Soul-Returning Powder Plus Confession Elixir - 2
"Hmm."
Heukmyo was acting strange again.
Judging by the damp collar of her clothes, she was pouring cold sweat in streams — though I had no idea why.
"What's wrong with you? Did you see something when Yeo Il-ye was wiping out those bandits?"
"N-no, nothing like that. I'm completely fine?"
"Then why are you sweating so much?"
"I just climbed down a mountain, that's all?"
Heukmyo gulped water as if her throat were on fire. She flapped her clothes frantically, trying to dry the sweat — and in the process the fabric parted enough that I had to snap my gaze away in a hurry.
"The st-story… the story… Right! Senior! Did you already know Yeo Il-ye was that strong?"
Heukmyo looked oddly restless. She was still flapping her front lapels to dry herself, so I had no choice but to stare off at a distant mountain while I talked.
"Well… more or less."
These were the Sichuan Nangin who had held their own in a contest of presence against six Super-Peak experts of the Tang Clan. There was no chance the Sichuan Nangin would ever hand me over to Yeo Il-ye, their mortal enemy — so back when she had been hunting me, the Wanderer Inn had been the safest nest in the world.
A Wanderer Inn strong enough to force a mutual bloodbath against six Super-Peak masters. And yet, in front of Yeo Il-ye, it was nothing more than a birdcage woven from bamboo.
That didn't mean Yeo Il-ye was stronger than six Super-Peak experts.
It was a matter of compatibility. Yeo Il-ye possessed enough internal energy to coat her entire body in Gang and still have plenty left over. Against any other Super-Peak fighter, the Nangin's hard-honed combat instincts and their signature killing techniques would have been a genuine threat. Even if you threw up a protective Gang for a moment, you would still take damage from their attacks in the end.
But Yeo Il-ye? The moment she wrapped herself in Gang, there was simply no way to hurt her except with Gang of your own. No matter how sharp the Nangin's strikes, no matter how cleanly they could pierce an opening — there had to be an opening first.
That was why I had tried to escape by relying on luck.
When I ran into Yeo Il-ye, fortune was the only card I had left to play.
Yeo Il-ye's enemies, though…
I had always been curious about them. In the game Murim Cheonha, I had never heard of a revenge scenario attached to Yeo Il-ye. Ordinarily, once she attained enlightenment she simply locked herself away in her sect and became a complete homebody.
Games have triggers. Just as a bullet needs a pulled trigger to fire, a scenario needs a specific action to begin.
Like giving a tightly packed little snowball at the mountain peak a push and sending it tumbling down.
That snowball rolls and rolls, swelling into a massive sphere; the massive sphere alone is enough to shake the whole mountain, and the snow swept along by those tremors becomes, in an instant, a colossal avalanche that buries everything at the foot of the slopes.
In the game, Yeo Il-ye must have realized that the culprit behind the bloodbath at the Yeo Family Mountain Villa was not a Nangin. The fact that she always chose seclusion anyway probably meant she had never found a single lead on whoever had orchestrated the massacre.
Was Jeon Hu-dam the one who pulled the trigger and handed her the clue she needed for revenge? Watching him trail after her, it seemed almost certain.
Jeon Hu-dam was someone I knew as well. Live seven years as a Sichuan Nangin and you naturally pick up certain pieces of information. What business could an information broker making his living in Sichuan have, dragging Yeo Il-ye along to hunt down Mak Yeo-bu?
I had no way of knowing the exact reason — but simply operating for years under the title of bandit was already enough to pile up the kind of karma that got a man killed. There was nothing strange about a Sichuan information broker popping up and trying to put Mak Yeo-bu in the ground.
Nothing strange… and yet. If the causality were truly that airtight, would I really have gone through every playthrough of Murim Cheonha without ever once hearing that Yeo Il-ye had found a lead on her enemies? She was beyond Super-Peak — the kind of figure people paid attention to.
"Tsk."
It bothered me like hell.
Yeo Il-ye was a master beyond the Super-Peak Realm. She could probably thrash most Transformation Realm experts who hadn't come out of a prestigious great sect without breaking a sweat.
The reason I added that caveat about not being from a prestigious great sect was simple.
The higher your realm, the harder it becomes to field combat power that actually matches it. I didn't need a long explanation for that. Just look at the Sichuan Nangin. Suppose the ones currently at Peak Realm all broke through to Super-Peak. Where exactly were they supposed to get Super-Peak martial arts from?
Even finding a Super-Peak technique at all was like plucking stars from the sky — never mind a technique suited to your own weapon, your own aptitude. How were you supposed to dig that up?
But the Nine Great Sects and the renowned prestigious clans? They kept techniques stocked for every realm, from Third-rate all the way up through Transformation and Profound. And that wasn't all. They had senior and junior disciples who had trained in the exact same arts, ready to rocket your early proficiency skyward.
Martial compatibility? They screened for that the moment you entered the sect. What was there to worry about?
A Super-Peak expert who came up as a Nangin might reach the realm and still have no idea whether they would ever obtain a Super-Peak technique suited to them — never mind actually training in one. The prestigious orthodox sects? They had masters to teach you. They had generations of condensed know-how inside the sect. You could pick the technique that fit your hand like a glove and learn it. The moment your realm rose, you simply exploded in growth.
By the time you reached the level of the Nine Great Sects, the moment a disciple hit the ceiling of one realm they were already being force-fed the techniques and training methods for the next. That was why Yeo Il-ye had become this strong the instant she stepped into Super-Peak.
The gap between those who came from prestigious great sects and those who did not only widened the higher you climbed. A sect's institutional power was a martial artist's combat strength.
Martial artists from outside the great sects already had a mess of mismatched techniques and half-baked proficiency by the time they hit Super-Peak — never mind Transformation Realm. Hollow at the core, every last one of them.
The masters of the Nine Great Sects and the major factions would never pick a fight with Yeo Il-ye, a disciple of the Jeomchang Sect, over anything short of a truly serious matter. So her odds of succeeding in her revenge were very high.
What bothered me was the fallout her path would create. From the very first act, her revenge play had smashed one of the Green Forest Seventy-Two Strongholds. Yeo Il-ye herself had even dropped a line implying her enemies were no ordinary people.
In the Murim of this relatively peaceful era, Yeo Il-ye's campaign of vengeance was a major incident. Depending on how she moved, it could send out serious shockwaves — or outright chaos.
I had stocked a decent set of First-rate techniques, but depending on the Poison Doctor's diagnosis some of them might become unusable. Even if I could use them all, reaching a fully rounded First-rate would still mean wandering all over, gathering this and that.
Unlike the days when I could just dig in and live as a Sichuan Nangin inside Sichuan Province, any ripple through the Murim now put me in the splash zone. I couldn't help fretting over it from every angle.
"Hmm."
To be precise… her enemies were supposed to be heavyweights. The veteran gamer in me had a feeling that helping Yeo Il-ye's revenge would drop some very sweet scraps. Depending on the Poison Doctor's examination results, the techniques I needed to learn would change — so wasn't this the perfect chance to stockpile everything I could?
I ran a few calculations, then shook my head. Putting my hand into Yeo Il-ye's revenge plot when I still knew nothing about it was far too dangerous. The opening move alone had been a raid on a mountain stronghold that housed two Super-Peak experts. No place for a mere First-rate to stick his nose in.
Right. For now, stick close to the Poison Doctor, get a proper result, and think after that. Even if Yeo Il-ye went on a blood-soaked rampage of vengeance, I was in no position to act until the diagnosis came back. Don't get greedy. A lead on raising my realm mattered more than anything else.
Yes — sorted by priority, this was the correct call. There was no guarantee the Poison Doctor would even re-examine me. Chasing some unknown scraps that might or might not fall my way made no sense at all.
Yeo Il-ye's revenge scenario, something I had never experienced, was unfolding right in front of me — and I had gotten carried away without realizing it.
At times like this, you drink tea.
I poured hot tea from the kettle, blew on it, and took a sip. Countless people across the Central Plains drank tea, but the ones who had drilled tea ceremony into me were ultimately the Tang Clan. After seven years, I still wasn't sure whether to be glad or sad that I had adapted to Central Plains customs.
I drank the tea slowly, settling my thoughts, and by then Heukmyo seemed to have cooled off enough to wrap her clothes tightly around herself again.
"By the way, Heukmyo."
"What is it, Senior?"
She was back to her usual prim tone.
"Should we ask the Poison Doctor to set aside some Soul-Returning Powder and Confession Elixir for us too?"
Heukmyo had just finished straightening her clothes and catching her breath; her hand, reaching for a teacup, froze mid-air.
"W-why would we take something that vicious…? There's no need…"
"Hmm… You think so? Well, you're not wrong. Who would ever need something like Soul-Returning Powder or Confession Elixir while working as a Sichuan Nangin? Hahahahaha!"
"Ha, haha, hahahaha…"
"Come to think of it — ugh. You really couldn't use something that inhuman unless the other party was a mortal enemy, right? Don't you think?"
"M-maybe they were thinking of that person when they… did it…?"
"Tsk."
Heukmyo flinched. The angle of her face began to slide slowly sideways. Watching her, I felt the moment of reckoning drawing near. From here on out, Heukmyo and I were going to be traveling a lot of places together for a long time…
Honestly, even up through today I hadn't been certain she was the one who had done that thing back then. The suspicion had been more than enough — but I still couldn't pin down a motive.
But come on. Hearing about Confession Needles and Soul-Returning Powder and then acting this blatantly suspicious was basically standing up and announcing, I'm the culprit.
Today, I was going to shake Heukmyo down for everything she had.