[ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
[Unbaek, poor guy]
[Lady Baengnyeong is a bad guy, huh]
[So pitiful]
[As expected, it’s Lily]
[The kid really is pitiful]
[And look at Yena just eating away, lol]
[Yena…!]
Om nom nom.
“Is it delicious?”
“Meow? Ah, yes, it is! It’s a unique flavor…”
Yena was munching on a small snack next to her teacup that looked so enjoyable to eat.
“……”
Of course, it wasn’t the time to be eating in this atmosphere.
Unbaek was staring at Yena with a soft expression before putting down his teacup.
“Feel free to eat. I’ll call the servant for more.”
“Meow meow.”
“Good job, Miss Yena.”
“Meow meow.”
But since the atmosphere lightened up, that’s a good thing, right?
“Let me continue explaining. One day, Lady Baengnyeong gained a strange power. It was an eerie power that even the Display Case Practitioner couldn’t handle.”
“What kind of power is it?”
“…I couldn’t see it. To be precise, it can be described as ‘emptied.’”
“Meow?”
Yena tilted her head.
Then Unbaek held out the nearly empty teacup to us.
The teacup that was once full of tea now showed its bottom, barely holding onto crushed Baekseolchuo.
“That power is like this teacup. From far away, you only see the cup itself. The contents are invisible. Of course, if it were filled, you’d see it from a distance….”
“Since it’s not there, it can’t be seen.”
“That’s correct.”
Being empty means you can’t know.
What is visible is just a fragment of the form, and only the person who drank it can know the contents.
And that person is already dead.
“One thing is certain: Lady Baengnyeong gained tremendous power as a price for drinking those contents. She not only soared to Display Case level 3 in an instant but also reached level 4 within 500 years.”
She truly was unstoppable.
It was as if her past struggles were mere illusions as she ascended at a terrifying speed, deciding to aim for even higher places.
‘Marriage Device.’
To transcend mortality and reach the divine.
To become Junseon, she craved even more power, and her hometown became increasingly desolate.
It’s no wonder she was no longer putting in any effort into her own hometown at all.
“Spirit herbs, spirits, and all kinds of tangible and intangible assets that had long been stockpiled in White Mist. She used everything. If there was nothing, she even borrowed from other Archlords.”
“Did you do it?”
“……”
“It’s totally scary, meow…”
No one could stop Baengnyeong, intoxicated by the madness of power.
No, after all, she was the master of this place; who could possibly stop her?
Leaving aside the Archlord, she was a Display Case at Level 4, so even if all the ascetics of Baekmuhyang banded together, they couldn’t prevent her.
“Getting indebted to other Archlords was a good thing.”
Gyeoryu didn’t concern himself with matters within the Archlord as long as the overall rules of Jangmugye weren’t broken.
“So she challenged the unreachable sky and met her end with excessive use of power. That’s the end of it.”
“Meow?”
“I see. Understood.”
“Is this… the end, meow?”
[Hmm]
[There’s something more, right?]
[ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
[That old man said there was more to it.]
[Unbaek sounds calm, but it’s really sad.]
[Didn’t they say something?]
[Why not mention the inheritance?]
[Is it that they just don’t want to say?]
[But, if they received an inheritance, how could they not know the true nature of their power?]
[Hum, Lily…]
[They’re definitely hiding something.]
I nodded.
Unbaek’s story ends here.
Of course, there were still quite a few things left unsaid, but we weren’t meeting to interrogate after all.
Just bringing this topic up must have been a big deal for Unbaek.
However, aside from that, there was something I needed to confirm.
“Thank you for sharing. It must have been tough.”
“No. I feel bad only repaying such a debt with mere words.”
“Well then. It was nice to meet you.”
Swish.
I offered a handshake.
Unbaek stood up, took my hand, and a tiny fraction of power, barely noticeable, seeped into her.
She flinched.
Sensing a slight change, Unbaek merely smiled, as if it was just an ordinary display of strength.
“Have you already reached Display Case level? That’s impressive.”
“But you’re still a Display Case Level 3.”
“Even so, you can’t compare with Lord Jeokmuhyang.”
Unbaek and I shared a laugh, finished our farewells, and exited Baekmuhyang.
I clasped our joined hands, let go, and nodded.
“I’m fairly certain now.”
“Is it Lord Mokmujin?”
“Probably.”
Though I hadn’t mentioned it, prior to coming here, I had unearthed some meaningful information from Lord Heukmuhyang and the former Archlord Jooam.
For example, Lady Baengnyeong had three children, including Unbaek, but currently ‘only Unbaek is alive.’
Lady Baengnyeong felt quite a bit of jealousy upon seeing her children’s remarkable ‘talents.’
Above all, the most certain doubt arose from Lady Baengnyeong’s corpse.
“…They said that corpse had no eyes.”
“Eek?!”
“To be exact, it wasn’t just that the eyes were missing; it was as if they were completely empty. Like they never existed in the first place.”
[D-d-d?]
[Then isn’t it obvious?]
[No eyes, d-d-d.]
[That’s a clear case then.]
[No eyes Jin-gun;;;]
[Whoah.]
[Did Unbaek not mention that?]
[Did they hide it?]
“Rather than hiding it, bringing it up again would have been a big deal. The memory of that day must have been quite shocking for Unbaek.”
“How tragic…”
“However, just that information wasn’t enough to be certain. It could simply be the effects of battle or techniques, and moreover, it was information that came from Lord Heukmuhyang’s investigation.”
The information investigated was not from White Mist but from Heukmuhyang and his associates.
Unless there’s a special case, an archlord cannot move to another territory, so it can’t be 100% certain information.
To confirm accurately, they needed to meet Unbaek directly.
“Lady Unbaek inherited that heritage after Lady Baengnyeong died. She instinctively seems to be reluctant to use it, so it’s in a half-sealed state. But Lord Mokmujin’s power is definitely real.”
It was true that Lord Mokmujin had involved himself with Lady Baengnyeong.
“Is Unbaek just going to leave it as it is?”
“For now, yes. She’s hardly using her power.”
Metaphorically speaking, the current state of Unbaek’s power is like an ‘empty teacup.’
Though she inherited the heritage from Lady Baengnyeong, the contents of that teacup are nonexistent.
Even if the faint remnants of power occasionally seep out, she hasn’t tried directly using the teacup.
“If we have to be precise, we should consider her similar to Lord Heavenly Horse. In fact, Lord Heavenly Horse is using his power more.”
“Hmm…”
“First, we need to find the location.”
“Okay, nya.”
Coincidentally, there’s a promising location nearby, as Gyeoryu informed.
Ena and I used spatial movement again and arrived in the endlessly stretched Bamboo Forest.
The densely packed Bamboo Forest.
Not feeling any life signs particularly, it seemed like life didn’t exist in this area.
[Huh?]
[Nothing here, Lily.]
[So many bamboos.]
[Oh.]
[Can we just break them?]
“Uh… for now, I can’t feel anything… But I think I need to pull one out to find out.”
“Is it okay to damage it?”
“It doesn’t matter since we’ll restore it.”
“I’m going to kill it anyway.”
“Since I’m uprooting it completely, just replanting it will do.”
“Even if it’s damaged, using the Marriage Device technique commonly employed by Gyeoryu can quickly restore it.”
“You can also use magic.”
As I casually reached out, golden currents erupted, and thousands, no, tens of thousands of bamboos were pulled out all at once.
They were bamboos filled with Cosmic Spirit, unlike ordinary ones, but they were still just trees.
Of course, they couldn’t withstand my power.
After gathering the uprooted bamboos in one place, I hovered up to the sky and scanned the land once again.
“Hmm…?”
“What’s wrong, nya?”
[Lily is the best!]
[?]
[Why?]
[It’s refreshing, haha!]
[You’ve gone bald!]
[Look at how you’ve shaved it off, whoa!]
[?]
“Doesn’t it seem like something is visible?”
Something etched into the ground that was hidden beneath the bamboo.
Specifically, it was something concealed by the ‘Cosmic Spirit’ of the bamboo forest, but once I cleared it, the existence was revealed.
It was a character quite familiar to us.
Eye (目).
Faint but, when viewed from the entire forest, it vaguely appeared to look like an ‘eye.’
[Eye?]
[Is it an eye?]
[Huh?]
[Whoa!]
[Isn’t that it?]
[It’s definitely Mokmujin, haha!]
[Here it is!]
Thud.
“Isn’t that a character?”
“I think we’ve found it.”
Etched into the ground as if drawn with a finger.
Based on the characters and the structure of the technique, it seemed that only by sending out the Cosmic Spirit in accordance with the conditions would the hidden passage open.
Although it could be opened without knowing the conditions, at that time, I would need to push in at least a Cosmic Spirit above the display case level.
“Looks like we need to send out energy over there. Or solve some puzzle-like conditions.”
“Oh? Should I give it a try, nya?”
“Um… no.”
Clang!
“Let’s just ask it to open. We might get lucky since we have some connection, right?”
“Nya? Is that so?”
“Of course.”
Nodding, I lightly knocked with the small hammer in my hand.
And then.
─?!
Gugugugugugu!!!
The continent sank.
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