Chapter 158: Salvation (3)

In this cult-like atmosphere, Il-mok found himself receiving everyone's adoration in place of his Master, and he felt like he was going insane.

‘Fuck. It's barely coming out anymore...’

If water had been gushing out like a waterfall, that would've been one thing. But watching this pathetic trickle that looked like someone pissing droplets made him want to crawl into a hole, especially with everyone celebrating like this.

"Please save us!"

"May we not be blinded by evil!!"

The villagers kept directing their prayers toward him, and Il-mok couldn't bring himself to stop the spell. He'd already gathered all the water qi flowing around the area, there was nothing left to work with.

‘Just a little more. Just a bit longer...’

He had no choice but to force the remaining qi from his dantian to spread wider, trying to grab every water qi from even farther away. But for Il-mok, who was basically a beginner when it came to sorceries, this was ridiculously difficult.

Drip… drip… drip…

He managed to barely extend his range and keep the spell going a little longer, but now there wasn't even a drop of water energy left to squeeze out of the surroundings.

Sensing the crisis, Il-mok casually glanced around.

What he saw were the village residents fervently praising him, and the White Sparrow Corps members and Demonic Way Hall students watching him with smug, proud expressions, like they'd accomplished something themselves.

‘Do something, you useless bastards!’

It pissed him off. Why was he the only one suffering through this?

It reminded him of his civil servant days during those work assignment meetings. That damn team leader would praise him for doing good work and then dump all the new department assignments on him.

But the most infuriating part wasn't even that asshole team leader who passed the buck.

It was those damn coworkers who'd cheer him on from the sidelines, never once offering to help.

Right now, these demon cult bastards cheering him on looked exactly like those faces from back then.

"Haah..."

With a deep sigh from Il-mok, the stream of water flowing from his hands began to weaken. The already thin trickle quickly broke off, leaving behind only a pathetic final gurgle.

"G-God...?"

The villagers who'd been bowing reverently looked up at Il-mok with confused expressions, while the cultists stared at him with panic in their eyes.

Their faces all said, Why'd you stop already?.

Il-mok turned toward them and spoke in a calm tone.

"This method has its limits."

"So, you're saying we should just go back? How can we leave these poor people behind?"

The Corps Leader asked despite having done absolutely nothing himself. But Il-mok cut him off before he could speak again..

"I'm not saying we should give up. I've thought of another way."

He meant it.

‘I won’t be the only one who's gonna bust my ass here.’

While scanning the faces of those who were just watching him do all the work, a brilliant idea had come to him.

"If there's a well here, that means there's a water vein running through this well, right? So we just need to follow that water vein to find a spot where more water has collected, then dig there."

It was something he'd figured out while forcing himself to extend his spell’s range.

He couldn't sense any water qi in the air, but he could feel a dense flow connected to the well down below. Not scattered water qi, but an actual water vein that was already flowing as water.

Adding that to his desire to put those gawking bastards to work, he had arrived at this conclusion.

‘I'm gonna find the water vein and make these bastards dig!’

Filled with the thought of putting the cultists to work, Il-mok strode forward with purpose.

"This way."

Following the flow of the water vein he'd sensed earlier, he used his lightness skill to travel with his entourage and several warriors from the branch following behind.

On top of that, the villagers who'd heard the earlier conversation also started chasing after them.

With over two hundred people following behind Il-mok, he stopped and closed his eyes.

He sharpened his qi perception again and tracked the flow of water energy deep underground.

After following the flow for a while, he'd move again, repeating this process.

Following human water-vein-detector Il-mok's guidance, they traveled for quite some time.

By the time the sunset sky had turned completely black.

"Here!"

Il-mok found a spot where the water vein flow was pretty strong and pointed at the ground beneath his feet.

"I think it's about fifteen meters deep."

In modern times, this might have been manageable. But without an excavator, digging a 15-meter-deep hole with primitive tools or bare hands was an act of madness.

But Il-mok didn't care.

After all, digging wasn't his job.

"From now on, you can use your martial arts to dig."

There were at least seventy people here who could exert superhuman strength.

Hearing Il-mok's instruction, several White Sparrow Corps members and Demonic Way’s students frowned.

"You want us to use our Demonic Arts to dig a pit?"

"...It's not even killing evildoers, just digging dirt."

Before the White Sparrow Corps leader could scold them with a stern expression—

"What did you just say?"

Il-mok spoke first in an icy tone.

"Did you just say it's 'just digging a pit'?"

"That's right, Disciple Il-mok. Anyone can do that kind of work, can't they?"

When one White Sparrow Corps member answered confidently, Il-mok clicked his tongue and replied.

"If you really think that way, then you need to go back and reread the scriptures. What's the most important doctrine of our Divine Cult? It is to watch over the evil that dwells within humans so that it does not run rampant. We punish villains to save the common people, not just because they are steeped in evil and run wild, but because through them, new evil is born."

Maybe because the Heavenly Demon's disciple had brought up doctrine, everyone quietly shut their mouths and focused on his words.

"So what about our current situation? The well water is drying up and everyone's suffering from thirst. If more time passes and that well runs completely dry, the people living here will become evildoers capable of anything to quench their thirst. I'm not saying they are at fault. As it is written in the scriptures, there is evil within every human heart. In that case, what should we, as believers of the Divine Cult, do?"

The White Sparrow Corps Leader answered that question.

"Before they are consumed by evil, we must solve the problem that could be the cause. In other words, we must create a new well to quench their thirst."

He'd known this fact too, which was why he'd been planning to severely punish the members and students who'd just complained.

Since Il-mok had stepped up to scold them first, he was just watching for now.

Separate from answering Il-mok's question, the White Sparrow Corps leader was inwardly impressed.

‘Even among the guys in the White Sparrow Corps, some are short-sighted, but how can someone so young have such deep thoughts...’

Regardless of his martial achievements, he'd been feeling oddly uncomfortable seeing him always napping and obsessing over baths. But now the White Sparrow Corps Leader was finally certain. The Eighth Disciple was the 'real deal.'

The other cultists who heard the exchange between the White Sparrow Corps Leader and Il-mok expressed admiration or shame.

Scanning their varied faces, Il-mok thought, ‘Trying to weasel your way out of this?’

Il-mok had never actually had any deep thoughts about this.

His reason for discussing doctrine wasn't anything special.

When it came to putting cultists to work, there was no more convenient tool than doctrine.

‘Doctrine can be twisted however you want anyway.’

With the right verbal packaging, you could create justification for anything. That was the power of cult doctrine.

And his plan worked perfectly.

"Now that you understand how important digging a well is, get started immediately!"

As soon as the White Sparrow Corps Leader's stern command fell, the cultists began digging with all their might using their martial arts.

"Uhahaaa!!"

BOOM!!

Every time they swung their swords, sabers, spears, or bare hands, the ground exploded and sand dust scattered everywhere.

"Now, now. Everyone step back."

Il-mok quickly turned around and led the villagers who'd come to watch further back.

‘Ugh. All that sand is no different from a sandstorm.’

He had no intention of getting covered in that crap.

After moving a good distance away with the villagers, Il-mok covered his mouth and nose with a cloth and kept giving orders.

"There are many of you, so dig in shifts. Start with Team One, and once your internal energy is depleted, fall back to recover with meditation and then switch out."

"Keep proper spacing so you don't interfere with the person next to you."

Following Il-mok's instructions, the human excavators soon established a system and began digging down systematically.

The speed was incredible.

The cultists attacked the ground like it was their mortal enemy, unleashing their full power and turning the earth into a wasteland.

If they'd been ordinary people, they would've been swept up and seriously injured, but the workers digging now weren't ordinary.

"Hah!"

When the ground suddenly collapsed, the cultists used their movement techniques to easily escape the flow.

"Hahaha! This might actually be good training for our lightness skills!"

As expected of martial fanatics, they were now treating even digging a hole as a form of training.

Meanwhile, the White Sparrow Corps Leader who was watching the labor alongside him, casually asked Il-mok a question.

"Won't you join them in digging, Disciple Il-mok?"

"I used too much energy finding the water vein, so I need some rest." Il-mok lied without his expression changing one bit.

The White Sparrow Corps Leader, having already confirmed Il-mok's devotion, accepted his words without the slightest suspicion.

"That's true. Don't feel too bad about it. Just finding the water vein was a great deed for the people."

"Haha. I'm fine, Leader. I just hope the well gets finished quickly."

"Hahaha. Just trust in our corpsmen and your fellow students."

The innocent White Sparrow Corps leader, thinking Il-mok must be disappointed he couldn't help the people more, turned to look at those digging.

But even with human excavators, digging to a depth of fifteen meters was bound to take quite a while.

Because the ground was unstable, they couldn't dig straight down. They had to dig in the shape of an inverted cone, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

On top of that...

BOOM!!

After digging more than nine meters down, the sounds coming from the pit changed dramatically.

Once they'd cleared away all the surface sand, the real bedrock was finally starting to show itself. They were now in a situation where they had to literally carve through rock to dig deeper.

But the cultists didn't care.

"Protect your weapons with qi!"

They poured out streams of demonic energy, forming Sword Qi or Saber Qi to slice through the bottom like cutting radish.

Il-mok, who was watching the scene from afar with enhanced vision, gave additional instructions.

"Use the cut stones to build walls! The center has become narrow, so three of you will break through the bottom, five will clear the rocks and build the walls, and eight will carry sand to prevent the ground from collapsing! Sixteen to a team, four teams will dig in rotation!"

Il-mok just gave orders without lifting a finger.

As the pit got deeper and wider, and they had to break through stone bedrock, the cultists' internal energy drained incredibly fast.

The four teams rotated constantly at about thirty-minute intervals, and the cultists who emerged from the pit looked absolutely ragged.

It was quite a contrast to Il-mok, who stood there casually with his arms crossed, giving orders.

And so more time passed. By the time the pit had become so deep that the bottom was no longer visible from the outside…

"Haaa!"

Dokgo Pae was continuously swinging his greatsword in the center.

"Don't underestimate the Dokgo’s Nine Swords!"

He was spouting nonsense like the stone chunks at the bottom were his greatest rival.

At first, he wondered why a warrior like himself had to do such a menial task, but his thinking changed at some point.

‘Stronger!’

For Dokgo Pae, who wielded a strength-oriented sword style focused solely on attack, this labor was actually quite helpful.

To cut through the stone below, he only needed to focus on power and speed. Since he was cutting through inanimate rock, he didn't need to worry about defense at all. He just had to think about how to swing harder.

But no matter how much he cut and smashed, the rock seemed endless.

The muscles he'd built up in the Bodybuilding club were trembling and screaming, and even his massive dantian that always ready to go berserk, was starting to run dry like this village's well.

Dokgo Pae didn't like this situation. It felt like he was losing to mere rock.

"You think this Dokgo Pae will give up!"

When his body, internal energy, and mental strength all reached their limits, the greatsword he swung toward the bottom traced a strangely different path.

"!?"

It was a sword swung unconsciously, out of sheer frustration.

But Dokgo Pae, being a martial arts maniac, instinctively realized it.

‘This… this is the true path of the Army-Piercing Hegemon Sword!’

The first move of the Dokgo’s Nine Swords he'd been training for nearly ten years, the Army-Piercing Hegemon Sword.

The true meaning of that technique was manifested in this swing.

BOOOOM!!!

And as if to prove Dokgo Pae’s intuition, a massive explosion unlike anything before echoed through the area.

Dokgo Pae, who was about to savor the enlightenment contained in that one strike, had to throw himself out of the way with a look of anguish.

Because through the hole he'd blasted open, highly pressurized water came gushing out.

WHOOOOSH!

At that violent sound of rushing water, the villagers who'd stayed to watch despite the late hour went crazy.

"!! It's coming out!"

"W-water!"

After shouting with moved expressions for a moment, they all began bowing in unison.

"Ohhh! Lord Heavenly Demon!"

"The Eighth Young Master has saved us!"

The one who found the water vein was Il-mok, the one who directed the construction was Il-mok, and most importantly, he was the disciple of the Heavenly Demon, the living god of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.

The villagers all praised Il-mok in unison.

Late at night.

Hundreds of people bowed around a massive well that reflected the gentle starlight and moonlight.

Watching this almost holy scene, Il-mok rubbed his arms.

‘Ugh, gives me the creeps.’

It was a scene straight out of a cult.