Chapter 176: 177

Light Novel: Volume 8 Episode 2

Manhwa: N/A

Hak-gil Yoon, the captain of the tenth group, struggled.

An intangible noose was hung around his neck, so thin that it was indistinguishable with the naked eye. The noose pulled his body up in a tall tree.

Hak-gil Yoon struggled to get out of the noose, but the more he did, the more the noose tightened.

As the blood supply to the brain was blocked, his head became more and more hazy.

‘How?’

He didn’t know anything until he stopped breathing.

Why did you become like this?

Who did it?

Tuk!

Finally, Hak-gil Yoon’s head fell.

Dead.

Hak-gil Yoon’s body was placed silently on a thick branch. Even then, the person in the cold did not notice his disappearance at all.

It was Pyo-wol who lifted Hak-gil Yoon onto a tall tree branch. He strangled Hak-gil Yoon by using the Soul-Reaping thread.

He  carefully placed Hak-gil Yoon’s body on a large branch.

However, it wasn’t just Hak-gil Yoon’s body on the branches.

Several members of the tenth group were sitting all over the branches of a tree, not breathing. It was impossible to tell that they had stopped breathing just by looking at their appearance. 

Because there was no trauma at all.

Even though their colleagues disappeared right next to them, the outer disciples did not notice anything at all.

Their abilities were unable to detect the movement of Pyo-wol.

There was no sign nor sound.

The dense forest between the trees provided an optimal environment for Pyo-wol to work.

In this place, Pyo-wol’s ability was doubled.

Like a black leopard, Pyo-wol moved through the darkness as cover.

He walked silently from one high branch to another, looking down.

Numerous heads were visible.

They were the Heavenly Silver Marketplace warriors. They only looked around, not expecting that someone was following them over their heads.

They thought they were already strictly vigilant about their surroundings, but in the eyes of Pyo-wol looking down from above, he was at their blind spot.

Srreuk!

Pyo-wol went down again in search of his next victim.

It was similar to fishing, but the essence was different.

Fishing requires endlessly waiting for the fish to bite the bait, but Pyo-wol catches the fish when he wants to.

Kwac!

Just like now.

Once again, someone fell victim to the Soul-Reaping Thread.

The Soul-Reaping thread strangled the outer disciples’ head and dragged him up the tree. 

In that brief moment when he was pulled up on the tree against his own will, the man’s breath was cut off.

His breath was cut off, but the great fear he felt in that brief moment was clearly visible on his face.

Pyo-wol’s method is not a battle between warriors.

Assassins fight differently from that of the warriors. So the warriors despised the assassins.

Warriors despised the assassins who kill through gimmicks while hiding and waiting for a long time. 

Pyo-wol was not ashamed or embarrassed to be an assassin. Since there is no reason to be proud, conversely, there is no reason to be ashamed.

He didn’t want to become an assassin. 

He only became one in order to survive.

He could throw away his life being an assassin, but Pyo-wol had no intention of doing so. The assassin’s way of killing is very effective. And it had the advantage of giving fear to enemies.

“AHHH!”

“Yang Cheong is gone!”

The screams of the outer disciples resounded in the Dead Forest.

It was only now that he realized that their colleagues had disappeared.

Extreme confusion and fear engulfed the outer disciples.

“Everyone, calm down!”

Pung Nosan tried to calm them down somehow, but to no avail.

By the time they had noticed something was wrong, more than a dozen outer disciples had already gone missing.

The outer disciples felt an extreme fear that they could not bear.

Tuk!

At that moment, Pyo-wol pushed down a corpse that had been sitting on a branch. A very fine Soul-Reaping thread was hung around the body’s neck.

Because of that, the body was dangling in the air and swaying.

The moment they saw the corpse swaying in the air, the fear of the outer disciples reached its peak.

“Hiiiik!”

“T, there is a ghost in the forest!”

“We’ll get eaten!”

The outer disciples screamed and fled in all directions.

The natural horror of the huge forest, the Dead Forest, and the silently murdered corpses were combined to create an effect that even Pyo-wol did not expect.

“Everyone! Stop! Those who run away will never come back to the Heavenly Silver Marketplace again!”

Pung Nosan threatened, but the disciples did not hear it.

“These guys!”

In the end, the angry Pung Nosan swung his sword at the warriors who passed by and fled.

He was trying to enforce the rules by punishing them. But his attempts were unsuccessful.

Cuckoo!

At that moment, the bodies fell one after another.

It was truly terrifying to see about a dozen corpses swaying in the air, hanging by their necks.

Eighty percent of the information that humans perceive from their surroundings depends on vision.

Information received through the eyes is transmitted to the brain without any filtering process, and the fear is instantly maximized several times.

The minds of the outer disciples went blank with fear they couldn’t handle.

The only thought running through their minds was to get away from this place.

“Help me!”

“I don’t want to be here!”

The outer disciples fled without looking back, leaving Pung Nosan alone at the scene.

“You—!”

Pung Nosan trembled.

His eyes were full of anger.

“How dare you do something like this–”

It was Pung Nosan who prided itself on having gone through everything, but it was the first time he met a person who had provoked fear by insulting the body of a dead person.

“Who are you? Come out! Don’t be a coward! How can you be called a dignified warrior?”

He shouted into the air.

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Hoong!

At his cry full of qi, the leaves around the area fell like rain.

Hoong!

“Heurgh!”

Pung Nosan suddenly screamed.

A small dagger was lodged in his shoulder.

It was the phantom dagger.

“W, when?”

Pung Nosan’s eyes fluttered.

He obviously enhanced his whole body senses to an extreme. But he still didn’t notice the dagger flying towards him.

“L… leaf?”

For a moment, his eyes turned to the leaves falling like rain.

It was evident that a dagger flew through the leaves falling after his war cry. The leaves obstructed his vision and he didn’t even notice that the dagger was flying.

“Oh…”

Puck!

At that moment, a dagger pierced his chest.

The strong impact pushed the figure of Pung Nosan.

Pung Nosan endured the pain and tried to swing the sword in the direction the dagger flew in. 

But he couldn’t. 

Puck!

This is because a phantom dagger was embedded in Pung Nosan’s forehead.

Pung Nosan’s body fell backwards in the same posture of him wielding the sword.

Thud!

Pung Nosan’s body collapsed to the floor with a sound like a log falling.

Pyo-wol appeared silently in front of Pung Nosan, who was dying with his eyes wide open.

Pyo-wol, who looked at Pung Nosan’s body for a moment, flicked his hand and retrieved the phantom dagger embedded in his corpse. 

Just as it appeared, it disappeared without a sound.

Leaves piled up like a grave on the corpse of Pung Nosan, who was left alone.

* * *

“Strange!”

Yeo Hwa-young frowned heavily.

“What’s strange about it?”

Ak Chusan, who was beside her, asked with a puzzled expression.

“The air has changed.”

“You felt it too?”

“Then the Great Evil?”

“The flow changed a little while ago.”

Ak Chusan was a master.

He was also a master recognized by the world.

A master who can easily rank in the top 100 throughout the world.

He might not be in the top 10, but it’s already amazing enough to be in the top 100. 

Considering that the number of warriors in Jianghu is as numerous as grains of sand on a sandy beach, it’s already a great feat to be within the top 100.

Among the top 100, there were only about twenty or thirty people who could be said to be higher than him, including the Eight Constellations and the Eleven top sect leaders.

It was predicted that the forces of the warriors in the rest of the top 100 would be similar.

In fact, the rankings are  just based on people’s speculation. They did not actually know whom among the warriors would be superior or inferior since they did not directly practice martial arts nor compete with each other.

It was just a rough evaluation by combining their reputation, and level of martial arts.

Nevertheless, many people believed this evaluation and thought it was absolute.

Ak Chusan had the skill and ability to be selected into the upper ranks of the hundred masters.

In particular, one of the abilities he was confident in was his outstanding eyesight. Besides using his eyesight to look at his surroundings, his vision of reading the flow and atmosphere of the battlefield was excellent.

The situation of the Dead Forest reflected in his eyes was obviously not normal.

No matter how tall the trees were, the trees were so thick that they couldn’t fully comprehend what was going on below. 

However, he was able to roughly infer the situation through the flow of qi.

“The flow of qi is turbid. I didn’t felt this flow before. Someone must have intervened.”

At Ak Chusan’s words, Yeo Hwa-young nodded her head.

She did not have the ability to read the flow of qi like Ak Chusan. However, by going through her subordinates’ reports that came in real-time, she was able to understand that the situation in the Dead Forest was becoming strange.

The Bamboo Sea Clan is inferior to the Heavenly Silver Marketplace.

Over the decades, the Bamboo Sea Clan’s power has weakened, while the Heavenly Silver Marketplace has grown stronger. As a result, the gap has now grown to the point that it is burdensome for them to collide against them head-on.

Nevertheless, the reason she put all of her energy into the Dead Forest was out of desperation that if the gap widens more than this, she will never be able to go against them.

And she was confident.

She calculated that the damage of the Bamboo Sea clan will not be as great as anyone would expect if they suddenly attacked the Heavenly Silver Marketplace.

At first, it seemed as if everything went according to her plan.

Due to the intervention of the Bamboo Sea Clan, the warriors of the Heavenly Silver Marketplace failed to respond properly and collapsed. 

Yeo Hwa-young tried to seize Gongbu, and retreated with their initial momentum.

However, the situation changed when Hwa Yu-cheon added additional troops. Even Yeo Hwa-young did not expect Hwa Yu-cheon to react that way.

The battles continued, and the damage at the Bamboo Sea clan grew exponentially.

For that reason, Yeo Hwa-young thought about whether or not she should hand over her troops at this point.

But the atmosphere on the battlefield changed.

The flow of battle has changed.

As if the warriors of the Bamboo Sea Clan were afraid of something, the formation was greatly disturbed.

Hwa Yu-cheon was not a rookie. If he had been, he would not have been able to make the Heavenly Silver Marketplace reach where they were right now.

It was impossible for a great person like him to let the Heavenly Silver Marketplace’s formation become so disorganized. 

If so, it was clear that someone intervened.

The question was who.

Yeo Hwa-young asked Ak Chusan,

“Do you have any guesses?”

“No. At least none of the warriors around here.”

“Then it’s a third party.”

 Yeo Hwa-young touched her red lips with her white finger.

At that moment, an image of a man appeared in Yeo Hwa-young’s mind.

The man she met at the guesthouse.

When everyone was preoccupied with the fight between Hwangbo Chiseung and Ak Chusan, he was the only one alone in his thoughts as if he wasn’t interested. 

So his figure remained in her memory.

“Maybe…”

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