Chapter 158: Chapter 158
Cheon Woo-jin walked slowly through the marketplace.
The smell of food wafting from here and there.
A grandfather taking a walk while holding his granddaughter’s hand.
A tense battle of wits between a customer trying to bargain down prices and a merchant trying to receive even a single coin more.
It was truly an ordinary everyday scenery. Except for the fact that this place was none other than the outer courtyard of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
Cheon Woo-jin was inside the Heavenly Demon Cult.
The Heavenly Demon Cult, enormous enough to be regarded as a single country, was divided into an outer courtyard and an inner courtyard.
The inner courtyard was a space where the leadership and martial artists of the Heavenly Demon Cult, including the Cult Leader, and their families lived, while the outer courtyard was the world of ordinary people who had nothing to do with martial arts like this.
“It is truly ordinary.”
In fact, even if it was called the outer courtyard, it was still the Heavenly Demon Cult after all, so he thought ordinary people would also be peculiar.
For instance, a waiter having trained in demonic arts, or people intoxicated by mind-altering poisons and drugs sprawling across the streets.
Or perhaps he had imagined a chaos rife with people shouting about the Heavenly Demon’s second coming and disbelief leading to hell.
However, even compared to any marketplace in the Central Plains, it was merely ordinary. Somehow, a sense of dissonance was felt from that scene. Although Central Plains people trembled in fear just hearing the word ‘Demonic Cult,’ in the end, excluding a very small minority, this place was also merely a place where people lived.
Cheon Woo-jin stopped his steps in front of a shop.
It was an inn situated small at the very edge of the marketplace, and the smell wafting from inside was quite good.
Cheon Woo-jin entered the inn as if bewitched by something and ordered noodles. Often, when he grew tired of the food eaten in the mountains with his masters, he used to come out to villages like this and enjoy a modest meal.
While observing the inn’s customers for a moment after ordering, a cheerful waiter quickly brought a large bowl of noodles.
“Here are the special noodles!”
The waiter of spirited voice stood looking at Cheon Woo-jin for a moment even after setting down the bowl.
Cheon Woo-jin, chuckling at the old memories for no reason, took out a piece of silver from his robes and handed it over. Master White Elder always used to give extra money to waiters like this. Of course, master Black Elder had clicked his tongue saying he was wasting money like crazy.
Contrary to the words ‘special noodles,’ the taste was ordinary.
Even that ordinariness made him feel for no reason that this place was no different from an inn in the Central Plains.
Just like that, around the time he had eaten about half of the noodles.
As a man stepped inside, the atmosphere of the inn changed.
Families who had come to eat out together, merchants who had come to roughly fill their stomachs, Cheon Woo-jin who had entered as if enchanted by the smell. The modest atmosphere naturally created by such people froze, and an uncomfortable and overbearing air flowed within the inn.
Sure enough.
Soon, a loud noise erupted from where the man stood.
Slap!
The man swung his hand, and the spirited waiter’s cheek turned.
Listening to it, he seemed dissatisfied that his order had not been brought out first. Surely that clever waiter would have served the food in the order it was ordered.
The owner who hurriedly ran out from the kitchen was an old man with graying white hair. Bowing repeatedly to the young man, he apologized, saying he had relayed it incorrectly to the waiter.
The man could not bring himself to slap the cheek of the owner who was old enough to be his grandfather, merely spewing out curses.
“Old man, do you know how busy we are these days? As a cultist, you should also have the obligation to actively cooperate with the Sacred Cult’s events, no?”
The man was wearing red martial robes, and on his chest, the characters for ‘Sacred Cult’ were written. Apparently, he seemed to be someone belonging to the martial forces of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
At any rate, bringing up the cult’s affairs just over ordering alcohol in an inn. Such people were scattered everywhere, whether in the Central Plains or here.
Cheon Woo-jin, thinking thus, soon withdrew his gaze and began eating noodles again. At any rate, there was no need to needlessly intervene in matters occurring inside the Demonic Cult.
However, the regrettable point was that because everyone held their breath and read the room, the sound of Cheon Woo-jin slurping noodles alone sounded exceptionally loud.
That sound of half noodles and half air being sucked into the mouth seemed to irritate the man’s temper.
He looked over this way.
Cheon Woo-jin, although feeling the gaze, did not go out of his way to make eye contact. Because if he got entangled in a quarrel with that bastard, he had no other choice. However, everywhere there were always people like moths hastening their own deaths.
“You’re a bastard from the Central Plains, aren’t you?”
Then, everyone inside the inn, including the owner and the waiter, looked at Cheon Woo-jin.
Thanks to that, Cheon Woo-jin also set down his chopsticks.
He pondered for a moment while scratching his head. However, no matter how much he thought about it, there was no other choice.
If Chief Strategist Sima Hwi had known of this, he would have lamented: ‘No, with your martial prowess, could you not have just avoided the spot! Saying you had no choice is just an excuse!’
Soon rising from his seat, Cheon Woo-jin walked out through the door located at the back of the inn. At the back of the inn, there was a small yard that also served as a warehouse, so it seemed like an environment suitable for having a conversation with the man.
Soon, the man whose words had been ignored came out huffing and puffing after him.
“Where does a Central Plains barbarian bastard dare enter the Sacred Cult without fear…”
Thud.
The man collapsed. If he belonged to the martial forces of the Heavenly Demon Cult, he would have trained hard in martial arts in his own way. He would not have imagined that he would die while coming to an inn like this to buy alcohol.
However, since the deaths of martial artists were always like this, there was nothing particularly unfair about it either.
Thinking thus, Cheon Woo-jin stripped the man of his clothes. Since things had turned out like this, he intended to wander around the Demonic Cult a little more while posing as this bastard for a while.
In the middle of changing clothes, the owner cautiously came out with a worried face. He must have been terrified, but seeing that he ended up following out of worry, one could feel what kind of person he was.
Of course, separate from that sentiment, Cheon Woo-jin, who was caught killing a corpse and taking off his clothes to put them on, felt awkward for no reason.
“Ah.”
“…”
Seeing the corpse and Cheon Woo-jin, the owner’s pupils shook. Even so, that he did not scream was probably thanks to the intuition and worldly wisdom of an old man who had done business in one place for a long time.
“…Are you really a Central Plains person?”
“Yes.”
Cheon Woo-jin replied while putting on the trousers.
At that, the owner’s brow narrowed further.
“Why did a Central Plains person come here without fear? Hurry and run away. Once they realize that bastard is missing, the martial artists will soon begin an investigation, and it will only be a matter of time before you are discovered.”
The owner was not a cultist of the Heavenly Demon Cult, but merely an old man worried about a young youth.
Since the dead demonic cultist was a bad guy who often acted violently, he might have felt even more grateful to Cheon Woo-jin who had killed him.
However, Cheon Woo-jin looked at the dead demonic cultist’s face for a moment without answering. Soon, he kneaded his own face.
“Gasp!”
Even the deeply experienced owner could not hold back his shock.
Exactly as Cheon Woo-jin touched it, his facial bones crackled and shifted shape. Furthermore, the outer skin was being molded softly as if it were clay.
Even his arms and legs gradually shortened, and starting with that, his entire physique became diminutive.
“How does it look?”
“U-Uh…”
The owner could not continue his words.
At that sight, Cheon Woo-jin felt crestfallen.
It was the first time in his life he had displayed disguise art. He had never particularly learned it, but because he had often seen Dok-ra-su and others do it, he had roughly imitated it, but…
“As expected, do I not look like him?”
“I-It is astonishingly identical.”
Cheon Woo-jin’s mood improved again.
As expected, learning and unfolding new things was always enjoyable.
Soon, he glared at the Crescent Moon Staff for a moment. Because it was too large and solid, he had no way of hiding it on his body at all.
Cheon Woo-jin, who had been contemplating, dug the ground and buried the Crescent Moon Staff.
“May I come to retrieve it later?”
“…You intend to come again?”
“Yes, because the noodles tasted good.”
The owner let out an empty laugh. Compliments on food were pleasing, but what on earth was this Central Plains person who spoke of entering and leaving the Sacred Cult as if visiting his own home?
However, the owner soon nodded his head with a mind of wondering what did it matter even if that youth did not return.
“I will just finish the remaining noodles before leaving.”
“Let us do so. At any rate, all the customers have run away.”
The moment Cheon Woo-jin and the demonic cultist went out to the backyard, the customers who had been reading the room the entire time seemed to have all fled.
.
.
.
Soon, the owner who entered the inn sent the waiter away, telling him to leave early since business was ruined for today anyway.
The waiter refused, asking how he could leave only the elder and that bastard behind, but the moment Cheon Woo-jin, disguised as the demonic cultist, re-entered the inn, he bowed politely as if he had never done so and left work.
Originally, there was nothing more precious than one’s own life.
Soon, Cheon Woo-jin looked around the quieted inn, sat down, and began eating the noodles. The owner watched that scene, thinking that he was truly identical to the dead demonic cultist.
“May I sit for a moment?”
“Yes.”
Having replied, Cheon Woo-jin ate the noodles again.
Then the owner, having brought dumplings from the kitchen, placed them on the table and sat down cautiously.
“Is a war truly about to break out? Ever since the Cult Leader passed away, the atmosphere has been uneasy. Recently, not just me, but people are anxious and cannot even sleep properly.”
The death of the Cult Leader, which the Demonic Cult had tried to hide, seemed to have become fully known now. Indeed, since it had been delivered even to the Martial Alliance by the Courier Hall, there would be no reason to hide it any longer.
“Well. I do not know either.”
“It would be so good if a war did not happen. Why do martial artists like fighting so much? What on earth can they gain?”
The owner let out a deep sigh.
At that sight, Cheon Woo-jin’s impression of the Demonic Cult changed once more. He had thought that people living under the Cult Leader’s influence blindly followed the doctrine even if they had not learned martial arts.
However, they were not much different from the old men of the Central Plains sitting in inns, gossiping about and worrying over the ruler of the country.
“Martial artists inherently like fighting. Because wanting to show off what one possesses is human nature.”
“At the very least, they shouldn’t cause harm to someone, should they?”
Cheon Woo-jin had no other words to reply, so he merely picked up a dumpling and put it into his mouth.
Even while doing so, the owner’s lament continued.
“These are dumplings I learned directly from my late father. Although our family is not wealthy, we have been running an inn in this spot for three generations. But if war breaks out… I will have to pack up the business and flee to some countryside.”
He was afraid of being swept up needlessly. This was the attitude ordinary people had toward war.
“The Cult Leader passed away too early. If he had lived just a little longer, the Second Young Master would have become the Young Cult Leader, and there would have been no need to worry about war… It will probably be the Third Young Master or the Fifth Young Master. People say that if the Young Cult Leader comes from between those two, war will surely break out.”
Cheon Woo-jin was a little surprised. For the owner running an inn at the very edge of this outer courtyard to know even the personalities of the young masters, not just the Cult Leader.
Considering that among the innkeepers of the Central Plains, few would know the name of the Emperor, it was an astonishing thing.
Indeed, master White Elder had said that a true era of peace and prosperity was to let the common people live on without even knowing who their ruler was.
In other words, it meant the Demonic Cult was a place not peaceful enough that the subjects under its rule paid full attention to the next Cult Leader and felt anxious.
Those who created such an atmosphere would be the tiny minority of leadership that ruled this land. Those who put forward the survival of the strong and destruction of the weak, treating the weak like bugs.
Cheon Woo-jin suddenly became curious.
Not those leaders, but what kind of person the Young Cult Leader desired by the people who lived truly ordinary lives in this land was.
“It seems the Second Young Master dislikes war.”
“Indeed. Despite his noble status reaching the heavens, he is someone who lends an ear to whether the small inn in the neighborhood is running well and whether there are any problems. Before the atmosphere became uneasy like now, he occasionally took the long journey out here to personally inspect things.”
“I see.”
At any rate, the dead Cult Leader was someone who had not waged war for a long time. Clearly, if he had lived just a little longer, the possibility of the Second Young Master becoming the Cult Leader would have been great.
Just around the time Cheon Woo-jin thought thus and grew a little more curious about the person called the Second Young Master.
“Are you brewing the alcohol? Why the hell haven’t you come yet?”
A man entered the inn and shouted. It was a man wearing the exact same martial robes as the dead demonic cultist.
Discovering Cheon Woo-jin, he came to a sudden halt. Cheon Woo-jin also looked at him silently for a moment. Just like that, quite an awkward silence flowed within the inn.