Chapter 78: Whore vs. Sword Freak (1)
Chapter 78: Whore vs. Sword Freak (1)
I explained in a little more detail about the Myriad Deaths Divine Physician.
"A spy from the Blood Cult holding the position of an elder? I find that difficult to believe."
The Blood Cult might be a heretical religion, but it still had its own doctrine and rules. Though you could call it a knockoff Heavenly Demon Cult, serving as an elder of the Blood Cult proved that someone had more than enough experience or talent—one or the other.
And yet this person was working as a physician himself while acting as a spy. It was a personnel choice she couldn't understand.
'A position as high as elder isn't something you can get by playing slapjack.'
An elder of the Blood Cult was more or less on par with a Peak Realm master.
And even if they weren't the Blood Cult, the elders of the Five Great Clans or the Nine Great Sects were all fairly formidable.
But, as it turned out, there was a surprisingly good reason for this.
"The Blood Cult's short on people. Last time, they overextended themselves trying to expand their forces and stirred up a calamity, but a spy from the Murim Alliance leaked the whole operation from the inside. Thanks to that, they all ended up dead."
"So the whole operation failed because all their plans were leaked? What kind of idiotic... Knowing every operation they were carrying out means the spy must have held a position of considerable authority. And they put a spy in a position like that?"
"Exactly."
They'd accepted all sorts of people in a reckless attempt to expand the Cult. How could they have known one of them was a spy? The Blood Cult normally secured manpower by feeding people Gu worms, forcing them to submit, and rewarding them according to their positions.
But those fools hadn't established themselves properly like the Heavenly Demon Cult. When they took in huge numbers of people in an effort to build up their manpower, they didn't have enough Gu worms to go around.
As a result, a spy who hadn't been fed a Gu worm got lucky, proved his abilities, and secured a position among the leadership. Then the Murim Alliance completely foiled the calamity they'd planned, nearly cutting the Blood Cult in half in the process.
After that, the Blood Cult became so sensitive about expanding its manpower that it turned into an elite force of only a select few. It was certainly strong, but...
"A small, elite force is most effective when concentrated entirely on some specific task. But if they try to pull off something on the scale of the calamity they caused before, they're bound to suffer from a shortage of manpower."
"...It truly is a hard-to-believe tale. Experience is supposed to be the soil in which growth takes root. The more experience those fools gain, the more they regress."
"That's why they were so easily stopped by the Heavenly Secrets, and why they were wiped out."
Namgung Gang-o, with the protagonist's protection, and the heroines were certainly strong.
But the reality was that they were still only among the most outstanding Rising Stars. Considering that the Rising Stars who qualified for the Nine Dragons and Six Phoenixes were only First-rate, that was realistic enough.
In any case, those fools struggled even against Peak Realm martial artists, and the Blood Cult was the sort of organization whose grand schemes could be stopped by a bunch of snot-nosed kids like that.
In other words, the three of us—two of whom were Super Peak masters—could easily go out and wipe them all out.
Though, as far as I was concerned, a complete family was a big family.
"But, my disciple. What do you plan to do about the Myriad Deaths Divine Physician?"
"What do you mean, what do I plan to do?"
"I heard the Myriad Deaths Divine Physician is currently staying as a guest of the Beon family, a prominent local household, and treating the illness of the head of the family. How do you plan to draw him out when he's even hiding his identity there? If he's an elder of the Blood Cult, he won't let his guard down so easily."
The Beon family was a prominent local household with considerable influence in Anyang City, Henan. They weren't a martial family, but they were a clan that did a little of everything, from producing scholars who went on to serve in the past to making money through their merchant caravans.
Naturally, they had more money than they knew what to do with, and a large number of First-rate martial artists served as their retainers. They had enough strength to chew up and spit out most minor sects. On top of that, the Myriad Deaths Divine Physician himself was as skilled as a Peak Realm master.
After calmly running through a simulation, I reached my estimate.
"I'm just going to storm in and kidnap him."
No matter how desperately they struggled, I was confident we could handle it.
Even if he used the method from the original story, the Myriad Deaths Divine Physician still wouldn't be a match for us. Of course, that would make things troublesome, so I'd subdue him before he could use his trump card.
But Seol Yu-ran was aghast at my answer, which made it sound as if I'd handed Sun Tzu's Art of War over to the neighbor's dog as chew toy.
"W-What? You're going to barge in without warning and kidnap the physician treating the family head? Did this master hear you correctly?"
"Yes. You did."
"Why on earth would you come up with such a crude and dangerous plan?"
"I don't know about crude, but is it really dangerous?"
"Well... Hm?"
Only now did Seol Yu-ran realize what her own words meant.
There were three of us, including two Super Peak masters. Seol Yu-ran herself would surely consider herself quite skilled, even among Peak Realm masters.
And she realized that it wasn't all that difficult for the three of us to storm a family overflowing with First-rate martial artists and abduct one physician.
If Chi-chi alone appeared there with the Asura Demon Spear, she'd be a tactical nuke. If she also performed the Transcendent Heart Art, making full use of the Heavenly Killing Star's power, it would take less than an hour for the Beon family to be wiped out.
No—at that point, it wouldn't just be wiped out. They might be slaughtered so thoroughly that not even a single survivor would remain.
Perhaps realizing how absurd her words had been, she noticed the contradiction and took a different approach.
"B-but isn't Post-Nut Clarity Sect a disguised sect, one that only pretends to belong to the orthodox faction? It may not be officially registered with the Murim Alliance yet because it follows a One-Person Inheritance, but won't it be difficult to deal with the consequences if it comes out that we committed this sort of crime when we make a name for ourselves at the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly and register?"
"If we don't get caught, no problem."
"You speak rightly."
With Chi-chi siding with me too, Seol Yu-ran looked confused. She seemed to wonder whether she was the strange one for finding something odd about all this!
In truth, Seol Yu-ran was the normal one. But in a country of the one-eyed, it was the two-eyed person who was considered abnormal.
To me, the Lust Demon, who resorted to any means necessary, and to Chi-chi, who put strength above all else, the Beon family estate was no obstacle whatsoever.
"I may be the leader of Post-Nut Clarity Sect, but you've forgotten this is only a secondary position, haven't you? I have another main line of work."
"Hm?...Ah! The Thousand-Faced Lust Demon!"
"That's right."
What would you say was the Thousand-Faced Lust Demon's greatest characteristic?
It was his outstanding lightness skill and Disguise Art that no one could see through! He would come flying in like a butterfly under a false identity, then plant King Cock like a bee and send a woman tumbling into paradise!
There was a reason the Murim Alliance had once set up a dragnet to capture him, even though he had never gone around killing people for no reason just to show off his martial prowess.
Who knew they'd come after me so relentlessly just because I'd fucked one man's wife?
I had once fucked the wife of a Daoist from the Wudang Sect, one of the Murim Alliance's elders. The bastard was a Daoist, but instead of showing me tolerance and compassion, he chased me like a madman, dancing with his sword like a bloodthirsty killer.
The bastard had married her, yet, just because he was a Daoist, he kept his distance from women and left his wife to sleep alone. Inside, he was narrower-minded than a sandfish's asshole.
Thanks to his tireless efforts, the Wudang Sect actively cooperated with the Murim Alliance, and the dragnet was completed. I very nearly got caught for real.
After that, I grew scared enough to have a heart no bigger than a bean, and for a while I went around sleeping only with people who didn't hold any official positions.
"What do you intend to do about your martial arts? You can hide your martial arts well enough with basic techniques, so that aside, the Lightning Qi in your internal energy is so distinctive that you're bound to be found out."
"That's no problem either. I saw this coming, so I went and trained in Swordsmanship to a pretty high level."
Using Lightning Qi in unarmed combat made it far too conspicuous.
That was why I had once trained in Swordsmanship in depth, enough to make people mistake me for someone else entirely. The calluses on my hands weren't just from undergoing countless rounds of tempering until I attained the Diamond Indestructible Body; some of them had formed from gripping a sword, too.
Perhaps it was because I had once held a sword.
Seol Yu-ran, who had earned the epithet Sword Queen, was purely delighted, while Chi-chi, who used a spear, muttered with a hint of discomfort in her voice.
"My master, Swordsmanship?!"
"Yeah."
"Why did you not learn the art of the spear! If you are my master, you should have mastered the spear, the King of All Weapons!"
"What are you talking about?"
A sudden chill swept over us. At Chi-chi's emphatic insistence, Seol Yu-ran's eyes flew wide open. She looked like someone who preferred dipping sauce staring at a person who had suddenly poured it over their food.
Goosebumps rose on my skin, even though I had already attained Immunity to Heat and Cold.
Silence descended, like the stillness before a storm.
"You don't know at your age that the sword is the finest weapon?"
"...Huh?"
At the sharp provocation, Chi-chi put on a delinquent's expression. In the original history, she was the woman who used force to overthrow the Heavenly Demon Cult's ruling family and take the seat of the Heavenly Demon for herself.
After that, Chi-chi's nature—she would seize complete control of the Divine Cult and go on to wage the War Between the Righteous and the Demonic—could be summed up in one word.
A thug.
Her expression laid that side of her bare.
She'd only mellowed because I'd beaten her in a life-or-death duel; at heart, she was a thug through and through.
Her ferocious presence was enough to make an introverted person shrink back all on their own. It had nothing to do with one's level of cultivation. Even I flinched for a moment.
"What kind of nonsense is that? The spear, the King of All Weapons, is a weapon that keeps your opponent at a distance."
"It's the weapon soldiers favor most, yes. Soldiers, I mean."
"Oh?"
The spear was a weapon that won by keeping the opponent at a distance. It required that much skill, which made it harder to learn than the sword, but once mastered, it was true that a spear wielder was stronger than a swordsman of equal ability.
But Seol Yu-ran had pointedly called it a weapon used by soldiers.
In truth, spears were the weapon soldiers in the army favored, while any commander with a name to speak of used a sword.
The mood grew increasingly heated.
"You don't seem to know how satisfying it is to give someone a good jab with a spear."
"And you, it seems, don't know how clean and precise a sword thrust can be when you slash someone with a good swing."
Now they looked ready to point their blades at each other just to defend their own arguments.
I was wondering whether I should step in and stop them when—
"Master!"
"Disciple!"
The spear wench and the sword freak both turned their arrows on me.
"Spears are better, right?"
"Swords are better, right?"
Don't ask me that. I'm a fist fighter.
...No matter which side I picked, it felt like I'd set off a landmine that would earn me three hours of my wife's nagging.