042
042
Thieves have their ranks.
A third-rate petty thief is caught even before he tries to steal—his intention exposed to the owner. A second-rate thief is discovered in the middle of the act, red-handed among another's goods.
A first-rate thief succeeds in taking the item, but leaves behind the faintest trace. And a flying thief, who surpasses all first-rate, ensures no one but himself ever knows that something was taken from another.
"Heh-heh, youth truly is wonderful."
With every sense in my body, I focused on the shaft that had slipped within the deeply sleeping Namgung Yurin. Inside her slumbering body, my member stirred, as though she herself were shifting ever so slightly while a thief crept through her chambers.
Smoothly.
Though it was narrow and tight, the shaft pushed forward slowly. Like a thief sneaking past every trap, I pressed my organ deeper without even drawing a breath.
'Normally the main gate would still be there, and an alarm would ring. Heh heh.'
I had already flung that gate wide open back in the woods. The pain of deflowering and the mental shock had already been soothed the moment she set foot in the ward, and I had taken every precaution by burning sleep incense and all manner of medicinal herbs so that every last bit of tension in her body would ease.
Squelch, squelch.
Thanks to that, Namgung Yurin was so deeply asleep she had no idea what was happening beneath her own body. To keep her from waking, I continuously pressed her pubic mound with my thumb and spread my Yang Energy.
"Hn...."
My Yang Energy surged upward from Namgung Yurin's pubic bone. The branching flow of that energy, spreading left and right from her lower dantian, matched my manhood's temperature to her body heat, so that the sleeping mistress of the house would not be roused.
"Heh heh, she won't even know my thing is sliding in and out."
Human body temperature is constant, but it shifts a little when blood rushes or a person sweats. Martial artists sensitive to qi can instantly detect even the slightest difference, and the heat my meat rod gives off—a fiery club in its own right—would be noticed before it even entered.
Squelch, squelch.
Yet Namgung Yurin lay sleeping soundly. Her modest but definitely present mounds rose and fell, and I thrust my shaft in as though riding the moment those little hills lifted.
'I thought she'd be fierce, but surprisingly her insides are meek!'
Was this what people meant by strength on the outside and softness within?
The future False Tear Flower had resisted me until the moment she died with every last drop of her internal qi plundered, never once relaxing her strength. That certainly had the flavor of breaking down a mighty iron gate, but sometimes it's also necessary to overcome an opponent with softness.
- Keeping the other person asleep is the true master's path in sleep rape. Any bastards who drug them are nothing but heretics, I tell you, heretics! If you just dope them up and start pounding, what kind of sleep rape is that?!
That was what the Blood Cult Leader once said. The night is silent and deep, and slipping away unnoticed while the other person sleeps—that is the truest form of the flying thief's art.
She repeated time and again that, when taking a sleeping woman in the night, the most crucial thing is to make absolutely certain the other party never wakes up in between, and I faithfully followed the Blood Cult Leader's words.
'You were right.'
"Uung...."
I, the strongest being after the Gucheon Hyeonnyeo, felt my heart sink at a mere woman's moan. Where else could a peak expert ever experience this kind of heart-stopping thrill, as if teetering on the brink of life and death?
'I'm a little worried she might wake up, but I just have to make sure she doesn't.'
Ultimately, it all comes down to splitting the flower, taking her, leaving behind a man's trace, and departing.
- A true thief is one who violates another without her even knowing she has been violated.
The Bandit Demon—later called the Flying Shadow Divine Thief—went around boasting that he'd never been caught sneaking into women's chambers at night, but that was a direct violation of the Blood Cult Leader's teachings.
'If you're not going to pull off a flying thief's job and leave no trace, you might as well just go in, spray your load, and settle for being a first-rate thief.'
I would leave a trace and become a first-rate thief. Only, I would make it so Namgung Yurin never realized I had come and gone, reach the peak, and then leave my thick mark inside her room before departing.
Squish, squish.
Amid the chirping of insects, the wet sounds of a man and woman joining together resounded. The quiet room, empty save for us, was filled with nothing but the noise of a flower being trampled underfoot, and though someone might have noticed, no one did.
"Haaah...."
Even the woman being trampled—Namgung Yurin herself—did not. Because I matched her body temperature so that she felt nothing strange, thrusting in and out in time with the rhythm of her breathing, Namgung Yurin never dreamed she was being violated.
Could she even imagine it! That she'd come to a physician to heal the wound from being violated by the Blade Demon, only for that physician to put her to sleep and violate her himself.
'Since she's asleep, she's practically a heavenly Celestial Maiden.'
Bathed in the moonlight slipping through the window, her tightly shut eyes and the soft smile on her lips showed not a trace of earthly miasma. So much so that one could doubt whether this was the same woman who constantly provoked and sneered at Sagong Hee.
'She's so charming because she's meek!'
When her flower petals were spread wide open, she was so garish as to be almost repulsive, but seeing her quietly closed like this, she even exuded an elegant dignity.
'But once she wakes up, she'll probably bare her teeth at everything, right?'
I could tell. Even without knowing the future, I could tell well enough from the lower body I had right then inside her.
"Haa... so warm...."
Namgung Yurin twisted her body slightly, smiled, and then let the corners of her mouth drop again. I was pushing the head in and pulling it out at a pace slower than a turtle's crawl, yet that was enough to heat her body up and make her leak faint moans.
'This bitch would love it even if adultery were done painfully slowly.'
Thinking about it again, I felt deeply resentful toward the Blade Demon. If the Blade Demon had suffered from delayed ejaculation instead of premature ejaculation, I could have fully enjoyed the depths of Namgung Yurin's body, but because that bastard was a premature ejaculator with his dagger, I'd had no choice but to release the illusion technique early.
"Aah... dear brother, a little more...."
At Namgung Yurin's mumbling words, my movements instantly stopped.
'Did she wake up?'
Gulp. I grew tense, wondering if I needed to cast the illusion technique right that moment. Namgung Yurin, who had been pursing her lips, drifted back into sleep with a squelching sound.
"Eugh, I'm about to—, kheup."
Pfffft, pfft.
"...That was close."
Namgung Yurin, a terrifying woman.
'To make one of the Ten Great Masters of the World nearly lose it—what a fearsome woman she is!'
I carefully gathered up the Yang Energy that was leaking from Namgung Yurin's insides.
'It's fun, so I'll keep going.'
The night is long.
* * *
Morning came.
After greeting the sunrise with that all-night messy yin-yang union with Namgung Yurin, I fixed up my face to look as gaunt as possible, returned to the role of the physician, and went to greet her. Around the bed where she lay, all sorts of medicinal ingredients and acupuncture needles were scattered, and I, dripping with sweat, waved my hand at the newly awakened Namgung Yurin.
"Are you coming to your senses? Please check your condition."
"Ah...."
Namgung Yurin smiled at me, having even forgotten she was naked. Her eyes looked upon me as though she were gazing at a savior of her life, and I felt a sense of moral degeneracy. Her pubic mound was spotless.
"I truly... thank you. I thought I'd never be able to marry for the rest of my life."
"Do not worry. I will bury this matter forever."
Truth number one. It was I who carved the wound onto her pubic mound so that she couldn't marry.
"I won't ask how such a thing came to happen. Take good care of your body."
"...It was those sons of bitches from the Demonic Cult who did this to me."
Truth number two. That son of a bitch is me.
"Kheum. Even if the body's wounds can be treated, the heart's wounds cannot be healed with medicine. It might do you well to return to the clan and settle your mind."
"...It would be difficult to restore my virginity, wouldn't it?"
"Kheum-kheum! Th-that, even I cannot do."
Truth number three. It was also I who trampled the flower petal.
"Heuk-heuk, Blade Demon...!"
The Blade Demon's only crime was getting caught in my illusion technique and stabbing away at a rotten tree, but Namgung Yurin burned with the blade of vengeance against him.
'If she'd been the type to say she had to marry the Blade Demon now that she'd been violated, it would've been a major problem.'
"I'll kill him...! I'll never forget this for the rest of my life...!!"
Namgung Yurin's earthly miasma was beyond compare. The aura she gave off was such that if she ever found out I was the one who had raped her twice, she would draw her sword immediately, regardless of the difference in martial arts skill or anything else.
'She's pretty, but she's not the kind of flower you can look at again and again.'
She was a flower brimming with poisonous energy that would make every other flower in the garden wilt if left among them. You should just glance at a flower like that, catch its scent once, and move on. If you let your gaze linger many times without reason, it'll only cause trouble. After sobbing for a long while, Namgung Yurin composed herself and bowed her head to me.
"...Doctor, I'm sorry. I've shown you an unsightly side."
"Do not worry yourself. Living in this world, you see this and that all the time."
Consolation that didn't sound much like consolation. I let her words, which seemed as if she wanted to continue the conversation, slide off me appropriately.
"A warrior of the clan is waiting outside. See yourself off safely."
"......Doctor. May I ask you one thing?"
"......"
I nodded. Making a resolution to encourage a culture where people would immediately ask me anything they were curious about in the murim from now on, I listened carefully to Namgung Yurin's words.
"At the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, I want to leave an indelible scar on that fucking Little Princess. A humiliation greater than the disgrace I suffered."
"Heo."
A sigh escaped me before I knew it.
Did she have the ability? She didn't. She couldn't even beat Sagong Hee, let alone the Little Princess. To begin with, if she had the skill to defeat the Little Princess, she wouldn't have been violated by the Blade Demon in that manner.
'She messed up herself, and yet...'
Who said the Heavenly Demon's crown was as wide as the Central Plains?
Namgung Yurin did.
Who said the Little Princess would be stripped bare someday?
Namgung Yurin did.
'As expected of the one who'll be called the False Tear Flower, her thinking is profoundly selfish.'
Since the martial world's epithet for her would be the flower of false tears, how could her character be anything short of abnormal? The nature that would be notorious in the future never changes. If the roots and foundation of that infamous future are the present, it is as good as saying the current Namgung Yurin has an equally self-centered disposition. Peach trees bear peaches, after all—there is no way they yield any other kind of fruit.
"If by any chance I manage to wound the Demonic Cult's Little Princess at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering... then, please do not treat that bitch."
"That cannot be done."
"Why not? It was those Demonic Cult sons of bitches who kidnapped your master."
"......"
Was I to be the physician who refused to treat anyone, or the disciple who stood by the Divine Doctor? Placed at a fork in the road, I listened as Namgung Yurin whispered to me in a low voice, trying brazenly to control me however she pleased.
"I beg you. If you simply say you will not treat those demons who kidnapped the Divine Doctor... the justification alone would be enough. If you do that, the Namgung Clan will not forget this favor."
"I will think about it."
I would do no more than think. Yet even at my empty words, Namgung Yurin smiled brightly as though it were already settled, bowed at the waist, and left.
'Let me think.'
Is it more advantageous for me to side with the Namgung Clan, or to side with the Demonic Cult's Little Princess? If I choose the former, I will have done my duty as the Divine Doctor's disciple. If I choose the latter, I won't be able to play the part of the Divine Doctor's disciple so easily from now on. To treat the enemy who harmed one's master? Among fellow physicians, I might perhaps be praised as a true healer, but among martial artists who value the master-disciple relationship even above that of father and son, I would be ostracized, whether openly or subtly.
Clink-clink.
The bell hanging at the door swayed as Namgung Yurin left the clinic. Left alone in the clinic, I sank into thought.
"There really is no point in even thinking about it."
So what if I can no longer impersonate the Divine Doctor's disciple? It doesn't matter. I still have countless martial arts left.
"If need be, I can just impersonate some other bastard's disciple or grandmaster."
If I accumulate more inner energy for just a few more years, I could even become a figure within the Demonic Cult—
"......Hm."
The Heavenly Demon Cult. A massive group of a hundred thousand demonic practitioners who gather at the Heavenly Mountain and follow the Demonic Cult Leader. Unlike the White Path that concerns itself with sects and generational hierarchy, it is a fanatical religion that worships the Heavenly Demon and respects only obedience and strength.
"A Lust Demon...."
The picture forms. What kind of action I would take within the Demonic Cult. Considering my relationship with the Wudang Sect and this and that, walking the demonic path isn't exactly a bad thing.
A life in which I become the Lust Demon, stay by the Little Princess's side, and repay the grace of taking her virginity.
'That's not half bad, is it?'
Rather, it's good. Assassination squads will be sent from all kinds of sects and an inescapable heavenly net will be spread, but living as a public enemy of the martial world while drifting by like the wind isn't too bad either. Above all, isn't the justification perfect? I won't have to work hard parroting the Divine Doctor's disciple act while running my mouth. I can just smash everything, appear before a woman, and shout it out.
- Wh-what are you doing?!
- This lord is the Lust Demon!
"I ought to thank Namgung Yurin for this."
She gave me several realizations. The next time she ever becomes indebted to a physician, I shall repay my thanks by once more blowing my sun-like energy thickly into her insides. Because a flower brimming with poisonous energy like Namgung Yurin needs to be drenched thoroughly with water for its petals to bloom prettily.
That was the very moment I was exploring another path for myself.
"My lord."
At the entrance, Sagong Hee, who had spent the night in the side room, appeared before me after freshening up.