Chapter 224 The Sword At My Throat

Chapter 224 The Sword At My Throat
The Orthodox factions had blamed a rogue Demonic Cult plague. They had built a massive stone monument for the victims. Jin-Woo himself wore a white mourning ribbon for them during the annual Alliance ceremonies.

"The plague," Jin-Woo breathed, his dark eyes shrinking to pinpricks. "The Demonic Cult..."

"It wasn't a plague," I interrupted, the black bile spilling over my chin. "And it wasn't the Cult."

The heavy wooden doors behind him cracked loudly, but Jin-Woo didn't even flinch. He was completely paralyzed, staring at me as if the floor had just opened up beneath his feet to reveal the gates of hell.

"My target was an exiled clan elder," I confessed, the words pouring out of me like venom from a lanced wound. "He had stolen heavily guarded state secrets. He was a master of disguise. He fled south and integrated himself into the Sun Village. He lived among them. He farmed with them. I couldn't identify him by sight, and I couldn't risk a close-quarters assassination because if he triggered his self-destruct arts, the secrets would burn with him."

\[Time remaining: 40 Seconds.\]

"So I didn't use a blade," I whispered, the memory rising up to suffocate me. "I carried a vial of Abyssal Tear. It is a slow-acting, completely tasteless, colorless poison that suffocates the meridians over three days. I went up into the mountains. And I poured the entire vial directly into the headwaters of the river that fed the village."

Jin-Woo took a slow, trembling step backward. His jaw was slack. His face had lost every single ounce of color, turning the shade of old parchment.

"No," Jin-Woo said. It was a weak, hollow sound of sheer denial.

"I poisoned the river," I stated, forcing the truth into the open where he couldn't deny it. "I knew exactly what would happen. I knew the children drank from that water. I knew the mothers used it to cook the rice. I sat on a limestone ridge overlooking the valley for three days, and I watched."

The damp smell of the warehouse faded, replaced entirely by the phantom stench of death. I could see the valley in my mind. I could hear the echoing, desperate cries carrying up the mountain as the sickness took hold.

"I watched the panic start on the first night," I told him, my voice completely devoid of emotion, mimicking the cold, mechanical apathy I had possessed in my past life. "I watched them try to flee on the second day, only to collapse on the dirt roads as their lungs failed. I watched five hundred innocent people slowly suffocate to death in their own beds."

Jin-Woo’s hands began to shake. The rag-wrapped straight sword trembled in his grip, the deep blue Qi violently flickering and dying out.

"When the village finally went completely silent," I rasped, coughing up another thick splatter of black sludge, " I walked down the mountain. I walked through the streets filled with dead families. I found the target in his hut, dead like the rest of them. I took the secrets from his robes. I didn't bury anyone. I didn't leave a marker. I turned around and walked back to the capital to collect my payment."

\[Time remaining: 20 Seconds.\]

"I didn't lose sleep over it," I whispered, the brutal honesty tearing the last shreds of my humanity away. "They were just collateral damage. Numbers on a ledger. I am the butcher of the Sun Village, Jin-Woo. That is the man you shattered your jade medallion for. That is the man you swore to protect."

The silence inside the warehouse was absolute.

Outside, the bounty hunters were screaming, slamming their heavy iron ram against the barricade, but the noise felt a million miles away.

Jin-Woo stared at me.

The denial in his eyes slowly, agonizingly morphed into something completely different. It was a profound, soul-shattering horror.

This was the man who had abandoned his entire life, his sect, and his prestigious title because his Sect Leader had funded a false war. Jin-Woo believed in absolute righteousness. He had pledged his blade to me because he saw me as a beacon—a man who refused to kill his enemies even when his own life was on the line. He thought my mercy was born of a pure heart.

He didn't know my mercy was a desperate, pathetic attempt to balance a scale that was already overflowing with the blood of innocent children.

"You..." Jin-Woo’s voice broke. A single tear cut a clean line through the dirt and soot on his cheek. "You killed them. You killed all of them."

"Yes," I breathed, my right arm finally giving out.

I collapsed onto my back, hitting the damp dirt. I stared up at the rotting corrugated tin ceiling. The freezing poison finally breached the outer walls of my heart. The cold was absolute. The pain was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, numbing void.

\[Time remaining: 10 Seconds.\]

"You are a monster," Jin-Woo whispered.

The sheer disgust and revulsion in his tone were worse than any physical blow I had ever taken. It was the sound of a man looking at a demon pretending to be human.

I heard the heavy, wet drag of his boots against the dirt floor. He wasn't walking toward the doors to hold the line. He was walking toward me.

I didn't try to defend myself. I didn't try to move. I accepted it. I had earned this death a thousand times over in my past life, and standing before me was the only righteous judge left in the Murim.

A shadow fell over my face, blocking out the dim light of the warehouse.

I slowly turned my single working eye.

Baek Jin-Woo stood towering over me. His chest heaved with ragged, broken breaths. His eyes were wide, dark, and completely consumed by an unyielding, furious grief. He raised his right hand.

The rag-wrapped straight sword was gripped tightly in his fist. The blade was slick with the blood of the men he had fought outside.

Jin-Woo reversed his grip, pointing the razor-sharp, blood-stained tip of the steel directly at the center of my throat.