly opened her eyes.

“…….”

Hururuk.

The Archduchess, who had kicked away the black flames rising from her hand, looked at the wall.

With a map of the entire Central Plains spread out across the entire wall, the Grand Duchess bit her lower lip as she looked at Liaodong Province, which was directly opposite Xinjiang to the west of the map where the Demonic Cult was located, and went straight east.

“…If only I could get stronger a little faster.”

The Archduchess reached out her hand to her head.

A dark red glow began to appear somewhere in her hair, but it soon faded away again.

“…….”

In an instant, the sweaty princess forcibly got up from her staggering body and headed somewhere.

Inside the display case where gorgeous ornaments were stored, among the boxes filled with all kinds of jewels, I opened a wooden box that looked particularly odd.

“…….”

It was a butterfly decoration carved from wood.

It wasn’t made by a craftsman, nor did it have the delicate touch of someone who had mastered martial arts. Rather, it had dark red spots on it, as if blood had splattered onto the wood while carving it and seeped into the wood.

“……Must.”

The Archduchess clasped it tightly with both hands, hugged it to her chest, and bowed her head.

“I’ll put you back where you belong. So, please wait a moment. And…”

Suddenly.

“It’s not that woman next to you, it’s me-”

Knock knock.

At the sound from outside, the Archduchess put the wooden ornament back in the box, wiped the sweat off her body with her sleeve, and got up.

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, Your Highness!”

Marno came inside in a hurry with a bewildered look on his face.

“Your Majesty…!”

“…What did Father do that made Manoe so flustered?”

“You ran away!”

“?”

The Archduchess tilted her head.

“???”