Chapter 277

Shk! Shk!

Each time the small flying dagger passed, the rough wood gradually became smoother.

The man sat on a wooden table, diligently carving the wood.

His hand movements were extremely precise.

In an instant, he had carved all the pieces of wood laid out on the table into their desired shapes.

The man set down the flying dagger and began to assemble the carved wood.

Kkireuk! Kkireuk!

A moment later, what was completed in the man’s hands was a small doll.

A human-shaped doll with arms and legs.

The crude doll, with its indistinct eyes, nose, and mouth, somehow evoked a strange sense of horror.

The man began to carve a bizarre symbol on the back of the doll, which was the size of a small child.

Seogeok! Seogeok!

What the man carved on the doll’s back was a type of talisman.

The talisman, with its complex pattern, exuded a grotesque feeling all on its own.

But carving the talisman wasn’t the end.

The man poured a red liquid he had prepared beforehand onto the talisman. The red liquid filled the engraved letters of the talisman and quickly hardened.

“Heheh!”

Only then did the man smile with satisfaction.

His smile was incredibly sinister.

The man, with his gaunt, skull-like appearance, was none other than Black Tiger.

Black Tiger turned the doll in his hands this way and that, satisfied with his own handiwork.

Thud!

Black Tiger tossed the newly made doll into a corner of the room.

Inside the room, besides the doll he had just made, there were quite a few other dolls.

All of them were made by Black Tiger himself.

The other dolls also had talismans carved on their backs.

They were no ordinary talismans.

It was thanks to these talismans that he could control the dolls from a distance.

In his youth, he had learned how to write talismans from a Daoist.

The Daoist said he was a successor of the Maoshan Sect.

Nowadays, when one thinks of Daoists, they think of those belonging to martial arts academies like the Wudang Sect or the Mount Hua Sect, but in the past, there were many Daoist Temples like the Maoshan Sect that focused on Occult Arts.

However, as the martial arts academy-style Daoist Temples gained power, Daoist Temples like the Maoshan Sect that mainly used Occult Arts naturally declined.

Some Daoist Temples, in order to overcome this unreasonable reality, even sided with forces that threw Jianghu into chaos, like the Divine Demon Association. Because of that, they fell into an even more miserable ruin, and people’s perception of occult artists grew colder.

The Maoshan Sect Daoist who taught Black Tiger puppetry was no different.

He hid from the eyes of the world and was extremely afraid of revealing himself openly.

Black Tiger had no talent for any other Occult Art. But in the one art of puppetry, he boasted an exceptional talent.

While he couldn’t understand any other Occult Art, he absorbed everything he was taught about puppetry as if it were his own.

Such cases sometimes occurred.

A talent specialized in one particular area.

Black Tiger was just such a case.

He frighteningly absorbed the puppetry taught by the Maoshan Sect Daoist.

While teaching Black Tiger puppetry, the Daoist had repeatedly warned him to refrain from using it.

The reason was that it was such a sinister sorcery that a single misstep could lead to him being branded a public enemy of Jianghu.

After that, the Daoist suddenly disappeared, and Black Tiger met another Master and became an assassin. His skills were recognized, and he was recruited into the Hundred Wraith Union.

The combination of puppetry and killing methods had elevated him to the ranks of the Ten Blood Assassins, the strongest in the Hundred Wraith Union.

Until now, he had never once failed.

No matter who the target was, they could not survive once they became his objective.

He had immense pride and affection for himself.

No client dared to treat him disrespectfully, and he never disappointed a client.

But that pride was shattered this time.

Lee Yul treated him like a failure and looked at him as if he were a problem child.

“He looked down on me too much.”

Black Tiger bared his teeth and laughed.

He was by no means a person to be controlled by someone else.

He could never tolerate his life being controlled by anyone other than the Hundred Wraith Union Lord.

“Kikik!”

He chuckled and rose from his seat.

One corner of the room was filled with dolls. But this wasn’t enough.

He needed more dolls.

Making the dolls was not a problem. All he needed was wood.

The problem was the talisman.

To be precise, it was the red liquid that filled the engraved letters of the talisman.

The core of the talisman was that very red liquid.

He had to obtain more of the red liquid.

Kkiiik!

Black Tiger opened the door and went outside.

A rather spacious warehouse greeted him.

“Ugh!”

Something was hanging upside down inside the warehouse.

The object, gagged and struggling, was a person. A person was hanging upside down, their ankles tied with a rope.

Black Tiger, with his characteristic grotesque smile, approached the person hanging from the rope.

As Black Tiger approached, the man hanging from the rope showed a terrified expression.

“Ugh! Ugh!”

The man tried to say something, but it was useless because of the gag in his mouth.

Black Tiger looked at the man’s face, contorted in fear, and muttered.

“Well-aged. It should be effective.”

He took out the flying dagger he had used to carve the wood from his clothes.

The man’s terror reached its peak.

His eyes were bloodshot, and foam dripped from his gagged mouth.

At that moment, Black Tiger slit the man’s throat with the flying dagger.

Seogeok!

With a gruesome cutting sound, blood streamed down from the man’s neck.

Black Tiger held a bucket underneath to collect the blood.

The strong resentment contained in the blood was the essential medium for his puppetry.

While waiting for the bucket to fill with blood, Black Tiger looked around the warehouse. The warehouse was full of people hanging upside down, like persimmons dangling precariously from the end of a branch.

Black Tiger leisurely admired the macabre scene he had created.

“Heheh!”

＊＊＊

Pyo Wol briefly looked around the house.

It was closer to a hovel than a house.

Rotten pillars barely supported the roof, and the roof and walls, covered with straw mats, were only just enough to block the wind and rain.

The hovel’s environment was so poor that it made one wonder if a person could even live in such a place. But Pyo Wol didn’t care about the hovel’s appearance.

What was important was that the hovel blocked the gazes of others, and its location was on the outskirts of Runan’s slums.

On the outskirts of Runan, there was a rather large swamp.

It was originally a clean pond, but as the slums formed, various filth flowed into it, turning it into a foul-smelling swamp.

The filth continued to flow in, but with no way out, the swamp rotted.

The smell of the swamp was so vile that no sane person would ever approach this area. This was the last place where people, pushed out even from the slums, would settle.

Pyo Wol had bought this hovel by tossing one Silver Tael to the original owner.

As soon as the owner sold the hovel, he fled without looking back. He was afraid that Pyo Wol might ask for the silver back.

The poor surrounding environment might be a deterrent for others, but for Pyo Wol, it was the optimal environment.

After entering Runan, Pyo Wol had not prepared a separate residence for himself.

He hadn’t thought to prepare a hideout because he didn’t know his stay would be this long. But now, the situation had changed.

Pyo Wol was a firm believer in the saying, “Cunning Rabbit Three Burrows,” meaning a cunning rabbit digs three burrows.

An assassin had to be a cunning rabbit.

He had to prepare his own hideout that no one else knew about.

He needed his own space that no one could approach, and this place perfectly met his desired conditions.

An environment that caused discomfort to others was like a natural fortress to an assassin.

A fortress wasn’t just about setting up traps or mechanisms and building high walls. Even a small inconvenience that made the opponent feel reluctant was an excellent weapon for an assassin.

On top of that, the swamp connected directly to the back was nothing short of fantastic.

Pyo Wol had already surveyed the area around the swamp in the morning. And he clearly realized what he needed to prepare.

It would have been much easier if Tang Sochu were here, but unfortunately, he was in distant Chengdu. It was impossible to summon him now.

From now on, he had to move and prepare things himself.

Pyo Wol left the hovel. A terrible stench pricked his nose. But Pyo Wol walked on without even frowning once.

The slums were like a maze.

It wasn’t planned from the beginning; it had formed haphazardly as those pushed out from the city center settled wherever they pleased.

Even those living in the slums often got lost, and ordinary people wouldn’t even dare to enter this place.

Recently, the slums had expanded explosively.

This was because many people who had lost their homes after the fight between Snow Blade Sword Manor and Jin Clan had flowed in.

Even the Hao Clan, having arrived only recently, did not know the situation in the slums. They hadn’t even grasped its structure.

The battle between the two sects was devastating Runan.

For now, it wasn’t noticeable because many martial artists had come in, but the common people were losing everything and continuously flowing into the slums.

The eyes of the people who had lost everything were empty.

Pupils that had lost their focus, without any will.

That was how the people in the slums were now.

They were continuing to breathe simply because they were alive; they had no will to live.

In other slums, they would be wary of a stranger like Pyo Wol, or rush at him like hungry ghosts to try and steal even his clothes, but here, there was not even a hint of that.

Perhaps the slum dwellers instinctively felt that Pyo Wol was a different kind of being from them.

Pyo Wol left the slums and headed for the workshop district.

With the influx of many martial artists, Runan’s workshop district was experiencing its greatest boom in history.

People looking to get new weapons for their broken ones, and martial artists wanting to repair their dulled weapons, visited the workshop district every day.

Thanks to this, every workshop was full of customers.

Pyo Wol went around to each workshop and bought the things he needed, a little at a time. But since he visited so many workshops, the amount he gathered was by no means small.

Thanks to this, Pyo Wol had to make two round trips between the workshop district and the slums.

Even after returning with the last item, Pyo Wol had no time to rest.

He began to set up various traps around the Thatched Hut and the swamp.

They were the kind of traps where each one’s power seemed insignificant, but when combined, they would display their might.

Pyo Wol spent a full day building all the traps in the form he wanted.

Among them, his favorite was the swamp itself.

The swamp, formed from accumulated filth, was emitting Staff Poison.

The Poison Qi was so noxious that most martial artists would immediately feel dizzy and vomit upon exposure to the Staff Poison. But this level of Poison Qi had no effect on Pyo Wol.

This was because Pyo Wol’s blood itself was like the most virulent poison in all under heaven.

Pyo Wol briefly looked around the swamp, examining the traps he had made.

On the surface, there was no sign of any traps.

For hastily made traps, this was good enough.

It was different from when he made the Celestial Net in Chengdu.

Back then, the goal was extermination; now, the goal was to secure a safe burrow.

This much should be enough to deter not only ordinary people but also most martial artists from daring to approach.

It was then.

A rather strange sight caught Pyo Wol’s eye as he was looking at the swamp.

The surface of the swamp was rippling slightly.

It was incomprehensible that waves were forming when there was no wind.

It was a swamp where Staff Poison had accumulated.

It was too harsh an environment for any living creature to survive.

It seemed impossible to survive in the swamp unless one was a being who had perfectly adapted to poison, like Pyo Wol.

Sssreuk!

At that moment, something suddenly emerged, breaking through the filth covering the swamp.

It was a small snake.

A thread snake, barely the thickness of a child’s pinky finger and a handspan in length. Up to that point, it looked no different from any other thread snake.

What made the thread snake special were its eyes and the color of its body.

Ruby-red eyes, contrasted by a seemingly transparent, silver body.

The way it occasionally flicked its red tongue even looked elegant.

The silver thread snake came out of the swamp and leisurely slithered through the undergrowth.

Just then, a weasel was seen approaching the thread snake.

The creature hid its body in the bushes and cautiously approached the thread snake.

Like a silent assassin, it perfectly concealed its presence. At this rate, it seemed the thread snake would become the weasel’s prey without a fight.

Beasts like weasels were natural enemies of snakes.

Some of them had such strong Poison Resistance that they were unaffected even when bitten by venomous snakes.

The weasel pounced on the thread snake like a bolt of lightning. It was impossible for an average Eye Power to even follow the weasel’s movements.

The weasel’s fangs were aimed precisely at the snake’s neck. If bitten here, no snake could resist.

The weasel’s fangs were just about to touch the snake’s neck.

Sssreureuk!

Suddenly, the snake exquisitely ducked its head, avoiding the weasel’s attack, and instead bit firmly into the nape of its neck.

The weasel, bitten on the nape by the snake, immediately rolled its eyes back, turned over onto its belly, and collapsed. Foam appeared at its mouth for a moment, and then the weasel’s breath stopped.

It was a terrifyingly potent poison, unimaginable to have come from such a small snake.

Pyo Wol extended a finger toward the snake.

“You’re an interesting one.”