Chapter 173

Chapter 173
## Chapter 173: Misjudgment (1)

Sobinta felt the first prickle of alarm roughly halfway through the burning of a short incense stick after the conflict had reached its peak.

He had recognized the sudden arrival of an outsider and the remarkable power that individual wielded. However, his faith in his own capabilities and the storied reputation of the Thunderclap Temple had remained unshaken.

That poise shattered into ruins because of several critical lapses in his assessment.

Primarily, the Sword Empress and Dang Cheonha were in far more robust health than he had calculated, seemingly unaffected by the grueling duel they should have just finished. Furthermore, defying the long-standing rule that the Sword Empress’s home remained without a permanent guard since her predecessor’s passing, the White Sword Corps had mobilized in full force to shield Neung Sohwa.

Even though the siege of the Sword Empress’s residence was incomplete, such a drastic defensive shift occurred because Neung Sohwa had officially ascended as the Pavilion Lord of the Sword Pavilion.

The White Sword Corps, consisting of thirty-six elites, represented the absolute pinnacle of martial talent cultivated within the Sword Pavilion. Individually, their prowess rivaled that of any high-ranking disciple from the Thunderclap Temple. Overlooking their involvement was a catastrophic blunder.

Secondly, the arrival of Sima Geon and his entourage.

This was a variable he had never envisioned—and it proved to be the most lethal.

Their collective might far surpassed anything Sobinta had braced for.

Ban Takga, a respected elder of the Thunderclap Temple and a peer of Sobinta, had confidently engaged Sima Geon, only to be systematically dismantled.

Ban Takga was not the only casualty; many of the prominent commanders who had accompanied Sobinta to the Dang family estate to oversee the Temple’s campaign fell one after another to the blades of Sima Geon and Cheol Woo. Their swift execution gutted the disciples’ fighting spirit and decimated their tactical cohesion.

Thirdly, he had drastically miscalculated the depth of the Dang family’s secret arsenal.

While it was true that the majority of the family’s finest warriors were away from their posts—leaving the main estate with barely a third of its typical garrison—the Dang main house held assets capable of neutralizing that disadvantage, if not overturning it entirely.

The identity of the Dang family was forged in poisons and hidden weapons.

While toxins were difficult to deploy in a chaotic melee where friend and foe were intertwined, hidden weapons faced no such limitation.

The Dang family utilized many projectiles known to the public, but they possessed even more that were guarded secrets. Specifically, their Ten Great Hidden Weapons were whispered of as peerless instruments of death.

Before the fray had even stabilized, the family patriarch issued a decree that sent retainers sprinting to the Divine Technique Hall. They retrieved every one of the Ten Great Hidden Weapons that had been resting in the darkness of the vaults. Once unleashed, these relics tore through the ranks of the Thunderclap Temple, living up to every terrifying legend whispered about them.

‘At what point did the foundation of this plan collapse?’

Sobinta looked on with hollow eyes as his battle lines disintegrated.

“S-Senior Brother!”

He spun around at the desperate shout.

Ripada was stumbling backward, his features masked by a veil of blood.

His left arm dangled uselessly, the bones pulverized into something soft and malleable, while the heavy staff he once wielded had been reduced to nothing but the fragment in his grip.

“How much longer do you intend to retreat?”

Cheol Woo chuckled, carelessly ripping away his shredded tunic.

His massive chest was peppered with various gashes, but none of them appeared to hinder his movement.

“Ah, it looks like the man in charge has finally shown himself. You over there—I’m feeling merciful, so scurry off while you still can.”

Cheol Woo brushed Ripada aside as if he were a nuisance, refocusing his murderous intent entirely on Sobinta.

Accepting that combat was now the only path forward, Sobinta gripped his stone staff tightly and dropped into a combat stance.

“Move aside. This one belongs to me.”

Dang Cheonha stepped in front of Cheol Woo, cutting off his path to the target.

“That’s not fair. I staked my claim first…”

Cheol Woo began to protest, but he fell silent when he caught the freezing stare Dang Cheonha leveled at him while keeping his focus on Sobinta.

Without further argument, Cheol Woo pivoted away like a hunter seeking easier prey. There were still plenty of lives left to take on the battlefield.

“I recall you bragging about wiping the main house off the face of the earth. Is this the result of those grand words?”

Sobinta offered no reply to Dang Cheonha’s biting sarcasm.

“Pathetic. You’ve retreated like a beaten dog.”

“Be silent! If the Sword Empress and those freaks hadn’t interfered, a simple Dang family would never—”

Dang Cheonha gave a slow, deliberate nod at Sobinta’s desperate rationalization.

“Perhaps. But even without their assistance, I will show you that your claims are nothing but fantasy.”

With a casual motion, Dang Cheonha snapped his wrist.

“Futile.”

Sobinta swung his stone staff with contempt.

The majority of the hidden projectiles Dang Cheonha released were unable to penetrate the defensive wall created by the staff spinning like a high-speed turbine.

The few that managed to slip through were batted away by Sobinta’s whipping sleeves, clattering harmlessly to the ground.

“Impressive.”

Dang Cheonha remained perfectly composed despite his opening volley being neutralized. Instead, he reached for his whip with a calm hand.

*Tchirit!*

A sharp crack echoed as he flicked his wrist. The whip, which had been trailing in the dirt, snapped upward with lethal velocity.

Sobinta scowled and lunged forward with his stone staff.

The whip wound itself around the wood like a serpent coiling for a strike, continuing to slide toward him, so he reached out to snatch the cord.

Just as Sobinta’s hand closed in to grab the weapon, the tip of the whip veered sharply, aiming for his throat.

Startled, Sobinta jerked the staff and threw himself into a backward roll.

Dang Cheonha then unsheathed the blade hidden within his stone staff and flung the whip-wrapped wood at Sobinta, who was still trying to recover his footing.

As Sobinta smashed the thrown staff in half, Dang Cheonha’s whip struck again.

The sheer speed and the erratic, shimmering patterns of its movement made it almost impossible for the eye to track.

Sobinta lashed out with his sword to cut the cord, but whether due to the exotic materials of the whip or the internal energy Dang Cheonha poured into it, the blade left no mark.

*Tchirit!*

A high-pitched sound was followed by a spray of crimson from Sobinta’s neck. A fraction of a second later, and his throat would have been opened.

The whip tore through the skin of his shoulder.

It carved painful gouges into his flank and both of his legs as well.

Struggling to predict the whip’s path, Sobinta eventually took a devastating hit.

The whip straightened like a rigid spear, tunneling through his left shoulder.

White-hot agony radiated from the wound across his entire frame, but Sobinta didn’t allow a single cry to escape.

With the whip anchored in his flesh, he twisted his body to pin the weapon in place. Closing the gap instantly, Sobinta’s blade lunged toward Dang Cheonha’s heart, catching the latter off guard.

It was a counterattack born of desperation, moving with the speed of a spark.

Dang Cheonha instinctively let go of the whip’s handle and threw himself to the side.

Sobinta’s sword bit into the space beneath his arm. But the danger hadn’t passed.

Embracing the philosophy of yielding skin to take bone, Sobinta had sacrificed his shoulder to create this opening. He refused to squander what felt like his final opportunity, committing every remaining ounce of his power to the pursuit.

With the whip still protruding from his shoulder, he relentlessly chased the retreating Dang Cheonha.

Dang Cheonha attempted to use the Ink Moon Staff Technique to regain control, but unable to halt the momentum, he reached into his robes for an object.

It was a butterfly of deepest black, radiating an icy, unsettling aura.

“You will regret making me resort to this.”

Sensing a profound darkness from Dang Cheonha’s sudden surge of confidence and the strange weapon, Sobinta aborted his charge and tried to create distance.

“Too late.”

A cruel grin touched Dang Cheonha’s lips as the ink-black butterfly left his hand and cut through the air.

It traveled at a velocity Sobinta could barely track, weaving up and down with violent instability.

Realizing the butterfly’s trajectory was too chaotic to dodge, Sobinta decided his best chance was to strike it out of the air.

The erratic movement made a clean hit difficult, but Sobinta fought with the strength of the doomed.

The moment his blade connected and swatted the ink butterfly aside—

The lone insect suddenly fractured into eight separate pieces, fanning out to swarm his body.

He twisted his torso in a frenzy, swinging his sword to deflect the fragments, but three managed to slip through his guard, sinking deep into his muscle.

One landed just beneath the whip wound, another in his leg, and the third in his left side.

As the ink butterflies bit into him, Sobinta realized the engagement was over.

The physical impact was secondary to the alien sensation now flooding his system.

A foreign force was rapidly dismantling him from the inside out.

He needed no guide to tell him what this was: the legendary venom of the Dang family.

“This is one of the Ten Great Hidden Weapons of the main house, known as the Black Rope. It earns its title because those it touches experience the agonies of the Black Rope Hell—bound in searing iron chains and methodically carved by a giant saw.”

As Dang Cheonha spoke, Sobinta’s limbs began to jerk in violent spasms.

“And the toxin currently melting your insides is the Soul-Severing Poison. Its corrosive power is so intense it can eat through most metals in half a day. Only the Black Rope itself, crafted from meteor iron, can remain intact while carrying it. But the interesting part is this—do you know what?”

Dang Cheonha leaned in close to Sobinta, who was now thrashing on the ground, blood leaking from his eyes, nose, and ears.

“It refuses to let you die quickly. A poison that can dissolve steel in hours somehow struggles to snap a human’s thread of life. But don’t worry too much. The sensation will only persist for the duration of a single incense stick.”

His body felt as though it were being pulled apart, every nerve endings scorched by an invisible flame—a torment so profound it would likely linger in his spirit long after his heart stopped. Even in his madness, Sobinta couldn’t forget the phrase “the duration of an incense stick.” As he writhed in a cycle of unending pain, that specific length of time became the only thing etched into his fading consciousness.

With Sobinta neutralized, Dang Cheonha turned his attention back to the rest of the grounds.

Due to the combined efforts of the Sword Empress and her White Sword Corps, the relentless assault of Sima Geon’s party, and the chaos sown by the Ten Great Hidden Weapons, the battle had reached its conclusion.

“That is a gruesome sight.”

Sima Geon, having finished his own skirmishes, approached and looked down at the twitching Sobinta with a grimace.

The man’s limbs were twisted into impossible angles, and a mixture of blood and fluid seeped from his face. His jaw was locked open in a silent scream.

Dang Cheonha gathered the scattered ink butterflies and remarked,

“The terror of this weapon isn’t just its striking power, but the toxin it delivers. Soul-Severing Poison is the most heinous substance our house has ever produced. Its application is strictly prohibited—except for someone like him.”

The five separate fragments had already clicked back into a single unit.

Sima Geon stared at the impossibly thin edges of the ink butterfly, his respect for the Dang family’s smithing skills growing.

“It is, of course, a magnificent weapon on its own. Meteor iron is particularly adept at bypassing defensive internal energy.”

Before Dang Cheonha could finish his thought, Cheol Woo wandered over, looking at the device with wide eyes.

“Heh heh! I’d love to see what that feels like.”

“Feel free, if you believe you can survive the Soul-Severing Poison. Don’t come crying to me when you start melting.”

“Hey, don’t be like that. You’re giving me the creeps.”

Cheol Woo gave a mock pout and backed away cautiously.

“Regardless, you have my thanks. Because of your intervention, we settled this matter with far fewer graves to dig.”

Dang Cheonha gave a deep, sincere bow to Sima Geon and Cheol Woo.

Even without their help, the Dang family would not have fallen as Sobinta predicted, but the cost in lives would have been staggering. Had the Thunderclap Temple reinforcements intended for the Dang branch arrived unimpeded, the destruction would have been beyond calculation.

“It was a stroke of luck. We were traveling home when Surin insisted on paying you a visit, Elder.”

“Understood.”

Both Sima Geon and Dang Cheonha looked over at So Surin, who was still venting her rage. True to her deep-seated grudge against the Demon Buddha Temple, the ground around her was carpeted with their fallen disciples.

“Wait, couldn’t Surin manage to survive that Soul-Severing Poison too?”

Cheol Woo asked with genuine curiosity. Naturally, no one bothered to give him an answer.