SYM 120

Smoke was rising from the direction of the Third Prince’s residence. Red light flickered ominously in the dark sky.

Cheong-un, upon seeing it, clicked his tongue briefly.

“Tsk. Looks like they set a fire. They’re really going all out.”

It seemed Jeong-hyeon had set fire to the Third Prince’s residence.

The Third Prince’s residence had security almost as tight as the Imperial Palace. Even Cheong-un found it difficult to infiltrate. He suspected this was why they resorted to arson.

“Bring more water over there!”

“Pour it here too! Don’t let your guard down until the embers are completely extinguished!”

As he got closer to the residence, the commotion grew louder. He could see everyone working at the residence in a frenzy, trying to put out the fire.

Fortunately, they had plenty of fire retardant, so putting out the fire itself didn’t seem to be a problem.

[Amhon.]

Cheong-un spread his senses throughout the Third Prince’s residence, calling out to the Amhon in hiding via Telepathic Transmission.

[At your command.]

Cheong-un stood on the roof, surveying the scene below.

Cheong-un compressed his energy at his fingertips and launched a Qi bullet. The Qi bullet, propelled by Finger Flicking Skill, pierced through the crowd of workers and struck someone’s forehead. The person with the hole in their forehead collapsed without even a scream.

Among the people busily trying to put out the fire, there were those secretly harboring murderous intent.

Cheong-un launched a few more Qi bullets.

There were many caught in his senses, but it was impossible to deal with them all right now.

[Return to Onghwa Palace and tell the Third Prince’s men that Onghwa Palace was a trap. The real attack is on the Third Prince’s main residence.]

It was only after arriving here that Cheong-un realized he had left without saying anything to the men the Third Prince had assigned to him.

Since he had parted ways with the Third Prince’s men in the underground maze, they were probably still in the maze.

[Understood.]

After the Amhon disappeared, Cheong-un spread his senses again, scanning every inch.

Cheong-un tried to find Eun-hyeon, or the Third Prince, by spreading his senses, but it was difficult to pinpoint anyone specifically with so many people running around in a panic.

If they had mastered Martial Arts, he could have searched for them using the unique energy of their Martial Arts, but since both Eun-hyeon and the Third Prince were ordinary people, he couldn’t find them that way.

Instead, Cheong-un found something irritating within the residence.

There was a distinct boundary where the outside was very noisy, but the inside was very quiet.

How could one place be so quiet when the entire residence was on fire and in such chaos? Something was suspicious.

Cheong-un headed in that direction.

Some of the intruders from the Hongbaek Sect wore masks, while others disguised themselves as ordinary people, blending in with the workers.

The masked ones directly clashed swords with the residence’s guards, while the ordinary ones seemed to aim to cause chaos by mixing among the people.

Because of them, the fire, which he thought would be easily extinguished, kept spreading.

Cheong-un moved inside, launching Qi bullets whenever he saw a Hongbaek Sect follower. People fell like flies each time Cheong-un’s finger flicked lightly.

“There! There’s an intruder over there!”

“Fire! The flames are rising! Pour water over there first!”

The situation seemed to worsen the further he went inside.

Clang, clang clang.

The sharp sound of metal clashing echoed incessantly, and corpses were scattered everywhere. The residence was in such a mess that it was unrecognizable from its former state.

“That bastard is really determined.”

From the start, the Brocade Guard were not beings that even a royal could command. The Eunuch of the Eastern Depot was the same. They were all people who could only be moved by the Emperor’s direct orders, and currently, the Third Prince had some of the Eastern Depot and Brocade Guard as his escorts.

This showed how great the Emperor’s favor towards the Third Prince was.

For Jeong-hyeon to do something like this against such a Third Prince meant that he was not simply going against a member of the royal family, but against the Emperor himself.

The principle of non-interference with the imperial family had been established for a long time because even if an individual possessed great skill, dealing with an army was another matter entirely.

The reason the Demonic Sect became distant from the center of the Martial World was ultimately because they opposed the imperial family.

Since then, the imperial family had been an inviolable territory that no Martial World force dared to encroach upon, but Jeong-hyeon had stepped into that territory.

…Why on earth?

The first question that came to Cheong-un’s mind was why.

Why was Jeong-hyeon so obsessed with Eun-hyeon? Did he know Eun-hyeon’s identity like he did? Or was Eun-hyeon a special constitution that he wanted to turn into a Semi-Reanimated Corpse to control the Undead?

But none of that made sense.

Could Eun-hyeon be the only one in the world with such a constitution? That alone wasn’t enough reason to wreak havoc like this.

If controlling the Undead was so difficult and required such a rare ability, then the Undead themselves would become meaningless.

No matter how many Undead there were, they would just be expensive logs if they couldn’t move according to orders.

So no matter how he thought about it, Jeong-hyeon’s actions didn’t make sense.

Unless there was something he didn’t know about Eun-hyeon.

Cheong-un walked inside and encountered the Third Prince, who was being guarded by the Brocade Guard. The Third Prince was in the center of the Brocade Guard, who stood back-to-back in a circle, looking around with a pale face.

“Ah!”

Then he met Cheong-un’s eyes.

Cheong-un drew his sword against the masked men who were confronting the Brocade Guard. It was the first time he had drawn his sword since coming here.

He had no time to waste since he had to find Eun-hyeon. Cheong-un quickly swung his sword.

The masked men fell like flies with simple hand movements that seemed to be swung randomly without any great shouts or martial art stances names.

Then, the faces of the Brocade Guard, who had been exhausted, began to brighten.

They had been struggling to face a large number with a small force, but Cheong-un had reduced the number of masked men in an instant, giving them a breather.

“Onghwa Palace? What happened to Onghwa Palace!”

The Third Prince shouted, looking at Cheong-un.

Cheong-un lightly shook off the blood on his sword and glanced at the Third Prince.

“Can’t you tell? It was a trap. Onghwa Palace was already full of trash.”

“…Damn it!”

Cheong-un looked at the Third Prince with cold eyes. He hadn’t set the trap, but it was true that he had given the wrong information.

“Where’s Eun-hyeon?”

“Eun-hyeon? If you mean your group, they’re inside.”

“I’ll go. The rest should be enough for the Brocade Guard to handle.”

Unlike before, Cheong-un was speaking informally to the Third Prince, but the Third Prince didn’t care and nodded.

“Huh?”

It was then. Cheong-un, still holding his sword, stretched his arm out towards the Third Prince.

The Third Prince, who knew nothing of Martial Arts, reacted a beat late.

Faster than the Third Prince was the Brocade Guard behind him. The Brocade Guard tried to block Cheong-un’s sword with a pale face, but Cheong-un’s sword had already gone behind the Third Prince.

“Wh-wha, what is…!”

By the time the Third Prince screamed, the Divine Shadow of the Brocade Guard was already falling downwards.

“Hey, are you alright! No, you’ve been stabbed by a sword, there’s no way you’re alright…”

The Third Prince babbled, muttering words he didn’t even know what they meant, half out of his mind. The Brocade Guard collapsed at the Third Prince’s feet, vomiting black blood.

The other Brocade Guard focused their attention on Cheong-un rather than taking care of the fallen man.

The Heavenly Demon, the leader of the Demonic Sect.

If that man decided to point his sword at the Third Prince, they wouldn’t be able to stop him even if they all rushed at him.

“A spy.”

“What?”

The Third Prince looked at Cheong-un and the Brocade Guard who had fallen next to him with a dumbfounded expression.

The Brocade Guard were the ones the Emperor had assigned for this Hongbaek Sect matter, so even the Third Prince didn’t know each of them well.

“…Are you sure? This man serves His Majesty the Emperor.”

“Well, I went to Onghwa Palace this time and destroyed their altar, so I know that unique energy for sure. That man had the energy of the Hongbaek Sect on him.”

At Cheong-un’s words, the Brocade Guard’s blades all turned towards the fallen man.

“The rest is up to you guys. I’m going inside. That guy is inside, right? Eun-hyeon will be inside too.”

Cheong-un turned his body after saying those words.

The sounds of shouting and fighting came from behind him, but Cheong-un didn’t look back.

He would be in trouble if the Third Prince died, so he had done this much. If he still died after he had done this much, then that must be his fate.

Cheong-un moved into the quiet interior.