This was an art created from Sorim. The reason why Yuking was chubby was because he was trained in the art. It was famous and well known, but required one to gain weight and made the person slower, so it was unpopular.

‘A spy from the Forces of Justice?’

That seemed likely considering the martial arts style. But why would they want the Imperial Palace to fight against the cult?

‘This is strange. Wait…’

Yeowun ordered Nano.

‘Nano, do the MRI scanning.’

[Understood. Initiating Magnetic Resonance Imaging on the target.]

Yeowun’s hand shined with a faint red light, and Yeowun had augmented reality over his eyes. The scanned image popped up.

‘Let’s start with the head.’

Yeowun touched Yuking’s head, as he could now barely move. That’s when Yeowun saw something on the image.

‘That’s…’

Something small was squirming inside the head. Its movement was slowing down as if it was dying together with its host.

‘It’s the centipede. I’m sure of it.’

This was similar to the centipede that Yeowun pulled out from Yi Baek, Master of the Blade Sword of the Blade God Six Martial Clan. The only difference was that the centipede was dying.

That’s when Yuking’s head fell. He finally had died. As soon as he died, the white thing in the image assumed to be the centipede exploded and turned into liquid.

Fluid then oozed out of Yuking’s eyes. It was the dead centipede.

At the same time, in a dark stone room at the Yellow Mountain by the Jurkang Castle.

Noisy screaming filled the room as a red centipede screamed with a weird noise from within the red wooden box on the table. The man with his face hidden under the shadow was looking down at it. The centipede suddenly shivered and exploded. The man closed the wooden box and mumbled, “The cult again.”

The lid of the box read ‘Third Grand Plan – Spy on the Demonic Cult’. This time, the man didn’t need to get the centipede as the spy was programmed so that he would die from poison the moment he was affected with any potential threat.

“There’s no way you will find out what we are doing.”

The Second Grand Plan failed recently. If it worked, the cult would have fallen under their hands, but they even lost the spies that waited for so long. At least he worked it so that the centipede would not leave a trace. There was no way the Demonic Cult would find out who was behind it.

…Or so they thought. There was one thing that the man did not know. It was Nano. Yeowun was able to find out the centipede.

‘Blade God Six Martial Clan!’

The man was from the Blade God Six Martial Clan.

‘It’s them again…’

Yeowun couldn’t imagine how influential this clan was now. That’s when Yeowun became curious about the Imperial Order and opened it.

“Ugh!”

“Imperial Order! Get down on your knees!”

When the scroll opened, all Imperial Guards and two thousand soldiers went down on their knees and bowed. But Yeowun and the cultists stood proudly.

‘Ugh… those arrogant bastards.’

Commander Yon Namgun who barely went down on his knees with an injured leg gritted his teeth. But he couldn’t say anything.

“Hmmm…”

Yeowun read through the scroll. Unlike Zhu Taikhan’s arrogance, the scroll was written very politely, considering the cult as an equal. It was more of a letter rather than an order.

[…I want to invite heroes and many important guests to the place of our renewed nonaggression pact for my successor.]

The scroll was an invitation being made to Yeowun, dated next month. But the message didn’t seem to be only aimed at the cult.

“Huh?”

Zhu Taikhan became shocked when Yeowun appeared in front of him again.

“W-what is it?”

Yeowun showed him the scroll and spoke.

“Your highness. Do you know what the scroll said?”

“I don’t know by every word, but yeah. Mostly.”

The scroll of the Emperor wasn’t something that even the royal family could open. But he had heard from the Emperor himself about the invitation already. Yeowun then asked as he gave the invitation to Zhu Taikhan, “Do you know who received these invitations?”

Zhu Taikhan hesitated for a second and responded, since Yeowun would know soon anyway.

“It was sent to all the leaders of each faction.”

“The three factions?”

Yeowun frowned. This meant that the Palace will have leaders from all three factions on the same day.

‘Gathering them in the same place at the same time?’

It was not something that could easily happen. Up until now, that had happened less than five times.

‘Is the Blade God Six Martial clan trying to make the three factions go to war against each other?’

That seemed like a possible plan. But Zhu Taikhan revealed some unexpected details instead.

“No. If you are talking about your cult, the Yulin clan of the Forces of Justice and the Alliance of the Forces of Evil, there is one more faction.”

“One more?”

“A new faction called the Blade God Six Martial clan.”

“!!”