Abolition of the Wicked - Chapter 89

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#089

Seo Seok-san realized there was no point in waiting any longer.
“Let those with the will to go ahead and go. As for those afraid of ghosts—drop your trousers and stay put here.”
He’d even deployed the Bullal Divine Art, but not a single hunter had moved. It seemed Cheonun Mountain would have to be climbed without a guide.
Seo Seok-san had heard only descriptions of the regions where the Blood Tiger frequently appeared.
In the city, roads and buildings served as landmarks, but a mountain where rocks and waterfalls were your only signposts proved far more difficult to navigate.
“There’s a Neoul Rock beside a waterfall about thirty feet high, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. But are you really going? There are ghosts up there.”
“Ghosts eating walnuts—what utter nonsense.”
Having left the inn, Seo Seok-san raced toward Cheonun Mountain. Though he didn’t know the path, traveling alone at least made him quick.
He’d listened carefully to the directions, but once he reached the mountainside, every explanation proved useless.
“Damn it, where is Bear Rock, and where the hell is Grandmother Pine?”
Eventually Seo Seok-san decided to concentrate his senses entirely on finding the waterfall. In a place where only insects and wild beasts could be heard faintly now and then, if the waterfall lay within a hundred paces, he could detect it easily enough.
After wandering for some time, the sound of falling water finally reached him.
“An irritating mountain, to be sure.”
Seo Seok-san hadn’t bounded twice before the thirty-foot waterfall came into view.
“They said to head toward where Neoul Rock is, didn’t they?”
As he turned his gaze, his eyes widened. The roar of the falling water had been so thunderous that he’d missed the presence of a person standing atop the rock.
And remarkably, the figure sitting on the flat boulder was a woman.
A woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in white mourning cloth with wet hair cascading down, was raising a wine cup to her lips alone.
No matter how loud the waterfall’s roar, his failure to sense her presence was decidedly strange.
‘She’s trained in Martial Arts.’
Her steady breathing, the unwavering grip on the wine cup, and the energy radiating from her confirmed it.
And this woman was likely the ghost the hunters had spoken of.
The woman’s gaze turned toward Seo Seok-san with glacial slowness. Her eyes, with their sharp contrast of black and white, gleamed like polished glass, and from her slightly parted lips wafted a sickly-sweet scent that reached him even from a distance.
“How strange to find your way to a place untouched by human footfall.”
Her voice was like jade beads rolling across a silver platter. The gleam in her eyes, that fragrance, that voice—all combined to strike at the very core of a man’s instinct. It was the Gwaneum Mihon Art.
Any man who encountered this woman would surrender completely, no matter how much he thought her a ghost.
Seo Seok-san smiled languidly.
“I heard rumors of a beautiful woman in these parts and came seeking her.”
If the woman possessed the Gwaneum Mihon Art, Seo Seok-san possessed the Hwawhagongja Internal Energy, honed over a lifetime.
A flush rose to the woman’s cheeks.
“You flatter me greatly. Since you’ve come all this way, why not share a cup of wine with me?”
“A man of leisure cannot refuse such an offer.”
With a light leap, Seo Seok-san landed on the broad rock. Now he understood why it was called Neoul Rock—it swayed beneath him.
The boulder shifted, and the wine in her cup sloshed. Seo Seok-san accepted the cup she extended and drained it in one breath.
“The wine itself is decent, but the Gwaneum powder and the aphrodisiac have ruined its taste.”
The smile that had clung to the woman’s face fell away.
“I’d love to keep playing, but time is short.”
“This… this cannot be. No matter how strong one’s Martial Arts, none can withstand Heavenly Joy Powder and Fire Harmony Powder combined.”
“You’re using both—that marks you as belonging to the Cheonrakhwanhui-gung, the faction eradicated by the Murim Alliance forty years ago.”
Countless promising young masters of the Murim, regardless of Orthodox or Evil alignments, had fallen to the allure of Cheonrakhwanhui-gung and had their vitality drained.
There were jokes that if they’d been left alone another decade, the only promising young masters remaining in the Murim would have been from Cheonrakhwanhui-gung—the damage had been so severe.
The enraged Murim Alliance had supposedly left not a single survivor, yet here he was encountering remnants of Cheonrakhwanhui-gung.
“To see that the Gwaneum Mihon Art has reached the Tenth Mastery Level tells me you’ve drained considerable vitality from many men up here.”
It was only natural the hunters would think a woman like this was a ghost.
“Who… who are you?”
“Ever heard the name Hyeolpung Saja?”
The woman’s upper body recoiled and bent backward.
“The Bloodwind Four Lions!”
“Our reputation reaches even mountain dwellers, it seems.”
The woman immediately dropped to her knees.
“The Cheonrakhwanhui-gung Sovereign, Baek Garyeong, pays respects to Master Hyeolpung Saja.”
Even if one mastered all the techniques of Cheonrakhwanhui-gung, one could never claim with confidence to stand against the Bloodwind Four Lions, let alone at her current, still-progressing stage.
“You’ve been living in these mountains for some time, it would seem.”
“Five years now.”
“To drain a man’s essence, you’d need to be in town. Why are you hiding out here in the mountains?”
“The righteous factions were hunting me. I had no choice.”
“And?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It would’ve been easier to prey on hunters and herb gatherers coming through here. And every so often, Murim martial artists show up to hunt the Blood Tiger—a bonus, wouldn’t you say?”
“It was all for avenging Cheonrakhwanhui-gung! We were wiped out unjustly. Surely you understand, having walked the Demonic Path yourself?”
“You’re saying you’ll drag the Bloodwind Four Lions down to the level of Cheonrakhwanhui-gung?”
“I would… I would never dare… I was merely voicing my grievances.”
“Grievances are one thing. I need the Blood Tiger. You’ve lived on Cheonun Mountain for five years—you know where it dens.”
“Of course.”
“Good. You’re useful after all. Lead the way.”
“Right now?”
“Ask me again, and you die.”
Baek Garyeong rose at once and took the lead.
“If you catch the Blood Tiger, what becomes of me?”
“You go your way. I go mine.”
“Truly?”
“Have you ever heard rumors that I lie?”
No. But that didn’t mean the Bloodwind Four Lions never lied.
Most people who’d met the Bloodwind Four Lions were dead, so there weren’t many left who could testify to his nature.
Baek Garyeong pushed her Lightness Technique to its limits, but Seo Seok-san followed with his hands clasped behind his back, looking utterly bored.
‘He really is the Heavenly Sound Ghost. How unlucky can you get.’
The mountain had grown so quiet lately—fewer hunters, fewer herb gatherers, fewer Murim martial artists coming to hunt the Blood Tiger—that she’d been considering moving on.
‘I should’ve left when I had the chance.’
Regret, no matter how swift, always arrives too late. Now she had to find a way out of this predicament.
She racked her brain trying to think like the Heavenly Sound Ghost, but eventually gave up. The man across from her was the Heavenly Sound Ghost.
As long as he wouldn’t let her go, there was no escape. She had only one option: keep him in good humor.
After bounding across a rocky stretch where only sparse weeds grew, Baek Garyeong halted before a substantial cave.
“This is the Blood Tiger Cave.”
“Are you certain?”
“Would I dare lie to you?”
“We’ll see soon enough.”
Before Baek Garyeong could even see his hand move, Seo Seok-san had locked a Pressure Point Technique on her.
“Why… why are you doing this?”
“A good bait needs to be alive.”
Seo Seok-san poured the liquor she wore at her waist over her body. If the Blood Tiger was in that cave, it would have no choice but to respond to such a potent scent.
A low growl rumbled from the darkness.
The growl echoed from within, and a crimson shape emerged from the shadows.
The nocturnal tiger blinked its eyes against the daylight and glared at the intruders.
Tigers by nature are cautious creatures. Even when they sense prey, they’ll usually paw at it first to test—but caution was a virtue utterly foreign to the Blood Tiger.
It roared.
The beast charged at standing Seo Seok-san with a single bound. One strike was all it took.
Hyeolweung had needed two blows to kill it after a protracted struggle, but the Blood Tiger’s neck snapped in one.
Even pinned by the Pressure Point Technique, Baek Garyeong couldn’t hide her shock. Certainly, she could have caught a Blood Tiger herself.
But it would have taken a lengthy battle, and he’d crushed its neck in a single motion.
‘Truly the Heavenly Sound Ghost!’
Seo Seok-san sliced open the limp tiger’s belly. Blood gushed out in waves, streaming down the rocks until it reached where Baek Garyeong lay.
“Master Heavenly Sound Ghost. My tongue… the Pressure Point…”
“I’m busy.”
“Yes. I’ll wait, Master.”
“Don’t call yourself a girl. You must be sixty by now.”
In fact, Baek Garyeong was turning exactly sixty this year. Seo Seok-san placed the Core Elixir Field he’d extracted into a box, then wiped the blood from his hands on the soft tiger skin.
For Seo Seok-san, completing such a difficult task after so long felt refreshingly satisfying.
As he turned to leave, Baek Garyeong’s urgent voice called out.
“You must release the Pressure Point before you go!”
Most Pressure Points loosen with time as the technique naturally unravels, but the one Seo Seok-san had set would never release—not until death.
“Be grateful I didn’t kill you outright. How many innocent lives did you take?”
For the Bloodwind Four Lions to say such a thing would have been absurd once, but lately the words came naturally. That was Geom U-bin’s influence.
“If you leave me here like this, I’ll become wolf’s meat!”
Probably. And it was a fitting punishment besides.
‘Did the others complete their assignments?’

***

“I need to pee! I need to pee!”
At Kang Ji-an’s cry, Do Pyeong-su had no choice but to stop. Excrement might flow backward, but urine would certainly soak his back.
After Kang Ji-an descended from Do Pyeong-su’s shoulders and disappeared into the forest, he returned after what seemed like an eternity—time enough for a bowel movement.
“You’re working hard, little one.”
“Aren’t I? It’s difficult, isn’t it?”
“The difficulty is mine to bear. Your effort is in wasting time.”
“What do you mean by—”
“Perhaps my head isn’t particularly sharp for certain reasons, but neither am I a complete fool. The Mudang Faction has blocked my path eight times now. If I count the occasions when I simply moved too quickly for them to intercept, it’s easily over ten. How did those Daoist bastards know which way I was going?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“We have only ten li to our destination, yet in the span of half a double-hour, you’ve made me stop three times. Why?”
“Because I’m exhausted and desperately need to urinate—what else would you have me do?”
“Brat.”
“I’m not a brat! My name is Kang Ji-an!”
“I have no interest in the name of a dead child.”
“Dead?”
Do Pyeong-su seized Kang Ji-an by the collar and lifted him off the ground.
“You dare deceive me and still hope to live? Don’t imagine I’ll show mercy simply because you’re small. I possess no such indulgence.”
Facing Do Pyeong-su’s killing intent, Kang Ji-an’s face drained of all color.
“But I was hired to bring you safely to your destination!”
“Ah, damn it! I knew you’d say something like ‘But I was hired.’ Those who deceive me are never allowed to live—commission be damned!”
Do Pyeong-su hurled Kang Ji-an toward a boulder three zhang away. Just as the boy flew through the air shrieking, his head about to strike stone, someone erupted from the forest and caught him.
The motion—striking the boulder with her hand to dissipate the impact, kicking off a tree trunk to somersault through the air, then descending smoothly to the ground—was as graceful as watching a butterfly in flight.
“What manner of cruelty is this!”
“Your technique of catching the child and dispersing the force is the Ihwa Jeophmok, and your Divine Technique of kicking off the tree to descend is the Pungryun Nakhwa. I had no idea the cargo I was transporting belonged to a child of Ihwa-gung.”
From the start, Do Pyeong-su had harbored not the slightest intention of killing the boy. Kang Ji-an’s deliberate delays had all been designed to allow the woman following behind to catch up.
There was no possibility such a woman would abandon Kang Ji-an to his death.
“Ihwa-gung, that mysterious sect of women martial artists, is not widely known in the Murim, but it’s certainly not an evil faction—so why would it make enemies of the Mudang Faction?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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