8. Provocation
…
Honestly, if I claimed I hadn't been flustered by the sudden turn of events, it would be a lie. Then again, seen through a Sex Fiend's eyes, it wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, either.
In cases like this, it's either a plan to seduce and kill through essence absorption… or someone simply looking to enjoy herself.
Neither fit Yeon Hayeong in the slightest. In my past life, the disciples had only begun preying on one another in earnest through essence absorption after the Wandering Sex Fiend was murdered and I ascended to the Sex Fiend's seat — and even that much was news that had reached me only after I took the title and set out on my wanderings.
And if you asked whether she was simply some nympho out to have a good time, pure and simple… that didn't quite fit either. The girl I'd watched these past few days showed no such inclination.
Arrogant, hot-headed, forever flinging provocations — and yet far from squandering her body, she handled it with care, like something precious.
…I couldn't fathom it at all. What could be driving her to act this way?
"What's wrong? Why are you so stiff?"
"…Wouldn't it be weirder if I weren't?"
"Aww, our little Scrub… seems he's weak to this kind of stimulation, huh?"
At that, she flashed a grin like someone who'd just discovered a brand-new toy and began, ever so subtly, swaying her hips from side to side. Sway… sway… Rocking this way and that with shameless allure, she reacted with wide-eyed innocence, as though she hadn't the faintest idea what she was doing. Never mind that a woman who didn't even wear underwear could hardly be called pure.
…It wasn't as though women had never closed in on me first like this. Lost for a moment in old memories, I then quietly slipped my arms around her from behind as her hips went on swaying. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If she wanted to provoke… then all I had to do was answer in kind.
"Fooling around is all well and good… but it's about time we took the last shot and headed out."
"R-, right… yeah…?"
Caught off guard by my sudden boldness, Yeon Hayeong faltered in turn.
"Alright, taking the last one…!"
But she quickly composed herself and slipped back into character, the paused countdown resumed its march, and I — feigning obliviousness — held her lightly from behind and took the picture. Yeon Hayeong still had the front of her qipao lifted, staring straight ahead… yet her frozen expression looked flustered, tense.
Click!
The sixth and final shutter sounded, and a moment later the prints came out. The first through fourth were perfectly ordinary… but the fifth and the sixth could easily have passed for a couple of perverts.
"Still… the photos came out pretty well, huh?"
"…Better than I expected."
Neither of us said a word about the two photos at the very end. She had started it herself, yet she seemed embarrassed all the same and was doing her best to pretend otherwise; as for me, I'd judged that pressing the advantage now would gain me nothing.
The mood was drifting somewhere delicate, but with so much still left to do, we both swallowed it down and carried on as though nothing had happened.
The two of us went on enjoying our night out.
"Let's try this one too!"
Scooping goldfish with teensy little nets, popping balloons with air rifles — the night market had no shortage of amusements. Of course, her net tore at the first touch, and she couldn't hit a damned thing with the rifle, so I ended up having to help… Either way, it was a natural excuse to get closer, and that was a win on my end.
"This is how you hold a gun. Your grip's wrong from the very start."
"H-how do you know this stuff so well?"
"…Let's just say I've had my moments."
It wasn't as if I'd seldom handled firearms — there had been moments, now and then, when a gun beat having none at all, and in those moments I'd leaned on them rather heavily. Naturally, I couldn't tell her any of that truthfully, so I deflected with something vague and went on helping her.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
In the end she won no prize, but she did manage to burst a few balloons. With every shot, I patiently corrected her stance from behind. The difference in our builds was such that, pressed against her back, I all but swallowed her from view — a passerby might well have mistaken it for a full-grown man enjoying himself all alone.
"Ugh… this is harder than it looks."
"Still, for a first attempt, that's well done."
Even mid-conversation, she kept wriggling her body this way and that. Maybe being pressed so close simply made her uncomfortable… but judging by how she'd behaved in the photo booth, she might still be angling for an opening.
…Especially the way she kept grinding that ass of hers against me… it was nothing short of blatant.
But for now, deciphering her intentions came first. Blindly ravishing her wasn't really my style, after all. A relationship needs at least a little story behind it to taste right.
Still, there was no helping certain physiological reactions, so I bore down and endured, enjoying the various attractions all the same. Every new experience wrung an intense reaction out of her. Watching her light up at finally doing in the flesh what she'd only ever seen online, I almost caught myself thinking — if I'd ever had a daughter, wouldn't she have been just like this?
And so, after a full loop of the market… the hour had slipped into the dead of night without my noticing.
He should be showing himself any time now.
Getting closer to Hayeong was certainly one of the reasons I'd come here, but the primary objective, as ever, was the elixir.
The elixir was called the Chaos Primordial Pill, if I remembered right.
The Chaos Primordial Pill was an elixir produced by the Sun Moon Sect, an unorthodox outer-domain sect versed in both yin and yang martial arts. Should yin and yang fail to strike harmony, the pill would crumble to nothing in an instant and the refinement would end in failure — which was why its value was reckoned so high.
Precisely the elixir I need right now.
To wield the Ten Thousand Flowers Cloud and Rain Mental Art, the inner cultivation method I myself had devised, alongside the Dance of a Thousand Mechanisms in Linked Chains — that living compendium of countless martial arts — I required qi of the most varied attributes. The two could meet any situation that arose, but versatility on that scale came at a price, which meant I would need to acquire and consume as many elixirs as I could from here on. And while carefully regulating the quantity and quality of each attribute, no less.
For now, balancing yin qi and yang qi alone would suffice. Even that much would help enormously.
And so, as I made the rounds of the places where "he" was due to appear…
There he is.
Off in the distance, a man in black martial garb came into view. A small wooden case threaded on a cord hung at his neck — and by all appearances, the elixir was inside it.
Carrying it out in the open to deflect suspicion, is it? Clever, in its own way. But once you've already been made, such tricks are worthless.
"Now that he's shown himself, thought I'd use the chance to loosen up a little."
"Loosen up? Weren't we here to have fun today?"
When I said this to Yeon Hayeong — busy noisily demolishing a tanghulu skewer beside me — she cocked her head and shot the question back.
"We are here to have fun. I just mean putting the body to use. Beat a few punks while we're at it, do our part for public order."
Even in the shadow of Mount Cheon, under the Divine Cult's jurisdiction, rat-tail little gangs were bound to exist. Policing them was, by rights, the Cult's business… but this once, I decided to borrow that duty for my own ends.
"Catch a few underworld scum today, and it might just work as a get-out-of-jail-free card the next time you're in hot water."
I dangled the bait, recalling how she'd flinched at the mere thought of being scolded. Rough up a few bad eggs on the side, I told her, and later she could hold it up as a shield.
"Ooh…! So that's a thing! Our Scrub's got a brain on him too!"
Persuaded in the space of a heartbeat, Yeon Hayeong's eyes went bright. How she fell for it hook, line, and sinker at the gentlest push was almost endearing… yet at the same time it felt a little like baiting someone simple-minded, and that left an odd aftertaste.
Still, what had to be done had to be done.
After a quick briefing on the target for Hayeong, we set off tailing the man with the wooden case at his neck. Melting into the crowd, we drifted along in his wake with studied unconcern, and the moment he turned down a deserted alley we sprang skyward, tracking his movements from the rooftops.
If he's headed straight for their base, sweeping them all up in one net would be for the best.
Anyone trusted enough to ferry the Chaos Primordial Pill might well be sitting on other valuables too, so I resolved to deal with the lot of them and loot the place while I was at it. With funds of my own to draw on, moving about would become far easier than it was now.
And so the man wound his way through the alleys for a long stretch, until…
"Hm?"
"He's gone…?"
At some point, without any warning at all, he had simply vanished. There'd been no tell, no premonition — he was just suddenly gone from sight. Wondering what in the world was going on, I dropped down into the alley myself.
…The footprints keep going, though. Vanished as he was, the trail of prints ran on without a break.
"For now, following them seems the wisest move."
"Ugh… what a pain. Those unorthodox bastards are all sneaky tricks — that's exactly what makes them such a problem."
Yeon Hayeong grumbled her complaints, but the two of us followed the trail together. After passing through alley after alley, we finally arrived before a wide open lot, a small commercial building standing at its heart.
So this was it?
Presences stirred from the building and from every direction around it. They were doing their level best to stay hidden, but most hovered around Third-Rate at best — or were ordinary civilians who didn't even clear that bar.
"Hmm… so can I just kill them all?"
"Just keep the small fry pinned. I'll handle the bothersome part myself."
"What's this, our Scrub… actually looking out for me now? Well then, much obliged!"
Clack.
The sound rang out once from all four directions. Taking another look around, I found gunmen training their weapons on us from every side, while those who carried themselves like true martial artists stood with blades in hand, ready to charge at the slightest signal.
"I did wonder who'd been sniffing after the Chaos Primordial Pill… turns out it was just a pair of brats."
And at the center of it all stood a black-haired man in jeans and a leather jacket. Dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes, he studied the two of us with a gloomy gaze.
"I don't know where you caught wind of the Chaos Primordial Pill… but now that you know, there's nothing to be done about it."
Shing.
He drew the saber slung across his back and leveled it at the two of us. That saber… I'd seen it somewhere before—
"Still, you're young, so I'll send you off painless and easy. So don't bother resisting."
Boom!
But before the thought could even finish, the man kicked off the ground with total confidence and swung his saber.
…This is— Only after watching the path of his blade did I finally place where he'd come from.
"The Hebei Paeng Clan?"
…!!!
At the words I'd just spoken, the saber-wielding man's eyes went wide with alarm — but it was far too late to take back the swing he'd already made.
CLANG!!!
With a light, almost lazy sweep of my knife-hand, I turned the saber away.
"Kgh…!"
The man had been certain he'd be cleaved in two on the spot — and finding his blade batted aside like a toy, he scrambled backward in a panic.
"It's certainly the Paeng Clan's saber art, no mistake there… and yet something's off."
"…Who… who are you?" asked the man with the saber — the one I now took to have ties with the Paeng Clan.
"Even granting it's the Paeng saber art… the version I know would be one I personally twisted out of shape and remade…"
Ah — so he'd mangled it himself, had he?
"However thoroughly you mangle an art, those traces can never be hidden. Not unless you erase the very concept itself."
Among the many women I'd held in my past life, there had been a daughter of the Paeng Clan as well. A woman brash and overwhelming as any man — and yet, against all odds, one who showed me the trembling innocence of a maiden untouched…
"Anyway, that's neither here nor there right now…"
"…"
"You wear the look of Paeng stock — so what exactly are you doing here?"
I couldn't help but wonder why a man so plainly of the Paeng Clan had come all this way to this country, only to end up playing ringleader over a pack of street-level Third-Rate thugs.
"…What good would it do, dragging a story long since buried back into the light?"
"…"
"But if you're truly set on hearing it… there is one way."
The man leveled his saber once more and settled into his stance. Gaunt as his face was, there was no mistaking the warrior in his eyes and blade.
"Come at me. Defeat me, and I shall tell you everything."
"…Now that, certainly, is very Paeng of you."
Seeing the sincerity in the man, I resolved to oblige him. My original plan had been to sweep up every last one of these underworld rats and strip them to the bones — but it seemed, after all, that not every one of them was worthless.