CH 17

“Where the hell are you hiding?”

So Yeowol’s expression was as cold as a stone. She tried to hide her emotions, but there was a glimmer of irritation in her eyes.

It wasn’t just her.

All the children who were tracking Pyo-wol felt the same way as her. All the surviving children were mobilized to pursue the hunt, but no traces of Pyo-wol were found anywhere.

All the children were proud that they had a knack for tracking, but it was no use in front of Pyo-wol, who disappeared without a trace.

It wasn’t just a feeling of weirdness.

“Give me a little more strength. I’m sure I’ll find it.”

“You bastard! I didn’t like him from the beginning. I’ll definitely find him.”

The children swept their hair away and heated up the search even more.

Some children mustered up their courage and searched the underground room where Pyo-wol  resides. However, not even a shadow of Pyo-wol appeared. 

“That bastard!”

“What a cowardly bastard…”

Profanity toward Pyo-wol broke out among the children.

Beep!

Suddenly, a loud ringing plagued the children’s ears.

At first they thought it was a hallucination. They thought they were only hearing it for themselves. But the tinnitus was heard in everyone’s ears.

That was then.

“Aww!”

“Ouch!”

All the children fell, grabbing their chests at about the same time.

Because they felt pain in their heart. It felt as if an invisible hand was squeezing their heart, and the children could not breathe properly.

‘What, what?’

So Yeowol crouched like a shrimp and trembled. It was the first time she had experienced this kind of pain since she came here. She thought she was already used to all kinds of pain, but this was different.

The pain that felt like squeezing her heart soon turned into a pain that felt like an insect gnawed through her body.

Not a single one was an exception.

The children all collapsed and struggled in agony.

Then, out of nowhere, a boy of the same age appeared.

It was Pyo-wol who exuded a neutral sensuality given the mixed of his masculine and feminine parts.

The children were in so much pain that they did not even notice that Pyo-wol, who they had been searching for so much, had appeared.

Pyo-wol looked at the children with a puzzled expression.

Twenty-seven children were lying on the floor in pain without missing a single one. Even an ignorant person could know that something unusual was going on.

‘Is it because of the sound they just made?’

Pyo-wol also heard a tinnitus. However, unlike the other children, he did not feel anything. 

It just hurt his ears a little. But the other children, unlike him, were all clutching their chests and rolling around.

‘They have triggered the restriction.’

Pyo-wol’s eyes went cold.

The moment he has been waiting for came. But he also had doubts.

Everyone suffers from the restriction because only he remained fine.

He didn’t feel pain like the other children, and he didn’t show any signs of abnormality. Because of that, he couldn’t understand why the children were in so much pain.

Pyo-wol knelt down on one knee and looked at the children.

The children rolled their eyes and their complexion turned white. It looked like they were about to die. Pyo-wol took a closer look at Lee Min, who had the most serious condition of them all.

‘I need to find out the cause.’

Pyo-wol carefully injected his inner qi into Lee Min’s body.

Even if the person is crazy, it is extremely dangerous to inject internal energy into another person’s body. If he makes a mistake, he could cause a collision between the energies, which could cause you to wear a coin.

Nevertheless, the reason Pyo-wol instilled his inner strength into the body of Lee Min is because she has learned the same cultivation method. 

Unlike himself, she learned it at a level that just passed by, but he thought it wouldn’t cause a major conflict because they had the same internal cultivation method. 

Pyo-wol’s guess was correct.

Even though the qi was injected, the collision of the energies did not occur in the body of the Lee Min. 

Pyo-wol carefully operated his internal qi. 

This was the first time he had injected his inner qi into another person’s body. That’s why he had to be more careful.

Pyo-wol carefully examined the inside of Lee Min’s body. But there was no reaction or alien feeling anywhere.

‘There’s no issues with her internal energy…’

Pyo-wol took his hand off Lee Min-min’s body and fell into deep thought.

‘What is the difference? The difference between them and me is–the same environment, the same food, the same martial arts.’

Of course, he had learned one more unknown swordsmanship, but it was unreasonable to think he was fine because of that.

‘What? What made me different from them.’

Pyo-wol erased what they had in common with them one by one.

He erased everything that came to mind, such as food, water, and martial arts, so there was only one left.

‘Is it poison?’

Unlike them, he had great resistance to poison.

It was because he was constantly bitten by an unidentified snake.

There was only one difference between them and myself.

Then it was understandable that the poison could not be pumped out of his body. But the question was not completely resolved.

If they were really poisoned, it didn’t make sense that they had seizures at the same moment.

It was impossible to trigger the poison that lurked in the bodies of twenty-seven people at one time.

What’s more, the poison was just an unidentified tinnitus, if you say it was a sign before a seizure. It was unreasonable to think that the poison that had been dormant in the body was activated simply by the tinnitus.

‘There’s something more. It is impossible to move the poison by external noise in the first place.’

Pyo-wol’s head turned faster.

Suddenly, the image of a snake eating an insect came to mind.

It controlled the bug by making a cry when it tried to move.

‘What if it’s not poison, but poisonous bugs dormant in our body?’

Then everything clicks. 

It was very easy to put poisonous bugs into the children’s bodies.

This is because it can be mixed with water or food supplied from outside.

‘It must be a kind of cursed poison (蠱毒 gu poison).

If you put hundreds of poisonous species in one jar, they will eat each other and only the strongest will survive.

These surviving insects have a number of bizarre properties. Some of them may have the property of being particularly sensitive to sound. And it was clear that the cursed poison stimulated by the sound emitted poison and consequently poisoned them.

As his heart began to harden, Pyo-wol’s head turned more complicated.

‘Why did they have to trigger the cursed poison at this moment?’

Anyway, there was only one reason.

It was because of him. 

It was clear that they were convinced that he had invaded the cave which was why they activated the restriction. 

Then the voices of the instructors were heard in the distance.

“Over there!”

“They’re all collapsed there!”

The instructors found the children who had fallen and run towards them. 

Pyo-wol was a little conflicted.

He could avoid this place if he wanted to. But it was clear that they would discover that he was poison-resistant.

It was not yet the time to reveal that he was different from the other children. Pyo-wol, who had quickly gathered his thoughts, fell to the floor and pretended to be poisoned.

He used his inner strength to make his complexion pale on purpose, and trembled while grabbing his chest.

Shortly thereafter, Lim Sayeol and the instructors appeared.

“You were here.”

Lim Sayeol found the collapsed Pyo-wol and approached him.

His eyes were full of vigor. 

‘Isn’t it better to kill him now?’

Lim Sayeol was conflicted.

In light of the various circumstances, it was not easy to completely control Pyo-wol. 

The inability to get along with other children and the tendency to move alone was also a problem, but above all, it struck him that Pyo-wol’s mind was so deep that he couldn’t understand what he was thinking. 

Although they had been in the same space for six years, Pyo-wol never revealed his true feelings to others.

It wasn’t something that could be explained simply by expressing that he had a lot of patience or he didn’t talk much. So Lim Sayeol thought Pyo-wol was very dangerous.

Throng!

Lim Sayeol drew his sword from its scabbard.

Swing!

Lim Sayeol thrust the sword into Pyo-wol’s shoulder without hesitation.

Pyo-wol did not resist and was hit by the sword.

Because he was just pretending to have lost his mind, the feeling of the weapon tearing his muscles and entering his body was vividly conveyed.

At the end of the day, Pyo-wol screamed and opened his eyes in excruciating pain. However, Pyo-wol struggled to endure the pain and pretended to have lost his mind.

Lim Sayeol whispered into Pyo-wol’s ear with his sword still in it.

“What did you see in my room?”

Lim Sayeol said darkly. 

No one will know this terrible feeling he is feeling right now. Every time he saw Pyo-wol, he felt a fear of unknown origin. Although he looked just like the other children, Lim Sayeol knew that this wasn’t his real face.

From the first time they met, Pyo-wol had acted differently numerous times. 

Even when the other children were lost because they could not understand the situation properly, only Pyo-wol grasped the situation and moved boldly.

The boldness he showed at that time was still deeply engraved in Lim Sayeol’s mind.

The decisiveness that Pyo-wol showed at that time was at a level that other children did not dare follow. Then he started to stagnate at some point, and he came down to a level similar to the other children.

He only showed his abilities in catching such as hiding and infiltration, but there was no development in his martial arts. So, even people like Gu Shinhaeng and Sang Ilshin lowered their guards against Pyo-wol.

Lim Sayeol thought it didn’t make sense.

He couldn’t believe the existence that had standed out so prominently had now turned into a normal thing.

Then there was only one conclusion.

Pyo-wol is hiding himself.

It was clear that this young demon had long been hiding his growth. But there was no way to clarify that fact. He clearly knew that a monster was growing inside, but the fact that no one knew except himself made him frustrated.

Now was the chance to kill Pyo-wol.

He thought that killing him cleanly would have no repercussions.

Lim Sayeol drew his sword from Pyo-wol’s shoulder and tried to stab him in the neck again. But at that moment, Gu Shinhaeng and Sang Ilshin deterred him.

“You mustn’t!”

“Let go!”

“His infiltration skills are outstanding! His abilities are absolutely necessary for this quest.”

“Other children are enough.”

“You know just as well that that’s not true!”

“Do you think it will be easy to control him?”

“As long as there is Hell Call, we can manipulate him at any time. As you can see, he is stuck in the poison emitted by cursed poison.”

Lim Sayeol flinched when Gu Shinhaeng mentioned Hell Call. 

Not only Pyo-wol, but all the children lost their minds and struggled in pain. It was the power of Hell Call. 

Just as Pyo-wol had guessed, the Hell-Call was a piece of equipment capable of incubating the cursed poison hidden in the body. Hell’s sound waves stimulate the poison, and the stimulated insects attack the heart by spewing poison.

The poison that spread from the heart flowed through the blood vessels and attacked the whole body.

As a result, children are paralyzed and unable to move.

If they blow the hell call and the children do not take the antidote on time they will eventually die.

So as long as there was a hell call, it was impossible for children to get out of their control and move freely. It is for the same reason that children have been allowed to be left alone as they please in the underground. 

“Huu—”

In the end, Lim Sayeol withdrew the sword that was going to stab Pyo-wol. Then, he gave orders to the instructors.

“Give the medicine to the children.”

“Yes!”

The instructors hurriedly gave the children a pill one at a time.

Shortly after taking the medicine, the children’s complexion returned to normal.

Speaking of the efficacy of the drug, it was only a temporary relief from addiction. It doesn’t kill the cursed poison that lurked in their body.

Lim Sayeol looked down at Pyo-wol.

‘It would have been easier to kill him now, but now I can’t change my decision.’

“Kugh!”

“Huff!”

One by one, the children who took the antidote came to their senses.

Pyo-wol opened his eyes with a moan when he thought it was appropriate.

“Hngg!”

He deliberately grabbed the part where he was stabbed by Lim Sayeol’s sword and made an absurd expression. Pyo-wol’s acting deceived the instructors, but Lim Sayeol did not lose his doubts.

“What happened? Why did I suddenly lose consciousness?”

“What the hell?”

The children still looked confused.

The moment they heard a sound in their ears, they lost their minds due to the excruciating pain, so they couldn’t figure out what was going on.

At that time, Sang Ilshin spoke in a loud voice so that all the children could hear it.

“All of you are suffering because of Pyo-wol. If he hadn’t invaded our dwelling, you wouldn’t have suffered like this. If something like this happens in the future, all of you will suffer the same pain you felt today. “

At Sang Ilshin’s words, the children looked at Pyo-wol with angry eyes.