Chapter 248: Trap (2)

The massive giants were shattered, their bodies riddled with holes. Their once semi-transparent forms were now fading into nothingness.

“Not going to make any noise now?”

Even at Wind-Passing Great Sage’s taunting, the eight slowly vanishing giants said nothing.

The projections summoned to the Central Heavens Realm had nearly lost all their strength and could no longer communicate.

“With sixteen eyes, you should’ve been able to read the room better. Maybe try stepping out sometime.”

Sixteen eyes glared at him, but Wind-Passing Great Sage simply crossed his arms and snorted with contempt.

As the divine being from the Demonic Spirit Realm, known as the Sixteen-Eyed God, disappeared, Je Yeong-jeong, who had been cowering from the shockwave, raised his dharma treasure again with a pale face.

Whether sealed or not didn’t matter. No—being sealed might even be preferable. Anything was better than getting entangled with those monsters.

The attack that the Demon-Slaying Squad had just unleashed had gone far beyond anything he had expected.

As he was about to press down on the dharma treasure in his hand, something dropped to the ground with a soft thud.

“Uh…”

His hand had been severed. The dharma treasure he held tumbled across the ground.

Seoryeom had appeared at his side without notice and sliced off his hand. The shield-type dharma treasures that had been flying around him for protection had all been blown away by the earlier impact.

Not stopping at cutting off the hand, Seoryeom stabbed both of Je Yeong-jeong’s shoulders with his sword. Almost simultaneously, a chain wrapped around his neck and body.

Mak Ya-wol snatched Je Yeong-jeong like reeling in a fish and then kicked him away.

Boom!

Je Yeong-jeong slammed into the ground. Mak Ya-wol landed atop him, gripping the chain.

“You bastard. Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

The dharma treasure that turned humans into oil by crushing them.

Ever since he had heard about that, Mak Ya-wol had wanted to tear apart any cultivator he saw.

Pulling on the chain, Mak Ya-wol yanked Je Yeong-jeong off the ground and then slammed him back down, crushing his head underfoot.

Smash!

Je Yeong-jeong’s head burst along with his helmet.

It didn’t matter. Cultivators wouldn’t die from this level of injury.

“Let’s take the Inner Robe first. Who knows what tricks he might pull.”

Seoryeom shattered the armor, rifled through Je Yeong-jeong’s body, and retrieved the Inner Robe and several other dharma treasures.

As his head slowly reformed, Mak Ya-wol crushed Je Yeong-jeong’s arms and legs.

“You’re going to spend the whole day getting wrecked, you bastard.”

There were no other surviving cultivators. The few who had already suffered damage from Seoryeom and Mak Ya-wol were wiped out in the recent attack against the Sixteen-Eyed God.

Je Yeong-jeong seemed to have mastered a powerful recovery technique. His head was already beginning to regenerate.

A martial artist who had reached the Boundless Realm could recover from even fatal wounds. But not as fast as Je Yeong-jeong was recovering now.

For example, Seoryeom, who had been injured in a battle with the Mountain-Moving Great Sage before arriving here, still hadn’t fully recovered one of his arms.

The difference in healing between cultivators and martial artists was now evident in Je Yeong-jeong’s display.

Before Je Yeong-jeong’s head was fully restored—

Cho-su, who had descended onto Gyeongroeseong, used various restraining artifacts to bind him, while Seon Tae-gyeong cast a few spells. The two of them were better suited to this than martial artists.

“Brother Cho, can you use this?”

Seoryeom handed over the bracelet-shaped Inner Robe he had taken. Cho-su started fiddling with it.

“Nice tech. It’s locked to a registered user only.”

“Then we can’t open it?”

“Of course we can. Bring me that bastard’s arm.”

Seoryeom casually sliced off Je Yeong-jeong’s regenerating arm.

“Heh heh… do you know what sets me apart from you?”

Je Yeong-jeong, whose head had now fully reformed, began to speak.

“You cut a man’s arm like slicing—ugh!”

Cho-su’s chain scythe pierced into his mouth.

“You want to know the difference, you bastard? We’re standing, and you’re flat on your back. Can’t you read the mood?”

While Mak Ya-wol stomped on him a few more times, Cho-su unlocked the Inner Robe using the severed arm.

“This is it.”

Inspecting its contents, Cho-su walked over and pulled out a massive dharma treasure.

It was a giant cube, large enough to hold hundreds of people, with an inverted pyramid underneath it.

It was the vile dharma treasure that crushed humans into oil, a sight Jang Woo-hyun remembered.

The moment he saw it, Jang Woo-hyun approached and swung Mukya.

With a flurry of strikes fast enough to form a sword barrier, Mukya shredded the enormous dharma treasure into powder.

As Jang Woo-hyun turned his gaze to Je Yeong-jeong, Seoryeom lifted him upright.

At first, they had intended to ask him about the dharma treasure that crushed humans and the tower built from the practitioners’ corpses turned into bricks.

But after seeing what Mukya had done, those questions no longer mattered.

The disgusting dharma treasure had already been destroyed, and Je Yeong-jeong was captured. Now they needed to ask about something more important.

“The dharma treasure that summoned the giant just now. That was given to you by Hyeonwol of the Radiant Light Sect, wasn’t it?”

Je Yeong-jeong flinched but didn’t respond immediately.

“That wasn’t just a giant. It was a divine being from the Demonic Spirit Realm known as the Sixteen-Eyed God.”

“A divine being? Like that time when that guy summoned a horde of Giant Bees?”

“Yeah, similar type. In the Demonic Spirit Realm, there are divine beings that dwell within their own domains. They might not be great in combat, but this one—Sixteen-Eyed God—is specialized in spatial manipulation, particularly sealing.”

Jang Woo-hyun nodded at Wind-Passing Great Sage’s explanation and spoke again.

“What is Hyeonwol plotting? He tried to seal even you just now.”

“Heh heh heh…”

Je Yeong-jeong burst out laughing at the question.

“This one’s really lost it. Still doesn’t get the situation.”

As Seoryeom and Mak Ya-wol raised their weapons, Jang Woo-hyun gestured for them to stop.

Left alone, Je Yeong-jeong laughed for a while.

He laughed at how pathetic he was. How absurd it was for his life to end this way.

“……You can’t win.”

“That’s your opinion. From where we’re standing, we already have.”

“Hehehe… It’s too late. There’s no going back.”

“What are you babbling about, you lunatic? Speak clearly. Chief, why not let me handle him? I can make him spit out even what he hid in his gut in half a si-jin.”

“Even if you get the answers from me, nothing will change. What are you willing to sacrifice? No—how many people are you willing to sacrifice? Hyeonwol abandoned his own sect.”

“What do you mean?”

“He cast aside all the practitioners of the Radiant Light Sect who fought you. We were nothing more than bait to draw you out. Along with the Radiant Light Sect’s elites, I was just bait!”

The words didn’t make sense at first, and Jang Woo-hyun said nothing.

“So you’re saying that Hyeonwol lured us here by making us come after you?”

“You look like you don’t believe me. I didn’t either. I never thought he’d use me. He used the Ascension Cult and even the elite of the Radiant Light Sect as bait.”

“This guy’s behavior has been off, but he’s just plain crazy now. So what does he gain from this? Without us, the Five Elements Cult weakens? But the Radiant Light Sect doesn’t have the manpower to defeat them.”

“I don’t know what measures he prepared. But one thing’s clear. The Five Elements Cult’s Five-Wheel Guardian God. If that monster moved, then he must’ve prepared something for it, too. Hehehehe…”

Je Yeong-jeong cackled loudly, echoing through the surroundings.

In his eyes, everything that was happening was part of Hyeonwol’s grand design.

Seoryeom didn’t like how Je Yeong-jeong kept laughing, so he tried to correct his attitude. But Cho-su raised a hand to stop him.

“Leave it. A bastard who crafts dharma treasures that use humans as raw materials? He probably tampered with his own body too. Regular pain likely won’t work on him.”

Given that smashing his head and limbs had barely provoked a response, that statement might be true.

“Even so, we can’t just leave him alone.”

“Who said anything about letting him be? We just need to use the right method for a bastard like this.”

Cho-su pulled out a large black coffin from the Inner Robe.

“Whatever tricks you’ve got in mind, you can think about them inside here. I’ll make sure you’re neither alive nor dead.”

“……”

For the first time, Je Yeong-jeong’s expression stiffened. He recognized the artifact Cho-su had brought out.

“W-Wait. I’ll cooperate. I’ll cooperate, so let me just—no! I said no! Wait! Please wait! I’ll tell you everything! Senior! Great Senior of the Nation of Mechanical Marvels! Please wait! Stop! I said STOP, you mother—!”

Ignoring Je Yeong-jeong’s sudden, pathetic change in tone, Cho-su opened the coffin. Je Yeong-jeong was sucked inside with a whoosh.

Only Mak Ya-wol’s discarded chain and Seoryeom’s twin swords remained on the ground.

As Cho-su closed the lid and placed the large coffin back into the Inner Robe, the group remained silent. The event had happened too quickly for anyone to react properly.

“What was that?” someone asked.

“That thing locks someone inside and allows you to split and use their soul. You can think of it as a small prison.”

Jang Woo-hyun stared at Cho-su, not quite grasping what it meant to split a soul.

“Puppets move on their own, right? That’s because they’re animated with something called a pseudo-spirit or pseudo-soul. But sometimes, to make more sophisticated puppets, you split a real soul and use that instead. Usually it’s from beasts or spirit beasts. But some people split human souls too.”

In other words, they planned to keep Je Yeong-jeong confined and extract parts of his soul for use.

“You can’t use an entire soul whole, but even a fragment should be enough for him to experience some suffering. After what he’s done, he deserves it. Or we can keep him stored and hand him over to some wicked spellcaster who’ll put him to good use. A spellcaster will know how to make him suffer.”

As Cho-su casually spoke of such a horrific fate, Seoryeom grimaced and edged away.

Even Cho-su had no intention of letting a cultivator who created and used such vile dharma treasures go unpunished. He would deliver the greatest torment he could manage.

“Well, that bastard’s taken care of.”

As he continued speaking so nonchalantly, Jang Woo-hyun began to think that Cho-su might be the coldest among them.

“Now let’s figure out how we’re going to get back. If Hyeonwol is up to something, we need to return as quickly as possible.”

“Can’t we just head straight back to Gyeongroeseong?”

“The distance is too great. We’ve ventured deep into the Radiant Light Sect’s territory, so we can’t get back directly.”

Even Gyeongroeseong, with its high mobility, couldn’t simply close any gap in distance. At the moment, Cho-su had no better plan either.

“We’ll have to use every available method to move as fast as possible. Just hope nothing happens in the meantime. That bastard Hyeonwol probably won’t strike right away.”

Since this was a battle between sects, it likely wouldn’t escalate that easily.

No one else had a better idea, until Seon Tae-gyeong raised his hand.

“I have a method.”

All eyes turned to him. He was holding the fist-sized dharma treasure Je Yeong-jeong had used.

“This still has value.”

“You’re going to use that again? But won’t those giants trap us again?” Cho-su asked.

Seon Tae-gyeong shook his head.

“It doesn’t have that kind of power anymore. It’s just still connected to the Sixteen-Eyed God. If we form a new contract, we can borrow its power.”

“Borrow power? What kind of power?”

“The Sixteen-Eyed God has the ability to manipulate space. That includes sealing techniques. But through a contract, we can use that ability for spatial teleportation—as far as possible.”

With no better option, the group agreed to Seon Tae-gyeong’s plan and boarded Gyeongroeseong immediately.

Once prepared,

Seon Tae-gyeong summoned the Sixteen-Eyed God using the dharma treasure.

Though smaller than before, the Sixteen-Eyed God still filled the interior of Gyeongroeseong.

“O divine being of the Demonic Spirit Realm, we wish to borrow your power.”

At Seon Tae-gyeong’s words, the sixteen eyes opened wide. A moment later, all eight giant foreheads furrowed.

【…….】

Just earlier, they had smashed it to pieces with everything they had—so now what was this?

Even the Sixteen-Eyed God, an existence that had endured eons beyond human perception, had never encountered a situation like this.

Wind-Passing Great Sage, perhaps feeling awkward, turned his head to look the other way.

Seo Gyeong-mu couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

When the massive Floating Continent approached, he hadn’t been too concerned. He had believed that no matter what the Radiant Light Sect had prepared, the Five Elements Cult would prevail.

Spellcasters and monsters flew up from the Floating Continent aboard flying artifacts—but then the Five-Wheel Guardian God, positioned at the front, unleashed a single attack, burning half of them to death.

At that moment, Seo Gyeong-mu was sure of victory.

But then Hyeonwol appeared, and everything unraveled.

Rising above the Floating Continent, Hyeonwol wore a broad smile despite his subordinates having been incinerated.

“Guardian of the Five Elements Cult. I’ve longed to meet you.”

There was nothing magical or forceful in his voice.

Yet Seo Gyeong-mu felt a chill. His instincts screamed at him—something terrible was about to happen.

The moment Hyeonwol finished speaking—

The Floating Continent split apart. The land divided into five parts, each imbued with the energy of one of the Five Elements, and began devouring all surrounding energy.

The unified Guardian was torn into five and dragged into the split land masses. That was how the Guardian vanished.

But worse still—

“The energy…”

The foundational energy of the world, the Five Elements, had weakened immeasurably.

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