Chapter 72: Murim Alliance Leader

Once Namgung Myeong reevaluated the worth of Sewoon in his mind—

The subtle hostility in his gaze shifted to resemble that of a hawk eyeing a coveted prey.

‘In that case…’

Namgung Myeong revised his plan in accordance with the changed circumstances and immediately moved to act.

His eyes, cold as ice, turned sharply toward a single individual.

“Hmph, I believe all misunderstandings regarding Young Lord Tang have now been cleared. What do you think, Clan Head Hwangbo?”

“…Pardon?”

Caught off guard by the sudden call, Hwangbo Geon blinked at Namgung Myeong in confusion.

“Heh, and now you plan to feign ignorance?”

“W-What? What do you mean by that?”

“Even though Young Lord Tang directly demonstrated the Treasure Weapon's ability and resolved the misunderstanding, you're the one who kept making a fuss, which is what led us to this situation!”

“?!”

Hwangbo Geon was so dumbfounded, he forgot what he was going to say.

What the hell kind of nonsense was this?

He was just doing what he was told.

Why was the blame being arbitrarily shifted to him all of a sudden?

At that moment, Namgung Myeong continued speaking, now gazing at Sewoon with a gentle expression that was in stark contrast.

“Sigh, I was worried that Young Lord Tang might have been terribly startled.”

“…I'm fine. Thank you for your consideration, Clan Head Namgung.”

“Haha, how could I just stand by while a much younger junior is in trouble?”

The shift in his plan was now abundantly clear.

To bring Tang Sewoon into his fold—

A figure capable of winning the vote of the neutral Mount Hua Sect, and the one closest to the title of the new-generation prodigy.

Only now did Hwangbo Geon finally realize what was happening.

‘T-Throwing me under the bus!’

Namgung Myeong was pressing him silently with his gaze.

*You're the scapegoat.*

He didn’t have to say it aloud.

He was offering Hwangbo Geon as the sacrificial lamb to leave a belatedly good impression on Sewoon.

“Sigh, I don't know what kind of grudge led you to act in such a way. But from my perspective, this matter has nothing to do with distribution. Clan Head Hwangbo ought to personally apologize to Young Lord Tang.”

“!!”

“Th-That's right.”

“Ahem, we almost got swept up by Clan Head Hwangbo's words and made a terrible mistake against a future cornerstone of the martial world.”

Following Namgung Myeong’s cue, the elders—except for the one from Qingcheng Sect—nodded in agreement.

Backed into a corner, Hwangbo Geon's face flushed red and pale in turns.

…He was supposed to apologize to that brat?

He, the head of the mighty Hwangbo Clan, bowing to the heir of a fallen Tang Clan?

‘Namgung Myeong! How dare you—!’

His pride wouldn’t allow it.

Hwangbo Geon glared at Namgung Myeong, his eyes burning with rage.

But…

“What are you doing?”

“…!”

Namgung Myeong’s response was brief.

Just two words.

But the look in his eyes, like the knife-edged winds of the North Sea, scattered all rage from Hwangbo Geon's mind.

‘Damn it…’

What filled the void left by his fading anger was none other than dread and fear.

Filthy and shameful as it was, he had no choice.

If the Hwangbo Clan fell out of Namgung Clan’s favor, it would vanish from the Murim world that very day.

There was never a day like this where he regretted choosing to become Namgung Clan’s hound.

And in the end—

“…Grrk, I'm sorry… It was all my misjudgment…”

Just as Hwangbo Geon began to lower his head and deliver a humiliating apology to Sewoon—

*Creak.*

“?!”

The doors of Azure Dragon Hall suddenly opened once again.

Perhaps because of all that had just happened, the elders quickly turned their heads with expressions saying, *"Now what again?"*

Then, they exhaled in relief.

The figure entering was a warrior from the Court of Justice, who had previously gone to the smithy to fetch another Treasure Weapon.

…But something was off.

What was he doing just standing there?

The enforcer from the Court of Justice was holding a sword in both hands, frozen stiff like a statue.

Upon closer look, his face was deathly pale, drained of all color.

“Well done. I’ll take it from here.”

Then, a deep and dignified voice rang out from behind the warrior, and a man stepped forward.

“!!”

“-!!”

Everyone in Azure Dragon Hall, including Sewoon, gasped in shock at the unexpected figure.

“M-Murim Alliance Leader?”

“What brings the Alliance Leader here…?!”

Yes. The one who appeared was none other than the Murim Alliance Leader—

Yoo Jinhak, the Sword Emperor.

He had returned to the Alliance far earlier than originally planned.

In that moment, a strange light flickered in Hwangbo Geon’s eyes.

This was his chance.

If he could just expose Tang Sewoon’s absurd lie that the Alliance Leader had personally assigned him the mission, the situation could be reversed.

“You’ve arrived just in time, Alliance Leader! That Tang Clan’s Young Lord—?!”

Hwangbo Geon darted forward, only for his lips to clamp shut like a clam.

Because the Sword Emperor’s merciless gaze fell squarely upon him.

‘Khrrk, hrrk—?!’

He couldn’t even breathe, much less speak, under the crushing weight of Yoo Jinhak’s overwhelming presence.

It wasn't just Hwangbo Geon—everyone present was struck with astonishment.

Yoo Jinhak’s demeanor was completely different from usual.

His face held not a trace of a smile, and the aura he emitted was like a naked blade.

‘Something's wrong.’

Only Sewoon remained composed.

He instantly realized that Yoo Jinhak had experienced something dire during his time away from the Alliance.

---

Time reversed—

To the day before.

*Caw, caw.*

The cries of crows echoed eerily throughout the mountains.

Beneath a circling flock, as if they were searching for prey from above—

“……”

Yoo Jinhak stood upon the ground with a hardened expression.

The benevolent smile he always wore when facing Sewoon had completely vanished without a trace.

In his eyes, gazing upon the devastation of the fire-ravaged slash-and-burn village, was a restrained, but deep-seated fury.

*Rustle.*

Walking through the ruined village, Yoo Jinhak bent down and picked something up from the ground.

It was a porcelain doll.

Half of it was scorched black, while the other half had crumbled to pieces.

Once painted in vibrant colors, the doll's face had melted from the fire’s heat, creating the horrific image of a child weeping blood.

*Crack.*

As his energy touched it, the porcelain doll crumbled to dust.

Yoo Jinhak fell into thought.

‘…This place is no different.’

On the surface, it looked like a village completely destroyed by a wildfire caused by lightning.

The commoners down the mountain had claimed it was a natural disaster—one that wiped out the entire village overnight.

But Yoo Jinhak knew.

What meets the eye wasn’t the whole story.

This was unmistakably a scene of a gruesome massacre.

Since the return of the Poison Demon, one suspicion had lingered endlessly in Yoo Jinhak's mind:

The confirmed return of a demonic practitioner once believed to be dead.

But was the Poison Demon truly the only one?

From that day forward, for the past two months, Yoo Jinhak and Jaegal Hoon had quietly launched an investigation.

They began reexamining all incidents—both major bloodbaths and small unresolved cases that had either gone cold due to lack of evidence or were dismissed as wastes of manpower.

And then—

As time passed, their suspicions hardened into conviction.

> "…Alliance Leader. We estimate that at least twenty, possibly more, Great Demonic Heads may have survived."

Jaegal Hoon had said this, his face drained of color.

The term Great Demonic Head referred to demonic practitioners at or beyond the threshold of the Manifestation Realm.

If over twenty such beings were operating in secret…

Even if one combined the Murim Alliance and the Demonic Alliance, the number of Manifestation Realm warriors wouldn't match that.

While they had been lulled into a false sense of peace—

A sinister undercurrent had been brewing beneath the surface of the martial world.

This level of coordination could never have occurred by mere coincidence.

Thus, Yoo Jinhak and Jaegal Hoon resumed their investigation under a new assumption:

That an unknown force was not only orchestrating these demonic practitioners' returns but also perfectly erasing all traces of their involvement.

However, this mysterious force was terrifyingly meticulous.

The deeper they dug, the more it felt like they were trapped in a fog where not even a single step ahead could be seen.

Whenever they were about to uncover evidence, it would vanish like smoke.

But Yoo Jinhak never gave up. He poured his entire being into the effort.

He knew the Elder Faction would soon accuse him of dereliction of duty, but the gravity of the situation rendered such political consequences meaningless.

Through tireless effort, he eventually uncovered a key clue—

That a mysterious trading company had hired the villagers of this slash-and-burn settlement to gather poisonous herbs.

And those herbs were delivered into the cave of the Poison Demon.

Or rather—they had been.

*Hummm…*

Yoo Jinhak stopped in place, focusing the qi he had gathered into his eyes.

His innate ability—Golden Purity Eyes (금정안)—was not limited to reading the hearts of others.

As his pupils glowed with golden light like miniature suns, they swept across the area.

*Ssshhhh!*

Over the scorched and ashen landscape of the ruined village—

The silhouettes of the villagers began to emerge, overlapping with reality.

It wasn’t time reversal, of course.

Rather, it was a reconstruction of the villagers’ final moments based on countless scattered traces throughout the area.

But when viewed through the lens of Golden Purity Eyes, things unseen before became vividly clear.

‘Even amidst the agony of being burned alive… not a single one resisted.’

Indeed. All the corpses had died in peaceful repose.

No matter how sudden a lightning strike or wildfire was, people wouldn’t die without so much as waking from sleep.

The pain of burning flesh was one of the most unbearable torments a human could endure.

There was another troubling detail.

Yoo Jinhak’s brow furrowed even deeper.

‘There wasn’t a single child among the corpses.’

The disappearance of boys and girls was one of the most ominous and terrifying signs in the Murim.

Because many of the most forbidden sorceries involved sacrificing children as offerings.

The mysterious trading company that commissioned the herb gathering had vanished like a mirage in the desert.

The adults of the village had all perished in the flames—

And the children had disappeared.

Yoo Jinhak let out a sigh and silently vowed to himself:

‘…If even a single finger was laid upon those children, I will never let them go unpunished.’

Those who had committed such a horrific act—he swore to punish them all.

The fact that the children hadn’t been killed meant they had been kidnapped and taken elsewhere.

Yoo Jinhak searched the village’s perimeter for traces of movement.

Yet, he found nothing.

No trampled grass. Not a single footprint.

He turned his attention to scent.

If the children had been kidnapped in the midst of such a fiery inferno, the smell of smoke would have seeped deep into their clothes.

Yet no matter where he searched, not a single trace of scent lingered.

‘Wait a moment. No scent at all?’

At that instant, the image of Sewoon flashed through Yoo Jinhak’s mind.

*Fragrance-Dissolving Water.*

The divine tool used by the Divine Thief, once said to have been wielded by the Poison Demon, came to mind.

‘If the Poison Demon wasn’t the only one who had the Fragrance-Dissolving Water…’

If this unknown force had supplied all the demonic practitioners with it—

Then it would perfectly explain why there were no traces left from the children’s abduction.

‘He said he tried to find *No Fragrance*, didn’t he?’

He recalled the line written in the Murim Alliance’s report about Sewoon—over and over again.

And then Yoo Jinhak, drawing upon his strength—one that had reached the very pinnacle of the Manifestation Realm, began to recreate what Sewoon had done.

He spread his senses outward, vast and wide, and began to trace the absence of scent.

But such supernatural tracking was no simple feat, even for Yoo Jinhak.

When he heightened his sense of smell to the extreme, countless odors attacked him like arrows.

To isolate just one particular scent from that chaos was an ordeal of maddening difficulty.

But not for long.

‘…Found it!’

At last, he succeeded in locating the trace of his enemies.

Among the infinite natural scents, he found one artificial fragrance overlaid atop it all.

New realizations and insights surged within him—but Yoo Jinhak forced them all aside.

‘Tang Sewoon… That child attained such comprehension at merely that age…?’

Doubt toward Tang Sewoon surged within him, but he pushed it away for now.

That wasn’t the priority right now.

From that point on, Yoo Jinhak pursued the Fragrance-Dissolving Water’s absence of scent.

And at last, he discovered a small cave hidden deep within the mountains.

---

‘…The children aren’t here.’

Regrettably, neither the children nor their captors were anywhere in sight within the cave.

Only signs remained that someone had already moved on.

The trail ended completely here. Yoo Jinhak couldn’t hide his bitterness.

Was this the end?

*Drip.*

A single droplet of water echoed through the cave.

Yoo Jinhak turned—there was a small pond.

“!!”

His eyes widened to their limit as he confirmed what he was seeing.

Activating his Movement Arts, he rushed toward the pond.

Even though a droplet had fallen, the water’s surface showed not a single ripple.

It remained perfectly still, like the surface of a mirror.

Yoo Jinhak had once heard of such a strange sorcery from the Shrine Maiden Sect Leader.

‘The *Mirror Beyond Water* technique!’

A spell that used water as a mirror to communicate across great distances.

The *Mirror Beyond Water* technique allowed one to exchange written communication with a faraway connected location.

A spark lit in Yoo Jinhak’s eyes.

‘Residual qi remains. If I pour in all my inner qi…!’

He might be able to steal control of the spell, even if only for a brief moment.

*Rustle.*

Kneeling on one leg, Yoo Jinhak spread both hands wide and placed them over the surface of the pond.

*Ssshhhhhh!*

Then, channeling every ounce of his inner qi into the technique—

*Rumble!*

The pond’s dark color shifted to a luminous blue.

Finally, characters began to rise to the surface.

[Alliance. Rat. Contact.]

Contact established with the Alliance’s mole.

[Plan. Ready. Complete.]

The great plan is ready.

[Target…]

The target is…

*Chiik—!*

*Rumble—!*

Suddenly, as if the other side had realized it was being watched—

*Bubbling!*

The surface of the water began to boil like lava.

*Rumble!*

At the same time, the cave began to quake violently, as if struck by an earthquake.

*Fwoosh!*

Yoo Jinhak sprang out of the cave using Movement Arts.

As he escaped, two final characters floated into his mind—

[Target: Kaifeng]

‘—The target is Kaifeng!’

Not just the Murim Alliance—

Kaifeng itself was in danger.

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