The Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts - 058
The crowd murmured restlessly.
“Um… guest, about your order…”
Truth be told, I had never placed a proper order before. I had never even had the chance to learn the real names of dishes, and my knowledge of food was hardly deep. Still, anticipating a day like this, I had asked Moyong Ryu one by one while eating at the Moyong Family residence and committed them to memory.
“Three Fresh from the Earth, boiled sliced pork, Dezhou braised chicken, fish-fragrant shredded pork, and two bowls of plain noodles.”
The waiter took down my order, then carefully asked, “Do you have companions with you? The amount of food is…”
“If it’s not enough, I’ll order more. No liquor needed.”
“That’s not what I meant… Ah, understood.”
He glanced at me as I sat motionless, staring at the object on the table, then bowed and hurried off.
…
I gazed blankly at what I had set on the table.
It was a golden bronze incense burner, fist-sized and glittering with gold light.
“Mumyeong. Do you understand this?”
[From the fact that he falls outside the bounds of normal people, there is no room to doubt he is one of the eight palace lords of the Blood Cult.]
Two full days had passed since my meeting with Mara Jin, since I left Obi Cave and arrived in this village near the Emei Sect.
Ryu Hwasa had pulled the golden bronze incense burner from his robes and handed it over without offering a single condition.
At first I suspected it was a fake, something he had presented just to stay alive. But the features of the golden bronze incense burner I had been told about beforehand matched the object before my eyes exactly.
There was no doubt: this was the token of the second trial, the golden bronze incense burner that the Green Forest Bandits of Hyeonhobong were supposed to possess.
The prisoners, too—he had released them like a generous fisherman setting free a school of fish. When I went to the place he mentioned, people lay sprawled about with their limbs bound.
…
I took the tip of a chopstick from the table and slowly rolled it.
—Clatter. Tap.
I caught the rolling chopstick and rolled it again, over and over.
This feels wrong.
He was a type of enemy I had never encountered before. Strength was not the issue. I kept remembering those mad eyes that glittered like a rotten fish’s, eyes that seemed to see through everything.
‘We will meet again. Soon. Very soon.’
I recalled Ryu Hwasa’s face as he muttered those words with his snake-like features.
[Host already knows. That bastard is no fool.]
“I feel it far too well—that’s the problem.”
He had overturned my decision—to hand myself over to Cheonsubaekryeonsa after thirteen declared statements—as easily as flipping a palm.
[In any group, there is a reason that cannot be ignored when someone holds a mid-level post or higher, or stands as the leader. That is the way of the world. The problem is that he called himself the Seventh Palace Lord of the Blood Cult. That puts him on the level of Jeokmaryeong, the Yama King of the Surayeomrang Squad of the Heavenly Demon Cult. A position that absolutely cannot be disregarded.]
“That’s exactly why it doesn’t make sense.”
—Bang.
I slammed the table. People turned to look. I bit my lip and lowered my voice.
“Seventh Palace Lord or whatever—if I had killed him right then, what was he going to do about it? You saw it clearly. He was just taking a merciless beating.”
[I saw it without a doubt.]
“A Seventh Palace Lord’s martial arts that pathetic? Does that make any sense to you?!”
[I do not understand it either. He seemed to view things from a perspective entirely different from ours. Understanding him would be the strange part.]
I stared at the golden bronze incense burner before me.
He, more than anyone, would know exactly what it meant to hand this over. The moment I accepted it, my second trial was finished. There was no longer any reason to remain here. I could not fathom on what grounds he had so confidently declared we would meet again.
“Your food is ready.”
I tucked the golden bronze incense burner into my robes. Dishes settled onto the table.
“Let’s eat first.”
[Yes. Eat. Nutrition is essential for survival.]
I began taking out my frustration on the food with fierce intensity. I piled fish, all kinds of meat, hot eggplant, and vegetables onto the noodles and shoveled them into my mouth as if sweeping them in. My body absorbed the food without mercy, like water poured onto a parched rice field. After all the hardships, every time it met proper food it felt as though it sucked everything in the moment it entered my mouth.
“My life is so twisted… munch munch… finding a normal person is like plucking stars from the sky… munch munch… why is it that every bastard I meet is someone thrashing around trying to cut my throat…”
“Who tried to kill you this time?”
“Pwah!”
I sprayed out the noodles and Three Fresh from the Earth I had been shoveling in.
—Whir.
A sharp sound rang out. A slender soft sword like a silver snake swept across the table. The plates that had been in the path of the fragments flying from my mouth were neatly shoved aside to the left and right.
“You should treasure food.”
The figure spoke as she pulled a chair opposite me and sat. It was a red martial outfit that clung tightly to her curved body. She peeled off black gloves, revealing long, white fingers. Black hair that reached her waist swayed.
It was a woman I was seeing for the first time. But I knew the voice. It was a voice I could never forget.
—Clatter-clatter-clatter.
My hand holding the chopsticks trembled and struck the noodle bowl in a regular rhythm. At the sight, the woman in red sighed. She hooked a cloth on her index finger and held it out in front of me.
“You look ridiculous. Wipe your mouth and stop shaking those hands, will you?”
I could not even think of taking the cloth she offered.
“Um, if you’ll excuse the rudeness on a first meeting…”
“Excuse the rudeness?”
“Are you the person I’m thinking of?”
The woman picked up a pair of chopsticks.
“Probably? I suppose so.”
So Yeomgyo, Munju of the Blood Death Sect—the strongest assassin group in the jianghu—picked up a piece of boiled sliced pork and chewed it.
“…Haha.”
I set down the chopsticks. I set down the noodle bowl. I stared at the teacup beside me. I lifted my head and looked up at the ceiling. I muttered as if whispering.
“My life, really…”
“I’m not wearing a mask, you idiot.”
“Huh?”
I snapped my gaze to her like lightning. She called the waiter.
“You there, waiter—clear this away, and bring the strongest liquor in the place. Bamboo-leaf green? No. Something else. And one fried rice. I’ll just eat the side dishes already here. Oh, wait a second.”
She swallowed the meat she had been chewing. She tapped the bowl of red-sauced meat with her chopsticks.
“One more of this too. I didn’t expect much from a village near Emei, but the boiled sliced pork is pretty good. This is a solid restaurant. I should bring my kids.”
“No—if you bring your kids, who are you planning to slaughter next—”
So Yeomgyo looked at me with slanted, snake-like eyes.
“I meant everyone would welcome them.”
In a corner of my mind I heard Jin Muje shouting something about selective rage, but this was irresistible. The terror of that first encounter was an absolute law. It struck harder psychologically than anything existential. No matter what anyone said, the woman sitting right in front of me, stuffing fried rice and red-sauced meat into her mouth, was the one who had first killed me—and the beginning of this entire path.
So Yeomgyo toyed with her chopsticks and suddenly muttered, “By the way, I’m sorry.”
“The food’s fine—eat as much as you want. Just don’t kill me.”
At my words she furrowed her slender black brows.
“You going to keep spouting nonsense? I thought it over and apologized.”
So Yeomgyo set down her rice bowl and chopsticks. She gathered her long, trailing black hair and tied it up. Her white nape was revealed above the collar of her red martial outfit.
“Apology?”
Holding her rice bowl, So Yeomgyo said, “For breaking the promise and stabbing you in the chest. It’ll all sound like excuses anyway.”
“…This is giving the disease and then the medicine.”
“What was that?”
So Yeomgyo frowned. I buried my head in the noodle bowl. She shook her head and sighed.
“You can relax, I said. Not wearing a mask means I’m not on a job. So.”
She pointed at me with chopsticks still stuck with grains of rice.
“Can you un-turtleneck that neck of yours? Even I feel uncomfortable eating in front of someone hunched up like that.”
I immediately stretched my neck out straight.
“…You really piss me off.”
So Yeomgyo seemed to give up and focused on her meal. For a while we ate in silence, the only sounds the clatter of dishes. She was a heavy drinker. While eating she kept pouring the strong liquor the waiter brought into her cup without pause.
“What brings you here? If it’s not because of me, that is.”
“Strictly speaking, it’s for work this time too. But it’s the complete opposite of the job when I first met you.”
“The opposite job?”
So Yeomgyo licked a drop of liquor from her swaying red lips.
“That question just now—did you ask it thinking I would tell you the details of the commission?”
I buried my head in the noodle bowl again. At the sight, So Yeomgyo let out a soft laugh.
“No middle ground with you, ever. Which one is the real you? When you’re fighting? Or like this?”
“…Who knows.”
“But you’re casually dropping the formal speech on me?”
I tried to bury my head in the bowl again, but her chopsticks blocked the way.
“Just kidding.”
“And instead you just kill people?”
“…Are you joking around?”
…
She sighed and withdrew her chopsticks.
“Hard to even imagine that demon-like look from back then now. Well, it wasn’t a good memory for either of us. Enough. Let’s drop it.”
So Yeomgyo poured liquor into her cup as she spoke.
“I’m here not as the Blood Death Sect, but as So Yeomgyo, for a personal favor I received. I stopped by to grab a bite on the way and happened to spot you.”
Something I could not afford to let slip past had just gone by. It was information that turned my faint unease into reality.
“Is that personal favor related to the Guardian successor of the Emei Sect, by any chance?”
At my question So Yeomgyo’s face showed surprise.
“Oh, how did you know that? It’s nothing major. I have an acquaintance in Emei. The Guardian successor is about to undergo the Flower Opening Ceremony, and I was asked personally to provide a bit of protection.”
I had heard countless stories on the way here. A Guardian was a living disaster who handled force equivalent to thirty percent of an entire sect—called the sword pointed at the jianghu. Rumors had been spreading thickly in this area that a new Guardian successor was about to be formally appointed, succeeding the one who had retired forty years ago in Emei.
The waiter, seeing that the meal was ending, set a teapot of steaming Pu’er tea on the table. As I poured the tea I organized my thoughts.
I knew her skill better than anyone. If I could travel with her even for a short while, no one would be more reliable. Of course, the very idea of accompanying the person who had killed me was insane—but precisely because of that, I thought I could trust her. Living at the bottom of reality had taught me that the most dangerous people in this world were those who acted polite and righteous on the surface while hiding their true hearts. Those who were the same inside and out might drive a blade into you from the front, but they would not stab you in the back. My instinct said So Yeomgyo was the type who would openly announce it and take your head from the front—not the type to scheme.
Burn the hair of the Emei Guardian successor toward the northwest at the end of the fifth day, when dusk falls, and offer it to him. Two days had already passed, so only three remained. That was the condition Mara Jin had set in exchange for handing over the Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo. Mara Jin had claimed that compared to the value of the martial art he was giving, his wish was far too easy. I did not believe a word of it. Nothing in this world was free. There had to be something more. The fact that the Munju of the Blood Death Sect had come to provide protection already made my guess more than real enough. I needed information.
“I know Guardians are powerful beings. Why would one need protection?”
“Guardians vary. Especially since the current Emei Sect is in decline, even the Guardian line was broken, and a successor was only selected after forty years. The previous Guardian is so old and frail he can barely move.”
“I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“On top of that, the successor for this Flower Opening Ceremony is a young girl who hasn’t even had her first period yet. As you know, Emei doesn’t even perform the tonsure ceremony for children before menarche.”
I blinked. My ears took in her words, but my mind was elsewhere. At first I had found it strange that Mara Jin wanted me to obtain the hair of a Guardian from Emei, a group of nuns. Now everything made sense.
So Yeomgyo poured more liquor. Watching her, I muttered, “But even if it’s a personal favor, the Blood Death…”
I checked the surroundings and let the sentence trail off.
“Anyway, it doesn’t seem like something the head of a group should handle personally.”
“Oh, I liked that careful consideration just now. Baekho should take after you a bit more.”
With a slightly tipsy expression, So Yeomgyo said, “I still think it’s baseless rumor. But it’s hard to ignore completely when some unpleasant rumors are floating around. Then again, as you know, this jianghu is a mad world where common sense doesn’t apply, right?”
“Unpleasant rumors?”
The teapot was growing cold. Dew formed on its surface, rolled down, and pooled on the table. So Yeomgyo chuckled as if it were nothing.
“Intel from the Lower Gate. Apparently elites from the Blood Cult and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult seem to be gathering nearby. It’s a reliability grade-four document, so I don’t know whether to believe it or not. Honestly, you don’t buy it either, do you? Same here. Blood Cult and Demon Cult showing up at the same time—does that even make sense?”
…
My face hardened. It was hard to smooth out the shaken expression. The moment I heard it, I knew. The situation was plunging toward the worst I had imagined.