Camellia 112

A seductive hand gently caressed Seolyeong’s cheek. The air was thick with lust, an open invitation for carnal desire.

Seolyeong, blinking as if his soul had left his body, finally managed to compose himself. He desperately tried to think of a way out. How can he overcome this predicament?

But no matter how much he pondered, he couldn’t come up with a solution. With his skills, there was no way he could overpower the imugi. He’d be lucky to escape without being beaten half to death. Left with no choice but to pick one of the options the imugi had thrown at him, Seolyeong clenched his fists tightly.

“…Does it really have to be that method for transferring yang energy?”

There were plenty of other ways to give yang energy. The imugi nodded slightly, as if to acknowledge the fact. But the answer that followed was ruthless.

“To bask in yang as intense as sunlight, simple skin contact isn’t enough.”

The gaze that raked down Seolyeong’s body was licentious. The reptilian slit of his pupils thoroughly inspected the blood fiend’s form. He wanted to sink his teeth into that heat-filled body and melt it down slowly in his mouth.

To be honest, even offering sex as a substitute was already the imugi being generous. If it had followed its true nature, this blood fiend would’ve long since disappeared into its jaws and become nothing but another corpse.

“You’re slow to decide, darling.”

The imugi whispered, wrapping his palm around the back of Seolyeong’s neck as if searching for warmth. Seolyeong gripped the intruding wrist with all his strength. The imugi raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

“I have a condition if I’m to give you my yang.”

This impudent blood fiend dared to talk back without a shred of fear.

“Return the sect leader’s will…ngh!”

Before he could finish, the imugi’s lips twisted with displeasure, and it suddenly began to choke Seolyeong. Its cold fingers clamped down around Seolyeong’s slender throat, making his face flush red.

The imugi’s voice was icy.

“Don’t assume I’ll be merciful just because your husband is.”

The divine beast was a creature that showed kindness only to humans. Now Seolyeong was starting to realize the weight of all the warnings Sahyeol Amje had given him. The bastard really was trying to kill him. The grip around his neck tightened, cutting off his air until he could only let out rasping, broken gasps.

“But you’re brave, so I’ll give you a reward.”

Just when he was on the verge of death, the imugi suddenly released him, smiling in satisfaction. Seolyeong collapsed onto the rooftop, hacking and coughing.

The imugi’s feet stepped closer. He bent one knee beside him, grabbed a fistful of Seolyeong’s hair, and yanked his head up.

“Make the most of it. You won’t get chances like this often.”

Golden eyes, like the twilight sun, flared with an eerie brilliance. But the glow didn’t last. That beautiful gaze soon turned black and cloudy, his expression dazed.

Seolyeong caught him instinctively as the man slumped into his arms.

“Sect Leader? What is this…?”

The sect leader’s body was cold as ice. Every breath he exhaled carried a deadly yin energy, spreading like a poison meant to devour the soul.

“Sect Leader! Please, come to your senses!”

He grabbed his shoulders and shook him. The sect leader’s eyelids fluttered faintly, black tearstrailing from the corners of his eyes. His expression twisted in pain, no longer capable of rational thought from the invading yin energy.

Tang Yujae barely clung to consciousness as he rasped,

“…Leave me.”

He didn’t care if the Namgung clan’s warriors found him like this. Better that than letting his bride be toyed with by the imugi.

“I told you to leave, Ahyeong.”

When he repeated the command with more force, Seolyeong bit down on his lip. The sect leader’s skin was already rotting, peeling under the pressure of the yin energy.

It was a force no human body could withstand. The air pulsed with a sickly sweet scent, the same as always to Seolyeong.

“…Yes. I’ll leave.”

He answered in a firm tone. But he quickly moved to support his husband.

“However, I won’t leave alone.”

He hoisted the limp man onto his back and leapt into the sky.

Leaving a sick person behind? That’s absurd. It’s better to be discovered together than flee in disgrace and leave the sect leader behind.

As the cold crept through his back from the body he carried, Seolyeong prayed the yin tormenting him would be neutralized by his own yang. And if someone were to ask why he’d even bother showing concern for someone who only ever bullied him, he would answer like this.

‘Because… to me, he looks like a child who has been thrown into the world.’

He looked like a fierce wolf on the outside, but if you looked closer, there was the soulf of a child yet to grow up. One that hadn’t yet learned to tame his anger or turn hatred into love, always throwing himself into ruin instead.

Seolyeong hadn’t wanted to admit it, but now he had to.

“I’ll free you from this suffering, my lord.”

As much as he resented the man, he also pitied him. He’d braced himself for the criticism, already knowing what others would say. “Why are you sympathizing with someone like that?” But honestly, Seolyeong wanted to ask them instead: “Did they really think this man still wanted to see the martial world burn?”

“Pay back your debts to the martial world, not to me.”

Once a cycle of vengeance begins, it doesn’t end until someone dies. That’s why Seolyeong had always tried not to hate anyone, no matter what.

Not the Murim Alliance leader who locked him away in the Murong clan. Not the martial artists who sneered and called him a monster. Not the martial world itself, which had never once shown him any warmth.

As he flew through the sky with his husband on his back, Tang Yujae laughed. It was all so absurd. The way his bride just couldn’t bring himself to leave, even now, it stirred something in him.

“Foolish thing… there will come a day when that kindness will strangle you.”

He muttered, and Seolyeong replied flatly,

“Yes, I almost died just now. Fuck.”

As soon as they arrived at the inn, Seolyeong tossed the sect leader onto the bed. The man, consumed by suffocating yin, looked up at him with glassy eyes.

Seeing that dazed, blank stare, Seolyeong scrubbed his face in frustration.

“So now… I’m supposed to… climb on top of the sect leader and do this and that…right?”

He knew there was no time to waste, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. While the sect leader was tormented by venomous yin, he himself was still perfectly clear-headed.

Just as he knelt onto the bed with a determined expression, the sect leader suddenly laughed. After a hearty laugh, he gazed straight at him with smiling crescent eyes. The way Seolyeong earnestly prepared to carry out the imugi’s seemed foolish and endearing.

“Ahyeong.”

His called in a soft voice. At the same moment, he reached out and yanked off the Seonwol-do hanging around Seolyeong’s neck like a necklace.

Sensing the immense Qi, Seonwol-do returned to its true form. Tang Yujae gripped the hilt and murmured,

“Stay somewhere out of my sight for a while.”

His relationship with the imugi was based on mutual trust. The imugi, which was about to ascend and is spreading its evil influence in all directions needed to remember its place.

Tang Yujae raised the sword upright and aimed the blade at his lower abdomen. Splitting open his danjeon would be easy.

If the danjeon holding the imugi’s power was destroyed, the ascension would fail too. That’s why the imugi had tried to remain cooperative and make things easier for him.

He raised the blade, ready to pierce his gut.

─How dare you threaten divinity.

The imugi, who among all humans had always found Tang Yujae especially dear, now showed rare anger. The host’s hostility, sparked by a mere blood fiend, made it feel both hurt and wary. It felt that Tang Yujae might try to block its ascension, and insist on living a little longer.

So the imugi decided to make a point.

“Cough…!”

Tang Yujae’s eyes rolled back and his upper body snapped backward. His body convulsed on the bed. Under divine punishment, a human’s mind tore apart with ease. The imugi’s said in a subdued voice.

─If you are hostile to me, I’ll have no choice but to be hostile to you.

And then a wave of pain came rushing up from his toes.

─Don’t wound my affection, foolish man. Or I’ll crush you with mine.