Into the Plum Blossoms
To cut straight to the point: the escape failed. The moment he turned to flee, he realized he could no longer control his own strength.
Leap too hard and the entire inn might come down around him. He had no choice but to freeze mid-motion, half-crouched and ridiculous.
He had forgotten. Reaching the Transcendent Realm had sharpened his senses far beyond what they used to be.
Naturally, the failed escape earned him a thorough thrashing. Bi So-hyang scolded him the entire time, fists included, and beat Shin Gi-woon without mercy.
Halfway through, Sama Yul joined in. She piled on for no particular reason, adding herself to the beatdown queue.
"Haa… Next time, think before you move."
"There wasn't a second to—sorry."
One sharp look from Bi So-hyang and Shin Gi-woon immediately tucked his tail. She wasn't wrong. It had been reckless. He hadn't even known whether the poison could be neutralized, yet he had yanked the toxic energy straight out and dumped it into his own body. Surviving at all was a miracle. Only the demonic energy's sudden intervention had dragged him back from the brink.
No need to mention that part. Shin Gi-woon, both eyes swollen black as ripe plums, scrambled through his excuses in a cold sweat.
Bi So-hyang listened, then let out a long sigh.
"As long as you know you screwed up. Congrats on breaking through the Transcendent wall, by the way."
"You can feel it too, right? The reason I couldn't run was because I was about to bring the whole inn down."
"Ah. So you were trying to run."
"…Let's drop that. Long time no see, Yul."
"Long time."
Shin Gi-woon tried to change the subject. Reuniting with a friend he hadn't seen in over three years—first blood-soaked, then getting beaten the moment they met while fully conscious—was absurd. Still, he wasn't angry.
The Black Death Ghost Shadow Corps was an assassin organization. From the day a person enlisted, their human emotions tended to erode, buried layer by layer. Sama Yul was different. She was the same as three years ago, when she had last beaten him senseless. That did not mean he had enjoyed getting hit. Absolutely not.
"Tell me what happened. Who put you in that state."
He was smiling as he spoke, but the memory of Sama Yul covered in blood made killing intent surge up on its own. Without Bi So-hyang's warning, he wouldn't even have noticed. Breaking through the Transcendent wall had clearly made his qi sense razor-sharp.
He had reached this realm once before, but after more than three years stuck at a single stage, the unfamiliarity was inevitable.
"I was tracking a trail and got surrounded. So-hyang said something about Cheongung? Anyway, those bastards tried to kill me."
According to Sama Yul, it had gone like this. She had been on a routine mission with her unit when the air around them rippled and a formation closed in. They managed to break the array together with the other operatives, but the sheer number of attackers that hit them at once left escape with their lives as the only realistic option.
"We were near Shaanxi, so I came here. The problem is… I couldn't erase my trail completely."
"So Cheongung already knows this inn belongs to the Cult?"
"Probably. We need to get out of here as fast as possible. Everyone else already packed up. Once you and Yul and I leave, we're done—you were just circulating your energy."
"So the situation's not great."
He was almost grateful he hadn't bolted the second he woke up. Knowing the full picture before moving really was the right call.
"But if it was that urgent, did you really need to beat me up first?"
"…Let's just move past that."
The moment the conversation turned against her, she wanted to drop it. People really were like that. Still, there was no point pressing further.
Unwelcome guests would arrive soon enough. They needed to get out of Shaanxi as fast as humanly possible. The problem was the Gongcheongseogyu.
No idea when I'll get another chance to come to Shaanxi. Mount Hua or Cheongung might find the Gongcheongseogyu first.
He would have to take the risk. If he ran straight back to the Cult now, he might never get another shot at the Gongcheongseogyu for the rest of his life.
That probably made him sound like a maniac obsessed with elixirs. But this was the Gongcheongseogyu—the most exalted spiritual treasure in the entire martial world. The moment word got out that Mount Hua possessed it, every faction of the Orthodox, Unorthodox, and Demonic paths would come stampeding in.
It had to be handled quietly, before anyone else knew. The Gongcheongseogyu was worth that much.
"We're going to that inn."
"You sure?"
"Our information never got sold. At the very least, that waiter knows how to keep faith."
The inn Shin Gi-woon had in mind was the one where he had clashed with the Black Spirit Sect. He had wiped the whole group out under the pretext of saving the waiter—and the waiter had kept his word. All he had told anyone was that a young man had slaughtered the Black Spirit Sect. Nothing more.
If they went there, they would probably be welcomed with open arms. There was an old saying that a criminal always returned to the scene of the crime. By that logic, avoiding the place was the smart move. But he flipped the thought around. Precisely because of that common wisdom, there was a decent chance no Martial Alliance warriors would be stationed there.
If they walked in and ran into Martial Alliance fighters… well. Forget the Gongcheongseogyu—bolting straight back to the Cult would be the wiser choice. Not that he could go around posing as a Beggars' Guild Taoist while looking like a complete wreck.
"We're going there first."
Shin Gi-woon led the way out of the inn, face composed and confident so as not to draw suspicion. He and Bi So-hyang both used disguise arts, shifting their features just enough to look like different people. Sama Yul, for the first time in a long while, had changed out of her assassin gear into something that made her look like a young lady from a wealthy household. The ornate clothes seemed to sit awkwardly on her; she kept frowning. The point was not to look suspicious. Wandering around in broad daylight dressed like a killer was a terrible idea.
The group headed for the other inn. Not long after they left, a party of martial artists in Mount Hua Sect robes stormed the Demonic Cult–affiliated establishment.
"Search everything! Bring me anything even slightly suspicious!"
"Yes, sir!"
Too late.
The elder who had brought the Mount Hua disciples realized his mistake. He should have arrived sooner. Not a single living presence remained inside the inn.
I shouldn't have wasted time on torture.
Only one person had slipped the encirclement. She had already been poisoned with an extreme toxin crafted by the Palace itself. The odds of her still being alive had been zero. So he had tortured the captured Demonic Cult assassins—and extracted nothing. In the end he had tracked the escaped woman's trail and found this inn.
It was unmistakably a Demonic Cult establishment. But every living soul was already gone. More than enough time had passed for a clean withdrawal.
She cannot be left alive.
The Black Death Ghost Shadow Corps was the single greatest obstacle to conquering the Demonic Cult. They had rooted themselves deep in the martial world in the form of assassin sects. After the Heavenly Net Black Web Captain incident, planting more spies inside the Cult had become impossible. The existing agents had to shrink the Corps' influence as much as possible.
It had been going well—except for the variable of one woman escaping. What could a single person accomplish? She had been young, yet she commanded an entire squad as its leader. That meant she was a Peak-level expert. There was nothing to gain by letting her live.
If she had headed straight for the Demonic Cult, he would have pursued. Instead the trail led somewhere strange, and leaving it alone had produced this empty result.
"Not even an ant left, Elder! Shall we keep searching?"
"…We're heading back."
"Yes, sir!"
As the elder's worries deepened, the Mount Hua disciples who had been searching the inn returned. They were pure seedlings dispatched from the main mountain solely to hunt the Demonic Cult—sprouts with no connection to the Palace. Fools who didn't even understand how the martial world truly worked. Fools who had no idea that proud Mount Hua was already sliding toward ruin.
No point grinding them when there's nothing to find. Time to return.
Hwaseon Jinin—elder of the Mount Hua Sect and Fifth Apostle of Cheongung—hurried his steps back toward Mount Hua, never knowing he would come to regret this day for a very long time.
Things went smoothly. The moment the waiter saw Shin Gi-woon, he treated him like royalty. He gave them an empty room free of charge—and even threw in free bowls of noodles. A waiter who understood honor better than half the Orthodox sects.
Thanks to that, Shin Gi-woon finally had time to tend to his body again. Having only just stepped into the Transcendent Realm, he needed to get used to his newly sharpened senses. Combat could erupt at any moment; his condition had to stay at its peak.
Tomorrow I'll head for Mount Hua.
They wouldn't be insane enough to seal every approach to the mountain. The Mount Hua Sect was nothing more than a cluster of buildings on the highest peak. They didn't own the whole mountain—why would they block every path? He would circle the slopes slowly and search the caves.
I just hope nothing goes wrong…
Even with the poison drawn out, Sama Yul was far from normal. If a fight broke out in this state, she would take a deep internal injury. If they could just get the Gongcheongseogyu and return to the Cult safely…
But when had the world ever been that kind? He always had to assume the worst—including the bleak possibility that someone might die.
"…"
His head grew crowded. Had he been coasting too long on the memories of his past life? Opportunities to grow stronger had been plentiful. The one who threw them away under the excuse of safety was Shin Gi-woon himself.
Out of a baseless fear of being consumed by demonic energy, he had refused to break the Transcendent wall—and only today had he finally reached it. Nothing had changed. Aside from learning that the demonic energy could speak, everything was the same.
If it was going to end up like this anyway, he should have broken through much earlier.
"No more time to take it slow, huh."
Cheongung had begun to bare its ambitions in earnest. There was no leisure left for gradual growth.
Shin Gi-woon made his decision. He would consume the Gongcheongseogyu—and right there, open the Governing and Conception vessels in one stroke, shattering the wall of the Flower Realm.