Chapter 158: The End of Childhood (17)

“...So he ran away like that?”

Red Tile Pavilion, late at night.

Jeongyang clenched his teeth and nearly slammed his fist down on the desk, stopping himself at the last moment.

Instead, he kindled Samadhi True Flame at his fingertips with internal energy and began burning several documents.

He did not like the way things were unfolding.

If this continued...

He might even be forced down from the Sect Leader’s seat.

Normally, the Sect Leader was the absolute head of a sect.

The notion of being forced down from that position was absurd.

But this was different.

Of all things, it was the Demonic Cult.

That connection to the Demonic Cult was the problem.

The day someone reported it to the Martial Alliance and the wider world, his life as a martial artist would be over.

How could he ever walk with his head held high again?

“Ha...”

If he gave up the Sect Leader’s position, who would come after him?

He did not even need to speculate. The answer was obvious.

His junior brother, Jeongbeop.

It would probably be him.

Jeonggang had already lost his strength.

From what Jeongyang had heard, he had less than three months left to live.

Making such a man Sect Leader would only throw everything into greater confusion.

The sect would have to change Sect Leaders again in three months.

But appointing Myeonggon, the senior-most Myeong-generation disciple, would be difficult while Jeong-generation elders remained.

Unless every Jeong-generation elder gave up any ambition for the Sect Leader’s seat, it would be impossible.

And was not everyone alike in their desire for power?

At least, that was what Jeongyang believed.

If ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) Jeongbeop rose to the position of Sect Leader...

No, regardless of who it was...

Anyone who came to power after a leader had fallen from grace always did the same thing first.

They exposed every fault of the former leader and purged it all.

Jeongyang had no desire to suffer that kind of disgrace—humiliation akin to posthumous desecration.

It was better to burn everything away while he still held his position.

“How much time is left?”

Jeongbeop would surely come to Red Tile Pavilion again as soon as tomorrow.

There was a reason his Daoist name bore the word “law.”

He was the sort of man who considered Jeongyang being his senior brother less important than principles that had been violated.

The day after that, elders who shared Jeongbeop’s views would come.

Then more elders.

Then the senior Myeong-generation disciples...

Rather than endure such shame and humiliation, it would be better to step down of his own accord.

The elders’ residences stood on Mount Hua’s North Peak.

Because he had lived in Red Tile Pavilion, his own residence there had remained vacant.

He would simply wait there for everything to pass.

*****

The following morning.

Jeongyang gathered every Mount Hua disciple at the training ground before Red Tile Pavilion.

Few people knew about matters connected to the Demonic Cult.

At most, the Myeong generation.

Other than Eunsong and Eun Jeong, even the second-generation disciples of the Eun generation did not know that the Sect Leader’s resignation was connected to the Demonic Cult.

“...I believe my time as Sect Leader has come to an end.”

Jeongyang began with those plain words.

Whispers soon spread through the crowd.

But Jeongyang did not rebuke them.

Jeongbeop was watching him with an icy glare, for one thing...

But what would be the point of trying to enforce discipline now?

Where had everything begun to unravel?

When he sent Myeongjeok to deal with Eunbyeok?

When he had grafted the Little Heavenly Demon’s arm and had Heaven-Toppling Cultivation learned in order to test the forgotten Great Net of Myriad Plum Blossoms Sword?

When he dragged innocent children in because he wanted to raise the number one sword under heaven?

Or...

When he concealed his ambition and desire, smiling with a dagger hidden within, and clawed his way into the Sect Leader’s seat?

“...I will leave all discussion of the next Sect Leader to the elders. As for me, I intend to lay down the burdens I have carried, withdraw from the front lines, and spend the rest of my life in retirement.”

It was a merciful outcome.

Originally, Jeongbeop had argued that everything should be reported to the Martial Alliance and that Mount Hua should leave judgment to them.

But the other elders had restrained him again and again, and retirement became the compromise.

“That is all. Disperse.”

With that, Jeongyang stepped down from the platform.

Though he had dismissed them, the gathered disciples did not leave.

They remained where they were, exchanging their own guesses as they tried to make sense of the situation.

Those who had simply been summoned without knowing the full story began forming their own theories.

And absurdly enough, the theory gaining the most support was one favorable to Jeongyang.

No one had failed to sense the intense, violent residue of Demonic Energy from the day before.

From the perspective of ordinary disciples who knew nothing, it must have seemed as though there had been a Demonic Cult member within Mount Hua—or someone colluding with the Demonic Cult.

But the Demonic Energy had vanished completely in an instant...

And the next day, the Sect Leader announced his retirement.

The most plausible conclusion was that Jeongyang had fought a Demonic Cult member and been injured, so he was stepping down to recuperate.

That theory quickly began to take hold.

Jeongbeop and the elders simply let the rumor spread.

It was not as though it was openly leaking beyond Mount Hua.

Besides, if rumors were going to spread, they would spread anyway...

And it was better than a rumor that the Sect Leader had colluded with the Demonic Cult.

*****

At the foot of Mount Hua.

Before the main gate.

The seventy-seven-year-old Medicine Sage, Jang Uitae, was locked in a staring contest with a guard.

“...Then who exactly are you?”

“Who am I?”

The Medicine Sage repeated the question as though it were ridiculous.

Pressed down by an inexplicable force in the old man’s bearing, the guard took a step back.

“Tsk, tsk. You do not know me? You do not know me?”

“...How would I know you, sir? I have never seen you before today.”

“Hah! You dare talk back when an elder is speaking?”

“What?”

The Medicine Sage nearly swung his walking stick at the guard’s head, but stopped himself.

It could become troublesome if the man truly did not know who he was.

After all, he was a Mount Hua gate guard.

“Go up and tell Jeonggang that the Medicine Sage has arrived.”

“Old man, do you even know who Elder Jeonggang is—did you just say the Medicine Sage?”

The guard had been about to lose his temper the instant the old man said Jeonggang’s name.

Then the words “Medicine Sage” made him freeze.

The Medicine Sage?

The Medicine Sage called the reincarnation of Hua Tuo, one of the great elders of the martial world?

Cold sweat streamed down his forehead.

The sound of him swallowing reached even the Medicine Sage.

The Medicine Sage watched him blankly for a moment, then clicked his tongue.

“Snap out of it!”

The tip of the Medicine Sage’s walking stick swung out and struck the dazed guard squarely on the head.

Now that he had revealed who he was, he felt it was safe enough to give the boy a beating.

The Medicine Sage’s judgment was quite sound. The guard was far too stunned to even think of complaining about being hit.

“Hurry up and tell them!”

“Y-Yes, sir!!”

The guard immediately dashed toward the summit of Mount Hua, leaving the senior guard at his post behind him.

The senior guard’s expression as he watched the whole scene was so blank that all sense seemed to have drained from his face.

“...I pay my respects to a senior of the martial world.”

“Good. At least you have some sense.”

But there was nothing the senior guard could say to someone older and more senior than himself like the Medicine Sage...

He could only lower his head.

About a quarter of an hour passed.

The guard who had run up the mountain came rushing back down and collapsed in front of the Medicine Sage.

He had apparently pushed his lightness arts beyond their limit, and his legs had given out.

“T-They said you may come up!”

The Medicine Sage decided not to scold him any further and walked past.

Even if he said nothing, the senior guard certainly would.

Indeed, the Medicine Sage could already hear the senior guard chewing the young guard out.

*****

“It has been a long time.”

“...Have you kept well, Medicine Sage?”

The Medicine Sage sat inside Jeonggang’s residence.

He had clearly hurried to get there, yet he had brought a great many things with him.

Of those, only one had been prepared for Soyak.

The Medicine Sage merely grinned and drew a small wooden case from his robe.

Then he tossed it directly to Soyak.

“...Ah.”

Soyak had not expected him to hand it over so casually. Her eyes widened as she barely caught it.

Then she let out a breath.

“If you cannot even catch that, you have no business going around calling yourself a Transcendent Apex master. Hmph.”

“Medicine Sage, even a Transcendent Apex master can die to a stray blade.”

A full-body protective force barrier...

That was the sort of thing one saw only in martial-arts fiction.

Even masters in the rare Transformation Realm who could properly manifest force were few and far between in the current martial world.

To spread it broadly and cover the entire body with it?

It would not be wrong to call that impossible.

But Soyak could not pay attention to the Medicine Sage’s joke.

The clear, elegant fragrance seeping from the wooden case he had thrown her had captured all her attention.

What she held in her small hand was the Primordial Peerless Pellet.

A miraculous pellet said to have restructured the size and resilience of the dantian—and, through that effect, revived Namgung Byeok, the Reverse Heaven Society’s Sky-Burning Sword Tiger.