"Both the dagger and the inner force are yours."
Guard Gam's eyes trembled at Mok Gyeong-un's words. The dagger embedded in the center of his chest... The inner force imbued in the dagger was his own? Did this mean that the boy had somehow forcibly taken his inner force and used it against him?
"...Impossible," Guard Gam thought. Inner force has its own unique properties. Even if one were to steal another's inner force, due to the variations caused by different sects and schools, it would typically become poison to the user. Even when disciples of the same sect inherited inner force from their masters, they needed to refine it through circulation techniques to make it their own before they could use it effectively.
Yet this boy claimed to have used it?
"Just what is this guy's true identity?" Guard Gam wondered. He was certainly no ordinary civilian. Guard Gam had thought that even as a death row inmate, since he wasn't from the martial world, he could be controlled. But that was a grave miscalculation. This guy possessed strange abilities that Guard Gam knew nothing about. He even seemed to command supernatural entities.
"A mistake," Guard Gam realized. He shouldn't have brought this guy here. How foolish to think he could be controlled just because he hadn't learned martial arts. This guy was clever enough to use supernatural means to distract him and then throw a dagger infused with stolen inner force to inflict a fatal wound. Perhaps that was what made him truly frightening.
Gam struggled to steady his breathing. The dagger in his chest made it difficult to breathe. He could feel his body temperature dropping from the chest outward. The location was too critical. If he pulled it out, the bleeding might worsen to the point where recovery would be impossible.
He raised his head to glare at Mok Gyeong-un. Their fates were incompatible; this had to end one way or another. Although Gam was injured, surely Mok Gyeong-un was in no better shape with daggers in his ribs and thigh...
But something was off. The dagger Mok Gyeong-un had thrown was the one that had been in his own thigh. Yet why was there so little bleeding? With an injury in that location, his pants should have been soaked with blood below the wound. But aside from the immediate area, there seemed to be no blood flow.
"He couldn't have controlled the bleeding or blocked the acupoints," Guard Gam thought, baffled. He had never seen anything like this before. Just what was going on?
Looking at Mok Gyeong-un as if he were some kind of monster, Gam bit his lip hard. He couldn't fathom how he had ended up at odds with such a bizarre individual. But he still had one trump card left. That's why he hadn't made him take it earlier.
"...You... haven't forgotten about... the poison pellet?" Guard Gam managed to say.
The poison pellet was a precautionary measure, force-fed to Mok Gyeong-un to prevent him from acting out of line or trying to escape.
Mok Gyeong-un responded, "Oh? The poison pellet?"
"Yes."
"I had forgotten about that."
"Ha," Guard Gam scoffed incredulously. How could someone forget that their life was being held hostage? It didn't matter what this cunning boy was thinking. There was no way he could have truly forgotten about it.
"Haa... haa... let's make a deal," Guard Gam proposed.
"A deal?"
"If we stop fighting now and you hand over the secret manual, I'll let you go free."
"Let me go free?"
"Isn't that what you wanted? Staying here means living a fake life with the constant risk of being discovered."
Mok Gyeong-un nodded at this. "Well, that's true."
"...I'll give you the antidote formula and some travel money. Any competent doctor should be able to make it, and you can use the money for a fresh start. cough cough"
Guard Gam's voice grew hoarse as he spoke at length. He needed urgent treatment and to regulate his inner force, or he would be in danger. There was a limit to how long he could endure with inner force alone.
"Make your choice. If we keep fighting like this, we both lose."
"You certainly have a point," Mok Gyeong-un agreed, seeming to show a positive response.
Guard Gam was about to breathe a sigh of relief at Mok Gyeong-un's apparent cooperation. He could deal with the urgent situation now and dispose of the boy later. For now, he needed to put him at ease.
"First, I'll give you a sedative. We can each treat our... cough..."
At that moment, Guard Gam coughed up blood. While this could be expected given his injury, something felt off to Guard Gam.
"The blood..."
There was a strange, pungent odor to the blood. Alarmed, Guard Gam tried to open his chest garment, but his hands were shaking too severely to move.
"Why are my hands..."
Suddenly, his legs gave out, and he fell to one knee. Then he vomited a mouthful of black blood.
Something was rapidly spreading through his internal organs, causing damage. He hadn't noticed earlier because he had been protecting his chest and organs with inner force.
"Could it be?" Gam's eyes widened. These symptoms were unmistakably those of poison. But something was wrong. This boy hadn't used any poison, so how had he been poisoned?
As Guard Gam pondered this in confusion, Mok Gyeong-un staggered slowly towards him.
"Whew. Having this dagger stuck in me does hurt quite a bit," Mok Gyeong-un remarked.
"You... what exactly... did you do?" Guard Gam demanded.
"Ah, I forgot to mention something earlier."
"What?"
"Besides the dagger and inner force, I also gave you my blood."
"Blood?"
"Yes. There wasn't time to wipe the blood off the dagger that was in my thigh. Well, actually, that was intentional."
"What are you talking about..." Guard Gam didn't understand.
Mok Gyeong-un smiled slightly and explained, "Of course you wouldn't understand. I only told Guard Go-chan about this."
"Go-chan?"
"Yes. It's nothing special, really. I've eaten a lot of poisonous herbs since I was young, so my blood is toxic."
Guard Gam was dumbfounded by this revelation. Blood that was toxic? What nonsense was this? Was this boy saying he was like a poison human from the Sichuan Tang family?
"This guy... just how much has he been hiding?" Guard Gam thought, astounded. But that wasn't the most pressing issue right now. He needed to use his inner force to somehow stop the poison from spreading, not just protect his chest area. Whatever this poison was, it burned terribly.
"cough cough..."
"Painful, isn't it?" Mok Gyeong-un asked.
"You... you won't... get away with... this..." Guard Gam managed to say.
"Paedo, Angelica dahurica, Adonis amurensis, Pinellia ternata..." Mok Gyeong-un began listing herbs.
Guard Gam's eyes widened in shock. These were all ingredients used in the poison pellet.
"Patrinia scabiosaefolia, Amanita muscaria, Foeniculum vulgare..."
"You... how do you..."
"Well, I can get a pretty good idea of simple herbs like these just by tasting them a little."
He could tell just by tasting? Just who was this guy?
Mok Gyeong-un knelt down in front of the bewildered Guard Gam, meeting his gaze, and said, "Actually, you don't need an antidote at all."
"You... were you... cough cough... toying with me?"
Mok Gyeong-un tilted his head slightly, staring intently at Guard Gam's face. Guard Gam's face was pale, his eyes filled with fear and terror.
Seeing this, Mok Gyeong-un smiled and said, "Whether they're martial artists or first-class experts, when faced with pain and death, people aren't much different from anyone else."
A chill ran down Guard Gam's spine at these words. How could someone wearing human skin speak like this and have such lifeless eyes? It didn't feel like he was facing a human at all. This guy was a demon.
Guard Gam couldn't stop trembling. His breathing became ragged, and fear made it difficult to breathe. The human heart was indeed fickle. Just moments ago, he had still believed he had the upper hand and had looked down on his opponent without tension. But now, everything had changed completely.
"You're trembling," Mok Gyeong-un observed.
"P-please... spare me," Guard Gam begged, abandoning his pride and pleading for his life. He couldn't die like this. He had left the cruel world of assassination, where one could die at any moment, dreaming of a stable life. Losing his life like this was too unfair.
Mok Gyeong-un stroked his own chin. "Spare you?"
"I... I swear loyalty. No, I swear my allegiance. Please... please spare my life."
Watching the pleading man, Mok Gyeong-un smiled and said, "Now that's the attitude I like."
"I will live only for you, young master."
"Well, I appreciate that."
Guard Gam's expression began to brighten at Mok Gyeong-un's words. But then—
"Gah!" Guard Gam gasped as Mok Gyeong-un suddenly pressed the dagger in his chest all the way to the hilt.
Leaning close to the suffering Guard Gam's ear, Mok Gyeong-un whispered, "Someone who changes allegiances so easily depending on the situation... what loyalty could you possibly offer?"
"Urgh..."
"I think it would be more helpful if you just died."
With those words, Mok Gyeong-un covered Guard Gam's mouth and nose with his hand. Guard Gam's eyes bulged, blood vessels prominent, as he flailed his arms and legs in agony. But Mok Gyeong-un watched impassively.
It didn't last long. Soon, the convulsions stopped. Guard Gam's eyes, bloodshot and filled with terror, stared lifelessly.
Mok Gyeong-un looked at him with a lack of interest, then removed his hand from Guard Gam's face.
"That was dealt with quicker than expected. Lucky, I suppose," Mok Gyeong-un thought. He had planned to kill Guard Gam one way or another from the start. There was no point in keeping alive someone who knew he was an impostor; it would only cause trouble.
Mok Gyeong-un pondered his next move. "Should I kill Guard Go-chan too?"
If he eliminated Go-chan as well, there would be no one left who knew the truth. But Mok Gyeong-un shook his head.
"Might as well keep him alive."
Go-chan could still be useful. He was good for handling various clean-up tasks. Besides, "He seems to keep his mouth shut pretty well."
Go-chan had remained silent even under torture, which impressed Mok Gyeong-un. Whether it was out of fear of him or because of the poison didn't matter. As long as Go-chan didn't betray him, Mok Gyeong-un was willing to use him.
Mok Gyeong-un looked at the dagger embedded between his ribs. No matter how exceptionally fast his body healed, having this stuck in him still hurt.
However, he couldn't remove it now. He needed to maintain appearances.
"I wish someone would come quickly," he thought, finding the situation cumbersome.
"Ah!" Mok Gyeong-un remembered something. He placed his palm on the lower abdomen of the dead Guard Gam and activated the Method of Attraction.
He wanted to confirm something.
The dispersing inner force from Guard Gam's dantian was drawn into Mok Gyeong-un's body through the Method of Attraction.. The amount was incomparable to what he had absorbed from Jo Il-sang.
"Unattainable after all," Mok Gyeong-un thought. But this inner force would have dissipated anyway. What he was truly curious about was something else.
After a short while, the flow of inner force stopped. The expected reaction didn't occur.
Just as Mok Gyeong-un was thinking, "Maybe not?" a cold, ominous death energy flowed from Guard Gam's abdomen. It was similar to the energy he had absorbed from Jo Il-sang, but in greater quantity.
"Ah!" It was there after all.
The death energy from Guard Gam's body gathered below his navel, gradually taking form. Although Mok Gyeong-un wasn't sure exactly what this was, he found himself increasingly drawn to this chilling energy.
Watching Mok Gyeong-un with interest were a pair of red eyes. It was Blue Spirit, smoking a long pipe amidst a hazy mist.
She whispered softly to the Demonic Monk beside her, "Monk, I think I understand why you're so captivated by this mortal."
This boy was no ordinary human. She, too, could instinctively sense this.
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A/N:
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