Chapter 112. Exterminated Sects
Nangnang Tavern was not the direct scene of the incident, but it was right nearby, and because the corpses that died last night had been temporarily placed there.
It seemed that the tavern owner, his family, and even the cook had all been sent outside, and only the Martial World Protection Unit members were standing there, emitting a chilling killing intent. The wine tables and chairs and all the interior furnishings had been completely cleared away, and instead, dozens of corpses alone were welcoming Weapon Eccentric while exuding a thick stench of blood.
The man who had guided him here from the beginning seemed to be the person in charge of this place, and he kept explaining the case to Weapon Eccentric.
"These are the people who died right outside there last night."
Weapon Eccentric, with his hands clasped behind his back, slowly swept his gaze over the corpses lined up on the floor, then walked up to the corpse at the far left corner.
Like all the other corpses beside it, its head had been cut off and was rolling around haphazardly.
Thud.
Weapon Eccentric nudged the corpse with his foot. Then, as if it were nothing, he spat out a single word.
"One."
After that, he walked all the way to the right along the row of corpses, kicking each one in turn.
"Two, three, four …..."
He was counting the corpses.
The sight was so absurdly playful, yet it somehow made him look even more like a professional — which was, indeed, a characteristic of this ruthless world called the martial world.
Forty-three.
The number of heads scattered randomly on the floor above the corpses matched the number of bodies exactly.
"First, I've confirmed the number of dead."
Next, Weapon Eccentric examined the condition of the corpses.
Since they were all beheaded, it was difficult to tell which head belonged to which body.
However, the condition of the cut itself —.
"Clean."
Too clean.
Because of that, Weapon Eccentric could not find anything particularly special from the wounds. He thought that if he looked closely at the cross-sections, he might be able to tell what kind of martial arts had been used to behead them... but.
He examined them for quite a while longer, but in the end, he could not figure out anything. Judging from how clean it was, he could only guess that the culprit was a fairly high-level expert.
"What about these guys' belongings?"
Weapon Eccentric said after thoroughly searching the chest of one completely empty corpse.
"There was nothing on them from the beginning."
The Martial World Protection Unit member who had first greeted him and led him here answered, having stood quietly behind him until then.
"These guys are shady as hell. Both the dead ones and the one who killed them."
"Yes?"
"Look at the corpses. They were killed very cleanly. I can't tell the level or type of martial arts used, but it's definitely the work of a single person. That's why it's shady."
"Ah, yes."
Weapon Eccentric continued while examining the clothes of one of the corpses.
"These guys lying here look like they all bought their clothes from the same place. They're all wearing exactly the same thing. That's shady too."
All the clothes the corpses were wearing were black.
But not all black was the same kind of black.
Light black, dull black, black with a slightly reddish tint...
There were many kinds.
However, the clothes of the dead were all jet-black, with almost no difference in shade. They were clearly from the same group.
Weapon Eccentric seemed to be just glancing over them, but he was actually checking everything carefully. Of course, this much had already been confirmed long ago by the Martial World Protection Unit members as well.
And that was not all.
Weapon Eccentric saw one more thing there. That was why he was called the Eight-Skill Weapon Maniac.
Thud.
Weapon Eccentric shoved his finger deep into the neck of one of the corpses and then pulled it out. His finger was now smeared with thickened blood.
"Ugh."
"Ugh!"
At first, the Martial World Protection Unit member had been watching, wondering what Weapon Eccentric was trying to do, but then suddenly vomited. That was because Weapon Eccentric had put his blood-soaked finger into his mouth.
He stuck it deep into his mouth and smacked his lips, as if savoring the taste of blood.
"Mmm! That's right, that's right. I thought the color and smell of the blood were fishy, and sure enough, these were shady guys."
"Yes? What do you mean by that...?"
"These guys came from Yunnan. Their blood is all shit-colored, and it stinks like shit."
"Yes...?"
The Martial World Protection Unit member grew more and more confused and could not understand what Weapon Eccentric was talking about at all.
However, whether the Martial World Protection Unit member was curious or not, Weapon Eccentric did not open his mouth again. It was not something an ordinary Martial World Protection Unit member could understand anyway, nor was there any need for him to understand it. After the investigation was over, he would just tell Eulji Tae, and it would be up to him to decide whether to explain it or not.
'For the Killing Shadow Squad of the Hall of Gathering Evils to be slaughtered like this right in front of Zhengzhou.'
The Hall of Gathering Evils, and the Killing Shadow Squad.
Weapon Eccentric had drawn out the decisive information about their identities from the blood of the corpses.
The Hall of Gathering Evils had a peculiar internal energy cultivation method called the Concealment Shadow Heart Art.
However, if one learned the Concealment Shadow Heart Art, the color of one's blood became a little murkier than others, and a peculiar poisonous fragrance would come from that blood. That was because, in order to learn the Concealment Shadow Heart Art, one had to continuously ingest the venom of a poisonous snake called the Eight-Call Viper, which lived only in Yunnan.
That Concealment Shadow Heart Art was the exclusive inner art that the members of the assassination group operated by the Hall of Gathering Evils, the Killing Shadow Squad, learned. That was because if one learned that inner art, one could raise one's cultivation power while not easily revealing one's presence to the outside.
It was one thing for the Killing Shadow Squad to appear here.
'But who in the world killed them?'
Could it really be that a ghost had appeared, as the rumors said?
'Ridiculous.'
How could there be such a thing as a ghost? Even if one did exist, would a ghost have nothing better to do than pick only these guys to kill? Weren't there a lot of spectators at the time? And besides, how many people are there in this city right now who deserve to be killed?
'Especially in the Martial Alliance, there are plenty of those kinds of guys.'
And the head of that Martial Alliance was someone who deserved to die a hundred times over.
That old bastard.
'It's definitely not a ghost. No.'
If he just brushed it off as a ghost, there would be no point in coming here to investigate. And that was not the case anyway.
'Heavenly Demon Castle? The chosen of the Extreme Yin Heavenly Slaughter Star? Or maybe....'
If they were killed in a counterattack after being attacked by the Killing Shadow Squad, then it might be the work of the orthodox path.
But even thinking that way felt somehow unsatisfying.
First of all, if that were the case, there would be no need to kill the enemy so secretly, and there would be no reason to hide this incident either.
It was someone who moved so secretly that they were thought to be a ghost. And yet, they used a very concise and fast sword art to assassinate the members of the Killing Shadow Squad.
There were many fast swordsmen in the orthodox path as well, but this felt different. Very different.
'How can there be this little emotion in a sword?'
A sword is the soul of a martial artist. When one swings a sword, one's soul is carried with it.
So anyone who has learned martial arts will inevitably leave traces of their soul in the traces of their martial arts. There are no exceptions.
There should not be.
But in these sword marks, there was no...
No soul.
'Shady. Very shady.'
That unidentified ghost was definitely someone who reeked.
"Then shall we go catch this ghost in earnest now?"
The Martial World Protection Unit member was still looking at him strangely, as if he did not understand what he was saying, but Weapon Eccentric did not care and quietly stood up from his seat.
"Whether it's a ghost or a monster, I don't know yet, but let's try to find it first."
With those words, he left Nangnang Tavern.
***
"M, monster!"
"Monster? Hey, that's a bit much, mister. Have you ever seen such a cute monster? Ah! Or maybe not? That ghost guy was pretty handsome too, probably? Then, well, I'll be a cute monster. Hehe."
Splat.
A childlike hand stretched forward, and the man's head melted away just like that. Blood, brain matter, and melted skull mixed together and became a strangely colored liquid.
Drip.
It flowed down and thoroughly soaked the man's limbs.
Thud.
After that, the headless corpse lonely fell to its knees.
"Watch your mouth. You'll get hit."
There was already no mouth left to get hit, and of course, no mouth left to be careful with either.
"Elder Noh."
"Yes, young lady."
At Yeon Yeong-ha's call, Elder Noh, who had been standing silently behind her, bowed.
"These guys taste like shit and are boring as hell too. What should we do?"
Yeon Yeong-ha said this while cutely pointing with her little finger at the swordsmen of the Great Sword Sect who were still pointing their blades at her from the front.
At that, Elder Noh bowed even deeper. So much so that if he could bow any further, it looked like he might crawl into the ground.
"The sect leader of this place has not come out yet, young lady."
"I guess that's true. I can feel a pretty good toy coming over right now. I guess that's the sect leader here, right?"
"That is probably the case."
"Then we should clean up the bugs first before we play properly, right?"
Bugs.
To her, the swordsmen of the Great Sword Sect were nothing more than bugs.
"Yah—! Die, you monster!"
One swordsman, whose pride had been hurt by her words, rushed forward and brought his blade down at Yeon Yeong-ha with all his true energy raised to the limit. Dozens of swordsmen had already turned into puddles of filthy water, but they still did not seem to know what kind of being Yeon Yeong-ha was, or what a terrifying monster she was.
"Tsk. At least you should be worth playing with if you want to play. This is like playing house, isn't it?"
Yeon Yeong-ha lightly flicked the little finger she had been using to scratch her ear.
Half of the rushing swordsman's head disappeared.
It was not cut, not melted, not crushed. Just... half of his head simply vanished.
"Uh..."
The swordsman let out a strange scream with his half-remaining mouth and tongue and then died on the spot.
"Tsk. You can't even block something like that, and you want to play with me?"
"..."
"Boring. Boring. This is so boring. Hurry up and come already."
Yeon Yeong-ha's eyes turned like obsidian, and a mad gleam shimmered in them.
And then.
Her fingers began to dance in the air like plucking the strings of a zither. In time with that, the bodies of the swordsmen began to melt one by one.
There were no screams, no resistance, no battle.
It was just a game.
As her hands embroidered the air as if playing with pebbles, the lives of the swordsmen vanished in heaps.
Even running away was useless. Her black aura had spread throughout every corner of the Great Sword Sect, and death soon became rampant.
It was just when, after a little more time passed, the only living beings left here would be Yeon Yeong-ha and Elder Noh.
Tap.
A middle-aged man appeared in the hall, holding a blade that was over eight feet long, longer and bigger than his own body.
It was Jang Pil-gang, the sect leader of the Great Sword Sect.
Although he was not a member of the Martial Alliance, he was one of the top experts in Henan Province. There was no precise information about his exact level of skill, but there were even those who said that he might be able to face off against a Hall Master-level expert of the Martial Alliance.
But right now, his expression was terribly stiff, and his face had turned completely ashen. His two hands holding the great blade were trembling so violently that it looked like he might drop it at any moment.
That was how much he could feel even just the edge of the bizarre aura Yeon Yeong-ha was emitting.
He looked around with a dark expression. Most of his dozens of disciples had already turned into puddles of blood. The remaining disciples had their limbs melted, or holes punched through their necks or faces, and were already crippled or about to die.
He hardened his face even more, looked at Yeon Yeong-ha, and spoke heavily.
"Can you not just let them go?"
He did not even ask why or who she was.
The moment he saw Yeon Yeong-ha's pitch-black eyes, like the bottom of the abyss, he knew very well that such questions were useless.
In fact, even the words he had just spoken would probably be useless, but as the sect leader, he had to say something. If he did not even say that much, the Great Sword Sect would disappear just like this without being able to do anything.
"Huh? Those things?"
Yeon Yeong-ha playfully pointed at the crippled swordsmen with her little finger.
"Yes. These people."
Those things, and these people.
It clearly showed the difference in perspective between Yeon Yeong-ha and Jang Pil-gang.
Yeon Yeong-ha shrugged and continued.
"Well? That would be a bit difficult. If they leave here, I might not be able to join the big game that finally opened up. Hehe."
"What should I do for you to let them go?"
Jang Pil-gang asked again without giving up.
At that, Yeon Yeong-ha revealed her neat teeth and smiled brightly.
"Simple."
"..."
"Die. If you die, I'll let them go."
"... That's not letting them go, is it?"
"Oh? Is it not? You fool. Hehehe."
She lightly flicked her own forehead and laughed. She looked exactly like a cute young girl, but no one here thought that sight was cute. Except for herself.
"Then just..."
Yeon Yeong-ha trailed off for a moment, then cutely licked her lips and said.
"Just die, then. Why live so complicatedly? Huh?"
"..."
That day, the Great Sword Sect was exterminated.
But that was only the beginning.
Noh Family Village, the Great Sword Sect, Yong Family Manor, Tianxing Dojo, and so on.
Within a week, several small and medium-sized sects that had built some reputation in Henan Province disappeared without a trace.
All while being buried under the huge topic of the All-Under-Heaven Youth Martial Arts Tournament.....
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