I Decided to Give the Contract to the Male Vassal - Chapter 81

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 81

A head with black holes where the eyes should be.

The eyeballs had already rotted away, and from within the empty sockets, a red aura stood out prominently, emitting an ominous light.

The head, still attached to twisted neck bones, floated slowly like a buoy rising to the surface.

The red blood gate, which had been a grotesque formation, had now transformed into a pool of blood that rippled gently.

The New Figure that emerged was not alone.

Beside it, another torso crawled out, pushing through the pool of blood.

My hair stood on end as strength flowed into the hand gripping my sword.

From within the pool of blood, corpses began emerging one by one in succession.

Arms were twisted, and joints were bent at angles too strange to be human.

Along with the stench of rotting blood, a fishy aura surged upward.

“Corpses…?”

These weren’t simple corpses.

One of the corpses nearby snapped its neck with a crack and turned its head toward me.

A red light flashed from within its empty eye sockets.

– Kieeeee!

A high-pitched sound that seemed to expand inside my head rang out and burrowed into my mind.

A sound that couldn’t be blocked even by covering my ears tightly.

I immediately raised my sword.

Clang!

My sword energy had clearly struck, but I felt nothing.

There was no sensation of touching flesh or bone, as if I had only cut through empty air.

Yet the corpse in front of me was precisely split in half and collapsed.

Immediately after, three corpses rushed straight at me.

I reflexively swung my sword and cut them down.

The pattern of rising, being cut, and falling was repeating like a predetermined sequence.

It seemed as if they weren’t reacting to my sword swings, but rather showing me exactly what had happened long ago.

I stopped Yeo Gyeong-o as he tried to pull out his iron wire to attack the corpses.

“Just leave them be. This is an illusion.”

I said to him while catching my breath.

“It seems like the blood gate is repeatedly showing us what happened in this ravine. It’s probably a warning not to go deeper.”

“I see.”

Yeo Gyeong-o kept his guard up, gripping his iron wire tightly.

Even though we did nothing, the corpses split in half and collapsed.

“Is that Amhamason’s swordsmanship?”

It was said that Amhamason, who had pursued the Bloodsky Sect at the time, had struck down the corpses of the Ma Ryeonghwa Family. This was probably recreating that situation.

“I heard that the Ma Ryeonghwa Family uses blood gates to combine and control corpses.”

“That’s right. It’s quite similar to the Mosan faction that controls jiangshi.”

Yeo Gyeong-o continued in a low voice.

“But even in the Heavenly Sect that pursues strength, using sect members as test subjects is taboo.”

Yet the corpses here were wearing the martial robes of the Heavenly Sect.

“Those who broke the taboo were here.”

It meant the Ma Ryeonghwa Family had experimented on sect members.

Yeo Gyeong-o clenched his fists tightly.

He had been constantly pursuing evidence that the Ma Ryeonghwa Family killed his family. So he must have thought of his family.

“Were the Ma Ryeonghwa Family joining hands with the Bloodsky Sect to conduct experiments using sect members?”

The reason no evidence could be found until now was because of their ability to conceal incidents.

If no blood gate had remained in Mujingyeop, we wouldn’t have known about this situation.

“The Ma Ryeonghwa Family must have summoned corpses to face Amhamason. Meanwhile, the Bloodsky Sect would have hidden themselves.”

Though it was only an illusion, it seemed almost certain that the Bloodsky Sect and Ma Ryeonghwa Family had moved together in this ravine.

I ignored the continuing illusion and examined the blood gate rising from beneath my feet.

The red lines inside the pattern were somehow changing their arrangement.

Lines that had formed pairs like the Eight Trigrams became tangled, then returned to their original positions.

“The pattern keeps changing.”

When I squinted, Yeo Gyeong-o took a deep breath instead of answering.

He knelt down, placed his finger on the ground, and slowly drew a circle.

As his skin made contact, the blood gate that had been frozen cold trembled slightly.

“This blood gate is designed to swallow sound and direction.”

Yeo Gyeong-o continued muttering to himself.

“So I need to return the sound first.”

He scraped the ground with his fingertip.

At first, there was no change.

But soon, a very small wind arose from the edge of the ravine.

Whoosh.

That wind sound pierced my ears sharply, like a flute that had just begun to play.

All the noise of the world rushed into my ears at once.

The sound of rocks crumbling.

The sound of dust scattering.

Even my own breathing and heartbeat that had disappeared.

The red blood gate burst and cracked with a pop.

The movements of the corpses stopped simultaneously.

The figures that had been raising their heads crumbled instantly like dolls made of sand.

Finally, only the red pattern left a faint trace on the earth before even that scattered with the wind.

“The first formation has been solved.”

Yeo Gyeong-o said as he stood up.

I caught my breath for a moment and looked inside the ravine.

Now I could see properly.

What replaced the spot where the bloody illusion had disappeared was a more deeply carved valley.

The wind blew again.

However, this wind was slightly different from the smell of death I had felt just moments before.

A slightly deeper and cooler scent.

The darkness grew thicker, and the wind was sucked inward.

“Can you go deeper?”

I asked Yeo Gyeong-o. His face had turned pale.

“We’ve already come this far.”

Yeo Gyeong-o answered briefly.

“What you’re looking for, and what I’m looking for… they’re probably in there.”

I turned back one last time.

The sky outside Mujingyeop was visible through a very narrow gap.

Though the temptation to return crossed my mind, I pulled down my blood-wind robe again and stepped into the darkness.

Soon the soil beneath my feet changed.

It was a bit more damp and left deeper footprints.

I regulated my breathing through the first stage of Cheonryusimbeop and slowly followed Yeo Gyeong-o deeper inside.

As the entrance to the ravine gradually narrowed, the sky appeared like a thinly cut line.

And when we finally reached the end of the ravine, torches on the wall lit up.

Then another formation revealed itself before us.

Red lines extending in all directions like roots drawn in blood.

It was a chaotically tangled blood gate.

While breathing in, I suddenly realized.

“The smell has changed.”

If the first gate had a strong smell of decay, this place reeked of blood that hadn’t yet cooled.

“This is a completely different blood gate from before.”

Yeo Gyeong-o added in a low voice as he surveyed the surroundings.

“If the first gate repeated the past, the second gate ‘feeds’ on living things and grows.”

Most people wouldn’t have been able to enter this place, so this gate would have grown by absorbing small things like trees and insects.

But the moment we entered, the situation changed.

The ground rumbled.

Something was writhing on the walls of the ravine.

Squelch.

Along with a sound like rocks falling away, there came sticky, viscous sounds as if flesh was tearing through hardened shell.

‘That thing…’

Skin dried like leather, twisted joints, blackened dried bloodstains.

A form that seemed to retain only traces of having once been human was clinging to the wall before raising its head to greet us.

Its face was half-collapsed, and its eye sockets were completely empty.

Blood-red energy writhed like veins, filling those empty sockets.

“…Another corpse?”

As I muttered like a sigh, Yeo Gyeong-o replied in a low voice.

“That is… a Johabsache of the Ma Ryeonghwa Family. I remember seeing it in documents.”

The moment those words ended.

The first corpse kicked off the ground and leaped up.

I reflexively raised my sword.

The tip of my blade slashed across the corpse’s face. I could clearly feel the sensation of scraping against solid bone structure.

‘This time it’s not an illusion.’

Rotting flesh was torn away by the sword wind and scattered through the air.

The corpse, seemingly unable to feel pain, stretched out its twisted arm again.

Whoosh—!

Its movements were rough and fast.

I barely dodged by arching my back.

The corpse’s fingernails scraped across my wind cloak, leaving a thin line.

“Chung-rin!”

Yeo Gyeong-o’s voice was heavy.

“They have claws that corrode objects. If they touch your skin by mistake, your internal energy will be twisted, so be careful.”

Before those words even finished, a second corpse shot up behind me.

Thud!

I immediately turned and swung my sword.

The blade severed the corpse’s neck, and its head rolled to the ground with a dull sound.

The headless torso continued charging at me, swinging its drooping arms sharply.

As I blocked in shock, Yeo Gyeong-o quietly clicked his tongue.

“It’s the Ma Ryeonghwa Family’s Hyeollyeongbyeongisul. A sorcery that cuts up corpses and binds them back together. Normally they can’t last this long, but it seems they’re being sustained by that blood gate.”

That was the moment those words ended.

Bang!

The third, fourth, and fifth corpses simultaneously kicked off the ground and leaped up.

Yeo Gyeong-o and I stood back-to-back in the middle of the ravine, while corpses crawled out from walls on all sides, surrounding us in a circle.

They didn’t use human footwork, but charged with twisted trajectories like broken curves.

Clang—!

When I struck one with the flat of my blade, the sensation transmitted to my hand was so vivid it was disgusting.

The corpses aimed for my knees with twisted ankles that seemed to have two or three extra joints, and their arms weren’t even consistent in length. As if arms from different people had been sewn together.

‘These aren’t the movements of warriors. It’s more like a method of attacking with pure terror itself…’

At that moment, the first corpse grabbed my ankle.

“…!”

The instant I lost my balance.

Thud!

Yeo Gyeong-o’s iron wire severed the corpse’s wrist.

“Stay focused. If you’re careless, you’ll be devoured!”

His voice was low but strong.

Sound waves like wailing rose from various places in the ground.

Now at least ten or more corpses were rising from all over the ravine.

“…It seems they’ve gathered all the corpses buried in this area.”

As Yeo Gyeong-o took a defensive stance, four corpses simultaneously leaped up and plunged toward me at tremendous speed.

I raised my sword, but the difference in strength was great.

My arms tingled and trembled.

Yeo Gyeong-o also launched his iron wire, repeatedly creating distance from the Johabsache before backing up against me again.

Since we couldn’t let the corpses’ claws touch our bodies, our defense became even more difficult.

With limited internal energy, we wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long either.

It seemed I would have to use my time-stopping ability to escape this situation.

The Johabsache weren’t even living beings and there were many of them, so I couldn’t know if my ability would work, but I had to try.

That’s when it happened.

Swish—.

Something passed through them, cutting across.

I couldn’t even see whether what passed through was a sword or a hand.

I could only grasp the fact that all the corpses’ heads had fallen off at once.

In an instant, everything around us became quiet.

Red energy drained from the Johabsache as they all collapsed in unison.

And.

A figure walked out from the darkness.

With eyes nearly closed, head slightly bowed as if unaccustomed to light.

The figure opened their mouth toward us.

“…You’re too noisy, I can’t sleep.”

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