Chapter 25
It seemed he wouldn't have to hide it from Seo Hyo-eun, but he felt that if questions poured in, it would be a needless waste of time. So he took a seat on one side as if he were doing Qi Circulation Meditation, placed it on the floor, and began to read.
Seo Hyo-eun looked at him, and seeming to think that he really was doing Qi Circulation Meditation, she was seen concentrating on her training again.
Thanks to that, Cheon Ha-seong was able to concentrate for a considerable amount of time from then on.
Just because he had seen it once didn't mean it felt easy. Should he say it was like taking just a single step onto Mount Tai? Cheon Ha-seong concentrated as if he were encountering something completely new.
While reading the commentary, the feeling that his counterpart was speaking to him came without fail this time as well. Reading something is bound to be a one-sided act, but Cheon Ha-seong did not feel that way. If he felt a question, the answer would soon appear. When he felt a new question from there, it was the same.
It was to the point where he wondered strangely if it had originally been written that way.
It was difficult content, but it was as if someone were explaining it in a way that was perfectly suited to his level.
It felt as if the person who wrote the commentary was determined to make Cheon Ha-seong understand it, no matter what.
Cheon Ha-seong looked closely at the part that explained how to move his internal energy when executing the techniques. And he actually attempted it.
It was then that the Cult Leader came in and saw.
Even just thirty minutes ago, Cheon Ha-seong would have set aside enough concentration to notice someone else entering. But at that moment, he was so engrossed in trying what was in the commentary that he didn't even notice the Cult Leader had entered.
“…!”
The Cult Leader saw a dim blue energy rising from around Cheon Ha-seong's body. However, that was not what surprised him.
What truly surprised him was that the body of Cheon Ha-seong, sitting in the lotus position, had floated about half a foot into the air.
He wanted to rush over at once and ask what was happening, but the Cult Leader also knew he shouldn't do such a thing.
Wondering if his daughter also knew about this, he turned to look, but she was so engrossed in her own training that she wasn't even looking at what was happening beside her.
That too was an incredible level of concentration.
No matter how much one concentrates, if a fire breaks out next to you, you should at least look, shouldn't you? But this was a situation where it seemed she wouldn't even notice if something next to her burst into flames.
The Cult Leader thought these two were truly fascinating, then turned his head back towards Cheon Ha-seong.
This place was supposed to be off-limits to others, but these days, he couldn't help but be suspicious of many things.
It was a time when an assassin who dared to ambush him had appeared, and a bastard who destroyed the mnemonic verses of the Heaven-Shattering Will Art at the Martial Arts Academy was running rampant. It would not be strange at all if things that were thought to be a matter of course were no longer maintained.
Therefore, feeling that he had to be here, he guarded the door. Who would believe that the Cult Leader was standing guard at a door for the sake of another's concentration?
However, that time was not boring at all, and he had no time to feel it was in vain. The Cult Leader watched the marvelous phenomenon occurring in Cheon Ha-seong's body, then looked down at the original copy of the Heaven-Shattering Will Art that he had brought.
It was a martial arts manual he had a love-hate relationship with. How desperately had he wished to master it. But it had stubbornly hidden its secrets to the very end.
Like a woman who turns away a suitor to the very end, the Heaven-Shattering Will Art was that kind of martial art to the Cult Leader. Having no other choice, he had had to find a suitable martial art that he could learn and master that instead.
It was a path he had not taken, and a path that had often come to mind for a very long time. He had thought countless times about where he would end up if he went down that path. But now, watching Cheon Ha-seong and the martial arts manual, the Cult Leader realized that the Heaven-Shattering Will Art was opening itself to Cheon Ha-seong.
It was to the point where it felt as if the martial art were alive and autonomously choosing its own companion.
‘Is all of this the Demonic God's will as well?’
The smile he wore as he looked at Cheon Ha-seong held no trace of envy or pain. If the Cheon Ha-seong who had suddenly appeared before him one day hadn't been the fellow who spent a night with his precious daughter, the story might have been different.
But isn't that bastard the one who will become his son-in-law? He is the bastard who became his son without even being born to him.
It was like a pumpkin had rolled in with the vine, and was even wrapped in gold leaf.
Some things were a great help just by watching, and that was the case then too.
The Cult Leader couldn't take his eyes off Cheon Ha-seong. He found it fascinating, he was proud of him, and he wanted to learn from him.
It would be one thing if it were a completely different path that he couldn't dare to attempt, but if Cheon Ha-seong's enlightenment was very high, wouldn't there be something he could learn from it?
‘All streams return to the source,’ as they say. So expectations naturally arose.
The fact that Cheon Ha-seong was absurdly young compared to the years he himself had lived was not a problem at all. Wasn't Cheon Ha-seong an amazing bastard who seemed insane from the start? He was someone who was called a genius at the mere age of thirteen. Back then, he had been green with envy, but now he could bear it.
He could endure it.
Suddenly, the Cult Leader looked at his daughter.
‘My admirable girl. Where did she drag a fellow like this from? I really did give birth to one fine daughter. Yep. It's only right, since she was born with such difficulty.’
Suddenly, his deceased wife also came to mind, and unbecomingly, tears even began to well up.
Unaware of what was happening beside him, Cheon Ha-seong's insight only continued to deepen.
***
“Are you truly insane, you bastard! I am asking if you dared to mention me and my family just to save your own worthless life!”
The disaster that had struck the Martial Arts Academy showed no signs of ending easily.
Considering the current situation, the assassin's surprise attack seemed like nothing in comparison.
The Fourth Demonic Marquis was trembling, unable to contain her rage until she arrived here.
Feeling that she absolutely had to grab the bastard who had spouted such nonsense and tear him to shreds at once, she had used her lightness skill all the way here without resting. No matter how much Cheok Gyo-woon told her it would be better to conserve her internal energy since they didn't know what would happen at the Martial Arts Academy, she hadn't listened.
She had already lost her senses to rage; how could such words enter her ears?
Bang Sun-taek, who had just been thinking of somehow getting through the immediate crisis, was at first bewildered when the Fourth Demonic Marquis suddenly appeared with Cheok Gyo-woon. Seeing the lavishly adorned Marquis, he guessed she wasn't an ordinary person, but he had never imagined that the Fourth Demonic Marquis herself would appear.
From then on, the Fourth Demonic Marquis's whip spewed fire.
After asking Cheok Gyo-woon who Bang Sun-taek was and hearing the answer, the Fourth Demonic Marquis swung her whip without even trying to hold back. No matter how much Bang Sun-taek tried to flee, it was not an attack he could avoid.
Although it was a baffling experience, like a thunderbolt striking from a clear sky, from the perspective of martial arts achievement, it wasn't entirely a bad thing for the Fourth Demonic Marquis. The distance from her residence to the Martial Arts Academy was by no means short, and the lightness skill she used then was the fastest she had ever performed in her life. The same was true for the way she wielded her whip.
It looked as though she were swinging it wildly, but the Fourth Demonic Marquis's whip never once missed Bang Sun-taek. Each time, it flew and latched onto Bang Sun-taek's body, only falling away after tearing off a piece of flesh.
Bang Sun-taek screamed and cried out to be saved, but the Fourth Demonic Marquis had no intention of showing mercy from the start.
“After you die, I will kill your wife and children. After that, I will tear to shreds and kill every bastard who shares even a single drop of blood with you. If you want to reveal even a little of the truth, now is your only chance, so speak at once! I'm telling you to say which bastards ordered you to do such a thing!”
In a way, it might have looked as if she were trying to kill Bang Sun-taek to conceal the truth. However, the people who were there seemed to know that was not the issue.
Looking at the Fourth Demonic Marquis's expression, wasn't it as if she were half out of her mind with rage that her own and her family's honor had been tarnished? It was a world away from a face that was afraid of the truth being revealed.
“Please spare me, Fourth Demonic Marquis. I swear, I did not tell a lie. The man who approached me at the gambling den clearly said so.”
He was a man who had initially planned to leave out the parts disadvantageous to him, embellish the story, and even frame Cheon Ha-seong. But now, with the flesh of his entire body in tatters and covered in blood, he couldn't think of anything.
It felt like as long as he could make that whip stop, he wouldn't care what he had to do. He thought it would be fine, no matter the price he had to pay.
“Mother, it would be best to hear what this man has to say. If he dies like this, won't we lose any way of ever catching the one who actually orchestrated this?”
Thankfully, Cheok Gyo-woon stepped in and was barely able to calm the Fourth Demonic Marquis.
“If you don't speak at once, I will resolutely tear your limbs to shreds and kill you!”
The Fourth Demonic Marquis shouted in a cruel voice. However, even if she hadn't said that, Bang Sun-taek would have told her what he knew. But crucially, he didn't know much.
As he just kept repeating the same thing, in the meantime the Principal sent a few Head Instructors to the gambling den in question and had them drag back its attendant and owner.
The Fourth Demonic Marquis, knowing what the Principal had done, glared at them.
“Have you seen this bastard!”
They had terrified faces, wondering what was going on. When they realized the person who had screamed so terrifyingly was the Fourth Demonic Marquis, they were so scared it felt as if all the color had drained from their bodies.
The owner of the gambling den thought this was the result of him coveting money he should never have coveted.
Operating a gambling den was also illegal in the Divine Cult, so he had been running it secretly, avoiding others' eyes, but now he could no longer hide it. He felt that if he made a mistake, his head could fly off right here, so he couldn't try to hide trivial things.
“I am sorry. Making a living is difficult, and the stomach's needs come first, so I did something I should never have done. I have only been operating the gambling den for a few months. And even then, it wasn't going well and I was having a hard time, but a few days ago, a person came to visit. And strangely, he said he wanted to try being a gambling den attendant.”
As the gambling den owner spoke, the attendants who had been dragged along with him nodded their heads so hard it looked like their necks would break.
“That's right. When I heard that, I also thought, 'what a strange person'. I wondered what was so fascinating and fun about being a gambling den attendant that he would want to do it. But seeing as he offered to pay three hundred taels of silver on the condition that we let him do it, it didn't seem like he was joking.”
The attendant and the gambling den owner went back and forth, continuing the story.
Looking closely, it seemed the people Bang Sun-taek had met at the gambling den that day weren't actually attendants who worked there, but people brought in by the man who had given the owner money.