Chapter 177

Tenth group leader Yun Hak-gil struggled.

Around his neck was an invisible noose, so thin it was imperceptible to the naked eye. The noose was hoisting his body up into a tall tree.

Yun Hak-gil thrashed, trying to escape the noose, but the more he struggled, the tighter it constricted around him.

As the blood flow to his brain was cut off, his consciousness began to fade.

‘What is this?’

Even at the moment his breath gave out, he couldn’t understand.

Why this was happening to him.

Who was doing this to him.

Thud!

Finally, Yun Hak-gil’s head dropped.

His breath had been cut short.

Yun Hak-gil’s corpse was silently placed on a thick tree branch. Until that moment, no one around had noticed his disappearance.

The one who had pulled Yun Hak-gil up to the high branch was none other than Pyo Wol. He had used the Soul Restraining Thread to choke the life out of him.

Pyo Wol carefully sat Yun Hak-gil’s body on a large branch. But Yun Hak-gil’s body was not the only one on the branches.

Several members of the tenth group were sitting on various branches, their lives extinguished.

Just by looking at them, one couldn’t tell they were dead. There were no external wounds.

Even though their comrades had vanished from right beside them, the outer sect martial artists failed to notice a thing.

Their skills were not enough to detect Pyo Wol’s movements.

There was no sound, and even less of a presence.

The dense forest provided the optimal environment for Pyo Wol to operate.

In a place like this, Pyo Wol’s abilities were amplified.

Like a black panther, Pyo Wol moved, using the darkness as his cover.

He walked silently from one high branch to another, looking down below.

He saw countless heads.

They were the martial artists of the Heavenly Eunuch Clan.

They scanned their surroundings, never dreaming that someone was moving above their heads, following them.

They thought they were being thoroughly vigilant, but from his vantage point, Pyo Wol could see the blind spots they were missing.

Ssssk!

Once again, the Soul Restraining Thread descended in search of a victim.

It was similar to fishing, but the essence was different.

Fishing required waiting endlessly until a fish took the bait, but Pyo Wol snatched the fish at his own will.

Snatch!

Just like now.

Another person became a victim of the Soul Restraining Thread.

The Soul Restraining Thread tightened around the neck of an outer sect martial artist, hoisting him up into the tree.

In that brief moment of being pulled up into the tree against his will, the martial artist’s breath was cut off.

His breath was gone, but the immense terror he had felt in that short instant was plastered all over his face.

Pyo Wol’s method was not the fight of a Martial Artist.

An Assassin’s fight was bound to be different from that of a Martial Artist. That was why martial artists looked down on assassins.

They scorned them as half-baked martial artists only capable of Ambush Attacks. But within those words lay a fear of assassins.

Pyo Wol was not ashamed or embarrassed to be an Assassin.

There was no reason to be proud, but conversely, there was no reason to be ashamed either.

He had not become an Assassin by choice.

He became an Assassin by the will of others, in order to survive.

He could cast off the shackles of being an Assassin now, but Pyo Wol had no intention of doing so.

The assassination methods of an Assassin were extremely efficient. And they had the advantage of instilling fear in his enemies.

“Aaaah!”

“Yang-cheong is gone!”

The screams of the outer sect martial artists echoed through the Forest of the Dead.

They had only just now noticed that their comrades were missing.

Extreme confusion and terror consumed the outer sect martial artists.

“Everyone, calm down.”

Pung No-san tried to calm them down somehow, but it was useless.

By the time they noticed, more than ten outer sect martial artists had already disappeared.

The outer sect martial artists felt an unbearable, intense fear.

Thud!

At that moment, Pyo Wol pushed one of the corpses he had placed on a branch. A very thin Silver Thread was tied around the corpse’s neck.

Because of it, the corpse dangled in the air, swinging back and forth.

The moment they saw the corpse swinging in mid-air, the outer sect martial artists’ terror reached its peak.

“Ugh!”

“Th-there’s a ghost in the forest.”

“We’re going to be eaten.”

The outer sect martial artists screamed and fled in all directions.

The inherent fear of the vast forest called the Forest of the Dead, combined with the silently murdered corpse, produced an effect that even Pyo Wol had not anticipated.

“Everyone, stop! Know that anyone who flees recklessly will never be able to return to the Heavenly Eunuch Clan.”

Pung No-san threatened them, but the martial artists couldn’t hear him.

“You bastards!”

Finally enraged, Pung No-san swung his sword at the martial artists who were fleeing past him.

He intended to restore discipline by making an example of them. But his attempt failed.

Thud-thud-thud!

That was because, at that moment, corpses began to fall one after another.

The sight of a dozen corpses hanging by their necks and swinging in the air was truly horrifying.

Eighty percent of the information humans receive from the outside world relies on sight.

Information that enters through the eyes is transmitted to the brain without any filtering process, instantly magnifying fear several times over.

The minds of the outer sect martial artists went blank with a terror they could not handle.

The one thought that dominated their minds was that they had to get away from this place.

“Save me!”

“I don’t want to be here.”

The outer sect martial artists fled without looking back, leaving Pung No-san standing alone and forlorn on the scene.

“Hmph!”

Pung No-san’s beard trembled.

His eyes were filled with rage.

“How dare you… how dare you do such a thing…”

Pung No-san prided himself on having been through thick and thin, but this was the first time he had encountered a being who provoked fear by desecrating the bodies of the dead in such a way.

“Who is it? Come out! How can you call yourself an honorable Martial Artist, hiding and ambushing like a coward?”

He shouted into the air.

Woooong!

His shout, filled with Internal Power, caused the leaves of the surrounding trees to fall like rain.

Thwack!

“Keuk!”

Suddenly, Pung No-san let out a scream.

A small Flying Dagger was embedded in his shoulder.

It was the Ghostly Rain.

“Wh-when?”

Pung No-san’s eyes wavered.

He had definitely heightened all his senses to their absolute limit. Yet he hadn’t noticed the Flying Dagger coming.

“The… leaves?”

For a moment, his eyes turned to the leaves falling like rain.

The Flying Dagger must have flown through the leaves that fell from his lion’s roar. The leaves had disrupted his vision, preventing him from noticing the dagger’s approach.

“How could this…”

Thwack!

At that moment, another Flying Dagger embedded itself in his chest.

The powerful impact sent Pung No-san staggering backward.

Pung No-san endured the pain and tried to swing his sword in the direction the Flying Dagger had come from. But his sword never completed its swing.

Thwack!

With a sharp sound of Minor mastery, a Ghostly Rain dagger lodged itself in Pung No-san’s forehead.

Frozen in the posture of swinging his sword, Pung No-san’s body fell backward.

Thump!

With a sound like a log toppling over, Pung No-san’s body tumbled to the ground.

Pyo Wol appeared silently before the dead Pung No-san, whose eyes were wide open in death.

After gazing at Pung No-san’s body for a moment, Pyo Wol waved his hand and retrieved the Ghostly Rain daggers embedded in his body. Then, just as he had appeared, he vanished without a sound.

Leaves piled up like a grave over Pung No-san’s lone corpse.

＊＊＊

“Something’s strange!”

Yeo Hwa-yeong furrowed her fine brows.

“What do you mean, strange?”

Ak Chusan, who was beside her, asked with a puzzled expression.

“The air has changed.”

“You felt it too?”

“Then, Great Hero Ak, you as well?”

“The flow changed a little while ago.”

Ak Chusan was an Expert.

An Expert renowned throughout All Under Heaven.

An Expert who could easily rank within the top hundred in the entire Jianghu.

One might say that being in the top hundred, not the top ten, was no big deal, but considering that the number of martial artists in the Jianghu was as countless as the grains of sand on a beach, it was quite an achievement.

Even among the top hundred, those who could be said to be definitively superior to him were only about twenty or thirty people, such as the masters of the eleven super-powerful factions and the Eight Constellations.

The martial prowess of the rest of the martial artists in the top hundred was predicted to be similar.

In truth, being ranked in the top hundred of the Jianghu was merely speculation; they had not directly fought in a Duel or crossed hands to determine superiority.

It was simply an evaluation made by the public, synthesizing their fame in the Jianghu, the level of their Martial Arts, and their reputation. Nevertheless, many people believed in this evaluation and considered it absolute.

Ak Chusan possessed the Martial Arts and abilities to easily rank in the upper echelons of those chosen hundred experts.

One of the abilities he was particularly confident in was his excellent insight.

Not just an eye for people, but an outstanding vision for reading the flow and atmosphere of a battlefield.

In his eyes, the situation in the Forest of the Dead was clearly not normal.

Even from high up in the trees, the foliage was so dense that it was impossible to grasp everything happening below perfectly. However, he could roughly deduce the situation through the flow of qi.

“The flow of qi is turbid. The previous flow is nowhere to be found. Something has clearly intervened.”

Yeo Hwa-yeong nodded at Ak Chusan’s words.

She didn’t have the ability to read the flow of qi like Ak Chusan. But by listening to the real-time reports from her subordinates, she could grasp that the situation within the Forest of the Dead was taking a strange turn.

Juk Hae-jang was at a disadvantage compared to the Heavenly Eunuch Clan.

For decades, Juk Hae-jang’s strength had weakened, while conversely, the Heavenly Eunuch Clan had grown stronger. As a result, a gap had formed, making a head-on clash burdensome.

Nevertheless, the reason she had committed her forces to the Forest of the Dead was out of a desperation that if the gap widened any further, it could never be closed again. And she was confident.

She had calculated that a direct clash would result in a major blow, but if they attacked the Heavenly Eunuch Clan with hit-and-run tactics, Juk Hae-jang’s losses would be smaller than expected.

At first, it seemed her plan was working.

The martial artists of the Heavenly Eunuch Clan couldn’t respond properly to Juk Hae-jang’s intervention and fell. Yeo Hwa-yeong intended to ride the initial momentum, seize the Gongpo Sword, and retreat.

But the situation changed when Hwa Yu-cheon deployed additional troops. Even Yeo Hwa-yeong had not expected Hwa Yu-cheon to react so immediately.

A biting, vicious fight continued, and Juk Hae-jang’s losses grew exponentially.

Because of that, Yeo Hwa-yeong was contemplating whether she should withdraw her troops at this point.

It was at that moment that the atmosphere of the battlefield changed.

The flow had shifted.

The martial artists of Juk Hae-jang, who had been in high spirits, had their battle lines thrown into great disarray, as if they had been frightened by something.

Hwa Yu-cheon was by no means an easy opponent. If he were, he would not have been able to create the Heavenly Eunuch Clan of today.

There was no way such a resourceful man would have allowed the Heavenly Eunuch Clan’s forces to fall into such disarray. That meant something that even Hwa Yu-cheon had not anticipated had clearly intervened.

The problem was who the intervening party was.

Yeo Hwa-yeong asked Ak Chusan.

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

“I do not. At least, not among the martial artists active in this area.”

“Then it means a third party has intervened…”

Yeo Hwa-yeong touched her red lips with her white fingers.

At that moment, the image of a man flashed in Yeo Hwa-yeong’s mind.

The man she had met at the Inn.

When everyone was captivated by the fight between Hwangbo Chiseung and Ak Chusan, he alone had been lost in his own thoughts, as if completely uninterested. That was why he had remained so vividly in her memory.

“Could it be…”