Chapter 139: The Long Search for Do Hwa
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 139: The Long Search for Do Hwa
People were already glancing at us as they passed by, and me holding her wasn't helping.
“Hurry, I want to check if my Domi-oppa is right here next to me.”
As Ahyu said that, her face turning bright red, I gave a wry smile, lifted her lightly, and turned toward the wall.
This way, at least, passersby would only see my back.
Ahyu looked at me and gently closed her eyes.
I felt a little shy initiating it, but I lowered my head toward Ahyu, who was looking up at me.
Chu—
And Ahyu’s lips met mine.
Slowly opening her eyes, Ahyu smiled happily, hugged me, and started rubbing her head all over my chest.
She’s being cute.
“You like it that much?”
“I love it. Let’s do it again later.”
“After we find Do Hwa.”
“Then we have to find him quickly!”
As Ahyu said that with an excited expression, as if she’d regained her energy, I couldn’t help but laugh along.
“So, you don’t know why Do Hwa disappeared, right?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but he was always cleaning the house.”
Do Hwa, you’ve grown up well.
Knowing Ahyu’s personality, she didn’t seem like the type to be good at cleaning, so I silently pitied Do Hwa.
“Anything else?”
“Umm, he watched a lot of TV. I showed him one news channel, and he had it on every day. Maybe he found stories from another world interesting?”
The news, huh.
That definitely didn’t give me any solid clues.
In that case.
It’s better to leave this to an expert.
“Ms. Eunhyeon.”
As I called out while looking around, a silver fox appeared on top of a telephone pole.
Leaping down lightly, she swayed her tail.
“Silver Fox, you were still following us?”
“Of course. It is Lady Seol-hyang’s order.”
Ms. Eunhyeon replied to Ahyu’s question.
I may have gotten much stronger recently, but I was still a long way from being on par with a returnee.
“Ms. Eunhyeon, you can sense things, right? Would you be able to find Do Hwa for us?”
“I will look for him.”
After giving a reliable answer, Ms. Eunhyeon did a somersault and vanished with a pop.
Watching her go, I looked down at Ahyu.
“Should we ask the others?”
“Nah. With Silver Fox on the case, it won’t make much difference how many people are looking. Let’s just go look around together, you and me.”
Taking her word, Ahyu and I started visiting places we thought Do Hwa might have gone.
The first place we went was a supermarket near Ahyu’s house.
It was a pretty big supermarket, and Ahyu was looking around while clinging to my arm.
“You said Do Hwa has been gone for about a day, right?”
“Yeah. He left yesterday morning and hasn’t come back.”
Ahyu said she initially thought he would be back by evening.
But when night passed and morning came with no sign of him, she finally started searching on her own before calling me.
“Is there any reason Do Hwa would come to a supermarket?”
“He asked me where he should buy ingredients, so I told him.”
“So he was cooking, too.”
“The food was good.”
Is he a perfect housewife?
“For the record, it’s not that I can’t cook. Do Hwa said he would do it, so I let him.”
“I haven’t said a word.”
“Hey, your eyes say you don’t believe me. Domi-oppa, you just wait. I’ll cook for you at your place.”
Will my stomach be okay then?
“A-And after I cook for you, and we’re full… w-we could… sleep over. Yeah.”
Saying that with her face beet red was so typically Ahyu.
“Ahyu.”
In that moment, something occurred to me.
“Oh, uh, yeah? Why? D-Don’t you want to sleep with me?”
“No, I’d like that, but…”
“Eek!?”
I caught Ahyu as her legs were about to give out in surprise and said.
“Do Hwa… what if he just gave up and went back?”
“Huh?”
Ahyu, who was holding onto my arm, widened her eyes.
Going back.
It seemed Ahyu hadn’t considered that possibility.
“He’s been here for a month. He couldn’t exactly drag you back by force. So what if he finally gave up and went back?”
“…I guess that’s possible.”
Hearing my words, Ahyu fell into thought for a moment.
“But even if he goes back, he can’t save Murim. So what would be the point?”
“You said Do Hwa was watching the news constantly.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe he found some kind of method from the news.”
“Is there really a method you could find on the news?”
I had just thrown it out there as a guess, so it was a bit vague.
“…Maybe he found someone related to Murim?”
“A returnee, you mean?”
Ahyu scratched her head.
“Besides me, they’re all scrubs, so I wouldn’t know.”
Quite the statement.
“What’s been on the news most often recently?”
“From what I’ve seen, the incident in Jung-gu seems to come up the most.”
The Jung-gu incident meant the matter with Girasung and the World Returnee Association.
As Ahyu mentioned that incident, she suddenly stopped talking.
Did she remember something?
“Ahyu, did you think of something?”
“Uh, no, it’s just… umm, there was this one person who used to be called the Hero of a Turbulent Age.”
“Hero of a Turbulent Age?”
“Yeah. It was before I became Cheon Hong-ryeon. Everyone used to say that if he had been around, Murim wouldn’t have ended up in such a state. Because that hero was the master of both the founder of the Murim Alliance and the Supreme Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult.”
The master of the Murim Alliance’s founder and the Demonic Cult’s Supreme Leader.
What kind of person could he have been?
His two disciples ended up on completely opposite sides.
“Where is he now?”
“He died before I was even transmigrated there. Without any clear reason. The problem is, because of that, the Murim Alliance blamed the Demonic Cult, and the Demonic Cult blamed the Murim Alliance, and their relationship hit rock bottom.”
After saying that, Ahyu looked up at me.
“In Jung-gu, people were brought back to life thanks to Juksim, right?”
“…So you’re saying Do Hwa might be thinking that if he could just revive that hero, he could save Murim?”
It was a leap in logic, but as a desperate attempt to grasp at any clue, it wasn’t a bad one.
“Yeah. So he might be trying to find Juksim.”
Juksim said a soul only lingers for three days, so she wouldn’t be able to revive someone who died so long ago.
But Do Hwa doesn’t know that.
So, rather than relying on Ahyu, he might have decided to find a way himself, gathered information from the news, and come up with this idea.
“But how would he know where Juksim is?”
Juksim is always at home.
Her appearance is nothing but a vague rumor among people, nothing concrete. Could he really find her?
“I know Do Hwa has learned a lot of miscellaneous secret techniques. He probably knows one that lets him trace past events at the scene of an incident.”
“Then Do Hwa is now…”
“There’s a high chance he’s in Jung-gu.”
My eyes and Ahyu’s met at the same time.
The two of us nodded and immediately left the supermarket.
Just then, my phone started to ring.
The caller was none other than Ms. Eunhyeon.
“Ms. Eunhyeon, did you find him?”
[Well, it seems something has happened.]
Ms. Eunhyeon paused for a moment before telling me.
[I’ve found traces of a fight between the Heavenly Demon’s brother and someone else.]
Something was starting to happen.
*
I hurried to Jung-gu with Ahyu.
Because the place where Ms. Eunhyeon had found traces of Do Hwa was, in fact, Jung-gu.
When we arrived, we saw a wall covered in a mess of sword marks.
Thanks to a spell Ms. Eunhyeon had cast, they weren't visible to ordinary people.
But anyone could tell that the situation was serious.
“…This side is Do Hwa’s, that’s for sure.”
Ahyu said, as if she had figured something out just from the sword paths on the wall.
To my eyes, they all looked like the same sword marks, but it seemed she could see something more.
“And the other side?”
“The Demonic Cult…”
Ahyu’s eyes narrowed.
The Demonic Cult… they were the ones Ahyu commanded like her own limbs back when she was the Heavenly Demon in that other world.
“Why would those people attack Do Hwa?”
“I don’t know that part. I’ll have to ask that punk Do Hwa myself.”
Ahyu bit her lip and let out a long sigh.
“…Maybe I should have talked more with that guy.”
Ahyu had been reluctant to talk to Do Hwa.
That must be why she hadn’t had any real conversations with him, even while living together.
Before Ahyu could get any more depressed, I turned the topic back to Ms. Eunhyeon.
“Ms. Eunhyeon, is there anything else besides this?”
“The trail ends here. I am expanding my detection range, but there have been no results yet.”
As Ms. Eunhyeon said that, Ahyu shook off her gloomy mood and looked back at her.
“Didn’t we close the dimensional gate Do Hwa opened? How did these guys crawl through?”
“That was only a temporary measure. The dimension around the Seoul area is so unstable right now that the gate isn’t closing properly. Moreover, because the dimension is unstable, it is extremely difficult to check for dimensional intrusions.”
It seemed that even for the World Returnee Association, there was nothing they could do about the dimension itself being unstable.
“That’s because jurisdiction over Earth’s dimension is held solely by the Tower of Revelation.”
And Baeksan also added the reason why the World Returnee Association had such a hard time with dimensional matters.
If it weren’t for the Tower of Revelation, they could intervene and try to stabilize the dimension.
But since the Tower of Revelation holds the dimension itself, intervention is impossible.
‘It’s like trying to observe the moon not by looking at it directly, but only by its reflection in the water.’
It must be an extremely frustrating situation not just for the World Returnee Association, but for any organization or nation dealing with dimensions.
“I will send people to the Heavenly Demon’s dimensional gate again. And I will continue the search for the Heavenly Demon’s half-brother.”
After Ms. Eunhyeon said that and disappeared, Ahyu let out a deep sigh.
It seemed she was tired of the life of Cheon Hong-ryeon, which she thought she had left behind, constantly resurfacing.
“Ahyu, was Do Hwa hurt?”
“…Yeah, but it’s strange. For his hair to be dyed the color of plum blossoms, he must have surpassed the Hwagyeong stage and be on the verge of Hyeongyeong. Even though it was a dimensional gate I had already opened, he still had to force his way through.”
Ahyu said, brushing back her hair, which was turning red.
It seemed that Ahyu’s red hair and Do Hwa’s plum-blossom-colored hair were signs of reaching a certain level of mastery.
“But the sword paths themselves show no attacks at all, only defense.”
“These people also crossed dimensions like Do Hwa, right? Doesn’t that mean the ones from the Demonic Cult are also formidable figures?”
“They’re not that weak, but they’re not on Do Hwa’s level. These guys just followed the dimensional path that Do Hwa had already opened.”
Do Hwa had been severely injured crossing over to this dimension.
But thanks to Do Hwa paving the way, the people from the Demonic Cult were able to cross over more easily.
“The problem is, I don’t sense any hostility from Do Hwa’s side of the fight.”
“That means he knew his attackers.”
Hearing that, Ahyu’s eyes slowly turned red as she revealed a thick killing intent.
Grind—
“How dare those bastards from the Demonic Cult cause a ruckus in the place where I, the head of the Demonic Cult, live…”
I went behind her, wrapped my arms around her waist, and lifted her up.
Ahyu, being shorter than me, was lifted right off the ground.
“Stop being grumpy. Let’s go find Do Hwa, too.”
“…Alright.”
It’s nice that she listens well.
When I set Ahyu back down, she glanced at the sword marks again.
She looked like something was still bothering her.
“So, is there a way to find that guy Do Hwa?”
Ahyu asked, looking at me.
It seemed he was being chased, but with no clues, she asked out of frustration.
“Ahyu, the fact that Do Hwa came to Jung-gu means he came looking for Juksim, right?”
Hearing that, Ahyu’s eyes shot open.
“Then.”
“Would a cat pass by a fish?”
The answer is simple.
We’ll know if we go to Juksim.