The Pigeon Brings Dire News
The pigeon was supposed to come back after playing around, wasn’t it?
With a flutter of wings, a single dove fearlessly hopped over the tall wall of the Dukhyun Royal Manor and flew inside. Of course, in such a vast estate, no one would scream, “How dare a mere bird enter the royal manor without permission! Even a beast cannot be forgiven for this!” and fly into a rage. Nor would the pigeon politely knock on the door with its beak and say, “Though this humble creature was born without knowing its parents, having heard the illustrious name of the virtuous Prince Dukhyun, it comes with fervent admiration and respectfully requests permission to visit the royal manor. Coo coo.”
However, this particular pigeon was a little special. It had been trained to find its way back to the royal manor no matter where in the Central Plains it was released. A homing pigeon—one that could survive hawks, wild dogs, stray cats, and the most dangerous predator of all, the starving beggar—only to eventually return to its proper perch at the manor.
Thus, when the royal manor’s pigeon keeper saw the suddenly returned Youngsoon (the pigeon, six years old, and coincidentally sharing a name with the kitchen auntie he secretly admired), he greeted it with delight.
“Oh, Youngsoon! What’s this? Did you miss your big brother and come back? Where—”
The keeper, chuckling as he reached to remove the message tube tied to the pigeon’s leg, suddenly froze. The tube was stained with nothing but blood.
He hurriedly opened it. The trained homing pigeon pecked fiercely at his hand to protect the tube, but the keeper didn’t even feel the pain. It couldn’t be. It must not be.
There had to be a letter inside.
But the tube was empty.
The keeper’s face turned deathly pale. This was the most urgent kind of distress signal. They had smeared the pigeon with blood and sent it flying without even time to write a message. It meant something catastrophic had happened to His Highness.
The keeper kicked open the door of the dovecote and rushed out.
And roughly two hours later.
The great gates of the royal manor burst open, and a group of martial artists poured out, racing across the ground like the wind with supreme lightness techniques, tearing through the city of Chengdu.
It was an immensely spacious indoor training hall.
In this vast arena that could easily accommodate a hundred grown men lying down, only one person sat quietly in the lotus position amid a field of shriveled corpses and mummified remains.
If anyone from the outside world had seen her, they would have instantly understood what it meant to possess a “nation-toppling beauty” that could set a kingdom ablaze.
Beneath sweat-drenched strands of hair clung a woman who was quite literally the embodiment of carnal allure. Her seductive, fox-like eyes dripped with lewdness. The beauty mark on the bridge of her nose was lewd. Even her vulgarly red, glossy lips were obscenely lewd. She was the very incarnation of lust—her mere breathing enough to ignite a man’s desires and drive him mad.
So when the woman let out a sigh that sounded almost like a moan—even her sighs were lewd!—and finally opened her mouth…
“I’m huuuungry……”
The dreamy, half-witted voice that came out clashed so violently with her bewitching appearance that the entire atmosphere shattered in an instant.
The woman stood up, briskly dusting off her backside, then walked to the wall and opened a box containing Fasting Pills. Only three remained. But they were already covered in green and blue fuzzy mold. The very pills meant to purge poison from the body while abstaining from normal food had instead become something that would kill her if eaten.
The woman’s face crumpled into a pout.
“They’ve gone bad……”
Giving up on the pills, she turned her head to look at the thick iron door of the indoor training hall. Then, with her stomach letting out a loud growl, she drooped her seductive eyes in hunger and finally walked over, slapping her hand against the door.
It was a massive iron door, easily as tall as a grown man. Shockingly, this delicate-looking woman pushed the enormous slab of metal aside with profound internal energy.
Grrrrrrrng—!
The iron door scraped against the floor as it opened with great difficulty.
Outside, a man who had been sitting in meditation with his eyes closed slowly opened them.
He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, a handsome man with a dignified presence. His features were bold, his jaw sharply defined, giving him a stubborn look. However, though both eyes were open, one socket was simply a hollow, dark void. The eyeball was nowhere to be seen.
The man covered the empty socket with an eyepatch, then bowed his head deeply and spoke.
“You have reached the later stage. Aunt, I congratulate you on your great achievement.”
“Great achievement? What’s that?”
“It means you have attained a tremendous level of mastery.”
“But I didn’t reach the Harmonious Realm, did I?”
“There is no need to be so impatient. Are there not still countless villains in this world? However, since your internal energy is not yet perfectly pure, it would be best to take more time.”
“But I need to protect my little sister.”
“Haste often becomes poison. Come, you must be starving. Let us go eat.”
“Okay. Let’s eat.”
The woman nodded with a ditzy attitude that completely clashed with her seductive appearance.
Thus, the woman took the lead while the one-eyed man followed behind. Suddenly, as if a thought had just occurred to her, she asked,
“By the way, the purge? Is that all finished now? Are there still more left from the Kettle Faction?”
“It’s not the Kettle Faction, it’s the Main Faction. The Black Killing Demon Lord you just absorbed was the last one, so the sect’s reorganization is now complete. You have been a great help. Even those traitors must be thanking you from the afterlife for becoming your nourishment.”
“For someone saying that, they sure cursed me a lot when they died.”
“That is why I said ‘from the afterlife.’ They may have died with resentment, but once dead, they will realize the truth before the King of Hell. By offering their internal energy to you, Aunt, they have at least washed away some of their evil karma as a merit, have they not?”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
“It is.”
“If my nephew says so, then it must be true. I don’t really understand these things!”
The woman readily agreed. Her pure-hearted tendency to believe anything without suspicion was one of her few remaining virtues.
“Hehe. Then, can I go see my little sister now? I miss her.”
At that, the one-eyed man suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Noticing there was no one following behind her, the woman turned around and caught the strangely pained expression on his face.
She immediately made an offer.
“Wanna come with me, nephew?”
“Would… that truly be acceptable?”
“Of course. You’re going to see your adoptive mother. And from what I’ve seen, my nephew is already a very good person. I’m sure my little sister will welcome you too.”
(Though they would still need to hear the little sister’s opinion first.)
But the woman’s brain was far too pure for such high-level thinking.
The one-eyed man’s face instantly brightened. Despite his appearance that suggested he was well past thirty, his smile was innocently childlike.
Kang Su-yang, the leader of the Gyerim Sword Sect, watched as smiles bloomed across his disciples’ faces.
In that moment, he felt as if he had been struck hard on the head. When was the last time he had seen his disciples laugh?
The Yaoga Flame Hall, backed by the Sadoryeon, had been threatening them with daily acts of tyranny. The martial artists had been forced to endure humiliations that should never be tolerated. Even if the reason was the survival of their sect, the sense of disgrace the disciples felt must have been indescribable.
But if they abandoned their estate, where could they go? Any other city would already have its own established sects that would not welcome them. Even if they somehow settled down, they would only slowly wither away under the stigma of being a defeated sect that had fled.
And even if they gave up the estate and remained in Nanning, having lost all their businesses and taken down their signboard, what could they possibly do?
Yet what had they gained by stubbornly holding on until they reached this state? Only a faint hope—the vague possibility that they might somehow receive help from the Murim Alliance.
The outcome of fighting was obvious, and the outcome of running was obvious. Caught between the two, they had already reached the eve of the Lunar New Year.
This could not continue. He should have made a decision long ago. Whether it meant licking their wounds, abandoning the estate to plan for the future, or launching a preemptive strike to raise the sect’s name before dying gloriously in battle.
Only then did a hollow, sage-like smile appear on Kang Su-yang’s face.
Yes. Let’s abandon the estate.
Come to think of it, what did an estate matter? What was there to cling to in their businesses? And who in this world received admiration their entire life? Everyone gets covered in mud at some point in their lives.
Even the founding ancestors of the Gyerim Sword Sect had originally been based in Gyerim before establishing new roots in Nanning. If they had done it once, they could do it again.
As long as the disciples of Gyerim lived and breathed with smiles on their faces like today, the Gyerim Sword Sect would never die.
A sect leader’s resolve was truly a tremendous thing. Because the life of a martial artist, of a person of Murim, could be summarized in a single line:
To lose one’s honor was to invite death…!!
Of course, some might sneer and ask what honor a bunch of sword-wielding thugs could possibly have. But people always crave and emphasize most what they lack. That was why it was easy to understand why martial artists—and the entire Central Hua people—were so unusually obsessed with honor.
For this reason, when Cheong looked at him, the Gyerim Sword Sect leader Kang Su-yang gave off an unexpectedly sage-like aura. Perhaps because he was almost entirely a secular fake Taoist, even though he was called Sect Leader rather than Sect Master, he somehow gave off an air of transcendence.
“Thanks to you, laughter has returned to our sect for the first time in a long while. I feel embarrassed that you had to see such an unsightly scene right upon your arrival.”
Kang Su-yang was embarrassed for another reason as well. He had unfairly directed his resentment at this incredibly admirable child. To now welcome her so warmly made his face burn with shame.
Of course, Cheong had indeed been late. But travel through the Central Plains was inherently unpredictable. A delay of a month or so on such a long journey was only natural. It was part of Murim culture that one could not press someone with “Why are you so late?” and blame them for it.
Therefore, resenting Cheong for being late would have been unreasonable. Still, human hearts don’t always follow what the head knows, so he had let his senior disciple voice the complaint on his behalf. Given that the sect’s future had been hanging by a thread, that much could be forgiven.
After all, none of this was Cheong’s fault to begin with. The very idea of resenting her for not arriving sooner was utterly pathetic.
Kang Su-yang set aside his lingering attachments and asked after the well-being of his guests.
“So, are the esteemed elders doing well?”
“Um, Sect Leader? There’s something I need to tell you first.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“The Prince of Dukhyun from Sichuan wishes to stay at the Gyerim Sword Sect. He is currently waiting outside. I wanted to ask for your permission first. Would that be alright?”
“……?”
Kang Su-yang doubted his own ears. Why on earth was a prince suddenly appearing? And not just any prince, but one from Sichuan?
“Did I hear that correctly? You are saying His Highness the Prince has come with you?”
Cheong scratched the back of her head and answered.
“Hehe, it just sort of happened. If it’s too much trouble, you can refuse.”
“Why would His Highness come all the way here…?”
“Ah, we met on the way.”
It sounded as casual as if she had picked up a prince while out for a stroll. (Which was, in fact, exactly what had happened.)
“……?”
For a moment, fireworks exploded inside Kang Su-yang’s head.
“……!”
The final ultimatum was by the end of the year—tomorrow. But no matter how lawless the dogs of the Sadoryeon were, they could not possibly attack a place where a prince was staying. They couldn’t even approach with weapons at their sides, let alone loiter nearby.
To carry weapons and spy on a prince’s residence? That in itself would be an act of insolence equivalent to being an assassin.
The sage-like Kang Su-yang vanished, replaced once more by the martial artist Kang Su-yang.
Abandon the estate? To hell with that! This bought them time! If they could just hold out until the Murim Alliance’s support arrived, he would utterly crush those arrogant Yaoga Flame Hall bastards!
“Immediately! We must escort the honored guest at once! No, no, that’s not proper etiquette! Where has His Highness arrived? It is only right that I go out personally to greet him!”