Chapter 390: Shadow of the Yin God (4)
“It’s been a while, senior martial brother.”
“……”
“It seems you aren’t glad to see me.”
“……You’ve gotten stronger.”
“Haha, just like you, senior martial brother. It’s too stiff for a greeting given to a junior martial brother you are seeing for the first time in seven years.”
“Somehow it’s difficult.”
“To me?”
“A genius born with the best talent among the lay disciples. You, who were called a prodigy who would be in the top three even if all the martial monks of the main temple were combined, have now become the head of a sect.”
“The praise is too much. I was just lucky.”
“Did you say it was the Vajra Fist Sect? The sect you lead.”
“That’s right.”
“The reputation is resounding that it is one of the top sects in Henan, excluding the main temple.”
“It’s all thanks to the support of the Shaolin main temple. If it wasn’t for that, how would my sect have grown this much, I wouldn’t even dare to hope for it.”
His somewhat sly personality was exactly the same.
However, Beom-oh didn’t look down on Yi Cheol-gyeong. Leaving his skills aside, contrary to his outward personality, this guy had a cautious and sharp side to him.
Not only that, his pride in Shaolin was also amazing. Their personalities didn’t match so it was somewhat uncomfortable to deal with him, but it wasn’t that he disliked his junior martial brother.
“Be that as it may, is it okay for you to be wandering outside like this now that you’ve become a sect leader? When speaking of Yi Cheol-gyeong under heaven, isn’t he a skilled person discussed as the best among the rising stars.”
“Haha, that too has all become an old saying. Even in the past, I’ve never heard anyone say I was the best among the rising stars.”
Beom-oh’s eyes shone.
“Yeon Ho-jeong……”
“Yes. And there is also the Demon-Sweeping Army Commander Murong Yu.”
For a moment, Beom-oh felt a sensation as if one of his arms and the top of his foot were aching.
‘Tiger General of Green Mountain.’
In front of the great elder of the main temple, Abbot Kong-kong, he suffered an overwhelming defeat by a rising star who was much younger than him.
The shock at that time was indescribable. He thought he had cultivated Shaolin’s martial arts to the realm through closed-door training and facing the wall, but he was smashed in just a few exchanges by a young man who had just passed twenty.
At first, he was angry. No, he couldn’t acknowledge his defeat.
When Beom-oh thought about it at the time, Yeon Ho-jeong led the fight in an excessively dirty way.
It wasn’t a fight of the Orthodox faction. It meant it wasn’t a fair and square match. Not to mention launching a surprise attack, stepping on his foot, and such tricks that deluded the senses could never be called the martial arts of the White Path Orthodox faction.
Beom-oh thought like that. For a time.
The one who gave enlightenment to him, who couldn’t overcome his anger and looked like he would faint at any moment, was none other than Master Kong-kong.
‘How immature. When sparring, there are times you win and times you lose, yet to think you couldn’t even recover your composure after suffering just one defeat. Was your five years of facing the wall all in vain?’
‘Senior Martial Uncle! That person’s martial arts are not the martial arts of the Orthodox faction!’
‘Then what? Are you saying it’s the martial arts of the Unorthodox faction? From what I saw, no demonic qi was smeared in his true qi, nor did he learn demonic arts. Rather, it was an orthodox divine art containing holy energy that rivaled the divine arts of our main temple.’
‘That’s not it! A surprise attack, you ask? He launched a surprise attack and stepped on my foot in a fair and square spar! That is what a scoundrel of the Black Path would do!’
‘Then, were the Shaolin martial arts you learned so light that they couldn’t even respond to the tricks of the Black Path?’
‘……!!’
‘A defeat is a defeat. If it had been a life-and-death battle, you wouldn’t be able to complain to me like you are now. It means you would be dead.’
‘B, But……!’
‘Did you say it was a cowardly trick? Then, do you think you would have won if Grand Commander Yeon had engaged in a frontal confrontation without cowardly tricks? He is an opponent who easily broke you without even bringing out all of his skills, so if he revealed all of his real skills, in how many exchanges do you think you could have won?’
‘……!!’
‘Did someone say your skills would improve just by locking yourself in a back room and throwing punches? You might be able to master the principles of martial arts, but a martial art that cannot unravel those principles with the physical body is merely a half-baked one. Your martial arts right now are like that.’
‘……’
‘Accept your defeat humbly. It is only right to consider an excessive competitive spirit as a monk to be a result of a lack of virtue, yet to show such an ugly appearance. It seems the position of the next Arhat Hall Master was excessively heavy for a guy like you.’
‘A, Abbot Senior Martial Uncle!’
‘The Arhat Hall Master is Shaolin’s martial arts itself. You cannot endure that weight simply because your realm of martial arts is high. Shaolin’s martial arts are like an iron fortress. And such martial arts include near-perfect fighting skills that don’t collapse against any of the opponent’s techniques.’
‘……’
‘Before your character, your skills themselves do not suit the Arhat Hall Master. If your skills are lacking, you should at least be humble, so why do you show such an ugly appearance? I see the shadow of a third-rate scoundrel of the Jianghu in your current appearance.’
‘……Senior Martial Uncle?’
‘I am greatly disappointed in you today. What on earth did you learn during those five years? Were you also just one of the countless old dead trees that broke from a single defeat while strutting around trusting only in your talent?’
‘……’
‘Start over from the beginning. Whether you stay in the Alliance, return to the main temple, or travel around the world, I won’t stop you. Think about what you lack, and don’t think about knocking on the door of my residence until you have confidence in your own change.’
They were poisonous and harsh words.
Beom-oh had never seen Master Kong-kong express such disappointment to anyone. But he had become the target of it.
How disappointed must he have been to even say such words. Drenched in a sense of defeat, Beom-oh felt as if his soul was flying away at Master Kong-kong’s ice-cold words.
A few months passed like that.
For a few months, Beom-oh didn’t practice martial arts. He threw punches intermittently, but that was literally just taking out his anger and not something that could be called training.
He couldn’t even properly perform the Qi Circulation and Breathing technique that he hadn’t skipped for a single day since learning martial arts. Was it because of that? His body was heavy, and his joints felt like they were full of rust.
And now.
Beom-oh came to find Yi Cheol-gyeong after hearing what the Shaolin monks in the Alliance were talking about.
“I heard you are heading to Guangdong Province.”
“That’s right. Because there is an order from Abbot Senior Martial Uncle.”
“Are you going to support the detached unit of the Murim Alliance?”
“That’s right. There are people in seclusion in Guangdong Province who have a connection with our family. Abbot Senior Martial Uncle’s order was to rectify the atmosphere of the southern Murim together with those people. Of course, that’s after the detached unit cleans up the board.”
Questioning marks formed in Yi Cheol-gyeong’s eyes.
“But are you also going, senior martial brother?”
“……”
Beom-oh couldn’t easily answer.
He locked himself in a back room and immersed himself in thought, but that didn’t mean his mind calmed down. Rather, it only became more complicated.
However, if there was one thing he realized, it was the fact that he had been excessively arrogant. And that arrogance soon concluded with the four-character idiom‘Frog in the well’.
Of course, realizing and acknowledging were two different issues.
“……If it’s okay with you.”
“Yes?”
“If you agree to my accompanying you, I’d like to go together this time.”
A small surprise bloomed on Yi Cheol-gyeong’s face.
The Senior Martial Brother Beom-oh he remembered wasn’t someone who spoke like this. It didn’t mean he was arrogant, but he wasn’t a person who kept his manners well to someone either.
Yet his senior martial brother was asking him, his junior martial brother, for a favor. With a confused face, and eyes drenched in fatigue.
That fact came as incredibly refreshing to Yi Cheol-gyeong.
“Although I am a leader leading a sect, you, senior martial brother, are fittingly an adult more than me. How could I refuse when an adult of my sect asks me to go together?”
Beom-oh shook his head.
“I have no intention of making you uncomfortable. If you don’t like it, I will act separately, so don’t feel burdened. The mission must be important in your own way, so I don’t have the slightest intention of getting in the way as your senior martial brother.”
“……!”
Yi Cheol-gyeong’s gaze looking at Beom-oh became strange.
‘Was this what Abbot Senior Martial Uncle spoke of.’
He recalled his conversation with Master Kong-kong.
‘Someone might ask you to accompany them. I pass by ‘that guy’s’ residence from time to time, and although his true qi has become dull, a little bit of purity was oozing out of his fiery qi flow. However, considering the guy’s personality, he wouldn’t be able to just sit still and practice asceticism.’
‘Yes?’
‘Since he is a guy whose actions come out before his thoughts more than expected, if he wants to be with you, take good care of him. Of course, I don’t know if the guy will move. I am just saying this keeping the one in ten thousand chance in mind, so don’t pay too much attention to it.’
Yi Cheol-gyeong could finally know. That the person‘that guy’ Abbot Senior Martial Uncle spoke of was exactly his senior martial brother, Beom-oh.
‘Senior martial brother is changing too.’
Something must have definitely happened. Something he didn’t know about.
Yi Cheol-gyeong smiled.
“If you accompany me, senior martial brother, to me it’s like gaining a thousand troops and ten thousand horses. Rather, it’s something I wanted even if I didn’t dare to ask. I am only thankful.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be of help. However, I will try not to cause any damage.”
“Haha, why do you say such things? Rather, please take good care of me.”
“Let’s do that.”
“By the way, may I ask you just one thing?”
“……?”
“Do you have separate business in the south? I ask because I am curious as to why you want to go together with me.”
Beom-oh’s eyes deepened.
“There is a person I want to keep an eye on. Just that.”
* * *
Purureureuk!
Red Wind snorted fiercely.
Yeon Ho-jeong, who patted Red Wind, looked down at the widely spread scenery of Guangdong Province.
‘It’s spacious.’
Guangdong Province boasts quite hot weather. The winter in Guangdong was similar to or even warmer than the autumn in the northern Central Plains.
It was springtime, and the spring in Guangdong was more muggy than expected. It wasn’t to the extent that the Righteous Justice Army, who were peak internal martial artists, would be bothered, but it could be a factor that eats away at their stamina, albeit slightly.
‘Whatever it is, I shouldn’t drag the Righteous Justice Army around carelessly. Unless the moment of a single sweep comes, I shouldn’t recklessly send them into the city.’
The current Yin God, that is, Yelu Jeok, was settled in Guangdong Province.
As a bigshot in the underworld, he would boast an influence comparable to Hunan Province where the Black Dragon Manor had coiled itself. Naturally, intelligence agents would have been deployed everywhere, and if the Righteous Justice Army moved, the information would reach Yelu Jeok in less than half a day.
‘Evil Lust Cult.’
Yeon Ho-jeong took a deep breath.
Yelu Jeok was said to be a peak master from the Evil Lust Cult. When he heard that fact from Yang Cheon, his heart pounded like crazy.
Although tied together as the Three Cults, the main enemy he clashed with the most during his time as the Dark Emperor was precisely the Evil Lust Cult. Naturally, his feelings couldn’t help but be different from during the battle with the Martial Generals of the Divine Fire Cult.
Yeon Ho-jeong controlled his mind.
His emotions shouldn’t fluctuate wildly every time he faced an enemy of destiny. Rather, it was right to become calmer.
While patting the Vermilion Bird Qi, Yeon Ho-jeong fell into thought.
‘He’s from the Evil Lust Cult, but in order to become the Yin God, one must perfectly embody the assassination arts of the predecessor. And the assassination arts of the Yin God I know are in name and reality the best under heaven. So to speak, that bastard Yelu Jeok holds the assassination arts of the number one under heaven on top of the martial arts of the Evil Lust Cult.’
He was a tricky enemy just thinking about it. Because he knew well how terrifying the martial arts of a person using the title Yin God was, he was also tense.
‘However.’
Yeon Ho-jeong’s eyes shone.
In his field of vision where he maximized his eyesight with internal energy, a faintly visible mountain in the distance came into view.
‘It’s a relief that I know his location.’
Yeon Ho-jeong said to Murong Yu.
“The Demon-Sweeping Army will stand by at the low mountain to the front left. We will deploy the Evil-Annihilating Army one by one at a distance of thirty li to facilitate information transfer.”
“Understood.”
“Now, then.”
Chwareureureureuk!
Yeon Ho-jeong, who slung the Flood Dragon Chain and Crazy Dragon Axe that were tied to Red Wind’s saddle over his shoulder, stepped both feet on Red Wind’s back.
“Let’s not drag out the time, and take care of him quickly.”
Paaang!
As Yeon Ho-jeong ran out, the Evil-Annihilating Army followed behind him.
The fight with the Yin God, the battle with the underworld of the southern Central Plains had begun.