Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

A pure-white venom sphere burst out from near So-ryong’s lower dantian as if exploding.

It felt soft like a snow-white mist, yet it spread like lightning like the mouth of a merciless predator, and it swallowed in one gulp the Blood Demon’s body that was bleeding nearby and tangled up in close combat.

The Blood Demon could not even scream and, together with So-ryong, was sucked into that white abyss.

So-ryong’s venom art was tenaciously entangling her, and because their bodies had been entwined, they were dragged into the sphere without even a chance to resist.

The sphere licked and devoured the surrounding corpses and the sticky blood like a living creature.

As the sphere touched the surrounding corpses and blood, blue and red flames blazed, and it rapidly spread, consuming them as if taking them for nourishment.

—Ssssss.

—Whoooshhh.

Just brushing the white sphere made the corpses melt like ash and scatter into the air, and the blood evaporated away like steam and vanished.

At that grotesque sight, So-ryong’s wives instinctively backed away and shouted toward the inside of the sphere with trembling voices.

“Th-this is!?”

“So-ryong!? So-ryong!?”

“So-ryong!”

Their urgent cries echoed back, but the inside of the sphere answered only with a deep silence.

Not even So-ryong’s ragged breathing, not even the Blood Demon’s final scream could be heard.

Only silence.

The white sphere quietly swallowed and silenced all.

Before that overwhelming spectacle, even the martial artists of the Central Plains and even the Blood Cult fanatics shut their mouths and froze.

While fear weighed down the air, their gazes stayed fixed on the sphere, unable to move.

It was then, when people had been stunned by the uncanny sight and swallowed by silence.

Suddenly, inside the heads of Hwa-eun, Gun Hye-rin, and Ji-ryeon, there came a humming feeling.

—Wung, wung wung wung.

No— not a feeling. A real humming sound began to be heard.

At the same time, a surging, convulsive agony rose from deep within their heads and seized them.

It was no ordinary headache.

It was a pain as if each nerve in the brain were being torn out one by one, a pain that shredded the soul to tatters.

A throbbing rising from the abyss of the head instantly swallowed their consciousness.

If a person could feel the pain of the soul, it would be similar to that being torn.

So-ryong’s three wives thought so.

“Ugh...”

“Hh—ugh...”

The three clutched their heads and sank down.

Because they had trained martial arts since childhood, the three could endure a certain degree of pain, but this pain could never be endured.

Cold sweat ran down back and brow.

Their legs gave out and their vision reeled.

It felt like they might lose consciousness as they were.

It was an unprecedented pain that would make even Gun Hye-rin, who had endured the horrible agony dealt by martial arts that use demonic qi, stick out her tongue.

It felt like the kind of pain that cannot be endured just by enduring.

A pain that gnaws at the soul.

“W-what is this!?”

“What is it? Suddenly? Juniors, are you all right?”

As the three of So-ryong’s wives suddenly grabbed their heads and crouched, following behind Wheel Lady Heo Muha, Axe Lady Seop Biyu looked to the Princess and Hwa-eun.

—Thump!

—Splaasshh.

At that moment, Madam Hoja (Mama) staggered down from the sky and crashed near the three.

In Hwa-eun’s blurring vision, she saw Mama curled up and trembling.

She seemed to be suffering the same pain as Hwa-eun, the Princess, and Gun Hye-rin.

Mama, like them, was writhing under pain that pierced the soul.

A shadow of fear was cast over her eyes.

“M-mother...”

[Grrr-rrrk.]

—Shiaaaa! 『Kyaaaaa!』

In the rear, Cheong-yu Sojeo too was clutching her horns and screaming.

Cho, Yeondu, and Juhwang, who had flown tirelessly from afar and alighted in the back to rest, were also screaming.

Five small baby snakes were anxiously licking Juhwang and Yeondu.

Moji and Soji, whom So-ryong had called and who were flying over a little while ago, fell among the Central Plains martial artists and trembled in their legs.

So-ryong’s spirit creatures—those registered ones at that—were all suffering together?

It felt like something had gone wrong with So-ryong himself.

Hwa-eun, the Princess, and Gun Hye-rin, all in pain, stared at the sphere holding So-ryong.

Just then.

From among the Martial Alliance’s warriors, Seol and the Beast Palace Lord darted out and ran quickly toward the three.

“Kids! Get a hold of yourselves! You must never let your mind go!”

“Child. Children. Gather your spirit. Seize your mind. If you lose consciousness, a great calamity will befall.”

In their voices lay a deep anxiety, as if they had foreseen something in advance.

When Seol supported Hwa-eun and wrapped an arm around her, Hwa-eun clung to her arm, panting, and asked.

“S-Seol unni, nghhh... Wh-what is this?”

At Hwa-eun’s question, Seol’s eyes trembled.

Seol bit her lower lip and answered.

“S-So-ryong seems to have fallen into Qi Deviation.”

“What!?” “Kkyaah—!”

At the words that So-ryong had fallen into Qi Deviation, the eyes of Hwa-eun, the Princess, and Gun Hye-rin flew wide open.

The three, startled, forgot the pain for a moment and asked urgently.

“Q-Qi Deviation?”

“Ghhk. Qi Deviation, is it!?”

“What do you... ngh...”

They wore expressions of disbelief.

Qi Deviation, in the midst of a fierce battle with the enemy—such words were unbelievable.

Certainly, So-ryong had seemed to gain some deep realization, unfolding venom arts and driving the Blood Demon overwhelmingly.

Drawn into a state like selflessness, his movements had indeed looked like he had gained enlightenment; how could he fall into the abyss of Qi Deviation from there?

Even in the long history of the martial world, while realizations in the thick of battle existed, Qi Deviation in the middle of it had almost no precedent.

But Seol’s explanation told of a possibility that had not been.

“I told you, didn’t I. If you accept too many beasts with the Beast-Heart Technique, you can fall into Qi Deviation—what’s happening now feels similar to that. An unbearable pain that’s felt from inside the head.

I don’t know why it’s happening now either.

Originally, I know it to be something that occurs when one accepts a beast one cannot handle, and the beast’s wildness flows into the soul and takes over...”

Yes, it was a story they had already heard.

Originally, with the Beast-Heart Technique, if the practitioner accepted a number of beasts he could not bear, he could be swallowed by the wildness of the beasts.

Then, after suffering this pain, if the wildness completely ★ ★ invaded, one would change into a single beast.

If swallowed by the wildness of a wolf, one becomes a wolf; if swallowed by the wildness of a leopard, one becomes a leopard.

This was something they had already heard from Seol, but something seemed amiss.

As Seol said, right now was a state where no spirit creature was being accepted.

It was a moment of battle.

Seol had said to be careful only at the moment of accepting a spirit creature.

“Why suddenly? Nnngh.”

“W-we were told, ngh, that we only had to be careful at the moment of accepting a spirit creature, weren’t we?”

“I—I don’t know either. It seems linked with the venom arts...

Hold yourselves together—you must hold yourselves together! If the minds of you humans are strong, his mind may return properly.

If not, his mind may be influenced by the wildness of the other spirit-creature children and turn into a madman!”

“Ghhk. O-okay.”

Right, as they had heard from Seol before, if one falls into Qi Deviation through the Beast-Heart Technique, the likelihood of becoming a madman is high.

Imitating the beasts he has accepted.

Because he believes himself to have become that beast.

They could never allow So-ryong to become that.

Gun Hye-rin clenched her teeth and endured the pain, and Hwa-eun and the Princess bit their lips—and it was in that moment.

The white sphere had not grown beyond a certain size, but that sphere suddenly began to shrink.

Shrinking slowly until it was about the size of a ten-ja span, the sphere.

Where the sphere vanished, everything had been perfectly erased—an emptiness.

The corpses had evaporated without a trace, not a single drop of blood remained, and even hems and weapons were turned to dust.

Even blades of grass in the earth, tree roots, and weeds—everything had been annihilated.

What remained was only soft sand like a fine white beach.

Even the soil seemed to have melted in the flames of purification and turned into delicate grains of sand.

That sand-carpeted space shone quietly, like the abode of an immortal who has washed away all the world’s filth.

As all gazed upon the sand-covered ground that had appeared, in that moment—

Staff King Gam Muncheong’s voice was heard.

“D-did we... finish it?”

It was a question with faint hope soaked into it—asking if they had finished the Blood Demon—but in that instant, the sandfield beyond the sphere where the Blood Cultists had gathered swelled up.

—Pwhoak!

Despair flashed across everyone’s minds.

Because what burst up from underground was the arm of a slender woman.

At those pale, keen fingers, Gam Muncheong, Seop Biyu, and Heo Muha instinctively gripped their weapons.

So-ryong was said to have fallen into Qi Deviation, and his three wives were in no state to fight further.

Even so, that monster, the Blood Demon, was still alive.

That hand that had sprung up now was already too familiar—a symbol of terror.

“Grrrhh...”

Letting out a painful groan, the Blood Demon pulled herself up out of the ground, from arm to head to chest in order.

Her body was melted here and there, but she thrust her hand into the belly of a nearby Blood Cultist and spoke.

—Kwaduk!

“Guh-hrk.”

“Die with honor. Your blood will be eternal within me.”

In an instant, a dozen Blood Cultists collapsed, and the blood containing their life force was sucked into the Blood Demon.

Then her body recovered in the blink of an eye.

Her clothing returned to blood-dyed crimson silk, and her skin smoothed like pale porcelain.

The overwhelming beauty and wickedness from their first meeting was revived as-is.

A smile hovered at the corner of her lips.

It was the smile of an undying monster who had rebuilt her flesh with her subordinates’ lives, foreseeing victory.

So-ryong and his three wives had fallen, and now only three Flower Realm masters remained.

There was no one left to stop her.

To stop a master of the Manifestation Realm, one normally needs five or more Flower Realm masters.

All the more so, the Blood Demon was an unprecedented master who could restore her body.

That smile was natural.

“Heh-heh... Something seems to have happened to that one’s body. And to those other women.

Without that bastard, the rest of you are nothing much. It ends now!”

Just as the Blood Demon, with a fishy smile, took a step—

—Flaaap!

A sound of vast wings spreading cleaved the sky and rang out from above.

At that clear sound, everyone’s eyes turned to the sky by instinct, and a single enormous bird, with golden-glittering feathers on its head, descended with elegance before the Blood Demon.

Its deep purplish-black plumage was as profound as the night sky, and its red eyes burned like the fires of hell.

Its presence was not that of a mere bird.

One could feel a numinous qi like that of an immortal.

Of course, only to those who knew what it was.

“What, a mere bird?”

The instant the Blood Demon said, how dare a mere bird descend fearlessly before her—perhaps because of the memory of one she had absorbed, a foreboding began to sound in the Blood Demon’s mind.

In response, the moment she flung her body backward—

—Fwoooosh.

The bird’s tremendous wings spread, and from its body, a black-violet, flame-like energy blasted out as if exploding.

It was not flame; it was like a wave of darkness that devours all that is impure, and that wave wrapped the Blood Demon and the Blood Cult warriors of that whole sector all at once and, in an instant, turned them to ash.

Their bodies vanished without even a scream, vaporizing into the air.

It was like heavenly punishment by an immortal, a sight of the world being purified.

Watching that overwhelming scene, a single trembling word leaked from Hwa-eun’s mouth.

“Z-Zimjo...”

Zimjo, the one So-ryong had searched for so much, was erasing the Blood Demon and an entire wing of the Blood Cult warriors root and branch.