Chapter 128: Wronged Ghost Summons Calamity (5)

When Eunsong sent all the disciples away.

One person alone.

Only Cheonjeong remained.

That was not something Eunsong had ordered.

“Cheonjeong, you should go back to Flower-Haze Hall as well...”

“Please tell me, Master. What on earth happened? What did you hear?”

Cheonjeong looked straight at Eunsong.

He was seventeen years old.

In the Nine Provinces of the martial world, seventeen was already an age at which one could be held responsible for one’s own choices.

It meant he was old enough to understand the weight of the sword in his hand.

He could not be absolved from any crime.

He could not be excused from any responsibility or duty.

That was why his choices were respected.

Eunsong silently wiped a hand over his dry face and swept his hair back.

Cheonjeong was young, but he was the Eldest Brother and the most trusted among the third-generation disciples.

No.

Could he even be called a “child”?

In three years, he would be twenty, and by then he would already be recognized as a proper rising talent of the sect.

“...Do you truly wish to hear it?”

“Yes. And I believe I must hear it.”

Eunsong sat weakly on the wooden porch and thought.

There was nothing wrong with what Cheonjeong had said.

If even Cheonjeong was kept ignorant...

Then what meaning was there in calling him Eldest Brother?

“...Very well. Come here.”

“Is it a secret matter?”

“More than enough to be one.”

This was a matter concerning Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor, who was known as second only to the Sword Sovereign among the masters publicly known in the martial world.

Of course it had to be secret.

Above all, this was also information about the cross-body transfer of Innate True Qi.

The fewer people who knew this truth, the better.

...If possible, it would have been better if no one knew at all.

But that had become impossible once Elder Jeonggang used the forbidden secret art through the Medicine Sage.

“However, there is something you must promise me.”

“What is it?”

“No matter who asks you, you must not answer anything about what I am about to tell you.”

“...I promise.”

Eunsong shook his head.

Then he looked straight into Cheonjeong’s eyes.

Cheonjeong froze for a moment, because he had never once seen Eunsong look at him with eyes like that.

They were not the eyes he usually saw.

They were cold, frozen eyes, the eyes of someone driven to the edge of a cliff.

His usual ease and leisure had vanished without a trace.

“No. This is not something you can promise so easily.”

“What do you mean?”

“...If this story spreads through the martial world, we will no longer be able to overcome the unorthodox factions and the remnants of the Demonic Cult.”

Cheonjeong frowned.

But Eunsong’s prediction was accurate.

The righteous factions, if only because of their dignity and reputation, could not consume human beings as resources.

At the very least, they could never do so openly.

But the Demonic Cult and the unorthodox factions?

Beginning with the Heaven Yin Blood-Siphon Scripture, they had always done such things.

Thus, they could grind up countless victims to restore their own Innate True Qi.

The Medicine Sage was human as well.

There was no guarantee that he could endure prolonged, hideous, and brutal interrogation and torture.

And in the first place, they could not repay the grace of him violating his own resolve and performing such a secret art on Soyak by allowing that to happen.

“...I will tell no one. Soyak is my junior sister too, Master.”

“Yes... the youngest junior sister to all of you.”

Eunsong gestured to Cheonjeong.

It meant for him to come closer.

*****

Step, step, step.

Myeongjeok was slowly walking out of the cave.

Inside the cave, corpses of grotesque animals like the ones Eunbyeok had once stepped on lay scattered everywhere.

Who knew how long they had lived steeped in Demonic Energy?

Their flesh and skin had already melted away, leaving only bones behind.

Though the walls no longer writhed as if alive, nor was the place filled with wicked energy that polluted the mind...

The sight of white bone mounds piled here and there was ominous enough.

And at the far end.

At the cave entrance where light shone brightly, one person stood.

It was Jeongyang, the Sect Leader of Mount Hua.

The Young Cult Leader narrowed his eyes.

He had two choices.

Either disguise himself as Myeongjeok, or kill Jeongyang and take that body.

The Young Cult Leader briefly measured his own strength.

Myeongjeok’s body was excellent material.

It was a body that had reached the far end of Transcendent Apex.

The depth and breadth of its dantian, and the refined state of its flesh, matched that level.

But could he defeat Elder Jeongyang?

If asked that, the answer was no.

Under ordinary circumstances, even this body would have been enough to produce strength beyond the Transformation Realm...

But he had only just taken Myeongjeok’s body.

He needed a period of adjustment.

He was not yet accustomed to the height, the level of the body, the muscle strength, or the height of its field of vision.

Unlike with Eunbyeok, he had completely subdued Myeongjeok’s mind and taken possession of him, so he could claim the body in full.

But for that very reason, the adjustment period would be longer.

Nor could he turn this body into a Demonic Beast.

After all, he had gone to the trouble of obtaining a body with a proper identity, and one he had seized perfectly at that.

The Young Cult Leader narrowed his eyes and slowed his steps.

Then he slowly rummaged through Myeongjeok’s memories inside his head.

But at that moment.

A fierce brilliance poured blindingly in from outside the cave.

It was the light of Sword Force emitted by Jeongyang.

“Oh dear. How perceptive.”

The Young Cult Leader, now occupying Myeongjeok’s body, loosened his shoulders and gripped the Plum Blossom Sword.

Sword Force began to blaze from the Plum Blossom Sword in his hand as well.

But it was different from Jeongyang’s.

It was pitch-black Sword Force, as if it meant to devour and extinguish all light.

“What did you do to my disciple, monster?”

Jeongyang asked in a low voice.

But the Young Cult Leader merely smiled through Myeongjeok’s body.

“Ha. Your disciple?”

“Yes.”

In Myeongjeok’s memories, Jeongyang had never properly cherished him.

He had always cherished only the most outstanding among his disciples.

On top of that, he was someone who had never once made a proper effort to understand his disciples.

That was why Myeongjeok had been able to stand here.

As the senior disciple among the first-generation disciples.

As the next Sect Leader.

He had quietly begun pushing away those who seemed more talented than him.

He spread unsavory rumors, dug into their pasts, and circulated their weaknesses.

One by one.

Disciples more outstanding than him either failed to be entered into the main mountain or grew disgusted with human relationships and left the mountain.

Myeongjeok himself possessed talent far beyond what one could simply call extraordinary.

But how could there not have been talents on the level of Eun Jeong, the Mount Hua Sword Dragon, or Cheongak among the current third-generation disciples in his era?

And Myeongjeok’s talent was extraordinary in a different direction.

Extraordinary enough that no one found it strange even when those more talented than he was were pushed away.

Only a few people had clicked their tongues.

They said there was no “qilin” or “dragon” in this generation of Mount Hua.

“How amusing. Judging by this man’s memories, he was never particularly loved by you.”

“What clumsy falsehood are you spouting? Myeongjeok is the next Sect Leader I chose.”

That was only because Myeongjeok was the best of what remained.

Because those better than him had been cut away by Myeongjeok himself.

One corner of the Young Cult Leader’s mouth twisted upward.

Then he began chuckling.

“What is so funny?”

“Why did you choose this man as the next Sect Leader and senior disciple?”

“Because he was the best.”

So this man’s memories were correct.

That person, the Sect Leader of Mount Hua, was the sort who lined people up by rank.

And an organization ruled by someone like that was the easiest kind to bring down.

Because...

It was a place ruled by a man who, if something was useful, would gladly put even a poisonous mushroom in his sack.

“Do you not wish to defeat the Sword Sovereign? Do you not wish to become the Alliance Leader of the Martial Alliance and command the martial world?”

“Do you think that means I would collude with a Demonic Cult wretch?”

“You would refuse to choose ruling over a divided world instead of bowing under another man in a peaceful one? Think carefully, Sect Leader of Mount Hua. Is that truly what you want?”

The safety of the martial world?

Peace in the Central Plains?

If he had been the sort of person to concern himself with such things in the first place, he would never have become what he was now.

Jeongyang furrowed his brow.

However, he could not deny that this was his ultimate and unattainable desire.

*****

“...That is impossible.”

Cheonjeong shook his head.

But Eunsong’s expression was still wretched.

His disciple owed a debt to his Great Grand Master.

A lifelong grace, and a debt that could never be repaid.

It was not something he could simply accept with an easy heart.

“How... How can such a thing be possible, Master...?”

“Lower your voice.”

“Good heavens...”

Cheonjeong glanced in the direction Soyak had gone.

Of course, Soyak was no longer visible on that path.

But he could not imagine how enormous a burden now rested on those small, delicate shoulders.

How was one supposed to repay such grace?

And within three months, at that?

Cheonjeong shook his head again and again.

“That... That may be too great a burden for Soyak.”

“But there was no other choice. We could not let her die like that. Soyak is... absolutely necessary to us.”

“...Us, you say? What ‘us’ do you mean?”

Cheonjeong sensed something strange in Eunsong’s words and asked.

Eunsong once again spread his internal energy to block the sound around them.

“Do you remember the day you and I first met, Cheonjeong?”

“Yes, I remember. That day was...”

Cheonjeong clenched his teeth.

“...The night my parents were dragged away because they had sold food to a man wanted by the Alliance.”