Episode 1230. I don’t know. (5)
‘Enemy?’
What should they do if anyone sees Cheon Woo-maeng and his party?
If you are a citizen, you might be able to get them to join in a good way. But what if it’s a scam or a remnant of a demonic cult?
‘Destruction!’
We will definitely have to kill it and get rid of it. Suddenly, my whole body gained strength.
It was then.
“⋯⋯What do you want me to see?”
“Over there, over there.”
“⋯⋯What?”
“ah!”
Jo Geol walked to one side as if she was frustrated and pointed to a bulge on the floor.
“This, this! Can’t you see it?”
“Hey…”
Yoonjong’s face, which had been tense, suddenly distorted.
“I almost lost my liver!”
What Jo Geol found was not a person, but a sword buried in the ground with only the handle sticking out.
“Isn’t it amazing? A hundred years may have passed, but the sword is still there.”
Jogeol pulled the handle of the sword stuck in the ground. However, I frowned as if it wasn’t as well chosen as I thought.
“What’s wrong with this… kkeungcha!”
“Hey, then it breaks!”
“No, if I just do a little more, I think I’ll be selected…”
The moment Jo Geol gave strength to the hand holding the sword, the entire ground around him shook and something large suddenly rose from the ground.
“uh?”
“⋯⋯What is this?”
For a moment, everyone looked at the scene blankly.
There was silence.
It wasn’t anything special. This means that the precious treasure was not found by chance.
What appeared was just chunks of iron that were almost rusty. A piece of metal that was once a sword, once a sword, or maybe even a spear.
They were tangled in the Gujeolpyeon (a weapon made of several pieces of metal joined together to resemble a whip) and were pulled out at once.
The weapons whose color had faded seemed to no longer have any value as weapons as their blades had become dull and the rust was so severe that their original shapes were difficult to recognize. However, strangely enough, it caught the attention of everyone here and did not let go.
“⋯⋯What kind of weapon is this⋯⋯.”
Jo Geol scratched the back of her head with an awkward expression. At first glance, Jogeol thought that these might be weapons that had been stored here and then forgotten, so he glanced down.
The moment he saw the hole where the weapon had been pulled out, his face hardened.
“Uh…”
Yunjong asked in a slightly flushed voice.
“Why are you doing that again?”
“⋯⋯Death penalty here⋯⋯.”
“what?”
Yoon Jong approached Jo Geol and looked down at the ugly hole that had formed in the ground. Yoonjong’s reaction was not much different from Jogeol’s.
“This…”
Yoonjong, whose voice seemed to be in pain, stretched out his hand. And then they began to carefully dig around the hole.
Not deep down, but wide around.
Those who watched him without knowing what he was doing also soon understood the meaning of his actions. A heavy silence fell.
The wider the hole became, the more clearly it became visible.
Weapons buried in a not-so-deep place with dust accumulated over time, and pieces of human bones scattered around them.
No matter how widely we dug, new weapons and human bones kept appearing.
“⋯⋯accident.”
As Tang Xiaoxiao’s hand trembled slightly, Yu Yi Xue held her shoulder tightly without saying a word.
Yunjong’s hands, which had been digging around for a long time, finally stopped.
This is because I realized that there is no end to the waves in this way. I couldn’t even tell how much more I had to dig to find all the human bones here.
Yunjong looked around at the place he had dug with a blank face.
The pit was large enough to fit ten people, and was filled with weapons and human bones.
“This place….”
As soon as I fully recognized the scene in front of me, goosebumps ran down my spine.
Until a moment ago, all I could see were green fields and sharp peaks. Even if I didn’t know that it was the headquarters of the Demonic Cult, I would have thought it was an extremely peaceful and quiet place.
However, now that I know what scene was hidden under the dirt and the indifferently green grass, I can no longer look at this place with the same appreciation as before.
Everyone was speechless.
How dead is it? How many people killed each other here?
“Where the hell are you…?”
“There must have been a battle.”
An indifferent voice flowed into their ears as they stared at the human bones in bewilderment.
“To be exact, it’s probably one of those places. Well, there’s nothing new about it. This is Mount Hundred Thousand Thousand Years.”
Those short words penetrated everyone’s hearts.
100,000 mountains. Where the last fierce battle took place. A place where everything was at stake between the political faction and the demonic cult. And this is where the final battle to cut off the Heavenly Demon’s head was destroyed.
okay. It is Hundred Thousand Mountains Mountain.
“No matter what…”
While everyone was solemn, Yoonjong broke the silence and spoke through gritted teeth.
“Shouldn’t there have been some sort of reconciliation?”
“⋯⋯.”
“It’s not just the devils who are buried here… these people… these people fought to protect the world…”
“who?”
“⋯⋯What?”
“Who will take care of it?”
But Cheongmyeong’s tone was still sour.
“Right now, my head might be blown off tomorrow, so how can I afford to pick up the body of a dead person? I might even lie down on it tomorrow.”
“But even after the war ends…”
“You’re going to retrieve tens of thousands of bodies one by one and take them all the way to Gangbuk?”
“⋯⋯.”
“If they had that spirit, they wouldn’t have made that mess. They seem to have forgotten, but the Demon Cult was not eradicated. They retreated because they lost the Heavenly Demon. If they had tried to eradicate all the remaining ones, the powerhouse would have been destroyed. As soon as the Heavenly Demon died, the Demon Cult would have been destroyed. “Because it was Kang-ho who took a step back.”
“⋯⋯Then even if it’s too late⋯⋯.”
“well.”
Cheongmyeong sneered.
“If I could afford it, I might have done it.”
I roughly guessed.
It would not have been possible to enter Hundred Thousand Mountains immediately after Cheonma died. Because the poisonous demonic cultists must have gone crazy. Didn’t they even use their momentum to advance all the way to Shaanxi?
Moreover, even if it was not completely ruined and collapsed like a volcano, other sects also suffered damage close to annihilation. It couldn’t have been easy to send someone all the way to Gangnam to retrieve the body when they were busy reorganizing it.
If we put off the urgent work for a day or two, the body would have rotted away and it would have become impossible to clean it up later.
“No matter what…”
“Sound like a horse.”
Cheongmyeong cut him off in a cold voice, as if he was tired of it.
“Hundred Thousand Mountains, Hundred Thousand Mountains, but Hundred Thousand Mountains is not just a mountain. It is a huge mountain range stretching 500 li from the east of Guangdong to the west of Guangxi, including Guizhou above it.”
“⋯⋯.”
“And during that long war, battles took place throughout this mountain range. No, battles took place not just in the mountains, but everywhere in the world. But are you going to search this entire mountain range just to retrieve a few bodies? There might still be remnants of the Demonic Cult holding out. Mountain range?”
Yoonjong bit his lips. Cheongmyeong asked.
“Is it possible?”
In the end, Yoonjong also answered with a difficult sigh.
“⋯⋯It must be difficult.”
Cheongmyeong added innocently.
“It’s easy to say that people who haven’t experienced it should have been like this behind their backs, but those who actually experienced it didn’t want to let go. There was nothing they could do.”
Yoonjong didn’t say anything. I could understand it with my head, but I couldn’t accept it with my heart.
Only then did he realize it again. Of the bodies of the volcano ancestors of whom he was so proud, only one was belatedly returned to the volcano.
The bodies of others were buried so carelessly in this faraway land. Without being able to return to where I left.
Who can you dare to blame for this?
I couldn’t even bring myself to collect the remains of my ancestors, even from the volcano. No, I even forgot that I had to do that in the first place.
Now who can we blame and who can we blame?
“Then at least these people…”
He was about to say that he would at least do his best, but Cheongmyeong cut him off and threw him away.
“Bury it again.”
Yunjong was momentarily embarrassed and opened his eyes to look at Cheongmyeong. There was a lot of anger in his eyes.
It is impossible to search the entire mountain to retrieve the remaining bodies. But isn’t it the duty of a human being to collect even bodies that have already been dug up?
But Cheongmyeong had no reaction in front of his gaze.
“A corpse is just a corpse. It’s nothing more or less than a dead body.”
“⋯⋯.”
“Isn’t it absurd if a living person dies while trying to collect a dead person’s bone fragments? There’s no time for that, so just bury them again. We have to get to Haenam quickly.”
“Cheongmyeong!”
“execution.”
At that time, Cheongmyeong spoke in a calm voice.
“Don’t look down on people.”
“⋯⋯.”
“Did the people who died here not know that this was what would happen to them?”
Yoonjong bit his lips.
“They knew it would end up like this anyway. They fought anyway. Do you think they fought knowing that the people who died here would be treated as something special?”
A bitter smile crossed Cheongmyeong’s face. A faint taste of blood lingered in my mouth.
It was like that back then. Even when a colleague died right next to me, I couldn’t even cover him with dirt. Even though I knew that it would be torn apart by wild animals and rotted by wind and rain, I had no choice but to leave it alone.
But I have never once felt sorry.
Because soon I will fall where my colleague fell and rot in the same way.
So there is no reason to be sorry, is there?
‘Useless.’
Cheongmyeong completely turned his head away.
When you think about the past, you become sentimental. Now was not the time to get sentimental. What was important to him was the present, not the past.
We must not pity those who have died. Because everyone completed their mission until the last moment and fell asleep. Rather, the one who deserved the pitiful gaze was Cheongmyeong, who was being dragged into this hell again even though she had completed her part.
So…
“I don’t have time to waste on something like this.”
Cheongmyeong shook his head.
“Leave your emotions in moderation. Unless you really want to see something like this vividly in front of your eyes again.”
It was at that time that Cheongmyeong was trying to indifferently cover the dirt again.
“Cheongmyeong…”
Jo Geol’s trembling voice was heard.
And at that moment, Cheongmyeong had an intuition. The fact that it would be better not to listen to what follows next.
But Jo Geol’s voice pierced his ears without a doubt.
“Here…”
Cheongmyeong looked away. He checked the place Jo Geol pointed and saw it.
A rusted sword stuck at an angle.
Engraved on the end of the handle of an old sword that is so old that it can no longer be called a sword…
“It’s a plum sword…”
A small plum blossom pattern.
