The Taepyeongdan Inferno
The Heavenly Demon Cult Serial Murder Case: #5 — No Chinese Allowed.
Gyeon Po-hui slipped a sleeve onto Seomun Cheong’s arm and spoke up.
“Samae, did you hear the news!?”
“I’d have to know what you’re talking about first.”
“They say the Taepyeongdan burned down! Reduced to nothing but ashes! All the prisoners escaped, too!”
Cheong had only burned two buildings. She had simply released the prisoners locked in the dungeon. The inmates, suddenly granted freedom, had celebrated with a midnight fireworks display of their own making.
“Oh. Is that so? Sounds like quite the incident.”
“An incident? No way! I’m thrilled!”
“Why would you be happy about it, Sajae?”
“I borrowed some money from the Taepyeongdan before. The interest piled up so high I had to make a few oaths. They all went up in smoke!”
“Oaths?”
“Yeah. Stuff like ‘comfort activities for the Cult’s warriors in the future Central Plains Liberation War.’ Oh, and demonstrations of the righteous faction’s new medical techniques, plus reserve personnel to carry on the bloodline if the Divine Pulse ever faces extinction. Priority food procurement plans in case of isolation? There were tons.”
Not a single item sounded light. It was as if she had mortgaged her entire future.
Cheong asked, just in case. “Do you even understand what any of that means?”
“Nope. But they said it wouldn’t be too difficult.”
Cheong nodded. Well, at least the effort of burning it wasn’t wasted. They weren’t complete bastards after all. Maybe I should’ve stayed and burned the place down with the prisoners.
“How much did you borrow to end up making oaths?”
“Here, lift your hips.”
Gyeon Po-hui answered while dressing Cheong in a palace skirt. “About thirty taels of silver?”
“That’s quite a lot.”
Cheong hadn’t asked out of genuine curiosity. It was simply the natural flow of conversation between acquaintances. Then the mood turned uncomfortable.
“Yeah. Mother was sick.”
“Ah, medicine for your mother……”
“But then they suddenly raised the interest to thirty percent per month. They’d said thirty percent per year when I borrowed it. Everyone acted like it was normal, so I figured it must be.”
That was how the Cult governed its followers. Tianshan Shinshi, a barren land with no special resources, relied heavily on the income of loyal special forces units sent on external missions. The Cult had countless businesses in the Central Plains. It was sustained by professional smugglers, grave robbers, bandit gangs, human traffickers, drug dealers, loan sharks, and gambling dens—all united under the power of religion. Money and goods flowed in from outside and into the hands of the Cult’s officials. The combat units and affiliated sects. If you didn’t want to meet a miserable end at the hands of debt collectors in Tianshan Shinshi, you had to learn martial arts and join a combat unit. Thus, the first of the two great teachings emphasized by the first Heavenly Demon was achieved: the complete militarization of every follower.
“So, is your mother all right now?”
“No? She died.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Cheong fell silent, feeling even more awkward. Gyeon Po-hui merely smiled brightly.
“It’s fine! We were basically enemies anyway. She used to beat me every day, calling me a stupid, brain-dead, useless bitch who only wasted food. Even if I’m a bit slow, I’m not the type to like people who hate me.”
Cheong broke into a cold sweat. Shit. This is getting worse by the minute. There really isn’t a single decent place in this neighborhood.
Cheong offered an awkward consolation. “That must have been hard.”
“Nah. She said useless bitches deserve to be hit, right? So I paid her back the same way. She kept saying she was in pain and couldn’t do anything, so she really was useless. She made such a racket every time I beat her, going on about the grace of giving birth and raising me.”
“Hmm.”
“If I borrowed money in my name to pay for her medicine, that should’ve settled the debt for giving birth to me, right? She never properly raised me, so any talk about the grace of raising me is invalid!”
“Hmm. Well. Yeah. You did good.”
“Hehe, right?”
Gyeon Po-hui was the type to settle blood feuds with ruthless precision. Still, the fact that she had acknowledged the debt of being born meant she wasn’t truly a bad kid. Just not a good one either. Wait a second—
“Sajae? If you’ve got any grievances against me, don’t hide them. Tell me now. No holding grudges and paying me back the same way later.”
“Huh? What are you talking about! I don’t have anything like that!”
“Really?”
“Yeah! Besides, you’re the only one who’s ever been good to me! You’re more of a mother to me than my own mom ever was! When I was little, I used to envy other kids’ mothers. The way they’d chase after anyone who bullied their child and beat them up, or save the tasty, good stuff for them. Now I’ve got a samae like that. Hehe……”
Cheong had thought she was just a dim-witted support pillar, but she turned out to be a daughter taking care of her troublesome mother. Cheong felt even more uncomfortable. This is why people have to be careful. You can turn into trash in an instant. From the very start of the morning (or whenever it was), the worn-out triangle in Cheong’s conscience was spinning wildly.
——
Cheong was no longer the Cheong of the past. She was the legitimate yet improper successor who had roughly inherited the great Buddhist teachings of the Daejeong Seongong through all sorts of underhanded tricks! Therefore, she was no longer the scoundrel who made her teacher give massages and run all sorts of errands, only occasionally rewarding her with a single verse of the Cheonsim Hwaeum when she felt like it.
Reflecting on her past disregard for the Cult’s authority, Cheong thought, Right. Lady Kang was trying her best to teach me in her own way. I shouldn’t have treated her so harshly.But wait. She wasn’t trying to make me better—she was just trying to use me for her own benefit, wasn’t she? That’s no different from those rebel bastards raising child soldiers.Lady Kang was a real piece of work.
Calling Lady Kang “teacher” would be an insult to every teacher in a land of roughly less than six billion people. The range was a bit broad, but since she didn’t know the population of this world, she went with the maximum estimate.
Yeah. Thinking about it, I didn’t do anything wrong.
So Cheong did exactly what she always did. After making Lady Kang clean the room with her toes while picking her nose, she generously played one verse for her today as well. Lady Kang shed a bucketful of tears of emotion at the performance before fleeing at top speed. Soyoung the maid bowed politely and followed after her with an extremely refreshed expression. Lady Kang’s face grew increasingly rotten while Soyoung’s grew brighter by the day.
Then came dinner. Afterward, a trial awaited Cheong. It was time for the undressing dance with the support pillar.
At first, Cheong had felt genuine self-loathing at the thought of performing the undressing dance herself. But the support pillar’s catastrophic dance moves possessed a demonic charm that made onlookers clutch their chests and leap up to join in. Gyeon Po-hui’s Tangseon Talui Dance filled the heart not with lust, but with stiffness, pity, and frustration until it felt ready to burst—truly a dance of demonic allure.
Anyway, Gyeon Po-hui seemed delighted despite achieving absolutely nothing in her complete reinterpretation of seduction. After that, they went to bed early. When Cheong woke up, she shuddered at the weight of the unwelcome task of killing, yet found herself walking out with a bright smile and bouncy steps without realizing it.
She entered the courtyard, skillfully kicked the rope once, caught it, and pulled. Huh? Did I not take the rope down?
Cheong flopped down in the small room (the living room). But today, something felt a little……
As usual, Seolgajik appeared, dripping water everywhere.
“You came.”
“What, you didn’t put the water bottle away?”
“I thought about it. If something goes wrong and it becomes known that I helped you, assassins might come. Being a bit damp is better than dying.”
“What? You don’t trust me?”
“A wise man always prepares for the worst. I have to stay alive if I’m going to handle things afterward.”
As expected of Seolgajik—there was no room for argument. Cheong changed the subject as she always did.
“By the way, air the place out a bit. It reeks of bachelor. It wasn’t like this last night.”
Seolgajik’s expression turned oddly triumphant as he lifted his chin.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a man’s house, so of course it smells like a man. Are you getting worked up even though you’re a woman?”
“Can’t you stop with the teasing now that you’re not a eunuch anymore?”
“I was never a eunuch to begin with. But now that I think about it, you’re right. I was born a man yet lacked propriety. I’ll apologize.”
The joy of regaining his manhood seemed far greater than Cheong had imagined. Well, escaping eunuch status was understandable. Cheong swallowed the words that had risen to her throat after seeing Seolgajik’s long, slender eyelashes. No need to say something that would hurt him.
“Anyway, just like you said, I left plenty of traces of the Hyeoryeong Noejeondo technique, burned down the Taepyeongdan and the records office, and released the prisoners from the dungeon.”
“I heard the news too. But don’t get cocky. The Taepyeongdan was only the weakest of the Cult’s combat units.”
Seolgajik sounded like one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army.
“If what you say is true, the Cult bastards’ obsession with retrieving the Heavenly Demon Soul is extraordinary. They’ll definitely mobilize every combat unit they have.”
“So?”
“But the Taepyeongdan burned down. If a few more units go up in flames the same way, the Cult members who were being suppressed by force will cause an uproar. The city’s very existence will become unstable. Since they need to prepare for the Great War of the Orthodox and Demonic factions, they’ll have no choice but to deploy a small elite force.”
Oh? A small elite force? Teacher Seol never said that. If he suddenly changed direction like this, she couldn’t guarantee her faith either. Got it?
Cheong asked with a sulky tone born of such thoughts. “Wouldn’t a small elite force be more dangerous? Even the great Seomun Cheong would feel a bit uneasy if Transcendent experts were swarming everywhere.”
“Still, a small elite force is better than a large number of elites, isn’t it?”
Cheong immediately understood the short, logical rebuttal. He truly possessed the mind worthy of being called the greatest intellect in the Central Plains. As expected of Seolgajik! She had believed in him! His performance was reliable!
Cheong’s eyes sparkled as she asked, “So, who are we killing and burning today?”