So? Did Someone Force You to Become the Heavenly Demon?
Chapter 441 : Awe (3)Il-mok closed his eyes and once again slipped into meditation. But this time, he wasn’t operating the White Hand Demonic Art, but the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword to fill her empty lower dantian.
He wanted to be at full strength to face whatever it was in the lake.
After all, there was no telling what was waiting in the middle of that lake.
After about an hour of meditation, Il-mok's eyes snapped open the moment his lower dantian filled back up.
He rose from his cross-legged position and spoke. "I'll be heading over there for a bit."
The group looked at him with puzzled expressions.
His finger was pointing toward a spot far out on the water where there was nothing to see but more water.
"Is there something out there?" Jin Hayeon asked on behalf of the group.
Il-mok nodded before giving a brief explanation. "I can't say for certain, but something's catching on my senses."
"Allow me to escort you."
"Stay here and guard others, Miss Jin. Just in case those Mierqi tribe’s bastards might be wandering around nearby."
With his instructions given, Il-mok immediately took off toward the lake.
He uses his lightness skill to tread on the surface of the lake as easily as if it were a paved road. For a master like Il-mok who executed Sky Walk daily, skimming across water was nothing to brag about. But James and Ohalak stared at the sight with blank expressions.
'I-Is he even human?!'
Meanwhile, Il-mok raced across the water and soon reached the center of the lake.
Looking back, the others had shrunk to tiny figures, meaning he'd covered well over a mile.
'It's down here.'
The density of the energy he could sense through his senses grew thicker.
Il-mok took a deep breath, then stopped circulating his internal energy, allowing gravity to do its work.
Once submerged, he flipped himself head-down and resumed circulating his energy.
He reversed the principles of his earlier lightness skill feat and made his body heavier.
His body shot downward at tremendous speed.
As he sank rapidly toward the bottom of the lake, a school of fish darting around in the water briefly caught his attention.
'Are those freshwater fish? Or saltwater?'
While casually entertaining such idle thoughts, the speed of his dive began to catch up with him. Even with a superhuman physique vastly strengthened through Overhaul Body Transformation, the intense water pressure was starting to make his ears ache.
He continued descending for a while longer.
Just as the pressure shifted from a dull ringing to a little pain, something caught Il-mok's eye.
Whether it was a stroke of good luck or terrible misfortune, it definitely wasn't a rare herb or an elixir.
Resting at the very bottom of the lake was a massive serpent.
It was a bit too small to be called a Flood Dragon, but simply calling it a serpent would have been a gross understatement.
'There it is.'
A powerful aura of Yin Qi was pouring out from the massive serpent.
For a beast to grow to that size and accumulate that much energy, it must have lived for centuries.
'It probably survived this long purely because this lake is saltwater.'
Because the water in this lake is undrinkable, the nomadic tribes have never settled near it. And that minimal interference was probably why the thing had been able to grow undisturbed for centuries.
Spirit Beasts had practically gone extinct in the Central Plains because martial artists obsessed with internal energy had used their lightness skills to comb through every mountain valley too remote for ordinary people to reach.
While Il-mok was studying the giant serpent, the giant serpent finally registered his presence.
It raised its massive head from its coils and locked its eyes onto Il-mok.
The moment it opened its jaws, an unholy tore through the water and slammed directly into Il-mok's eardrums.
At the same time, the beast unleashed its coiled body like a compressed spring and lunged straight at Il-mok with its jaws wide open.
Each of the teeth revealed in that gaping mouth looked to be at least a foot long.
As the serpent lunged to swallow him whole, Il-mok swung his Ascension Sword to clash against the serpent's teeth. Cracks began to spread across the teeth that met the Ascension Sword, but Il-mok was frowning all the same.
'This is frustrating.'
His original plan had been to drive the Ascension Sword straight down the serpent's open throat, but his body was moving far more sluggishly than he'd expected.
Fighting underwater would make anyone sluggish. On top of that, he'd dived down more than two hundred feet under the surface, so his body simply couldn't move the way he wanted even with his internal energy circulating.
After successfully blocking the serpent's first ambush, Il-mok swung his sword again.
Compared to swinging it on land, the motion was slower.
The Ascension Sword cut through the water in a wide arc, and the serpent twisted its massive body to dodge the strike.
Thanks to the first clash with the sword against its teeth, it seemed to have realized that directly colliding with it was dangerous.
Befitting a centuries-old Spirit Beast, the thing moved with surprising cunning.
It used its flexible body to twist and turn through the water to circle around Il-mok. And thanks to its fluid movements, Il-mok couldn't land a clean hit with the Ascension Sword.
To make matters worse, the Yin Qi radiating from the beast as it moved grew even more intense as time passed. It’s to the point where the surrounding water around them has slowly begun to freeze.
As the already freezing lake rapidly dropped to sub-zero temperatures, Il-mok was forced to frantically circulate his internal energy just to ward off the lethal frostbite.
'Fighting down here is suicide.'
The freezing water slowing his muscles down was bad enough, but the most critical problem was his oxygen supply.
Holding his breath for ten minutes would have been difficult even if he were sitting perfectly still. But engaging in a high-speed underwater duel with a giant serpent was burning through the oxygen in his lungs at a terrifying rate.
Knowing that staying down here any longer was a death trap, Il-mok immediately began swimming for the surface by utilizing his lightness skill.
Unfortunately for him, the serpent won’t let him have his way easily. The moment it saw Il-mok trying to get onto the surface, it came at him again with its jaws open.
In response, Il-mok swung his right hand at the serpent.
CLANG!
The Ascension Sword met the serpent's teeth again with a ringing clash, and one of its teeth finally snapped clean off.
KEEEEEEK!
As if regretting its earlier recklessness, the serpent backed off. Instead of fully engaging, it began to relentlessly hinder Il-mok's escape.
And each time it did, Il-mok had to swing his sword at its jaws, making his escape slower.
'Just a little more... almost there!'
Just a little ahead, he finally saw the surface of the lake sparkling with sunlight right above him.
But just as hope swelled at the thought of finally being able to breathe again, he felt a powerful surge of energy from below his feet.
When he looked downward, he saw the serpent had its enormous jaws wide open, and the water of the lake was being sucked into a whirlpool centered on that gaping mouth.
'You've got to be kidding me...'
As if determined to crush Il-mok's hope, the serpent unleashed a deafening shriek that mirrored the legendary Lion's Roar. In the same breath, it exhaled and spat out a highly pressurized jet of water infused with a catastrophic amount of extreme Yin Qi at Il-mok.
Because the water was so supercharged with Yin Qi, the jet of water rapidly froze as it tore through the lake water and transformed into a colossal lance of ice by the time it was halfway to Il-mok.
'Fucking hell.'
Swallowing his curses, Il-mok quickly twisted his body and swung the Ascension Sword.
The Sword Force rippling along the Ascension Sword spread out wide, instantly forming a dome-like structure made of Sword Force.
A fraction of a second later, the dragon's breath slammed directly into his barrier.
BOOM!!
A massive explosion roared out, and the impact sent Il-mok's body flying above the surface of the water.
***
Back on the shoreline, the rest of the party had been staring blankly at the center of the lake.
Ever since Il-mok had sprinted across the water and abruptly dived into the depths, they had just been waiting around with half-dazed expressions.
They had been staring at the empty ripples, wondering what the hell he was doing down there, when a completely incomprehensible spectacle erupted before their eyes.
BOOM!!
With a thunderous explosion that sent tidal waves crashing outward, a massive pillar of solid ice pierced the surface of the lake.
And riding the shockwave of that pillar was their Left Guardian.
Every single one of them was stunned by the incomprehensible sight, but their confusion only lasted for a brief moment.
KEEEEEEEK!
The next second, their faces instantly went pale as a massive creature burst through the surface as well and lunged at Il-mok who was suspended in midair.
"Left Guardian!!"
Several of them shouted in alarm and were about to throw themselves toward the lake.
But the next moment, Il-mok casually spun around and swatted the giant serpent's jaws away like it was nothing.
Watching from the shore, Ohalak and James stood completely paralyzed
'I-Is this some kind of Kaiju battle?!'
'He is literally fighting a dragon that lives in the lake! He looks like a legendary hero from the old myths! Wait a minute... we're in the Demonic Cult. Does that make him the Demon King?!'
Before they could finish the thought, a rapid series of blinding flashes erupted in the sky.
The serpent's massive head and torso were violently carved open in dozens of places, causing a literal rain of blood to shower down onto the lake.
'Never mind... The Left Guardian is the real monster here.'
***
The instant he was launched back into the air, Il-mok drew in a deep breath and swung his sword like a madman at the serpent that had dared to follow him out of the water.
Underwater, the beast held the absolute advantage. But out here in the open air, it was no match for him at all.
In the blink of an eye, the serpent's thick scales were shredded to ribbons.
After barely dodging a lethal strike that would have cleaved its head perfectly in two, the monster finally realized it had made a fatal miscalculation and desperately dove back toward the lake.
Il-mok hurriedly stepped on the empty air to throw himself forward, swinging the Ascension Sword at the snake.
SLASH!
Another deep gash opened across its body, but it still wasn't enough to cut it in two.
In the end, the serpent managed to slip back beneath the surface, and Il-mok hovered above the water's surface as he looked down at the lake.
Even though it was covered in wounds, fighting that bastard underwater was taxing in many ways. Above all else, the inability to breathe was simply too great a disadvantage.
'Then I just won't go in.'
With his decision made, Il-mok hurled the Ascension Sword straight down into the lake.
Then he closed his eyes and began controlling the Ascension Sword with the Hand-Controlled Sword.
Since the Yin Qi was constantly leaking out from the creature's massive body, he could track its every movement purely through his Qi perception. And because the Ascension Sword was linked to him through his mind, a perfect three-dimensional map of the underwater battlefield naturally formed in his mind's eye.
The heavily wounded serpent tried everything in its power to swim down to the safety of its nest, while Il-mok's sword effortlessly carved through the water.
The roles of hunter and prey had been completely reversed.
The more the serpent thrashed to survive, the more its wounds reopened and the more blood flowed from its body, causing the surface of the lake to gradually be dyed red.
And just as the blood loss seemed to reach its limit and the serpent's movements grew sluggish—
CRUNCH!
The Ascension Sword pierced straight through the serpent's head.
Only then did Il-mok snap his eyes open and take a deep breath before diving back into the lake.
Befitting a creature of that size, an enormous amount of blood gushed out, causing the surrounding water to turn the color of blood entirely.
'There's no way I can haul this whole thing back in one piece.'
Il-mok used his senses to examine the corpse.
After the serpent died, the Yin Qi that had been radiating from its entire body vanished.
But there was still one spot where condensed Yin Qi was still leaking out.
Slash!
Il-mok carefully swung the Ascension Sword at that spot, and a smile spread across his face.
'Worth all the trouble.'
Nestled right behind the serpent’s flesh, a glowing orb revealed itself in the dark water.
It was an Inner Core.
***
A few hours later.
Somewhere out in the northern steppe where the Mierqi tribe had settled.
"So, you are telling me you simply turned tail and fled?"
At the Khan's indifferent question, Namguru pressed his forehead to the ground and answered. "P-Please forgive me, my Khan!"
The Khan showed no interest whatsoever in Namguru's apology; he curled one corner of his mouth and stroked his chin with his left hand. "From the look of it, those bastards never had any intention of handing over the grains to us in the first place."
"O’ Khan. What is your plan?"
At the question from one of the others gathered in the yurt, the Khan burst into a booming laugh.
"Hahaha. Why even ask something so obvious?"
But his eyes weren't laughing at all.
"Summon every tribe under Mierqi's banner. It's time we collect those grains that Jong-ri Chu bastard promised us with our own hands."
With that, the Khan rose from his throne and gave the order.
"They broke their word, so we'll take double the price. Along with their blood."
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