9
Chapter 9: First Experience
Dong Bong-su entered through the opened hole and took one step. Now he was standing not in Machil's room, but in the room next to it. With this, he'd completely removed himself from the line of suspicion. With just one step.
The incident was already going to be concluded as Machil and Choseon's suicide anyway, but even if someone suspected they'd been murdered, they wouldn't be able to find the culprit.
Because soon.
Thud.
That room would become a locked room.
With a light sound, a wooden pillar appeared again in the empty hole. This technique wasn't actually that simple. Pulling out the pillar was no problem since there was no glue or anything between the pillars, but reinserting it required quite precise 'Inventory control.'
When taking it out from the Inventory, he had to take it out fitting all the joints at once. For this, Dong Bong-su had honed his precise Inventory usage over the past few months. He could be certain of it. This Inventory would provide him infinite help going forward.
This incident was merely his 'first experience.'
Now there was no way for anyone to know exactly how Machil and Choseon died. Whether it was locked room suicide or locked room murder, either way didn't matter.
There were only the dead, not the killer. Whether the murderer was oneself or another.
Dong Bong-su went to the middle of the room and sat down.
He'd just confirmed another law of New Murim Online.
People were experience points. Though not perfect yet, he couldn't deny that they were experience points.
When experience points accumulated, he'd be able to level up. When he leveled up, he'd become stronger. When he became stronger, he could hunt more easily. When hunting became easier, he could accumulate experience points faster.
When experience points accumulated...
An infinite 'virtuous cycle' would occur. Of course, to someone it would become an infinite 'vicious cycle.'
With this, Dong Bong-su was given a new motive for murder.
Rattle.
Soon the door opened and a woman with a sensual figure, a courtesan, entered the room carrying a lavishly set table. This was something Dong Bong-su had ordered to buy time to deal with Machil.
Warm steam rose in wisps from the food.
That sight seemed.
As if it were celebrating the murderer's adaptation.
***
The festival began.
"Aaheuk!"
Dong Bong-su's waist moved rapidly. Matching that movement, the courtesan's buttocks rippled like waves, and her cries stickily heated the room.
Dong Bong-su's sex technique—in the language of this place, bedroom arts—was truly flawless. When it came to sex, there was no way this place, Murim, could keep up with modern Earth. Dong Bong-su was an expert in all skills necessary for murder.
Though she didn't know it, the courtesan was lucky today. She'd avoided the fate of death and was viewing paradise while alive—what great fortune was this?
Dong Bong-su's waist turned mysteriously and pounded the courtesan's erogenous zones like a storm.
"Heuuuk!"
The courtesan became overwhelmed, feeling a climax she'd never experience again in her life.
However, if she had turned her head now and looked at Dong Bong-su's eyes, the heat that had risen in her body would have cooled in an instant.
Dong Bong-su's eyes were calm. Like the surface of the Sanzu River that the dead were said to cross—low, calm, and sinister.
Perhaps even heaven was startled by that eerie appearance, as thunder suddenly struck.
Rumble!
Rain poured down immediately after.
Today was the first day since Dong Bong-su came to this place that he'd committed murder and had sex.
Even heaven was crying from fear of that 'terrible adaptation.'
***
New Murim Online 2nd Law: Dong Bong-su can put any object in direct contact with any part of his body into the Inventory. (However, its size must be smaller than the Inventory and it must not be a living thing.)
New Murim Online 3rd Law: Insects and animals (this isn't certain yet. Experiments with animals other than rats needed) have no experience points, and killing humans raises experience points. (Need to confirm differences according to strength and weakness.)
***
Anhui Province.
The Huai River flows in the north, and the Yangtze River flows eastward through the central region, forming a vast agricultural zone. Along the banks of these two rivers, wet areas surrounded by swamps and ponds are widely distributed, displaying the fertility of the land. The symbols of this were the Huabei Plain and Chaohu Lake, the pride of the Central Plains.
Since ancient times, due to the exchange of fertile and rich land, great rivers, and lakes, commerce and trade developed in this land. Geographically, it was also advantageous for business, being adjacent to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to the east, Shandong Province to the north, and Hubei and Henan provinces to the west.
Naturally, goods from across the nation gathered, and money concentrated.
Just as flies swarm to places that smell foul, thieves and scoundrels from evil sects naturally swarm to places that reek of money.
Many sects that defeated such people and protected the righteousness of the Martial World also emerged in Anhui Province.
Among them, the most representative sect was the Namgung Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains, located in Hefei. The Namgung Family was by far the foremost even among the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. Since they opened their doors, Anhui Province had never once been ravaged by evil sects or demonic cults.
Emperor Sword Form, Vast Sky Limitless Sword Technique, Great Swallow Sword Technique, Flash Battle Thirteen Sword Thunder, Heavenly Wind Sword Technique, Heavenly Thunder Emperor Divine Art, Vast Sky Great Swallow Divine Art, Heavenly Thunder Energy, Heavenly Thunder Three Palms, Heavenly Wind Palm Power, Great Vast Sky Limitless Sword Formation...
The Namgung Family, armed with martial arts that would make members of evil sects and unorthodox schools tremble just from hearing their names listed, was the solitary, lofty First Great Sect of Anhui.
The prestige of the Namgung Family was so tremendous that other sects in Anhui Province were as insignificant as fireflies before the moon, but still, sects existed in each county and city.
Among those many sects was the Danri Family. Though it couldn't compare to the Namgung Family, it was the greatest family in Bongyang at least. Wasn't there a saying that arose in Bongyang that people with the Danri surname rode four-horse carriages even in death?
The Danri Family had the Black Five Group as an intelligence and law enforcement organization, and the Cross Heaven Sword Group as the family's specialized martial force. They all learned the family's secret martial arts, the Flying Heaven Sword Technique and Short Heaven Flying Sword Technique, and their reputation was quite significant within Anhui Province.
In particular, the Black Five Group's information gathering ability was unmatched. To what extent? Even the beggars of the Beggar Sect, who would feel aggrieved to be called second when it came to information, deferred one level to the Danri Family's Black Five Group in Bongyang at least.
However, right now that Black Five Group was suffering from a headache over a recent incident.
***
Suicide epidemic.
It was a phrase spreading among people because suicide was epidemic-like prevalent in Bongyang these days.
In just one month, as many as two hundred people had committed suicide.
What an abnormal phenomenon was this?
There had been suicide victims before, but never this many. At most one or two people a month.
Even if there were two hundred murder cases in a month, it would be a scale that would turn things upside down as if a major incident had occurred, but two hundred suicide cases had occurred, so it was no ordinary matter in a medium-sized city like Bongyang.
Naturally, the city's residents were agitated.
Stories spread that ghosts were coming to secretly kill people and disguise it as suicide, that hairworms were making not just insects but people commit suicide, that a real suicide epidemic was rampant.
Various other hypotheses were floating around as rumors besides these.
Whichever of the numerous rumors was correct, it was equally ominous.
Among these, there was one hypothesis that the authorities focused on.
That was precisely the theory of an evil sect entering Bongyang.
That a terrifying evil faction group unknown to Murim had recently entered Bongyang and was causing these incidents.
The reason this story gained credibility was simple.
Murim people, both past and present, were beings who built walls with ordinary people and the authorities. Though they were citizens of the nation, from another perspective they were also not citizens—people of an outer world—that was the view of ordinary people.
People who flew through the sky, used earth-shrinking techniques, and split mountains and rivers. Since such things were possible, how could it be impossible for them to kill people without anyone knowing? Moreover, among them, those from evil sects killed people to suck out their liver and brain, or vital essence to build internal energy. There were no such corpses among the discovered bodies, but who could know if it was perhaps a new method of accumulating internal energy?
However,
The inspector of Bongyang wasn't a Murim person. If this hypothesis was correct, he had no way to uncover them or method to catch them.
Of course, the authorities had experts too. But most of them belonged to the imperial family, and in principle, they didn't come to help such small cities.
Eventually, the inspector came to request help from a Murim sect. The target was naturally the Danri Family.
The head of the Danri Family, Flying Heaven Beautiful Sword Danri Cheon-u, gladly accepted the authorities' request as a symbiotic relationship with them. Though such things didn't happen often, they occurred occasionally.
And each time, the Black Five Group would step forward and resolve it splendidly.
But...
***
Gi Dae-hyo, the leader of the Black Five Group, was perplexed. Under Danri Cheon-u's orders, he had no choice but to start investigating the 'suicide epidemic,' but he couldn't grasp its substance at all.
'Something is definitely strange...'
But that was it. There were over a hundred cases with only evidence of suicide, without any circumstances that could be considered murder.
The reason he thought these cases were strange was that while the crime scenes clearly said suicide, it seemed difficult to definitively call them suicides.
A considerable number of the suicide victims were people who had reasons to commit suicide. Their lives were hard, or they were abandoned by lovers, or they couldn't endure parental abuse. He could understand these people's suicides.
But the problem was that there were also many who weren't like that. People who'd lived happily satisfied with their station throughout their lives suddenly committed suicide overnight?
Gi Dae-hyo found it hard to understand.
Must there always be a reason for suicide? Then again, perhaps there could be...
'It doesn't sit right.'
He was someone who'd experienced all battles in Murim—mountain, water, sea, even dog battles.
His sense was strongly insisting that these cases smelled foul.
"Who was the first person to die?"
Gi Dae-hyo decided to trace things from the beginning.
At his question, Gi Man-ji, the deputy leader of the Black Five Group and his son, answered.
"They're called Machil and Choseon—the family's weapon servant and a courtesan."