Provocation (3)
"Those Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect bastards. At first they claimed they wanted to buy our Dharma Treasure."
Seated across from Cheon Woo-jin as he sipped his spirit tea, Gwak Gyeong-in spoke in a voice thick with fury.
"Naturally, we refused. It's a sacred relic passed down through our sect since its founding—we had no intention of selling it, no matter the price."
It went without saying that Geumsijong was a wealthy sect.
They were hardly desperate for funds, and there was no reason to fritter away the sect's treasures.
"But they didn't back down quietly. They began scheming to take the Dharma Treasure by force."
"......"
"Their first move was to poison our people, one by one. One day, they poisoned over a dozen of us at once."
Anger seeped into Gwak Gyeong-in's voice.
"By the time we discovered it was the Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect's toxin, it was too late—we went to protest as a group. But they had laid a trap for us even as they welcomed us through their gates. Many of our people lost their lives on the spot."
"......"
"After that, they began attacking us in the open. We tried to fight back, but...... we'd already taken such devastating losses that we're struggling just to hold our ground."
Had Geumsijong been at full strength, they could have held the advantage even against the Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect.
But the damage they had suffered in the early stages left them fighting an uphill battle.
"We petitioned the other sects for help, but every one of them backed out, terrified of the Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect's poisons. Make an enemy of them, and your most promising talents could be poisoned in retaliation."
"......"
"So in the end, we had no choice but to hire Loose Cultivators."
Having said his piece, Gwak Gyeong-in let out a long sigh.
"But honestly? I don't trust them one bit. It feels like they're just padding our numbers."
"......"
"Which brings me to my point, Cheon Do-u."
Gwak Gyeong-in met Cheon Woo-jin's eyes directly.
"Couldn't you continue helping us—not just today, but going forward?"
At last, Gwak Gyeong-in had arrived at the heart of the matter.
"As I said before, we're short on Foundation Establishment cultivators. And capable strategists are even scarcer. But if you lent us your aid, I believe it would let us breathe again."
Today, Gwak Gyeong-in had witnessed Cheon Woo-jin's tactical brilliance with his own eyes.
It was Cheon Woo-jin who had delivered the decisive blow in the middle floors—far more so than seasoned veterans like Lee Geuk-gyeol and his crew.
Which meant Gwak Gyeong-in had little choice but to cling to him.
"Of course, the compensation would be generous. You have my word."
"......"
Cheon Woo-jin did not answer.
Instead, he raised the teacup that had been provided earlier to his lips.
After taking a sip of the tea, he slowly opened his mouth.
"This tea is truly remarkable, I must say."
"Hm?"
He had noticed it from the very first sip—this was spirit tea saturated with extraordinarily dense spiritual energy.
Only a few mouthfuls in, and his fatigue was already melting away, his body feeling as though it were being purified.
"Was this also grown in the cave heaven within your Dharma Treasure?"
"It was."
Realizing that Cheon Woo-jin was taking an interest in the tea, Gwak Gyeong-in leaned forward.
"If you like it, I'd be happy to gift you an entire tin of leaves."
An entire tin of tea leaves, each cup of which was worth tens of thousands of ordinary Spirit Stones?
It was an offer that would make anyone's ears prick up.
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can accept that as payment for an alliance."
Yet Cheon Woo-jin refused in a level, unhurried voice.
"Cheon Do-u......"
"I understand Geumsijong's circumstances well enough. And I'm grateful that you hold me in such high regard."
In front of Gwak Gyeong-in, whose face was clouding with disappointment, Cheon Woo-jin laid out his position.
"But this isn't something I can decide at this point. I only ascended to the fourth floor recently myself—I still haven't gotten a read on how things stand here. I can't rashly commit to entering a war between two formidable sects."
"Hmmm......"
Gwak Gyeong-in crossed his arms and groaned.
"So...... you're saying you'll consider it, at least?"
"That I am."
"Can't be helped, I suppose......"
Faced with Cheon Woo-jin's composed attitude, Gwak Gyeong-in sighed.
"From where you stand, that's the right call. I was too hasty."
"My apologies."
"No—it's I who should apologize for springing such a heavy request on you out of nowhere."
Gwak Gyeong-in offered his apology with utter sincerity before this strikingly talented junior.
A rarity in the cultivation world—a person of genuine character.
Cheon Woo-jin thought as much as he regarded the man.
And yet, he still could not bring himself to promise to fight alongside Geumsijong here and now.
He needed to carefully examine the current situation first, and only then decide whether this was a battle worth joining.
And above all...... rather than accepting on the spot, negotiating later through Seo Seol-ryeong would almost certainly secure him far better terms.
"Then I'll take my leave."
"Yes. You've done good work today."
As Cheon Woo-jin rose from his seat, Gwak Gyeong-in saw him out.
"About that spirit tea from earlier."
On the way out, Cheon Woo-jin brought it up as casually as if it were an afterthought.
"Is it the cave heaven that makes any tea tree produce tea that fine?"
"Not quite."
Gwak Gyeong-in shook his head.
"No matter how pure the water or how clean the air, you can't coax a legendary tea out of some common, gutter-grade tea tree. The lineage of the tree itself is something special—that's what yields tea like this."
"I see. Thank you for telling me."
A tree whose very lineage was special.
At those words, Cheon Woo-jin nodded slowly.
What a relief. If it were the cave heaven alone that made the tea this good, things would've gotten complicated.
Honestly, when Gwak Gyeong-in had offered him a whole tin of spirit tea earlier, Cheon Woo-jin had been sorely tempted.
But...... even if he accepted, once he finished drinking the tin, that was the end of it.
Given the choice, he would rather cultivate such tea himself and become self-sufficient.
And there's already a vacant spirit field sitting idle, after all.
Within the eastern section of the Great Emptiness Cave Heaven Mirror lay spirit fields as well.
Tae Sa-ryang, apparently never having felt the need to till the soil with his own hands, had simply left them to rot.
But now that Cheon Woo-jin possessed them, he had been thinking it might be worth trying his hand at growing something.
And if he was going to grow anything, he wanted it to be rare crops that couldn't easily be found in the market.
Anything purchasable at the market at any time wasn't worth the time and effort of personal cultivation.
Tea like this, though—that would be worth growing with my own hands.
Rather than receiving a tin of tea leaves as a gift, receiving a single tea tree sapling was far better.
That was Cheon Woo-jin's thinking.
Moreover, Geumsijong was certain to possess all manner of other rare crops besides this spirit tea.
If he could obtain the seeds—or better yet, the saplings—of such crops and achieve self-sufficiency...... it would be an enormous boon to his future cultivation.
If he did end up cooperating with Geumsijong, he intended to ask Seo Seol-ryeong to negotiate for exactly those things.
Having left Geumsijong, Cheon Woo-jin headed for the bustling commercial district of the fourth floor.
As he had told Gwak Gyeong-in earlier, he needed to get a feel for the current state of affairs.
He did not, however, head for the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion.
That place was far too loud and insular—a poor fit for his purposes.
Instead, Cheon Woo-jin made for a perfectly ordinary tavern.
He took a seat on the third floor overlooking the main thoroughfare, ordered a drink, and watched the world go by.
Simply observing the status windows of the passersby yielded a wealth of information.
Quite a few cultivators affiliated with the Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect around, I see.
Not a small number of people who looked perfectly respectable on the surface bore the label Affiliation: Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect.
Had they dispatched so many cultivators up to the fourth floor because of the war with Geumsijong?
The Myriad Poison Six Deaths Sect's main hall is on the fifth floor. Maybe I should pay it a visit sometime, too.
Naturally, he would have to scout it wearing the Human Skin Mask, his appearance transformed by the Appearance Transformation Art.
There was always the chance that someone might recognize his face.
"Hey."
Cheon Woo-jin was nursing his drink, lost in these thoughts, when a rough voice carried over from the stairway.
He turned his gaze in that direction to find a familiar face glaring daggers at him.
"Drinking away in a place like this. Must be nice and leisurely for you."
"......"
It was Lee Geuk-gyeol, the Loose Cultivator from the Foundation Establishment squad he'd clashed with during the earlier operation.
He was blocking the stairway alongside several cultivators cut from the same cloth.
"Don't you think it's a bit cruel to toy with people?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Why didn't you tell us you'd been hired separately by Geumsijong?"
Cheon Woo-jin had been recruited through a different channel than Lee Geuk-gyeol and the others this time.
But word of that fact apparently hadn't reached Lee Geuk-gyeol, who had treated Cheon Woo-jin as one of his own underlings.
In the end, Cheon Woo-jin had refused to follow Lee Geuk-gyeol's orders and acted alone.
"Because of you, I was made a fool of. They even paid out the compensation with my share carved clean out of it."
"And how is that my fault?"
Cheon Woo-jin fired back in an icy voice.
"The terms were that whoever produced the greater results took the entire payment. As I recall, you agreed to them yourself."
"Don't make me laugh. That agreement is void."
Lee Geuk-gyeol fixed Cheon Woo-jin with a menacing, narrowed glare.
"The Spirit Stones that were owed to me. Hand them over."
"Quite the highwayman we have here."
Cheon Woo-jin brought his cup to his lips as he spoke.
As it happened, Cheon Woo-jin hadn't yet received any payment at all.
So even if he had wanted to return Lee Geuk-gyeol's share, he couldn't have.
Not that he had the slightest intention of doing so, of course.
"A green pup still reeking of the lower floors' stench...... keep strutting around so insolently, and you might just lose something precious."
"And who was it, exactly, who got beaten by that green pup and didn't earn a single Spirit Stone?"
"You little......"
Lee Geuk-gyeol's face flushed crimson.
Cultivators, as a rule, had thick skins when it came to pride.
They took pride in being beings who transcended ordinary humanity, walking the path of cultivation.
Even mere Qi Condensation cultivators showed that tendency—so Foundation Establishment cultivators were all the more swollen with it.
And that pride of his had been wounded. The only remedy left was revenge.
"Seems I'll have to teach you how to respect your elders today."
Swish.
The cultivators Lee Geuk-gyeol had brought along stepped forward.
One look at their faces was enough to tell they were thoroughly unsavory characters.
How did people like this always manage to find each other?
Cheon Woo-jin was musing over the question when—
"Hey, you there. Cultivator."
Right at that moment.
A voice called out from a room at the back of the third floor.
"We were keeping quiet, figuring you'd know when to wrap things up, but you just keep getting worse. Is that how a Foundation Establishment senior carries himself?"
"Don't sour the taste of the liquor—finish this up and move along, cultivator."
At the sight of the two men poking their heads out of the room, Lee Geuk-gyeol flinched in alarm.
"Cultivator Jang, Cultivator Yuan—what are you two doing here......"
Lee Geuk-gyeol wasn't the only one startled.
Cheon Woo-jin was staring at the two men's faces in surprise as well.
I hadn't run into them once since the attack on the Dokgeom Sect, so I figured they'd gone off somewhere else...... and here of all places we meet again.
They were Jang Ryang and Yuan Bisu, who had once worked alongside him.
When they'd first met, those two had also regarded Cheon Woo-jin with the same disdain Lee Geuk-gyeol showed now.
But once the battle was over, they had parted on good terms, all smiles.
They had even encouraged him to ascend to Foundation Establishment quickly.
Though it seems they don't recognize me.
Cheon Woo-jin had undergone a complete transformation upon his recent breakthrough to Foundation Establishment.
His features had changed considerably.
"Stay out of it and mind your own drinks."
Lee Geuk-gyeol, after an initial flinch, spat out roughly at Jang Ryang and Yuan Bisu.
His side had the numbers, after all—there was no need to shrink back here.
"If you've got spare time to stick your noses into other people's business, worry about rebuilding that sect of yours instead. The way you scurry around the lower floors, I'd say reconstruction is a lost cause."
"Oh ho, now this fellow—"
"Have you said your piece, cultivator?"
Jang Ryang and Yuan Bisu shared a single goal: rebuilding their fallen sect.
Having that dream mocked sent them over the edge.
Harsh words flew back and forth between the two sides, and the atmosphere grew uglier by the moment.
Objectively speaking, the greater fault lay with Lee Geuk-gyeol—but he only grew more swaggering as things escalated.
Probably because his side had the numerical advantage.
As if trying to salve the pride Cheon Woo-jin had bruised earlier, he hurled ever cruder insults and mockery.
"Well now. This won't do at all."
Driven past patience by the repeated provocations, Jang Ryang glanced over at Cheon Woo-jin.
"Why don't you head out. It looks like it's the likes of us who'll be trading blows with this cultivator."
Jang Ryang still hadn't recognized him.
Meanwhile, Lee Geuk-gyeol snorted at the sight.
"How adorable. I'll skewer all three of you at once."
The Loose Cultivators on Lee Geuk-gyeol's side could be seen raising their artifacts, each in their own way.
This was no mere attempt at intimidation.
At the unmistakable killing intent radiating from them, Jang Ryang drew out a talisman, and Yuan Bisu formed a hand seal.
"Kill them!"
Lee Geuk-gyeol roared at his companions.
But not a single soul answered his cry.
They had all collapsed, vomiting blood.
"What......?!"
Lee Geuk-gyeol hadn't known. Neither had Jang Ryang, nor Yuan Bisu.
The fact that Cheon Woo-jin had already drawn the Black Locust Sword out beneath the table some time ago.
Fragments of fine metal had ridden the air, injecting venom into the cultivators' bodies.
While Lee Geuk-gyeol stood gaping, unable to comprehend what had happened—
CRACK!
A black blade rose from the shadow Cheon Woo-jin had stealthily extended, punching clean through Lee Geuk-gyeol's lower body.