Chapter 331

Chapter 331
## Chapter 331. Shadow Tracking (1)

—

“Did you discover something?”

Hearing Seong-mo-ran’s voice brought me instantly back to reality.

As I cast my eyes back toward the Jeok-bong-hwan, the faint pulsing had completely ceased before I realized it.

‘Could it have been a trick of my senses?’

After all, it was merely an unfastened bracelet dangling loosely on my wrist. If my body shifted awkwardly, it was bound to sway, and such a motion could easily make it stir independently…

‘Like hell it would.’

Trying to deceive myself with excuses was useless in a predicament like this. The only way to resolve the chaotic events tumbling down upon me was to confront the reality directly.

Perhaps it truly was an accident. Perhaps the ornament had simply shifted by mere coincidence.

…Yet that cursed ape had explicitly screeched the forbidden title ‘Cheon-ma’ from its jaws. When two profoundly disturbing occurrences lined up in immediate succession, one would have to be utterly deluded to view it in a positive light. And I was certainly not a man who lacked his wits.

“Which way did the primary group head?”

I demanded answers from the left-behind stragglers, but no valuable details were offered. To begin with, attempting to extract coordinates from people who had entirely lost their bearings was a futile effort.

Reaching out, I seized a nearby tracker tightly by his clothes.

“…It—it is the wrath of the Spirit… The—the Spirit is observing our every move…”

Typically, when ordinary mortals encountered an excessively terrifying phenomenon, their faculties tended to unravel. I had witnessed countless individuals lose their minds in such a manner on fields of slaughter. Despite spending their entire existence alongside violence, the instant an unpredicted horror manifested, their sanity would shatter completely. If these fractured souls were not brought back to reality swiftly, they would only pose a severe hazard to their remaining comrades.

“Jin Gong-ja, what exactly are you attempting…”

“It is actually quite fortunate. Given that I happen to know the proper remedy for this.”

“…The—the Spirit’s curse…”

*Thwack!*

The fellow’s face whipped violently to the side, and a spark of clarity flickered back into his vacant gaze.

“Gah… The—the Spirit…”

“The very man who proudly boasted about executing a Spirit is now shivering in fear and blabbering about a hex? Whence came this sudden cowardice?”

It appeared the therapy required a bit more thoroughness.

*Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!*

As I targeted and struck only the most agonizing pressure points on his body, the tracker began flailing his arms frantically.

“H—halt! Stop this at once! What in the world do you think you are doing…!”

Ah, it seemed his cognitive functions had finally been restored. Keeping my fist poised in the air before him, I repeated my inquiry.

“Which path did the primary vanguard take?”

“……”

Was he still experiencing some lingering mental fog? For stubborn ailments, physical correction remained the most effective cure—

“I—I will speak! I will confess everything, so… please put your hand down.”

Wiping away the streak of crimson flowing from the edge of his lip, the tracker extended a trembling finger toward the northern horizon.

“Tha—that direction… they advanced that way.”

“Lead the march.”

“Are—are you truly intending to pursue them? Have you lost your mind? Even if we possess the heading, a gap of nearly half a day has already formed between our groups. How do you propose we close such a distance…!”

Where did this fool think he was trying to spin such cheap falsehoods?

“Your kind undoubtedly possesses a mechanism to track each other’s coordinates. Did you honestly believe I would remain ignorant of that?”

They were far too calculating to venture into a perilous maze like this without engineering a safeguard against losing their companions.

“……”

Receiving nothing but silence, I hoisted my bloodied knuckles once more, causing the man to shield his countenance in pure panic.

“I—I understand. I shall lead you. How can a individual representing the Orthodox Factions behave like… ah, no! Forget I said that…! J—just promise me I will not be forced to walk at the absolute front…”

The moment I released my grip on the tracker’s collar, he scrambled backward with desperate urgency.

“What kind of display is this?”

Seong-mo-ran knitted her brows in profound disgust, as if she had just witnessed a repulsive spectacle.

“Are you genuinely contemplating chasing down the training instructors? They will not simply overlook this… they are bound to claim we disrupted their official operation.”

“If my intuition proves accurate, the training instructors will be the least of our worries.”

After all, registering a formal complaint is a luxury reserved for times when a catastrophic crisis isn’t already looming over everyone’s heads.

The marching pace of our collective unit, now burdened by the rescued stragglers, slowed down considerably. Navigating through the perilous formations of the Cheon-yeon-jin while bearing the weight of the wounded proved to be an arduous task. To make matters worse, predatory fiends ambushed us along the route. These demonic beasts, which had vanished completely whenever we actively hunted for them, now materialized in pairs, sending waves of dread through the rank and file.

“Shatter them!”

“Understood!”

Naturally, because our core martial artists were highly adept at eliminating demonic beasts, no severe casualties occurred. We maintained our pursuit of the instructors by tracing the unique scent of the *Cheon-ri-hyang* that the tracking units utilized to keep tabs on one another. Before long, we stumbled upon an even larger cluster of abandoned survivors.

“…This is grim.”

“…This is turning into an absolute catastrophe, isn’t it?”

Among the newly discovered stragglers, three had already perished. The majority of those who breathed were plagued by devastating trauma. Unable to repress her mounting outrage, Seong-mo-ran let her temper flare openly.

“No matter how heavily blinded they were by the desire for Spirit Pills, is this not entirely abandoning their humanity?”

I found myself entirely aligned with her sentiment. And in all likelihood, the instructors themselves understood this truth. Regardless of how many Spirit Pills they managed to harvest, if the academy students perished in such catastrophic quantities, the political fallout would swell past any hope of concealment.

“Hey, explain what transpired here.”

“Jin… So-un?”

I attempted to rouse the conscious student who appeared to be in the least critical condition among the wounded to gather intelligence, but—

“The Spirit… we never should have… targeted it. The fault lies with us…”

Having barely managed to wheeze out those few syllables, his eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness. Yang-ja-pyeong released a muted grunt of dismay and directed his gaze toward me.

“What is our course of action?”

“For the time being, we aggregate the wounded and advance.”

The headcount of the injured had already eclipsed more than half of our functional fighters. Escorting them would undeniably complicate any upcoming clashes with demonic beasts, yet abandoning them to the wild was out of the question.

“The deceased…”

“We leave them behind for now. We will return to salvage their remains later with the assistance of the Southern Fist Sect.”

“…Understood.”

Though Yang-ja-pyeong looked as though he possessed a multitude of objections, he ultimately inclined his head in agreement. As we began organizing our defensive line to resume the trek—

*Chirrup.*

*Grrrr.*

An deeply unsettling vibration rattled the nearby foliage.

“Curse it all…”

Five sets of amber irises gleamed menacingly from the thickets. Dropping into a martial stance, I barked a sharp alert to the surrounding fighters.

“Form up for engagement!”

As though waiting for that precise signal, the five demonic beasts sprang forward simultaneously.

Despite our absolute best efforts to hasten the march, our momentum steadily decayed. The vast majority of the recovered stragglers were crippled by wounds, impeding our movement, or consisted of individuals who contributed absolutely nothing to our offensive capability, all while the demonic beasts continuously ambushed our position.

“Why do their numbers keep multiplying…!”

Seong-mo-ran vented her irritation with a furious shout, but the predatory fiends were hardly the type to listen to reason and politely disperse. Rather, as if instinctively identifying our compromised state, several beasts pressed their assaults with amplified savagery, explicitly targeting the defenseless wounded whenever an opening presented itself.

“Whew…!”

The tally of demonic beasts that had fallen by my own hand had already reached double digits.

*Squelch.*

I lacked the appropriate window of time to harvest and cleanse the venomous inner cores. There were simply too many observant eyes surrounding me, for one. Furthermore, I chose to distribute the tiny, grain-sized Spirit Pills directly to the vanguard members so they could consume them immediately. There was absolutely no breathing room to engage in meditative internal cultivation right now.

Right at that moment.

“What exactly are you doing over there?”

An academy student, whose fractured upper extremity was bound tightly in a makeshift splint, pointed a critical finger at our activities. My response was curt and flat.

“Extracting the inner core of a demonic beast.”

“…The inner core of a demonic beast? I was completely unaware such things even existed within them.”

What absurd angle was he attempting to play?

“…Have you individuals been hoarding and consuming those treasures exclusively among yourselves this entire time?”

Ah, precisely as predicted, the fool wished to engage in baseless whining. Tilting my gaze slightly to the side, I countered smoothly.

“And what if that is exactly what we have been doing?”

A deep-seated sense of societal privilege is an affliction so thoroughly woven into a person’s psyche that it fails to wash away, regardless of the extremity of the situation. Even when placed in a scenario where they ought to be begging on their knees for salvation, the delusion that they are inherently entitled to luxury persists stubbornly.

“What did you say?”

“Could your body even process its energy at this moment? It may be an inner core, but it undeniably harbors severe toxicity. Ah, surely you aren’t suggesting that our entire formation halt and wait idly while you spend hours purifying its essence, are you?”

“……”

Though he found himself devoid of a logical rebuttal, the indignant scowl remained firmly etched upon his face. Ultimately, the venomous words he spat out were:

“Hmph! Truly, they say one should never mingle with those of vulgar, low-born lineages.”

Unable to endure the arrogance any further, Seong-mo-ran bounded forward and grabbed the youth fiercely by his collar.

“Listen here, where exactly did the rest of your precious Orthodox Society comrades run off to?”

“……”

“The people who chose to pull your pathetic self out of the dirt while the Orthodox Society cast you aside like garbage happen to be us. Does that simple reality fail to register in your skull? Or would you prefer to be unceremoniously dropped right here in the Muk-rim to serve as a delectable snack for the wandering beasts?”

“…!”

The young man looked as though the gravity of his predicament had pierced his skull for the very first time. His features twisted into pure panic. Just as Seong-mo-ran had articulated, this was a critical juncture where his very survival hinged entirely on our whims.

Shaking her hand loose as though she had contaminated her skin by touching something foul, Seong-mo-ran uttered a chilling warning.

“Do not let a single sound escape your mouth until we clear the borders of the Muk-rim. The instant you do, I will personally hurl you into the depths of a Cheon-yeon-jin.”

“……”

That solitary declaration from Seong-mo-ran proved spectacularly effective. The individuals who had been quietly muttering their grievances in the shadows instantly clamped their mouths tightly shut. Casting my eyes across the assembled group, I issued the directive.

“We resume the march.”

Even the complainers who had been whimpering about their fatigue and begging for a respite no longer dared to utter a word of protest. They had fully comprehended who held the strings to their lives.

“Those who have ingested the inner cores, utilize every brief pause in our movement to perform focused internal cultivation. In the worst-case scenario, we may be stripped of any opportunity to rest whatsoever.”

“Jin Gong-ja, is it truly wise to persist in this manner?”

Exactly as Seong-mo-ran indicated, dragging this massive entourage along was incredibly counterproductive.

“Would it not be far more practical to select a swift detachment and dispatch them to secure the staging grounds first?”

Adopting her strategy might have represented the most logical path under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, I shook my head in refusal.

“Given that the training instructors have entirely abandoned the encampment, we cannot count on any reinforcement from that location. If we leave these fractured units behind… they will likely not survive past half a day.”

While the underlying catalyst remained a mystery, the behavior of the demonic beasts had grown increasingly bloodthirsty. They were no longer the cautious creatures that actively avoided human presence and slunk in the shadows. Quite literally, this demonic realm had transformed into a living underworld.

“At present, our sole viable option is to harvest as many abandoned survivors as we can find and retreat toward the staging grounds. Before the rest of our primary team takes further casualties.”

With Seong-mo-ran enforcing discipline, our traveling velocity increased markedly. After putting down an additional two demonic beasts, we eventually arrived at a clearing where—

“Hmm.”

For the first time, we encountered a massive gathering of abandoned martial artists numbering close to thirty. Off to one flank lay the lifeless form of what appeared to be an academy student alongside the massive carcass of a slain fiend. It seemed they had attempted to wage an independent hunt against a beast while isolated, resulting in this catastrophic outcome.

“Who holds command over this unit?”

I called out to identify the leader of the thirty-man group, but my question was met with absolute silence. They merely stared back at us with deeply resentful glints in their eyes.

“Is there truly not a single individual here capable of articulation?”

When I repeated my question, an mocking tone drifted out from the crowd.

“He truly possesses the traits of a scavenging predator. How did he even manage to sniff his way to this location?”

When certain Daoists bind their hair upward to secure their headwear, their facial structure and upper cranium are pulled taut, yielding an appearance reminiscent of an equine skull, which often earns them the mocking moniker of ‘Horse-nose Daoists.’ However, this particular fellow’s nasal bridge truly did resemble that of an actual horse.

“Hey, Horse-nose. Are you the one running this circus?”

“……”

“Explain what occurred here.”

“Ha! Do you honestly believe I would share intelligence with the likes of you?”

I locked my gaze directly onto the man’s peculiar nose.

“Is it merely your facial structure that mirrors an equine creature, or has your intellect degenerated to the level of a beast’s as well?”

“What did you say?!”

“I have counted a total of five corpses during my journey to this spot. Every single one of them was an academy student. Do you fail to comprehend the implications of that reality?”

“…….”

“Do not tell me you harbor the delusion that you are absolved of blame simply because you were blindly executing the mandates of your training instructor?”

In a flash, Horse-nose’s nostrils flared with intense agitation. Incredible, did he genuinely believe that absurd justification? This individual was an utterly shameless, delusional fanatic.

“Whether it concerns a Spirit or some other entity, precious lives have been extinguished. If he persisted in hunting this creature until matters deteriorated to this catastrophic degree, then that wretched instructor No-jin-ha ought to be categorized as nothing less than an operative for the Heterodox Factions.”

The moment I struck that sensitive nerve, the Horse-nose fellow, who had been oozing arrogance just moments prior, began to crumble emotionally, looking as though his entire worldview was shattering.

“Ou—our senior brother would absolutely never commit such treason!”

Ah, so this particular group traced their lineage back to the Cheong-seong Sect. Letting out a weary breath, I closed the distance between us by another pace.

“What precisely transpired during the pursuit?”

“……”

The martial artist’s eyes drifted toward the ragged line of survivors we had accumulated behind us. Then, after dropping his gaze in a solemn, quiet pause—

“Ca—can our group join your march as well?”

He raised his eyes toward me, projecting an incredibly pathetic and desperate expression. What an absolute simpleton. Exactly as expected, they were merely sheltered, naive children. They had been thoroughly intoxicated by the grandiose rhetoric of that despicable instructor No-jin-ha, barely managing to keep their lives without understanding the true nature of the trap they were in.

Turning my back to him, I answered impassively.

“Provided you maintain the pace and follow orders.”

“…We lost track of the Spirit during our pursuit. While our group was resting, the creature materialized once more, accompanied by what appeared to be its offspring. Because we were forced to mobilize in a frantic rush, we failed to maintain contact with the primary body.”

I shifted my gaze toward Yang-ja-pyeong. He deliberately and slowly shook his head in absolute denial. Indeed, even the most savage beasts possess maternal patterns, making it entirely counterintuitive for a creature to retreat toward the location of its vulnerable young when actively tracked by dangerous predators. No matter how extraordinary a Spirit was supposed to be, for it to deliberately manifest alongside its offspring defied all natural logic.

Ultimately, I was forced to confront the dark reality I had been desperately attempting to disregard. The entity the instructors and students were pursuing was definitively not a Spirit.

“What sort of monstrosity are these simpletons actually hunting?”

A profoundly ‘sinister’ concept scratched at the edge of my thoughts, yet I chose to keep the word unspoken. If the situation truly mirrored that dark suspicion… it would be far too catastrophic to contemplate. Curse it all, regardless of how heavily my reincarnated existence was blighted by the malice of the Demon God, this was bordering on excessive.

I chose neither to validate nor dismiss the terrifying thought. Had Confucius himself not championed it? Walking the middle path of moderation is always superior. Clapping my palms together once, I addressed the surrounding crowd.

“Prepare yourselves to resume the trek. What have you all been doing up until this moment without even administering basic field medicine?”

While the abandoned fighters began receiving applications of gold-sore salve and bandaging their wounds, I strode over to the carcass of the demonic beast. Halting his own medical treatment, the Horse-nose Daoist tracked my movements with a deeply wary and suspicious glare.

“Wh—what do you think you are doing with that?”

“What does it look like? Even when time is of the essence, a martial artist must always harvest the spoils available to them.”

Of course, it was technically a beast your unit managed to fell, but under current circumstances, it belongs to the cooperative pool.