Novel Full Chapter 604: Hop-Hop (1)
I stared up at the black ceiling and thought.
‘Can’t sleep.’
I’d trained all day, so I could feel the fatigue, but for some reason my mind was razor-sharp.
Maybe it wasn’t just me—Dang Gyu-young tossed around, then leaned in and asked by my ear,
“You sleeping?”
“No.”
From down by my legs, Zhuge Soso’s voice floated up.
With bulldozer-level drive and bull-level stubbornness, she’d claimed the Kim Ho pillow—no, the Kim Ho leg.
“Little sovereign, I heard if you just rest your head on it, you fall asleep. Did you trick me?”
“Let’s say today is a special day.”
Even Seo Ye-in seemed to be rolling around this way and that.
At times like this, forcing yourself to sleep isn’t a good choice.
Nine times out of ten, it means there’s a reason you’re awake.
So I made a suggestion.
“Want to take a walk?”
“Sure.”
But the moment we stepped out of the guest annex, the walk stopped mattering.
Dang Gyu-young looked up at the sky and furrowed their brows.
“……What is this? Why’s it so dark?”
Not just moonlight—there wasn’t even a single cloud visible.
Even our field of view was severely limited.
On top of that, everything was dead silent. No matter how late it was, it was strange not to hear even the smallest noise.
It felt like we’d stepped into a sealed space.
Zhuge Soso looked around and muttered like she was talking to herself.
“Feels like a formation array. Kyu?”
“It’s not ours.”
Dang Gyu-young shook their head.
If it wasn’t a formation array set by the Dang family, there was only one answer.
Zhuge Soso let out a hollow laugh.
“So it’s an attack. Isn’t that a bit much? How does it blow up the moment I arrive?”
“That’s why I told you to go home, but you wouldn’t listen even if you died.”
“KyuKyu, is that how you treat someone who came to help?”
“I’m sorry, ShoSho. Please accept my apology.”
“In the future, be more careful, KyuKyu.”
I watched the ShoKyu routine, then added a line.
“Bad timing, yeah. But let’s think about it positively.”
“How?”
“If we deal with this, we can play with a clear mind. No worries at all.”
The attackers were obviously the Blood Cult, and this was basically the last round.
If they were bold enough to hit the Dang family directly, they’d poured in everything they had.
Zhuge Soso nodded like she agreed.
“So you’re saying it’s better to take the hit first?”
“Pretty much.”
“When it’s over, you’re playing too, right?”
“Even if I have to make time, I will.”
“Good. Let’s wipe them out fast.”
While the party’s fighting spirit ignited, Ahn Jeongmi and the Hyeseong Group staff were also stepping out of the guest annex.
Looks like they’d sensed the same ominous atmosphere.
Ahn Jeongmi looked at Seo Ye-in and spoke.
“My lady.”
“Butler.”
“Wouldn’t it be best for you to retreat to a safe location?”
Even knowing it wouldn’t work, she tried.
Naturally, Seo Ye-in shook her head side to side.
“Fight.”
“……Understood. We’ll cover you, so please don’t overdo it.”
“Confirmed.”
A moment later, the Hyeseong Group staff’s figures seemed to ripple—then vanished.
They’d put on transparent ghillie suits.
Only Ahn Jeongmi stayed visible, sticking close to Seo Ye-in, then she asked me,
“Kim Ho, have you decided on a course of action?”
“The safest call is to link up with the Dang family experts.”
The Dang family head, the Elder Council Head, and the Dang Ilbi–Dang Hanbi brothers would be fighting somewhere right now.
If we moved as a group with them, both our odds of winning and surviving would go up.
“However, we don’t have enough information yet.”
Other than the obvious fact that the Blood Cult had attacked, we knew nothing.
Who they’d brought, how many, what the enemy’s composition was, what their objective was.
Rather than just desperately blocking them, it was strategically better to figure out their intent and stop that.
So my conclusion was—
“Fundamentally, we move to link up, but respond flexibly depending on the situation.”
“Understood.”
Ahn Jeongmi nodded, as if she found it perfectly reasonable.
Then I spoke to Dang Gyu-young.
“Please lead us.”
“Yeah. That’s better. It’s our place.”
There were so many formation arrays and device mechanisms installed inside the Dang family that you couldn’t even count them.
The moment the Blood Cult crossed the walls, all of it would have activated.
If we weren’t careful, we could get caught in them too, so the best option was for Dang Gyu-young—who knew the internal layout—to take the lead.
If anything got missed, either I or Seo Ye-in would catch it.
Soon we started moving—not too slow, not too fast.
Following Dang Gyu-young’s guidance, we turned, and sometimes stopped to neutralize traps.
As we cut between large and small pavilions, pale shapes appeared beyond the darkness.
Old martial-robed fighters.
They stood with their backs to us, staring off in the opposite direction.
“…….”
“…….”
We stopped immediately, because there were too many unnatural details to ignore.
At a glance, they clearly weren’t from the Dang family, yet they were in the middle of the Dang family grounds.
They stood at attention with every joint fully straightened, rigidly upright.
There were a lot of them, yet not a single word was exchanged.
Then, maybe sensing our presence, they all turned at once.
They didn’t turn around normally—each one rotated their entire body in place.
As if an invisible hand had grabbed them and spun them.
Facing them head-on, we finally understood what had been bothering us.
Their faces were pale and half-rotted.
They hadn’t been living beings to begin with.
And there were talismans plastered all over them—on their foreheads and everywhere else.
‘Jiangshi.’
In other words: wuxia undead.
Something the Blood Cult had prepared—their hidden trump card.
The next moment, they all stretched both arms toward us.
And with stiff, locked legs, they started approaching by hopping.
The gunners opened fire immediately.
Holes punched through their bodies, gouges carved deep—yet they didn’t care, and kept hopping forward.
Dang Gyu-young and Zhuge Soso stepped up.
A longsword slashed diagonally, cutting into a jiangshi.
But the blade didn’t cleanly chop it apart—it bit in halfway, then stuck.
Zhuge Soso dodged its clawing swipe and said,
“Harder than I thought.”
A jiangshi ★ 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ is made by treating a corpse with special drugs and occult processing, so its skin is extremely hard and tough.
Comparable to a martial artist who’d pushed external training to the extreme.
Maybe her competitive streak flared up—Zhuge Soso poured internal energy into her blade and swung.
This time, the jiangshi’s neck was sliced clean off, but even headless, it flailed its arms wildly and kept clawing.
“Wait, cutting the head doesn’t end it?”
“You have to tear off the talismans.”
The driving force behind a jiangshi is the spellwork contained in the talismans.
Usually there’s only one on the forehead, so cutting the neck ends it.
Or you tear or burn the talisman and destroy it.
But the Blood Cult must have known this, because they’d plastered them on everywhere.
‘That would drive the cost way up.’
Which meant they were staking everything on this.
Dodging another swipe, Zhuge Soso locked every talisman’s position into her eyes.
Then her sword flashed at terrifying speed.
Yellow talisman scraps scattered into the air, and only then did the headless body collapse to the ground.
“Okay. That’s one.”
Zhuge Soso made a distant, exhausted face while engaging the next one.
The others looked like they were struggling too against an unfamiliar opponent.
Under concentrated fire, a few jiangshi dropped, but most kept hopping like mad, swarming in.
Dang Gyu-young had abandoned the club entirely and was focusing solely on operating shadow undead.
Because blunt strikes wouldn’t do anything no matter how much you hit them.
At least the former Blood Cult elders’ attack power was substantial—they were ripping the jiangshi to shreds.
While we steadily reduced the numbers one by one—
From somewhere, another pack of jiangshi appeared.
And they started hopping toward us like maniacs.
“…….”
“…….”
The party’s faces went pale, yet they reset their formation anyway.
I stepped forward and said,
“I’ll take them. Just buy me a little time.”
We’d taken down the first batch together to build experience, but there was no need to keep doing that.
If there was a more efficient method, using it was the way to preserve everyone’s strength.
I pointed my staff at the incoming jiangshi, and a concentrated whirlwind locked onto them.
Most of them were pulled in immediately, but some tried to hop out of the range.
Then, in the next instant, the gunners’ special rounds detonated—
Electricity burst out and wrapped around them like a net.
With their movement restricted, they were dragged into the whirlwind like the rest.
As the wind continued gathering and compressing, I clenched my other fist.
A dark red flame that burned and seethed.
I drove it straight into the jiangshi.
[Spiral Explosion]
[Inferno Fist]
A moment later, all that remained where the firestorm had swept through were corpses reduced to ash.
While we took a moment to reorganize, Dang Gyu-young looked into the distance with worried eyes.
“If we’re having this much trouble, other people will be struggling way more.”
“Probably.”
Even Zhuge Soso—an excellent swordswoman—had to pour internal energy in properly just to cut them.
Needles and hidden weapons would be even worse.
‘Poison obviously won’t work either.’
They were already dead—their metabolism had stopped.
Considering most Dang family martial artists relied heavily on poison and hidden weapons, it was the worst possible matchup.
“And not all jiangshi are the same.”
Just like undead have zombies and skeleton soldiers and death knights, jiangshi also come in multiple types.
What we’d just fought were iron jiangshi.
The most basic kind, focused purely on defense.
Their production process was relatively simple, so you could mass-produce them, but each individual tended to be weaker.
Zhuge Soso nodded in agreement.
“No way they only brought iron jiangshi. It’s the Blood Cult.”
“There’ll definitely be variety.”
To pressure the Dang family experts through multiple methods.
And it wouldn’t even end there.
As the quality of the materials and the level of the occult work increased, the jiangshi grew stronger as well.
Among them, there would be individuals capable of going toe-to-toe with an A-rank.
At minimum, they would’ve prepared enough to match the Dang family experts.
As everyone’s expressions turned even grimmer, Ahn Jeongmi asked,
“Will you continue prioritizing joining up, or will you act differently?”
“I think a different approach is better.”
Now that it was clear the Blood Cult’s main weapon was jiangshi.
We hadn’t killed them easily either, but the Dang family martial artists would be struggling several times harder.
The longer this dragged on, the more casualties would pile up.
If we focused only on linking up, there was a high chance we’d miss those casualties.
That would hurt the main quest, and it would also mean Dang Gyu-young would lose relatives.
The best move was to blunt it as early as possible.
So I looked around at the party and said,
“We’ll focus on support and evacuating the wounded.”