Chapter 89: Chapter 89
Jin U-gwang surveyed the glittering lakeside without a word at their appearance.
The Right Emissary, Heuk-ya, spoke in a respectful tone.
“You have been showing so much interest in that boy lately. I thought you wouldn’t come here this year.”
The Left Emissary, Baek-ya, tilted his head and asked.
“That boy?”
“The one the Cult Leader personally summoned to the Heavenly Demon Palace. I gave him the divine token.”
“Such a thing happened? I knew nothing of this.”
“If you knew, would you not have scurried over and told everyone?”
“Hah!”
Baek-ya let out a breath of dismay. To think such an entertaining story had existed. Jang I-seo. It was about him.
However.
“He is a boy I have no further business with.”
Jin U-gwang drew a blade-sharp line.
In his eyes, the position Jang I-seo currently occupied was his limit.
And the Heavenly Demon was not benevolent enough to keep looking down at and showing interest in someone who could climb no higher.
“He had spirit and drive, seemed quite usable… but I suppose that was his ceiling.”
Rather, it was Heuk-ya who seemed disappointed. The current heirs had never satisfied his eyes.
‘Hmm, he looked the best among those the Cult Leader had taken notice of.’
But if the man had made his decision, there was nothing to be done.
Even Heuk-ya withdrew his interest entirely and changed the subject.
“Are you still thinking of him?”
Jin U-gwang reacted with a faint smirk.
To others, it might seem as if he were recalling a departed lover.
But this was the Demonic Cult. And he was the Heavenly Demon.
Such naive emotions did not suit him.
The one Jin U-gwang envisioned was not such a tender figure.
He was stronger than anyone, more overwhelming, and the only absolute being who could look down upon him.
“Now that there is nowhere left to climb, I find myself thinking of him more. Whether I could win if it were the me of today. I am curious.”
“Even if he were to return alive, he would not be able to defeat the current Supreme.”
“Heh, is that so.”
At the Left Emissary’s glib words, Jin U-gwang offered a relaxed smile.
It wasn’t because he believed him.
He was someone who could never return, after all.
It was merely to lessen his attachment to a fight that could never happen.
His pupils grew distant, and he pictured the back of a man whose memory was now fading.
‘Still, if by some chance. Even one in ten thousand. If you were to return alive, I would love to cross blades with you at least once. Between the you of then and the me of now. To see who stands higher.’
Jin U-gwang turned away without lingering regret.
In honor of the one who had vanished without a word one day.
The pinnacle of the previous generation.
The Shadowless.
* * *
– Cheonsan Northern Road, Wasteland.
Atop a hill overlooking the wasteland.
With dozens of warriors in white robes behind her, a middle-aged woman sat in a chair placed at the edge of a cliff.
Her attire was truly distinctive, covered in feathers like a white hawk, with a green gem embedded in her forehead.
Though she was well past forty, maturity and beauty permeated her features, along with a seasoned, chilling sharpness.
Her name was Myo Chae-gyeong.
One of the core figures of the Demonic Cult and the Hall Master of the Flying Dragon Hall, which handled diplomacy and intelligence.
And the reason this woman, who looked as though she should be sipping tea in refinement, was furrowing her brow in such rugged terrain was simple.
‘These insolent wretches. Where in the world are they hiding!’
It was because of the recent request for cooperation from the Guardian Dragon Hall.
Their name was the Iron Horse Bandits.
An organization operating in the northern regions centered around Xinjiang.
‘The Iron Horse Bandits? They must be nothing. Ten days. No, I’ll have them caught within three. So… what will you do for me in return, Hall Master?’
When Ji Dae-ho first made the request, she had looked down on them and made bold promises.
They weren’t a famed clan of the north, nor a major power of the Central Plains.
She had thought them nothing more than petty bandits who scraped by on odd jobs and pillaging.
However…
Crrrk.
She bit her thumbnail hard. That was her current state of mind. Contrary to expectations, the situation had twisted and turned, and her promise to catch them within three days had gone down the drain long ago.
‘What in the world are these bastards?’
Truthfully, even she, who was considered foremost in the cult when it came to intelligence, had only learned of them recently.
No, to be precise, she was still learning about them even now.
It was understandable, given that they were supposedly nothing more than insignificant bandits.
But it hadn’t taken long to realize they were anything but ordinary.
‘Who fell at their hands?’
‘The Five Military Masters, who were loyal retainers of the Shan Wang Jia…’
‘Do you take me for a fool? Who doesn’t know that? Then you’re saying the ones reported dead at the time were…’
‘Yes. It appears to have been their doing. At the time, they had participated in the war as mere foot soldiers, so…’
‘Why are you only finding this out now?!’
‘The Shan Wang Jia hushed it up… I apologize.’
‘Useless fool!’
Crrrk.
She bit her thumbnail again at the memory. If she had known from the start, she would never have sent her men so carelessly.
If only that hadn’t happened…
‘They dare touch the Flying Dragon Hall? I’ll tear them apart with my teeth.’
She wouldn’t have suffered the humiliation of losing her subordinates.
It was nothing short of disgrace.
In truth, this alone was a serious enough matter to warrant the mobilization of the entire Five Dragon Halls rather than just the Flying Dragon Hall investigating alone.
But Myo Chae-gyeong’s pride would not allow it.
Above all, it had been even more so since the moment she learned that the initial reporter of this matter was Jang I-seo.
“Jang I-seo… I’d grind him up and drink him and still not feel satisfied.”
Curses spilled out just thinking about him.
What grudge could a figure as prominent as a Second Grade Ghost Hall Master possibly hold against him to resent him so was unknown, but judging by her expression and tone, it was no petty grudge.
In any case, for these reasons alone, she felt she would only be satisfied if she personally slaughtered the Iron Horse Bandits.
No, at the very least, she had to find their stronghold.
That was her last shred of pride.
“They will surely appear again. Men this audacious wouldn’t miss the biggest prey, which is our cult. So we wait until they take the bait.”
Myo Chae-gyeong’s eyes gleamed sharply.
The method she had chosen was not a massive search, but lying low with hidden blades, waiting quietly.
She had ambushed cultists in eighteen villages and checkpoints leading to Cheonsan.
And then.
“Hall Master!”
A hopeful voice called from behind.
She rose and turned around. Her adjutant, riding a white horse, dismounted and immediately prostrated himself before her, shouting.
“We have found the Iron Horse Bandits!”
Finally… they took the bait!
“Where!”
Color returned to her frozen face as she asked urgently.
The martial officer replied with a rigid expression.
“Near the Bumun Inn. However…”
“However?”
Myo Chae-gyeong looked at him with questioning eyes. The adjutant shouted in a devastated voice.
“The Sixth Young Master has reportedly been kidnapped by them!”
“What?!”
Maeng Hwi’s disappearance.
An emergency had erupted.
* * *
– Wolha Village, Seventh Small Palace.
Sunset painted the open sky.
His already red hair glowed even redder.
His face, filled with rage, was no different.
“You little bastard! You dare stab me in the back?!”
It was Mao. And the target of his wrath was the Azure Dragon Blade, standing tall and imposing, feigning ignorance and innocence.
He had only let a little bit of internal energy slip through as a sign of friendship.
‘I almost sliced Jang I-seo in half!’
The more he thought about it, the colder his blood ran. At this point, it was a monster in its own right.
“Wait. Isn’t this thing actually a demon?”
Oh! A groundbreaking deduction. Mao brought his index finger to his chin.
Then he squatted down and tapped the blade against the ground.
“Hey. Say something. Come on, talk.”
But naturally, there was no response.
“You’re going to keep defying me? Even after this?”
Pthbt, pthbt, pthbt! Mao childishly spat on the blade.
“Caught you, you bastard! Your face is getting redder.”
It was the sunset.
“Nope.”
Mao quickly lost interest and clicked his tongue.
If it were a demon, that would at least be better. They could have a conversation.
“Wait. A conversation? Someone once said. You have to beat a sword into submission for it to listen. Oh, right.”
That was it.
Mao looked around.
His gaze locked onto a large boulder in the corner of the garden. A round rock, like a turtle’s shell. Incredibly solid.
“Hehe. So you thought you could just walk all over me. Caught you.”
Mao scurried over and lifted both hands high.
He spread his legs slightly and, with an awkward stance, swung straight down at the rock.
FWOOOM!
But this was something he would never have done if he had handled a blade even a little.
Because.
KKAANG!
“KUAAGH!”
The rebound would kill his arms alone.
He hadn’t even sliced it; he had bludgeoned it, so how bad must it have been.
“I’m dying!”
Mao, sent crashing backward, tumbled across the ground.
Both arms tingled as if struck by lightning.
Tears even welled up in his eyes.
From a distance, Yong-tae and Mae-gi, who had just finished today’s construction, chuckled to themselves, assuming the young master had been drinking again, and headed home.
“Uwaaah! You son of a bitch!”
Barely fighting back tears, Mao sat down and picked up the blade, seething.
He wanted to hurl it far away.
But at that moment, Jang I-seo’s words echoed in his mind.
‘Keep holding it at all times. When you sleep, when you wake, wherever you go. Don’t let go unless absolutely necessary. First, your hand needs to grow familiar with it. Then at some point, you’ll start to feel what your blade wants from you.’
Damn it.
“What does this thing even want from me? No, is it even possible to befriend a sword?”
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t understand why Jang I-seo had said that. It was just a lump of iron, wasn’t it?
“Haa…”
The sky had grown dark, and pointless sighs kept dragging out of him.
Jang I-seo wasn’t here either.
If only there was someone he could confide in and ask…
“Young Master, is something troubling you?”
Right then.
A clear, refreshing voice washed over his ears.
When he turned his head, the figure of a familiar beauty caught his eye.
“Proprietress…?”
The Proprietress of Chiseonru, Chwi Hong-ran.
Originally a daughter of the prestigious Murong Clan of the Central Plains.
She had come visiting, carrying a basket with a packed meal.
*
“So Adjutant Jang told you to befriend that blade?”
“Yeah.”
Mao sat across from Hong-ran in the garden, chewing on fruit with a sullen face.
At first, he had only planned to vent his frustration.
But with her smiling warmly and listening so attentively, his inner thoughts spilled out.
“He also said to never let go of it. At this rate, I’m going to be wiping my ass with this sword.”
“Pfft.”
“Ridiculous, right? But I’m serious. I’m going crazy.”
“You must be frustrated.”
“Yeah. And do you know how prickly this thing is? The moment I put internal energy into it, it goes completely berserk. It’s insane. I almost sliced Jang I-seo in half.”
“Really?”
“How am I supposed to befriend something like this? According to Jang I-seo, if I keep holding it, I’ll supposedly hear what it wants or whatever.”
Mao had spoken without any real expectation, but Hong-ran listened to his story quite earnestly.
This was because she, too, vaguely understood what Jang I-seo had meant.
The Murong Clan was a deeply rooted family that had held power since the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms, over a thousand years ago.
Thus, countless martial arts were a given, and the clan had been filled with all manner of artifacts.
Among them, the one that left the deepest impression was a divine weapon called the Heaven-Piercing Brush, wielded by her grandfather.
‘Ran, would you like to hold it?’
In her childhood, her grandfather would sit her on his knee and place the Heaven-Piercing Brush in her tiny, fern-like hands.
A subtle tremor would run through it, and her grandfather would laugh heartily and say:
‘Haha, it seems this fellow has taken quite a liking to you, Ran. When it first came to me, it was so dismissive and unruly.’
She hadn’t fully understood what he meant at the time. But as she grew older, she came to realize it.
Divine artifacts chose their masters directly, and even afterward, one had to spend a long time building a rapport with them before they could finally demonstrate their true worth.