Chapter 80. It Is Mine Alone.
“Nothing surprises me anymore.”
I calmly looked at Baek Soa and Heuk Soryeong, who had fainted without even asking my permission.
I had beaten down female demon heads notorious for their villainy during my Mad Demon days, but I had never indiscriminately bludgeoned a woman far weaker than myself to death.
And now they had gone so far as to faint, testing my conscience while in their most vulnerable state.
Suddenly, the faces of several female demon heads came to mind, so I compared their features with the countenances of the two unconscious women.
Evil does not distinguish between men and women.
However, female demon heads shared a common trait: their faces lacked fortune. Mostly, where fortune should have resided, lust peeked through.
It was not so much lust born from chasing men, but rather caused by the martial arts they practiced.
Female demon heads who practiced dual cultivation techniques like harvesting yang to replenish yin often forcibly extracted the vital essence of young boys and men to preserve their youth.
The problem was that they had been masters with whom I’d fought for quite a while during my Mad Demon days, so even now they were opponents I couldn’t let my guard down against.
I carefully studied the unconscious Baek Soa and Heuk Soryeong to see if they might be the younger selves of the female demon heads I’d known in my previous life. If by chance they were, I planned to beat them to death right then and there before they could grow.
“You two aren’t.”
I grabbed Baek Soa and Heuk Soryeong by the scruff of their necks, sat them upright, and slapped each of them on the cheek.
Thwack! Smack!
“Count yourselves lucky.”
The two who had been unconscious gradually came to their senses.
Outside, people were still shouting “Fire!” as they headed toward the arena, but there was no danger of it becoming a large blaze. From the start, the arena was an independent structure with a sunken center.
The moment the two opened their eyes, tears began streaming down once again.
“Stop crying, dammit.”
I went to the corner, washed my face lightly, and spoke.
“You’d best shut your traps before I throw you into a pit of fire.”
After washing my face, I placed a chair in front of the bed, sat down, and glared at the two.
Since I am a kind man by nature, I explained the circumstances behind the fire.
“The Narak Society is finished. Dongbang Yeon is dead, Pyeong Gunsa is dead, and Gu Yangbok is dead. Plenty of others too. If you don’t want to ascend and open a rainbow gambling hall on the clouds with the ones who went first, answer my questions properly. Got it?”
Perhaps their acupoints had been released, for the two answered curtly.
“Yes.”
“Gu Yangbok and I made a promise, man to man. If I defeated the entire Narak Society, everything it owned would be mine. As you can see, I won, and Gu Yangbok ascended wailing like a beaten dog. I worry he won’t be able to quit gambling in the afterlife. You two, offer a moment of silent prayer for his soul.”
“…….”
I rummaged around my robes where I’d tucked the Flash Dagger and spoke.
“Shall I draw a blade so you can pray?”
“We will.”
I watched as the two closed their eyes in silent prayer. Heuk Soryeong’s eyelids trembled, while Baek Soa had a trickle of clear snot even with her eyes closed.
“Open your eyes now.”
I asked the two, who had opened their eyes, in an affirmative tone.
“He went to a good place, didn’t he?”
Heuk Soryeong and Baek Soa answered simultaneously.
“Yes.”
I answered with a straight face.
“No. There’s no way.”
“…….”
“He’d need to have only swindled one or two people to go to a good place. He shouldn’t be allowed to go to a good place. Am I right or not?”
“You’re right.”
“He died by fire, so he must have gone straight to the entrance of the Hell of Flames. Tomorrow my subordinates will arrive with carts and carriages. You’ll cooperate by telling them everything you know about where Gu Yangbok hid his assets, so they can cleanly recover the Narak Society’s funds. Can you do that?”
“Yes. We can do it.”
“Good. Get some rest. If you try to escape just because your acupoints have been released… you know. The rainbow gambling hall.”
Baek Soa spoke.
“Isn’t the fire spreading outside?”
“The flames? I see. I’ll block the flames for you.”
“Wouldn’t it be enough to simply let us go?”
“Shut up. Stopping the fire is the priority.”
I stood up, pushed aside the curtain of the Phoenix VIP chamber, and stepped outside. Naturally, the flames were still only rising from the arena. I walked down the chaotic street, taking in the sights, and entered the empty Narak Inn.
* * *
The waiter Jo Pal was nowhere to be seen, and the white liquor I’d left untouched was still sitting there. Naturally, all the Narak Society’s martial artists had vanished too.
Just as I had sent the waiter Ilbo to the Black Cat Room, the waiter Jo Pal seemed to have taken Gu Yangbok’s letter and gone to the Nammyeong Society.
I rolled up my sleeves and muttered.
“Shall we take a look at the Gambling King’s quarters?”
I went inside, passed through a narrow corridor, looked through the kitchen, waiter’s room, storage room, and so on in order, and arrived at the end of the corridor.
A thick iron door that blatantly did not suit an inn stood blocking the way.
I hadn’t taken the keys from the corpse, so I pulled out the Flash Dagger and heated it with flame qi. After slowly inserting the red-glowing Flash Dagger into the keyhole, I stepped back and sent the iron door flying with a kick.
Boom!
A large room roughly the size of the entire inn appeared. Looking around, the so-called Gambling King’s dwelling was nothing more than a massive prison. Because he guarded the money he’d scraped together so desperately, the master of the house never even stepped outside.
“The so-called Gambling King lived a worthless life.”
The interior was crammed with all manner of expensive-looking furnishings and collectibles.
How could an innkeeper have amassed such luxuries? I had no interest in antiques or objects of aesthetic value, so I merely looked them over.
I went to the desk Gu Yangbok had used and found a letter left half-written.
“The Narak Society has come under attack by some madman. His martial arts level is immeasurable, no techniques work against him, and he knows the Narak Society in great detail. Heretofore, following the Nammyeong Society’s orders, I have supported you wholeheartedly without ever asking for help, but—”
The letter had been written up to that point, with an ink line drawn through the center.
Suddenly, looking at the wall to the right of the desk, I saw six portraits hanging. From the first to the fifth were people I didn’t know, but I easily recognized the last one.
Nammyeong Society Leader Nam Garak (南佳峈).
It appeared the Narak Society had sponsored as many as six successive Nammyeong Society leaders.
I glared at Nam Garak’s portrait for a moment. Naturally, I knew his name and face, but since I’d never crossed him directly, I had to rely on information and memory.
“He was a man who’d been doing well for himself before some master killed him out of nowhere. Who was it again? Not the Mad Saint… Ah, the Nameless Assassin (無名).”
The man who killed Nam Garak never boasted about it, so the incident had remained buried for a long time like an unsolved mystery. However, the Nammyeong Society, having lost its leader, identified the culprit as the assassin organization Ilwidogang (一葦渡江) and declared all-out war.
And after that, the Nammyeong Society was destroyed.
But in the martial arts world, there was more talk about the defeated Nammyeong Society.
That was partly because the victorious Ilwi Dogang had suffered a heavy blow, and partly because the Nammyeong Society had waged a war of terrifying savagery against the rather powerful Ilwi Dogang.
Since they were madmen who would fight until an organization was destroyed, I needed to give some thought to how to deal with the Nammyeong Society.
The incident in which Ilwi Dogang killed the head of the Nammyeong Society would not happen for several more years, so it was of no use right now.
All of a sudden, I took Nam Garak’s portrait down from the wall. I removed all the other portraits as well and threw them to the floor, then looked at the wall. Near the center, where the six portraits had been covering it, there was an iron door that looked like a hidden safe.
It was an unusual iron door, with no keyhole or locking device in sight. I looked at the wall and ceiling, then followed an imaginary line back to the desk. No matter how I looked at it, it was a structure that could only be opened by a mechanism connected to the desk.
I opened the desk drawers one by one and closed them again, then grabbed the inkstone on the desk and tried to lift it, but it would not budge. When I pressed down on the inkstone as it was, I felt a fairly powerful resistance.
I combined a suitable amount of external strength and palm force and pressed the inkstone down.
Then, from somewhere, there came a metallic clank.
I went to the wall and pushed the iron door. With a click, the door opened outward instead, followed by the sound of another mechanism.
“……!”
The instant I heard a whoosh of air, I stepped aside. A steel needle fired from inside the iron door flew past and embedded itself in the opposite wall.
Thuk!
Just what the hell had he hidden in there to prepare this kind of nonsense?
Looking inside from a short distance away, I saw, absurdly enough, thin pieces of metal cut into neat shapes. Since I could not carelessly touch them, I brought over the lamp from the desk and shone it inside.
“Hmm……”
I thought it might be gold, but it was black.
The surface looked rough and hard.
I took out the Flash Dagger, slid it in, and pulled out one of the unidentified pieces of metal, then brought it to the desk. After making sure there was no poison smeared on the surface, I scratched the metal with the tip of the Flash Dagger.
It did leave a fine mark, as though carving letters into it, but the tip of the Flash Dagger did not bite into it at all.
“It’s profound iron.”
Ouyang Fu, who was already offering up a great deal of tribute, would not have wanted to offer even profound iron to the Nammyeong Society. I wondered where he had obtained this, but the man I could ask was already dead.
I moved the flat pieces of profound iron inside the iron door onto the desk. Beyond them, I saw a small booklet and a pitch-black ring, but I examined the profound iron first.
Something occurred to me, and when I used the Flash Dagger to fit the shapes together here and there, they became a single black longsword.
It was truly astounding.
I was not surprised because it was a longsword made of profound iron. I was more curious as to what method had been used to split it apart like this.
What master in the world could cut a sword made of profound iron into pieces like this?
Not only in my days as the Mad Demon, but even the highest-ranking masters who had been stronger than me would not have been able to chop profound iron into this state.
Ouyang Fu had probably intended to melt all of this down and make a new weapon.
But now there was no way to know why he had merely kept it stored here.
I was no master smith, but this looked like an object at least several hundred years old. There was a common belief that weapons made of profound iron could never be cut, but after seeing this, I revised that fixed notion anew. There was no such thing in the world as an object that absolutely could not be cut.
The owner of the longsword had probably been an incredible master.
But when that hard longsword broke, its owner must have died with it. The conviction he carried in his heart would have broken as well. Only then did I come to understand, to some extent, what the Mad Monk had once said to me.
“If your conviction breaks, you’re already as good as dead, so there’s no need to worry.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said.”
If anything, it also sounded as though being too greatly bound by weapons made it difficult to raise one’s martial learning to a higher level. Only then did I realize that the Mad Monk’s words had to be interpreted differently depending on my own experience and ability. The me of my previous life probably had not understood even half of what the Mad Monk had said.
I once again took the booklet and ring from inside the iron door, placed them on the desk, and read the thin booklet first.
Ouyang Wuji, the Sword Magnate of a Generation.
Wuji Heavy Sword.
The moment I saw the next passage, I smiled.
「Ouyang Wuji fought me, a man of no reputation whatsoever, seven times and lost every time. He was a man of truly tremendous pride, but in the end, contests in the jianghu are won by the stronger party. Even before we crossed hands, I knew that I would win, so I was calm about the result. Ouyang Wuji, however, could not accept it. He did not even ask me the cause of his defeat. I am inclined to understand the hearts of those in the jianghu, but how am I to explain that because of that very heart, Ouyang Wuji cannot advance to the next stage? In the end, when I pointed out his shortcomings, his answer was that it was too late to learn anew. I think differently. How can there be such a thing as late or early in learning? Yet I also know that human affairs do not go as one wishes. When, in response to Ouyang Wuji’s question, I honestly told him that I had only fought a few times since entering the jianghu, he was even more shocked. I had not said it in order to drive him into qi deviation, but Ouyang Wuji had merely trained his own sword for a long time; the cultivation of his heart did not reach the level of his sword art at all. Such cases are countless among those of the jianghu. With no other choice, at the request of Ouyang Wuji, who was dying after failing to overcome the wound to his heart, I briefly set down the Wuji Sword Art that I faced. The one of later generations who obtains this sword art must use it for righteous matters. If it is used for unrighteous matters, I prophesy that its end will be miserable.
Jixingzi.」
Since it was the exact same manner of speech as what had been written in the secret manual of the Golden Turtle Xiaoyao Art, I had already realized while reading that the booklet had been written by Jixingzi.
The reason Ouyang Fu had hidden this was simple.
Jixingzi’s martial learning was of far too high a level.
It was not martial learning that Ouyang Fu would have dared covet, so even if he read it, he likely would not have understood what it meant. Moreover, the prophecy that if it was used for unrighteous matters, its end would be miserable must certainly have weighed on his mind.
However, in the jianghu of the present age, there was no one who understood Jixingzi more than I did.
Therefore, Ouyang Wuji’s sword art would become a sword art that only I, under heaven, could understand with certainty.
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
To challenge Jixingzi, who created the Golden Turtle Xiaoyao Art, seven times……
Ouyang Wuji, just how strong were you?