Chapter 201. It Seems I Was Lacking.
Thinking about it as I ate the meat, I had slept plenty. That meant I could fight for three days and nights without rest from here on.
Matters of the jianghu could not be predicted even an inch ahead, so when wicked and unorthodox types were sniffing around, it was necessary to fill one’s belly well and prepare.
I diligently devoured the meat together with the Lust Demon and the Ghost Demon.
Sambok ate meat like a beggar of the Beggars’ Sect, but now and then he would set aside a piece or two, gathering them in a bowl to give to the Third Young Master.
Only when the rare meat feast was coming to an end……
The Third Young Master, having finished circulating his qi inside the inn, appeared with a hollow face and silently looked at the chaotic table, Sambok, and us.
“……”
I sat side by side with the Ghost Demon and the Lust Demon in front of the inn, picking my teeth without saying much. Sambok read the room and asked.
“Young Master, are you all right?”
The Third Young Master let out a sigh, then sat a little ways away from us and said to Sambok.
“Sambok, did you bring me here on purpose?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth?”
“Because I wanted to live. If I have offended you, I apologize. Have you driven out all the poison?”
“The poison…… More than that, I was too out of sorts.”
“Yes.”
“I feel as though you told me to shut up several times. What in the world were you thinking?”
I stopped picking my teeth and glared at the Third Young Master.
“Hey, Third Young Master.”
“……”
“Shut your mouth and eat the damn meat. Stop harassing your guard before I slam you into the ground and smash that stupid head of yours. He carried your sorry ass around trying to save you, and you can’t even let him tell you to shut up? Does this bastard need his mouth torn open before he comes to his senses? Do you want to circulate your qi again?”
“……”
Naturally, the atmosphere grew heavy.
But I was not the only one who wanted to lay into the Third Young Master.
The Ghost Demon also looked at the Third Young Master and opened his mouth in a subdued tone.
“Third Young Master. In any case, because you needed time to circulate your qi, the three of us were here eating meat and standing guard for you.”
“Mm.”
“If you bought time and drove out the poison, then as soon as you came outside, should you not first have assessed the situation rather than scolding the guard who suffered for your sake? I cannot imagine how you managed to compete with the other Princes with a mind like that.”
I nodded at the Ghost Demon’s words.
“Correct.”
The Lust Demon did not lay into the Third Young Master, but spoke to Sambok in a sarcastic tone.
“What was so pitiful about a bastard like that that you carried him around? Looking at you, you’re not in your right mind either. Since that meat you saved would be a waste, just eat it all yourself.”
Sambok stood with both hands respectfully gathered, watching both our expressions and the Third Young Master’s.
When the Third Young Master could say nothing, Sambok brought over the meat he had gathered earlier in an empty bowl and, utterly oblivious, said.
“Young Master, please have some meat. It’s delicious.”
What sort of pinnacle of obliviousness was this?
I turned my head together with the Ghost Demon and the Lust Demon, then stared—or glared—at the empty space ahead.
The Third Young Master accepted the bowl of meat, then set it down beside him as though he did not want to eat. He had just been harassing his subordinate, and then been harassed by us in turn, so the meat would not go down his throat easily.
Following the flow of my thoughts, I turned my head to lay into the Third Young Master again, but just then, the Ghost Demon beside me lightly tapped my knee.
It seemed to mean that I should stay still, so I looked forward again.
“……”
After an eerily heavy silence flowed by, the Third Young Master opened his mouth.
“Hao Sect Leader, Young Master Mong, Master Yukhap. Thanks to you, I was able to buy time and recover myself. Sambok.”
“Yes.”
“I survived thanks to you. If I had stayed at the safe house, I would have died. Thinking about it, the harsh words you said to me were nothing. It is all right.”
Sambok said in a subdued tone.
“Ah, yes. I was able to live because the Hao Sect Leader let us inside the inn.”
The Lust Demon said to Sambok.
“Pour the Third Young Master a cup of wine. His insides are all knotted up, so meat won’t go down his throat.”
“Ah, I see. Understood.”
The Lust Demon said.
“In any case, the Princes’ struggle is truly brutal. One side hires the Butcher and his martial brothers, while the other seems to have even brought in an expert from the Jecheon Alliance…… I cannot understand the Cult Leader’s intention in standing by and watching his sons fight to this extent. Could they not simply gather in one place and decide everything with a single duel? What do you think, bumpkin?”
I answered without much thought.
“Maybe he fought just as bloody a fight to seize the position of Cult Leader himself. Is it hereditary?”
The Ghost Demon answered.
“As far as I know, when the current Cult Leader fought over succession, the Cult’s situation was a complete mess. They say every organization split into factions and clashed. In that sense, now it is only the Princes fighting under the Cult Leader’s control, so the Cult itself likely suffers no particular damage. He is suppressing the maternal families backing the Princes as well, and even if one wins by seizing control of all this, he will still have to obey the Cult Leader’s orders. It is quite a futile fight.”
“Why?”
“Would the Cult Leader step down? In terms of both age and skill, as a martial artist of the jianghu, he is only now reaching his prime. Of course, he earned the title of Three Calamities long ago, but his skill must be even higher now.”
Ordinarily, martial artists of the jianghu belonging to the Orthodox faction consider their forties and fifties to be their prime. That is because they believe the internal energy training they have repeated for so long bears fruit then. But unlike that common belief, experts can appear in their twenties, and there are even occasional cases of someone becoming the greatest under heaven after passing sixty.
In any case, the jianghu saw the Cult Leader as only now entering his prime.
It was only my guess, but because of the Cult Leader, the overall level of the Orthodox faction must have risen as well. Since no one knew when the Orthodox-Demonic War would break out, the Orthodox experts, including Im Sobaek, would be training diligently too.
Only then did the Third Young Master drink a cup of wine.
In truth, the Third Young Master likely had nowhere suitable to go right now. Sambok, too, seemed exhausted from running around in all sorts of ways, and sat beside the Third Young Master, blankly staring out in front of the inn.
I looked around at the four men with nothing to do and the outside of the inn, then laughed to myself.
“……Seriously, all the pathetic bastards in life have gathered here. It isn’t easy to gather like this.”
The Ghost Demon answered.
“Not bad.”
Looking at the ordinary scene, I said to the four of them.
“This is the scenery of an inn. Enjoy it. If you cannot enjoy the moment, it will pass you by forever. Since we cannot enjoy forever, let us enjoy the moment.”
The Lust Demon nodded.
“You’ve mastered the art of spouting bullshit. Did you attain enlightenment?”
I shook my head.
“Our eldest brother attained enlightenment. The three of us still have a long way to go.”
The Ghost Demon asked me as if curious.
“Sect Leader, do you think Senior Sword Demon attained enlightenment?”
“Of course. His level is higher than the three of ours.”
“In what way?”
For a moment, I turned my head. Not only the Ghost Demon, but the Lust Demon, the Third Young Master, and even Sambok were waiting for me to speak.
I explained the Sword Demon’s level.
“Once, he was the Demon Cult’s Left Envoy of Light. A man who took orders from no one but the Cult Leader. If you compare it to a nation, wasn’t he in a position akin to a prime minister?”
Sambok answered.
“That’s right.”
“There may have been a Right Envoy, but the two would have been equals. The Chief Strategist seems to have been an honorary post for a retired elder. How many men in the murim could throw away the position of second-in-command of the most powerful organization in the martial world? That means his desire for power was not his foremost concern. Senior Sword Demon’s Light Sword, they say it’s one of the Demon Cult’s Four Great Swords. Yet he has set it aside for a time and trains with a wooden sword every day. That means he was wary of becoming stronger through improper means, and for someone from the demonic path, that is a difficult choice to make.”
Everyone listened to me in silence.
“But setting all that aside, what lies in Senior Sword Demon’s heart? The Cult Leader, the doctrine, and the demonic sword could not hold him down or suppress him. He pursues the demonic path he pondered alone and established alone, while not mingling with the trivial rabble of the unorthodox and heretical sects. In that alone, he is a great grandmaster. Even if he was defeated by the Cult Leader, even if the only force he has left is a single disciple who doesn’t listen to a word he says and he suffers under numerical oppression, the Sword Demon is still the Sword Demon.”
I looked ahead.
“It isn’t easy to live without causing great harm to others while staying true to your own convictions. And yet, even as the great lords and the unorthodox heretics fight among themselves, they surely cannot carelessly think of touching Senior Sword Demon. If you’re a man, this is how you ought to live. Sucking up to your superiors and carrying out orders well does not make it the demonic path. Following doctrine and bowing your head to the Cult Leader’s words is not the demonic path.”
I glared sidelong at the Third Young Master as I spoke.
“If you’ve eaten that many years, then live your life knowing the difference between being a slave and following the demonic path. And stop acting like a moron. Even if you use butcher-like bastards to kill off all your brothers, you can’t become the Cult Leader’s successor. Do you really think your father would hand the cult over to a moron like you?”
The Third Young Master could not open his mouth, and Sambok asked me in a cautious tone.
“Then who will he hand it over to?”
“He won’t hand it over, you bastard.”
“Why?”
I grinned and said,
“What am I, the Demon Cult’s spokesman…? Since we’re on the subject, if I had to say what I think, he’d hand the cult over to someone capable of killing him, or someone who actually does kill him. Isn’t that the demonic path? Why are you all fighting like such idiots? Your skills are idiotic too. A bastard who gets carried around on the back of a guard weaker than himself wants to become vice cult leader? Get a grip. Just sit there at the table and eat the meat Sambok grilled for you. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
When I cackled, even the Lust Demon and Ghost Demon looked awkward.
The Third Young Master glared at me, then stretched out his hand and began picking up the meat in the bowl with his fingers to eat.
For a while, the Third Young Master silently picked up meat with his hands and ate, then poured himself a cup of liquor with his grease-stained hand and drank it.
The Lust Demon spoke to me as if he were curious.
“Third.”
“What?”
“Why are you so good at tormenting people? Where did you learn to say such vicious things? Back when you fell off that cliff, did you take some eccentric master as your teacher, one who didn’t teach you martial arts but taught you how to make people cough blood with words?”
I pointed at the Lust Demon and said,
“Bastards like this are the worse ones, I swear. He could just stay quiet, but he always has to add a follow-up blow. What do you think, Second?”
The Ghost Demon nodded broadly as if he agreed.
“Right. If I were the Third Young Master, listening to you two, the meat would’ve gotten stuck in my throat.”
“……!”
Suddenly, there came a choking sound—hic—and when I turned to look, Sambok was patting the Third Young Master on the back.
“Young Master, eat slowly. You should use chopsticks.”
The Third Young Master hurriedly drank liquor with a face turned bright red.
There are times when even I don’t understand myself. Why was I born such a wicked bastard? I can’t understand every damn thing about how the world works, so it’s none of my concern anyway.
As I was having fun tormenting the Third Young Master, dark clouds finally began to gather around the new Thousand Li Inn.
A group of unorthodox heretics appeared.
Perhaps their leader, someone capable of shutting their mouths, was among them, because the martial artists—far more numerous than before—were swarming in with orderly movements.
In the midst of it all, the Third Young Master, who had forced down the meat stuck in his throat with liquor, continued picking up meat with his hands as he looked at those who had gathered to kill him.
Even to me, there were quite a lot of them.
The bastards who had flocked over spread out and formed a wide encirclement, and then the people near the center split to the left and right.
From there, a tall man in a black long robe walked out, looked around, and said,
“Explain who they are.”
One fellow from the group answered immediately.
“From the right, they appear to be the Hao Sect Master, Master Liuhe, Mongrang of the Fengyun Mong Clan, the Third Young Master, and lastly, the Third Young Master’s guard.”
The man in the black long robe replied in an indifferent tone.
“Why is this combination such a damn mess?”
I answered that question.
“You can say that again.”
The black-robed man said to me,
“Hao Sect Master, I am Yuan Jiaxing of the Jecheon Alliance.”
I nodded at Yuan Jiaxing’s words.
“You look like a monkey. What business do you have?”
Yuan Jiaxing glared at me for a moment, then sighed first.
“…We have decided to hand the Third Young Master over to someone else. You have no reason to protect the cult’s Third Young Master, so hand him over to us. We are not saying we will capture him and kill him on the spot. We intend to hand him over alive to our client. Nothing good will come of getting involved in the cult’s internal affairs, and interfering with our Jecheon Alliance’s undertaking is not a wise decision either. You are people whose reputations have only just begun to spread after being included among the Six Dragons. Surely you can judge this much reason?”
As he chewed his meat, the Third Young Master said to Yuan Jiaxing,
“Was it the Eldest Young Master, or was it Second Brother’s order? Say that first.”
Yuan Jiaxing looked at the Third Young Master and replied,
“You shut your mouth. I am speaking with the Hao Sect Master.”
Yuan Jiaxing said to me,
“Hao Sect Master, if not for this incident, our Jecheon Alliance would have been the first to invite you to join. From what I hear, you command quite a number of black path forces. I think you are more suited to our side than to Alliance Leader Im.”
Wow, even here they were trying to recruit talent…
This was not the time for that.
I looked at the Third Young Master.
“Are you done stuffing your face?”
The Third Young Master thumped his chest with his hand and replied,
“Just a moment.”
Having no choice, I spoke to Yuan Jiaxing first.
“Hey, Yuan Jiaxing. If kindness continues… Ah, that’s not it. Anyway, there aren’t many martial artists in the murim who can order me around. It’s not that there are none.”
Yuan Jiaxing said,
“Start with your conclusion.”
I glared at Yuan Jiaxing.
“You’re not one of them. If you’re the Jecheon Alliance, you shouldn’t have been negligent in gathering information. Did you not hear how I annihilated the Namak Alliance?”
Yuan Jiaxing looked at his subordinates around him and replied like this.
“…I heard Im Sobaek killed them all. Was that not the case?”
“That’s right.”
“So he says. What are you, then?”
A sigh escaped me of its own accord. It seemed I still hadn’t raised enough hell in the martial world.
If so, it was my fault.