Chapter 176

I feel like I’ve gone back to high school.

Like I got caught by the school disciplinarian while trying to sneak out of evening self-study. Of course, the despair I felt back then was nothing compared to this.

The person holding my ear right now wasn’t a school disciplinarian.

He was the Fire King.

Crack.

“Ah! Aaaagh! It hurts! Something just made a weird noise in my ear!”

Jeok Cheongang glared at me.

“Shall I make sure you never hear another sound?”

“…”

Judging by everything he had said and done so far, he was more than capable of following through.

I clamped my mouth shut and let Jeok Cheongang lead me along by the ear.

“Sit.”

“Yes, sir.”

I sat on a crude wooden chair and looked around.

The old inn was dark and gloomy. The owner was nowhere to be seen, and a server who looked barely twenty sat dozing at a table near the entrance.

Damn it. There aren’t even any other customers.

I must have been unconscious for longer than I thought. There were only four people on the first floor.

The dozing server, Jeok Cheongang, me—and Cheongpung, already dead drunk and sprawled face-down on the table, drooling.

It was the perfect place to die without anyone being the wiser.

No. They say that even in a tiger’s den, you’ll survive as long as you keep your wits about you.

Even so, I needed some kind of life insurance, just in case.

Unfortunately, the only brake capable of stopping Jeok Cheongang was currently fast asleep and snoring.

Cheongpung, you need to wake up if I’m going to survive this.

I was carefully stretching my leg beneath the table, preparing to step on Cheongpung’s foot, when—

“Let him sleep.”

“Huh?”

“I said leave him alone. Don’t bother the boy when he’s sleeping.”

At this point, he might as well have been a ghost.

I hadn’t made a sound or even moved noticeably, yet he knew exactly what I was doing beneath the table.

“Your answer?”

“…I’ll stay still.”

“You’re not entirely clueless, I see. You might live a long life yet.”

Jeok Cheongang muttered something that could have been either praise or an insult, then tilted the liquor bottle.

As the empty cup slowly filled, the cheap liquor’s sharp scent stung my nose.

“I have something to ask you.”

“I’ll explain everything in detail about the Head Elder—no, my great-uncle.”

“I’ve already heard. He committed more than enough crimes to deserve death. He was a fairly sharp fellow once, but time has ruined a lot of people…”

Jeok Cheongang downed his drink in one gulp and muttered bitterly,

“That child was like that, too.”

“…”

“Where did you meet him?”

The question came out of nowhere, but I understood immediately.

The “child” Jeok Cheongang had just mentioned was Jopil.

He already knew that Jopil and I were connected. The worst possible situation had become reality.

“If you’re thinking of lying, you’d better abandon the idea now. You’ll end up telling the truth anyway.”

Jeok Cheongang’s voice sank like an abyss, sending a shiver down my spine.

There was no point in lying or making excuses anymore. Right now, he was the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the judge who could hand down any sentence he pleased.

Damn it.

My parched mouth tasted bitter. He wasn’t even releasing Scorching Yang Qi, yet I was so thirsty I could barely speak.

“Give me a drink too.”

“You cheeky bastard.”

Despite saying that, Jeok Cheongang readily filled my cup.

I hurriedly gulped down the strong liquor, and only then could I breathe again.

Right. It wasn’t over yet. The more dangerous the situation, the more I needed to keep my wits about me if I wanted to escape it.

I took a deep breath and began.

“It was about two months ago. That’s when I met Jopil.”

“Jopil?”

“Yes. One Question, One Kill, Jopil. He was a fairly famous wandering martial artist.”

“Judging by his alias, he probably wasn’t famous for anything good.”

“…You could say that.”

He hadn’t just been bad. He had been practically insane.

Back then, I had seen Jopil as nothing more or less than a man obsessed with killing. He had genuinely enjoyed it.

“Is this his face?”

Jeok Cheongang pulled a sheet of paper from inside his robe.

It was so old that it had yellowed with age and was crumpled all over, but the young man’s face drawn on it was still easy to recognize.

“Is that Jopil when he was young?”

“It seems it was him after all. So that’s what became of him.”

His words sounded more like a monologue than an answer to my question.

After remaining silent for a while, Jeok Cheongang suddenly spoke again.

“More than twenty years ago, a terrible epidemic swept through Anhui Province. Countless commoners died, and even more children were left orphaned. He was one of them.”

The moment had come for Jopil’s true identity, unknown to everyone, to be revealed. Depending on what Jeok Cheongang said next, my future would be decided.

I held my breath and listened.

Jeok Cheongang continued slowly. As the clear liquor rippled in his cup, memories of those days rose vividly to the surface.

“He was a child struggling desperately to survive. Even while a dozen or so people surrounded him and trampled him, he shoved a dirt-covered dumpling into his mouth.”

“…”

“I liked the fierceness in his eyes, and I pitied him too. I gave him the name Jangcheon—Vast Sky.”

That was how Jangcheon came to live in a hut deep within Mount Jiuhua.

He was the first outsider to set foot there in the fifty long years since Jeok Cheongang had seen his Master off.

“At first, he knew nothing. It wasn’t until a year later that he realized I was a martial artist. Soon afterward, he began begging me to teach him martial arts.”

To an orphan with no one in the world, who had lived amid contempt and hunger, martial artists might as well have been beings from the heavens.

The boy wanted to become a martial artist and change his life. That was why he desperately clung to the old man who had saved him.

“Please accept me as your Disciple.”

“No.”

“Master!”

“Master? Who said I was your Master? You lack both the physique and martial talent to learn our sect’s arts.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll find a way to prove myself. Even if it kills me, I won’t disappoint you, Master!”

“…Don’t be ridiculous.”

Jeok Cheongang thought Jangcheon would not last long.

But the boy’s determination was far more tenacious than he had expected. For an entire year, Jangcheon tried to persuade him every single day. Eventually, he even went so far as to injure himself and refuse food.

Each time, Jeok Cheongang was the one left sweating bullets.

“You fool. Why would you do something like this?”

“I want to learn martial arts. Please accept me as your Disciple.”

“…I can’t.”

“Is it because I’m lacking?”

“It is an unavoidable decision if I am to continue the sect’s lineage. This will be difficult for you too.”

“No matter how difficult it is, I can endure it!”

“No. If you insist on being this stubborn, I’ll have no choice but to send you down the mountain. Is that what you want?”

In truth, Jeok Cheongang was the one who did not want them to part.

With the infirmities of old age creeping up on him, it seemed he had grown lonely for human company. A year had been more than enough time for him to grow attached to the scarred, taciturn boy who had endured far too much for his age.

But…

“Then do it. I’m destined to die anyway, aren’t I?”

“What?”

“If I can’t serve you as my Master, I’ll kill myself. No—kill me now. Kill me with the same hand that saved me.”

“You little—!”

What was so important about martial arts?

Seeing Jangcheon ready to throw away his own life for them, Jeok Cheongang felt hurt and furious.

But at the same time, another thought occurred to him.

“His martial talent and physical aptitude may have been lacking, but with tenacity like that, I thought he was bound to achieve Great Completion one day.”

Jin Taekyung, who had been listening quietly, asked with an uneasy expression,

“That kind of tenacity… Is that why you accepted him as your Disciple?”

“Yes.”

Jeok Cheongang added with a sigh,

“It was a mistake.”

That was the most painful mistake he had made in all the hundred years since his birth.

“For several years, everything went smoothly. He improved so quickly that the concerns I’d had before accepting him as my Disciple seemed foolish.”

Jangcheon followed his Master’s instructions faithfully.

No—it was closer to absolute obedience.

He swung his sword like a madman all day long and devoted himself to training his stamina. Even when learning the smallest, most basic techniques, he poured his entire being into them as though he were practicing the greatest martial art under heaven.

With his Disciple training with such passion and devotion, Jeok Cheongang could not help but be deeply moved. He did everything in his power to help Jangcheon grow.

Jangcheon’s talent and physical aptitude were only slightly above average, but Jeok Cheongang gradually improved his constitution by cleansing his sinews and washing his marrow.

A Master and Disciple who trusted and relied on each other.

Remarkable achievements.

Everything seemed to be going perfectly.

“The problem came afterward.”

The old man remained old, but the boy grew into a young man.

Yet his martial arts failed to develop along with his body. Jangcheon grew furious with himself after spending years making no progress, and eventually, something happened.

“I still remember it clearly. I had more trouble sleeping than usual that night, so I was sitting on a rock when he came up from below. He’d been out of sight for several days, claiming he was in closed-door cultivation.”

Jin Taekyung tilted his head.

“What do you mean, he came up from below?”

“He had gone to the village. The wind carried the musk courtesans use.”

“Oh. A pleasure house?”

“I understood. He had spent more than ten years learning nothing but martial arts, barely ever leaving the mountain. What could I say when his own Master had been of so little help and cared only for his own cultivation?”

At the time, Jeok Cheongang had been immersed in training to open his upper dantian.

Opening the upper dantian meant entering the Martial Extremity realm. It would not only raise his martial arts to another level, but also treat the infirmities of old age that were steadily eating away at him.

“But it wasn’t easy. It required lengthy preparation, time, and enlightenment.”

As a result, Master and Disciple gradually began seeing less of each other.

Jeok Cheongang believed that his Disciple, who had always worked so hard, would attain enlightenment on his own, so he focused on cultivating his upper dantian.

He noticed Jangcheon’s trips down the mountain only on the occasional days when the wind carried a mixture of unfamiliar scents.

“Then one day, a visitor came.”

“A visitor?”

“The Azure Sky Sword King. I had never seen his face before, but I recognized him immediately. He was exactly as I’d heard.”

Jin Taekyung’s jaw dropped.

“The Azure Sky Sword King? One of the Ten Kings?”

“Yes. He was also the Grand Family Head of the Nangong Family.”

“Why did he come?”

Jeok Cheongang tilted the liquor bottle without a word.

He had already emptied several bottles by himself, yet his mind only grew clearer. So too did the words the Azure Sky Sword King had spoken when he appeared without warning.

“These days, the brats in my family have been throwing a fit. There’s some vicious bastard running wild in Anhui, but they say they can’t catch him. They begged me so desperately that I had no choice but to come see you.”

Jeok Cheongang had been bewildered.

The Nangong Family’s influence in Anhui was immense.

If even their power had proven insufficient, to the point that the Azure Sky Sword King himself had to step in, then just how powerful was this bastard?

“Then why did you come to me? Are you saying the bastard is some kind of Martial God?”

“If he were a Martial God, he wouldn’t be killing only innocent women and mediocre wandering martial artists. I saw him once from a distance, but I let him go.”

“What does that—”

“A Master should correct his Disciple’s mistakes, shouldn’t he?”

Not long after the Azure Sky Sword King left, Jeok Cheongang stood absentmindedly on the rock and caught a scent carried on the wind.

It was the smell of blood.