When the Black Moon Rises - Chapter 75
Chapter 75
Baek Manyong sighed, rose from his seat, closed the window, and walked to the bed.
The bedding laid out was new.
Though not of particularly high quality, it was better than the blanket pushed against the wall.
The young lady's original blanket had been of even lower quality.
In his heart, he hadn't wanted to carelessly lie on the young lady's bed and had planned to spend the night sitting up, but...
"Though this bed isn't worth even 140 nyang, it's not too bad to use, so please sleep on it properly. I've prepared something good to help you rest," the young lady had insisted twice.
At the head of such a bed sat an elegant wooden box.
Though he couldn't know its contents, she had said merely keeping it close would relieve fatigue, so it couldn't be ordinary.
'Even if the box is locked, how can she give something like this so easily? What if I gave in to greed and had ill intentions?'
Baek Manyong looked down at the box with a troubled expression.
'Is she doing this deliberately to prove she's providing the most precious items? ...Hm. How affected.'
He turned off the light and lay down.
Yet the closer he was to the box as he closed his eyes, the more his fatigue genuinely lifted and his depleted spiritual power began to recover.
'...'
He couldn't understand why realizing she had truly given him good things made him so unsettled.
'Sigh. What can I do? I'll have to apologize tomorrow.'
Though he turned off the light and pulled the blanket up to his neck, Baek Manyong couldn't fall asleep for a long while, lost in various thoughts.
But how long had he been like that?
His spiritual sense trembled through his consciousness that had sunk into sleep without him realizing.
Something was stimulating him.
'...!'
The chancellor instantly regained consciousness and tensed his body.
Though he couldn't sense any presence, as someone from the wind-controlling Baek clan, there was something his senses caught.
Someone was in this room.
Though Baek Manyong was quite a skilled warrior, unfortunately his opponent was even more skilled.
'When? I didn't even hear the door open.'
Fortunately, it seemed they didn't intend to kill him as there was no killing intent.
But it was clear they had business with him.
Just as those presences gradually gathered near Baek Manyong's bedside...
He grabbed the hand reaching for him and shouted, "Who are you?!"
Still gripping that hand, he threw the person over his shoulder toward the floor.
BANG!!
As if that were a signal, the intruders all drew their swords at once.
SHING!!
Sharp killing intent-laden blades cut through the darkness from all directions with an eerie sound as they rushed in.
'No, these bastards!'
There was no time to turn on the light.
Baek Manyong grabbed whatever he could and deflected the blades pouring down on him as he ran toward the window.
He violently threw open the window and used the flooding moonlight to check the room.
"Who are you?!"
But somehow they seemed flustered too.
Unable to attack easily, they looked at each other until someone nodded, then pushed past Baek Manyong and fled through the open window one after another.
But.
"!!"
As they fled, one shadow quickly stuffed the wooden box from the bed into their arms and ran away.
"No!!"
'I already acted rashly before the clan head without understanding the situation, and now I'm going to be falsely accused of stealing someone's precious item?!'
Baek Manyong ran after that shadow, but the other's escape was a step faster.
"Damn it, wait!! Come back here!"
Just as he was about to climb over the windowsill after the shadow...
"..."
Someone was watching this scene from the roof of a distant annex.
The yellow moonlight poured down behind the standing figure.
"Yes. Since I hung black curtains, they would need to open the window."
A hand as pale as transparency calmly held a bow. Three arrows were nocked on the string at once.
"How long I've waited for you bastards to come."
Someone's clothes below billowed violently as they stirred up the wind at their feet.
But though the tiles clattered and flew away from the spiritual power wind, the slender body standing on the narrow ridge showed not even a slight tremor.
The eyes staring at the targets blazed.
"I won't let even one of you escape alive."
Sehwa gritted her teeth as she watched the shadows slipping out of her room like a scattering of rats.
TANG―!
As soon as she released with intense force, the spiritually-charged bowstring vibrated with a thunderous sound.
Arrows wreathed in purple flames began to fly at terrifying speed, cutting through the air.
"That bastard Sa Danyoon. How vicious he was. Even as we flayed his flesh piece by piece, he bit off and swallowed his own tongue so he wouldn't scream in case you might hear."
The spiritually-charged arrows simultaneously pierced through three shadows' ankles.
At that moment, power exploded and bright red chunks of flesh flew into the air along with blood.
"Kuk!!"
"In the end he was thrown as dog food on the plains with his skin completely peeled off. With his limbs cut off too. I peeled off his scalp. He endured well even as I stripped off his skin one stitch at a time with a knife."
Without any gap, she nocked three more arrows simultaneously.
Layering spiritual power strong enough to make her clothes flutter, she loosed the arrows.
TANG!
"Heuk!"
The arrows precisely pierced through the knee joints of the quickly fleeing shadows.
With a PUCK sound, spiritual power exploded again and legs were severed.
Mist-like streams of blood sprayed into the air.
The shadows rolled forward with miserable screams.
They were the guards who had been the Mystic Ruler's warriors before becoming Ju Kyunghyun's warriors, who had pressed down on her shoulders that day at the execution ground.
The Mystic Ruler would never entrust his spiritual orb to another for even a day.
So no matter when it arrived, the day the orb came into her hands...
She had anticipated that the old man would definitely send someone to retrieve the orb.
Not wanting to waste even the brief time to grab more arrows, she fitted whatever she could grasp between her fingers and operated the massive power without pause.
Purple spiritual power blazed like flames around Sehwa.
"Your maidservants tasted good. They said they'd do anything if they could just see you for a moment. Well, I ended up tearing them all to death anyway."
Why were those voices, which had only aimed to humiliate her, cackling so hatefully, still so vivid?
Though she had returned alive, though she had started again, the wretchedness of that time seemed to follow endlessly, refusing to be erased.
The final moments of those who died painfully trying to save her still felt fresh enough to grasp.
'No one.'
Her reddened pupils split vertically.
'I can't forgive anyone.'
TANG―!
A intense sound like lightning striking burst from the spiritually-charged bowstring.
In the blink of an eye, arrows pierced the joints of the shadows and detonated spiritual power in their red muscles.
"...Kuk!"
Bright red blood sprayed into the air like mist.
Watching their hands and feet explode away, the shadows trembled, but she wasn't satisfied at all yet.
The hands that had dragged her from prison.
The feet that had kicked her parents' severed heads.
The tongues that had spat on her brothers.
Even the vulgar expressions they had shown while pressing down her struggling shoulders.
There wasn't a single part she could leave untorn.
The arrows quickly depleted.
Perhaps she had focused too much on causing pain without killing.
At some point there was nothing left in her hands, while the vermin-like bastards were still alive.
That's when...
"Young lady, here! Here they are!"
Climbing diagonally up the tiles, Youngsun held out a quiver densely packed with arrows.
Behind her, Youngchae and Youngmu also climbed the tiles, each carrying a quiver fully loaded with arrows on their backs.
Sehwa's rigidly frozen mouth corners softened slightly.
Her heart, which hadn't been filled even as she severed those guards' limbs, rapidly welled up warm at the sight of the three sisters.
"Here! Shoot as much as you want! We put more underneath the roof!"
That voice suddenly made her laugh.
Her eyes grew slightly moist as she kicked the empty quiver down.
The arrows packed densely in the new quiver felt reassuring.
Sehwa's eyes flashed as she pulled up the corners of her mouth chillingly.
Thank goodness. It wasn't over yet.
'What is this... Who on earth is that?'
Baek Manyong couldn't properly distinguish if what he was seeing now was dream or reality.
"..."
Through the yellow moonlight, the slender body appeared to be standing in the middle of a storm.
Though clothes billowed violently, whoever stood maintaining perfect balance showed not even a slight tremor.
Given the arrows' trajectories came from a fixed direction and the moon was bright despite not being full... It would be stranger not to find the source of these arrows raining down.
Even amidst the cruel scene of limbs exploding and blood spraying before his eyes, Baek Manyong stared entranced at that delicate shadow in the distance.
The thin wrists visible each time they raised arrows and drew the string, and the crimson spiritual power like red lotuses wreathing that body, were clear even in the backlighting.
PUCK!
Once again an arrow powerfully shot struck and embedded in a shadow writhing like an insect on the ground before him.
Though the shadow trembled, with an arrow through their cheek they couldn't bite their tongue, and with severed limbs they couldn't flee, so they simply took the incoming arrows.
Over a dozen shadows lay fallen with arrows densely stuck in them like hedgehogs.
Yet still the arrows continued to rain down without stopping.
It was a terrifying scene.
The wide yard with its beautiful garden instantly filled with the thick scent of blood, and the ceaselessly flying arrows pierced the intruders without a single miss.
'But.'
Though it was truly a frightening scene...
'Why can't I take my eyes off it?'
Just who could that be?
With such perfect archery skills, they must surely be a member of the Baek clan.
'There was no one like that among those who came with me, could they perhaps be a secret guard serving the clan head?'
Each clan's mystic beings displayed special abilities according to their type of spiritual power, and this archery could only be refined through the Baek clan's power.
'Perhaps they're also a divine beast?'
Somehow his throat went dry and his heart pounded intensely.
He felt that same trembling that he had experienced long ago when he first witnessed Baek Giha transformed into beast form.
That's when...
PUCK!
"!!!!"
An arrow flying at frightening speed struck Baek Manyong's collar and pulled him backward.
And to him fixed against the wall, another shot.
PUCK!!
"Heek!"
His body tensed with terror at the arrow embedded between his legs.
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