Ghost Head City (2)
"Good."
For a moment, Cheon Woo-jin almost thought he saw a flicker of a smile, but her voice remained as cold as ever.
"Is there something you're skilled at?"
"Assassination."
Cheon Woo-jin answered curtly, and she gave a small nod.
"You don't quite match the atmosphere, I must say."
"What's my atmosphere like, then?"
"Like a young master raised in silk, who's never once dirtied his hands with anything unsavory."
"Aren't we in the same boat?"
It was true that Cheon Woo-jin hardly radiated the aura of a contract killer.
But with her snow-white skin and delicate frame, she hardly fit the trade herself.
"Very well."
She brushed off his remark without ceremony and continued.
"In that case, I have a job that suits you perfectly."
"What kind?"
"A traitor has emerged from the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect. I hear one of their inner disciples poisoned his senior brother half a month ago and fled to Ghost Head Mountain."
"……"
He had only recently gone and killed Jin Cheong of the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect.
It stirred up a strange feeling.
"As you probably already know, the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect cannot intervene within Ghost Head City. They made that pact with the Moonlit Thirteen League and the Blood World Mara Sect."
"……"
"Which is why the traitor fled here."
The Taiyi Easy Separation Sect had no way to hunt down a traitor hiding in Ghost Head City themselves.
So instead, they hired someone from inside the city.
"The traitor's name is Song Jun-hak. A Qi Condensation cultivator with a Metal-Water Spiritual Root."
"……"
"He's a sword cultivator with genuine skill, and he mastered the Taiyi Mysterious Splendor Sword Art. He stole a mid-grade magic artifact called the Mysterious Snake Spirit Sword when he murdered his senior brother. Kill him and retrieve the sword—that's the job."
No information about his appearance was provided.
It would have been useless anyway. Cultivators always refashioned their own faces when they fled, so looks meant nothing.
What mattered more than appearance was which cultivation art he primarily practiced.
He could reshape his face, but he could never remake his technique.
Besides, he'd stolen a powerful artifact on top of it—the Mysterious Snake Spirit Sword.
That was a valuable clue in itself.
"You have one month. Complete the job within the deadline, and I'll pay you two thousand spirit stones."
Two thousand.
That was a fifth of what he needed to attempt a breakthrough into the Great Perfection stage of Qi Condensation.
"Do you think it's possible?"
"It has to be."
"Good."
Cheon Woo-jin rose from his seat.
He'd taken the contract; there was no reason to linger.
But before stepping out of the tent, he paused for a moment.
"Something the matter?"
"You said he's a Qi Condensation cultivator."
He asked to confirm.
"Which stage?"
"Great Perfection, I'm told."
She tilted her head slightly and asked,
"Is Great Perfection of Qi Condensation beyond you?"
"No."
Cheon Woo-jin shook his head.
"Not a problem."
"I'm relieved to hear it."
Before going outside, Cheon Woo-jin checked her status window one last time.
The contents matched what he'd seen in the game exactly.
Core Formation, Great Perfection.
She was a cultivator standing at a realm far above Cheon Woo-jin's own.
She was even a member of the True Human Race, a people blessed with spiritual aptitude surpassing that of ordinary humans.
For the record, Mount Makgoya was a place from the Zhuangzi… the texts spoke of mysterious beings dwelling there, whose skin was like ice and snow and whose grace was like that of a maiden.
That was why the term "Guye Zhenren" came to mean an immortal who commanded ice and snow, or a woman of unearthly beauty.
The developers had almost certainly drawn on that source when they created the character Seo Seol-ryeong.
The game never gave out her full backstory, so players were always spinning wild theories about her.
Why was a Great Perfection Core Formation master lingering on the second floor of Ghost Head City?
Why did she only broker contracts instead of moving herself?
Why did she keep both eyes covered?
The game never answered any of it.
There were rumors she'd get a reveal in a DLC expansion, but even in the last one Cheon Woo-jin had played, her full story remained locked away.
Still… Seo Seol-ryeong was the most trustworthy NPC in all of Ghost Head Mountain.
Seo Seol-ryeong never disappointed a player.
She paid out rewards precisely matched to the difficulty of the job, every time.
That was exactly why Cheon Woo-jin had sought her out.
There's no guarantee this world mirrors the game perfectly, but it's still better than dealing with some stranger I know nothing about.
The world of immortals and heroes was steeped in betrayal and intrigue.
Finding the person least likely to plant a knife in your back was a matter of no small importance.
Cheon Woo-jin decided to scout the second floor first.
His target, Song Jun-hak, was a Great Perfection Qi Condensation cultivator, which meant he was entitled to ascend to the third floor.
But Cheon Woo-jin found it hard to believe that Song Jun-hak would be hiding up there.
Just as I'm feeling cramped down here on the second floor, Song Jun-hak would feel that same discomfort if he went up to the third. Not a good place to hole up for long.
Cheon Woo-jin had also picked up copper coins on the first floor.
A Great Perfection Qi Condensation cultivator like Song Jun-hak would have carved out a hideout on the second floor.
First, Cheon Woo-jin located the district where copper coins flowed most freely.
Then he settled into a seat on the second floor of a tavern nearby.
From there, he had a bird's-eye view of the nearest market.
Not exactly scenery that improves the taste of one's drink.
"Black market" was a more fitting word for it than "market."
Like most of Ghost Head City's lower floors, the whole place had a grimy, gloomy air.
Every now and then, a faint whiff of blood would drift up and sting his nose.
Was that the stench of a human corpse? A beast's? A monster's?
Whichever it was, it wasn't the sort of smell that enhanced a drink.
"……"
But some people preferred a dark, sinister market to a bright one.
On the third day of his stakeout, Cheon Woo-jin spotted a man buying dumplings at the corner of the market.
It was the traitor the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect had placed a bounty on.
A fugitive still had to eat.
A Qi Condensation cultivator could endure days of fasting, but three square meals a day was still better for body and mind.
That was why Cheon Woo-jin had taken a seat on the tavern's second floor and checked the status window of every single person passing through the market.
He'd predicted the man would eventually show his face there to provision himself.
I was planning to give it a week before trying somewhere else. Fortunately, he took the bait quickly.
Song Jun-hak seemed to be buying several days' worth of food in one go.
Cheon Woo-jin left the tavern and tailed him.
But Song Jun-hak didn't head toward the district where the copper coins clustered.
The man kept walking toward ever more deserted ground, until at last he descended into an underground waterway through a hole in the ground.
"……"
Rats scurried through the underground channels.
So thoroughly adapted to the polluted environment that they were practically monsters in their own right.
Anyone foolish enough to make this place a hideout would wake from a brief nap to find his fingers and toes gnawed to the bone.
But Cheon Woo-jin didn't believe Song Jun-hak's hideout was here.
Song Jun-hak was luring him in.
"……"
Halfway along the waterway, Song Jun-hak suddenly stopped.
Then he hurled the food bag he was carrying in this direction.
The food scattered across the ground, and the waterway's rats came swarming in.
Amid that chaos, Song Jun-hak drew a sword from his robes.
Or rather, he pulled it from the storage pouch concealed within his robes.
A magic artifact with a blade that writhed like a serpent—the Mysterious Snake Spirit Sword.
Serpent-like sword qi was rising from the blade in waves.
It was something altogether different from the sword qi martial artists forged by channeling internal energy into steel.
Over a dozen arcs of sword qi, conjured from the spiritual power of a Great Perfection Qi Condensation cultivator, deployed through the air all at once.
The true essence of the Taiyi Mysterious Splendor Sword Art, the pride of the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect, unfolded in that instant.
"Fly!"
With a battle cry, Song Jun-hak moved to loose the sword qi at Cheon Woo-jin.
But he was a beat too late.
Cheon Woo-jin had already deployed the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye.
"……?"
Song Jun-hak froze mid-motion, the Mysterious Snake Spirit Sword still raised high.
The dozen arcs of sword qi that should have shredded Cheon Woo-jin to ribbons had already vanished without a trace.
Song Jun-hak's face wore the expression of a man with something he badly wanted to say, but no voice ever left his throat.
His body had already been torn apart, fiber by fiber. He had died before he even knew it.
SPLASH!
Song Jun-hak's corpse toppled into the filthy water.
Startled by the sound, the rats scattered for a moment.
Cheon Woo-jin seized the opening, closed the distance, and collected both the sword and the storage pouch.
Then, from the spiritual energy streaming out of Song Jun-hak's body, he absorbed only the black-tinted water-attribute energy.
He really was Great Perfection. The energy coming off him is substantial.
Though the absorption efficiency wasn't anything to brag about.
Devouring a Great Perfection cultivator's energy didn't suddenly double his own reserves.
Even so, it was only by steadily accumulating spiritual energy like this that Cheon Woo-jin could eventually challenge the Great Perfection stage himself.
No amount of stockpiled spirit stones mattered if his own cultivation fell short of that threshold.
And now…
Cheon Woo-jin drew a talisman from the storage pouch.
It was a Soul-Extracting Talisman—one of the items he'd found in Jin Cheong's pouch.
A talisman used to harvest a sliver of the divine soul from a freshly deceased corpse.
The harvested fragment couldn't be used to reconstruct the dead man's personality or memories, but it could confirm who the owner of the soul had been.
A tool for proving that a kill had been made.
Without one of these, I'd have to drag every corpse back for verification every single time.
Cheon Woo-jin harvested a sliver of the divine soul with the talisman and immediately withdrew.
At once, the rats that had scattered earlier caught the scent of blood and swarmed Song Jun-hak's corpse.
Perhaps it was because they had absorbed the long-lived energies of Ghost Head City and become something like monsters.
The rats seemed to find a human corpse far more appetizing than the food scattered on the ground.
"……"
Watching them in silence, Cheon Woo-jin slipped his hand back into his robes.
He drew a Flame Talisman from his storage pouch and fed spiritual power into it.
Fwoosh!
WHOOSH!
As Song Jun-hak's corpse burst into flame, the rats gnawing at it were engulfed in the fire as well.
Flailing, the burning rats slid off the corpse and tumbled to the ground.
But the filthy water flowing through the underground channel was thick with grease, and it did nothing to smother the flames.
With more than a hundred rats burning to death before his eyes, Cheon Woo-jin swept his surroundings once more.
No one else around, as expected.
From the moment he'd entered the waterway, Cheon Woo-jin had moved while scrutinizing every direction.
He couldn't use the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye where others might see.
No status windows were visible anywhere, which meant he was the only cultivator down here right now.
Seo Seol-ryeong only asked for the sword, so anything else in the pouch is mine to keep.
This was one of the real perks of assassination work.
Take down a target, and beyond the official payment, you got to keep the spoils.
Cultivators living on the run often crammed every last possession into their storage pouches, so with a bit of luck, a single job could swell your fortune in one stroke.
Cheon Woo-jin reached into Song Jun-hak's storage pouch.
Just as with Jin Cheong's, he could sense the pills and elixirs stored inside.
But there was one thing here that Jin Cheong's pouch had never held.
"……!"
It was a book.
A storage pouch's capacity was finite.
The pouches the Taiyi Easy Separation Sect issued to inner disciples held only about as much as a traveler's backpack.
Stuff a single sword like the Mysterious Snake Spirit Sword inside, and there was barely any room left over.
And yet, in that cramped space, he had made a point of storing a book—even while living life as a fugitive.
That alone spoke volumes about its worth.
Swallowing hard, Cheon Woo-jin pulled the book from the pouch and examined the cover.