Chapter 407. Let Us Determine the Greatest Under Heaven.
Things in this world do not go as one wishes.
In truth, countless plans of mine had failed as well.
Like how I failed when I tried to make the Pervert Demon a eunuch.
But even if things in the world do not go as one intends, there is no need to be disappointed. After all, the Pervert Demon has now become a man who turns bastards like his past-life self into eunuchs.
This is not my achievement.
From what I have seen, it is Yoran’s achievement.
After hearing me speak sharply to him for the first time, Eldest Brother looked at Left Envoy Wi, lost in thought.
He seemed to be suppressing his killing intent with effort while mulling over my words. In truth, for someone of the Sword Demon’s stature, it must have been quite difficult to listen to the words of a much younger brother.
I waited silently, hoping Eldest Brother would understand my meaning. Eldest Brother nodded two or three times, then spoke as though he had made his decision.
“Third Brother’s opinion is always… Let us do that.”
I looked at Eldest Brother, then nodded.
“Eldest Brother, I’m sorry, but I had a plan. It changed several times, however. The fight at Mount Hua, you see—I intend to make it an example for the murim. Of course, the Cult Leader may arrive, and a life-and-death duel may break out. Even so, I am satisfied. Look at this Plum Blossom Manor.”
With Eldest Brother and Left Envoy Wi, I looked around Plum Blossom Manor anew.
“There are no weaklings here. There is no one who will be swept up in the fighting and die. Let us show them that this is how people of the murim resolve disputes. With a few duels, the orthodox faction cannot annihilate the demonic path, and conversely, the demonic path cannot massacre the orthodox faction either. And it is not as if we are fleeing. I…”
I stopped speaking and looked toward the entrance of Plum Blossom Manor.
Look at this.
Things in the world do not go according to plan.
A pitch-black carriage arrived, and for a while, no one got out. It simply remained there.
The reason we fell silent was that we had seen that pitch-black carriage before. Even the carriage wheels were painted black, making it look as though it would float through the darkness once night fell.
‘He’s here.’
Had he come quickly? Or had he come slowly?
I could not know, but I did not feel bad. If anything, I felt almost glad to see him, though it was difficult to express that.
Then Gongsun Sim stepped down from the pitch-black carriage.
Look at this.
One cannot know what will happen in the world.
Was Gongsun Sim in league with the Cult Leader?
Had he served as the Kwae Hall Master just to stab me in the back like this?
It was such a frighteningly shocking combination that, for a moment, I could not speak. But there was more to be surprised by. The Blood Cult Leader, looking like a persimmon ripened entirely scarlet, appeared with a deeply displeased expression.
“…What sort of combination is that?”
Only then did Left Envoy Wi rise and go to greet the man who belatedly emerged from the carriage.
As the Cult Leader walked toward Plum Blossom Manor first, Gongsun Sim and the Blood Cult Leader followed behind him like the Left and Right Radiant Emissaries.
‘What an extraordinary combination.’
Left Envoy Wi greeted the Cult Leader.
“Cult Leader.”
I had no particular intention of standing, so I pointed to the seat across from me at the table.
“You have come.”
The Cult Leader nodded, passed right by Left Envoy Wi, and sat across from me. Then the Blood Cult Leader stood behind him, while Gongsun Sim approached my side, making my knees go weak.
“No, Chief Strategist…”
Gongsun Sim immediately resolved my doubt.
“I met him while chasing the Blood Cult Leader, and he told me to go to Mount Hua with him, so I came along. I had no choice. As you know…”
Only then did I understand the situation.
In truth, if the Cult Leader tells you to go, there are not many men who can refuse. Thus, I welcomed Gongsun Sim, the Kwae Hall Master and former Chief Strategist, back as an ally.
“Phew.”
It seemed I had been rather badly startled. Only then did I greet the Cult Leader.
“You must have had a hard journey coming such a long way.”
The Cult Leader asked in return.
“Where is the First Demon Elder?”
I pointed to the manor and said.
“…He was defeated by Mongrang, who is lying inside, and left with his subordinates. You should have seen it, Cult Leader. It was an incredible sparring match. In truth, the First Demon Elder had a slight advantage, but Mongrang’s strange consummate art overturned the match like a light illuminating the darkness.”
The Cult Leader responded with another question.
“Are you saying the First Demon Elder returned alive?”
At that moment, unexpectedly, a man I had never seen before came trotting in from outside, knelt at a distance, bowed his head, and spoke.
“Cult Leader, I report. The First Demon Elder was defeated by the second son of the Fengyun Meng Clan. It was conducted as a sparring match, so his life was spared. I report this as it is, without excuse. His final words were that, having been defeated, he was going to recuperate in order to keep his old life attached to him.”
“Anything to add?”
“A physician named Murong Bai has arrived inside Plum Blossom Manor, and he applied golden wound medicine to the First Demon Elder for temporary treatment. He is currently treating Mongrang.”
“Understood.”
“Yes, Cult Leader. I shall withdraw.”
The Cult Leader looked at Eldest Brother.
“The First Demon Elder was defeated by your disciple. How did that happen?”
Eldest Brother answered with a faint smile.
“It was not one-sided. It could not be predicted until the very end.”
This time, the Cult Leader looked at Left Envoy Wi.
“What are those assassins dead outside?”
Left Envoy Wi seemed slightly flustered, then reported thus.
“They were assassins from Hainan, and they fell for the Sect Leader’s enticement that he would pay them more, so I killed them.”
At once, I hurriedly checked the Cult Leader’s expression.
He was not laughing here?
If so, the Cult Leader was not human. As I watched, the Cult Leader’s patience was so deep that its end could not be fathomed.
He held that in.
“What enticement?”
“Well, if I dealt with the Sect Leader and the Sword Demon, he had agreed to give me three thousand silver pieces for each. I raised that to four thousand, but then the Sect Leader told the assassins he would give them ten thousand silver pieces if they dealt with me, so…”
“Understood.”
“Yes.”
The Cult Leader looked at Left Envoy Wi, then added a word.
“No matter where you go, you talk about money.”
“My apologies.”
At some point, the Blood Cult Leader, who had sunk down onto the ground, let out a sigh and scolded Left Envoy Wi.
“To think a pathetic bargaining bastard like that is the Left Radiant Envoy… These are the end times. The end times.”
A pathetic bastard scolded a pathetic bastard.
When Left Envoy Wi glared at the Blood Cult Leader with his brow furrowed, the Blood Cult Leader opened his eyes wide and continued speaking.
“What are you glaring at? I suppose you won’t be able to look at me like that once I pluck your eyeballs out. You’ve grown quite a bit, you Wi bastard. ‘Right Envoy, sir. Right Envoy, sir,’ you used to say, prostrating yourself every time you saw me, and now you think you’ve risen in the world? If not for the Cult Leader’s protection, you would have long since burned to death by the Sword Demon’s hand and mine, along with your clan. What a long-lived bastard you are.”
I honestly felt like laughing, but since the Cult Leader was watching, I tried hard to restrain myself. Still, I couldn’t help my nostrils flaring a little. Seeing it this way, Eldest Brother was also holding back laughter.
“……”
The Cult Leader said to Left Envoy Wi.
“They didn’t look like assassins capable of killing the Sword Demon or the Sect Leader.”
“Yes. In truth, I wished to witness the Sect Leader’s martial arts once. Also, they were men who had caused a great deal of trouble in Hainan, so whatever happened, I intended to deal with them myself.”
He confessed that it had been his own borrowed-knife scheme, but it was an utterly shabby, miserable excuse.
When the Cult Leader let out a faint sigh, Left Envoy Wi hurriedly shut his mouth.
Looking at it this way, being the Cult Leader truly wasn’t a job worth having. After all, nine out of ten cultists were madmen.
Just look at the fellow sitting on the ground like some beggar bastard. A man like that had been serving as the Right Envoy of Radiance, so what more needed to be said?
Only then did I come to understand in detail the real reason Eldest Brother had escaped from the Demonic Cult.
The reason was nothing grand.
It seemed he simply hadn’t wanted to stay in the Demonic Cult.
Just then, the manor gate suddenly burst open with a bang, and the Lust Demon appeared with a white cloth wrapped around the crown of his head.
Everyone’s gazes naturally turned toward the Lust Demon, who had cloth wrapped around various parts of his body. At some point, Moyong Baek followed him out and scolded him.
“No, if you’re injured, you should be lying still. Why are you coming out?”
“Master Moyong, I’ll do as I please.”
In the end, the Lust Demon and Moyong Baek walked over side by side and stood nearby. The Lust Demon looked straight at the Cult Leader and said,
“Cult Leader, you’ve arrived.”
“Yes. I heard you defeated Ilmajo?”
“Yes.”
Unexpectedly, the Cult Leader brought up something none of us had anticipated.
“How long has it been since your Cold Poison last relapsed?”
“How did you know? It’s been quite a while.”
“Originally, when a man practices the Jade Flower Ice Art incorrectly, it commonly causes a kind of qi deviation. It likely was not a martial art suited to your constitution. You would suffer from Cold Poison through the night and be deprived of sleep. At times, when you held a woman and fell into a deep sleep, you would come to depend on and obsess over that, and so it was a martial art that earned one the epithet Lust Demon. It means martial arts affect the mind, and if one’s will is weak, one ends up living a mediocre life.”
Wow, was that true?
The Cult Leader was not a man who spouted lies, so to be honest, I was surprised as well.
That was the reason the Lust Demon had been the Lust Demon?
The pants-shitter having a lustful nature was probably one reason, but the Jade Flower Ice Art he had learned had also provided the cause that forced him to live as the Lust Demon.
Martial arts were that terrifying.
Because they could change a person’s fate.
This was why the aftermath of the orthodox martial arts of the righteous path and the martial arts that had, in any case, come from branches of the demonic path were so different.
Surprisingly, the Cult Leader looked at Eldest Brother and said this.
“You expended your true qi once.”
Eldest Brother said in an indifferent tone,
“Could it truly be called a waste? My disciple defeated Ilmajo without receiving help from anyone, so I have no regrets.”
“Mm.”
All of a sudden, we crossed our arms at the same time and looked at Eldest Brother.
What on earth was this conversation?
So, to summarize, it meant Eldest Brother had already expended his true qi in the past while treating the Lust Demon’s Cold Poison.
It felt a little different from expending internal energy. To put it somewhat exaggeratedly, it meant Eldest Brother had grown weaker from the time he met his disciple after escaping the Demonic Cult.
To a person of the jianghu, true qi carried that sort of weight.
I suddenly looked at the Lust Demon.
I had wondered why this hopeless pants-shitting bastard was so respectful toward his master, but there had indeed been circumstances that made it inevitable. His master had treated his Cold Poison while expending true qi, without expecting anything in return.
Unexpectedly, I recalled the sight of Eldest Brother sitting on the wooden bench some time ago, polishing his wooden sword. Perhaps even Im Sobaek back then had noticed that Eldest Brother’s true qi had been damaged. Images of Eldest Brother, who had simply begun training again with the wooden sword with a calm state of mind, passed before me like a revolving lantern.
‘Those past battles were no ordinary matter for Eldest Brother.’
How could a person not show it even once? It seemed I had not made the Sword Demon my eldest brother for nothing.
If so, the strange tattoo that had been on the Lust Demon’s body might also have appeared when Eldest Brother treated him while expending his true qi.
The Cult Leader said to Eldest Brother,
“Even so, it seems you’ve filled it back up quite a bit.”
Eldest Brother asked,
“How does it seem compared to before?”
“Your atmosphere has changed considerably, so I cannot tell precisely.”
Only then did the Cult Leader slowly move his head, taking in the scenery of Plum Blossom Manor.
“…Not bad.”
I could not immediately tell whether he meant Plum Blossom Manor was not bad, or whether the atmosphere he had come to confirm for himself was not bad. It also sounded as though the Cult Leader’s mood was not bad. Perhaps it was an expression containing all those meanings at once.
While the Cult Leader was admiring the scenery, the tactless pants-shitter opened his mouth as if ruining the mood.
“Cult Leader.”
“What?”
The Lust Demon glared at the Cult Leader and said,
“I will challenge you first.”
“……”
As the Cult Leader smiled faintly, all of us stared at the Lust Demon. The challenge had come so suddenly that no one could think of anything to say.
I looked at the Lust Demon’s expression and realized the bastard was serious.
“Wait.”
With one hand slightly raised, I looked at the Cult Leader. As if granting me the right to speak, the Cult Leader said,
“Sect Leader, speak.”
I looked around at the people watching me, then said,
“I have my own thoughts regarding the martial contest. They may differ from what everyone here thinks, but I should say them anyway.”
Because it was an important moment, I found myself rising from my seat. I looked around at the gathered people and said,
“He is a guest who has come from farther away than any of us, so it is not right to fight immediately. What kind of challenge is it if we haven’t even served him a cup of water? I don’t know whether Senior Cheonak and Baegui will come, but assuming they arrive, it is also not right to face the Cult Leader in successive matches. Let us determine the greatest under heaven here. But if the method is a gauntlet, then it is nothing more than trying to win in a filthy manner.”
The Lust Demon replied,
“Then what should we do?”
“I know that, for the most part, what I’m saying lacks order. Just listen for now. It won’t be too late to figure out what I’m trying to say after you hear it.”
I revealed my thoughts to these rarely seen experts.
“Determining the greatest under heaven means exactly that. Right now, even without proving it, the Cult Leader is practically the greatest under heaven. I can tell at a glance. So it is right for the Cult Leader to be deeply involved in the bouts. If you want to see a match between Cheonak and me, that is fine too.”
“Mm.”
“If Eldest Brother still has resentment left and wants to challenge the Cult Leader, that would not be bad either. If you are curious about the outcome of a martial duel between this shameless White-Clad Scholar and the Blood Cult Leader, it would be fine for those two to face each other. If Senior Cheonak is determined to challenge the Cult Leader, I, too, am curious how that duel would unfold. So what I mean is… not everyone here needs to challenge the Cult Leader. That would be shameless. Does everyone understand what I mean?”
As I waited a moment for their answers, a petal borne on the wind, though it had nothing to do with any of this, danced where all our gazes fell.
“Masters of this caliber have survived for so long and gathered at Mount Hua. Shouldn’t we do something at least that meaningful? What I mean is, let us determine the true Number One Under Heaven here. And along with that, we will also learn who the masters truly worthy of being called the Five Supremes Under Heaven are.”
I wanted to do something a little more refined than killing and being killed.
I could not tell whether my meaning had gotten across, since my eloquence was lacking.
I tried to define the meaning of this Mount Hua Sword Debate as plainly as I could.
“Once this fight is over, the epithet of the Three Calamities will disappear. At the very top will stand the Number One Under Heaven, and beneath him, let us create a new title for those who form the ranks below. The moment has come for the era to change.”
Could this, for the Cult Leader,
or perhaps for us, become a time like a gift?
I hoped it would.