Chapter 1241

"So the rumors that your wisdom surpasses your martial skill were true."

Taoist Heo Ju, or rather, the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal, nodded.

"I have no choice but to admit it."

One of the Ten Great Immortals, said to possess the innate ability to distinguish evil and peer into the human heart, had finally revealed herself.

'So that is her true appearance.'

Every immortal he had met possessed an otherworldly bearing.

Bu Eunseol had expected the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal to transform once her identity was revealed, exchanging those shabby Taoist robes for palace attire as splendid as snow blossoms.

Yet the disheveled woman in her thirties, with her plain but neat features, was her true appearance after all.

"Did you deliberately approach and help me because you wanted to ask a favor?"

"That's right."

The Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal nodded readily.

"People in the martial world say the Martial Soul Command Lord always repays his debts."

Had she suddenly appeared before him, proclaimed herself one of the Ten Great Immortals, and asked him for a favor, he naturally would not have agreed.

Bu Eunseol smiled and nodded.

"Tell me what you need. Anything at all."

"Kill my senior brother."

At the abrupt request, Bu Eunseol furrowed his brow.

An immortal was asking him to kill someone?

"Don't worry. I would never ask you to do something that would harm you."

The Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal lowered her voice.

"My senior brother is one of the Seven Great Demon Ancestors and a disciple of the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord... He is destined to become the True Demon Palace's next Death Medicine Head."

Bu Eunseol's eyes widened.

The ruler of the True Demon Palace's Poison Hall, whom his grandfather had once defeated, was the demonic spirit of poison itself.

The Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal's senior brother was that Poison Spirit Demonic Lord's disciple?

After staring blankly for a moment, Bu Eunseol asked bluntly, "How can your senior brother be one of the Seven Great Demon Ancestors?"

"We studied under the same master from childhood. Then, when we were around sixteen, the blood of the Ten Great Immortals manifested in me, while the blood of the Seven Great Demon Ancestors manifested in him."

"The Seven Great Demon Ancestors..."

"He is the Avici Demon Ancestor."

The Avici Demon Ancestor.

He was said to turn ordinary people into vicious evil spirits, and once his true body was complete, he would become absolutely invincible.

And such a being was the disciple of the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord, the progenitor of all poison?

He was a formidable opponent against whom even Bu Eunseol could not expect an easy victory.

'By now, the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord must have become an incredible master as well.'

He might have fled after failing to overcome Bu Eunseol's grandfather, but he remained a senior figure of the True Demon Palace and the progenitor of poison.

If Bu Eunseol laid a hand on his disciple, the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord would surely move as well.

Just as the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal had said, this was by no means an easy request.

"Very well."

Yet Bu Eunseol nodded without hesitation.

"Where is the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord?"

He was the sort of man who would repay a single sip of water by digging a well.

Not only had he accepted a dangerous request that might cost him his life without hesitation, he even intended to eliminate the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord before the man could harm her.

"Why are you asking about him?"

"Wouldn't that ensure there are no problems afterward?"

Bu Eunseol spoke with complete confidence.

"Besides, I owe him a debt of my own."

The Poison Spirit Demonic Lord had attacked his grandfather and cost the One-Eyed Immortal an eye with his poison.

He was a great enemy Bu Eunseol would have to face eventually, so he intended to kill him as well.

"It would be even better if you could tell me where the True Demon Palace is."

Understanding his intent, the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal shook her head.

"Even I don't know where it is. But... you must not kill the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord."

Then she said something unexpected.

"If you do, the Returning to One Realm Lord will intervene."

"What do you mean?"

"I heard the Returning to One Realm Lord has survived until now only because of the antidotes the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord gives him at regular intervals."

Then came an even more shocking revelation.

"His decaying body has endured this long only because the Poison Essence supplied by the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord is barely keeping him alive."

Bu Eunseol looked as though he had been struck in the back of the head.

The Returning to One Realm Lord's body was rotting, and only the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord's power was keeping him alive?

"If his flesh is decaying, does that mean he is also a Half-Spirit?"

"I heard he was poisoned."

She spoke quietly.

"That is why he spends most of each day in the Land of the Limitless. Unless he remains somewhere where time is distorted, he cannot stop his body from decomposing."

"Decomposing?"

"He was afflicted by the Rotten and Decaying Poison."

Her voice remained composed.

"He was poisoned by it in his youth, and the proper time for treatment passed. He has suffered from it ever since."

It was astonishing.

There might be an ideal time to purge any poison, but how could a master of his caliber fail to neutralize it and allow his own body to rot?

"If you target the Poison Spirit Demonic Lord, the Returning to One Realm Lord will surely become enraged and try to kill you. There is no need to let matters grow so grave."

'In his youth.'

Bu Eunseol's thoughts raced.

"Was he ambushed by one of the Eighteen Souls of Light when he was young?"

Every one of the Eighteen Souls of Light employed the same demonic sword arts, genuine Sahyang hidden weapon mechanisms, and the Rotten and Decaying Poison.

In that case, could the Returning to One Realm Lord have been defeated or ambushed by one of the Eighteen Souls of Light in his youth?

"I don't know. Everything I know about the Returning to One Realm Lord came from my senior brother."

The Returning to One Realm Lord had suddenly changed ten years ago.

But she knew neither why it had happened nor how he had been replaced.

'Then...'

Bu Eunseol clenched his fist.

The current Returning to One Realm Lord was dying as his body rotted away.

Was that why he always wore that strange suit of iron armor?

Had he continued forcing Bu Eunseol to grow because he wanted to entrust the future to him?

'Because I am Grandfather's grandson?'

The Returning to One Realm Lord was likely his grandfather's blood relative.

Their features looked far too alike.

Then was he preparing for his own imminent death by entrusting Bu Eunseol with the task of avenging his father?

'It makes sense.'

This deduction explained the Returning to One Realm Lord's cryptic behavior until now, including why he had ultimately spared Bu Eunseol and even strengthened his martial arts.

'But...'

Bu Eunseol shook his head.

His instincts told him this was not the complete answer.

'If that were the Returning to One Realm Lord's intention, I would surely have sensed some sign of it no matter how well he tried to hide it.'

The Returning to One Realm Lord was a man marching toward destruction.

He was absolutely not someone capable of such tender concern.

"What is it?"

The Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal, who had been watching Bu Eunseol, suddenly opened her eyes wide.

"Is there something on my face?"

Unaware that Bu Eunseol had become lost in thought, she assumed he was staring at her.

At that moment, a strange light faintly flowed through his eyes.

It was as though, merely by observing the speed of her breathing, her expression, gaze, body temperature, posture, and the tension in her muscles, he could transcend intellect and knowledge and use superhuman insight to peer secretly into the depths of her spirit.

It was a habit strikingly similar to that of the Heavenly Demon Emperor.

'So that was it.'

Through the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal's physical reactions, Bu Eunseol had just discovered one more truth.

"No. I merely remembered an urgent matter I must handle."

Concealing his thoughts, he changed the subject.

"Would you mind if I dealt with it now?"

"Of course not."

"Thank you."

Bu Eunseol gave a piercing whistle.

Fweeeee!

Some time later, a messenger hawk descended onto his shoulder.

Rip. Fwoosh.

He burned a strip of cloth and transmitted a cipher to the Death Spirit Corps.

"I already have an agreement with Sado Muryeong to eliminate the Seven Great Demon Ancestors."

He smiled at the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal.

"I will deal with him."

"Truly? Thank you."

When the Farseeing Mind-Mirror Immortal smiled brightly, Bu Eunseol asked with a confident expression, "Where is the Avici Demon Ancestor?"

* * *

At the edge of a mountain village, a stone-walled house stood surrounded by a pine forest.

The faint scents of drying calligraphy and ink always drifted over its wall.

The man who lived there was famous among the villagers as Master Seokgye.

Each morning, he ground ink and practiced calligraphy.

When the sun rose high, he changed brushes and began to paint.

His writing and paintings were so vivid they seemed alive, and they sold for a considerable price.

As the sun began to set, Master Seokgye headed for the marketplace.

He walked along the narrow, dusty road for some time before stopping at a butcher shop rank with the smell of blood.

"Welcome, Master."

The butcher, Jang Sam, recognized Master Seokgye and bowed deeply.

"Would you like your usual?"

"Please."

"Just a moment."

With practiced hands, Jang Sam carved the meat from the bone.

The slice of steel through flesh and the dull thuds of meat separating from bone rang out at a steady rhythm.

His face was laden with exhaustion.

Sweat beaded on his brow, and the marks of sleepless nights were plain around his eyes.

"I truly envy you."

Jang Sam muttered as he wrapped the meat.

"You write and paint... If only I could live as you do, Master."

A deep sigh seeped into his voice.

At daybreak, he went to the slaughterhouse and killed animals.

Then he prepared meat until sunset.

When he returned home with his entire body reeking of blood and beasts, only his wife's nagging awaited him.

―'How are we supposed to live when this is all you bring home?'

The reproach was repeated every night, and Jang Sam's back had bent little by little beneath it.

"Forgive me for prattling on."

A neatly trimmed slab of crimson meat now rested on the chopping block.

"Here you are."

Master Seokgye silently accepted the parcel, then suddenly studied Jang Sam's face.

"Is something wrong?"

When Master Seokgye's eyes glinted, Jang Sam gave an awkward smile.

But Master Seokgye examined every corner of his face with a grave expression.

"I think you should go home early today."

"Pardon?"

"There is a red line across your forehead."

Jang Sam instinctively touched his brow, but felt nothing.

"A red aura hangs over the space between your brows. It appears calamity has visited your household."

"Ha! You know how to read faces as well, Master?"

Jang Sam shook his head.

"I don't believe in prophetic theories or physiognomy."

Then he laughed heartily.

"There's calamity in my house every day. What else would you call the earful I get whenever I go home?"

Master Seokgye took the meat and continued quietly.

"Even so, it would do no harm to search your home from top to bottom just once."

There was a strange weight in his voice.

He turned and left the butcher shop.

Master Seokgye's shadow stretched long as he walked away with his back to the sun.

When a passing breeze fluttered his robes, Jang Sam had the illusion that something long, like a newborn child's umbilical cord, trailed from his back.

Jang Sam stared after him blankly, then shook his head and returned to his work.

But his busy hands kept stopping.

Master Seokgye's words had lodged in a corner of his mind.

"A red line? Calamity?"

Each repetition made his heart sink and sent an inexplicable unease washing over him.

Scramble.

In the end, he seized his butcher's knife and bolted away.

"Jang Sam, where are you going?"

A customer heading for the shop recognized him and called out in alarm, but Jang Sam did not answer.

He raced through narrow alleys and leaped across a stream before bending over, panting for breath.

At last, his home came into view.

Its thatched roof was old, its mud walls cracked, and its gate creaked in the wind.

After catching his breath for a long while, he carefully pushed the gate open.

No one was in the courtyard.

Only the clothes hanging out to dry fluttered in the breeze.

There was no sound from the kitchen.

No smoke rose from the evening meal.

Then he heard something strange from the bedroom.

A low moan.

Harsh breathing.

Jang Sam stopped breathing.

His entire body seemed to stiffen.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he approached the bedroom and eased the door open a crack.

And he saw them.

Inside the room on that sweltering summer afternoon, sunlight filtered through the paper window and stained everything yellow.

His wife was entwined with a strange man.

Sweat-slick skin.

Disheveled clothing.

Their frantic gasps.

Oblivious to Jang Sam's arrival, they were lost in each other.

'That whore!'

Jang Sam's body trembled.

Surging bloodlust engulfed him.

Warm blood sprayed across his face every day.

He heard death screams as he hacked through animals' necks and endlessly rummaged through their flesh.

He could endure a butcher's life only because he had been born with an enormous reserve of bloodlust.

'Ugh...'

When it felt as if the killing intent might make his body explode, he tightened his grip on the butcher's knife.

'I can endure it.'

'I can endure.'

Sunlight flashed across the keen edge.

Jang Sam clenched his teeth, struggling to regain control, but his body continued to shudder.

'You knew she had a wandering eye before you married her, didn't you?'

He had known it even then.

There had simply been no clear evidence, so he had buried his suspicions again and again.

'Just live as you have until now...'

'Pretend you know nothing.'

He soothed himself and suppressed his bloodlust.

Just as he exhaled slowly and began to turn away, Master Seokgye's words returned to him.

―'It would do no harm to search your home from top to bottom just once.'

'Search the house?'

He slowly turned his head and cautiously looked into the child's room.

At this hour, the baby would normally be wailing from hunger, yet he had heard no crying.

"No."

He opened the door, but the child was not there.

Only the bedding lay in disarray.

'My baby.'

His heart pounded madly.

He tore through the house: the kitchen, the wooden porch, the backyard.

Then a faint sound came from the storehouse.

He kicked open its door.

Sunlight entered through one narrow gap and illuminated the dust.

In one corner, among empty sacks piled in disarray, lay his child.

The tiny body sprawled limp on the floor.

Dried white foam crusted the baby's lips.

The face was pale, the eyes half-open, the little hands slack.

"B-baby."

A groan escaped him.

He fell to his knees and lifted the child with trembling hands.

The cold, rigid body had no pulse.

No breath.

"Wh-what..."

The storehouse was suffocating in the summer heat.

The baby must have cried.

His wife had surely locked the child inside for being too noisy, then forgotten.

No, she had not forgotten.

She simply had not cared.

"Heh... heh heh..."

Something hot ran from Jang Sam's eyes.

He could not tell whether it was tears, sweat, or blood.

The tiny body in his arms would never cry, smile, or breathe again.

An animalistic groan rumbled from his throat.

"U-ugh..."

Every blood vessel in his body felt ready to burst, and his vision turned scarlet.

Ssk.

Jang Sam gently laid the child on the floor and slowly rose.

Bang!

He kicked open the bedroom door.

The man and woman spun around in shock.

"Y-you..."

His wife's face drained white.

The man beside her hurriedly tried to gather his clothes.

Jang Sam said nothing.

The butcher's knife was already in his hand.

"We... we can explain!"

Flash!

The blade split the air, and a terrible scream erupted.

Blood fountained from the man's chest.

He collapsed to the floor.

"Spare me! Please spare me!"

His wife shrieked.

But Jang Sam worked the blade in a steady rhythm, his face blank.

His movements were precise and practiced, as though he were carving meat at the slaughterhouse.

Blood sprayed everywhere: across the walls, the ceiling, the paper windows.

The entire room slowly turned red.

The screams weakened into moans, then ragged gasps, and at last, silence.

Jang Sam stopped.

Two shapes lay on the floor.

Neither could still be called human.

He stood over them with the knife in his hand, drenched from head to toe in blood.

"Nicely carved."

A voice came from behind him.

Jang Sam turned.

Master Seokgye stood in the doorway.

Jang Sam did not know when he had arrived or how he had entered.

The man merely stood there with the evening sun at his back.

"Excellent work, indeed."

Master Seokgye nodded, satisfaction on his face.

"Just as I expected, you handled them cleanly."

A peculiar smile touched his lips as he spoke in a low voice.

"Would you give me three catties of the tastiest cuts?"

Jang Sam stared vacantly for a moment.

Then he nodded, walked to his wife's fallen corpse, and raised his butcher's knife.

"No. Not that."

Master Seokgye's eyes gleamed.

"Wouldn't the most delicious meat be the freshest cut of all?"

His gaze changed.

Those eyes were no longer human.

They were deep, dark, and cold, like staring into an abyss.

Jang Sam's eyes widened.

In that instant, he understood everything.

His wife's betrayal.

His child's death.

The entire scene had been a delusion he had always entertained.

Crick.

He turned his head.

The one lying dead beside his wife was not a strange man, but his own child.

His wife had fallen asleep with their beloved child beside her, and he had butchered them both while lost in a delusion.

"Heh... heh heh heh."

For some reason, laughter spilled from his lips.

After giggling for a long while, Jang Sam slowly placed the blade against his thigh.

It did not hurt.

He could feel nothing.

Crimson blood poured out as he sliced away a piece of flesh.

"No. There is one cut that must be fresh if it is to be eaten."

Only then did Jang Sam understand what Master Seokgye wanted, and he nodded.

He placed the knife's tip against his chest and pushed it between his ribs.

Thud.

Then he pulled something out.

"Here you are."

With trembling hands, Jang Sam used the last of his strength to hold it out.

Master Seokgye smiled and placed it in the cloth he had brought with him.

In that moment, Jang Sam's sins flashed through his mind like a lantern revolving before death.

He had not suspected his wife of adultery from the beginning.

He had merely felt that everything he possessed was more than he deserved.

He could not believe that a woman so beautiful had married a lowly butcher like him.

The problem was that, with time, his sense of unworthiness, his good fortune, had gradually transformed into anxiety.

―'How are we supposed to live on this little?'

Poverty.

A life from which the stench of blood never faded.

His wife had failed to understand the brutal days he endured and complained constantly.

In truth, all wives habitually nagged their husbands from time to time.

―'She must complain so much because she is having an affair.'

But the suspicious Jang Sam had convinced himself that adultery was the cause.

―'She grows more dissatisfied by the day because she compares me to another man.'

Once certain of that, he imagined it every day.

His wife abandoning their child to carry on with her lover.

Him discovering them, killing the adulterous pair in glorious revenge, then carving the flesh from their bones.

Thump.

As Jang Sam retraced his life and his poisonous suspicions, he finally breathed his last.

His eyes remained fixed on Master Seokgye and the bundle in his hand.

"Do you resent me?"

Master Seokgye clicked his tongue as he looked down at Jang Sam's corpse.

"I merely showed you your delusions a little more clearly."

He continued in a low voice.

"The fantasies you desired each day, the ones you saw in your dreams."

In truth, it was Jang Sam who had wanted to abandon the child.

It was Jang Sam who had wished for his wife to become depraved.

He had believed his wife and child were the cause of his grinding poverty.

Whenever exhaustion overwhelmed him and the child's piercing cries rang through the house, his irritation had swelled into killing intent.

"You were fated to fall and become a slaughter demon long ago, had it not been for your wife."

Jang Sam had been born with the blood of a slaughter demon.

Only after meeting his wife and fathering a child had he learned to suppress his bloodlust.

Master Seokgye had seen through him and merely allowed him to become the slaughter demon he was meant to be.

"Nothing is more amusing than corrupting humans and making evil spirits of them."

A devil who committed endless evil like the torments of Avici Hell, defiled human souls, and devoured their flesh.

The worst of the Demon Ancestors, utterly beyond redemption.

That was Master Seokgye.

No, the Avici Demon Ancestor.

Thoom.

The sky suddenly darkened.

The evening glow vanished in an instant as storm clouds gathered.

They resembled wings spreading across the heavens, or perhaps the form of a dragon summoning a tempest.

The Avici Demon Ancestor looked up at the sky and twisted his lips.

"So you came after all."

There was not the slightest surprise in his voice.

Rumble.

As the dragon shape descended to earth, it transformed in an instant into a shadow clad in black.

A cold gaze.

Firmly pressed lips.

Deep, profound eyes visible between strands of long hair.

It was Bu Eunseol.

Had the scene around him provoked his fury?

Shudder.

A faint flash rippled through Bu Eunseol's eyes, and his fingers trembled almost imperceptibly.

At the same time, a thin ripple and minute shards of light skimmed across the Silent Tiger Soul Sword.

The Avici Demon Ancestor noticed none of it.

With a leisurely expression, he spoke.

"The greatest genius under heaven."

"The next foremost figure of the Demonic Path."

He spread his arms and continued calmly.

"What an honor that the Martial Soul Command Lord came all this way to find me."