Chapter 191. Zaha Dao 紫霞道
I respect the Sword Demon’s thoughts, and I agree that there would be problems if the Third Young Master died at Baekeungji.
But is human psychology ever that simple?
Naturally, I wasn’t exactly in a good mood. But my moods have always had a habit of swinging back and forth, so as I watched the pathetic Lust Demon, the frustrating Ghost Demon, and the Sword Demon, who was politely insane, gathered in my quarters, my displeasure gradually faded.
Including me, that made four idiots.
In my previous life, I had mostly fought, killed, been chased, and gone mad all on my own, but now, going mad together with these idiot bastards didn’t feel so bad.
No matter how mad these bastards were, they were masters who could fight alongside me against the enemies I meant to face.
Thanks to that, I soon forgot the unpleasant feeling left behind from letting a bastard like the Third Young Master live.
Thinking about it, the chances of him appearing before me again and dying are not high. I expect he’ll either be done in by his brothers, or killed by assassins they send.
Whether that bastard dies or not.
What matters more right now is the fact that I am slowly turning the villains from my previous life, little by little, toward the light. I intend to guide the idiots who belonged to the villains’ circle of my past life onto Zaha Dao (紫霞道).
The White Path, the Demonic Path, the Black Path.
I don’t know. Truthfully, it’s none of my business.
But I do know a little about the path I wish to pursue. Kill those who should have died, give a chance to those who should not have died, and leave the result to heaven.
As I kept looking around at the idiots and taking deep breaths, the Sword Demon asked me,
“Sect Leader, are you all right? You haven’t suffered qi deviation, have you?”
“I’m fine. What about all of you?”
The Lust Demon looked at me with an expression that suggested he had no thoughts at all.
The Ghost Demon also nodded as if there were no particular problem.
“I’m fine.”
The Sword Demon asked me again.
“……It seems your pent-up anger is acting up. Shall we have another cup of plum tea?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s go easy on the plum tea. For the time being, I’ll find lodgings and stay at either the Thousand-Li Inn or Baekeungji.”
The Sword Demon nodded.
“Do as you please.”
I said to the Lust Demon,
“Tomorrow, send some people who can be hired for daily wages to the Thousand-Li Inn. We need to deal with the corpses and clean the inn as well.”
The Lust Demon nodded.
“I’ll send them myself. You’ll have to repair the walls too.”
I rose from the wooden bench and said to the idiots,
“Then rest. I feel like I’m about to gain a slight bit of enlightenment, so I’ll have to train a little in the middle of the night.”
The Sword Demon said with a faint smile,
“Work hard.”
Master Six Harmonies stood up and said to me,
“Sect Leader, give me some money. I need to find lodgings.”
“You beggar bastard……”
“Do not forget that your subordinates stripped me of everything I had.”
“Confirmed.”
With no other choice, I took a banknote from my money pouch and handed it to Master Six Harmonies.
* * *
The Butcher died, but his ignorant and brutal Butchering Saber Art (屠畜刀法) was inherited by me.
The sole successor of the Butchering Saber Art—that is me.
The principle of the Butchering Saber Art is simple.
It is a saber art in which a man who cannot feel bodily pain gives up defense and launches attacks.
I have faced all sorts of martial arts, but none were as brutal as the Butcher’s saber art. It was truly ignorant beyond belief, yet it was an ever-victorious saber art that was extremely difficult to deal with.
It felt like skirting the razor-thin line between death and mutual destruction.
The Butchering Saber Art is powerful enough to defeat someone of similar skill, and even if one is somewhat lacking in inner force, it is a saber art capable of cutting off the breath of a master one rank above.
Of course, in the process, there is also the risk of losing several parts of one’s body in vain.
That was why I recreated the Butchering Saber Art in my own way and, as I headed toward the Thousand-Li Inn, unleashed it wildly on the road.
I am a man who normally feels no shame, so I moved about while swinging the blade in a completely disorderly posture.
After focusing and throwing myself into a mad frenzy, I realized that this was truly a saber art perfectly suited to a madman.
I used my movement art and thrust the butcher’s blade forward.
I advanced while swinging it in short arcs, and the moment I confirmed the enemy’s movement, I lowered my head and swung.
In that case……
The technique performed while advancing is the First Form of the Butchering Saber Art.
The technique performed while evading is the Second Form of the Butchering Saber Art.
I mixed the First and Second Forms as I raced along the night road. Whenever the swords and hidden weapons of enemies I had created in my imagination flew toward my body, I twisted aside, extended the butcher’s blade, stabbed, and swung.
I moved as much like the Butcher who had tried to kill me as possible.
As I ran, I floated low into the air and stabbed, cut while moving, and even at the moment of striking away weapons, I shifted into an attack.
In my head, every moment of the Butcher charging in to kill me was now contained. The Butcher’s killing intent, bravery, and brutality were being unfolded again, intact, through my hand.
I fiercely repeated the First and Second Forms until, at last, I realized the problematic Third Form.
Giving up my own body to cut off the opponent’s breath—that is the Third Form of the Butchering Saber Art.
The Third Form was truly brutal.
To put it slightly differently, it was a refined method of mutual destruction.
While clearly forcing both the opponent and me to be injured at the same time, the psychological warfare of the Butchering Saber Art lay in pressing forward with momentum until the enemy had no choice but to retreat.
After all, hadn’t I fought while fleeing, and struck away the butcher’s blade while retreating?
If even I was driven to that point, then most masters would struggle greatly against the Butchering Saber Art.
With the moonlight as my companion, I continued to swing the blade.
Even when the sword created by my imagination stabbed into my abdomen, severed my left arm, and cut off my knee, I sent the opponent’s head flying with the butcher’s blade.
This time, while suspended in the air, I extended my left hand, imagined letting the opponent’s sword pierce into my palm, then unleashed a single stroke that split my imaginary opponent in half. At that moment, a shiver ran down my spine.
“Ah…… truly brutal.”
This Butchering Saber Art is martial learning in which a brutal mindset leads into the forms.
I repeated the First, Second, and Third Forms, running wild alone in the middle of the night. It was movement as though I had been possessed by the Butcher’s soul. But since my own nature was not so weak as to be shaken by ghosts, I felt not the slightest bit of fear.
On my way to the Thousand-Li Inn……
I made the Butchering Saber Art completely my own.
Because it was truly a saber art overflowing with madness, I was able to grasp it without much difficulty.
However, I did not like the word “butchering,” and in any case, since I had inherited the Butcher’s saber art, I decided on a new name for the new saber art.
From now on, this is the Mad Demon Saber Art (狂魔刀法).
As soon as I gave it a new name, I danced with the blade in front of the Thousand-Li Inn in order to forget the three forms of the Butchering Saber Art.
I intended to dance with the blade until the three techniques were forgotten from my mind.
Though I was dancing alone like a madman, the Butcher I had conjured in my imagination came back to life and attacked me with the Butchering Saber Art.
I continued the blade dance, crushing that Butchering Saber Art with the Mad Demon Saber Art.
In an instant, my entire body was left torn to shreds, but…….
I was the Mad Demon to begin with.
As I danced with the blade, I tore the Butcher apart again and killed him, sliced him down and killed him, smashed his head with palm force, neutralized his mutual-destruction technique, and then split him in half.
A state of selflessness…….
Carried away by the mood, I threw the butcher’s knife into the signboard of the Thousand Li Inn, and then…….
Thud!
The moment I drew my wooden sword, I unfolded the Plum Blossom Sword Dance (梅花劍舞). It was a sword dance into which I had improvised and melted the Mad Demon Saber Art. In an instant, the plum tree in the Black Rabbit Gang came to mind, and the faces of the subordinates I had formed ties with after my return flashed past.
The moment the thought naturally occurred to me that they must not be hurt…….
The power of the Mad Demon Sword Dance weakened markedly.
As soon as the excitement died, I put the sword back in, then shot up into the air and pulled out the butcher’s knife stuck in the signboard.
The Plum Blossom Sword Dance was truly a difficult domain, so I thought it would be right to move on to it only after perfectly mastering the Mad Demon Saber Art.
* * *
I went into the Thousand Li Inn, where corpses were strewn about, and caught my breath for a moment. Perhaps the Lust Demon bastard had used ice arts, because mangled corpses lay everywhere.
Just then, out of nowhere, the sound of something clattering struck my ears.
“…….”
When I went up to the second floor, a man propping his upper body obliquely against the wall was staring at me with a pale face.
His whole body was trembling, as if he had been hit by ice arts.
I pondered for a moment why this fellow was still alive.
Thinking about it, he was the one who had mouthed off to the Butcher at the start, then been blown away by the Third Young Master’s palm force and knocked unconscious.
Holding the butcher’s knife, I approached him and said,
“……So you were alive. Lucky you. All your comrades died, you see. But unluckily for you, you got caught. You bastard. Hahaha…….”
When I raised the butcher’s knife with a smiling face, the fellow, who had been watching while seated, fainted on the spot. The moment I saw white foam flowing from his mouth, I withdrew the knife.
“You faint? Confirmed.”
I thought that when he woke up later, I would interview him and then hire him as a waiter.
In any case, being the innkeeper is better than being an inn waiter. A waiter has one hundred and seventy-two assorted tasks besides cleaning, cooking, deliveries, serving customers, dealing with troublemakers, getting chewed out, sweeping the front yard, wiping up spit, and soliciting customers.
On the other hand, an innkeeper’s duties include counting money, napping, going out, looking around, meddling, and chewing out the waiters, so it is certainly more comfortable than being a waiter.
I was starting to need rest myself, but I could not spend the night with corpses, so I had no choice but to throw the butcher’s knife toward the unconscious fellow’s head.
Whoosh! Thud!
The moment the butcher’s knife embedded itself in the wall above the unconscious fellow’s head…….
The fellow who had fainted snapped his eyes open.
The moment our eyes met, I said,
“Get up before I beat you to death.”
“My body is frozen…….”
When I strode toward him, the fellow sprang to his feet.
“…….”
I grasped the young fellow’s chin, examined his physiognomy, and asked,
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are the Hao Sect Leader.”
“Clean, or die.”
“I will clean.”
“Begin.”
After hiring the fellow, who seemed to be one of the Third Young Master’s guards, as a cleaner, I pulled the butcher’s knife from the wall.
As the Lust Demon had said, there was a hole in the second-floor wall, so I sat down in front of it and admired the night scenery.
“……Go to the kitchen and bring me some liquor.”
The fellow who had been about to start cleaning went into the kitchen, clattered around, then brought liquor and set it down beside me.
I drank the tasteless liquor as I appreciated the night view.
It was the time when it seemed the morning sun would soon rise. I could hear the Third Young Master’s subordinate silently clearing away the corpses of his dead comrades. After cleaning for quite a while, the fellow asked me in a cautious tone,
“……Sect Leader, did the Third Young Lord perhaps pass away as well?”
“He is not dead yet. If he died here, things would become troublesome, so my comrades let him go alive.”
“Understood.”
While looking out at the pitch-black night, I asked,
“Why did you ask?”
“If the Third Young Lord dies, all of his guards must take their own lives.”
“Confirmed.”
I asked in a quiet tone,
“Do you happen to know where the White-Robed Scholar resides?”
“That is the first time I have heard that epithet.”
“How did the Third Young Master approach the Butcher?”
“The Butcher was originally an assassin who did business with Elder Hwan Gwija. We knew his location.”
“Did Hwan Gwija commission the Butcher to kill someone?”
“He was a reserve force meant to join when assassinating another Young Lord.”
“What brothers who truly think the world of each other. Stupid bastards…….”
I closed my eyes and wrapped up the day. The moment I closed them, the Butcher’s face appeared.
After that, the Third Young Master was glaring at me while kneeling. Perhaps because I had met so many madmen, now all I could do was laugh.
At the boundary between dream and reality, I warned the fellow who was cleaning.
“……Don’t make me chase you with a knife.”
“Understood.”
Suddenly, the epithets of the public enemies of murim who had been treated the same way as me in my previous life came to mind in no particular order.
Venom Demon, Ghost Demon, Lust Demon, Butcher, Lone Wanderer (獨行子), Flying Guest (飛客), Dongho One Sword (東胡一劍), Evil Emperor, and even Heavenly Evil…….
The moment I thought that I seemed to have grown strong in too short a time, drowsiness came over me. But the Third Young Master’s subordinate was cleaning, and all sorts of events from my previous life came to mind, so sleep did not come easily.
I opened my stiffening eyes again and stared endlessly into the pitch-black darkness.
Since there was nothing else to do, I held on to my senses.
And waited for the light.