Chapter 27
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Rebels Against the Heavens (2)
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The atmosphere grew heavy.
Amidst the tension, Geumsan spoke.
His eyes were filled with suspicion.
“How do you know that name?”
“I'm glad. That you don't deny it.”
Cheon Muryang offered a smile.
But Geumsan's expression remained cold and rigid.
“Great Young Lord, that name is dangerous.”
“Ah, I know.”
“And yet, how could you!”
“Because I need them.”
“What?”
“I want to make them my people.”
Geumsan was aghast.
The man had to be completely mad.
“Great Young Lord, do you truly not know who they are?”
“I do. They were once loyal retainers of the Cheon Family. And now, they are vengeful specters crying out against the heavens.”
“You know this, yet you truly believe it's possible?”
There were none left who were loyal to the Cheon Family.
Rebels Against the Heavens—it was a sacrilegious term, one that wished for the Cheon Family's downfall.
“It will likely be difficult.”
“……”
“But it is something someone must do. The wrongs of the past must be righted.”
“……”
“I'm not asking them to be loyal to the Cheon Family again.”
“Then what?”
“I'm asking them to become my people.”
“You are truly mad.”
“I've always been a mad scoundrel.”
“Even the Family Head could not accomplish this. Are you saying you can, Great Young Lord?”
A smirk.
Cheon Muryang smiled.
He spoke with conviction.
“Yes. I can.”
“Hoo… I suppose I must be mad as well. For some reason, listening to you makes me want to believe.”
Geumsan, at least, knew.
Cheon Muryang was no longer the scoundrel Great Young Lord he once was.
‘Perhaps… perhaps he can truly persuade them.’
He wanted to believe.
However, there was a major problem.
Others had already approached them.
“But, Great Young Lord, what will you do if another power has already approached them?”
“The Demonic Cult must have approached them.”
“……!”
Geumsan was stunned.
How could he possibly know that?
“It's obvious. I'm already aware that the Demonic Cult has infiltrated the Central Plains.”
*Grit.*
Cheon Muryang gritted his teeth.
His fury toward the Demonic Cult was palpable.
“Therefore, those who have fallen for their temptations will regrettably have to be cut down.”
He wouldn't be able to persuade everyone.
Some would have already succumbed to the Demonic Cult's wicked schemes.
If so, they would have crossed a river of no return for the sake of revenge, and they would have to be slain.
“……”
“Joining hands with the Demonic Cult means choosing to walk the path of the inhuman.”
The Orthodox Factions of the martial world lumped the Unorthodox Factions and the Demonic Cult together as heretics.
But that classification was wrong.
“If they had joined hands with the Unorthodox Factions, I wouldn't have even hesitated.”
The Unorthodox Factions, while committing all sorts of evil deeds for their own gain, did not at least antagonize the entire world.
They knew that the world had to exist for them to live in it.
The Unorthodox Factions pursued their ambitions within the bounds of coexistence.
Of course, there were blood-crazed demons among them, but wasn't that also true of the Orthodox Factions?
“But the Demonic Cult is different.”
They were beings filled with a vicious hatred.
They hated the living and yearned not for life, but for death.
Every single member of the Demonic Cult was a fanatic, someone who valued the cult's cause more than their own life.
“They are people who have given up on being human.”
They worshiped fire.
The fire that would purify the world—the inferno of judgment.
The Demonic Cult's ultimate goal was to completely purify the world with fire.
They did not understand the beauty of coexistence.
“That is why I have no choice but to cut them down. Slaying them while they are still human is the last act of grace I can offer them.”
“Even if they've only joined hands with the Demonic Cult and haven't become its followers?”
“They all must have thought they could use the Demonic Cult when they joined hands with it. But do you know how all of them met their end?”
The end of those who allied with the Demonic Cult was horrific.
The Soeung Gang Leader was one, and Cheon Ah-haeng was another.
“They will lose all their humanity, become monsters that hate the living, and in the end… they will vanish into dust, not even leaving a corpse behind.”
*Gulp!*
Geumsan swallowed hard.
A strange aura emanated from him.
“I will cut down those who have sided with them. I will embrace those who have not. This is my will.”
“……”
After a moment of silence, Geumsan finally spoke.
“Tomorrow night, at midnight, a market will open in the back alleys of Hangzhou.”
“A market.”
“Go there.”
“And after I arrive?”
“Everything will be up to you, Great Young Lord.”
“Alright. I'll do that.”
“Yes. I wish you good fortune in battle.”
Geumsan left.
Then, Cheon Muryang summoned Neung Ryeoun and Cha Myeonghak.
“I plan to go to Hangzhou tomorrow. Be prepared.”
“Yes.”
“I'm warning you in advance, you'd best be ready for anything.”
“Yes.”
Seeing the two men burning with fighting spirit instead of fear, Cheon Muryang smiled.
“Good. I'll see you tomorrow.”
The two men left.
Left alone, Cheon Muryang organized his thoughts about the Demonic Cult.
‘The Council of Elders and the Demonic Cult are in collusion.’
This much was certain.
Which raised a question.
‘But why?’
The Grand Elder, Cheon Jungho.
He was not a man to be trifled with.
‘Why did he just stand by and watch as the Cheon Family was annihilated by the Demonic Cult?’
Even if he was at odds with Cheon Wigang, Cheon Jungho was not someone who would be easily defeated by the Demonic Cult.
‘Was his goal not to seize power within the Cheon Family?’
Power is only meaningful if the Cheon Family exists.
If the Cheon Family is destroyed, what use is power?
‘Could it be that his goal wasn't to take control of the Cheon Family?’
Until now, Cheon Muryang had assumed Cheon Jungho's objective was to seize the Cheon Family's power.
He thought that was why he had stripped the Family Head of his authority, greatly expanded the Council of Elders' power, and deliberately sowed discord within the family.
‘No. What if his goal from the very beginning was the Cheon Family's destruction…?’
*Shudder!*
A chill ran down Cheon Muryang's spine.
A hypothesis came to mind.
‘What if… from the very beginning… Cheon Jungho was a member of the Demonic Cult?’
In the past, when the Demonic Cult rose to power, the entire Central Plains martial world was thrown into shock.
The reason was that the Demonic Cult had not only already taken root deep within the Central Plains…
‘...but key figures from the Nine Great Sects, the Five Great Families, and other major clans of comparable stature were revealed to be members of the Demonic Cult.’
For example, an elder of the Mount Hua Sect was exposed as a member of the Demonic Cult.
How shocking was that?
A deep-seated distrust, where no one could be trusted, settled over the Central Plains.
That was why, even when the Cheon Family was on the brink of collapse, no other clan dared to offer help.
‘I should assume the Demonic Cult orchestrated it that way from the start.’
Afterward, Cheon Muryang had no way of knowing what became of the future.
‘But I can roughly guess.’
Unable to unite, the Central Plains martial world must have crumbled before the Demonic Cult, which had been meticulously preparing in the shadows.
‘It's just a hypothesis for now… but there's plenty of reason to be suspicious.’
If that's the case, then all the more reason.
The need to cut down the entire Council of Elders becomes even greater.
He had to uncover Cheon Jungho's true identity.
“Soon, I will know.”
Cheon Muryang gazed out the window at the distant Elders' Hall.
“The moment the truth is revealed, my sword will be pointed at you.”
Cheon Muryang averted his gaze.
Then, a heavy silence fell over the office.
* * *
A day passed.
To leave the family estate in secret, Cheon Muryang decided to use the Inspection Corps' secret passage.
“I'd heard rumors that the Inspection Corps had a secret passage for covert operations…”
The rumors were rampant.
In the past, even Nameless had not been able to learn the truth.
But the rumors were true.
‘With a secret passage like this, Cheon Ah-haeng's corruption could have gone unnoticed.’
Secrecy is the lifeblood of an inspection, is it not?
The one who designed this passage, created for that very purpose, must have been chagrined to see it exploited by Cheon Ah-haeng.
“Don't you worry. I'll put it to proper use now.”
Cheon Muryang walked through the passage, which had likely existed since the founding of the Cheon Family.
“Hmm…”
Scars were carved all over the passage.
But they looked somehow familiar.
*Halt!*
Cheon Muryang's steps came to a halt.
He then looked at the scars, which connected into a single flow.
“This is… a sword path, isn't it?”
The sword path ultimately depicted a single sky.
Wondering if it was the same sky he had seen in the Heavenly Dragon Archives, Cheon Muryang looked closely, then tilted his head.
“I've never seen this sky before.”
It seemed there was a sky of the sword passed down only to the Chief of the Inspection Corps.
“A sky passed down through generations.”
His interest was piqued.
Hadn't Cheon Muryang sworn an oath?
That he would embrace all skies.
Therefore, this sky was also one he had to embrace.
“So this is how our fates intertwine.”
Cheon Ah-haeng was an unworthy man.
He was also a man whose fate was not tied to it.
That's why, despite passing through this tunnel tens, hundreds, thousands of times, he must have never realized.
“A sky, and yet…”
He saw the sky.
But that sky was filled only with clouds.
“It is not a sky.”
*Whooosh!*
Cheon Muryang raised the Heavenly Light Sword.
The Heavenly Light Sword moved leisurely, following the cloud-like sky.
As he swung it, he had a realization.
“I see.”
The Chief of the Inspection Corps was directly under the Family Head.
In other words, the sword they had practiced for generations was a sky meant to support the sky practiced by the Cheon Family Head of that era.
“Does this mean a sky cannot exist alone?”
The sky did not exist alone.
There had to be a sun, clouds, a moon, and stars for it to be called a sky.
“The Inspection Corps is the clouds.”
The sky above the clouds.
That sky was the Family Head.
It was a sword that showed the relationship between the Family Head and the Inspection Corps.
“And the sky is above the clouds.”
In other words.
It meant that one could not reach the sky without passing through the clouds.
*Whooosh!*
What was it?
The Heavenly Light Sword soared from the earth to the sky like an ascending dragon.
The sword energy scattering around it swirled like a vortex.
“The Heavenly Dragon ascends to the heavens.”
Cheon Muryang had been mistaken.
He had thought that to embrace a sky, the sword must always be in the sky.
Thus, until now, Cheon Muryang's sword had only ever moved from top to bottom.
“That wasn't it.”
On the contrary, it could also soar from the earth to the sky.
The Clouded Sky had granted him this realization.
“To think I failed to realize something so simple. How can I claim to embrace the heavens like this?”
Cheon Muryang blamed his own ignorance.
Hadn't he realized?
That the sky was like the Dao, something that could not be defined.
“I must have an open mind.”
That was the only way to embrace the sky of the Cheon Family.
Cheon Muryang expressed his gratitude to the successive Chiefs of the Inspection Corps who had bestowed this realization upon him.
‘Except for Cheon Ah-haeng, of course.’
An unexpected stroke of fortune.
Cheon Muryang bowed his head deeply.
“Thank you.”
Was it a coincidence?
The once-faint scars on the wall seemed to have inexplicably grown clearer.
*Step, step.*
Cheon Muryang stepped out of the passage.
The sky he now faced looked quite different from before.
“Let's not look only at the sky.”
Beneath it.
Beneath the sky.
There were countless things to embrace.
“I still have a long way to go.”
It was a distant path, but…
Cheon Muryang smiled.
“It's fun.”
Because it also meant this was a path only he could walk in this world.
“Shall we go?”
Cheon Muryang headed for Hangzhou.