Chapter 220: Chapter 220
As the horses carrying Danmok Chan and Jong-gak disappeared over the hill, Danmok Rin withdrew her widely waving hand and felt bitter.
Regret heavily cast over her face.
It was nice to see them, but it was an all too short meeting.
However, it couldn’t be helped.
Because right now, she was not a daughter of the Danmok Clan but a Taoist of the Mount Hua Sect.
Meeting and conversing longer than this was not a good thing for each other.
‘Still, it’s a relief that we could see each other’s faces and exchange greetings this time.’
She shook off a little of her regret while thinking of the time she left the clan.
It was Jong-gak and Danmok Chan, whom she had parted with without even being able to properly exchange farewells.
In particular, not being able to greet Jong-gak, who had taken care of her since she was young, was to the point that she felt sorry even as she was leaving.
However, since they got to exchange greetings like this, it was at least a satisfying thing.
‘On top of that, since I heard that Uncle is doing fine.’
Danmok Rin’s expression gradually brightened as she organized her thoughts one by one.
Upon hearing that Danmok Jin Gang, who decided to take responsibility for the crime of night flight on behalf of her who cut ties with the clan, received an unexpectedly light punishment, she swept her chest in relief.
Originally, she had planned to flee at night alone.
However, she, who had lost her internal energy, was easily caught by Danmok Jin Gang, and he had helped Danmok Rin instead.
Even knowing that he would be hated by the clan because of that.
Danmok Rin had also tried to stop him while worrying about the aftermath, but Danmok Jin Gang never backed down, and eventually, the two carried out the night flight and succeeded.
‘What a relief.’
When she was shaking off her regret amidst the short meeting like that.
Beside her, Cheon-hwi was stroking his chin and recalling the single sword strike Jong-gak had displayed just moments ago.
‘Hmm, it was a fun sword art.’
The one who created the Heaven Severing Flying Sword didn’t reach the Martial God Realm, but it was clear that they were someone who had caught a slight glimpse beyond it.
Otherwise, they couldn’t have manifested a fragment of the Mind Sword to that extent.
‘Wow, my interest is slightly piqued.’
The corners of his mouth slowly rose.
After meeting the peerless expert of the Martial God Realm called Paegun, his chest swelled with excitement upon witnessing a sword art that piqued his interest.
Slightly excited, he lightly moved his feet.
When Cheon-hwi swiftly got on the carriage, Danmok Rin also followed him with quick steps.
And the moment Heavenly Ear Beggar was about to get on the carriage last.
Grab.
Cheon-hwi’s hand stopped him.
“What is it?”
Heavenly Ear Beggar’s brow furrowed.
“I told you last time, didn’t I.”
“Last time?”
As if the wrinkles on his forehead deepened to understand the meaning of Cheon-hwi’s words, his expression soon scrunched up fiercely.
“Are you telling me to wash again?”
“Of course. Did you really think you could get on the carriage looking like that?”
Cheon-hwi scanned Heavenly Ear Beggar up and down.
Wearing a dirty straw mat he got from who knows where again, his appearance was a mess.
He had unkempt hair full of dandruff and black dirt marks smeared all over his face.
It was truly a strange thing.
It had only been a fortnight.
However, Heavenly Ear Beggar’s appearance right now was exactly the same as before setting off on their journey.
“Hmm? That looks like the clothes we bought last time, did you roll on the floor on purpose by any chance?”
“Ahem.”
As if Cheon-hwi’s guess was right, Heavenly Ear Beggar let out a fake cough and slyly turned his head.
“On top of that, this stench…”
Cheon-hwi, who tried to stealthily take a sniff, covered his nose with his hand and frowned at the stench that wafted over from Heavenly Ear Beggar.
“Did you go in and out of a dung bucket or something?”
This time, Heavenly Ear Beggar flew into a rage.
“You punk! I don’t go that far!”
“Then what is this stench?”
“You mean the smell? It’s my smell! How is it? Isn’t it a perfect stench?”
Heavenly Ear Beggar spoke proudly and puffed out his chest.
For a beggar, hearing that they smelled was better than any compliment in the world.
Cheon-hwi, rendered speechless by that proud attitude, slammed the door shut in front of him and said.
“Anyway, don’t even think about getting in looking like that.”
Eventually, Heavenly Ear Beggar pouted his lips.
“Got it. I got it! I just have to wash, right!”
About fifteen minutes later.
Clip-clop… Clip-clop…
Heavenly Ear Beggar, who had left the carriage, returned with Go Sam.
Go Sam, who brought over the horses that looked livelier than before perhaps thanks to feeding them fodder and water, swiftly looked around and nodded his head.
“We will depart again.”
Was it because he was born with quick wits?
Or was it because he had received a hint that such a situation would occur?
Even though he definitely felt the collision and aftermath of the spar, let alone open his mouth about it, he acted as if nothing had happened.
And Cheon-hwi also liked such behavior.
Wouldn’t it become annoying if he needlessly got scared or distanced himself?
At that moment, Heavenly Ear Beggar got on the carriage, and Cheon-hwi’s gaze turned to him.
Neatly trimmed hair and beard.
On top of that, he was wearing neat blue clothes, and it was as if the beggar he was until just now had disappeared and an elderly scholar had appeared in his place.
“Hmm? Did you also prepare clothes separately?”
“Hmph! I bought them just in case.”
Heavenly Ear Beggar grumbled as he spoke.
“Then you should have washed before coming over. If you did, it wouldn’t have gotten annoying either.”
Veins bulged on the forehead of Heavenly Ear Beggar, whose insides burned at the teasing words, but Cheon-hwi didn’t care.
“From next time, wash before I say anything.”
At the attitude of him rather calmly adding those words, Heavenly Ear Beggar thumped his chest.
He felt suffocated and wanted to say something as his insides seemed to turn upside down, but it was because he knew it was of no use.
At that moment, Go Sam shouted loudly.
“We are departing!”
With an energetic shout of ‘Giddy-up’ and the horses neighing, the carriage moved forward.
A moment later, amidst the regular swaying, Heavenly Ear Beggar, who had calmed his burning insides, looked at Cheon-hwi and said.
“Ah, right! I heard you caused an accident at the Zhuge Clan?”
“What accident?”
“Stop feigning ignorance. I know all about you getting into a scuffle with the Sichuan Tang Clan.”
“Ah! That?”
Recalling the incident he had completely forgotten in his mind due to meeting Paegun, Cheon-hwi spoke nonchalantly.
“Tang Jeok or whatever his name was, whom I met last time, picked a fight again, so I just entertained him.”
When Cheon-hwi spoke nonchalantly, Heavenly Ear Beggar stroked his beard and opened his mouth.
“As expected, you clashed with those guys.”
Speaking, his eyes flashed.
“But will you be okay? It’s none other than the Sichuan Tang Clan. They’re guys who would chase you to the ends of the Central Plains to repay a grudge.”
“They probably won’t even be able to think of doing that.”
The lips of Cheon-hwi, who answered, twisted.
The fear planted in Tang Jeok’s mind.
It wasn’t at a level that could be lightly resolved even by an expert.
However, with merely Tang Jeok’s skills.
‘He wouldn’t even dare.’
Heavenly Ear Beggar smirked while looking at Cheon-hwi, who was not worried in the slightest.
‘Looks like he did something to them.’
Had it been someone else, he would have just brushed it off thinking it was said out of bluff, but it was different because it was Cheon-hwi.
With that confidence, there was a high possibility he had set something up.
Heavenly Ear Beggar shook his head back and forth.
“Still, don’t run amok too wildly. The more you do, the more enemies will increase.”
It was a serious piece of advice stemming from experience.
Jianghu is a world of grace and grudges.
If grudges get deeply entangled, anyone’s life is bound to become complicated.
However, Cheon-hwi let it go in one ear and out the other.
‘That’s up to me.’
He was certain that there was no one who had experienced more grudges than him in his past life.
Because everyone in the Nine Provinces and Eight Wildernesses had their eyes lit up wanting to kill him.
‘In such cases, you just have to crush them so they can’t even hold a grudge.’
The moment he recalled the method he used to end grudges in the past, Heavenly Ear Beggar asked.
“…Is Paegun doing well?”
Cheon-hwi immediately snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Heavenly Ear Beggar.
He was meeting his gaze with a more serious expression than ever before.
“It seems you guys know each other well?”
“Not to the point where you could say that. But I do know him to some extent. When he was active in Jianghu, I was also in my prime.”
“He was doing fine. From the looks of it, he seemed to have developed a taste for tending to a vegetable garden.”
“What? He tends to a vegetable garden? That Paegun?”
Heavenly Ear Beggar widened his eyes.
Doing so for a moment, he burst into loud laughter.
“Puhahat! He, who made Jianghu tremble with his overbearing steps to unify the entire Central Plains, is tending to a vegetable garden?”
Heavenly Ear Beggar wiped the corners of his eyes, which had tears forming from laughing too much, with his index finger.
“What a truly unfitting act.”
“It wasn’t quite to that extent though.”
Zhuge Gocheon’s appearance of tending to the vegetable garden wasn’t that awkward.
Rather, it was natural.
Like a person who had been tending to a vegetable garden for a long time.
Hearing Cheon-hwi’s answer, Heavenly Ear Beggar stroked his beard and fell deep into thought.
“Well… I suppose that might be the case. It’s already been over forty years since he went into seclusion.”
Hearing Heavenly Ear Beggar’s muttered words, Cheon-hwi looked at him with an ‘Oho’ expression.
‘Come to think of it, he must know about the Eight Martial Gods better than anyone else.’
He hadn’t thought about it until now, but with the same generation and the title of Heavenly Ear Beggar, he would know better than anyone.
“But why did he go into seclusion with such skills? With those skills, he could grow the current Zhuge Clan even further.”
For a moment, Heavenly Ear Beggar’s eyebrows furrowed.
“I don’t know that either. No, not just me, no one knows.”
No one knows?
Cheon-hwi tilted his head.
It was a strange matter.
What reason would an expert who reached the Martial God Realm have to suddenly go into seclusion? There had to be something going on internally or externally.
However, Cheon-hwi’s eyes slightly widened at the explanation Heavenly Ear Beggar added then.
“Who would have known that the Eight Martial Gods would disappear on the exact same day at the exact same time.”
“Exact same day and time?”
“Huh, to not know this…”
Heavenly Ear Beggar, who was shaking his head, stopped speaking midway.
“It’s only natural that you wouldn’t know. It’s already been forty years, and an even bigger incident occurred at that time.”
“What was it?”
Interest swelled in Cheon-hwi’s eyes.
Until now, he had only heard about the current state of affairs in Jianghu and didn’t know much about before that in detail.
Since he had no particular reason to ask, the story Heavenly Ear Beggar was telling now sounded quite interesting.
“On the day they went into seclusion, the Flying Heaven Society was established, bringing about the era of the Nine Provinces Three Supreme Powers.”
It was a brief explanation, but he understood immediately.
The disappearance of the peerless experts known as the Eight Martial Gods was definitely a huge incident, but the Nine Provinces Three Supreme Powers were a massive faction that had ruled Jianghu for forty years. As of now, its ripple effect was bound to be different.
“It seems like it matched perfectly.”
Heavenly Ear Beggar lowered his gaze.
“I think so too. I don’t know the details, but the Nine Provinces Three Supreme Powers probably have a huge connection to the Eight Martial Gods. The reason I can think so is because the Evil Black Lotus Lord, one of the Nine Provinces Three Supreme Powers, has been staying completely out of sight since that day despite being one of the Eight Martial Gods.”
“That’s quite fishy.”
Listening to past information from Heavenly Ear Beggar, Cheon-hwi twitched his index finger.
It was fishy, far too fishy.
At that moment, Heavenly Ear Beggar’s eyes gleamed.
“But you were the one who drew out that Paegun, who had been in seclusion for forty years.”
His speaking gaze was fixed on Cheon-hwi and showed no signs of moving.
“Just what did you do?”
“I thought you were glaring fiercely for some reason, were you laying the groundwork to ask me that?”
“…It seems it’s hard to tell me.”
“Not exactly, but…”
Cheon-hwi shrugged his shoulders.
“We just had a little chat.”
“Just what kind of chat did you have to…”
Heavenly Ear Beggar spoke with an excited expression.
It was because he was too curious about what had drawn out Paegun, who had been in seclusion for forty years.
“It’s nothing special.”
However, unlike Heavenly Ear Beggar, Cheon-hwi spat out his words as if it was no big deal.
“We just exchanged names and had a chat about what our true natures were and all.”
Creases formed on Heavenly Ear Beggar’s brow.
“That’s it?”
“And just about having a spar at Mount Hua next time…”
Thump!
In an instant, the carriage shook greatly.
Heavenly Ear Beggar and Danmok Rin, who jumped up unconsciously, were looking at Cheon-hwi with their eyes violently shaking as if an earthquake had occurred.
“W-with Paegun?”
“S-senior Brother. When did you…?”
When the two were speaking in a fluster.
“What’s the matter?”
As the carriage thumped greatly due to the two stomping their feet and standing up, Go Sam, who was on the coachman’s seat, was also startled and asked toward the inside.
“N-no, it’s nothing. Hurry up and keep going on our way.”
Heavenly Ear Beggar hurriedly said.
“A-alright.”
Go Sam was slightly flustered at the urgent attitude, but he soon gripped the reins again.
Heavenly Ear Beggar sat back down on his seat and gulped down his saliva.
“Did Paegun accept?”
“He said he’d come to Mount Hua once.”
At that moment, Danmok Rin opened her mouth.
“Don’t tell me coming to Mount Hua that day wasn’t to spectate but…”
“Yeah, it’s a spar.”
Danmok Rin flopped back down onto her seat.
Her mind grew faint.
Meanwhile, Heavenly Ear Beggar, who was watching Danmok Rin’s expression and actions, couldn’t manage his facial expression.
‘Seeing that look, it must be true.’
He shook his head back and forth.
And then he looked at Cheon-hwi.
‘Just how high are his skills that…’
He knew he was in the Heavenly Martial Realm.
Because the Zhongnan Sword Saint had also said so, and when he saw his martial arts in person, he had also felt that caliber.
However, Paegun…
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