Chapter 138: The Eve (6)

The sun had set, and Eunsong still had not come.

Soyak, Cheonjeong, and the third-generation disciples waited for him at Eunsong’s residence, then let out a sigh.

It was time to go back.

“Let us go.”

Cheonjeong was the first to rise.

It was dinnertime.

He could not leave them unfed, so they had to return.

“It’s already so late....”

Soyak looked at the shadows outside, then nodded.

In any case, this was not something that could be resolved in a day or two.

If they could not do it today, they could come again the next day.

By tomorrow, Eunsong would likely be with Eun Jeong anyway.

Everyone began gathering themselves and rising from their seats.

They had heard the full story.

They knew what they had to do from here.

And they knew what they had to be careful of.

They could not let anyone discover the very fact that they knew this story, this information.

He was the sort of man who would silence witnesses by killing them without a second thought.

And whoever had released him...

There was someone inside Mount Hua who had struck a bargain with the Demonic Cult.

In the worst case, they may be a follower.

Cheonjeong propped his chin on his hand and sank into thought.

A follower of the Demonic Cult hiding inside the Mount Hua Sect.

It would be stranger to say there were none at all.

All the more so after the incident with the Shandong Ak Family.

Even the remnants of the Demonic Cult had planted spies and agents inside the Ak Family over a long period of time.

Then, at the decisive moment, they had spent those pieces boldly and nearly destroyed the Ak Family.

Then had they truly not done the same to Mount Hua?

Was it only Mount Hua?

What about the other prestigious righteous factions and the Nine Great Sects...?

Just as his thoughts reached that point, Soyak tapped Cheonjeong on the shoulder.

Then she pointed outside.

The other fellow disciples were all out in the yard, waiting for Cheonjeong.

“What are you thinking so deeply about, Eldest Brother?”

“Just... something a little horrifying.”

“What kind of thought was it...?”

“Come out to the training ground for a while tonight. I will tell you then.”

That was against the rules.

Even so, Cheonjeong simply nodded to Soyak, who hesitated.

Because this was more important than the rules. It was directly connected to Mount Hua’s safety.

“...Understood.”

“Why so hesitant? You went all the way to South Peak without permission well enough.”

“T-that was....”

“I am teasing you.”

Cheonjeong laughed softly and left the room.

Now it truly was time to return.

By the time they returned to Flower-Haze Hall, the evening glow was already sinking low.

By the time they finished eating, even the dusk had fallen completely, and the sky was covered in a deep navy night.

Soyak and Cheonjeong both barely ate.

They were both conscious of each other.

Cheonjeong was worried about the worst possibility he had imagined.

And Soyak was wondering what kind of situation Cheonjeong had envisioned to make him wear such a devastated expression.

Then, in the deep night, when everyone was likely asleep, Soyak lightly jumped down from the second-floor window, just as she had before.

Her lightness arts were so soundless that even the soles of her feet did not make a noise when they touched the ground.

Cheonjeong was the same.

“You came.”

“Where shall we go to talk?”

“No need. Let us go beneath that tree.”

It was a familiar tree.

Eunsong had once waited for her beneath it.

It had been right before she left for the Roaming Pillar Journey to the Shandong Ak Family.

“It has been quite some time since I sat in the shade beneath this tree.”

“You remember?”

“I do. Master taught us all kinds of little tricks here, did he not?”

Soyak could not hold back her smile.

If one called them tricks, they certainly were tricks.

The principle of the Roaming Pillar Journey was that they could not take any funds with them.

But Eunsong had made them bring goods they could sell.

And that was not all.

He had also handed them sturdy clothes that could be worn all season.

He was not supposed to see them off, but what was that if not seeing them off in all but name?

“Little tricks... is not entirely wrong.”

“Is it not? Now, sit comfortably.”

It was a large tree with a thick trunk.

Thanks to that, even its roots were thick.

They were good enough to serve as chairs, in their own way.

Once Soyak sat, Cheonjeong sighed again.

And in that moment, his expression changed.

It was the dark, devastated face Soyak had seen and worried about.

Cheonjeong opened his mouth with that expression.

“I simply had a thought.”

“...What thought?”

“Do you remember what happened at the Shandong Ak Family?”

Soyak silently nodded.

That was where she had first seen a Demonic Beast.

That was where she had personally felt how dreadful the atrocities committed by the Demonic Cult’s fanatics could be.

The harsh heat of those raging flames...

All of it had remained with young Soyak as memories and experiences she could never forget.

Because those flames and that heat had resembled what she had felt from the Flame-Saber Lord on the day she lost her parents.

“...I remember all of it. The flames, and even that resentment. Everything.”

“That is good. When I thought about it, I found myself wondering whether we had been truly naive and innocent.”

“What do you mean? When you say we...”

“I mean the Mount Hua Sect.”

Cheonjeong swept back his hair.

He pressed both hands over his face several times, barely calming the turmoil inside him.

Then he sat on a tree root a short distance away and faced Soyak.

“When the remnants of the Demonic Cult rose up all throughout the Ak Family, do you think the Family Head knew?”

“The branch Family Head died because he did not know, and the main Family Head suffered because he did not know.”

“Yes. That is what happened. He did not even know those Demonic Cult remnants were seducing his own daughter. How do you think that was possible?”

The obvious answer would be that the Demonic Cult people had disguised themselves well.

But that was not the answer Cheonjeong wanted.

Then she had to think one step further.

There must have been some kind of sign, some omen. Yet they had failed to notice even that—or rather, they had dismissed every possibility of it.

The reason was...

“...Because the Demonic Cult had fallen.”

“Correct. Because the Demonic Cult had fallen, they ignored every strange and ominous sign, every omen. The Demonic Cult had fallen, so such a thing could not be possible. Of course, there likely were not many clues, and they likely were not large. But if it had been during the War of the Righteous and Demonic, when everyone was on high alert against the Demonic Cult, would they truly have failed to notice? That is what I keep thinking.”

Cheonjeong poured the words out all at once, without even pausing to breathe.

Soyak now understood what he was worried about, and why he had looked so devastated.

Because Mount Hua was in the same situation as the Ak Family.

There was a living witness who had stood beside the Sword Sovereign when he cut off the Heavenly Demon’s head during the War of the Righteous and Demonic.

Even if the remnants of the Demonic Cult attacked, Mount Hua had a Transformation Realm master and Elder Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor.

And above all...

After losing the Heavenly Demon and the Young Cult Leader, the Demonic Cult had collapsed and scattered.

Those preconceptions.

That common sense, that knowledge, loosened their readiness.

It made them commit mistakes they never would have committed during wartime.

It made them ignore signs they would have reacted to swiftly if they were in the middle of a fight.

The Mount Hua Sect was doing the same.

During the War of the Righteous and Demonic, six people had guarded the main gate.

Now there were only two.

And was that all?

After the Sword Sovereign’s victory and the Heavenly Demon’s death, the martial world had become peaceful.

Its depths had not become peaceful, but at least on the surface, conflict had decreased.

And people were tamed by that soft, yielding peace.

Of course, more dreadful things were happening underneath it.

Under the Martial Alliance’s power, those who spoke one wrong word had their tongues pulled out, and those who wrote one wrong character in a petition lost their fingers.

But...

Because their tongues and fingers had been taken, they could no longer make the martial world stir.

Slowly, like that.

Even martial artists were tamed.

By the current martial world, where nothing happened and no terrible incidents occurred.

At least, that was how it was known.

Not only Mount Hua, but the entire martial world was soaked in meaningless peace.

The entire martial world was not guarding against the Demonic Cult at all, and the entire martial world had gone slack.

Then...

Where was the guarantee that what happened to the Shandong Ak Family would not happen to all of them?

By the time her thoughts reached that point, Soyak’s expression had become perfectly identical to Cheonjeong’s.

Things that had already passed.

Things that had already happened.

What effect would it have now to shout that they needed stricter vigilance and a more thorough search for the Demonic Cult?

It was already too late, irreversible, and there was nothing they could do.

The immense helplessness that came from that tormented Soyak.

If it was someone’s tyranny or rampage, individual martial power could stop it.

But if it was chaos that shook an entire society, an entire group, there was a limit to what one person’s martial strength could do.

“...What should we do, Eldest Brother?”

“That is what I am thinking about too.”

Cheonjeong sighed.

It was a sigh deeper and lower than any he had let out until now.

And then someone emerged from behind the tree.

“You are so young, yet you are already sighing like that. Is life so hard?”

It was Eun Jeong.