Chapter 119. What a Mess, What a Mess.
After checking the parchment, the Sword Demon spoke in a composed tone.
“A treasure map?”
The woman in red smiled.
“The Woldanhwa is a flower that blooms and withers as it pleases. From what I’ve observed, there were times it did not bloom for ten years. Shouldn’t there be people to ease the boredom of that interval? And to replenish this palace’s servants while I’m at it. Still, anyone who makes it all the way up here cannot be completely worthless.”
“How is that any different from the Cult Leader?”
“Why should those who live in the jianghu be treated as people? If the Woldanhwa were blooming here and I were a weak woman, every martial artist who came would have attacked me. To think a man called the Sword Demon would say something so trifling. Are you suffering from qi deviation? You are talking nonsense.”
The woman in red glanced at the Left Envoy, who was circulating his qi and regulating his breath, then fixed her gaze on me.
“Now then, you should understand that the Woldanhwa here was under my management. How will you compensate me? Let us hear it.”
The Sword Demon looked at me as well.
It seemed he had lost words because the woman in red was so unreasonable.
I spoke to the woman in red, who was presumed to be the Cult Leader’s junior martial sister.
“What do you want? The Woldanhwa is a flower that blooms alone to begin with. If you meant to take it, you should have eaten it beforehand. Your logic is bizarre. Besides, seeing as you even had a treasure map, you must have thought of it as bait to fish for martial artists. Are you asking us to pay you for the worms?”
As soon as I finished speaking, the woman in red blinked, looking utterly astonished.
“What an absurd fellow. Sword Demon, who is this man?”
The Sword Demon replied with an awkward expression.
“Ask the person in question. He is right in front of you, yet you ask me. I have yet to fully grasp this one’s identity myself.”
The woman in red stared at me, still looking surprised.
“Who are you?”
I fell into thought for a moment because I was naturally an impolite bastard. For some reason, if I revealed that I was the Hao Clan Leader, it felt like this temperamental woman would later harass my subordinates or attack the Hao Clan.
“I am someone who, until recently, made noodles and wiped tables at an inn……”
The woman in red lightly ignored my words and spoke to the Sword Demon.
“Who is that fellow circulating his qi?”
The Sword Demon replied.
“My disciple.”
“Is he the one who will inherit the Gwangmyeong Sword?”
“He is not.”
“That is fortunate. Your disciple and this absurd fellow. I shall consider this debt settled by taking one of the two with me. I will only feel relieved once I make him do some servant’s work. Both possess deep internal energy for their age, so they should be good at working as well. This much should settle the account, no?”
The Sword Demon answered.
“Palace Mistress, that will be difficult.”
“Why?”
“My disciple still has much to learn, so I must keep him with me longer. And if you take my disciple, your forces will be waging an all-out war against the Wind and Cloud Meng Clan.”
“How absurd. How could the likes of the Wind and Cloud Meng Clan be a match for this palace? Then is that fellow also a young master of the orthodox path?”
The Sword Demon shook his head.
“He is not, but he is not a man who would become your servant.”
“Why?”
“Because he is already a man who has risen on his own. In any case, it is true that we took Senior’s Woldanhwa, so even if I must travel the jianghu, I will find something precious enough to rival the Woldanhwa and deliver it to your palace. I am a man who lives by the words he speaks, so I ask for your understanding, Senior.”
I looked at the two of them with my arms crossed.
Though they were figures of the demonic path, their conversation was rather refined.
The woman in red smiled.
“It has been a long time since I heard someone tell me what to do, so my mood is worsening by the moment. I suppose that after crossing swords with Eldest Senior Brother and making rapid progress in your achievements, you have forgotten who I am. I think I would feel somewhat better if I watched the skills of the so-called remarkable Left Envoy.”
The Sword Demon also smiled.
“You speak ambiguously. Have you forgotten who I am?”
The woman in red nodded.
“Of course I know. Why did the great Sword Demon flee after facing the Cult Leader? In truth, even you, who were more arrogant than anyone, seem to have experienced defeat.”
The Sword Demon nodded.
“The Cult Leader is that sort of man. Just as the Palace Mistress fled from the cult, I had no choice either. Since we fugitives have met after so long, let us begin by recalling old memories.”
The woman in red answered at once.
“Let’s go.”
The woman in red walked to the edge of the peak and launched herself off.
The Sword Demon looked at me and spoke in an ordinary tone.
“Clan Leader, I leave it to you.”
I nodded as well.
“Go on.”
I watched the Sword Demon throw himself off the peak, then crossed my arms. In any case, when tempers flared, the best thing was to have a bout, so it was not surprising.
I was curious about the fight, but since the Sword Demon had asked me, I sat down on the spot and crossed my arms.
A slight sigh escaped me.
To think I would be guarding the Left Envoy while he circulated his qi.
You truly never know what will happen in life.
A little later, a thunderous roar came from below, but in truth, I was not worried. The man the Cult Leader had not managed to kill for certain was the Sword Demon. Therefore, my conclusion was that there was no possibility from the start that a woman called the Cult Leader’s junior martial sister could kill the Sword Demon.
At this point, when I thought about the time in my previous life when I took the Woldanhwa……
If I pondered why that woman had not appeared then.
Could there be any grand reason?
Nine times out of ten, someone had killed her.
There was a particularly high chance the Cult Leader had killed her.
The Heavenly Jade was that kind of object.
It seemed to be an object even the cult shunned, so from the moment he laid hands on it, the Cult Leader must have started by annexing the forces of the demonic path.
He must have repeated the cycle of killing and filling the gaps, killing and filling the gaps.
No matter how much that woman called the Palace Mistress put on airs, if the Cult Leader tried to find her, she would not have been able to hide. If the Cult Leader wanted to kill her, whether her neck was snapped or all her vital energy was sucked out until she died as a shriveled old hag, she would not have been able to escape her fate.
Another thunderous roar burst out from below.
When I suddenly looked at the Left Envoy, sweat was continuously pouring down his face.
This was why martial artists in the jianghu often fell into qi deviation.
If unease crept up and then one stumbled during the process of circulating qi, it was either straight to hell or else one would suffer serious damage.
I said to the pants-shitter as my mood dictated.
“This is not a fight your master will lose. If you don’t want to shit yourself while circulating your qi, finish it calmly.”
Only then did the Left Envoy gulp down his saliva, and the anxious energy lingering on his face slowly subsided.
At that moment, a scraping sound unrelated to the Sword Demon’s noisy battle came from below the peak.
With my arms crossed, I turned my head and stared at the edge of the peak.
‘Who is it this time?’
Had my opponent arrived this time?
A moment later, a woman dressed similarly to the woman in red, though with far more white mixed in here and there, shot up into the air and landed lightly on the ground.
I looked the young woman up and down and came to this conclusion.
‘She’s not a normal woman.’
The woman, her face deeply furrowed, approached the Moon Cinnabar Flowers with her hands clasped behind her back and kept letting out heavy sighs. Turning her head toward me, she asked,
“Was it you two who gobbled them up?”
When I sighed, the woman snapped at me.
“Are your ears clogged?”
I picked my ear, then blew away the bit of earwax that came out on my finger.
“Hoo.”
The earwax scattered like plum blossoms.
I have never laid a hand on a woman who did not know martial arts.
What does that mean?
It means I have beaten women who did know martial arts several times. After all, women of the jianghu are different from ordinary women.
Still, a woman was a woman, so I first admonished her with kind words.
“You seem to be something like the Palace Lord’s disciple, but if you don’t want to eat your fill of bright red dirt with that mouth of yours, keep those eyeballs of yours civil and mind your words and actions. If you prance around without knowing how the world works, you’ll get a forehead flick.”
“……”
The young woman glared at me, then came over with a splay-footed swagger like some beggar bastard from the Beggars’ Sect. When she drew close, she looked down at me with a cold expression and asked,
“What is a forehead flick?”
“How absurd that you don’t even know what a forehead flick is. In that case, I cannot tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because that is not the tone of someone requesting instruction.”
One corner of the woman’s mouth curled upward.
Seeing that expression, I thought it was exceedingly laughable. It was the look that announced an attack.
Sure enough, the woman extended her hand and unleashed a finger art.
When I tried to seize her wrist, the young woman rotated her wrist to evade, then naturally shifted into a palm art and thrust it out.
Her movements were rather smooth, so without thinking much of it, I met her strike with the Flame Realm Great Hand Seal.
KWA-A-A-A-A-ANG!
The young woman retreated six or seven steps in rapid succession.
Absurdly enough, I too was pushed back slightly with my butt planted on the ground. Since my two feet weren’t braced against the earth, it seemed I had been shoved back, but in any case, it left me feeling slightly displeased.
I got up, dusted off my backside, and looked at the young woman.
“You’re ready to receive your forehead flick, aren’t you?”
The young woman asked me,
“How old are you?”
Those were the very words I had once used to attack the Left Envoy.
At the time, I had meant to ask his actual age, but what the young woman’s words seemed to mean was closer to, “How old are you, that your internal energy is so deep?”
I suddenly glanced at the Sex Demon’s face, then replied as though my mind had been briefly contaminated.
“Old enough to know everything there is to know.”
The young woman widened her eyes, apparently thinking she was being teased.
“Know what?”
“It means I know what a forehead flick is, you country bumpkin bitch who doesn’t even know that.”
The young woman took a stance like an opening form, then immediately pushed off the ground and flew in low. She then unleashed her palm art and rained attacks down on me.
As I parried her palm art, I thought,
‘At this rate, that pants-shitting bastard is going to die of qi deviation.’
With masters fighting beside him, he must have been going mad and out of his mind.
For now, it was none of my business, so I focused on blocking the young woman’s attacks. Her palm art had at some point shifted into finger art, then noisily mixed in qinna techniques and kicking arts as well.
I knocked aside the palm arts with my fists.
I answered the finger arts with qinna techniques.
I neutralized the qinna techniques with faster counterattacks.
Then, in an instant, the young woman’s kick came flying toward my left cheek with fierce momentum……
I blocked the kick with my left hand and, at the same time, reached toward the young woman’s chest.
When the startled young woman withdrew one hand to guard her chest, I accurately struck the center of her palm with the Waning Moon Finger Art.
Thuk!
It was a move I used because, from our earlier exchange of palm force, I already knew my internal energy was deeper than hers.
However, the young woman’s internal energy was also fairly deep, so the Waning Moon Finger Art did not take full effect.
I launched a feint at the young woman’s face, kicked her ankle with my left foot, then grabbed the collar of the staggering young woman and injected the Waning Moon Ice Art into her.
The young woman, startled, tried to counterattack, only to flinch in shock at the chill seeping into her body.
Moreover, I already had her by the collar.
Holding the young woman by the collar, I said,
“A forehead flick, you see…”
The moment I finished speaking, I struck the young woman’s forehead with a forehead flick wrapped in the internal energy of the Wood Realm.
With a crack, the young woman crumpled to the ground and lost consciousness.
I wore a sneer, then spoke to the pants-shitter who was circulating his qi and regulating his breath.
“Are you going to sit there doing qi circulation all day? Are you practicing facing the wall? Planning to attain enlightenment? Do it in moderation, you pants-shitting bastard.”
Had I let my guard down?
In an instant, the young woman who had fainted suddenly pushed off the ground with one hand. Still lying down, she shot six or seven zhang away, then sprang upright like a ghost.
The young woman felt her forehead with her hand and glared at me with murderous eyes.
“……”
Looking at the red mound swelling on her forehead, I said,
“What are you going to do by glaring? Know your place.”
For a moment, I felt as though my way of speaking had been contaminated. It wasn’t that I was strange; that young woman was the strange one.
The young woman replied,
“……So this is a forehead flick.”
Just as I was beginning to think I was having trouble adapting to her way of speaking……
The Left Envoy beside me began performing some idiotic motion, crossing his hands this way and that, up and down, then lowered his right hand to his dantian and let out a long breath.
“Hoooooo……”
The pants-shitter finished circulating his qi and opened his eyes.
Without even a single word of thanks to me, that crazy pants-shitting bastard looked the young woman up and down in detail, then said,
“Country bumpkin, one must not strike a woman recklessly.”
I had been standing with my arms crossed, but I whipped my head around and looked at the Left Envoy.
“……That is true, but—”
“Shut up!”
The Left Envoy shouted at me, then said to the young woman,
“I shall apologize in his stead.”
The Left Envoy stood, dusted off his backside, and offered the young woman a cupped-fist salute.
“I am Mong Rang of the Pungun Mong Clan. And you, young lady?”
I looked back and forth between the Left Envoy and the young woman with a bewildered expression. The young woman replied to the Left Envoy in an icy tone.
“You stay out of this.”
“Pardon?”
The young woman twisted her neck this way and that, cracking it with a crunch, then rolled one shoulder.
In the midst of all this, I was astonished by that Left Envoy bastard trying to look good in front of a woman, and astonished again by the young woman who, even after getting flicked on the forehead, was still thinking of coming at me.
The scum of the black path were consistently a complete mess, but the people of the demonic path were, every last one of them, chaos itself.
At times like this, I often found myself wondering if perhaps I was a man better suited to the orthodox path after all.
Compared to those who had steeped themselves in the demonic path, I certainly seemed far more normal.
In the middle of this, the young woman undid the sash around her waist and flicked her wrist; before I knew it, the sash had turned into a whip.
The young woman, still not in her right mind, asked me,
“Are you ready to be beaten?”
Meanwhile, from beneath the peak, the long, drawn-out ghostly wail of the Radiant Sword flowed on.
And the red-clad woman’s maiden-ghost-like laughter was wiping away the wailing that covered the Red Night Plain.
A sigh escaped me of its own accord.
‘Chaos. Utter chaos.’