Ghosts Die, and People Get Wrecked (4)
“…….”
“…….”
The Mount Hua disciples stared at the person before them with complicated expressions.
“So, um—”
“…….”
The man wore a pale white robe from head to toe, clearly the garb of a person, but his face was a little too battered to confidently call human anymore.
Twice as swollen.
Looks like a steamed bun.
How badly did they beat him?
Baek Cheon, who had been looking at the pitifully battered man with a faintly sympathetic face, gave a small cough.
“Ahem. So, you’re saying he’s a disciple of this Ghost Sect?”
“……yep.”
“Ghost Sect, you say……”
Baek Cheon trailed off for a moment in thought, then tilted his head.
“Have you heard of it, Jo Gul?”
“Nope. First time I’m hearing it.”
The Mount Hua disciples looked back at the man with a touch of awkwardness.
“Uh…… sorry, but we’re not all that well-informed.”
Something like grievance flickered across the purple, puffed-up face of the Ghost Sect disciple.
And then Chung Myung frowned slightly.
“Ghost Sect?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve heard there was such a place, but this is my first time actually seeing one of them. What I heard was, um…… their footwork was insanely good, and they were the best under heaven at it…….”
“That’s right.”
“They hide their presence and fly around like ghosts…….”
“That’s right.”
Chung Myung nodded with a disgusted look on his face.
“It all checks out.”
Now that he heard it, it was odd he hadn’t recognized it sooner. Though hearing about something and seeing it with your own eyes were different matters, so that much made sense.
Baek Cheon, listening with a serious face, asked, “Are they a demonic sect?”
“Not really. If I had to categorize them, they’d be somewhere between righteous and evil, but…….”
Chung Myung shrugged.
“Even so, they’re ghosts.”
“They’re people.”
“Then they’re thieves.”
The Ghost Sect disciple tried to protest his innocence, but his swollen face simply would not cooperate with him.
Baek Cheon looked at the Ghost Sect disciple as though he wanted to say something, slightly flustered.
“Well, then. Um…… hmm. Um…….”
After hesitating for a moment, he scratched the back of his head, looking a little embarrassed.
“Sorry, but what’s your age rank? Your face is a bit too liberated right now for me to guess.”
“…….”
The Ghost Sect disciple closed his eyes tightly, anguish etched across his face.
There isn’t a single easy one among them.
This bastard looked perfectly normal, but he somehow picked the most infuriating thing to say every time.
“……I’m over forty.”
“Then you’re my senior.”
“……In this state?”
At the slightly sullen tone that slipped from the Ghost Sect disciple’s mouth, Chung Myung canted his head.
“What, this bastard hasn’t been hit enough?”
The moment Chung Myung tightened his grip on the shovel again, the Ghost Sect disciple—his face already a vivid bruised purple—backed away, trembling.
“S-sorry……”
“Gul.”
Baek Cheon said, “Yes, Sasuk?”
“Shove some candied fruit in that bastard’s mouth. He’s starting again.”
“Yes.”
Jo Gul dragged Chung Myung away by the arm.
Even while being hauled off, Chung Myung kept glaring and shouting the whole time.
“Answer properly! Before I make you transcend!”
Baek Cheon, looking like his head was throbbing, shook it and turned back to the Ghost Sect disciple.
“But why in the world were you doing something like this?”
“W-well…….”
The Ghost Sect disciple glanced at Chung Myung, who was being dragged away, and began to speak.
“I’m Gye Hyeong of the twelfth generation of the Ghost Sect. In the martial world, I’m known as the Shadowless Ghost.”
At that, Chung Myung, who had been going along obediently, shook Jo Gul off and came back.
“A guy nobody’s heard of still somehow has an epithet?”
“…….”
Baek Cheon signaled to Jo Gul and said with a pitiful expression, “Don’t mind him and continue. That’s just how he is.”
“…….”
“Those thief bastards!”
“Please ignore him.”
Gye Hyeong lifted his head and looked up at the sky.
Just kill me already, you lot.
One cursed at him while another comforted him; it felt like having carrots shoved into his mouth while a whip landed on his ass.
Which rhythm was he supposed to dance to, exactly?
If he’d known the Mount Hua brats were this vicious, he would have run without looking back.
“So you’re Senior Gye.”
“……Senior is too much of an honor for me. Just call me Shadowless Ghost.”
“Couldn’t do that. I’ll call you Mister Gye instead. Anyway…… Mister Gye, why are you here?”
“Well…….”
Gye Hyeong let out a long sigh and began to explain.
“The place where you built that pavilion is actually one of our Ghost Sect’s branches. To be precise, it should be called an Annex.”
“……An annex?”
Baek Cheon frowned.
He had heard the term before. People whose identities had to remain hidden as much as possible—assassins, thieves, and the like—would build secret hideouts called annexes all over the place and use them whenever necessary.
“This place?”
“Yes.”
“……Here?”
Gye Hyeong coughed awkwardly.
“W-well, of course this is a little bewildering. It does seem strange to have an annex here.”
“……It does.”
What kind of lunatic would build a hideout in the most bustling part of Xi’an? No matter how dark the lamp’s base, there were limits.
“Th-this annex was built over two hundred years ago. Back then, Xi’an wasn’t nearly this crowded, and I heard there wasn’t even a proper road leading this way.”
“Ah…….”
If it was that old, then it made sense.
Yoon Jong, who had been listening quietly, let out a sound of understanding.
“Ah. So that’s why people said ghosts appeared in the abandoned house before?”
“……Yes. That was us.”
“…….”
At the Mount Hua disciples’ dry stares, Gye Hyeong protested bitterly.
“This place was originally a building we constructed, after all. But over two hundred years, Xi’an slowly expanded, people began settling around it, and at some point they just started occupying the empty buildings however they pleased…….”
“But wasn’t it actually empty?”
“……It was.”
Gye Hyeong coughed.
“Still…… because of our line of work, we couldn’t come forward as the owners. It wasn’t the first time or even the second.”
Baek Cheon nodded as if he finally understood.
“So you pretended to be ghosts and chased people away. If rumors spread that this was a haunted house, no one would want to live here.”
“Yes, exactly. And as you can see, our martial arts are perfectly suited to that sort of act.”
“……Right.”
“We really did think they were ghosts.”
“At that point, you might as well count them as ghosts.”
Something wrapped in a pale, hazy blur flew around at a speed the eye could barely follow—what else could it be but a ghost? Especially when you couldn’t even feel their presence.
Gye Hyeong nodded vigorously.
“The ruse worked pretty well, and in fact there were no major problems until now. So when I came to Xi’an this time to manage things…… the abandoned house I’d painstakingly maintained, always on the verge of collapsing but never quite collapsing, was gone without a trace…….”
“……And in its place, a bunch of sword-wielding Taoist bastards.”
“Sword-wielding Taoist bastards, yes.”
“Putting myself in your shoes, that sounds like hell.”
With sympathy coming at him from every direction, Gye Hyeong nodded with a face like he might burst into tears at any moment.
“Th-that…… um…… it feels a little strange to say this in front of all of you, but when I learned those Taoists were the Mount Hua Sect—whose name has recently spread throughout the world…… I truly, truly couldn’t……”
“Sorry.”
“My apologies.”
They hadn’t actually done anything wrong, but somehow they felt like they should apologize anyway.
“S-so I figured I’d do whatever I could to make them think it was haunted again and drive people away like before. That was all I could do.”
Only then did the Mount Hua disciples nod, finally understanding the full story.
“……If you think about it, it doesn’t seem like he did anything that bad.”
“True. He didn’t hurt anybody; he just pretended to be a ghost and scared people.”
“He got beaten way too much for what he actually did.”
“Way too much.”
“Yep. Way too much.”
Sympathetic looks poured down on Gye Hyeong.
Under those pitying gazes, Gye Hyeong felt like tears might really come.
What sin did I commit in a past life
to meet monsters like this?
“Enough.”
But the monster in question didn’t seem interested in Gye Hyeong’s hardships at all.
“So this is your house?”
“W-well, yes.”
“Got proof?”
“……Pardon?”
Chung Myung asked with a sour face.
“Proof that this was your pavilion?”
“……Proof?”
Gye Hyeong blinked.
“N-no, I mean, proof isn’t exactly……”
They had already turned it into a haunted ruin to hide that it was theirs. What proof could there possibly be?
“We bought this. We even have the deed, see?”
“Th-that’s…….”
“And also.”
Chung Myung grinned and pointed his chin toward the excavated pit.
“Anything found in the ground belongs to the owner of that land. That’s the law.”
“What?”
“That’s ours now.”
Chung Myung smiled brightly enough to blind.
“If you feel wronged, go complain to the authorities.”
“…….”
Gye Hyeong stared at Chung Myung with a dazed expression. Then, with great difficulty, he opened his mouth.
“Excuse me…….”
“What?”
“I-I mean, it’s a bit…… strange to judge matters of the martial world by secular law……”
“Aren’t martial artists still people? Wow, big problem with you, huh?”
“……Th-that’s…….”
Flustered, Gye Hyeong hurried to defend himself.
“T-there’s that secret chamber over there, isn’t there! Just as I said! Wouldn’t that practically count as proof?”
“How’s that proof? We dug first, and then you showed up.”
“…….”
“If a gold chest shows up under your house and I go there and insist I buried it, does that make it mine?”
“N-no, that wouldn’t…….”
At the torrent of twisted logic, Gye Hyeong looked as if his soul was slipping out through his ears.
“Enough.”
Chung Myung smiled thinly.
“Anyway, that’s ours, so. Don’t make this long. Get out of the estate. If you keep sneaking around one more time, I’ll really make you transcend.”
“W-what kind of law is this…….”
“Is there a law saying you can come to someone else’s house and pretend to be ghosts to drive people away?”
Gye Hyeong flinched.
“You should count yourself lucky. If I were in a bad mood, you really would’ve become a ghost.”
Chung Myung gave his shoulder a couple of light taps, then turned away. But the moment he did—
“Th-there’s no treasure in there.”
Thunk.
Chung Myung’s body froze in place.
And a moment later, his neck twisted in a bizarre arc as he looked back over his shoulder.
“……What?”
From Chung Myung’s mouth came a voice several times more eerie and terrifying than when Gye Hyeong had been pretending to be a ghost.
Hiiik!
Panicking, Gye Hyeong quickly corrected himself.
“N-no, I mean valuables! There aren’t any valuables, that is! Nothing else is in there…….”
“Really?”
Chung Myung’s face lit up again, bright as melting snow.
“Aha, that doesn’t matter. If you can make money off it, it’s treasure. So what’s in there?”
“Th-that…….”
Gye Hyeong hesitated, his lips working soundlessly.
Then Chung Myung stepped forward and patted his shoulder.
“You’re making this needlessly difficult. At this rate, I’ll just have to go in and check myself. The end result’s the same anyway, so let’s not waste energy.”
At that, Gye Hyeong let out a deep sigh, as though he had given up on everything.
“……It’s the Sect Leader’s Token.”
“Huh?”
“The Sect Leader’s Token. Inside that warehouse is the Ghost Sect’s Sect Leader’s Token.”
“……What?”
Even Chung Myung, of all people, couldn’t hide his surprise this time.
“The Sect Leader’s Token?”
“……Yes.”
“You mean the token that represents the authority of the sect leader and oversees all the sect’s major affairs?”
“Yes.”
“The one that, depending on the situation, can even have more power than the sect leader himself?”
“……That’s right.”
“That’s in there?”
Gye Hyeong nodded weakly. This was supposed to be absolutely secret, but there was no way he had the power to stop what was happening here anyway.
That demon-like bastard was going to open it up and search it no matter what.
“Why is that here?”
“……It’s a long story. The thing is…….”
“If it’s long, forget it. Don’t explain.”
“…….”
Then why did you ask, you bastard?
“Hmm. So the Sect Leader’s Token is in there.”
“Yes. It’s an extremely important object to the Ghost Sect, so please…….”
“The Sect Leader’s Token……”
“……Yes?”
The corners of Chung Myung’s mouth began to curl upward.
“So you’re saying there’s a token in there—a Sect Leader’s Token—that lets whoever holds it issue commands on the same level as the sect leader, right?”
“…….”
“Really? Hehehehe. That’s what you’re saying? Ehehehehehe!”
“…….”
Like a child who had just been handed his favorite toy, Chung Myung began to laugh with unclouded delight.
In an instant, Gye Hyeong felt a chill too horrible to describe and called to him hesitantly, unable to hide his unease.
“S-so, young taoist?”
“No, no.”
“……Pardon?”
Chung Myung straightened his shoulders and looked at Gye Hyeong with an expression of boundless benevolence.
“From now on, you should call me Lord Sect Leader’s Token.”
“…….”
“I’ll be counting on you. Hehehe.”
What are you counting on, you crazy bastard…….
Seriously, there’s no answer to this, there really isn’t…….
Gye Hyeong, who had been hanging on by a thread, finally clutched the back of his neck and toppled backward.