Chapter 77 : The Hunt (2)

Chapter 77: The Hunt (2)

The group ventured deeper into the cave.

As Jang Woo-hyun had deduced from the Qi he extended, the path sloped downward the further they went in, differing from the entrance.

“This is too spacious.”

A cave suspiciously vast.

It was astounding to think that such a massive cave had been artificially created.

“This isn’t just a cave. It might even be one of their branches.”

The cave was large enough to dock a ship deep inside. It was far too suitable to be considered a temporary space.

“Pick up the pace. Light spheres.”

At Maeng Ye-ju’s command, several subordinates created glowing orbs and used them as light sources while they sprinted through the cave.

After about a quarter-hour had passed,

the group realized that Twin-Winged Lotus had not taken refuge here.

“Is this a trap?”

Mist filled the surroundings.

This wasn’t ordinary fog. It was sticky and felt almost alive.

At some point, the mist that enveloped the group began to block not only their sight but even their senses, as if it had some special power.

Those trained in sorcery created more glowing orbs to light the area, but even that light was swallowed by the mist.

Jang Woo-hyun extended his Qi to continue surveying the area. However, perhaps due to the unusual mist, the range of his detection was far more limited than usual.

“Interesting.”

Maeng Ye-ju smirked as she drew up her energy.

Twin-Winged Lotus’s methods amused her.

Whether it was to shake off any potential pursuers or intended to confront someone from the beginning, it didn’t matter.

What was certain was that the one present now was the Suwang Sect.

“Very amusing.”

As she spoke, she channeled the energy drawn from her Dantian into her arms. She clapped her hands together.

Zzzeoong—

The sound that echoed was too loud to be believed as just a clap, followed by a shockwave.

A wave of force spread outward from Maeng Ye-ju.

The mist began to recede rapidly.

As the mist retreated, Jang Woo-hyun extended his Qi.

He exerted more power than usual, condensing it densely—beyond where the mist gave way, and even farther.

Perhaps due to the earlier shockwave weakening the mist’s strength, he was able to expand his perception range significantly.

‘There must be something nearby.’

This mist even disrupted the senses of those in the state of Transcendence. That meant the power behind it couldn’t be trivial.

There had to be either a formation generating the mist, a spellcaster controlling it, or an artifact supporting it.

Jang Woo-hyun expanded his Qi to its limit to search for it.

“Let’s see…”

Maeng Ye-ju must have thought similarly. She pushed the mist back and surveyed the surroundings.

“Could it be this way?”

Fixing her gaze in one direction, she prepared to leap.

But Jang Woo-hyun was looking the other way. His extended Qi had caught onto something. It was drawing closer.

“We're under attack.”

Jang Woo-hyun was the first to draw his sword and move.

His sudden action left the subordinates unable to react in time.

Ignoring them, he hurled himself in a direction completely different from where Maeng Ye-ju had been looking.

He dashed to the mist’s receding edge and swung his sword.

Phwak!

With one stroke, the mist split apart, revealing a path.

Within that slash, bodies were sliced down and collapsed onto the ground.

“H-How…?”

The faces of the Twin-Winged Lotus warriors who had been hiding in the mist to launch a surprise attack filled with panic.

Jang Woo-hyun’s eyes gleamed as he looked beyond them.

“Found you.”

Behind the panicked expressions.

From a place still shrouded in mist, where visibility had not yet cleared, Jang Woo-hyun sensed a peculiar energy.

When he pointed his sword in one direction, dozens of the disassembled blades from the Dragon King’s Scales launched forward.

Phubububuk!

With the sound of flesh being pierced, screams rang out.

“Keuk!”

“Urgh!”

Those who had yet to reveal themselves collapsed.

The ones targeted were exuding a peculiar energy, and Jang Woo-hyun believed they were the spellcasters manipulating the mist.

Kwaang!

An explosion roared from behind, and Maeng Ye-ju instantly closed the distance, rushing past Jang Woo-hyun.

“You're up to some very amusing tricks!”

She charged at the bandits and threw out her fist.

Each swing of her fist unleashed overwhelming power that burst the bodies of the bandits apart.

If she struck the head, it burst. If she struck the body, it was punched through.

The immense power caused the bandits targeting the Suwang Sect to fall in an instant.

After clearing out all the bandits, Maeng Ye-ju spoke.

“What are these things? They come for us with this level of skill? Strange.”

She was right. Even with the aid of the mist, they stood no chance against the Suwang Sect at that level of ability. It suggested a hidden motive.

Saaa—

As she pondered, the mist that had retreated began creeping in again, causing Jang Woo-hyun to furrow his brow slightly.

‘What is this?’

They had clearly eliminated the spellcasters controlling the mist.

And yet, the mist was converging on all sides of the group again.

“This stuff’s sticky and repulsive.”

Maeng Ye-ju clenched her fists as she looked at the approaching mist. A rumbling sound followed as immense power gathered into her fist.

“I’ll have to obliterate it in one blow.”

The power concentrating in Maeng Ye-ju’s fist wasn’t just enough to disperse the mist—it could demolish the cave itself.

‘Ah! The cave!’

Seeing that power, Jang Woo-hyun realized why the enemies had chosen the cave as their base.

“This is it.”

“What is?”

“They set up inside the cave to prevent us from launching powerful attacks.”

Back when he was in the Absolute state, Jang Woo-hyun had blasted away a mountain peak with Destructive Slash.

Then now?

Having reached Transcendence, he could unleash attacks even stronger.

And he wasn’t alone. Including Maeng Ye-ju and Kang Yung, there were three who had reached Transcendence.

“If the cave collapses, our methods of attack would be limited.”

They were currently deeper in than the entrance.

If the cave collapsed here, the three Transcendents might survive, but the rest of the Suwang Sect warriors would be wiped out.

“To restrict our power and gain an advantage for themselves?”

Maeng Ye-ju pointed at the mist.

Her reasoning was correct, but it wasn’t easy to accept.

“With just this much?”

Her gaze toward the mist turned cold.

It was clumsy. At this level, it wasn’t much of an obstruction.

If they couldn’t unleash great power, they could just rip their enemies apart in close combat.

Thinking the Twin-Winged Lotus bastards were merely stupid would be too simple.

There had to be more.

And that something was revealed quickly.

“It’s Energy Dispersing Poison.”

“What?”

“My internal energy is slowly scattering.”

“Same here.”

Among the martial artists at the Master Level, those with weaker skills began to speak up.

“What about the others?”

To that question, the rest answered they were fine.

It appeared that those with lesser skill were affected first by the Energy Dispersing Poison.

“They’ve laced the mist with various tricks.”

This wasn’t a tactic to escape pursuit from the Suwang Sect.

They had come to hunt, but instead the enemies had dug a trap and waited.

‘I need to get us out of here as quickly as possible.’

Who knew what other tricks they might have.

Still, there was no fear.

No matter what the Twin-Winged Lotus tried, Maeng Ye-ju was confident she could crush it with brute force.

“We're getting out. I’ll take point, Yung on the right, Woo-hyun on the left. Everyone stay sharp.”

Just as the Suwang Sect members prepared to move into position,

a figure silently approached through the mist and suddenly struck with a weapon.

“Die!”

That triggered it.

Warriors of Twin-Winged Lotus burst out from all directions.

The number wasn’t in the dozens. Even at a minimum, they easily surpassed one hundred.

However, they were only numerous—their skill was lacking.

The moment Maeng Ye-ju and Kang Yung moved to the front, most were taken down in a single blow.

Bang! Bang!

Each blow packed enormous power. The phrase “one strike, one kill” suited Maeng Ye-ju and Kang Yung perfectly.

Even as human bodies turned to pulp, not one Twin-Winged Lotus warrior retreated.

Maeng Ye-ju, at the front of the battle, realized why.

“They're not in their right minds! They’re throwing away their lives as they charge, so everyone snap out of it!”

As she said, the eyes of the charging warriors were abnormal.

As if possessed, they charged in with frenzied eyes, ignoring defense completely.

Even as Maeng Ye-ju and Kang Yung smashed through them, their numbers only grew.

Before long, a mountain of corpses began to pile up, and while everyone focused on the battle, the mist was absorbing the blood from the corpses.

The white mist gradually turned red, then began to swell.

“What the hell is that? Yung!”

At Maeng Ye-ju’s command, Kang Yung crouched and prepared to charge into the blood mist of unknown nature.

At that moment, Jang Woo-hyun moved first.

Charreuk!

Jang Woo-hyun detached the Dragon King’s Scales in the form of a sword.

The blade scales, split into hundreds, circled around the massive blood mist like a school of fish swimming through the sea, then attacked.

Kwagagaga—

A torrential rain of freely moving Qi Projection.

Even Kang Yung, a martial artist in the state of Transcendence, had only barely avoided it by leveraging its speed—he hadn’t actually blocked the attack.

Such an attack surged forth in an instant and shattered the mysterious blood mist.

Even during that, the warriors of Twin-Winged Lotus didn’t run. They kept charging.

Thud.

Almost simultaneously with the complete annihilation of the blood mist by Jang Woo-hyun, the last bandit also collapsed to the ground.

“Was it some kind of spell that activates through human sacrifice?”

Looking around at the cleared mist, Maeng Ye-ju spoke.

It seemed they had prepared something, but it had been shattered before it could properly activate.

She couldn’t understand why they had attempted such a useless attack when it had yielded no result.

“For now… we’ll have to go catch the ones running away.”

Now that the mist had cleared, they could detect the fleeing presences.

The moment their positions were identified, Maeng Ye-ju and Kang Yung chased after them and quickly brought them back.

Three had been captured, and fear was evident in their eyes.

In other words, they were not like the ones who had charged in a frenzy.

“Who the hell are you?”

“P-please spare us!”

The three immediately bowed their heads and begged for mercy.

Their level wasn’t even close to Master Level—at best, they were First-rate Martial Artists. In the increasingly standardized Central Heavens Martial Realm, they were bottom-tier.

“You three are sane, right?”

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

“What about those guys? What the hell was that?”

“They were… drugged.”

“Drugged? What kind of drug?”

“If you take the drug, you can sense the position of those who haven’t taken it within the mist.”

“Then why are you fine?”

“We were assigned to observe and report the situation…”

Those captured had been standing by nearby for communication purposes.

“What’s your objective?”

“We were ordered to attack for now.”

“What about that mist?”

“We didn’t know it would turn out like that either.”

“Really? Is that the truth?”

“Yes! Yes, it is.”

At Maeng Ye-ju’s questioning, the captured men cowered.

“What next?”

“Next… if the operation failed, we were told to flee inward.”

“To where?”

“If you go deeper in, there’s a wide space. We were told to retreat there.”

At that answer, Maeng Ye-ju furrowed her brow.

‘What is this?’

No matter how she thought about it, it didn’t make sense.

Even if left alone, the Suwang Sect would have attacked anyway.

Why go through such a useless charade? On top of that, they’d used an ineffective assault.

The ones who had charged earlier had essentially died a pointless death.

‘Was there something in that red mist?’

Even after considering it, she couldn’t figure it out.

“What kind of bastard made such a dumb decision? With your strength, there’s no way you could have inflicted any damage.”

“There’s… a Cultivator. A Cultivator was involved.”

“What?”

“The orders came from a Cultivator of the Cultivation Realm.”

At that reply, Maeng Ye-ju’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Cultivator?’

Jang Woo-hyun was familiar with them as well.

Before he fell into this world—back when he was on Earth—there were not just martial arts novels but also a genre called cultivation novels.

Those who pursued Cultivation not as martial artists but to become immortals.

The Immortal Path they sought differed from the one commonly known.

They weren’t elderly sages seeking enlightenment or the Way, but lunatics dreaming of ascending their realm and extending their lifespans to become immortals.

They treated ordinary people as no more than insects—some would even grind humans into ingredients for pills.

—You are weak. So it is only natural that I take from you.

—It is only right that you be sacrificed for me.

Such logic was so deeply ingrained that most of them were completely insane.

‘That’s why Senior Pung also said he lives in the Central Heavens Martial Realm.’

Even those from the Cultivation Realm settled in a corner of the Central Heavens were no different from what Jang Woo-hyun knew.

It was precisely because he loathed the greed and madness of the Cultivation Realm that Pung So-bong chose to reside in the Central Heavens Martial Realm.

“These Cultivator bastards are making moves openly now?”

When Maeng Ye-ju asked again with a scowl, the captured men quickly nodded.

“What the hell is going on here?”

The situation had grown far beyond what she imagined.

She had thought Twin-Winged Lotus was merely kidnapping subordinates, but now an unknown force was revealed to be behind it.

The Cultivation Realm and the Martial Realm had traditionally respected each other’s domains.

To be precise, it was the Cultivators who had targeted martial artists, but they were prevented from interfering in martial territory by the Six Heavens of the Central Heavens Martial Realm.

In the outskirts of the Central Heavens Martial Realm, skirmishes between deranged Cultivators and martial artists did occur, but outright conspiracies like this were rare.

“These Twin-Winged Lotus bastards, who the hell did they bring in!”

“Eek!”

At Maeng Ye-ju’s fury, one of the captured men threw himself flat to the ground in terror.