Chapter 50: Don’t Come Here to Check If It’s Really True

This was the bird’s-eye sketch and future outlook Jin Sowol drew.

I was at the center, with enemies lurking on all sides—no, on three sides.
Let’s call them the Orthodox Alliance, Sabeol, and Maren.

The Orthodox Alliance side was, for the moment, a fire half-put out.

Boseong Hyeon Clan would, one way or another, try to get their hands on me, but the cards they could use right away were extremely limited.

If they wanted to eliminate me directly, they’d have to stake the entire fate of their clan.

Because Gwaeseon and Gwanggaek were by my side.

You can’t burn down the entire thatched house just to catch one bedbug.

Not that I’m calling myself a bedbug.
Please accept that only as a figure of speech.

Next, Sabeol.

Seoyeon, where Inudang had its base, lay within Sabeol’s territory.

By barging in there and killing Goru Seokgwi and the rest, I’d essentially yanked out Sabeol’s nose hairs.

It would be strange if they didn’t bristle.

Even so, Jin Sowol asserted that Sabeol, like Hyeon Clan, would also spend some time groping in the dark before acting.

Inudang was a sect that had survived and dragged on by paying enormous taxes to both Sun-Moon Sword Sect and Three Severances Sect, who sat at equal distance around them.

In principle, those two sects should be the ones riding out to take revenge.

But according to Jin Sowol, the odds that either Sun-Moon Sword Sect or Three Severances Sect would actively dispatch high-level masters to Jeonwon—known to be my place of residence—were lower than the odds of a goat eating a wolf.

The reasons were a combination of things: the way they watched one another, Gwaeseon and Gwanggaek’s presence, Maren’s movements, and so on.

To lump it together, let’s leave it at that.

If I tried to relay every detail of Jin Sowol’s explanation, this would go on far too long.

And you all don’t like that, do you?

For reference, the middle-aged man in white who had briefly put me in a difficult spot at Inudang was Cha Intae, the Third in rank of Three Severances Sect, known as Heaven-Covering Hand Gae Cheonsu.

Age: fifty-eight.
Martial level: mid-grade super peak.
Specialty: naturally, hand techniques.
Disposition: brutal yet cunning.
Record: the very embodiment of an evil seed of the unorthodox side.

A man I would someday have to toss into Flame King Hall without fail.

Not because he was a bad person—but because he’d dumped a hail of killing moves on me.

Lastly, Maren.

In truth, they were the real centerpiece.

The night I came back to the manor, and after briefly catching up with Jin Sowol, the reason I’d planned to slip away before dawn was because of them.

There was no way Maren would simply leave alone the man who had stormed their own stronghold and slaughtered dozens of their demonists.

Even Gwaeseon and Gwanggaek couldn’t serve as deterrents.

If even half of the Eight Demon Lords moved out, they could crush us.

But things were different if the Sword Emperor’s Heir joined our side.

Maren would not be able to rashly seek revenge.

Not because they’d fear his martial strength, but because of his background.

The Sword Pagoda, though it housed fewer than twenty swordsmen, was a formidable force that even the Four Great Clans of Sabeol could not take lightly.

All of its swordsmen were super-peak masters, and above all, there was the Sword Emperor standing behind them.

To face the Sword Pagoda, Maren would have to throw in all their strength; if a full-scale war broke out, they’d have to accept a devastating loss.

Even if they managed to erase the Sword Pagoda from the earth, Maren, whose fangs and claws had been broken, would be highly likely to be devoured in turn by the surrounding beasts.

So, before anything else, Maren would have to take preemptive measures to separate the Sword Emperor’s Heir from me.

Only then could they consider sending out troops.

Jin Sowol’s prediction here assumed the existence of Demon Brain Zhang Sam.

Without him, the demonists would not hesitate to surge toward Jeonwon without a thought for consequences or cost.

The moment a chance to fight appeared, demonists were known for charging in heedless of fire or water.

In fact, half the credit for the demonists—who had once had strength but had been scattered like sand along the riverbanks, pushed to the fringes by great orthodox and unorthodox sects—forming a proper alliance and taking possession of a vast territory equal to a third of the continent, belonged to Demon Brain.

He gathered the demonists of the Eight Demonic Factions, who had all been surviving on their own, under Maren’s banner and forged a mighty force to rival the Orthodox Alliance and Sabeol.

His martial level was only mid-to-low peak, but thanks to the Demon King’s absolute trust, he acted as Maren’s second-in-command and wielded real governing power.

Jin Sowol merely pointed out that Iron Horse might act alone despite the Demon King issuing orders at Demon Brain’s suggestion.

I, for one, hoped that hunk of iron would do just that.

I’d struggled against him before, but now I was confident I could beat him.

---

Events unfolded as Jin Sowol had foreseen, but the side effects were considerable.

To show that we were always together, the four of us—me, the Sword Emperor’s Heir, Gwaeseon, and Gwanggaek—would occasionally go into Jeonwon and have a drink.

Every time, crowds swarmed to see us.

In fact, as soon as the rumors broke, thrill-seekers with nothing better to do had begun pouring into Jeonwon from every corner of the continent, just to see me and the Sword Emperor’s Heir.

Jeonwon, fitting its reputation as a transport hub, usually had more floating population than residents, but with ten times the usual number of bodies crammed in, wherever you went it was as packed as a marketplace on the eleventh day, the busiest market day.

Whenever the four of us appeared, the sea of people split clean down the middle, as if a hatchet were cleaving firewood.

Then shrieks and moans would cover the street.

Almost all of them came from women who saw the Sword Emperor’s Heir.

Jin Cheongun said there were countless people bewitched by him, and that the women of the pleasure houses were lovesick to the point they could barely do business.

He wasn’t exaggerating.

In fact, after the Sword Emperor’s Heir first appeared in Jeonwon, brothels and flower houses closing their doors began to pop up one after another.

As an emergency measure, on our third outing to Jeonwon I put a bamboo hat on him that covered his face all the way down to his jaw.

It only backfired.

The shrieks and moans disappeared, but the number of people who rushed out to see us did not decrease in the slightest.

And now, their gazes latched onto me instead of him.

I had to take the hat back off the Sword Emperor’s Heir.

The real problem was that the risk of the manor being exposed had increased drastically.

Jeonwon was saturated.

Naturally, those who couldn’t secure a place inside started to gather around the outskirts.

As their numbers grew, the makeshift tents these drifters set up gradually crept closer to the manor.

At the rate things were going, in six or seven days their sprawl would reach the forest where the manor was hidden.

It was time for drastic measures.

After discussing it with Jin Sowol, I decided to lead everyone to the Ujang Mountain Range.

Our movements, this time, were going to be deliberately exposed.

Once word got out that we’d moved elsewhere, all the outsiders clogging Jeonwon would ebb away like the receding tide.

We only planned to stay in the Ujang Mountain Range for three or four days.

Jin Sowol had pleaded with me to come back as soon as possible.

She seemed afraid I might just settle down there for good.

In truth, when I’d made up my mind to leave the manor, the place I’d had in mind had been the Valley of No Return in the Ujang Mountains.

I planned to train my martial arts in that hidden place, occasionally hitting the Seven Unorthodox Sects or the Eight Demonic Factions to test my progress, and using battles and life-and-death struggles as opportunities for new breakthroughs.

---

On the day we were to leave for the Ujang Range, I spent the whole day in the marsh with Gwaeseon, Gwanggaek, and the Sword Emperor’s Heir, exchanging blows like madmen and devoting myself to training.

When the sun set, I headed alone toward the manor.

Jin Sowol had asked me to stop by before I left.

The Sword Emperor’s Heir showed his desire to follow me in every line of that annoyingly handsome face, but I pretended not to notice.

From the moment he first met Jin Sowol, he had been completely smitten with her.

He’d even had a few dangerous moments in the middle of our bouts because he’d been distracted thinking about her.

His one-sided feelings for Jin Sowol hadn’t only had negative effects on him.

Convinced that she was indifferent to him because he’d lost to me, he pushed himself desperately hard to catch up.

As for me, I welcomed his effort.

It was a strong stimulus to me as well.

The best rival is the best teacher.

To begin with, there was barely a sheet of paper’s thickness between us.

In terms of innate talent, we were like two halves of the same mold.

It was hard for me to accept that there existed another genius like me, but trading blows with him day and night, I had to admit that his exceptional talent matched mine.

I had no intention of ever letting him overtake me.

No, I had to widen the gap.

Considering that he was five years younger than me, in reality I was the one lagging far behind.

Even before, I had never known what it meant to be lazy when it came to training, but after teaming up with the Sword Emperor’s Heir, I put in twice the effort.

I sweated so much that it felt like I could have flooded that whole marsh.

That’s how hard I worked—
don’t actually come here to check whether it’s really true.

With only twenty or thirty jang left to the manor, I slowed my lightfoot skill and dropped to the ground.

The weather was clear with not a cloud in the sky, and the half-moon shone with a brilliance almost equal to a full moon, yet a heavy, dark air hung over the manor, as if storm clouds were gathered there.

I walked toward it.

Something inside me urged me to turn back.

I resisted that instinct.

A nameless fear welled up, but I couldn’t leave without checking on Jin Sowol’s safety.

Steeling my heart and about to launch my lightfoot again, I froze.

Because I’d noticed the ghost hovering over my head.

The moment I realized it was there, I knew I should flee at full speed, but like an animal caught in a snare I couldn’t move my feet.

Not because of the pressure that ghost exuded, but because I instinctively knew escape was impossible.

If I rashly turned my back, there was a high chance I’d meet my end without being able to do anything.

In that case, it was better to face an overwhelming threat head-on.

The ghost drifted down, slowly.

The figure that landed right in front of me was a dwarf-like old man, barely three cheok tall.

The top of his head only reached about my thigh.

With eyes sunk so deep it looked like finger-sized dwarfs inside his skull were pulling on the eyeballs, and a piggish nose with nostrils pointed straight forward, the ugly old man’s deeply carved wrinkles rippled across his whole face as he beamed at me.

I knew who he was.

There was no way I couldn’t.

Of the Ten Kings, there were three whose appearance alone was enough to identify them at a glance.

The eight-cheok walking skeleton Sword King, the golden-haired, blue-eyed Ice King, and the three-cheok dwarf Poison King.

The old man—Poison King—suddenly grabbed my hand.

I didn’t even dare to shake him off.

If I did, there was a risk I’d be killed on the spot.

A chilling energy seeped into my palm, flowed along my blood vessels, and roamed through my insides.

A moment later, the old man, whose teeth had all fallen out and whose lips had collapsed inward, rasped out a grating voice like an iron skewer scraping a steel plate.

“Khak khak khak, I knew I smelled something, and sure enough. I’m glad I came out to look.

A tower built with care does not collapse, they say, and in the end you’ve fallen into my hands like this.

Astounding!

So identical, a perfect copy!

And you’ve inherited the Treasure’s original power intact!

I used to doubt heavenly will existed, but now I see it’s real.

Without it, how could I have met you after decades, across thousands of li of distance?

Khak khak khak.”

The old man’s musings began and ended in mad laughter.

He was crazed with happiness, but for me, it was nothing but bleak.

I had a terrifyingly strong feeling that this time next year might be the anniversary of my death.

[End of Chapter]