Chapter 4

Pyo Wol stared blankly at the snake passing by him.

It was the one that had bitten his wrist. Thanks to it, he had been to the brink of death, but he felt no hatred for the creature.

It had settled in this underground space earlier than Pyo Wol. To the snake, Pyo Wol would have felt like the intruder.

Knowing that the snake had bitten him to survive, Pyo Wol didn’t particularly hate or fear it.

The snake went to the spot where Pyo Wol had relieved himself and ate a large insect.

No matter how much his eyes had adapted to the darkness, he hadn’t been able to see this clearly before. It seemed some change had occurred inside his body while fighting the invading Poison Qi.

‘Does this mean it’s not just Poison Resistance?’

He had once heard a story that if a person who was poisoned survived, they would become stronger against poison.

Pyo Wol thought he might be such a case.

The problem was that it wasn’t just the development of Poison Resistance; some other change had occurred in his body.

It seemed the poison had created a synergistic effect, influencing his Eye Power.

There was only one way to confirm his guess.

Pyo Wol grabbed the body of the snake as it was returning to its lair after eating the insect. The snake immediately opened its maw wide and bit the back of Pyo Wol’s hand.

The effect was immediate.

A searing heat shot up from the back of his hand. It was proof that the poison had invaded his body.

Pyo Wol gritted his teeth, bracing for the pain.

Just because he had developed Poison Resistance didn’t mean the pain would be dulled.

As Pyo Wol expected, an excruciating pain emanated from the bitten area. The searing heat raced through his blood vessels as if to burn his entire body.

It was agonizing.

He regretted his foolish act. But it was more bearable than he had thought.

The first time he was bitten, his whole body had been paralyzed, but it wasn’t that severe this time.

It was painful, but it was a level he could endure.

After a day, the pain disappeared.

Pyo Wol was certain.

He had developed a resistance to poison.

He didn’t know what level of poison it would work against, but it was clear that he had gained a weapon of his own that others did not know about.

His vision also seemed to have become a little clearer.

‘Good!’

For the first time, a smile graced Pyo Wol’s lips.

It was the first smile he had worn since being trapped in the underground space.

After that, a change occurred in Pyo Wol’s daily routine.

He would let the snake bite him once a day. Although he knew his body had developed a resistance, Pyo Wol had no intention of being satisfied with just this.

He wanted a more perfect resistance. So, he repeated the act of letting the snake bite him every day. And he observed the snake’s behavior.

The small snake with atrophied eyes was, along with Pyo Wol, one of the only two intelligent living beings in the underground space.

Watching the snake’s actions, he could see it used its head in its own way.

The snake was a born hunter.

It would approach its prey without a sound and snatch it in an instant.

Its skill was so stealthy that even the wary insects failed to notice.

Occasionally, a creature would notice the snake’s approach, and when that happened, it would let out the snake’s characteristic hissing sound. Then, the insects’ movements would freeze as if by magic.

It was controlling the insects with sound.

The snake was never greedy for more than a single meal. It didn’t make the mistake of letting the insects it had painstakingly gathered escape by being greedy.

This aspect of the snake intrigued Pyo Wol.

Outside of his physical training, Pyo Wol observed the snake.

Observing the snake was the only entertainment afforded to Pyo Wol.

Pyo Wol found himself unwittingly drawn into the snake’s movements.

Even as he paced the room to train his body, he tried to imitate the snake’s movements.

He practiced flowing through the darkness without a sound, without a presence.

As he spent his time like this, the day would pass quickly, and his meal would be provided. Then Pyo Wol would eat his food, observe the snake again, and train his body.

Pyo Wol repeated these three actions to keep from going mad. If he hadn’t, he would have been consumed by the terrible pain and gone insane long ago.

Eating, training, and observing and imitating the snake were the only ways for Pyo Wol to stay sane.

In the darkness, Pyo Wol was slowly becoming like a snake.

＊＊＊

G-g-grind!

Pyo Wol opened his eyes at the sudden vibration.

An expression of disbelief appeared on his face.

The iron door that had kept him locked in this place for so long was opening on its own.

Pyo Wol got to his feet.

The iron door was now wide open.

The scene outside the iron door was not much different from the scene inside.

An endless darkness and a damp, cold humidity that pricked the skin.

Pyo Wol stepped out of the iron door and looked around.

Outside the iron door was a large corridor.

To the left of the corridor, which was so long its end couldn’t be seen, were numerous iron doors. The countless iron doors were all wide open.

It seemed they had opened at the same time as the iron door of the room Pyo Wol had been trapped in.

Pyo Wol walked to the iron door right next to the room he had been confined in. Even though it was the room right next door, he had to walk a full twenty paces. The room was about three Zhang on all sides, or about ten paces. This meant there was a partition wall of about ten paces between the rooms.

‘So that’s why I couldn’t feel any presence.’

No matter how heightened his senses were, he couldn’t overcome a massive stone wall that was ten paces thick.

Pyo Wol peered inside the iron door.

Instantly, a foul stench assaulted his sense of smell.

It was the smell of a rotting corpse, a cadaverous odor.

Inside, where only deep darkness resided, someone’s corpse was rotting away. The terrible smell indicated that the decomposition was already quite advanced.

Pyo Wol, unfazed by the stench, entered the room and examined the body. The face had collapsed, making it impossible to discern the exact features, but from the skeleton, he could tell it was a boy of a similar age to himself.

The boy must have been locked in here at the same time Pyo Wol was captured.

The situation in the other rooms was the same.

In each room, boys or girls of a similar age to Pyo Wol lay dead.

Unlike Pyo Wol, they had been unable to endure the hunger and had starved to death.

Their rooms were just as damp and full of moss as Pyo Wol’s. But it seemed they hadn’t thought of eating the moss.

Perhaps, unlike Pyo Wol, they hadn’t adapted to the darkness and hadn’t even noticed the moss was growing.

In front of the iron door lay a bowl containing rotten food.

Like Pyo Wol, they had been given food. But they had not managed to eat it while they were still alive.

In the darkness, Pyo Wol’s eyes flickered red.

He walked straight down the corridor.

He passed a full twenty rooms. And he found twenty corpses.

One corpse per room.

Pyo Wol reached the end of the corridor.

At the end of the corridor was a large iron door.

It was a much thicker and larger iron door than the ones that sealed each room.

The bolt on this iron door was also undone.

When Pyo Wol pushed with force, the massive iron door slowly opened.

Beyond the iron door, a corridor identical to the one he had been trapped in continued, and again, twenty iron doors were lined up in a row.

The only difference was that in the section where Pyo Wol had been, he was the sole survivor, whereas here, there were two survivors.

A boy and a girl who looked to be Pyo Wol’s age.

They stared with wary eyes in the direction Pyo Wol had appeared from.

Judging by their actions, it seemed their eyes had not fully adapted to the darkness like Pyo Wol’s.

They had clearly noticed the appearance of a new person by the sound of Pyo Wol’s footsteps. As proof, their ears were constantly twitching.

Pyo Wol looked at them without a word.

The boy and girl were also emaciated, as if they hadn’t eaten properly. But compared to Pyo Wol, their condition seemed better.

Pyo Wol glanced at the room next to them.

He could see a corpse through the crack in the door. And he saw the rice bowl next to the corpse. The amount of food certainly looked greater.

To have died despite that meant they had either gone mad, unable to bear the solitude, or had succumbed to a disease contracted underground.

Just then, one of the survivors cautiously spoke.

“Who are you? Where did you come from? We’re the only two survivors in this section.”

The words were directed at Pyo Wol.

Pyo Wol stared blankly at the girl who had spoken.

She was a girl who had not lost her beauty despite being trapped underground for a long time. She was glaring in Pyo Wol’s direction like a cat full of venom.

But her eyes were unfocused, suggesting she couldn’t make out Pyo Wol’s appearance.

The boy next to the girl also stared in Pyo Wol’s direction with extremely wary eyes. He looked ready to attack Pyo Wol at a moment’s notice.

They hadn’t gained eyes that could adapt to the darkness like Pyo Wol, but their hearing and sense of smell had developed dramatically. That was why they had noticed Pyo Wol’s appearance and were on guard.

Pyo Wol opened his mouth.

“My name is Pyo Wol. I was trapped in the next section.”

“The next section? You mean there are more places like this?”

“It seems so.”

At Pyo Wol’s answer, the girl bit her lip hard.

Like Pyo Wol, the girl had been captured and brought here without knowing why, and had lived here for several months.

While everyone else trapped in her section died, she had gritted her teeth and endured, proving to be a tenacious survivor.

The same was true for the boy.

He was a person of outstanding mental strength who had succeeded in surviving while chewing on despair and solitude day after day.

Pyo Wol asked.

“Your names?”

“So Yeowol. This is Song Cheonwoo.”

“Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“It seems there are more sections like this.”

Pyo Wol’s gaze was directed towards the opposite end of the corridor. There, too, was a massive iron door like the one he had come through.

It was proof that another section existed.

So Yeowol and Song Cheonwoo, lacking eyes that could see through the darkness, were unaware of the existence of the iron door that divided the sections.

So Yeowol’s voice trembled.

“My god! There are more places like this?”

“Follow me.”

Pyo Wol led the way.

So Yeowol and Song Cheonwoo followed the sound of his footsteps.

They could have walked faster if they held hands, but Pyo Wol didn’t do that.

To offer a hand meant being unable to use that hand in an emergency. In other words, it was the same as exposing a weakness.

Although no one had taught him such a thing, Pyo Wol had learned through experience that to survive, he must not easily let anything into his personal space.

“Take my hand.”

Song Cheonwoo offered his hand to So Yeowol.

After a moment’s hesitation, So Yeowol took Song Cheonwoo’s hand and followed Pyo Wol.

When they moved to the next section, they saw more survivors.

This time, there were five of them.

Like Song Cheonwoo and So Yeowol, they were huddled together, sharing information. They were startled and wary at the sudden appearance of Pyo Wol, So Yeowol, and Song Cheonwoo. But when So Yeowol stepped forward and explained calmly, they soon lowered their guard.

While they were talking, Pyo Wol looked inside the rooms.

In most of the rooms, corpses were decomposing.

Unlike the section Pyo Wol had been in, almost no one had starved to death. Instead, there were signs of self-harm.

Some had their heads smashed in, and others showed signs of having strangled themselves.

They had committed suicide, unable to bear the despair, solitude, and fear.

It was too harsh an environment for children in their early to mid-teens to endure. Pyo Wol could understand why they had killed themselves.

The next thing Pyo Wol examined was their rice bowls.

They were definitely larger than the bowls in the section where Pyo Wol had been trapped, and the amount of food was also greater. It was clear that, at least in terms of food, they had been supplied with more than the section Pyo Wol was in.

‘Did they differentiate between us?’

Whatever the purpose of those who had imprisoned them here, it was clear they had managed the sections by differentiating between them.

From various circumstances, the environment of the section Pyo Wol was trapped in was the harshest. The fact that Pyo Wol had survived alone there was a miracle in itself.

But the children talking outside didn’t seem to have realized such a fact.

When Pyo Wol came out, So Yeowol sensed his presence and said.

“These kids were also trapped around the same time as us. This is Lee Min, Go Shinok, and…”

Having already exchanged names, So Yeowol introduced the children on their behalf.

Pyo Wol silently memorized their names.

In the third section, the ones who stood out were Lee Min and Go Shinok.

Lee Min was a girl whose beauty was no less than So Yeowol’s, and Go Shinok was an incredibly handsome young man.

He had a beautiful facial contour and features that were almost unmanly. It seemed likely that countless girls would have flocked to him outside.

Lee Min spoke towards the direction she presumed Pyo Wol to be.

“Hi, I’m Lee Min. I hope we can get along.”

It was unclear what she was asking for, but Pyo Wol nodded silently.

The survivors moved on to the next section.

The number of survivors in the next section was slightly larger. A total of eight had survived.

As they went to other sections, the number of survivors increased.

In the end, the number of those who survived reached a hundred. The number of the dead was more than double that.

‘So they put in three hundred people, and only a hundred of them survived.’

Capturing three hundred young children would not have been an ordinary task.

No matter how vast Sichuan Province was, if three hundred children went missing, the Jianghu sects would not stand idly by.

‘But if you widen the scope to All Under Heaven, it wouldn’t even be noticeable.’

Pyo Wol himself had been captured in Hunan, far from Sichuan Province.

So Yeowol and Song Cheonwoo had also said they were orphans. The others were probably the same.

If they disappeared, there was no one to care, no one to look for them.

They were the perfect targets for someone carrying out some secret conspiracy.

Pyo Wol opened the door to the next section. But the scene that appeared this time was different from what he had imagined.