The Legend of Red Cloud - Chapter 110

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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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Chapter 110. An Unexpected Turn
So it was the Wind Practice that Ryu had pulled out, believing it had worked just moments before.
He’d missed that clean, crisp wind.
But before even a quarter hour had passed since beginning the Wind Practice, Ryu found himself dripping with cold sweat.
The clear, biting wind that once came whenever he called no longer stirred within the Lion Hall of his mind—not a single breath of it.
Unable to surrender, Ryu staked everything on the Wind Practice and began summoning even the smallest breeze.
At the very least, calling upon the wind scattered freely through nature seemed to offer better odds than wrestling with a sealed Dantian he could not break.
How much time had passed? For a duration that felt like days to Ryu, who had lost all sense of time’s passage, he persisted—yet the wind still would not answer.
Gathering his crumbling resolve, Ryu threw himself back into the Wind Practice.
‘I can give up when I’m dead.’
He murmured the words he’d repeated day after day on Saja Plain, struggling to survive.
Steadying himself thus, he poured all his consciousness into calling and seeking the wind.
Days passed in this manner until, quite suddenly, something began tapping at the Spectral Qi that surrounded his inner world.
It was faint, but the tapping repeated again and again.
For a moment he dared to hope the wind was answering, but he forced his wavering heart to remain calm.
It could have been the Spectral Qi toying with him, keeping his will imprisoned.
So Ryu pressed deeper into his Wind Practice, yearning for the wind with ever-greater intensity.
Then, without warning, the tapping grew forceful, and with a soft ‘crack’, a hairline fissure split open through the black Spectral Qi’s darkness.
A passage had opened between his inner world and the outside.
In that instant, the wind from beyond answered Ryu’s desperate call.
A single strand of wind slipped through the widening gap.
It was gossamer-thin and so fragile it felt no more substantial than breath.
Yet for Ryu, who had yearned for this wind with such intensity, it was a prize he could not let slip—an opportunity.
Ryu seized the tail of that slender wind and, moving swiftly, pulled with all his strength according to the Fung Bi Wind Cultivation Method.
The Wind Practice reached its apex, drawing upon winds that dwelt somewhere beyond the gap.
Desperately, urgently.
His effort bore fruit: through the fissure now grew a torrent of wind, rushing inward.
What had been a breath-like whisper transformed into a gale of mighty force.
Before long, a clear, cold Qi began to flow within that wind as well.
Ryu recognized the cold, crystalline Qi threading through the wind as Internal Energy.
The realization that someone outside was aiding him redoubled his efforts.
He feared that a single misstep might wound his unseen benefactor and squander his chance.
So Ryu poured all his strength into the Wind Practice.
To shatter the Spectral Qi by any means and restore his will from the depths of his inner world back to reality.
***
Leaving Gon Gwi deep within the cave, Yun Yeo-ok searched the dwelling space at the entrance thoroughly, yet found no clue that might reveal the Vicious Beast’s true identity.
She could not even determine whether the attacker truly belonged to the Baramil Sect or was merely some wretch who’d stumbled upon and learned from fragments of the sect’s techniques.
Finding nothing, Yun Yeo-ok emerged from the cave.
“What have you found?”
Bu Ga Ju, who had been waiting, asked with evident curiosity, and Yun Yeo-ok shook her head.
“The creature’s gone—kicked the bucket. As for clues, all I can confirm is that the attacker was male. Nothing else.”
“Then what do we do now?”
“We’ll have someone stake out the cave in case it returns. For now, we head back and wait.”
Only then did Bu Ga Ju grasp why Yun Yeo-ok had emerged alone while the swordsman had remained within. He nodded and pointed at Sam Il.
“What about this one?”
Yun Yeo-ok, looking down at Sam Il whose eyes were wide with terror, answered him.
“Lock him up in the Yucheon Cheol-ga compound for now. We’ll investigate whatever we can learn about him later, step by step.”
At Yun Yeo-ok’s words, Bu Ga Ju sealed Sam Il’s Acupoint, cutting off his voice mid-plea.
Unable to make a sound, Sam Il thrashed violently.
In truth, Sam Il had been trying desperately to shout that the Vicious Beast was the Gui Xing Shen Tu, and that his sect master must have gone instead to Ak Dong Ho, a place called the Treasure Valley, to hunt for the sect’s treasure—but with his voice sealed, neither Yun Yeo-ok nor Bu Ga Ju could understand a word he tried to convey.
Even through the horrible pain, Sam Il had stubbornly refused to mention the Gui Xing Shen Tu’s identity or speak of Ak Dong Ho, thinking only of showing them the cave and then, should he be freed, rushing to Ak Dong Ho where his sect’s treasure lay hidden.
But when Yun Yeo-ok commanded his imprisonment, Sam Il suddenly realized his plan had been folly, and he tried desperately to confess the truth—only to have his Acupoint sealed, cutting off all hope of speech.
In his panic, Sam Il began to writhe.
He thrashed about, begging them to listen, swearing he would tell them everything now if only they would release him.
Annoyed at Sam Il’s violent struggle, Bu Ga Ju seized several more of his Acupoints with a grimace.
Now Sam Il became a corpse—rigid and motionless save for his eyes, which rolled about uselessly in their sockets.
Yun Yeo-ok glanced at the helpless Sam Il once, then performed a handful of hand seals, reshaping the surrounding landscape to appear exactly as it had when they first arrived.
Then she faded away like mist scattering on the wind, vanishing from sight.
The moment Yun Yeo-ok disappeared, Bu Ga Ju hefted the rigid Sam Il onto his shoulders and unleashed a full burst of speed, launching himself forward.
All that remained on the mountainside was the sheer face of jagged stone cliff, untouched and empty.
***
Nam On was utterly bewildered as a massive quantity of Internal Energy was sucked into Pung Ryu’s body entirely against his will.
Moreover, the volume of Internal Energy being drained in this manner continued to increase.
Seized by the terror that he himself might be utterly drained—forget about confirming Pung Ryu’s Internal Energy—Nam On left his right hand stuck fast to Pung Ryu’s meridian like a magnet, unable to pull away, and frantically drew his sword with his left hand from where it hung at his waist.
Even if he faced accusations of slaying an unconscious man, that would be preferable to having all his Internal Energy drained away and withering to death like a mummy.
The moment Nam On steeled his resolve and swung the blade—
Crack!
Yun Yeo-ok appeared as though from nowhere, stepped between Nam On and Pung Ryu, seized the sword in one hand to halt it, and grasped Nam On’s throat with the other.
“Gack!”
Nam On let out a startled cry as his throat was suddenly seized, and Yun Yeo-ok snarled savagely in response.
“Where the hell do you think you’re swinging that blade? I’ll rip you to shreds!”
Nam On was profoundly alarmed by the sight of Yun Yeo-ok spewing such ferocious words, her eyes blazing with a murderous aura so intense that cold sweat streamed down his back.
Yet in that very instant, when Yun Yeo-ok seemed about to snap Nam On’s neck, panic flashed across her own eyes.
Through the hand clamping Nam On’s throat, she felt her own Internal Energy draining away.
Startled, Yun Yeo-ok tried to jerk her hand free—but it would not move, as though glued fast.
“What—what is this? You!”
To Yun Yeo-ok’s bewildered question, Nam On, his throat seized, rasped out an answer.
“Kill… you must kill him. The… Qi Absorption….”
Following the direction of Nam On’s desperate glances, Yun Yeo-ok’s eyes widened.
She felt the Internal Energy draining from her hand flow through Nam On and pour into Pung Ryu, who lay motionless as though dead.
Qi Absorption.
The same word that rose first in her mind, matching Nam On’s words.
Qi Absorption—shunned even by the Demonic Sect itself.
At present, throughout all of Kangho, only one person was known to possess it: Hyeol Yeong Ma-jon, who was said to have mastered the Dae Nae Sin Gong, the secret technique of the Demonic Sect’s leader.
Of course, when wielded through the Dae Nae Sin Gong, Qi Absorption was called Qi Suction.
But Qi Absorption or Qi Suction—the name differed, yet the result was identical.
To seize the opponent’s Internal Energy and make it one’s own.
Not that Pung Ryu was Hyeol Yeong Ma-jon.
Yun Yeo-ok knew the face of that cursed old dog well enough.
Which meant that the Qi Absorption—lost and vanished ages past—might have returned to the world.
Through Pung Ryu.
It meant that Pung Ryu, of all people, possessed a legendary demonic art—but that was irrelevant.
Demonic or orthodox, strength was nothing to be ashamed of.
But when the victim was oneself, the matter was altogether different.
Terror surged up suddenly, engulfing Yun Yeo-ok.
That fear caused her to release the sword she had been gripping.
The moment her sword was freed, Nam On moved without mercy to strike Pung Ryu down.
But—
Whoosh.
Nam On’s blade halted in mid-air.
As Internal Energy was sucked away at a horrifying force incomparably greater than before—even drawing out the latent reserves hidden in every corner of his body—Nam On’s muscles seized up entirely.
It was as though his acupoints had been suppressed.
The muscles, stiffened rigid, rendered Nam On motionless as a frozen statue.
The same fate befell Yun Yeo-ok, whose hand still gripped Nam On’s throat.
A violent gale swept past the two frozen figures.
As a typhoon strips away everything in its path, the gale tore through both of them and poured into Pung Ryu, scouring away Internal Energy with terrifying ferocity.
Soon Nam On’s Internal Energy was utterly depleted, and his very life force was being drained; even Yun Yeo-ok’s Internal Energy, which had brimmed past her Dantian, was rapidly withering away.
In that moment when death seemed certain—
Bang!
A wind suddenly erupted from Pung Ryu, slamming both Nam On and Yun Yeo-ok violently backward.
Crash! Thud! Thud!
With their bodies rigid, the two were helplessly hurled away, but as their muscles unlocked moments later, they scrambled to their feet.
What the two beheld in that moment was a fierce, savage wind coiling and spiraling around the bed where Pung Ryu lay.
“A—a Dragon Tornado!”
Just as Nam On cried out in alarm, the wind wrapping around the bed was unmistakably a cyclone, a Dragon Tornado such as one might witness only on the great steppes or in the Gobi Desert.
Yucheon Chu-hon, who had come to assess the situation more precisely after receiving a report from Bu Ga Ju, urgently caught hold of Yun Yeo-ok as she moved to rush forward and rescue Pung Ryu.
“Let me go!”
“Wait—please, just wait a moment.”
“But he’s in there—”
“This Dragon Tornado is manifesting indoors, not outside. Touching it carelessly could be more dangerous. Please, just wait a moment.”
Had I found Yucheon Chu-hon’s words persuasive? I kept trying to force myself back outside, holding my retreating steps in check for the span of a moment, when the wind began to subside gradually. Then, through the thinning gusts, I could make out Pung Ryu’s figure rising slowly to sit, dimly visible beyond the currents of air.
Another moment passed, and the wind, now visibly slowed, rushed into Pung Ryu’s body as though being drawn in, sweeping inward with sudden force.
And…….

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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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