The World Beyond Mount Cheon
After that, we repeated much the same training. We didn't draw out essence at every session—only when I judged things had ripened sufficiently—but the sparring matches, no different from life-or-death duels, took place every single day.
Plenty of disciples died along the way, but just as many were funneled in to fill the gaps, so we never ran short of bodies. Of course, the brand-new arrivals were still too green for the sparring ring; they would need time to ripen.
Well, the Demonic Cult can get away with this because we're drowning in people—and because we keep to ourselves.
If any of the orthodox families or sects of the Korean murim had pulled the same stunt, it would have been splashed across the papers and fanned into a daily scandal on the evening news. All of this was possible only because the world called us the Demonic Cult. Had the Divine Cult belonged to the orthodox side, we could never have managed it.
Pssh, pssh, pssh.
In my room, I spritzed on cologne while studying myself in the mirror. The scent was light and airy, like a crisp spring day, and once it settled I checked the full-length mirror for anything out of place.
As it happened, today was the day the spirit elixirs arrived from across the sea.
Now that the murim had entered the modern era, its people had splintered into countless factions. Most still revered the martial way, but there were plenty who had trained in the martial arts and then set them aside—people who wielded formidable strength yet worked as treasure hunters, or those who'd learned second-rate sword arts and danced with their blades instead of dueling. The age when martial arts served nothing but personal discipline and violence had ended long ago. The people I was due to meet today were exactly that breed.
Asked which camp they belonged to, I'd have said closest to the unorthodox side.
The Serpent Shadow Guild… in my past life, they were the ones who couldn't escape annihilation over their elixirs.
The elixirs in their keeping were treasures far beyond their station. Naturally, plenty of people coveted them… and I heard they were eventually stripped of them by another gang. The traces left behind after the massacre were so gruesome that I understand it was treated as a major incident.
And my internal energy was lacking at the moment… so with elixirs, the more the better.
Wasn't there a saying that you could never have too many elixirs? Getting them down ahead of time would only help. They alone wouldn't be enough to stand against the Supreme Master of the World, of course.
Once I'd made my preparations, I left my room, cleared the wall, and headed for the agreed meeting point. Meeting up inside and leaving together risked someone catching on, after all.
So I made my way down the mountain until I reached rugged terrain strewn with enormous boulders. Yeon Hayeong was already there when I arrived—she must have been waiting a good while—sitting at her ease, idly kicking her feet at the empty air.
"Wait long?"
"Hey, Scrub! What took you so long?!"
She called out to me with an expression brimming with anticipation, a shoddily woven straw hat perched on her head.
"I came exactly at the appointed time, you know."
"You should've come even a little earlier! Time is money!"
"Is going outside really that exciting?"
For my part, I'd roamed the outside world at length before my regression, so it hardly stirred me… but this was her first time setting foot beyond Mount Cheon, and she was clearly giddy over it.
"We can't leave Mount Cheon without official permission, you know… I could browse the forums, but I couldn't actually go anywhere, and it was killing me…!"
Genuinely aggrieved, she poured out an endless torrent of complaints.
"If you wanted out that badly, you could've just snuck off."
"Still…! There's always a 'what if,' okay? I don't want to get scolded…"
She said she didn't want to be scolded, but… I couldn't quite follow her logic. In truth, the capable disciples of the Seven Demons slipped out on secret excursions now and then. They already knew their masters wouldn't come down hard on them—since the masters went on excursions themselves. Our Sex Fiend of a master wasn't the type to say much about it either. If anything, she egged us on. Sex Fiends, after all, mostly grew stronger by coveting men and women. Only the Sex Fiend of the era and a handful of disciples had peculiar inclinations; most simply slipped out in secret, indulged alone, and returned, over and over. But most of them never learned to put that banked internal energy to any real use…
Did mastering the carnal arts turn most people's brains to mush, or what…?
However much internal energy you hoarded, it was worthless if you couldn't wield it. It wasn't as if the stuff could be traded away for taffy…
After a few more exchanges of idle chatter, the two of us set off down the mountain in earnest. Mount Cheon was so colossal that Third-Rate or Second-Rate martial artists would wear themselves out partway up, but the two of us were another story entirely. I had attained the Peak Realm, and Yeon Hayeong stood in the Transcendent Peak Realm. We descended in the blink of an eye, and the moment we reached the mountain's foot, the city came into crisp, detailed view.
"Wow… I knew it looked dazzling even from a distance, but up close it's an absolute stunner."
Mount Cheon had surged upward after swallowing Busan whole, and its base was lined with the headquarters of corporations under the Divine Cult's jurisdiction. The Divine Cult might be branded a demonic sect, but where legitimate business was concerned, even the orthodox factions left it alone. The people staffing those companies were mostly ordinary civilians, and if the corporations vanished, their livelihoods would vanish with them. For the orthodox sects, it was far too late to lift a finger now.
Once we reached the heart of the city, Yeon Hayeong tossed her bizarre straw hat into a trash can and finally began surveying our surroundings in earnest.
"The air's not even as stale as I expected? The forums definitely said sandstorms whip through here!"
"…What on earth kind of forums have you been reading?"
Apparently she sourced every scrap of her information from internet forums—which, come to think of it, went a long way toward explaining her personality.
A vast market had taken root at the foot of Mount Cheon. The strong were exalted and force worshipped, but that didn't mean the cult left its followers unwatched. Merchants were free to trade as they pleased, so long as they didn't gouge customers or prey on them to feed private appetites. Cult branches were stationed at the mountain's base, and their routine inspections kept the ill-intentioned few and far between.
"Hey, hey! Scrub…! Look at that…!"
Walking side by side with her at my flank, I endured a whirlwind of fuss as she tugged at my collar. The shops she pointed out were the haunts of the young—Life Six Cuts photo booths, pop-up stores, gacha shops—she reacted to nothing but the spots engineered to set dopamine off like firecrackers.
If this was how we grew closer, I had no complaints.
Even while watching her carry on, I was gauging angles and turning the gears in my head. Like Yeon Seoryeon, she had caught my fancy, and I meant to close the distance first. I might be moving a touch faster than in my old life, but my fundamentals hadn't changed.
"Ooh, let's do this one!"
The first thing the bouncing girl pointed at was a Life Six Cuts booth—a shop where you took six shots in all and had them printed on the spot.
"They say every social butterfly these days does this. We have to try it!"
Seizing my hand, she hauled me through the door, her voice fizzing with excitement. The shop was fairly busy with couples and packs of girls, and the moment we stepped in, every gaze swung our way. Well… to be precise, they fixed on me. The two of us were dressed head to toe as murim practitioners, and the group ahead was squealing and raising a ruckus—how could the stares not gather?
We slipped into the last booth remaining, where my sheer bulk made for anything but roomy quarters. I'd had to duck my head just to get inside. We had no choice but to press our bodies together to fit the shot.
"You set it like this… and, done!"
With the settings finished, she settled naturally onto my lap and leaned her weight into me. Grin never fading, she nuzzled the back of her head against my chest a few times, and when a countdown flashed on the screen, she threw up a V sign to match.
Click!
The instant the shutter sounded, a fresh ten-second countdown began.
"Hey, Scrub! You pick a proper pose too!"
"…I just do whatever comes naturally?"
"Obviously! Were you planning to stand there like a stump? What are you, a folding screen?"
Smack, smack!
She rapped her palm against my thigh, hurrying me along. In the end, I awkwardly copied her, raising a single hand in a V…
Click!
Another shot was taken.
"Got any other poses? You look like a total old man."
"……"
She began to needle me, drawling her words with a deliberately twisted tongue. …Honestly, an old man was exactly what I was—but that was a fact only I needed to know. I'd never had the chance to enjoy this brand of youth culture in the first place, so the stiffness was only natural. Over the two shots that followed, I managed nothing more than a few awkward hand gestures.
"What, what? You can't even manage one lousy pose?"
"You've more than earned the name Scrub!"
She kept up the racket, needling me with provocation after provocation. Was she really acting this way purely out of excitement? At this point, it couldn't help but look like she had something else in mind.
Now came the fifth shot.
"……"
"…?"
This time, she turned her head, met my eyes for the briefest heartbeat… then turned back to face the lens. And then, in the instant before the shutter fired—
Swish!
With her own hand, she flipped the front of her qipao boldly upward. The side slits had shown no straps earlier, which meant she was, of course, wearing nothing beneath it… and the photo captured her bare, spread pussy in full view.
Click!