Gwi-eum-sa
“You there—what do you have to do with Gwi-eum-sa?”
At the female cultivator’s repeated question, the white mask with both arms missing answered this time in a voice that sounded like a howl.
“I only learned a technique I bought in the Dark Dust Market! I have nothing to do with Gwi-eum-sa!”
But the female cultivator seemed unconvinced. She frowned at once, and when she flicked a finger, the white-masked man’s body slowly began to rise into the air.
The armless white mask writhed violently, doing everything it could to break free of the force binding it.
Yet the Controlling-Objects Art wielded by a Foundation Establishment cultivator was no power that a mere Qi Refining cultivator could shake off, no matter how desperately he struggled.
The harder he thrashed, the more blood spattered from his shoulders.
Still, one change did come.
Swish—
While the white mask struggled furiously, the mask covering his face slipped free.
Of course, it happened at the very moment the face of the cultivator who had clearly been up to no good was exposed, so I studied him closely as well.
A cultivator with a round, almost innocent-looking face and an unusually small nose.
As I searched my memory for a familiar name, my second brother had already come up beside me and spoken.
“Good heavens! Brother An! Brother An, how could you do something like this…?”
Thanks to that, his name—and the way he usually behaved—rose vividly in my mind.
An Jeong-pung.
A cultivator with a laugh that came too easily, one who sometimes visited the Shadow Talisman Department where my second brother and I belonged. Even I, who had never fit in well with the people of the sect, had been spoken to by him now and then. No one could have guessed that his true nature was this hideous.
What was even more shocking was the fact that he was already a late-stage Qi Refining cultivator.
Everyone in the sect believed him to be nothing more than a talentless early-stage Qi Refining waste, after all.
But even knowing his true identity, the female cultivator continued speaking without the slightest hesitation.
“I’ll ask you one last time. What do you have to do with Gwi-eum-sa?”
Then, suddenly, An Jeong-pung began to snicker like a madman.
“Heh… heh-heh-heh…”
And then, abruptly cutting off his laughter, he glared at her with sharp eyes and said, “Haven’t I already told you? I only learned the technique from a transaction in the Dark Dust Market. I have nothing to do with Gwi-eum-sa!”
At that, the female cultivator answered with a chilling calm.
“If I must verify whether you speak the truth, then I suppose I’ll have to tear out your soul and ask it myself.”
It was not a threat to torture the truth out of him, but simply to kill him first and then rip his soul from his body to learn it from there. Such was the sort of threat only cultivators could make.
And the instant her warning ended, An Jeong-pung’s head suddenly began to swell, heaving like a pig bladder full of water.
He cast a resentful look not at the female cultivator but in our direction, and then his swollen skull burst all at once.
Boom!
Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere, sweeping over the surroundings, and even the female cultivator standing beside him ended up with a splatter of blood across her upper garment.
It seemed the protective barrier worn by Foundation Establishment guardians blocked only those attacks that directly threatened the body.
With a dark expression, the female cultivator looked down at the bloodstained clothes she now disliked, and huffed in irritation.
“That filthy Gwi-eum-sa bastard ruined a perfectly good set of clothes.”
Then I spoke to her at once.
“If you have a healing talisman to spare, could I have one? The man over there is dying.”
I was injured too, of course. Not to the point of dying on the spot, but enough that it would become a serious problem if untreated.
But Yang Jeon, lying over there, was in immediate danger of losing his life if he did not receive treatment right now.
Fortunately, after hearing me, she took out a healing talisman and held it out to my second brother without delay.
“Save him.”
Only after saying that did she look back at me, and there was no greed in her eyes at all. At the very least, she did not seem intent on snatching my spirit treasure away again.
My second brother must have thought the same thing, because he accepted the healing talisman she offered and ran straight toward Yang Jeon.
This time, the female cultivator looked at me as if she had been waiting for it.
“Your outward cultivation seems clearly to be early-stage Qi Refining, yet not only early-stage cultivators but even mid-stage Qi Refining brats couldn’t surpass you in the end. You must have some impressive secret, just like that fellow over there whose head is missing?”
Her suspicion was only natural. No one could possibly mistake me for an ordinary early-stage Qi Refining cultivator anymore.
So instead of some elaborate lie to evade suspicion for the moment, I gave her the plain truth.
“My cultivation is indeed early-stage Qi Refining. However, I’ve also trained in martial arts.”
She might, like the other cultivators, dismiss the martial arts I had learned as mere street brawling.
But this was the truth, and everything else would be a lie, so I had nothing else to offer her.
Fortunately, whether my sincerity reached her or not, she looked doubtful but eventually nodded.
Just as I was thinking I had at least cleared up her misunderstanding and was relaxing the stiffness from my face, she said something I had never expected.
“Then I’ll have to see for myself what kind of martial arts you’ve trained. Come with me to my eastern residence.”
After being forcibly dragged off by San Su Jinmyeong and made to live like livestock, I had no fondness for such compulsory companionship.
“If it’s martial arts, I can show you right here.”
But the moment I finished speaking and reached for my sword, my hand froze. Using the same Controlling-Objects Art she had used on the dead An Jeong-pung, the female cultivator bound me instead.
Then she continued, looking straight at me.
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion.”
At her words, which made my expression harden, I clenched my teeth and tried to grip my sword hilt, but then she tossed something from her pouch into the air—a small wooden boat-like flying artifact.
Whoosh!
The boat expanded in an instant, broad enough to carry at least ten people, and she hopped aboard before addressing me again.
“I don’t have any healing talismans left either. I’ll treat your injuries once we get to my eastern residence, so get on quickly.”
Although the Green Wood Talisman was a fairly common healing item, that did not make it cheap.
For her to hand one over so readily to save Yang Jeon, and to promise to heal me as well, made it clear that however rough her manner of speaking might be, she was showing me goodwill.
Once I understood that, I decided to obey her without further argument.
“Very well.”
With the answer she wanted, my body was freed, and as I stepped onto the wooden boat after her, I saw my second brother, who had saved Yang Jeon in the meantime, looking at me with a baffled expression.
He could not decide whether he should rush to rescue me right now or simply let it be.
So I called out to him.
“I’ll be back soon, so don’t worry.”
But then an absurd sound burst from the female cultivator’s mouth.
“Are you two perhaps a pair who share dual cultivation? How touching.”
Considering that dual cultivation was originally a term referring to the union of yin and yang between male and female cultivators, she still seemed to think I was a woman. To me, who had been speaking in a man’s voice without bothering to hide it, the whole thing was preposterous.
Before I could answer her, however, the wooden boat rose into the air and shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, until at last it entered what appeared to be her eastern residence.
It was a speed far beyond anything my own hidden ring could compare to.
The problem was that while I was marveling at the boat’s speed, she suddenly stripped off her upper garment after entering the residence.
Of course, the white, rounded swell hidden beneath it was left fully exposed and jiggling before my eyes. While I stood silent in shock, she casually slipped on another outer robe she had taken from her pouch and spoke as though nothing were strange at all.
“You seem so surprised. I take it you didn’t know I was a woman.”
Rather than covering the revealed fullness of her chest, she busied herself loosening the hair she had tied up tightly.
Her black hair spilled down like a sheet of silk, softly veiling her pale skin, but it did not conceal the curves of a full, womanly body.
No, if anything, it made her even more provocative. And then I felt a surge of energy rising with the force to burst my head open.
Lust.
The byproduct of the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic that I had kept pressed down only through iron discipline alone had, in an instant, broken free of my control and surged all the way to the crown of my head.
Huuu—
The breath that escaped my mouth heated the air, and my body, now under the command of lust, moved on its own.
Swish—
My lightly extended hand wove through her flowing hair, curling its fingers among the strands before closing around the long, slender line of her neck, graceful as a doe’s. Then I pulled her body toward me.
Only then did she finally frown, as if she could not understand the meaning of my sudden action, and slapped my hand away.
Smack!
“What do you think you’re doing?”
But my body, already consumed by lust, naturally unfurled a seizing hand and tried to grab the wrist of the very hand that had swatted me away.
If even a shred of proper reason had remained in me, I would never have done such a reckless thing. I was, after all, placing my life in the hands of someone who had used only the Controlling-Objects Art to defeat An Jeong-pung, a late-stage Qi Refining expert.
Yet this time, rather than shaking off my hand, she obediently offered me her wrist and said, “So your reason’s gone? I suppose you had a puppet technique laid on me in the meantime. A dirty trick worthy of Gwi-eum-sa. But even so, it’s still only a Qi Refining body. You don’t seriously think you can take me on with just that, do you?”
But I did not care how sharply she was glaring at me, or what words were coming from her mouth.
To me, swallowed by fierce lust, all I could see were her red lips. And all I could feel was the faint sweetness in the breath that escaped her whenever she spoke.
In the end, I pulled the hand I held toward me.
Then she reacted too.
Whoosh!
Somehow, from who knew where, a small brush-like artifact flew into the air, and the fine hairs attached to that brush stiffened like steel needles, filling the empty spaces in the air around me.
But the action that followed mine forced those steel needles, which seemed poised to kill me at any moment, into silence.
Swish—
Even she, who had been staring at me with murderous eyes, froze when she saw my lips cover hers, as if unable to understand what was happening.
As the warmth of my breath surged hotter between us, I instinctively turned my attention to that breath itself. With part of the lust that had filled my body so recently now eased by the kiss, the dormant instincts of a martial artist began to stir.
Fortunately, as my breathing started to settle, the reason that had flown off somewhere came back to me as well. As it had always done, my reason began to settle over the boiling lust like a steel lid over molten metal, sealing the thing tight.
With only a few breaths, I recovered complete control of my body and finally pulled my lips away from hers.
Then, instead of the murderous expression from before, she wore a blank face and suddenly tore open the front of the robe I had been wearing. The long, torn wound across my abdomen was revealed along with the solid, stone-hard planes of my muscular body.
“So you weren’t struck by Gwi-eum-sa’s puppet art.”
At that, I slowly nodded and answered, “That’s right. I lost my reason for a moment because of lust.”
I was just about to speak of the special demonic art I had learned when she fastened the collar of the robe she had been wearing so loosely until now and said, “I’ll come collect payment for today’s matter in ten days. For now, go back.”
No matter how much she was a cultivator who had shed the life of the mundane world, she was still a woman, and what had just happened was naturally shameful to her.
In truth, for me to be grateful that she wasn’t rushing at me to kill me on the spot was already asking too much.
So rather than provoking her further, I chose to retreat for the moment.
“Understood.”
But just as I turned to leave, I felt something flying toward me from behind.
Quickly turning around, I caught it, and found a small wooden horse in my hand.
“My eastern residence is a place that cannot be entered without a flying artifact. So ride that back. And this is the healing talisman I promised you.”
Her face was still rigid and stiff, which bothered me, but she had not only given me a flying artifact—she had also used a healing talisman herself to treat my injuries.
So I bowed my head once toward her with sincere gratitude, then left her eastern residence. After that, I looked down quietly at the wooden horse in my hand.
It did not seem to have been made by someone with especially skilled hands; rather than refinement, it carried a certain roughness.
As I fiddled with the wooden horse and felt the coarse grain of the wood beneath my fingertips, I thought that perhaps she had made this artifact herself.
No, that had to be it. If it were her, she would surely track the item’s energy and use it to find me again.
Yet perhaps because the lust I had not fully settled still lingered in me, that scene from before rose once more in my mind.
Her calm, unashamed expression despite the flimsy robe that left her skin exposed. The sweetness of her breath, and the softness of her kiss.
The remnants of lust that had surged with the force to burst my head open now seemed to drive my heartbeat rough and wild instead.
Thump. Thump.
As that harsh pounding echoed vividly in my ears, I forced myself to steady my breathing once more and poured spiritual energy into the wooden horse she had given me.
Then the horse quickly grew larger, until it was the size of an ordinary steed. In truth, horses—though this one was made of wood—were creatures I was fairly familiar with.
So I mounted its back with practiced ease, and as though it understood my will, the thing began running through the air.
Whooosh— whoosh whoosh—
Riding a wooden horse sprinting unrestrained through the sky was certainly a sensation entirely different from riding my hidden ring. It was not merely a matter of speed; this was steadier, and far more pleasant as well.
Thus, instead of heading straight back to the eastern residence, I let the wind cool the fire in my head and heart for a while as I raced through the air, steadying my shaken thoughts.
Not yet. It was still too soon to let my heart waver or to pause for a moment’s rest. My hair, which had been white not long ago, had only just returned to black; the lost innate true qi had not yet recovered.
But I could not deny that I was already looking forward to the woman who had said she would come for me in ten days.
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