A fake patient had been created. With that, an excuse was now in place, and it was time to search the village thoroughly.
Baek Woo Jin went to find Jegal Yeon Ji who had just finished her breakfast.
“Young master Baek …!”
“Let’s talk for a moment.”
“Yes!”
The two of them sat facing each other on a tree stump behind the building.
Baek Woo Jin’s expression was serious.
“It was good that we made it into the village, but there’s one major flaw.”
Discovering the suspicious village hidden by the formation and reaching this place had been an achievement in itself, but the problem came afterward.
Jegal Yeon Ji seemed to realize this belatedly, and her face darkened.
“We’re trapped here, aren’t we…?”
“That’s right.”
…
…
Just as it had been incredibly difficult to enter, leaving by their own strength was also impossible.
Asking a favor from the men once or twice might be possible, but if they frequently went in and out, it could raise their suspicions, so they had to find a way to enter and exit on their own.
“So what I’m asking is, can we create a new exit in this formation?”
Jegal Yeon Ji fell into deep thought.
Formations were one of her favorite fields of study during her time studying within the Jegal clan.
However, since the youngest sibling was shown to be a genius at formations, being constantly compared to him eventually led her to give it up, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t read her fair share of formation books.
“At the moment, it’s hard for me to say….”
“Why’s that?”
“We need to examine the core of the formation.”
The core of a formation refers to the essential components placed at key points that allow the formation to function.
If it was mishandled, the formation could be altered or even destroyed, so they wouldn’t have left it in a visible location.
“Can you find it?”
Another long moment of silence followed.
The formation’s effects, range, and structure flashed through her mind repeatedly.
Finally, she opened her eyes and answered in a confident voice.
“I can… I can do it!”
About thirty people lived in the village. Most were middle-aged or elderly, with only four or five young men barely past their twenties.
The young men and middle-aged worked on slash-and-burn fields, while the elderly walked around the village doing chores.
Whenever they had a moment, the young men would grumble about wanting to leave for the city, and the middle-aged men would scold them, and tell them to stop daydreaming and focus on plowing the fields.
It was the typical scenery of a rural village. And yet, there was a strange sense of unease around this place.
It feels like watching a play.
There was none of the usual essence of life that one would expect from them. When a small group of people lived together like this, there should have been a natural warmth and connection, but instead, it felt like skilled actors performing a well-rehearsed play.
The team members gradually blended into the village and helped out with various tasks. Meanwhile, Gu Wang Soo stayed indoors and played the role of a patient, while Jegal Yeon Ji used the excuse of caring for him to slip away and begin wandering outside.
“F-Found it…!”
After two days of thoroughly searching the small village, Jegal Yeon Ji finally succeeded in locating the core item of the formation.
It was a piece of birchwood, covered in indecipherable writing, buried beneath the roots of a large tree in the forest, not far from the village.
“This is…”
Though she had never seen the strange symbols tightly packed on the surface of the wood, whether they were drawings or letters, she instinctively understood their purpose.
“It’s absorbing the energy around it…”
It took a considerable amount of energy to maintain the formation. She couldn’t quite understand how these symbols could have such an effect, but they clearly absorbed the surrounding energy to maintain the formation.
“This… this isn’t the time for this.”
It wasn’t the moment to indulge her rising curiosity.
A formation powerful enough to wipe out the existence of an entire village couldn’t be sustained by just one core. Considering the size of the village, at least four cores were probably needed.
However, there was no need to worry anymore. Now that she had found one core, she could reverse-track its location and easily deduce where the others would be hidden.
“I… I found them…”
After spending half a day, Jegal Yeon Ji finally unearthed all four core components. Her body collapsed from exhaustion.
The tension had left her body, and her legs gave way beneath her.
Forcing strength back into her legs, she pushed herself up and returned home. There she began organizing the information she had gathered from the core items, one by one.
“He… hehe.”
After an hour of racking her brain, she let out a giggle and lifted her head.
The tightly written characters on the sheet of paper represented the conclusion she had drawn.
She went straight out of the house and split the wall-mounted logs hidden on the opposite side from the village entrance in half. She quickly buried one half in its proper place, then buried the other half a little distance away.
At that moment, the surrounding energy faintly rippled.
She swallowed hard and stepped beyond the range of the formation’s influence.
“It, it worked!”
After successfully stepping out without being affected by the formation, she smiled brightly and walked back in.
It was nearing sunset. As she ran straight home, the team members were trudging back and dragging their exhausted bodies.
“Yo-Young master Baek…!”
Seeing her running toward him with a more radiant smile than ever before, Baek Woo Jin also returned a bright smile.
“I-I did it…!”
His response was just as she expected.
“You did really well.”
Unable to hold back, Baek Woo Jin ruffled her hair and cupped her cheeks, expressing his joy as much as he could.
“Heh, hehe… hngh…”
When she received his unfiltered emotions, Jegal Yeon Ji’s face melted into a soft expression.
***
In the dead of night, when everyone was asleep.
Baek Woo Jin slipped out of the village through the passage Jegal Yeon Ji had prepared beforehand.
The village certainly felt suspicious, but the true culprit wasn’t there.
“So, they must be somewhere around here after all.”
It was time to find the real culprit who was lurking somewhere in the darkness that had settled over the mountain.
The thick darkness posed no obstacle for him. Neither his vision nor his emotions, like fear, hindered him in the slightest.
With nothing holding him back now that he was alone, Baek Woo Jin’s silhouette swiftly began to weave through the forest.
This time, he wasn’t searching for tracks but instead trying to find terrain where something might be hiding within the mountain’s depths.
Following the contours of the land, the low-lying energy began to immediately absorb the surrounding terrain’s details.
Not here, not here either…
He checked every suspicious spot but couldn’t find anything particularly dangerous.
Pausing for a moment, Baek Woo Jin wore a serious expression on his face.
“As expected, again…”
Seeing the village hidden by the formation, another possibility crossed his mind.
Perhaps not only the village but also the source of the incidents was concealed by a formation.
This search only reinforced the likelihood of that being the case.
“What was it again?”
In preparation for moments like this, he had learned from Jegal Yeonji how to pierce through formations.
She explained that a formation distorts the natural flow of energy ever so slightly, and while it appears to blend seamlessly with the surrounding environment, it’s ultimately just an illusion reflecting the area, so there would always be some parts that are out of alignment or distorted.
“Even if it’s just barely noticeable…”
A smile naturally formed on his lips.
If nothing else, he prided himself on his sharp eyesight. He was confident that no one could surpass him in that regard.
While he hadn’t noticed anything at first, the moment he became aware of it, he was certain he could find it, and with that conviction, he dashed through the mountain once more.
“Huh…?”
But he couldn’t find it.
After running in a full circle and returning to his starting point, Baek Woo Jin stood there with a blank expression.
“My eyes… what’s going on?”
The sharp eyesight that had been drilled into him all his life by the two sword demon old men, who had insisted that it was the most important skill of all, now seemed utterly useless.
“Hoo.”
He forced himself to cool his heated thoughts.
Without being able to find the formation, there was nothing more he could do.
With dragging steps, Baek Woo Jin made his way back to the village.
***
Several days passed like that.
“Yaaawn.”
While the rest of his team was out helping the villagers or chatting with them to ease their wariness, Gu Wang Soo was lying still in a house and staring up at the ceiling.
“So boring…”
He’d been assigned the role of a patient, with splints tied around his legs and bandages wrapped tightly, so he couldn’t even leave the house. He was in a half-imprisoned state because he’d been told not to arouse any unnecessary suspicion.
Still, hearing Jang Sam complain about how hard things were as he wandered around the village, Gu Wang Soo occasionally thought that maybe this life wasn’t so bad after all.
“Didn’t they say they were going out of the village today?”
It was near the end of winter, so the villagers said there was still a shortage of food. That was why they regularly roamed the mountains to gather whatever edible things they could find.
The team members joined them, thinking that by tagging along and engaging in conversation, they might uncover some useful clues.
Knock, knock, knock!
Just then, someone knocked on the door.
Who could it be…?
It was the first time something like this had happened. The startled Gu Wang Soo sat up and called out.
“Who is it?”
“May I come in for a moment?”
“Oh…”
It was the voice of the middle-aged man who had brought them here.
“I heard you’ve been having a hard time treating your leg, so I brought some herbs.”
“Oh! Please, come in.”
With Gu Wang Soo’s permission, the door opened.
The middle-aged man walked in. He was holding a bundle of herbs in his hand.
“It must be suffocating, staying cooped up in this shabby house all day.”
“Haha… well, what can I do.”
The man set the bundle of herbs down beside Gu Wang Soo and spoke.
“Grind these herbs finely and apply them to the injured area. It should help.”
“Thank you, I’ll make good use of… huh!”
Gu Wang Soo had just begun to bow his head with an awkward smile when it happened.
The middle-aged man standing nearby suddenly reached out and clamped a damp cloth over his mouth.
Wh-What is this…!
The moment Gu Wang Soo inhaled through the cloth, his head spun. He tried to struggle, but his strength was already leaving him.
N-No…!
His consciousness fell into a deep, dark abyss.
***
“Everyone, great job!”
“Thank you!”
“Thanks to you, we won’t have to worry about food for a while.”
The search for provisions led by the Divine Dragon team had ended successfully.
The team members, who returned with baskets filled to the brim with anything remotely edible, went home complaining of mental exhaustion more than physical fatigue.
As soon as Baek Woo Jin entered the house, he heard a faint groan coming from where Gu Wang Soo lay sprawled on the floor and hurried over to him.
“What’s going on? Are you in pain?”
“M-My leg… ugh!”
He saw Gu Wang Soo clutching his bandaged leg.
“What are you talking about? Your leg is just sprained.”
It was the same leg that had been lightly slapped on the thigh in revenge for spitting mashed potatoes in his face, then wrapped in bandages as a joke.
There was no way that leg could have suddenly developed a real problem.
Just as Baek Woo Jin’s gaze lingered on the leg, Gu Wang Soo’s eyes which had been filled with pain moments ago flashed with a sinister light.
“Dodge!”
Jang Sam, who had come in late while brushing off dust from his clothes, shouted urgently.
In that split second, instead of turning his head, Baek Woo Jin extended his senses in a very narrow range.
A sharp dagger was speeding toward his heart with terrifying speed.
Too late.
Two unexpected things collided in that fleeting moment. His brief lapse in attention and the realization that the attacker was Gu Wang Soo.
The finely honed blade plunged into Baek Woo Jin’s body.
Thunk!
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