Celestial Immortal Divine Art
The moment her watcher vanished, Ryeong slipped away from Mount Zhongnan and headed straight toward Xi'an. Perhaps because it was the most vibrant metropolis in all of Shaanxi, no one paid her the slightest heed. Amid the boisterous clamor of the teeming thoroughfares, she did not even need to watch her step.
Ryeong had ventured here for a single purpose: to elevate the Heaven-Killing Art to the fourth stage.
Animal blood had reached its limit; she needed the blood of a human. Yet she could not bring herself to slaughter mortals at random. Her only recourse was to provoke someone into baring overt killing intent toward her. To find scoundrels willing to bare their fangs, she had to delve into the seedy back alleys where illicit deeds thrived under the cover of night.
"Little lady. Wandering into a place like this on your own will get you killed. Turn back right now."
Just as Ryeong located a deserted alleyway where the very air felt stagnant and dead—convinced she had stumbled upon the ideal hunting ground—a beggar stepped out from the shadows and blocked her path.
Her brow furrowed immediately. It was not from the interruption, but from the rank stench billowing off him. A beggar was a beggar, after all; the foul odor wafting from his filthy, unwashed frame was a trial to endure up close.
"What could possibly be back there? If anything, you look far more dangerous than whatever is inside."
"I'm offering you sound advice. The mood in these back alleys has been grim lately."
"..."
Ryeong narrowed her eyes. She had suspected from the start that he was no ordinary panhandler, and his measured response confirmed it. He belonged to the Beggars' Sect—and held considerable rank within it, no doubt. His manner of speech gave him away; as the adage went, every rumor under heaven originated from the Beggars' Sect, and the fellow possessed the practiced cadence of someone adept at circulating whispers.
"Unless it's a matter of life and death, go home. You'll lose your life if you don't."
"Just what is lurking in there?"
"Word is a man-eating monster dwells within. Rumor has it that even the Murim Alliance is mobilizing to purge it."
"Even the Murim Alliance? In that case, I'd best turn back. Thank you."
Ryeong conceded cleanly and turned on her heel. Now that the Beggars' Sect had caught the scent, moving about undetected was near impossible. Besides, she had gleaned valuable intelligence.
He must have spotted me leaving Mount Zhongnan.
Operating in Orthodox territory made shaking the ubiquitous eyes of the Beggars' Sect an arduous task. A lone maiden slipping away from Zhongnan only to head straight into an Unorthodox district? Anyone would view that as suspicious. She had been somewhat reckless; she should have accounted for prying eyes before making her move.
A man-eating monster, is it?
Could the beggar have been lying? The likelihood was vanishingly slim. Ryeong had lived the life of an assassin for years; discerning between a face cloaked in deceit and one speaking the unvarnished truth was second nature to her. The beggar had told the truth. The word "monster" might have been a colorful metaphor, but the imminent arrival of Murim Alliance enforcers was indisputable.
I'll have to tread lightly for the time being.
It was unlikely the Beggars' Sect would immediately report her minor excursion to Zhongnan, but accumulated suspicions were bound to invite trouble. She needed to reach the fourth stage of the Heaven-Killing Art posthaste, yet her path had hit an unexpected snag. With things as they were, she would have to force a breakthrough through solitary cultivation rather than bathing in blood.
Moving around properly tomorrow is going to be out of the question.
If she returned under the veil of midnight, she could at least avoid a private audience with the Sect Leader of Zhongnan. Concluding her thoughts, Ryeong lingered near the outskirts of the Unorthodox district, waiting to see if any new developments arose.
Roughly five shichen passed. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and total darkness enveloped the alleyways.
Ryeong halted the circulation of her internal energy and opened her eyes. With just a little more time, she might have broken through to the fourth stage, but an ominous premonition pulled her from meditation.
Something is happening.
An unsettling vibration prickled her skin. This was clearly Orthodox ground, so why...
"Why do I smell blood?"
It was not right beside her, yet the distinct metallic stench drifted into her nostrils from not too far off. There was no mistaking it. Her killer instincts screamed that something gruesome had transpired within the Unorthodox quarter.
Ryeong weighed her choices. Should she feign ignorance and slip back to Mount Zhongnan? Or walk straight into the jaws of the Unorthodox district?
Her path was already decided. Had she not smelled blood, it would have been another matter, but having caught the scent, turning away was out of the question.
"Might as well go look."
What did it matter if a man-eating beast lurked within? In her current state, Ryeong was confident she could assassinate even a Transcendent master. A direct clash might prove grueling, but if she struck from the shadows—
KABOOM!
"What the—!"
A massive shape plummeted from the rooftop, smashing into the ground before her. Until that exact split second, she had not sensed a shred of presence!
Ryeong reflexively slipped a dagger from her sleeve. Strangely, the fallen mass radiated no trace of life whatsoever.
Inanimate? Then the real one is—!
CRASH!
Ryeong sprang backward in the nick of time. A broad saber caked in shredded human flesh slammed into the cobblestones where she had stood just a heartbeat prior.
"Grrrgh..."
"Now that really does look like a monster."
A hulking figure dropped down to wrench the saber from the stone. Looking upon it, Ryeong muttered beneath her breath. Anyone would have mistaken the creature for a demon; the skin of its face had been savagely ripped away, leaving behind a mangled, horrific visage of raw muscle and bone.
Right then—
"Little lady! I told you to go back! What are you still doing here?"
"Mister Beggar?"
The beggar from earlier leapt into view, interposing himself between Ryeong and the fiend. Having already sensed his approach, Ryeong put on a trembling performance, feigning sheer terror. Fortunately, the beggar did not doubt her in the slightest, assuming she had merely avoided the monster's ambush by blind luck.
"Listen to me, girl. This isn't something we can let slide. You're coming with me."
"What? I don't want to."
"I'll explain everything later, so just come—"
"KROOOAAAR!"
The flayed monster lunged with a bloodcurdling roar. In an instant, the beggar's expression underwent a terrifying transformation, and a torrential blast of internal energy erupted from his frame.
Ryeong's eyes widened in genuine astonishment. Until a moment ago, she had judged him to be a common first-rate martial artist. Yet the aura exploding from him now belonged to a bona fide Transcendent master!
"An innocent civilian has been drawn into this, so I have no choice. Die here, beast!"
"Guhk!"
It was over in the blink of an eye.
The beggar blurred into motion, the Dog-Beating Staff in his grasp tracing an arc through the dark. The lunging monster's skull caved in like a shattered gourd, and the creature crumpled into a motionless heap.
Ryeong stared at the beggar with as wide-eyed an expression as she could muster.
"Wow... You're an incredible master. Here I thought you were just an old lecher trying to pick me up."
"Little lady, look at my age! Why would I do that? Never mind that—follow me. We have things to discuss."
"At least tell me your name first."
"That won't do. You already know which sect I belong to, don't you? I won't harm you, so just follow."
"Alright, fine."
Ryeong obediently fell into step behind him. Yet the light in her eyes shifted, cold and calculating.
"Though, there's one thing I'm curious about. You handled that monster all on your own, didn't you?"
"That I did."
"Then wasn't there no need to call in the Murim Alliance enforcers from the start?"
"The original plan was to capture it alive. But once a civilian was put in harm's way... keeping it alive was out of the quest—"
Thwack.
A razor-sharp dagger drove clean through the beggar's heart from behind. Without skipping a beat, Ryeong's fingers struck his paralysis and muting acupoints, stripping him of the ability to utter so much as a breath.
Shedding her mask of innocence, Ryeong walked around to face him with an icy gaze.
"Judging by this, something's definitely going on around here. Isn't that right?"
"Mmph...!?"
Veins bulged across the beggar's bloodshot eyes. Skewered through the heart and bound at his vital meridians, he could not lift a finger. No matter how formidable a Transcendent master was, once brought to such an extremity, they were scarcely different from an ordinary mortal.
Knowing this all too well, Ryeong had struck at his blind spot without hesitation. Naturally, she also kept her senses swept wide, scanning for any accomplices lurking nearby.
"Wondering why you have to die? I didn't kill you for sport. I had my reasons."
She had weighed the scales: whether following this beggar would yield more benefit, or putting an end to him here and now. The deliberation had not taken long. Ryeong chose to trust the instincts forged through her life as an assassin.
She chose to kill him.
And here lay the crux of the matter.
Ryeong was bound by an absolute constraint: she could not launch a lethal strike against anyone who did not harbor killing intent toward her. She could deliver painful blows, but piercing a fatal vital was impossible.
Yet the dagger currently transfixed his heart.
What did that prove?
"You aren't a beggar from the Beggars' Sect, are you?"
"..!"
It meant the bastard harbored raw killing intent toward her. And that meant he was no righteous soul.
The beggar—no, the impostor masquerading as one—widened his eyes in sheer horror as his guise was stripped away.
In moments like this, the restriction imposed by old man Hyeok proved rather convenient. Had she been capable of slaughtering anyone at will, she might have genuinely taken this fiend for an authentic elder of the Beggars' Sect.
Killing intent differed from ambient bloodlust. Intent was, quite literally, the conscious will within the mind. Harboring so much as a fleeting design of murder was enough to kindle it. And Ryeong had developed an instinctual sensitivity to detect that very intent.
"The real monster is you, isn't it? No matter how I thought about it, something stank. A beggar roaming alone when he isn't even the Dragon Head Sect Leader or one of the rising elders? Not in the Beggars' Sect I know."
Furthermore:
"Isn't it strange? An alley packed with people earlier today, completely devoid of life tonight?"
At a superficial glance, nothing seemed out of place. But Ryeong had noticed the faint spatters of blood the impostor had failed to scour away.
"There's no one here because you slaughtered them all. And you planned to lead me away somewhere quiet to finish me off too, didn't you?"
Ryeong's smile deepened. Sensing mortal peril, the man squirmed with frantic desperation.
His meridians were beginning to force themselves open.
If a Transcendent master broke free of suppression, even Ryeong would find herself in grave danger. What reason did she have to explain everything to a dead man anyway?
"Live a virtuous life in your next incarnation. Who knows? You might get reincarnated into a body that makes killing people an absolute pain in the ass."
"Mmmph! Mmmrrgh!"
"Farewell, Mr. Self-Proclaimed Beggars' Sect Elder."
Thrust!
Ryeong drove her dagger clean into the left side of his neck. A geyser of crimson blood sprayed into the night air as the spark of life drained from his eyes.
She had dozens of questions for him, but there were moments when silencing a threat took precedence over extracting answers.
"...Something big is about to blow up."
A man found dead under suspicious circumstances in the dead of night.
Little did Ryeong realize that the corpse would unleash a catastrophic storm that would sweep across the entirety of Shaanxi.