Chapter 134: The First Subordinate
Chapter 134: The First Subordinate
After settling matters with the Sacheon Salmun, I returned to the Hao Gate Uibin Branch. It was the place where I had left Jeok Ma-hyeok's two younger siblings, Jeok Ha-gun and Jeok Ha-yeon.
"Truly, truly thank you, Gongja. I will repay this grace until the day my life ends. Truly, thank you."
When I extracted the gu from Jeok Ha-gun and Jeok Ha-yeon's bodies, Jeok Ma-hyeok knelt and wept as he spoke those words.
The Sacheon Salmun's gate master, the man called Il-sal, turned out to be an easier mark than I had expected.
I only went as far as the third stage of Bone and Sinew Separation, yet he was already pouring tears and snot, shrieking that he would cooperate with anything and everything.
'Gwaaaaaaak! Stop! Please, just stop! Anything! I'll cooperate with anything! Aaaaaaagh!'
So I smiled brightly and said to him,
'Ahaha, you liar. As if the gate master of an assassin sect would have so little spine.'
Then, after letting him sample the fourth and fifth stages at a leisurely pace, I began our conversation.
After that, all sorts of intelligence came gushing out like a burst dam.
The variety of information was rich.
There was a drug that caused the gu fed to the assassin sect's disciples like Jeok Ma-hyeok to be expelled, there were the locations where he had hidden his wealth and spirit medicines, and there was even intelligence on the clients who had commissioned the sect.
He had trained his disciples not to let out so much as a scream even in death, yet the display he himself put on was utterly and profoundly disappointing.
It seemed that a greedy man could not easily be strict with himself, after all.
I watched the three siblings weeping as they embraced one another, overcome with emotion, and then abruptly spoke to the man standing beside me.
"I'll extract your gu ten years from now. Do you feel wronged?"
The man who had stood there with a face as expressionless as a boulder looked at me with deep eyes and answered.
"As long as you keep your word, I have no objection even if you never extract it at all."
He was the man named Gyeon-jung, who had been the I-sal of the Sacheon Salmun.
That assassin who, though he had not yet stepped into the peak realm, had given off the impression of being far more dangerous than a peak-level master.
When I had gathered intelligence about the Sacheon Salmun from Jeok Ma-hyeok beforehand, he had spoken of this man as follows:
'I-sal is a man like a blade. He carries out the gate master's orders without a word of complaint, yet shows no emotion whatsoever. Moreover, he executes only precisely what he is ordered. Like a tool devoid of feeling. It isn't as though I've shared any personal rapport with him, but I have thought that he might have killed his own emotions in order to endure an assassin's life he never wanted. I caught a glimpse of his sorrowful gaze just once, when he was looking at the children brought in to the assassin sect.'
That was why I had resolved not to kill I-sal Gyeon-jung.
And having momentarily lost consciousness from being struck by my sword qi, once he saw that I had already subdued the gate master and taken the drug that delayed the gu's seizures from him, he readily expressed his willingness to follow me.
Like a blade that cares not who wields it.
That was when I told him that if he worked for me for ten years, I would set him free, and I made him this promise:
'If you work under me, I will at least ensure that you never again have to do work that forces you to seal away your own emotions. For now, you will inevitably have to employ your skills as an assassin, but soon I will make it so that you can live as a warrior who walks in the light, carrying pride in himself.'
The reason I told him that was because I had once heard about the emotions of Sak Mu-heun hyeongnim, who had served in the Dark Shadow Squad. I had guessed that his heart would be much the same as Sak hyeongnim's.
He gave no reply at all to my promise.
But in that moment, I thought I saw a fierce light of emotion in his eyes for the first time.
He must have been a Heavenly Warrior indeed.
A short while later, Jeok Ma-hyeok and his two siblings, having ceased their weeping, all decided to follow me.
"Gongja! Please, allow me to follow you! Though my abilities are lacking, I will shatter my bones and grind my body to dust in service to you, Gongja!"
"Me too! I want to follow Gongja alongside my orabeoni!"
"...I also beseech you."
To be honest, I had expected this, but it still warmed my heart.
Concealing my gladness, I issued them their first command with a solemn expression.
"The first command I will give you is!"
At that, they all looked at me with eyes filled with resolute determination.
Their faces looked as though, if I gave the word, they would march into hell itself.
Smiling inwardly, I continued.
"To consume spirit medicine."
"Yes, Gongja! Spirit medicine... pardon?"
"...C-consume spirit medicine?"
The gate master of the assassins, being the greedy wretch that he was, had apparently hoarded an enormous quantity of spirit medicines in his own storehouse, and had not readily given them out to his disciples.
Seeing that even I-sal Gyeon-jung, who was said to be the strongest in the assassin sect, had not yet filled a single gapja of internal energy, I suspected that he may have deliberately regulated things so his disciples could not cross the wall to the peak level.
"What work could I possibly entrust to you with less than a single gapja of internal energy? From this moment, everyone is to raise their internal energy first."
At that, they exchanged glances with one another in confusion, and the younger brother Jeok Ha-gun asked carefully.
"We are profoundly grateful for your words. But from what I've heard, abruptly filling internal energy with spirit medicine carries the risk of qi deviation...."
I grinned and answered.
"There's a way to overcome all of that, so don't worry about it."
To have reason to be grateful to the Blood Cult bastards — one truly did live to see strange things.
And I took special note of the boy named Jeok Ha-gun, who had just pointed that out.
One could say that Jeok Ha-yeon and Jeok Ha-gun, the twin younger siblings, were like bonus add-ons that came with securing Jeok Ma-hyeok.
So I had not had great expectations, but it seemed the two of them possessed talents that were, by all appearances, far from ordinary.
For eighteen-year-old children who had received only assassin training, their senses and skills looked surprisingly decent.
They were undeniably talents who stirred a budding desire in me to properly raise them.
They all immediately consumed the spirit medicines and entered into energy cultivation.
They did so using the Muhwa Heart Method I had newly taught them.
The Muhwa Heart Method was the mental cultivation technique of the Heavenly Killing Secret Technique, which I had memorized in the Seonwoo family library. Though it was a mental technique of an assassin sect, it possessed capabilities far superior to most advanced techniques....
To me, having already mastered the Honwon Mugeuk Gong, it was useless, but for those who were assassins, it would undoubtedly be of immense help.
I intended to have them learn the Heavenly Killing Sect's secret assassin techniques that I had myself trained in.
For men like Gyeon-jung or Jeok Ma-hyeok, who had already reached a high level as assassins, it seemed that simply mastering those techniques would enable them to demonstrate significantly enhanced capabilities.
'And in the long run, I'll have to have them learn proper martial arts. So they can make a name for themselves as warriors of the light.'
Perhaps because they were the first direct subordinates I had acquired in this life, there were many things I wanted to do for them.
I was already looking forward to seeing how much they would grow.
But that was a matter for the distant future, and for now, I met again with the head of the Hao Gate Uibin Branch to attend to the business immediately before me.
It was to obtain the intelligence on the Guizhou City Hao Gate that I had previously requested from the Yeongnam Branch Head.
I also took the opportunity to obtain some intelligence on the Seonwoo family as well.
With a grave expression, he gave a lengthy explanation of the current situation in Guizhou City.
"...And so, it seems that the internal strife has now been mostly settled."
According to the intelligence they had gathered, up until recently, the Hao Gate disciples of Guizhou City had been engulfed in internal conflict.
And recently, it had been settled.
In the worst possible direction....
"The Blood Cult side, is it?"
"...Yes, that is correct."
I let out a deep sigh at his words.
He too could not bring himself to meet my eyes and was fidgeting restlessly.
"H-however, it is not as if there are no disciples opposing them at all. The former Guizhou City Hao Gate Master, as well as the disciples who follow him, are said to have gone into hiding in the shadows. If we can only make contact with them, we will surely be able to root out the Blood Cult's packs."
"...Even so, the former Hao Gate Master was also a Blood Cultist, was he not."
"Th-that is true, but...."
The rough outline of the situation I pieced together from what he told me was as follows.
In the past, the demon heads whom the Blood Demon had infiltrated into Guizhou City, unlike the Small-faced Demon Lord in Sichuan Province, had opted not to establish a sect but instead to infiltrate the shadows and seize control of the Hao Gate.
Thus, the Hao Gate of Guizhou City, unlike those of other provinces which generally had a strong character as coalitions of branches, had come to possess a centralized power structure centered on a single Hao Gate Master.
And that Hao Gate Master was none other than a demon head of the Blood Cult whose identity no one knew.
But what was strange was what came next.
For some reason, it was said that Blood Cultists who had recently flowed in had clashed with the existing Blood Cultists who made up the Hao Gate's leadership.
And the victors of that clash were the newly arrived Blood Cultists.
"I appreciate that they stirred up an internal conflict, but... why does it give me an ominous feeling?"
I was inferring that these newly arrived Blood Cultists might be the remnants of the Jeonghyeopbang who had been driven out of Sichuan Province.
But there was a problem with simply viewing it that way.
'Considering that the person responsible for Sichuan Province was the Small-faced Demon Lord Sa Won-yang, the one in Guizhou City couldn't have been some pushover either. At minimum, they would have been a master on the level of the Bloodthirsty Demon Lord Ji Gwang-ok. But newcomers took out someone like that, someone who had also already built his own power base? Just what....'
Without realizing it, I swallowed hard.
It was because I had a premonition that a monstrously powerful monster was lying in wait.
Abruptly, the faces of the Iron God Mad Demon Cheok Gang and the Guyueumma Ji Gi-eum, who had appeared at the Jeonghyeopbang, rose in my mind.
Monsters who had looked down upon the countless masters of the Qingcheng Sect and the Dang Clan as if they were beneath their notice.
'Surely, colossuses like that wouldn't have been dispatched to a mere Hao Gate in Guizhou City....'
Yet the unease in my heart refused to subside.
'Suddenly, returning to the Seonwoo family is starting to feel terrifying.'
If I went to the Seonwoo family this time, there was no way I could simply exchange a brief greeting with Father and then leave.
The situation at the Seonwoo clan was just as much of a mess as Guizhou City itself.
Moreover, thinking back to how many people of the Seonwoo clan had been soul-possessed by the Blood Cult in my past life, I couldn't guarantee that the Blood Cult's reach hadn't already extended into the Seonwoo clan as well.
So I expected that this time, heading to the Seonwoo clan would inevitably bring me into contact with Blood Cult factions.
The Uibin branch leader said this about the Seonwoo clan.
"The Seonwoo clan currently rests upon a two-sided scale, with the clan head, Seonwoo Jung daehyeop, serving as its axis. No, it would be more accurate to call it a three-sided scale. It appears to be in balance now, but it is a scale that will collapse the moment the weight tilts to one side."
It was something I hadn't known, but the Seonwoo clan had apparently nearly collapsed once in the past.
When my father was young, a great battle had erupted and all of the clan's masters had died.
At that time, my father, who had been thrust into the position of clan head at far too young an age, had apparently chosen to draw in outside support in order to maintain the Seonwoo clan's seat among the Eight Families of Guizhou.
"At that time, the most threatening force to the Seonwoo clan was the Ha clan, which shared the same base in Guiyang. So your father instead married a daughter of the Ha clan to protect the Seonwoo clan."
The Ha clan was one of the Eight Families of Guizhou, and also the maternal family of my second elder brother, Seonwoo Hyeok.
It was truly pathetic that I was only now learning there had been such circumstances behind that marriage.
I abruptly asked him.
"Then the Gaeyangmun, the maternal family of my eldest brother, was a force brought in to keep the Ha clan in check, I take it."
"Yes, that is how we see it."
The Gaeyangmun, the maternal family of my eldest brother Seonwoo Seong, was a sect located in Gaeyang, a region neighboring Guiyang.
It was a mid-level sect that didn't belong to the Eight Families of Guizhou. Despite its small power, I suspected it had been brought in to check the Ha clan under the pretext of the first wife and the eldest son.
It didn't end there.
The maternal family of my fourth younger brother, Seonwoo Gi, was the Seogidang of Dogun, and the maternal family of the fifth, Yeon-ha, was the Un clan of Geumsa.
All of them were sects located in different regions, with the Seonwoo clan at the center.
"Then what about bringing in the Seogidang and the Un clan?"
When I asked that, the Uibin branch leader avoided my gaze and opened his mouth with difficulty.
"...Seonwoo Jung daehyeop originally had a lover he was courting. But for the sake of the Seonwoo clan, he had no choice but to take her as his third wife."
The third wife.
He was speaking of my mother.
And she had passed away not long after I was born.
But the fact that talk of my mother was emerging now....
The branch leader cautiously continued.
"The relationship between the first wife and the second wife was not good. Both had borne sons and both wished to seize control of the Seonwoo clan. However, according to rumors at the time... they were peculiarly united when it came to dealing with the third wife."
I closed my eyes tightly.
I could understand immediately what he meant.
My mother, who had been my father's original lover but lacked any background, and the first and second mothers, renowned for their vicious temperaments.
I could picture that situation as if it were before my eyes.
"The cause of the third wife's death was never made public. However, from what we can see, it is likely...."
He trailed off.
But I couldn't help but know what he wanted to say.
"Huuuu."
I tried to calm my heart.
There was nothing certain yet, was there?
Whether they had truly killed my mother, and whether they had treated me so cruelly because they envied my mother, who had been my father's lover.
But for the first time in a long while, a fierce flame was rising in my chest.
"After that, when the third wife passed away, the conflict between the first wife and second wife only grew more intense. So our deduction is...."
"He dispersed the power even further. Because in a multi-sided struggle rather than a two-sided confrontation, no one would be able to move recklessly."
"Yes, that is what we surmise."
I let out a deep sigh.
I had almost no memory of seeing my mother.
It was because she had passed away so early that even my good memory couldn't recall her.
But I could imagine it well enough.
How those women, who had treated me so cruelly even as a child, would have treated my mother.
How exhausting my mother's life, without a single background to lean on, must have been.
I also felt I could fathom the weight my father had borne.
The life of my father, who must have lived solely as the clan head, having completely abandoned the individual named Seonwoo Jung, enduring somehow against external forces manipulating the clan....
I muttered to myself.
"There's a lot to do."
It truly seemed that way.
When I went to the Seonwoo clan this time, that is.
I, who had been lost in thought for a long while, opened my mouth again toward the Uibin branch leader, who wore a heavy expression.
"I have a request."
"Yes, Gongja. Please speak."
"Could you deliver two letters for me?"
"Yes, of course. To whom shall I send them?"
"One is a letter to be delivered to the Sichuan Dang clan. And the other is...."
***
Dark night, the underground space of a large inn.
"Gruaaaaaack!"
"Uwaaaaaaack!"
Countless people were bleeding from all over and dying.
It was a massacre.
Those clad in red had formed an encirclement and were slowly killing people while tightening the siege.
Laughing leisurely as though toying with rats trapped in a jar.
Then, among those trapped at the center of the encirclement, a middle-aged man who appeared to be their leader shouted with a ferocious face.
"What is the meaning of this, Gongja?! Did we not swear to follow you?!"
When he shouted that, the center of the encirclement parted slightly, and a young man slowly walked in.
Despite the dark surroundings, he was a handsome young man whose face seemed to radiate light.
He opened his mouth in a cold voice.
"First: the crime of merely managing the Hao Sect while cooperating with So Nan-so, even though the Supreme One entrusted you with the grave task of the Blood Cult's grand dominion over the world. Second: the crime of failing to capture the sinner So Nan-so and instead helping her escape. Third: the crime of losing trust due to all those actions."
The young man, having spoken thus far, stopped walking and asked with a chilly gaze.
"Do you need more reasons, Gong Dae-gak?"
At that, Gong Dae-gak, the eldest of the Blood Cult's demon heads, the Three Ghosts of Galsa, gritted his teeth and yelled.
"It is a misunderstanding! The Witch's plan was to advance into the open world after seizing control of the underworld; she was never slacking off! Furthermore, we truly do not know where the Witch is!"
But the handsome young man, Gu Yu-sang, known as the White Jade Dragon and the Foremost Gongja of Sichuan, gave a scoffing laugh.
"Don't make me laugh. You call it not slacking off when all you did was save a few orphans and console the grievances of gisaeng?"
Then Gong Dae-gak desperately shouted.
"We were orphans too! Is it wrong for us, who were orphans, to help children in the same situation? Moreover, by doing so, we were able to further expand the Blood Cult's power—!"
"Shut your mouth! Did the Supreme One send you to use that precious time and manpower to do such worthless things?! Enough talk! Repay your sins with your lives!"
When Gu Yu-sang coldly rebuked them, the expressions of Gong Dae-gak and the rest of the Three Ghosts of Galsa turned cold as well.
"Hmph! The Witch did say it. That the Blood Demon ultimately wants to cleanse the figures of our old generation. Just as he dealt with the Small-faced Demon Lord, he would do the same to us. Indeed, the Witch's insight was correct! We should have truly defected and escaped with her back then!"
A powerful momentum began to surge from the bodies of the Three Ghosts of Galsa, who had steeled their resolve to fight.
Not only the eldest, Gong Dae-gak, with over ninety years of internal energy, but also the energy of his two younger brothers, each possessing over eighty years of internal energy, was formidable.
Gong Dae-gak roared.
"You whelp! We treated you with respect as the Blood Demon's successor, and it seems you've gotten the delusion that you've actually become the Blood Demon! Do you think the likes of you can handle us, the Three Ghosts of Galsa, so easily?!"
At that, the two demon heads flanking Gu Yu-sang opened their mouths with fierce expressions.
"How dare lowlifes like the Three Ghosts of Galsa speak of the Supreme One in such a manner! Gongja! Leave them to us! This Chuk Ho-tak and No Jo-song will tear those dog bastards to shreds!"
"Leave them to us, Gongja!"
The ones flanking Gu Yu-sang were Chuk Ho-tak, the Hell's Blood Monk, and No Jo-song, the Man-eating Demonic Tiger—demon heads at the transcendent peak level and with over ninety years of internal energy respectively.
Thus, with them, even the Three Ghosts of Galsa could be sufficiently dealt with.
But Gu Yu-sang smiled faintly, and instead of them, he turned his head back and said.
"Could I ask a favor of you, Uncle Hwa?"
At that, a beautifully handsome young master, who had been behind him, stepped forward slowly while fanning himself and yawning.
"Yawn, of course I must grant Yu-sang's request. But can I just deal with those fellows and go right back? I discovered some very pretty girls upstairs."
He was a man with a youthful appearance, appearing to be in his early thirties at most, clad in splendid attire that suggested a wandering scholar of pleasure rather than a martial artist.
But Chuk Ho-tak and No Jo-song, upon seeing him, respectfully bowed their heads and withdrew to the sides, while the Three Ghosts of Galsa had to mutter with horrified faces.
"Th-The Flower-seeking Lust Demon Hwa Sa-yu?"
The Flower-seeking Lust Demon Hwa Sa-yu.
He was one of the Blood Cult's Five Demons alongside the Iron God Mad Demon Cheok Gang and the Nine Nether Sound Demon Ji Gi-eum, and a supreme master ranked among the Thirty-six Stars of the World. It was such a man who had appeared here alongside Gu Yu-sang.