TSBIRBV Ch 198

Chapter 198. The Venomous Viper Will Not Endure (9)

“No matter how much favor you receive from the Heavenly Demon, such actions cannot be overlooked!”

“Mm.”

Yegyeol nodded lightly, almost cheerfully. The old man, perhaps because of his age, had the clarity to see the truth immediately.

Indeed, he was favored by his Senior Brother.

‘Is this… meant to strike at me?’

At that unruffled face, Tak Noya grew even more incensed.

“Chilgwae-dong is a place that holds the long history of our sect! For such a place to be… to be destroyed like this! Even the Six Great Houses of the Demonic Sect will not stay silent!”

The old man’s face, jabbing his finger furiously, was bereft of reason.

“And who are you to say that!”

“Who am I, you ask? Does the ‘Noya’ even know me?”

Yegyeol widened his eyes, rolling them with mockery.

The other flinched.

‘So, if it comes down to sheer spirit, these so-called demonic masters are nothing special either.’

“You can’t even answer.”

Clicking his tongue, Yegyeol gave the impression that his words were meant to drill straight into the other’s ears.

“Then let me change the question. Who are you, really?”

Tak Noya’s mouth opened and closed, again and again, but Yegyeol did not allow him the chance to mount a rebuttal.

“I remember the faces of those who seemed important when they welcomed Senior Brother, but you—I see you for the first time.”

Yegyeol shrugged.

His tone was light, but his words carried weight.

“This servant has attended upon the Heavenly Demon for many years! It was I who first revealed to him the treachery of the Magician, and for that contribution I was granted stewardship of this Chilgwae-dong!”

That was the excuse Tak Noya had repeated to himself, dozens, hundreds of times in the dark.

Without the comfort of believing he had received due reward for his loyalty, he would long ago have gone mad.

Whether Yegyeol knew such inner justifications or not, the Heavenly Demon’s ‘guest’ slowly denied him.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Yegyeol tilted his head.

“If Senior Brother had truly considered you his man, he would have kept you close, like Hongyeo or Jinyoung, or at least placed you at my side, like Samrang here. Don’t you agree?”

His question was not directed at the cave’s warden, but at Samrang.

“Well… To presume the will of one’s lord would hardly be the duty of a servant, but…”

Samrang wrinkled her nose playfully.

“The last time my lord summoned that fellow was, hm… three years ago, wasn’t it?”

In other words, since he had become Heavenly Demon, he had not even seen him.

“And so, what do you think of that?”

The old man’s face flushed red, then paled, then red again. But for all its grotesque contortions, it was not a visage worth staring at for long.

“The Heavenly Demon has not forgotten me! The fact that I personally manage the Chilgwae-dong where he once dwelt when first he came to the sect—does that not show the trust he bears toward me?”

So that was how he consoled himself.

“Is that so? But so what.”

Yegyeol drawled, stroking Baembaemi’s head with leisurely hand.

“Senior Brother told me himself. I am the only one who shares a bed with the Heavenly Demon.”

〈Your own head admitted it. What will you do about that?〉 There were few who could counter such a technique.

“So then, would it be I who knows Senior Brother better, or you, who last saw him three years ago?”

Tak Noya fell silent, lips pressed in a grimace. His twisted face was unpleasant, but at least he was quiet.

“He told me he would grant whatever I asked.”

Yegyeol fluttered his eyelashes.

He had no intent of using any true beauty trap. Yegyeol’s tastes were unique—just imagining any man besides Haryang in such a way turned his stomach.

It only mattered that it looked as if he were employing such a trick.

“As you know… Senior Brother is so endlessly generous that he wouldn’t scold me just for mistakenly erasing something like this.”

Yegyeol had come here with the express intention of causing trouble.

He meant for people to believe: some wild seed had rolled into the Demonic Sect, dazzled the Heavenly Demon, and wreaked havoc.

‘What is a beauty who topples kingdoms (傾城) but one who brings down nations? If I topple the Demonic Sect, then I too am such a beauty.’

And indeed, Yegyeol was even prepared to stroke the other’s heart.

Since a proper Esper could hardly touch another man barehanded, he would simply cloak himself in lightning instead.

“Pfft.”

From behind Yegyeol, where she had been standing menacingly, Samrang finally let slip an irrepressible laugh.

“Mu—Mun Gongja. If we stay here any longer, it might be dangerous.”

With hands trembling from stifled mirth, she pulled at Yegyeol’s arm. Though the supporting pillars of Chilgwae-dong had not yet been touched, many of the cave’s fixed structures—bars and furnishings—were already collapsed. Nothing good could come of lingering.

“All right, all right. It’s not like I want to die crushed under rubble. Ah, Baembaemi!”

Yegyeol stroked the thunder serpent’s golden scales. Following his touch, the vast power he normally kept sealed within his body flowed into the Thousand-Year Thunder Serpent. His fingers pointed ahead.

It meant: Show them a taste of lightning.

Having fed well for the first time in ages, Baembaemi swayed its tail merrily. Obeying Yegyeol’s command, it slithered to the pillar and sank its tiny teeth into the wall. Golden bolts crackled and snapped, searing the ironwood beam to black.

‘Truly marvelous, this one.’

Yegyeol smiled in satisfaction, admiration welling within him. He had never heard of a spiritual beast understanding human intent, yet Baembaemi always caught his meaning perfectly.

“Oh my.”

Samrang yanked Yegyeol by the scruff and shoved him behind her. Almost in the same instant, the dagger she hurled looped on its tether of silk, snaring Baembaemi and reeling it back.

Unharmed, not a single scale marred, the little serpent’s bright round eyes gleamed with the same innocent delight as its master’s.

If Baembaemi could speak, it would surely have cried out with joy, like a child riding a roller coaster for the first time: So fun!

Rumble—!

From deep within, the cavern roared with collapse. Slinging Yegyeol over her shoulder like a bandit carrying loot, Samrang bolted out of Chilgwae-dong.

Trailing behind, clanking with his chains, came Tak Noya.

Chilgwae-dong was falling to ruin.

“Ah… ahhh…”

Panting to the edge of breath, Tak Noya stumbled free of the rubble, barely escaping death beneath the falling stone. His gaping mouth, his eyes wide with shock, turned back toward the place where he had been bound.

‘So the chain was built to extend even to the entrance.’

Haryang had spared the old man deliberately, yet Samrang had made no move to save him.

The man’s skin was pale, as though it had never seen sunlight. Clearly, he had not once left of his own will. In the darkness he might have hidden, but in the clear light of day he could not disguise that he was a sinner.

“My word…”

Samrang’s eyes shone as she looked back at what had once been Chilgwae-dong.

“My word!”

Repeating herself, she burst into snickering, which swelled into laughter.

It was a display of reckless venting.

No thought for what would follow—simply striking out as he pleased.

And yet, for that very reason, it was oddly exhilarating.

Tears streaked down her face from laughing too hard as she asked:

“Mun Gongja, have you lost your mind?”

This was truly a catastrophe. The utter collapse of Chilgwae-dong! That cave, with its so-called history, had seemed destined to endure forever.

Even Je Haryang, the only one who might have undone it, had paid it no heed since clearing out the Magician’s faction.

“I don’t know. I’m just some ignorant fool from the Orthodox sect, suddenly kidnapped by the Heavenly Demon and locked away in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains. So, maybe I’ve gone a little mad.”

“At times like this, you remember you’re Orthodox…”

Such astonishing insight it was. Yegyeol’s sharp gaze turned to Samrang.

She pressed her lips shut.

After a moment, rolling her eyes, Samrang asked,

“Are you trying to make our lord step down from the Heavenly Demon’s throne? Or to destroy the Demonic Sect itself?”

She wanted to know his true motive.

“Why would I pull Senior Brother down? As the lord of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, he can do whatever he wishes.”

Haryang had suffered to ascend to that seat.

At the realm of Transcendence—no, at the very edge of Demonhood itself—he could at any time shake off his burdens and leave. Yet he remained. Not merely to halt the Great War of Righteous and Demonic Sects.

As Heavenly Demon, no one could ever again control him. He held in his grasp every form of power—martial, political, and material.

Remembering his Senior Brother’s past life, buffeted and trampled without strength, Yegyeol would never tell him to relinquish it.

Indeed, the Yegyeol he knew deserved praise as a hero. But a man who had lived his life forever pushed by others, by the affairs of the martial world, needed the title of villain.

With that mantle, he could finally live willfully, and people would have no choice but to accept it.

‘Come to think of it, heroes always suffer far too much loss.’

For no other reason than that his guide was the Heavenly Demon, the Esper could twist his moral compass without hesitation.

If the Korean Center Chief who once tried to instill him with ethics could see him now, he would lament—but alas, this was not the modern world, but the Central Plains. To scold him, one would have to transcend space and time. Here and now, no one could stop Yegyeol.

Not even Haryang, this time, would restrain his disciple.

“And as for destroying the Demonic Sect? Could this place really fall apart just because I stirred my spoon into the pot…?”

Yegyeol’s question was delivered with earnest gravity. Samrang, despite herself, began to calculate the possibility—and then stiffened. Almost instantly, she smoothed her face into her usual unruffled mask.

“Completely impossible.”

Completely possible, rather.

‘Not by ordinary means, but Mun Gongja thinks outside all bounds.’

The moment he became a merchant, he had cracked down on smugglers. While other martial artists coveted inner cores, he instead raised spiritual beasts to mass-produce ironwood and sell it. Not only that, he had tricked swindlers, and now, in the very heart of the dreaded Ten Thousand Great Mountains, he had shattered Chilgwae-dong with lightning.

With his temperament, it would not be strange for him to line the canyon approaches to the sect with thunderbombs and detonate them all.

‘Indeed… he might even invent some entirely different way.’

Even this was only the worst chaos her ordinary mind could conjure.

Though she did not agree with the Magician’s methods, Samrang felt a sudden urge to crack open Yegyeol’s head and see what lay inside. People said a brain—yet with him, it seemed something else must be within.

“No wonder, then. That day, when my lord summoned me and asked whether anyone still remained in Chilgwae-dong…”

Samrang shook her head in disbelief. When Yegyeol, moved by his Senior Brother’s past, had asked to be shown where Haryang had once been confined, she had readily agreed—thinking nothing more of it, so long as he brought the lord’s permission.

Never had she imagined such an outcome.

‘I thought he only wanted to trace a few remnants of the past…’

Yegyeol chuckled softly.

He did not spare a glance for Tak Noya, crushed by despair and horror, but looked instead upon the ruins of Chilgwae-dong.

“I may not be a beauty whose glance topples cities.”

Yegyeol paused for a moment, then murmured:

“But at least I can bring down a cave, can I not?”