The Search (1)
“Our Heavenly Dragon Pavilion has a class of clients we call VIPs.”
Oh Hwi-seong began his explanation at an unhurried pace.
“Elders of sects whose names everyone knows. Patriarchs of venerable noble houses. Heads of merchant guilds that span the continent… Only such people can qualify as VIPs of the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion. We don't take on unaffiliated loose cultivators at all.”
“……”
“Don't mistake it for discrimination against loose cultivators. The rule exists to keep people from vanishing the moment trouble arises, washing their hands of everything. That's why we only accept clients whose identities can be guaranteed.”
Loose cultivators like Cheon Woo-jin could simply pack up and disappear the instant things went wrong.
But those who occupied positions of responsibility had no such luxury.
Hence the policy of accepting only identity-verified individuals as special members.
“Well, a problem has come up recently. One of our VIPs — a client whose identity we believed to be absolutely certain — caused an incident at the auction house.”
“At the auction house?”
“He seized a Dharma treasure that had been put up for bidding.”
“……”
That was something that could never, under any circumstances, be tolerated.
“The culprit was a man of the Jongri Clan, a famous noble house of Weijin Country. A branch of the clan resides on the 6th floor of Ghost Head City, and it was that branch patriarch, Jongri Un, who committed the crime.”
Branch or not, he was still the head of a household.
It was difficult to easily accept that a man of such standing would cause such an uproar at an auction house.
“As it turned out, he'd slaughtered every member of his own family. Using their vengeful spirits, he crafted a Ghost Soul Banner, stirred up chaos at the auction, and made off with the goods.”
“He went into it fully prepared to burn every bridge……”
The Ghost Soul Banner was a flag-shaped Dharma artifact crafted from human souls.
It was a textbook example of a wicked art — one that orthodox sects had banned the crafting and use of outright.
“In truth, my own trip up to the 6th floor is for the sake of resolving this very incident. I intend to meet with the influential powers of the 6th floor and request their cooperation. At the very least, I mean to make sure he never escapes to the upper layers of Ghost Head City.”
“In other words — seal off every route to the upper layers first, then catch him in the middle layers.”
“The problem is that catching him in the middle layers won't be easy either.”
Oh Hwi-seong's voice grew grave.
“Jongri Un is presumed to be lying low somewhere on the 6th floor. But the 6th floor is an extraordinarily complicated place. If he isn't acting alone — if he has accomplices — catching him becomes all the harder.”
“In that case……”
“I hear you tracked down the cultivators of the Ten Thousand Poisons Six Path Sect and annihilated them one by one. I'd like you to put that nose of yours to work again.”
The request was simple: track the culprit through methods entirely separate from the ones the Pavilion itself would employ.
That was Oh Hwi-seong's commission.
“You needn't capture Jongri Un with your own hands. So long as you uncover where he's hiding, the reward is yours.”
“And if you find Jongri Un before I do?”
“Even then, I'll see that you receive the minimum fee.”
It wasn't a bad proposal.
If he played the decisive role in apprehending the culprit, he would gain the legacy of Master Thunder Spirit; even if he fell short, there was still a base wage to collect.
Besides, Cheon Woo-jin already needed to comb the 6th floor in search of Seo Seol-ryeong.
It seemed the two tasks could simply be pursued in parallel.
“I'd like to know what Dharma treasure was stolen.”
“The Ghost Spirit Radiant Domain Banner.”
Oh Hwi-seong's answer came in a stiff, hard voice.
“It is a Dharma treasure of the Yin Soul Ghost Bone Palace — rumored to grant its wielder power on the level of the Soul Formation realm.”
The moment he rode the Flying Origin Ship up into the 6th floor, a mountain range swept by violent winds unfolded before him.
It felt as though the wind pathogen would burrow straight into his body, so he immediately cloaked his flesh in spiritual energy.
The middle layers of Ghost Head City were the domain of the Six Pathogens — wind, cold, and damp running rampant in concert.
If the 4th floor was dominated by dryness, and the 5th by fire and summer-heat, then the 6th floor was a land of extremes saturated with wind, cold, and damp.
Here the wind blew fierce and constant, but travel elsewhere and one would find frozen snowfields stretching to the horizon and sodden, sucking wetlands beside them.
“I plan to start by visiting Byeokpung Valley to ask for their cooperation… What will you do?”
Byeokpung Valley was one of the three great powers of the 6th floor.
As its name suggested, it specialized in wind-attribute cultivation arts, and it had established its main hall in this very region where the winds blew strongest.
For reference, the other two powers had their strongholds in the snow mountain region and the wetlands respectively.
“I'll head to Junggyeongjin first.”
“That's probably for the best. Jongri Un is likely lying low there as well.”
Junggyeongjin was the bustling heart of the 6th floor.
It served as a kind of buffer zone — an environment tolerable enough to be the only place up here where people could actually live.
“The Heavenly Dragon Pavilion has a branch in Junggyeongjin. If anything comes up, contact me through it.”
“Understood.”
Cheon Woo-jin parted ways with Oh Hwi-seong and Hoyeon Rin and made for Junggyeongjin.
Descending from the wind-battered mountain range toward the center of the 6th floor, he at last caught sight of streets where people had gathered to live.
As expected, the atmosphere is nothing like the prosperous floor where the Heavenly Dragon Pavilion sits on the 4th layer.
Buildings hastily expanded and stacked upon one another in layer after layer gave the whole town a cramped, chaotic feel.
The roads were poorly maintained, and street stalls crowded every corner, adding to the disorder.
It resembled the atmosphere of the 1st floor, the bottommost layer of Ghost Head City.
And yet this place could not be taken as lightly as the 1st floor.
The 6th floor was crawling with Core Formation cultivators who had challenged the upper layers, tasted failure, and crawled back down.
The man spreading out his wares on a mat near the entrance was at mid Core Formation; the woman slumped drunkenly against a tavern window was at late Core Formation.
They no longer had the stomach to challenge the upper layers again, yet neither could they bring themselves to descend to the floors below or leave Ghost Head City altogether… So they had simply planted themselves on the 6th floor, squatting in place and waiting for a golden opportunity that might never come.
At the same time, Foundation Establishment cultivators who had climbed all the way up here harboring grand ambitions were easy enough to find as well.
After all, anyone hoping to attempt Core Formation stood a far better chance of success operating on the 6th floor.
Many of them aimed to join one of the three great powers, Byeokpung Valley among them.
And… this is also the place where every kind of villain gathers, hoping to fleece such cultivators.
The greatest den of wolves in the middle layers of Ghost Head City, where cultivators of every persuasion jostled together.
That place was Junggyeongjin.
If Jongri Un was truly hiding somewhere on the 6th floor, the odds were high that he was lying low here.
That said, Cheon Woo-jin had no intention of immediately setting out to hunt for Jongri Un.
He'd heard the details about the man through Oh Hwi-seong and Hoyeon Rin, but blundering around in search of him would be hopelessly inefficient.
First, I need to meet Seo Seol-ryeong.
He had climbed to the 6th floor in order to find her in the first place.
Even for the sake of finding Jongri Un, meeting Seo Seol-ryeong came first.
Investigating with her cooperation would be far more efficient than Cheon Woo-jin poking around every corner on his own.
The problem is… I have no way of knowing where she is right now.
In the game, Seo Seol-ryeong opened a new shop in precisely this place — Junggyeongjin.
But its location was never specified.
After all, in the game a single click of the mouse had been enough to enter Seo Seol-ryeong's shop directly.
Where in this crowded sprawl of streets her shop might stand, even Cheon Woo-jin could not know.
He even had to account for the possibility that she hadn't yet opened for business at all.
Still, it's not as if I'm without clues.
Among the named NPCs of the 6th floor, there was one who had a confirmed friendship with Seo Seol-ryeong.
He was a character who originally appeared in an event unrelated to her, but one of his lines mentioned Seo Seol-ryeong by name.
The Sect Master of the Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate was depicted as being on friendly terms with her.
The Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate.
True to its name, it was a sect specializing in the wicked arts that made use of corpses.
At a glance it seemed like a thoroughly sinister sect, yet surprisingly, they almost never went about harming the living.
Not out of any particular virtue — it was simply that corpses were never in short supply to begin with.
The fact that no matter how many people died in Ghost Head City, corpses never piled up into a problem, was thanks to them.
Scavengers who served as the decomposers of the Ghost Head City ecosystem… that was the Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate.
And their Sect Master had, within the game, once spoken of his acquaintance with Seo Seol-ryeong.
Which meant that visiting the Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate should yield information about her.
Even if I can't get information on Seo Seol-ryeong herself, I should at least come away with a lead toward finding her.
The Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate's stronghold lay within the underground waterways that flowed beneath the earth of Junggyeongjin.
Because transporting corpses was so much easier down there, the sect made use of subterranean spaces on the other floors as well.
Cheon Woo-jin located a hole leading down into the waterways in a spot sparsely traveled by people.
Peering down into the shaft — there wasn't even a ladder — he felt an intense surge of yin energy.
It resembled the miasma of Ghost Head City's lower floors, yet laced with a different, far more virulent strain of toxin.
Entering that place unprepared would be tantamount to hurling himself naked into the poison arts of the Ten Thousand Poisons Six Path Sect.
This is exactly what I grew these for.
He slipped his hand into his storage pouch and pulled out a fistful of mugwort.
Wormwood exuding a faint violet aura — the Purple Yin True Grass he had cultivated in his courtyard all this time.
Cheon Woo-jin crammed all of it into his mouth.
At once, a potent fragrance of mugwort filled his mouth.
He chewed thoroughly, swallowed, and circulated his spiritual energy — and soon a violet aura began to seep out from his body as well.
The Purple Yin True Grass had taken effect, shielding his flesh with its numinous energy.
Strictly speaking, the most effective method was to dry the grass into moxa and bathe in its smoke, but for a swift result, chewing raw mugwort would do well enough.
Let's go in.
Cheon Woo-jin threw himself down into the underground waterway.
The intense yin energy closed in around him, but the violet aura of the Purple Yin True Grass held it at bay, wrapping his body in protection.
Before long, however, something new barred his path.
“Grrrrhh…”
“Aaaagh…”
Corpse ghouls — creatures the Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate had crafted from human dead.
Decay had advanced so far that their features in life were no longer recognizable.
And beyond them, a man stood with his arms crossed.
“Fall back.”
Using the corpse ghouls as his vanguard, the man's words came out cold and cutting.
“This is the domain of the Corpse Ghost Extreme Jade Gate. Turn around and leave. Now.”
“I have business here.”
Cheon Woo-jin opened his mouth to explain the situation.
But the man, without even listening, cut him off sharply.
“I said, turn around and leave. Now.”
The very next instant.
The corpse ghouls, which had been swaying in place, suddenly kicked off the ground and came lunging at him with startling speed.
Splashing through the water, they charged to swarm over him.
Corpse ghouls were capable of nothing but simple physical assault.
But that physical assault was devastating in its power — the full mass of a human body launched like a cannonball.
Worse, because they were not living humans, even inflicting mortal wounds would not stop their movements.
So what was to be done?
Burn them all to nothing?
No.
Grind them all to nothing.
A colossal sphere of black water lightning erupts into being — a spell of pure annihilation that renders all it touches to ash.
WHUUM!
An enormous black sphere materialized, blocking the underground waterway from wall to wall.
The corpse ghouls, lunging forward with mindless momentum, hurled their bodies straight into the sphere.
KWA-JI-JI-JIK!
With a searing crackle, the ghouls' bodies were shredded apart.
No rotting flesh scattered — only a fine black residue, like powdered ash, drifted through the air, and the man's eyes flew wide open.
If a path can't be opened with words, then it will have to be opened with force.
With that judgment, Cheon Woo-jin raised his spiritual power once more.