Mount Hua Sword Dragon.
Gam Woo-hyeon had never participated in the series of battles collectively known as the Subjugation of Demons and Heretics. Even though he was currently a middle-aged man, the war between the Martial Righteous Alliance and the Demonic Cult had taken place decades ago. He never had the opportunity to cross swords with the cultists himself.
Furthermore…
“You do not need to know.”
“…It is already in the past. Do not concern yourself with it unnecessarily.”
He never even had the opportunity to hear stories about it. However, perhaps because the prohibition only fueled his childish curiosity all the more, the young Gam Woo-hyeon relentlessly…
Truly relentlessly…
Searched for someone who would tell him those stories.
And eventually, he found someone.
“…What we saw that day when we ascended the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains was…”
The location was the Peak of Void. It was a space reserved for Daoists engrossed in closed-door cultivation, strictly prohibiting contact with the outside world for long periods. It was a type of forbidden ground where entry was heavily restricted.
“Pant…, pant…”
At the time, Gam Woo-hyeon was young, but his martial talent was exceptionally outstanding and he was highly intelligent. Despite the rugged terrain, slipping past the lax security to infiltrate the Peak of Void wasn’t too difficult a task.
“It was…”
The woman the young Gam Woo-hyeon met was a renowned martial artist who had fought in the war until the Demonic Cult’s final moments.
“…It was an absurd sight.”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon merely wanted to hear firsthand about the proud exploits and history of Mount Hua from a distant senior who had made a name for herself during the golden age of the Orthodox Factions.
However.
The words that spilled from her lips were completely different from his expectations.
“From the very entrance of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains… we realized something was terribly wrong.”
Deep in the darkness of the cave, only her hoarse voice echoed, sounding endlessly gloomy and unsettling to the young Gam Woo-hyeon.
“The glorious final battle we had imagined was nowhere to be found. We managed to capture a few stragglers who were fleeing, but…”
Heh heh heh. As if mocking something, her laughter rang out low and ominous.
“Even those few bastards had already lost their minds. They were completely insane.”
Suddenly…
“…Gasp?!”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon fell backward as her two hands shot out from the darkness.
“Hallucinations, auditory illusions, phantom pains, seizures, babbling incomprehensible nonsense without end…”
However.
She paid no mind to Gam Woo-hyeon’s reaction and continued speaking.
“The types of madness varied, but there was one common symptom among them all.”
Only then did the young Gam Woo-hyeon realize that her hands, reaching out towards him in the dark, were covered in wounds.
“Senior, your hands…?!”
Large and small wounds, still unhealed and improperly treated, oozed pus and blood. But what truly captured the young Gam Woo-hyeon’s attention were the countless overlapping scars beneath those fresh wounds.
“…The common symptom was self-harm.”
Goosebumps erupted all over Gam Woo-hyeon’s body.
“At first, the bastards made bizarre noises and started clawing and biting at their own bodies with their teeth and nails.”
Just like me, now.
She chuckled darkly from the shadows before continuing.
“We bound their entire bodies to prevent them from harming themselves further, but it was useless.”
“…Useless?”
If their entire bodies were bound, how could they possibly commit self-harm?
“The next day,” she answered the young Gam Woo-hyeon’s question. “When we went to the tents where we held them… we found every single one of them dead, their entire bodies contorted and twisted.”
“We asked the guards on duty, but they said no one dared to look inside all night because of the horrifying sounds of bones and flesh twisting, mixed with their screams.”
An image of an earthworm twisting and writhing to death under the scorching sun flashed through the young Gam Woo-hyeon’s mind.
“The command decided to ascend to the summit of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains. There was no other way.”
“The cultists had claimed there was a place at the summit they called the Divine Palace, but when we got there…”
In the darkness, the young Gam Woo-hyeon could faintly make out her hands slowly forming an ominous shape.
“…The only thing there was a colossal altar.”
“An altar…?”
“Yes. An altar so massive it couldn’t be taken in at a single glance.”
Her hands, marred with wounds and scars, recreated the shape of that sinister altar in the air.
“And as we approached… we realized that the entire colossal altar was made entirely of corpses.”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon gasped.
“Men and women, young and old. Hundreds. Thousands. Perhaps even tens of thousands of corpses were tangled and twisted together, forming a massive altar.”
“Between the two peaks where the sunlight didn’t reach… the sickening stench that twisted your brain. The unfathomable noise of countless swarming insects. The ominous cries of birds pecking at the corpses.”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon was too terrified to even open his mouth.
“Upon examining the corpses, we realized they had all died together on the exact same day, at the exact same time. It was a mass suicide.”
“Mass suicide…”
Repeating her words, Gam Woo-hyeon suddenly lifted his head.
“Wait a minute…” he asked. “If everyone died on the exact same day at the exact same time… then who built that altar?”
He was right.
If everyone on the besieged Hundred Thousand Great Mountains had died… who could have possibly stacked the corpses into an altar?
“I don’t know.”
However.
Despite saying she didn’t know, for some reason, her tone strongly implied that she did, in fact, know exactly what had happened.
“But we instinctively felt it.”
“…Excuse me?”
“Just like the stragglers we had captured…”
Her voice grew even more chilling in the darkness.
“Perhaps those people twisted and contorted their own bodies as they died, writhing and crawling over one another to build that altar themselves?”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon’s face turned completely pale, drained of all blood.
“The bastards made an altar out of themselves and offered themselves as a sacrifice.”
However.
“That day…!”
She paid no attention to the young Gam Woo-hyeon’s terrified state.
“Those bastards… they summoned ‘Entities’ whose names must never be spoken, dragging them here from the distant outer cosmos…!”
Her testimony, steeped in incomprehensible madness, continued.
“Drawn by the sacrifice of tens of thousands, those things coiled themselves in the deepest depths of our world, coveting, craving, and devouring our spiritual energy and reason—!”
“Woo-hyeon!”
The one who saved the young Gam Woo-hyeon, who was practically suffocating under her words, was…
His master, the Sect Leader of the Huashan Sect.
“Get away from that child this instant!”
The Sect Leader roughly tore the young Gam Woo-hyeon away from her.
Only then did the young Gam Woo-hyeon realize…
Unbeknownst to him…
Her emaciated body had coiled around his entire figure like a thick rope.
And Gam Woo-hyeon could feel the horrifying sensation and the metallic stench of her blood and pus clinging to his entire body.
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
“It was a lie…?!”
Having washed away the blood and pus several times and changed into new clothes, the young Gam Woo-hyeon sat down and asked the Sect Leader.
“Are you saying everything the senior told me was a lie?!”
“Rather than a lie…”
The Sect Leader shook his head with a grave expression.
“It would be more accurate to say that due to her madness, she herself doesn’t even know what she is saying or doing.”
“Then, the stories I heard from her…!”
“They are merely fabrications created by her jumbled memories and madness.”
“But…!”
The Sect Leader cut him off firmly.
“I was there too.”
“As you know, it wasn’t just me; countless martial artists from our Mount Hua were present.”
He added, gently pushing the agitated young Gam Woo-hyeon, who had half-risen from his seat, back down.
“And it wasn’t just us. Countless martial artists from the Martial Righteous Alliance were there together. Even Grand Strategist Sima was present.”
“If all of them saw everything she claimed to have seen, how could you have not heard even a rumor about such a story?”
“That’s…”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon couldn’t find the words and looked up at the Sect Leader with confused eyes. However, as always…
From his master’s deeply sunken eyes, the young Gam Woo-hyeon couldn’t read a single emotion.
“But…”
When the young Gam Woo-hyeon still seemed unconvinced…
Sigh…
The Sect Leader let out a deep sigh, recited a True Word mantra, and spoke.
“I intended to tell you when you were older.”
As the young Gam Woo-hyeon straightened his posture, the Sect Leader began to speak.
“If there is any truth in her story, it is that the Demonic Cultists chose to commit mass suicide on the exact same day, at the exact same time. That is…”
The Sect Leader added briefly.
“It is not only the Demonic Cult, but the ultimate fate chosen by the majority of pseudo-religions that delude the people.”
“…If that’s the case.”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon swallowed dryly and asked.
“What about the colossal altar made of corpses…?”
“There was no such thing.”
“Then…?”
The Sect Leader answered with a dark expression.
“We merely discovered countless corpses scattered all over the vast area the Cultists called the Divine Palace.”
His expression grew even more bitter.
“I wonder if it was truly necessary for even the young children to die along with them…”
“Then what about the prisoners she said died in bizarre, contorted positions…?”
“The martial artists standing guard tortured them to death overnight.”
“At the time, the war had dragged on, and resentment towards the Demonic Cultists had reached its absolute peak.”
The Sect Leader continued with a bitter expression.
“…It was also to extract information about the enemy.”
“That’s…!”
The young Gam Woo-hyeon felt that the Sect Leader’s explanation made perfect logical sense. However, at the same time…
For some reason…
He also felt a bizarre sense of incongruity deep within his heart. But at the time…
His thoughts couldn’t go any further.
“Since the topic has been brought up, this works out well.”
As if to change the mood…
“It’s a bit early, but…”
His master slapped his knee and said.
“Since it has come to this, starting today, let us study in detail and thoroughly the Demonic Arts of the Demonic Cultists and how to counter them.”
“Excuse me?!”
And…
Decades passed since then.
The memory of the woman he met in the cave that day was buried deep within Gam Woo-hyeon’s mind.
[Surely you must have heard the whispers leading you to this truth?]
Presently.
Having remained frozen in terror for a while without showing any reaction, the middle-aged Mount Hua Sword Dragon Gam Woo-hyeon finally parted his lips.
“That day…”
He spoke, dredging up fragments of memories that had been weathering away deep within his mind.
“I finally understand why I felt such a profound sense of incongruity when my master spoke to me.”
Mount Hua Sword Dragon Gam Woo-hyeon lifted his bowed head and looked directly at Grand Strategist Sima.
“The madness and darkness I felt in that senior’s words… were truly genuine.”
It had nothing to do with whether it was historically factual or not. The young Gam Woo-hyeon had felt the raw truth in her words at the time.
“And… having encountered the Demonic Cult personally this time… I know it even more clearly now.”
Gam Woo-hyeon declared firmly.
“Your whisper, Grand Strategist Sima, was a plausible imitation… but in the end, it was nothing more than a cheap imitation.”
After a suffocating moment passed…
“…Huuu. I see.”
Grand Strategist Sima let out a short sigh.
Unbeknownst to Gam Woo-hyeon, the oppressive darkness that seemed to be suffocating him from all sides was completely gone. The monstrous presence of Grand Strategist Sima had vanished, leaving him looking like nothing more than an elderly Daoist with a transcendent, immortal-like demeanor.
“I thought I replicated it as closely as possible. But, as expected…”
Grand Strategist Sima chuckled faintly and shrugged his shoulders.
“It seems you can’t perfectly mimic the real thing.”
“Haaa…”
As Grand Strategist Sima sat down next to him and said that, Mount Hua Sword Dragon Gam Woo-hyeon let out a massive sigh of relief.
“Truthfully…”
Sending a faint smile to Gam Woo-hyeon, Grand Strategist Sima warmed his hands by the bonfire and switched back to close-range telepathy.
[I had previously heard too many unbelievable, bizarre reports and accusations in Luoyang, so I was making my own preparations and countermeasures.]
[In Luoyang, you say…?]
Come to think of it…
The Sword Clan’s Eulogist Scholar and the Grand Young Master had both said similar things.
[After that, the Demon Subjugation and Heresy Annihilation Squad tore Luoyang apart so thoroughly that just cleaning up their mess made me sweat buckets.]
[The Demon Subjugation and Heresy Annihilation Squad…]
During the war with the Demonic Cult…
They were the ones who always stood at the absolute vanguard. Gam Woo-hyeon was well aware of their past glory and their current infamy.
[Did they also participate in this war?]
[No.]
Grand Strategist Sima picked up a poker to stoke the bonfire and shook his head.
[They are individuals who couldn’t care less about power struggles or political situations.]
[I… see…]
[The Demonic Cult, in this political climate…]
At Gam Woo-hyeon’s somewhat regretful response, Grand Strategist Sima hummed deeply, nodding as if empathizing.
[Indeed, since the situation has devolved to this point… it might have been better to drag those madmen here, even if it meant putting a leash on them.]
As Gam Woo-hyeon also hummed in agreement and closed his mouth, Grand Strategist Sima transmitted a telepathic message in a subtle tone.
[…By the way, you.]
[Yes…?]
Turning his head subconsciously, Gam Woo-hyeon…
Caught the triumphant smile spreading across Grand Strategist Sima’s lips.
[So, it’s true that you encountered the Demonic Cult during this battle.]
“…?!”
Oh, crap.
Gam Woo-hyeon froze completely on the spot.