Chapter 94
Chapter 94
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 94
Chapter Title: Hearing the News
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War Sword King 94
Taking advantage of the night, the place Hyeon-gak led them to was surprisingly North Mang Cave, the brothel district located at the eastern end of Bongrae Harbor by the seaside.
Bongrae had no shortage of red-light districts, but North Mang Cave was the worst of them. The only women there were spent husks drained of every last drop of sweetness and bitterness, and even they had so-called pillar men leeching off them, sucking every bit of blood.
People naturally flock together with those in similar straits, so North Mang Cave was crawling with gamblers, thieves, and beggars, not to mention fugitives who had fled after committing crimes.
The residents of North Mang Cave had all sunk to the very bottom of life, and those who came for a night of lust had no future either. Hence the name—North Mang Cave, the land of those who had seen it all.
"You live here?"
"That's about the size of it."
"A monk living in a brothel district. These must be the end times."
"To me, it looks like a world inhabited by pitiful sentient beings. But to you, Brother Heuk, it seems like a brothel district? Well, it's been a long time since you've laid eyes on a woman, so I suppose your head must be full of such thoughts. Heh heh heh."
"What the hell are you on about, baldy?"
"You must have some feelings for me."
"Do I look like I'm not pissed off right now?"
"Worries disturb the mind, and anger clouds the eyes. For things that have already happened, if you keep a calm heart, even entering a tiger's den will feel like reaching the other shore."
"Save your chanting for somewhere else. Why'd you grow out your beard like that? I almost didn't recognize you."
"Having abandoned my monkhood, there's no need to shave it anymore. I just let it be, and now it covers half my face. Though, to be honest, making sure people don't recognize me wasn't entirely absent from my intentions."
"If disguise was the goal, you should've grown out your hair too. Does it make sense to keep your hair shaved but grow a beard?"
"My hair doesn't grow."
"Why not?"
"I'm bald to begin with."
"......"
"Anyway, this is the neighborhood where I live."
As they turned a corner in the alley, a seaside forest appeared out of nowhere. They must have already crossed through North Mang Cave without realizing it.
The forest echoed ceaselessly with the sound of waves, and children were running around playing. Between the thick trees stood little huts, smoke rising thickly from every household as they cooked their meals.
The sight felt utterly alien compared to the dark and dangerous North Mang Cave.
As the strangers appeared, the adults mending their nets rose cautiously. Their wariness was plain.
Unlike the adults, the carefree children swarmed Hyeon-gak the moment they saw him, chattering away.
"Grand Master, Wang Sami wet his pants!"
"Grand Master, Jang Il almost burned down the house playing with fire!"
"Grand Master, Yeonbi sister says she'll marry you when she grows up!"
Hyeon-gak ignored all the other children. Instead, he gazed at a freckle-faced girl of twelve or thirteen fiddling with her hem off to the side and said,
"Is that so? Then I'll have to wait until Yeonbi grows up. I was thinking of getting married next year or so, but no helping it. Yeonbi, you better not go changing your tune later."
The girl's face turned beet red as she fled somewhere. Hyeon-gak chuckled softly, then instructed Old Man Pang to guide Seol Mae-ran to her quarters.
With a glance at Heuk Do-san to follow, he slipped into a small hut.
"What the hell is this place? And who are those people and kids outside?"
"Demonic Cultists."
"What?"
"Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. You know of it?"
"That's not what I'm asking."
"Once the war ended, the Righteous Alliance only rounded up their own casualties and their families. But the Demonic Cult side suffered far greater losses, as you can imagine—they were practically annihilated."
"So?"
"That left people with nowhere to go trickling into North Mang Cave to escape the world, and I ended up looking after them and their children."
"Looking after them?"
"Anyone branded a Demonic Cultist now is fair game for hunters. No one bats an eye if you kill one. Young women get dragged to dark corners, violated, and abandoned. Kids get kidnapped—girls sold to brothels, boys to beggar gangs. It happens in broad daylight all the time."
"......?"
"And that's the better fate. Anyone showing even a hint of martial arts training gets vanished without a trace, man, woman, or child."
"Who the hell are doing this?"
"Those who joined the Righteous Alliance to fight the Demonic Cult, those killed or crippled by Demonic Cultists during the war—their sects and families are carrying out indiscriminate revenge on the survivors."
The aftermath of war.
Even in victory, the families of the dead and gravely wounded exact cruel vengeance on the families of the defeated survivors. It's always been that way, through all ages.
That's what war is.
"The Righteous Alliance is just standing by?"
"Officially, they forbid revenge. But the situation isn't that simple. They show no real will to enforce it."
That figures. To quell the madness born of war and vent the pent-up internal grievances bloated during the conflict elsewhere, they have no choice but to turn a blind eye to a certain degree of pillage and atrocities.
Heuk Do-san had seen it countless times while wandering the battlefields. Back then too, the captains pretended not to notice when victorious soldiers raped or looted Demonic Cultists.
Heuk Do-san had been punished multiple times for protesting it vehemently.
"So the monk who used to hunt Demonic Cultists is now looking after them and their kids?"
"It just sort of happened that way."
"I'll be damned."
"The ways of the world turn in circles anyway."
"What happened to Gong Cheon-ak and Bing-seol?"
"That's exactly what I was about to get to. While you were gone, Brother Heuk, a ton of things went down. To save you asking multiple times, I'll explain it all in chronological order, so listen up."
Three years ago, after escaping the snow mountain cave, Hyeon-gak watched the mountaintop collapse over the course of half a day alongside Bing-seol, Gong Cheon-ak, and Dang Yak-ran.
When Dang Yak-ran learned that Heuk Do-san had stayed behind alone in the cave at the last moment to save them, she broke down sobbing right there.
"We didn't budge from that spot for three days and nights. Worried we'd all freeze to death, the horse guy and I dragged her down by force. Only then did she seem to accept your death, Brother Heuk. Then we headed straight for the Central Plains."
The journey back to the Central Plains was long and perilous. But they pressed on, occasionally encountering nomadic tribes on the steppes to ask directions and scrounge food.
They nearly died lost in a great tent settlement, and crossing the Mongolian plains, they barely escaped a warlike horse tribe without even their bones left behind.
After all that hardship, they finally crossed the Yellow River.
"That's when the trouble started. We arrived at some pleasure house that had repurposed an old fortress in the Yakida Grass Plains. And incredibly, that bastard Seop Dae-gang was waiting there."
Tongman Old Fortress.
Coincidentally, Heuk Do-san and Hyeon-gak's group must have entered the Central Plains via the same route. But why on earth had Seop Dae-gang shown up out of nowhere?
"Did he go separately?"
"Turns out he'd crossed the Yellow River a full month ahead of us. Right after, he sought aid from nearby martial sects, they sent out flying pigeons, and Mount Hua Sect, Shanxi Hong Family, and Moyong Family all rushed over. With their presumed-dead disciple and kin alive and returning, how could they not?"
"So?"
"Mount Hua Sect had heard of Seop Dae-gang's severe injuries on the way to the Yellow River, so they brought along a divine physician called the Black Hand Death God. And he really must've been a divine physician—he fully healed Seop Dae-gang, who had nine broken bones and was half-crippled."
"If Mount Hua Sect mobilized, that makes sense. So, what was the problem?"
"Once he recovered his strength, Seop Dae-gang must've talked about Gong Cheon-ak's existence. As you know, that horse guy's simple and brutish, but his status is what it is..."
The seventh disciple of the Heavenly Demon, the world's greatest—the Seventh Star Lord. That's Gong Cheon-ak's official background.
Amid the chaos of survival on the steppes, they'd all mingled as one, so no one had really registered or cared how exalted he was.
Had the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult won the Righteous-Demonic Great War, he'd have been an untouchable lofty figure.
"They set a trap."
"Exactly."
"At Tongman Old Fortress."
"Spot on."
"Did they get caught?"
"Of course."
"Of course?"
"Mount Hua Sect, Shanxi Hong Family, and Moyong Family experts were all waiting at Tongman Old Fortress. How could the horse guy handle that?"
"You were there too."
"You want me to die with him?"
"Then you threw caution to the wind?"
"Obviously."
"I thought you liked Bing-seol."
"You... knew?"
"You handed her over too?"
"Sigh. Even if it was the horse guy, I tried to save her somehow. But the Tang young lady insisted I leave everything to her and stay out of it. Said it was the only way to save the horse guy and Bing-seol."
"What does that mean?"
"Seop Dae-gang initially planned to execute Gong Cheon-ak, Bing-seol, and even me for treason right there. The Tang young lady was the obvious exception—she's Tang Clan of Sichuan blood."
"So?"
"She blocked it desperately. Said it wasn't right to pin treason on me without weighing my not-insubstantial merits from the Righteous-Demonic Great War. And that Gong Cheon-ak and Bing-seol were prisoners of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, so no one else could touch them."
"Prisoners of the Tang Clan of Sichuan?"
"During the Righteous-Demonic Great War, it was customary for sects to hold the right of life and death over captured enemy experts from other sects. It evolved into an unwritten rule as factions competed to extract valuable intel from prisoners."
The Righteous Alliance was a coalition of numerous martial factions. Even with a leader and command structure, each sect's power was considerable.
That naturally bred competition, and no small amount of rivalry.
Yielding the right of life and death over captured prisoners to the sect that first took them alive was a convention born from that process.
There were far more exceptions, of course, but if the capturing sect pressed strongly, the Righteous Alliance would step back to save face—especially for the stronger sects.
"I know about that convention. What I want to know is whether it worked on the Mount Hua Sect, Shanxi Hong Family, and Moyong Family experts. A prisoner who's a Seventh Star Lord of the Demonic Cult."
"It did. Those sects had their own share of prisoners captured that way, so demanding they hand him over outright put them in an awkward spot. The Tang young lady going all out was the clincher."
"Going all out?"
"She even drew her sword and faced them down. The old experts from those three sects were in a real bind. With no Tang Clan elite there, they couldn't bully a young junior, but they couldn't just yield either. Heh heh heh. You should've seen those old geezers' faces."
"Cut the crap."
"Anyway, they agreed not to kill them but to escort them to the Righteous Alliance. Thanks to that, Gong Cheon-ak and Bing-seol were shipped off without even properly setting foot in the Central Plains. Technically they did touch Central Plains soil as prisoners, but still."
"So?"
"I was released on the spot, then spent my time dodging assassins sent by Seop Dae-gang. The Tang young lady rode a carriage provided by Mount Hua Sect and returned comfortably to the Tang Clan of Sichuan. Word is, Tang Clan of Sichuan experts met her midway around Jiuzhaigou and escorted her safely."
It was heartening to hear Dang Yak-ran had returned safely to the Tang Clan of Sichuan. But the news that Gong Cheon-ak and Bing-seol had been escorted to the Righteous Alliance was a real shock.
On top of that, Heuk Do-san pitied the despair they must have felt. The fall of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult alone would shatter their spirits—how much worse to be taken prisoner by the enemy.
"So that's how it ended up."
"I somehow made it back to the Central Plains but had nothing particular to do. As you know, having broken my precepts, I couldn't return to Mount Song. So I headed straight to White Deer Academy. Partly because of the Tang young lady's request."
"Dang Yak-ran's request?"
"Just before we parted at Tongman Old Fortress, she asked me a favor. With the war over, your teacher at White Deer Academy must be waiting anxiously for you, eyes worn out—shouldn't we at least deliver the news of your death? She knew it was a tough ask but said she'd be grateful if I did it."
"......?"
"Half because I intended to deliver the death notice, half because I thought I'd try being a scholar myself, I went to White Deer Academy. But old Scholar No looked like his time was near, and with all the disciples gone, the academy was little more than ruins. So I passed on the news and left."
Only then did the full sequence of events click into place. Heuk Do-san's eyes reddened at the thought of his teacher, who must have been devastated by the false news of his death.
Though the shock of the false death notice may have hastened his teacher's end a bit, Heuk Do-san couldn't blame Hyeon-gak for going out of his way.
"But how did you know I'm alive? And how'd you come up with the idea of luring me with a fake daughter that doesn't exist? What the hell happened?"
"Sigh, that's the real kicker. I never even imagined you were alive, Brother Heuk."
Hyeon-gak let out a sigh so deep it seemed the earth might cave in, then continued.