Chapter 253
Guangdong Province, Zhaozhou.
Like a gust of wind, Sun Woo-jin and Jin So-eun arrived at Fenghuang Mountain, located northeast of Sandu Port in Zhaozhou.
Throughout the journey, Jin So-eun had noticed that Sun Woo-jin seemed lost in thought. Finally, she cautiously broke the silence.
“Do you think Jin Taedo can catch up to us? And what are your plans from here on?”
Sun Woo-jin smiled faintly at her and replied, “Realistically, they won’t be able to pursue us. We escaped before they even disembarked from the ship. We left no traces behind, so unless they’ve somehow planted a tracking talisman, there’s no way they can follow us. We’re heading toward Yunso Port in Fujian Province. If we get there, then maybe…”
He stopped mid-sentence and suddenly looked southward.
After a moment, Jin So-eun sensed someone approaching from that direction.
Whoosh!
Soon, a figure darted through the trees like the wind.
His face was unshaven and wild, his clothes ragged, yet he carried a pristine white Seollang Sword—a Baekrang Swordbearer.
He landed lightly in front of the two, carrying the limp Myoaran in his arms.
Sun Woo-jin’s eyes darkened with complexity as he looked at the man.
Avoiding Sun Woo-jin’s gaze, the man gently set Myoaran down and said, “Fortunately, the heart wasn’t pierced, but the wounds are severe. The internal organs in the chest are damaged. She’ll need time and proper care to recover.”
Myoaran’s condition looked grim. Though unconscious, her face was pale as paper, cold sweat beading on her skin.
Sun Woo-jin glanced at her, then turned to the man. “What happened, Mayu-gyeom Leader?”
That was it.
He was Mayu-gyeom.
Son of Ma Won-ung, former head of the Jeomchang Sect, and grandson of Blood Demon Jeon Mu-gwang.
Mayu-gyeom, the leader of the Sa Clan who had once tried to assault Dang Ye-eun through manipulation but failed and fled the Biryong Thirteen.
Now, he appeared here, ragged and wielding the Seollang Sword.
Hearing his name, Mayu-gyeom gave a bitter smile. “Leader, huh… It’s been a while since I heard that title. To think I’d meet you again, Sun Woo-jin, and hear it once more.”
A short while later, the four entered a secluded shrine halfway up Fenghuang Mountain.
They needed a place to rest, especially because of Myoaran’s condition.
Inside, they lit a small fire to warm the space and treated Myoaran’s wounds as best they could.
Only then did Sun Woo-jin ask Mayu-gyeom to recount what had happened.
Staring blankly into the fire, Mayu-gyeom began.
“After fleeing in front of you and her, I suddenly realized I’d gone mad—that I was no longer sane. Probably because of the secret techniques I learned from the Blood Sect…”
Sun Woo-jin listened silently.
He had long suspected that Mayu-gyeom’s mind had been broken by mastering the Blood Sect’s arts.
Before that, Mayu-gyeom had been arrogant but still a respectable leader of the Biryong Unit.
Perhaps the shock of discovering that the Blood Demon was his maternal grandfather and the atrocities committed by his mother’s sect had shattered him beyond repair.
“At that moment, I understood I could never go back. Not as a member of the Biryong Unit, nor as a disciple of the Jeomchang Sect.”
He said he wandered east aimlessly, wanting to get as far from the front lines as possible.
Mayu-gyeom smiled hollowly. “I wanted to die. But ironically, I couldn’t bring myself to commit suicide. So I just kept walking. After a long time, I ended up in a small fishing village on the coast of Guangxi Province.”
Like many villages in the South Sea these days, this one was being raided by pirates from the Haenam faction.
Seeing this, Mayu-gyeom realized why he couldn’t take his own life.
“I wanted to die as someone useful, at least in my final moments. At least at the moment of death. Maybe my life was too unfair to end as a worthless piece of trash.”
He laughed hollowly again.
Back then, he fought desperately to protect the villagers.
The pirate fleet included top warriors like Jeoljeong, but though Mayu-gyeom’s body was battered and broken, he never retreated.
Like a mad demon, he fought fiercely and eventually drove the pirates away, saving the village.
Mayu-gyeom then looked at the pure white Seollang Sword and continued.
“One of the villagers gave me this sword. They said it was found in the sea a few years ago and offered it as thanks for saving them.”
Hearing this, Sun Woo-jin pieced together the situation.
The Baekho Sword, which had disappeared when Jin Taedo attacked the Haenam faction’s leader In Gye-woon over a decade ago, had somehow been stripped of its white tiger ornament and found by the fishermen in its original Seollang Sword form.
And now, the sword that Mayu-gyeom had kept all this time had returned to the one who saved him.
A strange twist of fate, indeed.
Mayu-gyeom fell silent after that.
But Sun Woo-jin felt he could guess what happened next.
He asked, “Did you learn the Seollang Sword technique?”
Mayu-gyeom glanced at the Baekho Sword Sun Woo-jin carried, then at the long object wrapped in cloth sticking out of his pack.
“That must be the Mukrang Sword, right? I heard the Mukrang Heart Technique was modeled after the Cheonma Divine Skill?”
His question was more of a statement.
Knowing about the Mukrang Heart Technique meant he had broken the Seollang Sword’s seal.
Sun Woo-jin could imagine the life Mayu-gyeom had led after acquiring the Seollang Sword.
He himself had risked his life three times for others before unlocking the Mukrang Sword’s secrets.
Though Mayu-gyeom obtained the sword later, he had already broken the seal and mastered both the Seollang Sword and Heart Techniques.
That could only mean he had repeatedly risked his life for others.
“Perhaps his desire to die as someone useful gave him the strength to do so.”
The two men sat in silence for a long time.
Jin So-eun, sitting beside Sun Woo-jin, quietly observed the heavy atmosphere between them.
After a long pause, Sun Woo-jin suddenly asked Mayu-gyeom, “What do you plan to do now?”
Mayu-gyeom chuckled bitterly and muttered, “Live…? That’s the wrong question. For now, I intend to fight the Haenam faction. If, after killing Jin Taedo, I’m still alive… then maybe I’ll reconsider.”
Sun Woo-jin understood what he meant by the question being wrong.
It seemed Mayu-gyeom’s goal wasn’t to live.
His goal was probably just to die as someone useful.
Sun Woo-jin didn’t know what to say to that.
Then, for the first time, Mayu-gyeom asked Sun Woo-jin a question.
After hesitating for a long moment, he finally spoke.
“How is she? Ye-eun… is she well?”
From the way he said “she” without naming her, Sun Woo-jin immediately knew who he meant.
And with that realization, anger surged through him.
Sun Woo-jin fixed him with a sharp gaze. “I didn’t expect you to ask about her.”
Mayu-gyeom smiled bitterly and avoided his eyes. “I was just curious.”
Sun Woo-jin’s voice hardened. “Ye-eun and I are engaged.”
Thud!
Those words shocked everyone present.
Mayu-gyeom, Jin So-eun, even the weakly lying Myoaran all stared at him in surprise.
But Sun Woo-jin didn’t care about their reactions. His eyes blazing with anger, he looked Mayu-gyeom straight in the eye.
“So, no matter what kind of life you’ve lived, no matter how much you’ve repented your mistakes, I cannot forgive you. And above all, I will never tolerate you speaking her name.”
Mayu-gyeom’s voice trembled as he asked, “You… are engaged to her?”
His eyes flickered like a small boat caught in a storm.
Mayu-gyeom trudged aimlessly along the forest path.
His mind felt like it was about to burst from confusion.
“He’s… engaged to Ye-eun?”
Mayu-gyeom had lived like a monk in penance for a long time.
He had always left his body cold and hungry, never seeking comfort.
It was hard, but bearable.
That way of life brought him peace of mind.
But hearing those words from Sun Woo-jin for the first time since leaving the Biryong Unit, a flood of emotions overwhelmed him.
Longing for her, regret and disgust at his own deeds, even murderous intent toward Sun Woo-jin.
He couldn’t stay still.
So he simply replied “I understand” and dashed out of the shrine.
But even without seeing his face, the turmoil inside him didn’t fade.
“She, Dang Ye-eun, engaged to someone? Is that even possible?”
He couldn’t comprehend it.
The Ye-eun he knew was like an ice goddess—a proud flower perched on a cliff, never giving her heart to anyone.
Mayu-gyeom simply couldn’t imagine her whispering words of love to anyone else.
Or maybe, deep down, he didn’t want to imagine it at all.
Suddenly, a thought crossed his mind.
“Could it be… because of me? Because I tried to plant that suggestion in her back then?”
The hypnosis had definitely worked at the time.
It just hadn’t reached its conclusion because of Sun Woo-jin, but she had clearly fallen under the spell.
“Did that bastard Sun Woo-jin do something to her while she was under hypnosis? To make sure she couldn’t break free?”
In truth, that was exactly what Mayu-gyeom had intended to do to her back then.
But precisely because of that, he couldn’t shake the thought that someone else might have done the same.
Suddenly, a surge of anger and murderous intent welled up inside him.
“How dare he do that to her… and then be with another woman?”
The face of Myao-ran, Inpa-rang’s fiancée, flashed before his eyes—the short-haired woman he’d seen with Sun Woo-jin earlier.
Both of them were undeniably beautiful, though neither matched Dang Yeo-eun’s level of beauty.
That bastard had the audacity to claim he was engaged to Dang Yeo-eun while fooling around with other women.
But just as Mayu-gyeom’s thoughts reached that point, he shook his head fiercely.
“No, no. That bastard, Sun Woo-jin, is different from me. Even when he was weak, he always risked his life fighting for others. He wouldn’t do something like that.”
He struggled to rein in the uncontrollable rage and murderous intent rising within him.
Stopping in his tracks, he let out a deep sigh.
“And even if he did do something like that, what right do I have to punish him? What right do I, of all people…?”
A heavy wave of emptiness washed over his body and soul once again.
Mayu-gyeom realized that this line of thought was the truth.
Whatever Sun Woo-jin had done to her, he had no right to speak of it.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
It was an instinctive reaction, but he felt that leaving that bastard behind had been the right choice.
He was nothing more than a wild animal wandering in search of a place to die.
Yet, even as he thought this, Mayu-gyeom found himself unable to take another step.
For some reason, he couldn’t move forward.
Then—
Whoosh! Thud!
Suddenly, six sword masters landed right before him.
Their movements were so perfectly synchronized, they seemed like one being.
Startled, Mayu-gyeom quickly assumed a defensive stance.
No matter how dizzy his mind was, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t sensed six people approaching him until they were right in front of him.
He quickly scanned the six figures.
They were all middle-aged or older sword cultivators.
Each one was an incredible powerhouse, at least at the supreme level or higher.
Mayu-gyeom also noticed that they all wore white martial uniforms, unified by blue hero sashes.
“Hengshan Sect?!”
That was it.
These were warriors of the Hengshan Sect.
Mayu-gyeom didn’t know much beyond that, but these were the Six Harmonies Sword Masters—the strongest force of the Hengshan Sect.
They had been sent by the sect leader, Wei Jeong-guk, the greatest swordsman of Honam, to capture Inpa-rang.
The Six Harmonies Sword Masters had arrived here first.
The leader of the third group, Ja Seong-jin, glanced briefly at Mayu-gyeom’s White Wolf Sword before speaking.
“A wolf ornament, huh? We were told he carried a pure white sword adorned with a white tiger. Seems we were mistaken.”
He asked Mayu-gyeom with a smug expression.
“Have you seen someone named Inpa-rang around here? A pure white sword with a white tiger ornament, moving with a short-haired woman?”
“Inpa-rang?”
Mayu-gyeom instinctively realized they were after Sun Woo-jin.
He had already heard rumors of Sun Woo-jin’s enmity with the Hengshan Sect.
He looked over the six sword masters carefully.
All of them were clearly supreme-level experts.
Except for the one who spoke, the others’ expressions were stiff and doll-like, as if hiding something beyond their skill.
“So these guys are after Sun Woo-jin…”
A bitter smile flickered across Mayu-gyeom’s face.
At the same time—
Jin Tae-do, the sect leader of the Haenam Sect, was tracking Sun Woo-jin with only the twenty strongest warriors from his naval unit.
“This way, Sect Leader!”
They were following a white, fluffy cat along a mountain path.
The cat, so covered in thick fur it looked like a mere fluff ball, paused briefly to sniff the air before darting forward without hesitation.
Jin Tae-do frowned and asked one of his subordinates.
“Can we go any faster?”
The subordinate replied apologetically.
“S-sorry, Sect Leader. This is the fastest Baek-ah can go. He usually eats a lot…”
Jin Tae-do sighed and nodded.
“Understood. Then let’s move as quietly as possible.”
Though the pace wasn’t what he wanted, Jin Tae-do was satisfied knowing they wouldn’t lose their quarry.
The cat, named Baek-ah, was a mystical beast native to Haenam Province—a spirit cat.
The Haenam martial artists knew how to catch and tame these spirit cats, which were as intelligent as humans and never lost a scent once they caught it.
Moreover, the scent Baek-ah was tracking now was the Cheonri Chujong Incense that had been secretly administered to Myao-ran.
Jin Tae-do had given her the incense in her food, anticipating the possibility that she might have to be handed over to Inpa-rang.
“I never thought I’d actually have to use it.”
When the White Wolf Swordbearer had tried to rescue Myao-ran, Jin Tae-do’s men had deliberately spared her life.
It wasn’t a mistake.
They had planned to injure her if they ever had to send her away.
The injury would slow Inpa-rang down when he carried her off.
Jin Tae-do ground his teeth, picturing that bastard’s face.
“Inpa-rang… this time, I’ll finish you for good.”
Unaware of their approach, Sun Woo-jin was being steadily closed in on by Jin Tae-do and his men.