An Offer of Servitude (2)
This was, without question, a slavery contract.
But in the game, accepting this kind of slavery contract was actually a viable strategy.
It allowed entry into a sect regardless of when the entrance examination was held, and there were events that only triggered when joining in this manner.
There were even events that let you escape from this enslaved state altogether, so in the game, it wasn't a particularly bad choice.
'Still, there's no need to go looking for extra suffering.'
The game was the game.
Reality was reality.
A game character being exploited was not something he could place on the same plane as himself being exploited.
That said, refusing Jin Cheong outright here would be dangerous.
Cultivators with egos like Jin Cheong's harbored grudges when their offers were turned down—how dare you?—that was simply how they operated.
He wouldn't cause harm right away, but there was a risk he'd trip Cheon Woo-jin up later.
"To offer a rootless stray like me such an opportunity—I am truly grateful."
For now, Cheon Woo-jin pressed his palms together and bowed with careful formality.
"But there is something I'd like to mention before we make it official."
"Hm? And what would that be?"
"There is a stone cavern nearby that Gwiyeongja once used."
Cheon Woo-jin spoke in a cautiously measured voice.
"And inside it, I found a strange ginseng root."
"A ginseng root?"
"It looked as though a small child were curled up in on itself, and it had a remarkable jade-green hue."
Jade-green.
The moment he heard those words, Jin Cheong's eyes flew wide open.
"Could it be—an Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng?"
"I don't know its name, but it seemed to be an extraordinarily precious medicinal herb."
With that said.
Cheon Woo-jin deliberately cast a furtive glance about and asked:
"If I offered that root as tribute upon joining the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect, would I receive better treatment...?"
"W-well, now."
Jin Cheong could barely contain his excitement.
Getting him to press his blood onto the slavery contract had vanished entirely from his mind.
"I'll verify it myself. Where is this cavern?"
"I shall guide you there."
When Cheon Woo-jin took the lead, Jin Cheong followed on restless feet.
* * *
Jin Cheong was now in a state of extreme agitation.
He had stumbled upon an Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng in a place he'd never imagined.
'That wretch Gwiyeongja—so he acquired one through the Won Clan. But he didn't know how to use it, so he just left it sitting there.'
The Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng was a rare herb Jin Cheong had been hunting for a very long time.
It wasn't something he needed for himself; it was something he was obligated to deliver up to an elder of the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect.
'To whoever brings me an Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng, I shall grant a Foundation Establishment Pill...' He promised, without a doubt!'
If the ginseng truly existed, there was no longer any need to investigate the whereabouts of Heukha-ryong.
Simply delivering the root would be enough to secure a Foundation Establishment Pill.
'Which means...'
Jin Cheong stared at the back of the head of the junior cultivator walking ahead of him.
'Better to just kill this one outright.'
Originally, Jin Cheong had intended to bring this man into the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect.
But if this man laid claim to ownership of the Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng first, things would grow complicated.
Far easier to kill him here and seize the root by force.
'Only by receiving the Foundation Establishment Pill can I make a greater contribution to the sect. It is for the greater good—forgive me, junior brother.'
Rationalizing it thus, Jin Cheong entered the stone cavern alongside the junior cultivator.
"Where is the Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng?"
"At the far end."
Jin Cheong headed in the direction the junior cultivator pointed.
But no matter how carefully he searched, no ginseng came into view.
"Hey. Where exactly is it supposed to—"
The instant he turned to double back and check again.
He heard a voice.
"Instant Death."
Instant death.
What on earth was that supposed to mean?
Absently, Jin Cheong recalled the Heart of Instant Killing that martial artists spoke of—the legend that one who reached the pinnacle of martial arts could kill a man by will alone.
But why would this fool let such words cross his lips?
'...'
The question flitted through Jin Cheong's mind for a heartbeat.
And that was the end of it.
Jin Cheong's body was already torn to shreds.
Every organ, his heart above all, had ceased its activity.
No more spirit qi flowed through his meridians.
Without ever comprehending what had happened to him, Jin Cheong met his death.
* * *
Thud.
Jin Cheong collapsed onto the floor of the stone cavern.
'You were planning to kill me and steal the Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng, weren't you.'
Cheon Woo-jin stared down at the corpse, lost in thought.
'Because that's the kind of man you are.'
Even cultivators of the Orthodox Sects would betray anyone, without hesitation, the moment a great enough profit dangled before them.
That was the cultivation world—a place where a man promising his gratitude one moment could unsheathe a blade of betrayal the next without so much as a pause.
Cheon Woo-jin had already known that Jin Cheong was searching for the Azure Child Scattered Leaving Ginseng.
He had known from the very beginning that this was a man who would kill him to take it.
The reason Cheon Woo-jin had lured Jin Cheong into the cavern at all was that he wished to avoid killing him with the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye out in the open.
If a cultivator nearby noticed something amiss and came flying over, he could find himself in serious trouble.
'Now, then...'
Cheon Woo-jin reached out toward Jin Cheong's corpse.
Before disposing of the body, he needed to check the spoils.
But the only thing tucked inside Jin Cheong's robes was a single leather pouch.
'Not an ordinary pouch. A Storage Pouch, then.'
In immortal-hero tales, the Storage Pouch served the role of an "inventory."
To the eye it was just a plain pouch, yet it could hold enormous quantities of items inside.
Without one, you were forced to haul massive bundles of gear around everywhere you went.
The inconvenience was one thing, but it also looked utterly ridiculous.
Any cultivator hoping to roam the continent needed a Storage Pouch.
When he'd looted Gal Sa-ryang's corpse before, there had been no pouch.
It seemed to have been destroyed when the black dragon's attack had punched a hole clean through the man's torso.
But Jin Cheong's body had merely been shredded, so Cheon Woo-jin was able to claim the pouch intact.
'What might be inside?'
Cheon Woo-jin slipped his hand into the mouth of the pouch.
The moment he closed his eyes and focused his mind, the contents of the Storage Pouch rose unbidden into his thoughts.
'Assorted elixir pills and talismans... and all manner of miscellaneous tools essential to a cultivator's life.'
Unfortunately, there was nothing so remarkable as a proper dharma artifact.
But it was still too early for disappointment.
'A large stock of Spirit Stones.'
Spirit Stones were crystals formed from condensed natural spirit qi.
They served countless purposes in the cultivation world, including use as a kind of currency.
Jin Cheong's Storage Pouch held several hundred of them.
Enough to spare him any worries about funds for quite some time.
'Yes—with this many Spirit Stones...'
A feeling of deep satisfaction washed over Cheon Woo-jin.
The conditions for setting out on his journey had been fulfilled.
'I can establish myself as a cultivator without any sect's protection.'
That was right.
Cheon Woo-jin had never intended to join a sect in the first place.
Ordinary Qi Condensation cultivators scrambled to join sects in order to obtain a Foundation Establishment Pill, but Cheon Woo-jin meant to walk the path of the loose cultivator as he was.
Whether by passing the entrance examination or by recommendation from a senior like Jin Cheong—entering a sect would only mean being exploited.
'A capital sect is, at its core, a structure where the strong prey upon the weak below them.'
The essence of a capital sect was no different from a multi-level marketing scheme.
The harder the newly inducted junior disciples broke their backs working, the more the senior elders who had long since entrenched themselves profited.
Why else would capital sects accept any number of Qi Condensation cultivators with no particular talent, teaching them their cultivation arts and supplying them with pills?
Because if you worked those men to the bone and milked them ruthlessly, the returns exceeded the investment.
They dispatched their lowest-ranking disciples across the land to gather cultivation resources, then siphoned those resources away to fuel the realm breakthroughs of the sect's upper echelon.
And then they drove them to work themselves to death, whispering, work harder, and one day you too will rise to a higher realm.
The reason they refused to take an old man like Gwiyeongja into a sect was tied to this same structure.
A man who would soon drop dead of old age made it impossible to recoup the initial investment.
'Of all the Qi Condensation cultivators who join a capital sect, not even one in a hundred ever gets to attempt Foundation Establishment. The rest simply die, exploited to the very end.'
Jin Cheong had been fated to die in exactly that manner.
Unless a player deliberately gifted him a Foundation Establishment Pill, Jin Cheong would be used and discarded by the upper ranks of the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect.
Jin Cheong, who had tried to exploit Cheon Woo-jin, was himself merely one more cultivator being exploited by those above him.
Of course, in the game, the system was rigged so you could smash through odds worse than one in a hundred and climb steadily upward.
If Cheon Woo-jin set his mind to it, he could no doubt distinguish himself within a sect just like in the game and reach Foundation Establishment.
But... there was no need to go looking for extra suffering.
'Having come this far, there's no reason to live out my days being exploited.'
The moment he entered a sect, he would be battered by endless rivalry and suspicion.
Every time Cheon Woo-jin showed even a glimmer of talent, jealous seniors would trip him at every turn.
Some would undoubtedly pounce outright, seeking to devour him whole.
Contending with that kind of obstruction while shackled to a sect's contract was grossly inefficient.
'So—this playthrough, I go loose cultivator.'
The loose cultivator route.
Among players of Yeongro Suseonjeon, it was widely known by the shorthand "San-su play."
Abandoning the classic immortal-hero template of joining a capital sect, and instead climbing the realms as an unaffiliated rogue.
You had to forgo the cultivation manuals and training resources the sects provided, but in exchange you were freed from tedious missions, promotion procedures, and all the rest.
It was a playstyle of harnessing that hard-won freedom to the fullest—crisscrossing the continent and monopolizing its resources at every turn.
It was a method of cultivation that could only exist because this was a game.
An ordinary Qi Condensation cultivator who attempted to train as a loose cultivator would most likely end up like Gwiyeongja—achieving nothing and dying a miserable, screaming death.
But pursued with mastery of the information obtainable from the game... even a rogue could challenge Foundation Establishment.
At a speed far exceeding what any sect procedure could offer.
* * *
Cheon Woo-jin burned Jin Cheong's corpse with a flame talisman.
The cultivators of the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect might come to investigate the traces later, but identifying the culprit would be impossible.
After all, Cheon Woo-jin was a man who had never existed in this world.
Comb through Gwiyeongja's movements, turn the Won Clan inside out—they would never find a trace of him.
Next, Cheon Woo-jin burned the corpses of the Won Clan warriors as well.
He set fire to Gwiyeongja's hermitage and the stone cavern too.
'Farewell, Mount Goeyu.'
Mount Goeyu, standing steadfast in its unchanging form through all seasons.
For roughly eight months, since last summer, Cheon Woo-jin had trained while gazing up at that mountain.
Now it was time to leave.
Employing the Light Flight Art, he made for the nearest city.
He had already ascertained exactly where he needed to go.
"A high-grade Teleportation Formation."
When he addressed the old man seated in the shabby inn, the man answered with complete indifference.
"Five hundred Spirit Stones."
"Five hundred?"
The price was steeper than expected, and Cheon Woo-jin's brow twitched.
Even in the game the price fluctuated with the market, but five hundred was exorbitant.
Still, he had no intention of haggling.
He wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible.
He reached into his Storage Pouch, drew out five hundred Spirit Stones, and handed them over.
The old man collected them expressionlessly, then produced a single talisman from inside his robes.
"Last room on the second floor."
Cheon Woo-jin took the talisman without a word.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor.
As he stepped into the room at the very end, an eerie sensation washed over him.
An intricate geometric pattern was carved into the floor, every single line of it saturated with an immense reservoir of spirit qi.
Just then, a commotion rose from the floor below.
Warriors had entered the inn and were questioning the old man.
"Master Daoist, we are the Inspection Hall of the Won Clan. Have you by any chance seen a suspicious person in this vicinity?"
A beat too late, the dullards.
Listening to the voices rising from beneath his feet, Cheon Woo-jin poured his spirit qi into the talisman.
The instant he did, the teleportation formation in the floor responded with a metallic hum.
Before he knew it, nothing remained of his surroundings.
In their place, countless streams of light cut through a dark void, filling his vision.
And amid that light, Cheon Woo-jin murmured low:
"Ghost Head City."
The moment the image rising in Cheon Woo-jin's mind resonated with the streams of light—
every sound vanished from the world.
After a heart-stopping lurch of vertigo, a new landscape spread out before his eyes.
An endless stretch of blackened mountain range.
And at its very center, a grotesque fortress loomed skyward.
But this fortress was no structure raised by human hands.
It was a treasure created through the dharma power of a cultivator who had transcended the mortal sphere—an immortal treasure.
Here and there across the fortress, pale blue lights flickered and swayed.
But those were not lanterns. Nor were they lights conjured by spellcraft.
They were ghost-fires, born from the souls of the cultivators who had met their ends in this place.
Gazing upon that light, Cheon Woo-jin drew a long, deep breath.
Despite the considerable distance, a dank, sinister aura seeped into his lungs.
Along with it came the cloying scent of incense, the sickening reek of blood, and even the killing intent of those who had lived for long ages, forever wary of one another.
'So I've finally set foot in this place.'
The first destination for any loose cultivator playthrough of Yeongro Suseonjeon.
And at the same time, the location that had most captivated Cheon Woo-jin in the entire world of the game.
The legacy of the Yin Soul Ghost Bone Palace—a sect that had once ascended entire, departing the lower realm—and now a demon-suppressing crucible where countless cultivators poured in to clash and contend.
Cheon Woo-jin walked forward into that dark shadow.