Female General Lee Cheong-ha's Conspiracy (1)
That afternoon, on the very day the Empress Dowager ordered the man to learn martial arts, a crash-course in imperial martial training began at the Seoha Kingdom palace.
“…We will start with the horse stance. Watch closely and follow my lead.”
General Lee Cheong-ha, a thirty-year-old female commander who had taken charge of the man’s martial education at the scholars’ urging—since he seemed unable to remember written texts—demonstrated the horse stance first on the training grounds.
A few martial artists watching gasped in admiration at the general’s flawless horse stance, worthy of an external arts manual. The man, however, merely looked bored and made no move to imitate her.
“Is the posture too difficult?”
Though a collateral member of the imperial family, General Lee Cheong-ha tried her best to treat the man—who had become the Empress Dowager’s favored lover—with the utmost respect. Yet his absurd demand left her speechless.
“Don’t know, like this! Know! Take it off.”
Enraged by the humiliating order to strip and perform the stance, the general nearly shouted at the dim-witted man. But catching the Empress Dowager’s icy glare from afar, she quickly regained her composure and obeyed.
“Ugh… Is this enough?”
Clenching her teeth, General Lee Cheong-ha removed her armor and the undergarments beneath, revealing a plain white breast wrap and loincloth that contrasted sharply with her toned abs.
—Glare!
When the general’s furious gaze swept the hall—excluding the Empress Dowager—lower-ranking civil and military officials quietly slipped away. Even after she resumed the horse stance, the man shook his head, still looking thoroughly unimpressed.
“Don’t know, muscles! Take off! You! Underclothes.”
“Y-you bastard…!”
The general, whose loyalty and devotion had never wavered since entering imperial service, flushed crimson and glared as if she would kill him. At the Empress Dowager’s quiet command, however, she lowered her eyes.
“Why are you not stripping yet, General Lee?”
“Kuh… Your Majesty the Empress Dowager! I-I beg your pardon! I shall remove them at once!”
—Rustle, rustle!
General Lee Cheong-ha carefully set aside her breast wrap and loincloth, then assumed the horse stance once more with a mortified expression. Though her thighs spread wide, a damp golden tuft of hair remained visible over her tightly closed privates.
“Hnn… Is this sufficient?”
Even though it was a posture she often took during training, shame caused sticky fluid to well up from her lower lips.
—Squish!
—Step, step.
“!?”
The man was not the type to simply watch such a sight.
—Grab!
“Kyaaah♡ W-what are you—!”
—Lick!
The man dipped his fingers into the liquid trailing down her inner thighs and tasted it, then spoke with the solemn air of a head chef.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm! Virgin. You. Taste!”
—Stumble!
“What the hell are you doing, you son of a—!”
Before General Lee Cheong-ha could finish her outburst, the Empress Dowager sharply rebuked the man.
“You insolent fool! Can you not take this seriously?”
“But… she’s trash, that pussy bitch!”
The man’s oddly corrected speech drew no rebuke for its rudeness. Instead, the Empress Dowager’s elder brother, who had been observing, made a suggestion.
“It might be wise to have the general and the man spar right now.”
If the man won, they would gain a skilled fighter of equal caliber. Even if he lost, it would give the military faction—including the general—a chance to avenge the recent humiliation. The proposal held no downside for the Empress Dowager, who nodded in agreement.
“Then, in one quarter of an hour, we shall hold a sparring match between General Lee and Banryong on this very spot.”
Banryong—Half-Dragon—was the nickname the palace maids had given the man, noting that while half his face was ruined, the other half was handsome. The Empress Dowager, pleased that the character for “dragon” was included, had officially bestowed it upon him as a name.
General Lee Cheong-ha hurriedly donned her underclothes, robes, and light armor, then chose a wooden sword. This training ground, where she drilled daily, contained both ordinary wooden swords and ones studded with thick iron nails. Normally she would have fought fairly with a standard sword, but after the earlier humiliation, she had no intention of letting the shameless man leave unscathed.
‘I’ll turn him into a complete cripple…’
“Begin!”
As the match started, a blue haze rose from the wooden sword in General Lee Cheong-ha’s hand.
—Fwoosh!
It was the sword aura of the Blue Wilderness Sword Art she favored, pushed to its peak. Though the Seoha imperial martial arts were considered inferior to those of the Central Plains, her skill was first-rate even by Central Plains standards.
—Shhhk!
“No! General Lee! Sword aura in a spar? What are you doing!”
Before the Empress Dowager’s elder brother, the Grand General, could intervene, her wooden sword shot toward Banryong, who stood casually holding a worn wooden sword without even assuming a proper stance.
—Clang!
When Banryong spun his sword like a calligraphy brush and deflected the blow, General Lee Cheong-ha’s sword flew from her grasp and landed three yards away.
“Hah!”
Startled, the general stepped back, then formed hand seals and assumed a proper stance against Banryong.
“Not bad. Try this!”
This time she unleashed the Horseback Pursuit Fist Art at full power. Originally a brutal technique used centuries ago by the female warriors of the Qiang tribe—ancestors of the Tangut people—during coming-of-age rites to subdue and abduct men from neighboring tribes, she now employed it solely to crush the man before her.
—Rat-tat-tat-tat!
—Shhhk!
Once again, vivid blue energy wrapped around her hands and surged toward him. Banryong merely grinned and set his wooden sword on the ground.
—Thud!
—Slide!
After dodging her strike by half a step, he seized the general’s belt and drove his knee mercilessly into her exposed abdomen.
—Grab!
—Thud!
“Kuh-heeeek!”
As her limbs went limp from the internal shock, Banryong grabbed her belt and delivered a powerful slap to her unprotected buttocks.
—Smack!
“Kyaaah!”
The sight of the usually stern and dignified general—whose youthful appearance belied her age—letting out such a girlish scream left the entire hall speechless, including the Empress Dowager, the palace guards, attendants, and high officials.
“…”
Taking the silence as approval, Banryong continued slapping her rear.
—Smack! Smack! Smack!
“Kyaaah! Stop… hnnng♡ Enough! Stop… hiiiit♡”
Under his merciless strikes, the outer layer of her clothing tore away from her buttocks, exposing her plump, reddened rear just as it had been moments earlier when she was naked.
—Smack!
“Haaah♡”
As her cries grew increasingly lewd, the Empress Dowager’s elder brother finally stepped in.
“Ahem. Enough! The match is over!”
“Bad girl! Stupid female! Horse stance! Not enough! Spanking!”
“Ugh… You’re eyeing other females again! Banryong’s exclusive female is sad…”
—Thud!
—Squirt! Squirt!
“Heeeh♡”
Banryong, understanding the Empress Dowager’s lewd implication, dropped the general—now dripping sticky fluid between her reddened cheeks—onto the floor.
“He’s strangely sharp…”
One of the watching scholars muttered after observing Banryong’s behavior, and most of the hall nodded in agreement.
“Maybe that bastard isn’t actually an idiot…”
Another voice murmured as people began filing out of the training grounds.
Meanwhile, the Sex Demon Cult headquarters—where the Young Cult Leader had vanished into the sky mid-intercourse—descended into utter chaos.
“Haaah! Gaaah!”
Dang Seo-rin’s agonized wails echoed toward the hole in the ceiling as she applied stinging ointment to the bruise above her privates. Other women who had enjoyed the Young Cult Leader’s favor also wept and searched desperately for him.
“Darling! Where are you hiding?”
“Young Cult Leader! Where did you gooo!”
Amid their grief-stricken cries, only one man remained calm, sitting in his office and calmly handling documents as usual.
“Kuh! Great Elder! Why aren’t you looking for the Young Cult Leader?”
“Yeah! Mister Han! You’re way too relaxed! Do you know something we don’t?”
When the Ping sisters glared at Great Elder Han Go-sam with teary, venomous eyes, he sighed and stood up.
“Haa… Supreme Elder, and Great Elder Ping.”
“”Huh?””
“Have you checked the Young Cult Leader’s stele?”
“”Stele?””
When a Young Cult Leader ascended, a stele was erected. The names of female cultists who resolved to become the Young Cult Leader’s exclusive women were carved into it, and the monument possessed a hidden function unknown even to most within the cult.
“There have been seventeen previous Sex Demons and Young Cult Leaders who held the position. Yet why has no stele of theirs ever appeared outside during the thousand-plus years this headquarters has remained hidden?”
—Shake shake
Confused by the sudden talk of steles, the sisters could only shake their heads.
“It is because…”
Han Go-sam explained that when a Young Cult Leader or Sex Demon died, their stele would shatter on the spot.
“That makes sense?”
“Honestly, I’ve never seen it myself, but I once heard testimony from someone who witnessed it ninety years ago when the previous Young Cult Leader passed.”
Han Go-sam deliberately omitted that the witness had been the now-vanished Holy Maiden, Sa Jo-yeong.
“Besides, with the Young Cult Leader absent, how can the two of you—responsible for maintaining order—behave so recklessly? I, Han Go-sam, am deeply disappointed by this spectacle. How saddened the Young Cult Leader would be to see this! Stop crying at once! Now!”
“”Ugh… Now!””
The sisters had never seen Han Go-sam so stern before. He had always played with them cheerfully despite the age gap and helped train their external arts foundations, but this resolute side appeared only now that they were over thirty.
“Then go check if the stele is intact first.”
With that, he returned to his seat and waved them away. The sisters headed for the stele.
“”!””
The massive monument was densely inscribed with nearly a thousand women’s names in small script, including those newly carved in recent days.
“Ahem!”
At the very top, the character “Gal” from Gal Du-ryeon’s name had been crossed out in an X shape, replaced by the character “Ping” bestowed by the Young Cult Leader, forming Ping Du-ryeon’s name.
Still unaware that her tears had not yet dried, Ping Du-ryeon stood with proud shoulders. Ping Bo-ryeon could only stare in disbelief.
That night.
<Come quickly!>
<Yes! Yes! I’m coming!>
Under cover of darkness, a certain pregnant woman who had been recuperating deep within the headquarters slipped out with her maid, using swift movement arts to escape the cult’s grounds.