Chapter 12

Gwak-o continued talking to himself as he pulled the cart down.

“Hundred Flower Valley is nothing in the martial world. Just a third-rate sect like countless others scattered throughout the martial world. There are plenty of sects just like Hundred Flower Valley.”

Gwak-o’s voice carried a hint of self-mockery.

“The Martial Arts Alliance? They don’t even spare a glance at sects like ours. Even this supposedly grand Extreme Poison Sect is merely low-ranked there.”

Yet this “third-rate” Extreme Poison Sect had completely annihilated Hundred Flower Valley.

Gwak-o suddenly stopped speaking and halted the cart, sighing as if this thought had just occurred to him.

“It was only after coming here that I realized how insignificant our Hundred Flower Valley’s name is in the martial world. Like a fool.”

After uttering these words like a lamentation, Gwak-o paused to catch his breath.

“If I… had known that earlier, would I have betrayed my master?”

The conversation briefly halted, and only the rattling of the cart could be heard.

“No. No matter what I said, my master never scolded me. He always praised and protected me. That’s why I didn’t know the situation outside Hundred Flower Valley. So it’s not my fault that I became so immature!”

Gwak-o’s voice was tinged with tears.

Rattle, rattle.

After pulling the cart downhill for quite some time, Gwak-o began climbing uphill again.

Hazy smoke was rising from all directions. The smell was acrid, and visibility was poor, making it quite difficult for Gwak-o to pull the cart.

“Ugh.”

It must have been strenuous, as he stopped talking to himself.

“Cough, cough!”

He occasionally coughed.

After a long while, Gwak-o finally stopped the cart. He had arrived at the waste disposal site.

Clunk.

In front of the cart was a cliff. Enormous clouds of smoke billowed up from below the cliff. There were numerous volcanic vents spewing smoke.

Gwak-o covered his mouth with a dirty cloth.

“Farewell. While I’ve become someone who just cleans filth, I hope that at least in your next life, you’ll be free from suffering…”

Just as Gwak-o lifted the cart’s handle—

“Sa…ve me…”

Gwak-o froze, his skin crawling.

The voice was so deflated that it was barely audible, but Gwak-o heard it clearly. It was Jin Ja-gang’s voice.

Gwak-o looked into the cart. Jin Ja-gang’s swollen eyes were slightly open, and there was a faint spark of life in them.

Jin Ja-gang was definitely alive.

What thoughts crossed Gwak-o’s mind at that moment?

Gwak-o lifted the cart even more forcefully.

“Ugh, aaaaah! Die! Disappear!”

This wasn’t a reflex action born from the fear of seeing a ghost.

It was a desperate struggle to cover up the ugly deeds he had committed in the past.

It was closer to a frantic attempt to leave no traces of the past.

Jin Ja-gang fell over the cliff, reaching out a feeble hand toward Gwak-o.

By the time Gwak-o turned around, clutched his head, and sank to his knees, Jin Ja-gang had already disappeared among the volcanic vents spewing sulfurous smoke.

***

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Translated by Nine Heavens!

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***

The distance from the cliff to the volcanic vents below was more than ten zhang.

Jin Ja-gang tumbled down, hitting the slope multiple times on his way down.

Thud! Crack!

Each time he hit, the sulfur-covered slope crumbled like a block of salt, sending up powder. Fortunately, this helped disperse the impact. The impacts were gradually absorbed, reducing the bouncing, and by the time he reached the bottom, he was almost rolling rather than falling.

Rolling, rolling.

Thud.

After rolling for quite some time, Jin Ja-gang finally stopped when his head hit a rock.

Fwoosh!

As the impact site crumbled, yellowish sulfur powder with red streaks scattered in a hazy cloud… The sulfur powder and fragments entered Jin Ja-gang’s open mouth.

The bitter, spicy taste pierced his tongue and throat like a needle.

“Cough, cough!”

Jin Ja-gang struggled as the powder made it hard to breathe. It was difficult to move his arms and legs, so he shook his body from side to side. Fortunately, the hole in his neck allowed a bit of air to pass through.

However, when the sharp, acrid sulfur smoke that filled the surroundings entered through the hole in his neck, his lungs felt like they were being torn apart.

“Kuk, kkuk.”

White foam continuously came out from both the hole in his neck and his mouth.

The sulfur smoke here was several times more potent than any other sulfur zone Jin Ja-gang knew of.

But since he couldn’t stop breathing, Jin Ja-gang continued to gasp, barely maintaining minimal respiration.

Since Jin Ja-gang couldn’t move his body anyway, there was no way for him to escape this place immediately.

Jin Ja-gang forced his stinging eyes open and rolled his eyeballs to look around.

The smoke was so thick that he could barely see, but he could make out the corpses, shells of insects, and other waste that had been dumped from the cart along with him. He could also see some volcanic vents emitting toxic sulfur smoke, yellow rocks, and parts of the strange ochre-colored ground through the smoke.

If there was a land of death where no living being could survive, would it look like this?

Jin Ja-gang looked up. The cliff he had fallen from seemed impossibly high. Even with a healthy body, it would be difficult to climb.

Still, after a little while, his poisoned body would recover, and then he could somehow move and escape from this place.

‘I will survive. I will survive!’

Dry tears flowed from Jin Ja-gang’s eyes.

‘I won’t forgive them. I can’t forgive them.’

The image of Mang-ryo’s eyes, who had treated him like livestock, and Gwak-o’s eyes, who had betrayed his trust to the very end, ignoring his desperate pleas, appeared simultaneously.

Also, Baek Li-jung of the Martial Arts Alliance and Petition Supervisor Seo Gil-pung, who had pretended to be heroes seeking the truth but were actually liars.

He could never forgive them.

But there were still many mountains to climb before he could have his revenge.

First, he had to survive here, and then he needed to grow stronger.

How?

It was still a daunting task.

But someday!

Someday he would definitely make them pay!

Perhaps because the hot ground made his body lethargic, or because the tension had finally released after a moment’s rest, the sandman began to visit Jin Ja-gang.

His mind, which had been clear even when rolling down the cliff slope, gradually grew hazy.

The pain that had seemed to scream from every part of his body also gradually dulled.

His eyes began to close bit by bit.

‘Sleepy…’

Jin Ja-gang, sprawled out, kept drifting in and out of sleep.

Just as he was about to fall completely asleep, at the very edge of consciousness, Jin Ja-gang suddenly had a thought: ‘Why?’

The intelligence decoction he had consumed in the morning should still be effective, making it unlikely for him to feel sleepy.

‘Something… is wrong?’

With this uneasy thought, he jolted awake, and a chill ran down his spine.

Jin Ja-gang’s drowsy consciousness snapped back to full alertness.

His head felt like it was about to split open. The sensation was quite different from the pain caused by venomous creatures.

It was due to the toxicity of the sulfur smoke.

Jin Ja-gang, who had just barely regained his senses, was shocked.

It was no longer daytime with the sun shining; it was already night. He had no idea how much time had passed.

However, what shocked him more was the fact that his body was being buried in the ground.

‘What!’

Half of his body was already buried. His head was buried up to just behind his ears.

The ground, which had definitely been hard earlier, was now melting.

Now the ground had melted and become sticky.

‘Hot, hot!’

It felt like the ground was boiling, with heat rising from deep below. His back already stung as if burned.

Even when he tried to push against the ground with what little strength he had, it didn’t work.

It wasn’t sticky, so if he could just move his limbs, he might be able to escape somehow, but that was impossible. His arms and legs felt as if they had weights attached to them, making it impossible to lift his body.

‘No, no!’

Jin Ja-gang was being buried alive.

And worse, he was slowly being cooked in the simmering ground.

The waste that had fallen around him was already buried and almost invisible.

As time passed, the ground melted faster. Jin Ja-gang was being buried deeper and deeper, and the parts of his body already buried were becoming unbearably hot.

His skin stung as if it were burning.

Jin Ja-gang was overcome with terror. Now, lying on his back, he was buried up to his ears.

‘Aaaaargh!’

A silent scream echoed from Jin Ja-gang’s mouth.

* * *

In Mang-ryo’s room, while Extreme Poison Sect warriors guarded the entrance, Gwak-o stood trembling before them.

Mang-ryo, with his upper body bare, was lying face down on the bed having moxa treatment applied to his back.

Though he had mostly detoxified his body, the side effects remained, causing him great pain. His contorted facial expression showed no signs of relaxing. His extremely haggard face and disheveled hair made Mang-ryo look like a wounded beast.

“So…”

“I, I thought it w-was just a c-corpse and d-disposed of it. P-please believe me. If I h-had known that the c-corpse was Jin Ja-gang…”

This was Gwak-o’s excuse.

“If you had known?”

Mang-ryo sat up on the bed and looked at Gwak-o.

Gwak-o glanced at Mang-ryo’s face and was terrified.

One of Mang-ryo’s eye corners was strangely dark, and the eyeball above it was eerily white.

“Urgh! I’m sorry, please spare me! Elder!”

Gwak-o fell to his knees and repeatedly knocked his head on the floor.

“Oh! It’s alright, it’s alright. Stand up proudly. After all, you are the only successor of Hundred Flower Valley.”

At Mang-ryo’s warm voice, Gwak-o rose, trembling.

Mang-ryo gestured.

“Come here. Come closer and tell me in detail.”

Gwak-o approached, trembling violently, and bowed respectfully. Mang-ryo grabbed the back of Gwak-o’s neck with his strong hand. With Gwak-o’s waist awkwardly bent, Mang-ryo asked subtly in his ear:

“So where exactly is it?”

“Mixed Spring Ground, Elder.”

“Where is Mixed Spring Ground?”

An Extreme Poison Sect warrior answered the question instead.

“It’s a sulfur zone on the middle of the adjacent peak, where we dispose of all the waste from our sect.”

“Why?”

“Every night, hot geothermal energy rises, melting the sulfur stone ground, and all the waste is washed away. During the day, all waste disappears, and the ground hardens back to its original rock-like state, leaving nothing behind.”

The Extreme Poison Sect warrior continued, speaking a bit cautiously.

“I understand we use that place because it can cleanly dispose of even things that shouldn’t be seen by others.”

Mang-ryo suddenly put on his deerskin gloves and nodded.

“Yes, that’s right. If it’s disposed of in such a place, no one would be able to find it.”

His tone sounded a bit strange.

“If you say you disposed of it there, no one would even think to look…”

Gwak-o looked at Mang-ryo in surprise.

“Pardon?”

Mang-ryo spoke as if he understood everything.

“It’s fine, I tell you! Meeting a brother from your sect after so long, of course I should help. I should definitely help.”

“Th-that’s not it, Elder!”

“I’m on your side. So just tell me honestly. Where did you hide him?”

“I don’t know! I really don’t know!”

Mang-ryo glared at Gwak-o with his eerily white eyeball.

“That b*st*rd took one of my legs, and then made my eye like this. I just want to ask him why. After taking such good care of him all this time, why would he repay my kindness with such ingratitude?”

“P-please spare me! Elder!”

Mang-ryo’s eyes turned wild. Blood vessels bulged on his forehead.

“He did the same! Begged me to save him. So I saved him! And then he made my eye like this! You should know that pain too!”

Mang-ryo suddenly grabbed Gwak-o’s hair, then put his deerskin-gloved hand into the brazier that had been brought for the moxa treatment.

When he pulled his hand out again, Mang-ryo was holding a piece of charcoal burning bright red.