Read Novel Full Chapter 1230: I Don’t Know. (5)
Chapter 1230: I Don’t Know. (5)
If someone had seen the Heavenly Friends Alliance party, what should they do?
If they were commoners, maybe they could be silenced gently. But what if they were Four Sects Alliance or remnants of the Demonic Cult?
‘Silence them!’
They must be killed without fail. Strength surged through his whole body.
It was then.
“...What are you looking at?”
“Over there, over there.”
“...What?”
“Ah!”
Jo Gul, clearly annoyed, hurried to one side and pointed at something jutting out of the ground.
“This, this! Can’t you see it?”
“Hey, you...”
Tension melted from Yoon Jong’s face and it twisted in shock.
“You nearly scared the life out of me!”
What Jo Gul had found was not a person but a sword buried in the ground with only its hilt protruding.
“Isn’t it strange? It must be a hundred years old, but the sword is still here.”
Jo Gul grabbed the hilt stuck in the earth and pulled. He frowned as it didn’t come out as easily as he thought.
“What’s it caught on...? Ugh, heave!”
“Hey, you’ll snap it!”
“No, if I just pull a bit more, it’ll come out...”
The moment Jo Gul tightened his grip on the sword, the ground around them heaved, and something large suddenly surged up from the earth.
“Huh?”
“...What is this?”
For a moment everyone stared blankly at the sight.
Silence fell.
It wasn’t anything remarkable. It meant they hadn’t accidentally found a precious treasure.
What emerged were merely rusted lumps of metal. Once swords, once sabers, perhaps spears—metal pieces whose original forms were indistinguishable.
They had been tangled together with a Chain Whip and were pulled out all at once.
The faded weapons were dull and so rusted their original shapes were nearly unrecognizable, making them worthless as arms. Yet strangely they gripped everyone’s attention and would not let go.
“...What kind of arsenal is this...”
Jo Gul scratched the back of his head awkwardly. He briefly thought they might be weapons stored here and forgotten, and he glanced down.
The moment he saw the pit from which the weapons were pulled, his face hardened.
“Uh...”
Yoon Jong asked in a slightly pale voice.
“What’s wrong now, again!”
“...sahyung, here...”
“What is it?”
Yoon Jong leaned in and followed Jo Gul’s gaze to the ugly pit in the ground. His reaction was much the same as Jo Gul’s.
“This...”
With a strained voice, Yoon Jong reached out and began carefully digging around the pit.
Not digging deeper, but widening the area.
Those who watched, not knowing what he was doing, soon understood the meaning of his actions. A heavy silence settled.
As the pit widened, it became increasingly clear.
Weapons buried under layers of old dust at a not very deep depth, and scattered bone fragments around them.
No matter how wide they dug, new weapons and bones kept appearing.
“...Sago.”
Tang Soso’s hand trembled faintly, and Yu Yiseol silently gripped her shoulder tightly.
After digging around for a long time, Yoon Jong’s hands finally stopped.
He realized there was no end to digging like this. He couldn’t even guess how much more they’d have to dig to find all the bones here.
Yoon Jong stared blankly at the area he’d excavated.
The wide pit could have held more than ten people, and it was densely packed with weapons and bones.
“This place...”
As the sight registered properly, a chill ran down their spines.
Until moments ago, there had only been green fields and sharp peaks. Had they not known it was the stronghold of the Demonic Cult, they might have thought it an exceptionally peaceful, quiet place.
But now that they knew what scene was hidden beneath this soil and the unexpectedly green grass, they could no longer view the place with the same sentiment.
Everyone was left speechless.
How many had died? How many had slaughtered each other here?
“What on earth happened here...”
“There must have been battles.”
A casual voice drifted into the ears of those staring helplessly at the bones.
“To be exact, it’s one of those places. There’s nothing surprising—this is the Ten-Thousand Mountains.”
The brief remark struck into everyone’s hearts.
The Ten-Thousand Mountains. The site of the final, decisive battles. The place where the Justice faction and the Demonic Cult fought everything on the line. And where the last squad that died to behead the Heavenly Demon was annihilated.
Yes. This was the Ten-Thousand Mountains.
“Even so...”
As everyone grew solemn, Yoon Jong broke the silence, gritting his teeth as he spoke.
“Shouldn’t they have at least been gathered up?”
“...”
“Those buried here aren’t only Demonic Cult members... These people... these people fought to protect the world...”
“Who?”
“...What?”
“Who would handle that?”
But Chung Myung’s tone remained nonchalant.
“In a situation where my head might be taken tomorrow, who has the luxury to be collecting corpses? Tomorrow I might be the one lying on that ground.”
“But even after the war...”
“You think they could gather thousands or tens of thousands of bodies one by one and carry them all to the Northern lands?”
“...”
“If they had the mind for that, the chaos wouldn’t have happened. It seems forgotten, but the Demonic Cult wasn’t exterminated. They retreated after losing the Heavenly Demon. If they had tried to wipe out all the remaining ones, the murim world would have been ruined by now. The side that withdrew as soon as the Heavenly Demon died was the murim world itself.”
“Then even belatedly...”
“Who knows.”
Chung Myung snorted a laugh.
“If they’d been in a position to do it, they might have.”
They roughly understood.
Right after the Heavenly Demon died, no one could have entered the Ten-Thousand Mountains. Demonic Cult members, intoxicated with their power, would have run rampant. Didn’t they even advance as far as Shanxi in that momentum?
Moreover, even if Mount Hua wasn’t utterly ruined, other sects were similarly devastated. They were too busy regrouping; sending people back to Gangnam to collect corpses would hardly have been easy.
They would have postponed such tasks while handling urgent matters, and after days the bodies would rot away, eventually becoming impossible to recover.
“Even so...”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Chung Myung cut him off in a cold, weary voice.
“The Ten-Thousand Mountains, yes, but it’s not just a single mountain. It’s a vast range stretching hundreds of kms from eastern Guangdong to western Guangxi, including Guizhou above it.”
“...”
“And during that long war, battles were fought across the entire mountain range. No, not just the range—fights happened everywhere in the land. Are you suggesting they combed through the entire range to collect a few bodies? A range that might still harbor remnants of the Demonic Cult?”
Yoon Jong bit his lip. Chung Myung asked,
“Is that possible?”
At last, Yoon Jong answered with a reluctant sigh.
“...It would be difficult.”
Chung Myung added dismissively.
“It’s easy for those who didn’t experience it to say how things should’ve been done. But those who lived through it didn’t abandon things because they wanted to—they had no choice but to do it.”
Yoon Jong said nothing. He understood it intellectually but couldn’t accept it in his heart.
He suddenly realized that of Mount Hua’s ancestors he had been so proud of, only one body at most had returned to Mount Hua belatedly.
The other bodies lay so carelessly buried in this distant land, unable to return to the places they had come from.
Who could dare blame anyone for this?
Even Mount Hua itself couldn’t bring itself to retrieve the ancestors’ remains. In fact, they had long forgotten they even ought to.
Now who was there to blame or resent?
“Then at least these people...”
As he tried to suggest holding at least a memorial rite, Chung Myung cut him off and said bluntly,
“Bury them again.”
Startled, Yoon Jong glared at Chung Myung, his eyes filled with a fair amount of °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° anger.
It’s impossible to scour the whole mountain to recover the remaining bodies. But isn’t it a human duty to at least tend to the bodies already dug up?
But Chung Myung showed no particular reaction to that look.
“A corpse is just a corpse. A dead, fallen body—nothing more, nothing less.”
“...”
“Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if people started dying trying to collect bone fragments? There’s no time—bury them roughly and hurry to Southern Island.”
“Chung Myung!”
“Sahyung.”
Then Chung Myung said in a low voice.
“Don’t underestimate people.”
“...”
“Did those who died here come thinking they’d end up like this?”
Yoon Jong bit his lip.
“They were the ones who knew it might end like this. Still they fought. Do you think those who died here fought expecting any special treatment?”
A bitter smile flickered across Chung Myung’s face. A faint taste of blood lingered in his mouth.
It was like that then. Even when comrades fell beside them, they couldn’t even cover them with soil. Knowing they’d be torn by beasts or rot in the rain and wind, there was nothing they could do but leave them.
Yet he had never once felt sorry.
A comrade who fell would soon be followed by him, and they’d rot all the same.
So there was no reason to feel sorry, was there?
‘Pointless.’
Chung Myung turned his head away completely.
Thinking of the past leads to sentimentality. Now was not the time for that. What mattered to him was not the past that had gone but the present.
One should not pity the dead. They all completed their duties until the last moment and then rested. If anyone deserved pity, it was Chung Myung—who, having finished his part, was being dragged back into this hell.
So...
“We don’t have time to waste here.”
Chung Myung shook his head.
“Keep your sentiments to a minimum. If you truly don’t want to see this sight vividly again, that is.”
It was just as Chung Myung was about to casually cover the soil again.
“Ch-Chung Myung...”
Jo Gul’s trembling voice came.
At that moment Chung Myung instinctively felt that what would follow was better left unheard.
But Jo Gul’s voice inexorably pierced his ears.
“Here...”
Chung Myung turned his gaze. When he checked what Jo Gul was pointing at, he saw it.
A rusted sword stuck at an angle.
Its hilt was so worn it was hard to even call it a sword, and at the end of the hilt was engraved...
“It’s a Plum Blossom Sword...”
A small plum blossom emblem, that is.