By Zephyria 
Episode 74
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Heightening his sense of hearing to the limit, Ho-yeon sought to judge the situation by sound alone. Fortunately, he heard no footsteps approaching.
But how had Cheon Mu-gyeong become a guard?
Setting aside the human-skin mask used to hide his appearance, his physique was completely different. Ho-yeon had awakened after feeling the immense heat radiating from Cheon Mu-gyeong. It wasn’t simply that he woke up because it was hot; his body had instinctively reacted to the yang energy.
Since he had never seen anyone use the bone-shrinking technique during his time at the Ice Palace, Ho-yeon had lived without knowing such a martial art existed. However, having seen the man’s body return to its original form with his own eyes, he couldn’t dismiss it as a hallucination.
Ho-yeon suddenly gasped. Though there was not a single sound of a footstep, he could feel a deep shadow casting over him.
He strained his closed eyes. Given the man’s exceptional energy perception, there was no way he wouldn’t know that Ho-yeon was awake.
However, since Ho-yeon had not yet recovered from his bewilderment and shock, he had no choice but to pretend to be asleep. The heat felt from the hands that wrapped around and lifted his body was overwhelming.
Even without consciously trying to relax his muscles, his body seemed to melt away under the man’s yang energy. He wondered if he was being moved somewhere, but Mu-gyeong simply held him tight and pressed his face against the nape of Ho-yeon’s limp neck. The tips of Ho-yeon’s toes barely brushed the ground.
Feeling him take in yin energy as if to soothe excessive fire energy, Ho-yeon moved past absurdity into anger. This was essentially an attitude that suggested it didn’t matter if he were actually asleep. No one would fail to wake up while their body was being handled this way.
Conversely, if the man knew he was awake and was acting this brazenly, Ho-yeon wondered what kind of human he even was. Was this why the Ice Palace warned never to associate with demonic practitioners?
Slowly pulling his face away from the nape of the neck, the man gripped Ho-yeon’s chin with one hand. Ho-yeon, who had already opened his eyes as if to challenge him, met Mu-gyeong’s red eyes head-on. Mu-gyeong did not seem surprised to see him awake; instead, he tilted his head and looked down at Ho-yeon.
For a fleeting moment, a thousand thoughts raced through Ho-yeon’s mind. Should he act surprised and ask where the guard had gone and why the Divine Cult Leader was here?
No, in reality, the one who should be flustered and embarrassed was Cheon Mu-gyeong, not him. Yet, Mu-gyeong remained expressionless throughout, as if he had never pretended to be a guard in the first place.
Since he couldn’t hide the glare in his eyes, it was already too late to pretend to be surprised.
“……I knew anyway.”
A heavily raspy voice escaped Ho-yeon. To Mu-gyeong, the sound was crystal clear even without focusing.
“I knew.”
There wasn’t a trace of sleepiness in any corner of Ho-yeon’s blue-gray eyes. Mu-gyeong did not budge an inch from Ho-yeon, who was trying to push him away with both arms.
“Since you were trying to hide it, I just… pretended not to know.”
He didn’t want to be caught having been completely fooled, and his pride had been wounded to a certain extent. He hated to readily admit that he had been played by the man until now. Thus, he chose to bluff, claiming he had known everything.
“How magnanimous of you.”
Mu-gyeong uttered the words of admiration in a thoroughly insincere tone. Ho-yeon tried to turn his head to avoid the hand gripping his chin, but he didn’t budge, just as their bodies remained pressed together. Though the energy was invisible, he could feel the fluctuating yang energy binding his yin energy.
Ho-yeon let out a small, pained groan at the strong grip around his waist. The demonic energy that had made his skin tingle had receded, and the fire energy that seemed ready to incinerate the plains gradually left only a lingering heat.
Ho-yeon, wanting to stand upright on his own two feet, could only bite his lip while remaining on tiptoe. Although Cheon Mu-gyeong did not suffer from the nine yang severed meridian, he was someone tormented by excessive yang energy. It was obvious that Ho-yeon could be of help to him. Of course, it was also true that Ho-yeon had found stability in his own dantian through him.
However, calling it a mutually beneficial relationship was a stretch. Ho-yeon had gotten along fine even without Cheon Mu-gyeong. As long as he didn’t use internal energy, no major problems occurred.
But that wasn’t the case for Cheon Mu-gyeong. He trapped lava within a body like a great mountain, and once it exceeded the limit, he lost control and erupted. He was like a volcano, the hundred thousand great mountains, harboring lava that could melt heaven and earth. Ho-yeon still resented Cheon Mu-gyeong for deceiving him, but he also felt a lingering pity.
“Then you’re a petty man.”
Ho-yeon spat out the words in a strong tone. At that, Mu-gyeong lifted his face from the nape of the neck. Ho-yeon’s cheek was still held by one of his hands.
A faint, bewildered smile played on Mu-gyeong’s lips. Having lived through countless lives, these were words he had never heard before, making the experience quite novel.
“Honestly… you just didn’t want to apologize for burning the letter, right?”
Since the letter from the Ice Palace was burned, Ho-yeon had not been able to treat him as warmly as before. Naturally, he had no intention of sharing their energies. The man must have known how cold Ho-yeon’s heart had become.
However, for someone in the position of the Divine Cult Leader, apologizing to another would not be easy. Perhaps that was why he had hidden his true identity and followed him, needing his yin energy. Since they ended up traveling alone together, this might have been his way of signaling a desire for reconciliation.
Ho-yeon reached this conclusion on his own. He felt that if he didn’t, he would never be able to understand Cheon Mu-gyeong. He then drove the point home to the silent Mu-gyeong.
“You… said you could just plunder my yin energy, but in truth, you don’t want to do that either. Because it’s better to get along without hostility. If you just apologize… I can act as if the burning of the letter and the deception never happened. I’ve… accepted things far worse than this.”
Cheon Mu-gyeong’s eyelids moved slowly.
Ho-yeon felt as if a vast amount of time was contained within that simple, instinctive act of closing and opening his eyes. Because he was so focused on the man, the flow of everything around them seemed to slow down.
“I know how absurd it is for a mere ordinary person like me… to say such things to you. But I didn’t meet you as the heavenly demon or the Divine Cult Leader. And you’re only by my side right now… because you need me.”
Though it was said he had lost his human heart, Ho-yeon believed that wasn’t entirely true. If it were, he would have already devoured Ho-yeon’s entire dantian. He wanted to believe that even if they didn’t share a grand destiny, they had at least exchanged human emotions.
“Things far worse than this?”
Mu-gyeong asked in a murmur after a long silence, and Ho-yeon nodded. It seemed as though he was saying that what he had done was nothing in comparison.
“If you’re that magnanimous, then this much should be fine.”
Before Ho-yeon could ask what that meant.
“Agh!”
A sharp groan burst from Ho-yeon’s lips. Mu-gyeong, who had tightened his embrace around the slender body, began to plunder Ho-yeon’s energy.
As his hand pressed down with immense pressure, as if to pierce through the skin of the lower dantian, the accumulated internal power was instantly swept away into Cheon Mu-gyeong.
There had been a few times before when Mu-gyeong took yin energy without Ho-yeon’s permission, but compared to now, those were mere trifles. This was a true robbery.
It was the heaven-defying demonic art. While similar to the Soul Absorbing Method, the key difference was that the Soul Absorbing Method had a severe side effect where the true qi of the user and the absorbed person clashed, leading to qi deviation. However, the heaven-defying demonic art was a demonic art that allowed one to perfectly convert and absorb another’s energy into their own.
Paradoxically, however, the user of the heaven-defying demonic art is seized by a great void. As much as they take energy, they are left with a terrible emptiness and thirst the moment they turn away.
Thus, the heaven-defying demonic art was called the curse of eternal hunger and endless gluttony.
If he did not stop at consuming the permitted yin energy but forcibly dug into the dantian, Cheon Mu-gyeong had to pay a corresponding price.
Mu-gyeong, who attempted to seize the middle dantian after passing the lower dantian, finally looked at Ho-yeon. Ho-yeon was beyond groaning; he was on the verge of fainting from the pain. Due to the horrific agony of muscles and bones twisting, Ho-yeon’s complexion turned deathly pale, as if it might scatter like snowflakes.
His entire body was drenched in cold sweat, and he couldn’t even gasp for air properly, looking like a thread about to snap. When the hand was removed from his lower abdomen, Ho-yeon’s body slumped.
His pupils eventually rolled back, and his cheeks were already wet with physiological tears. His hair, which had quickly faded to white, clung to various parts of his face.
Cheon Mu-gyeong looked down silently at the unconscious Ho-yeon in his arms. The curse of the fire dragon, which had been raging as if to tear his forearms apart, grew quiet.
This was it. The Wi Ho-yeon in his arms was clearly the answer.
But what if it was only a one-time occurrence? He had no certainty that consuming all of Wi Ho-yeon’s true qi right here would completely quench the curse.
Since there was no guarantee that no other variables would appear in the next repeating life, the most correct method for him was to keep Wi Ho-yeon by his side to soothe the fire energy. Mu-gyeong concluded his hesitation thus.
“You just didn’t want to apologize for burning the letter, right?”
Even if he had burned the Ice Palace instead of a letter, it was his own will, so an apology was unnecessary.
[W-what have you done?]
Behind Cheon Mu-gyeong stood Urkan, watching from a distance. The subordinates he had brought were all dead, and the horses they had ridden had long since scattered. Only Urkan’s horse remained steadfastly in the same spot.
“You… said you could just plunder my yin energy, but in truth, you don’t want to do that either. Because it’s better to get along without hostility. If you just apologize… I can act as if the burning of the letter and the deception never happened. I’ve… accepted things far worse than this.”
The nature of Wi Ho-yeon, who accepted the faults of others as well as his own, felt as if it were scratching him with an ice pick.
[D-did you kill him?!]
Urkan walked forward, limping with his hulking frame. According to Ho-yeon’s logic, wasn’t this fellow also someone to be saved?
Thwack! Demonic energy seeped into a six-do blade lying on the ground, and it instantly soared into the air, piercing through Urkan’s neck. Cheon Mu-gyeong’s gaze, fixed solely on Ho-yeon, was excessively fierce.