The Heavenly Demon's Invitation
Someone with a sword…
What the hell is he talking about?
What’s polite wine and what’s punishment wine? Alcohol? Is it alcohol? Punishment booze? It was an expression that wasn’t really used in the current Murim. If you said it now, you’d get cursed out for sounding like a grandpa. Did you live back in the Mucheon Great Emperor’s era or something?
Cheong blinked. It was an expression anyone would recognize as pure confusion.
The man let out a small snort of laughter.
“Can’t I just stay here quietly?”
Aish, this bastard is worse than my master.
But Cheong was not Seomun Su-rin. She was merely a late-stage Peak realm martial artist. The kind you could find one or two of in any city dojo—common enough that several of them got along just fine in a single city. Being Peak is so pathetic I can’t even live like this, seriously.
But she couldn’t even reach Transcendent, and for some reason the Transcendent quests wouldn’t pop up. Was it because she’d met the final boss first? Or maybe she had to ascend to Transcendent the way people did in this world, but she had no idea how that worked either.
“Then, if I follow you, can I come back out again?”
Cheong’s eyes narrowed. As if I could trust the word of a guy who’ll hit a thousand points soon.
She asked one more time to be sure.
“You’re not going to trick me by saying I’ll come out as a corpse or a cripple or something, right?”
“No, it’s not that I’m suspicious, it’s just—”
Before she knew it, the man was right in front of her. Cheong panicked. The man’s fist had already sunk deep into her stomach, almost up to his wrist. Cheong’s body bent like a bow and flew backward. The dizzying flight ended when she slammed into a tree. She clutched her stomach and rolled across the ground.
“Guh, hek. Khuk…!”
I can’t— I can’t breathe…
Cheong desperately tried to suck in air. But her crushed lungs refused to expand inside her tightly constricted chest. Pain filled her head. Her breath caught in her throat. It hurt. It hurt so much. Her stomach…!
It felt like blades were riding through her blood points. Sharp edges forcibly tearing, ripping, and gnawing at her narrow meridians. The only thing she could feel was agony. A horrible pain so intense it stopped thought itself. Her mind grew hazy.
Two pillars appeared right next to the ground that was lying vertically. They were her legs, which had fallen sideways. One of them was moving far away. Wait, no way.
Cheong tried to clutch her head. But it was already too late. The man kicked her head squarely.
Thud.
Her skull rattled and the world switched off like someone had pulled the plug. Cheong’s body floated into the air once more. The impact of crashing to the ground brought her back to consciousness. Everything she could see was blurred with a red haze. One of her eyes had burst a blood vessel and was filling with blood.
Before Cheong could do anything, a brutal force grabbed her by the hair and yanked. Her face hurt as if it had been shattered to pieces. The enemy’s penetrating energy was still tearing through her insides. The world was red. Her scalp kept screaming with pain as if it were being ripped off.
Into the ears of the trembling Cheong, the man’s voice slipped in. It was thick with enjoyment.
“Why… why…?”
Cheong grit her teeth. She was the child watched over by the lonely star of a thousand killings. The pain soon turned vicious and seeped into her bones.
This son of a bitch. I’m never letting him get away with this. Fucking bastard. I’m not going to let him die nicely.
Whether Cheong had the right to be angry didn’t matter. After all, she only ever toyed with the bad guys. With her good karma now well past one thousand four hundred and fifty points, and with the one thousand five hundred point exchange right around the corner, Cheong proudly considered herself the kindest person in the world.
Besides, this was the first time in a long while she had felt helplessness after becoming a high-level expert. That helplessness fueled her rage. Fury and powerlessness mixed together and pressed the power button deep in the basement of her heart.
What the hell? Does this guy have anger management issues? We were having a normal conversation and he throws the first punch? And he’s stronger than me, too. What a cheap bastard. Just wait. I’ll show you what real cheapness looks like.
Contrary to her inner thoughts, Cheong drew a smile. With the left side of her already swollen face, it was an utterly servile expression.
“Hehe, you could’ve just used words…”
It was the fear of someone born with the Heavenly Killing Star. Not a being that mindlessly craved blood and pain, but a monster who could coldly wait for the right moment.
If the man wanted a comfortable retirement, he should have killed Cheong right here and now. But who in the world would think that a righteous female hero of the orthodox faction had been born with the Heavenly Killing Star?
The man smiled with satisfaction.
Did this guy time-travel from the Stone Age or something? I should really cut his mouth off.
Come to think of it, since this was primitive ancient China, of course this bastard was a primitive bastard too. Cheong kept smiling like an idiot.
“Hehe, if I just listen well, you won’t have to hit me, right?”
At that, the man looked rather disappointed instead.
The young man threw Cheong aside and turned away. Immediately after, men in black clothes appeared from all directions and politely bowed toward his back.
---
The dragged-in Cheong looked like a complete mess. Half her face was swollen, her crushed eye completely bloodshot and red. Her new uniform was covered in dirt from rolling around on the ground, so it was only natural that Ji Seungju clicked his tongue.
“Tsk.”
Despite the servile smile plastered on her face, Ji Seungju instinctively sensed that the girl before him was the same kind as himself. It was the sharp intuition of one who had met their own kind—a human whose outside and inside were completely different.
This was a situation where they had to ask for cooperation politely. It would already be fortunate if she didn’t interfere while grinding her teeth on the inside. If only that old monster Hamwol hadn’t failed in the first place.
Ji Seungju swallowed his regret. He couldn’t possibly blame the Jijon for it. Since things had come to this, he figured he should at least throw her a carrot.
“Please don’t hold too much ill will. After all, the female hero did do something, didn’t she?”
Cheong answered with a smile.
“Hello? Kiddo. When you see someone for the first time, you should greet them first, right? I’m Seomun Cheong! And who is this tiny little baby? Oh. Are you a high-level expert too? You don’t happen to have the illness where you throw punches while having a normal conversation, do you?”
Her smiling face was one thing, but her words were vicious. Weren’t you supposed to be hiding your true feelings?
However, Ji Seungju remained expressionless.
“This one is called Ji Seungju. Though lacking, I currently hold the position of Secret Pavilion Master of the Divine Cult.”
“Secret Pavilion Master? Is that a high position?”
Cheong looked down at the tiny smiling boy with a bright grin. To think the first place they dragged her after kidnapping her in broad daylight was in front of this kid. He must be an important figure. If she killed him, would that guy get pretty angry? She should remember that for now. Since that guy was nearby at the moment.
Looking at the expressionless Ji Seungju, Cheong thought to herself. She no longer felt the need to check the numbers above people’s heads. She had to deal with this deep irritation pulsing along with her heart first if she wanted to survive.
“I apologize for receiving you in this manner, but we had our own circumstances as well.”
“Well. Everyone has circumstances. Alright then, let’s hear the story.”
“The timing isn’t very good to explain right now.”
Ji Seungju held out a bowl that had been on the table.
“You must be in a lot of pain. If you drink this, you’ll feel much better.”
“What is it?”
“It’s honey water mixed with poppy juice and a sleeping draught. After you drink it and sleep for a while, you’ll feel much better.”
Stone honey was honey, and the sleeping draught was a sedative. In other words, it was honey water laced with drugs and sleeping pills. Normally one would call it crazy to drink something like that straight away, but in the Central Plains, poppy juice was considered a universal medicine with pain-relieving, fever-reducing, and anti-diarrheal effects. It wasn’t a medicinal mix made with any particular malice.
“Really? Well then, I guess I’ll accept your kindness.”
Cheong gulped down the honey water without hesitation. The warm, sweet liquid sliding down her throat made her feel a little better. In any case, poppy wasn’t harmful to the body, and she already knew from experience that the sleeping draught didn’t work on her anymore. Sometimes she regretted having this kind of constitution.
One side of her face throbbed in time with her heartbeat. It would’ve been nice to just pass out cold after drinking the sedative. After that, Cheong obediently climbed into the carriage.
The only windows were iron bars covered with thick paper on the outside, allowing only a faint bit of light to leak through. Once inside the carriage, she heard the sound of a lock clicking shut from outside. The interior, decorated as a sleeping compartment, was actually quite cozy. The light leaking from the thick paper wasn’t bothersome, and without any seats, her feet sank all the way to the ankles into the many layers of thick quilted blankets.
Cheong lay down inside the spacious carriage. It seemed the carriage had started moving as it swayed slightly, but the vibration barely transmitted at all. Before long, the effect of the poppy came over her and the pain in her face gently subsided. Lying buried deep in the bedding felt like she was floating.
While lying down, Cheong turned her brain for the first time in a while. If she excluded that son of a bitch who kept talking about the Nature Realm, the treatment wasn’t bad at all. If anything, it was rather polite.
Cheong thought about the Boksinjeok that had been taken from her. The ones who had been looking for that flute were the Demonic Cult bastards, and that kid had called it the Divine Cult himself, so she now clearly understood their identity. And since that flute was needed for something, and it had a lock-unlocking function when played, they probably had business with its owner—her.
Fucking bastards. As if I’d ever do what they want.
Cheong had never intended to grant the requests of bad guys in the first place, so she grumbled to herself. In truth, the Demonic Cult had only earned her resentment for nothing; they had been hopeless partners to ask for cooperation from to begin with. But the important thing was that they had earned her grudge.
And once Cheong held a grudge, she was the type to repay it by fucking them over regardless of the consequences. Hadn’t she even talked back to a final boss whose realm she couldn’t even measure? A mere Harmonious Realm bastard daring to do this to her.
The Demonic Cult? You fucking bastards, just wait and see what I do to you.
The ominous starlight leaking from Cheong’s eyes brightly illuminated the dark interior of the carriage in red.