Chapter 125
I put Saessak’s warning behind me.
It looked like it was about to sulk at me again, the way it had when I didn’t listen during the ant nest job, but...
I couldn’t just run away from this place now, not after being warned.
On paper, I was part of the greeting delegation, but the real job was security.
If the guy who’d gone out to provide security suddenly vanished?
It would go down as an international embarrassment.
Li Lianzhe looked like he cared quite a bit about how other people saw him, too, so for now he’d probably just keep watching me from here.
As long as there were multiple pairs of eyes on me, he wouldn’t try anything reckless.
Buzz.
My smartphone vibrated.
Sure enough, it was Minister Han texting me.
Oh. Sharp one, huh.
How did he know?
Right, of course. This guy was a minister.
He was the kind of man who lived with one foot already planted in the political swamp, so reading the room like this would be second nature.
I’d gotten distracted by the sight of him grinning like a fanboy over Li Lianzhe today.
It wasn’t exactly a secret, either...
Still, fine. Whatever.
To be precise, it wasn’t me who felt it.
It was Saessak that sensed Li Lianzhe’s pure, complete mana.
But I didn’t feel like explaining that honestly, so I took the credit myself.
As I sent my reply, I glanced at Han Minister.
His face had gone blank, like someone had just short-circuited his brain.
Then he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.
He started tapping his smartphone with his thumb again, carefully angled so Li Lianzhe couldn’t see the screen.
“Huh. That’s surprising. Now I see why Minister Hwang kept pushing for you.”
“Hm?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t know. There was an argument that you should be excluded, based on all the ways you came up short. Minister Hwang bulldozed right through it.”
“Ah...”
I’d heard that from Hwang Minister already.
He’d said he’d ignored the objections until everyone else had worn out from arguing.
Not exactly something to be proud of, since it was more about ignoring people than persuading them, but...
Hwang Minister had genuinely been pleased with himself.
“Honestly, I was on the side that said you should be excluded too... but I was wrong. I apologize.”
“No, objectively speaking, that was the right call.”
“Minister Hwang must have been judging your true strength, then...”
No.
That probably wasn’t it.
Hwang Minister had pushed me through not because he’d measured my real strength.
I’d only seen him a few times, but that wasn’t the kind of man he seemed to be.
He was the sort who moved first if something looked entertaining.
He probably pushed me through not because he had some grand plan, but because he thought, This looks fun. Should we go ahead?
So that was it.
Only then did I understand why Han Minister had gone blank like that.
Why he’d asked if I’d really felt it.
It was Li Lianzhe’s mana, the sort only the heavy hitters had ever sensed.
So naturally it would be hard to believe when I said I’d felt it too.
Then again, if it hadn’t been for Saessak, I wouldn’t have realized Li Lianzhe had sent out mana in the first place.
Our Saessak was something else.
Adorable, too.
I reached up and stroked Saessak, floating above the screen.
My mana flowed into it.
Seeing that, I glanced sidelong at Li Lianzhe.
The old man was still watching me.
If looks could wear something down, there’d probably be a hole burned through me by now.
“......”
I looked back down at the chat window, trying to avoid his gaze.
Han Minister was tapping away at the smartphone he’d hidden beside his thigh.
But... even after I waited, no message came to me.
Was he texting someone else?
Well, if that was the case...
Now that the interrupter was gone, maybe I could finally focus on petting Saessak properly?
Then,
“Ahem. Ahem.”
Li Lianzhe cleared his throat twice.
At the sound, all four men, myself included, flinched at once.
Warning! Warning!
Yeah, Saessak.
I think I should probably be careful, just like you said.
Following Saessak’s advice, I tapped the screen very carefully.
Seeing that, Jo Joo-hyun, who was sitting next to me, jabbed my side with his elbow.
But my index finger didn’t stop.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Li Lianzhe stared fixedly at Do-woon, who sat across from him.
His observation had continued without pause ever since the brief interval at the airport for changing clothes.
Even now, inside the limousine.
“What is it?”
Even when his disciple Liu Yiho asked him a question, he didn’t so much as turn his eyes.
His gaze stayed pinned on Do-woon alone.
It was as if only the two of them were riding in the limousine.
Liu Yiho, who had been waiting for his master’s answer, shook his head.
As his prized disciple, he knew better than to poke at him when he got like this.
Instead of asking again, Liu Yiho decided to stare at Do-woon the way his master was.
“......”
Suddenly treated to the scrutiny of two Chinese men, Do-woon reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone, as if to change the mood.
The motion was smooth, like something he’d repeated his whole life.
Then he launched a game without hesitation.
“......!”
Shock spread across the faces of the others in the limousine.
They each tried to stop him in their own way.
Jo Joo-hyun, seated beside him, nudged his side with his elbow. Han Minister, sitting along the side of the limousine, tapped his smartphone screen from an angle Li Lianzhe couldn’t see.
There was only one problem.
Do-woon didn’t stop tapping the screen, no matter what either of them did.
It was rude and disrespectful, but Li Lianzhe didn’t feel annoyed.
This was the first time he’d ever seen someone boldly take out a smartphone and start a game right in front of him.
Not hiding it away, but doing it openly, straight before his eyes.
That made it fresh. Interesting.
So he did what people often did when they felt entertained.
He smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting into a grin.
Do-woon’s body shrank back by the tiniest amount.
Seeing that flinch, Li Lianzhe was impressed.
Good instincts.
Had he sensed my qi again?
Li Lianzhe recalled the personal dossier on Do-woon that had been sent by the Chinese authorities.
[Baek Do-woon.]
[Age 26. A-class hunter. Swordsman.]
[Older brother of the White Saint, Baek Do-hee.]
[Friend of the Knight of the Sky, Lee Tae-cheon.]
[Presumed to possess an A-class regeneration skill.]
[Retired, then returned.]
[After that, with help from Baekwooncheon Guild, he seems to have returned and become an A-class hunter within fifteen days.]
The dossier described Do-woon as an insignificant hunter.
There was no meaningful information on him.
He was little more than an appendix.
Not even a properly organized report, just an addendum pasted to the back of Lee Tae-cheon’s file with a Post-it note...
Because he had not been considered important, the investigation into him had been terribly incomplete.
He had gone from D-class to A-class in less than a month, but even that had been judged as nothing special by the Chinese authorities.
The reason was Lee Tae-cheon and Baek Do-hee.
If he had their support, becoming an A-class hunter would not have been difficult.
But Li Lianzhe now understood that judgment had been wrong.
If Do-woon had only become A-class because of help from acquaintances, there was no way he could have felt the qi Li Lianzhe had sent out.
Was this the same one as that greenhorn from back then?
Why did people like this keep coming out of Korea...
Up to now, the only ones who had instantly sensed the tiny amount of qi he released were the S-class hunters and Han Jin-hwan.
Even his beloved disciple had only managed to sense it about once in ten times, after long and grueling training.
And yet this young man, whom he had not even thought worth paying close attention to, had sensed that tiny trace of qi.
More than that, he had even looked straight back at him with a frown, as if to say, “Why are you doing that?”
He had recognized perfectly who had sent the qi.
In Do-woon’s frowning face, Li Lianzhe saw the face of a man he had first met eight years ago.
No, not just the face.
“What the hell is this crazy old man doing, like some kind of pervert?”
The voice came with it, too.
Li Lianzhe had regretted for eight years now that he hadn’t twisted that greenhorn’s neck that day.
Just thinking about that memory made his mood twist.
Li Lianzhe wanted to appear, and be called, a sage by others.
So being called a “crazy old man” and a “pervert” had naturally left him displeased.
“Ahem. Ahem.”
Li Lianzhe cleared his throat twice.
He was trying to erase the face and voice that had surfaced in his head.
The four people who didn’t know that all flinched at once.
They thought he was angry because of Do-woon playing a smartphone game.
Heh. And still he won’t put it away.
Do-woon just kept playing.
Even though he’d shrunk back, he still had no intention of putting the phone away.
He had quite the nerve.
When he first sent out his qi, it had only been out of curiosity...
The reason Li Lianzhe still remembered Do-woon’s dossier, attached as an appendix to Tae-cheon’s report, was Han Jin-hwan.
When they held the four-way meeting with the other S-class hunters, Do-woon had been sitting right next to Han Jin-hwan.
He seemed fairly close with Jin-hwan, who liked to go around on his own, so Li Lianzhe had become curious about what kind of man he was.
But then...
To his surprise.
Just as his disciple had said, Do-woon was weak.
In Li Lianzhe’s eyes, Do-woon’s strength was about that of a newbie who had only just entered the A-class.
Compared with his disciple Liu Yiho, it was insulting to even make the comparison.
Because of that...
“Lee Tae-cheon is strong. Why is friend not strong?”
He could understand why Liu Yiho had asked why he was so weak.
But.
Li Lianzhe, on the contrary, wanted to rebuke his disciple for being too dull.
Of all people, his disciple should have noticed.
If he had only paid a little attention instead of dismissing him, he would have realized it.
That Do-woon possessed completely pure qi.
Qi with no impurity at all, clear to an almost ridiculous degree.
Could such a thing truly exist?
Li Lianzhe stroked his beard.
He had only attained that same kind of qi after passing the age of forty-five.
It had been earned through ascetic suffering that felt like flaying his bones in order to cast out the dirty impurities within his body.
That was also when he was named an S-class hunter.
At the same time, that was why Han Jin-hwan had failed to become S-class and remained stuck at A+.
Even Han Jin-hwan, the man who had changed the hunter ranking system, still did not possess perfect qi.
And yet.
An A-class hunter who was barely twenty-six had that perfection.
When Korea produced an S-class hunter, he had assumed it would be Han Jin-hwan...
At that moment, for the first time since boarding the limousine, Li Lianzhe turned his head.
Toward his disciple, Liu Yiho.
So at last my beloved disciple has a rival now...
In one sense auspicious, in another ominous.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Another text came in from Han Minister.
Looks like he really was texting someone else.
......
I looked at Li Lianzhe.
He was still watching his disciple, but when our eyes met, he gave me a slight smile.
And right then, Saessak sent me a warning.
He likes me...
Then why was Saessak warning me?
That did sound like something Han Jin-hwan would do.
If someone was glaring at him because they didn’t like him, he’d probably just laugh it off and say something stupid like, “Why do you keep staring? You like me or something?”
He might never even consider the possibility that someone simply disliked him.
“......”
“......”
Haa.
Maybe that really was the answer...