Chapter 213: Kongtong (4)

Il-mok's face was ice cold as he gave orders to his group.

"Put on your masks."

Without a word, his team pulled out the masks they'd packed and strapped them on.

Every single one of them wore expressions of fury or cold anger.

They all understood just how twisted this rival cult really was.

When they were ready, Il-mok started walking, his expression cold enough to freeze hell.

He'd been carefully observing the flow of energy ever since the Formation had first been deployed to memorize their pattern.

His natural talent for sensing qi, combined with what he'd learned back at the Hall of the Demonic Way, made it possible.

'Compare the flow of energy felt from outside the Formation with the flow inside.'

He recalled the lessons from the Eight Trigram Hall’s elder who'd come as a temporary instructor and took the lead.

'In an Illusory Dream Formation, the biggest danger is your own vision. You need to find your way using qi perception, not your eyes.'

Following the path of least resistance in the Formation’s energy field, he pushed forward.

The drugged-up villagers were wandering around like zombies, but Il-mok just shoved them out of the way. They were so high on whatever was in the mist that they wouldn't remember a thing.

Before long, Il-mok came to a stop.

'This is where the Formation's flow is most unstable.'

The Illusory Dream Formation laid out here wasn't meant to kill anyone in the first place.

It was just a trap to get people high and keep them from wandering off. It wasn't built like a maze; it didn't even have a proper Life Gate built into it.

Knowing this, Il-mok had been searching from the start for the spot where the energy flow was most unstable.

"Haah!"

With a sharp drawing motion, Il-mok's sword radiated a brilliant Sword Qi.

Zzzzrik!

His sword cut through empty air, but there was a sharp cracking sound, and a rift tore open in the energy field around them.

To Il-mok's super-sensitive qi perception, it looked like a pane of glass breaking apart.

The Illusory Dream Formation crumbled away, revealing the original low hill and night sky before his eyes.

"What the—!?"

"Who the hell are you people!"

The Taoist bastards who'd been keeping the villagers trapped in the Formation shouted in shock.

They’d spread themselves in the four cardinal directions to maintain the Formation.

Whoosh!

The team saw their positions and split up instantly, each lunging for a target.

"How dare you disrupt our gathering!"

"Kill them!"

Shaking off their surprise, the Taoists started forming hand seals in the air or pulling out talismans to cast their spells.

The Taoist that Il-mok was targeting threw a handful of talismans that burst into flame, becoming fiery birds that came screaming toward him.

Il-mok swung his sword with that same cold expression.

No fancy moves, just a few clean, efficient slashes. But the insight behind them was on another level.

In just three swings, all seven talismans were sliced cleanly apart.

Thanks to those efficient movements, Il-mok didn't slow down at all as he closed the distance right up to the fake Taoist's face.

"!!!"

The bastard's eyes went wide with terror as he frantically moved his hands to form another seal, but—

Shwick!

A wet slicing sound rang out and the Taoist’s hands hit the ground with a thud.

Shhhhaaaaa.

A beat later, blood sprayed from his wrists like fountains.

"AAAAGHH!!"

The Taoist finally screamed as the pain caught up with him.

Thud.

But Il-mok's expression remained indifferent as he flicked his hand, sealing the man's acupoints.

He hit the pressure points to shut him up and paralyze him, then hit two more on his wrists to stop the bleeding.

After subduing one Taoist for interrogation, Il-mok turned his head to check on the others.

"Kugh..."

The first thing he saw was a Taoist tangled up in black threads like a puppet on a string, unable to move.

It was Dam Bini’s handiwork.

Jin Hayeon and Seon-ah were also working together to corner their target, and Ouyang Mun and Ju Seo-yeon were doing the same.

Swissssh!

An arrow shot by Jeong Hyeon pierced the leg of the Taoist who was being pursued by Ouyang Mun and Ju Seo-yeon.

"KYAAAGH!"

With his leg disabled, the Taoist was finally captured and subdued by the two of them.

"P-please. S-spare me..."

Next was the Taoist who’d been hit by Jin Hayeon’s White Hand Demonic Art. His face went pale as he begged for his life.

Even when the fake Taoists' voices were filled with agony and pleas, Il-mok couldn't feel even a shred of sympathy for them.

"Ehehehehe."

"Oh, Yuanshi Tianzun~"

Their screams and pleas were nothing compared to the voices of all those people high on drugs that echoed from every direction.

***

After subduing the Taoist bastards, they moved to a more distant location in case the drugged people woke up.

Il-mok then ordered his companions to search through the bastards' belongings.

They found a bunch of magic trinkets and talismans, and one small bag of a mysterious powder.

Il-mok took the bag and walked over to one of the subdued Taoists.

The man had been writhing in pain, but when he saw Il-mok coming with that bag, his face went white with fear.

Il-mok's expression remained indifferent as he gave Jin Hayeon a look. She grabbed the priest's head, pried his jaw open, and Il-mok dumped the whole bag of powder down his throat.

The man who'd been groaning in pain suddenly had his eyes rolling back as his face flushed red and he started making bizarre expressions.

Il-mok unblocked his vocal cords and asked his question.

"Why did you do this?"

"Ghhhrrgghh."

Maybe he'd given him too much; the bastard just frothed at the mouth and made gasping sounds.

"Tch."

Il-mok gave the twitching Taoist a look of utter disgust, then walked over to the next one.

Crack.

He stomped on the man's foot, shattering the bones in his toes. The Taoist’s eyes bugged out.

With his mute and paralyzed acupoint sealed, he couldn't even groan. After finally releasing his paralyzed acupoint, Il-mok asked again.

"Why did you do this?"

It was the first question that came to mind after his head had cooled down a bit.

Going so far as to use drugs and a Formation to pose as cultists and cultivate fanatics...

Why would anyone go through so much trouble to turn ordinary citizens into cult fanatics?

If the goal was to take their money, the return on investment had to be terrible. He was sure that drugs weren’t cheap.

"T-to send them to paradise."

Il-mok was about to respond to that garbage answer, but Dam Bin stepped up.

"I've handled a few of these before, Young Master. Let me."

Her creepy vibe was back in full force now that she'd been in a fight.

She pulled a black thread from her sleeve and, with a pleasant smile, started sewing right through the Taoist's skin like she was doing needlework.

"Fufu. Don't worry, I know exactly where everything vital is. You won't die."

Until he gave a proper answer, her black thread kept punching new little holes in his body.

"KYAAAAAAGH!!"

And before long, the Taoist finally vomited out the truth.

"T-To use them as sacrifices!"

"Sacrifices? What kind of sacrifices?"

"F-for creating artifacts and Formations! H-human life force contains spiritual energy far more potent than any animal's blood. W-We have been extracting the l-lifeblood of those intoxicated by the drugs to create artifacts and F-formation."

"...You mean all those people back there?"

"Th-they're just preparation. A-among those who've come to believe in paradise, we select a few from each gathering and p-process them at Mount Kongtong."

Thanks to the bastard's answer, Il-mok could piece together their general operation.

"You get them hooked on the drug, brainwash them with the illusion, and then you skim the best ones off the top with a promise of heaven. Then you take them to that mountain and bleed them dry. Until there's nothing left but a mummy."

These crazy bastards were treating Pingliang County like a livestock farm.

It was an act that would be utterly impossible if they saw the people of Pingliang as fellow human beings.

And now they were getting greedy and looking to expand their operations.

The Taoist bastards who'd shown up in Dingxi County were proof of that.

"P-please spare me! I didn't want to do this either! It was all my Master's idea!"

The Taoist couldn't take the pain anymore and threw his boss under the bus to save his own skin.

According to the bastard's story, these men's master was an old Taoist known in the world as Guiguzi—the Ghost Valley Master.

He'd originally been a Taoist living on some nameless mountain in Shanxi Province, researching sorcery and Formations while teaching disciples.

But at some point, after hitting a wall in his cultivation, he gradually grew desperate and eventually crossed a line that should never be crossed.

To refine his sorcery and create better magical tools, he'd turned to human sacrifice.

At first, he conducted human sacrifices in secret, and later, he used disciples who opposed him as sacrificial materials.

"I-I didn't want to do it either. I was just scared he'd use me as the next sacrifice if I didn't go along with it!"

He kept making lame excuses, trying to make himself look like a victim.

Il-mok thought it was a load of shit. He'd seen the way this guy looked at the townspeople.

But he needed information, so he decided to hear more of the story.

"So how did you end up coming here?"

The story continued.

Once he got a taste for human sacrifice, he set up a permanent trap on their mountain to catch lost travelers.

Of course, rumors started spreading that the mountain was haunted, and people stopped going there completely.

As if that wasn't enough, martial artists and other sorcerers who'd grown suspicious started frequently coming to investigate the mountain because of the rumors. Eventually, they had to leave the Ghost Valley behind and come here to Mount Kongtong.

This was due to a rumor that there was a great deal of "prey" that passed through Mount Kongtong.

While they were setting up their new sacrificial altar and studying the local ley lines, one of the students found something.

One of his disciples discovered a place where a certain flower was growing.

Butterfly Dream Grass. It was a dangerous flower known to make those who inhaled its pollen experience hallucinations.

As expected from someone whose mind worked in twisted ways, the moment the Ghost Valley Master heard about the flower from his disciple, he came up with this exact scheme.

A scheme to use the Illusory Dream Formation and flower pollen to cultivate fake cult followers to scam them and use them as sacrifices.

The faces of Il-mok and his party grew even colder as they learned just how horrific these bastards' actions had been.

The most important doctrine of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult was to punish evil for the sake of the masses.

"Including the Ghost Valley Master, how many more of you bastards are left at Mount Kongtong?"

In their eyes, these people were trash that needed to be removed from this world immediately.

After unsealing the mute acupoints of the other two Taoists, they interrogated all three to gather information on their strength and the Formations deployed at Mount Kongtong.

Just to make sure they weren't lying, they even force-fed them some of their own drugs to loosen their tongues and cross-checked their stories.

Even as they became wrecks from torture and writhed like worms while high on the Butterfly Dream Grass, no one felt any sympathy for them.

Compared to what they'd been doing, this was nothing.

Once they had squeezed every last drop of intel out of them—

Il-mok turned his head to look at Mount Kongtong, faintly visible in the moonlight.

It was supposed to be a holy mountain, but tonight it radiated an especially ominous atmosphere.

But even facing that ominous feeling, Il-mok moved forward without hesitation.

"Looks like we've got a lot of trash to take out tonight."

Seven wrathful incarnations of Maitreya moved as one toward the mountain.