Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 134 - Encroachment (1)
Chapter 134 – Encroachment (1)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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“The Society Leader’s second young master simply left?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.”
At the report from Seok-jung, who had been guarding Mok Gyeong-un, the Shadow Sect Master tapped the desk in his office with his fingers.
It seemed that the results of Corpse Blood Valley had spread faster than expected.
Enough so that Second Young Master Jang Neung-ak had already begun to move.
‘It seems he was intending to use that child Mok Gyeong-un as a bridgehead.’
He had already approached several times and requested support, yet every time the Shadow Sect Master had refused him, saying that since the Society Leader was still hale and healthy, he had no intention of supporting anyone.
But once a formal disciple appeared, Jang Neung-ak came coveting him openly.
Yet the unexpected part was,
‘To think Mok Gyeong-un rejected Young Master Jang Neung-ak’s proposal…’
That Mok Gyeong-un had refused the proposal of Second Young Master Jang Neung-ak without the slightest hesitation.
And yet it was surprising that nothing else had happened.
The second young master was the kind of man who could only be satisfied after obtaining what he wanted.
So it was strange that such a man had simply turned back without any dissatisfaction after a single refusal from Mok Gyeong-un.
“Was there nothing else of note?”
At the Shadow Sect Master’s question, Seok-jung hesitated for an instant.
At heart, he wanted to tell everything, but because of the fear that had lodged itself in one corner of his chest, he could not reveal what had happened earlier.
‘That fellow is hiding his martial prowess. He possesses a strange power. He also had some sort of unheard conversation with Second Young Master.’
There was far too much he ought to say.
Yet his lips would not part no matter what.
Even though the Shadow Sect Master’s room was certainly soundproofed, he even had the illusion that Mok Gyeong-un was watching, and so he simply could not speak of it.
“…Nothing happened at all.”
At that answer, the Shadow Sect Master’s eyes narrowed slightly.
But without showing it, he said,
“That is fortunate. Then you may return.”
“Yes.”
-Tap!
Guard Seok-jung gave a cupped-fist salute and then left the office.
Once he had gone out, a voice came from somewhere.
“Sect Master.”
“Yes.”
“It feels as though something was missing from that report.”
“I agree.”
Seok-jung’s complexion had been far paler than usual, and for some reason it also seemed that he had not fully reported the course of what had happened outside the manor.
Especially considering the disposition of Second Young Master Jang Neung-ak.
He was, after all, the head of the Shadow Sect, which controlled the Heaven and Earth Society’s information, secrets, and spies.
There was no way he would not find this strange.
“Put someone on Seok-jung.”
“Yes.”
“And tell those assigned to the detached residence to write down and report every single movement.”
“Yes.”
-Tap!
With a small sound from the ceiling, the presence vanished.
Once it disappeared, the Shadow Sect Master spread open an old scroll laid upon the desk.
Written on the scroll was a script entirely unlike Chinese characters.
[Ahriman]
It was difficult even to regard it as coded language.
* * *
Thus seven days passed.
As seven days passed, the Shadow Sect Master fell into many worries.
They were worries that had arisen while observing Mok Gyeong-un, who had become a formal disciple, over those seven days.
The first was Mok Gyeong-un’s talent.
It was something he experienced beginning the very next day.
To begin teaching him the Ghost Shadow Claw Method, whose manual he had been given to memorize, he called him into his private training chamber reserved for the Sect Master.
Before giving instruction, he told him that if he had memorized the manual, he should unfold the forms to the extent he understood them.
But then,
‘…Just what in the world is this?’
The Shadow Sect Master could not suppress his astonishment.
That was because Mok Gyeong-un had digested the Ghost Shadow Claw Method far too perfectly.
He was so precise that not a single form was disordered, exactly as if he had long practiced and mastered it.
For a moment the Shadow Sect Master wondered whether Mok Gyeong-un had perhaps secretly previewed the Ghost Shadow Claw Method all night.
But that was not it either.
[Young Master Mok simply shut himself in his room and stayed quiet.]
Judging from the reports of the guards and attendants watching the detached residence, he had done nothing.
It seemed that last night he had truly done nothing but eat and then rest.
The Shadow Sect Master could not hold back his admiration at the fact that he had completely mastered the claw method in a single day without doing anything.
‘Is he truly what one would call a genius?’
He had known that he possessed innate martial talent.
Had he not shown the astonishing ability to imitate the profound principles of Right Fist, Left Palm in a single glance right in front of him?
So the Shadow Sect Master decided to test Mok Gyeong-un.
This time he gave him the Flying Exchange Ghost Blade Method and told him he would give him one shijin, so he should memorize or learn as much of it as he could.
Then, after one shijin, the Shadow Sect Master asked Mok Gyeong-un,
[How much have you learned?]
The Flying Exchange Ghost Blade Method was the Shadow Sect Master’s personal unique martial art and a blade art that belonged among the highest ascending martial studies.
He prided himself that, across the entire martial world, it ranked within the top ten blade arts.
Thus, since it was somewhat more difficult to master than the Ghost Shadow Claw Method, he thought that this one at least would be difficult in such a short time.
But then,
‘…What in the world am I looking at?’
What was this?
Mok Gyeong-un demonstrated the Flying Exchange Ghost Blade Method with extraordinary skill.
Even the latter forms, which could not be performed at all unless one grasped the blade intent of the forms, he unfolded no less skillfully than the Shadow Sect Master himself.
Watching this, the Shadow Sect Master was genuinely unable to suppress his shock.
How could such a thing be possible in merely one shijin?
‘Absurd.’
Beyond shock, he even began to feel fear toward Mok Gyeong-un’s martial talent.
From the outset, Mok Gyeong-un had no need for teaching at all.
When first learning a form, the master normally had to correct the exact posture and the meaning carried in the form, yet that fellow simply read the manual and comprehended it by himself.
He taught him about two more martial arts, just in case, and then he was able to become certain.
‘Should I call it hearing one and knowing ten, no, rather martial one and knowing ten?’
There was hardly anything to teach.
In merely a single day he had mastered all the major martial arts of the main branch.
Because he had awakened every form on his own, the key point now lay only in reaching a higher realm through inner methods or enlightenment.
[We will have to change the method of instruction.]
So the Shadow Sect Master changed the method from teaching martial arts to question and answer.
Since there were many things to study in martial arts besides the forms themselves, he told him to ask if there was anything he did not know.
But for seven days, he had almost never asked anything.
No, there had been one thing.
[I heard that what is on your face, Master, is a human skin mask. How is that made?]
It was that, rather than martial training, in which Mok Gyeong-un showed interest.
But because he still did not trust Mok Gyeong-un, he had not yet taught him the final three secret forms of the Flying Exchange Ghost Blade Method, nor anything about the human skin mask.
So this first worry was his martial talent, which it would not be an exaggeration to call genius.
And the second worry was an extension of this.
[Is this really true?]
[Yes. This is information received from the branch in northern Anhui Province.]
[…Hard to believe.]
Only three days earlier, he had obtained information concerning Yeon Mok Sword Forge.
The Shadow Sect Master had made them investigate the environment in which Mok Gyeong-un had grown up in order to learn exactly what kind of person he was.
With talent at this level, he had assumed that Yeon Mok Sword Forge must have invested great effort in raising him.
But contrary to those expectations,
[Hmmm.]
The Mok Gyeong-un written in the report was far too different from the one he knew now.
His talent for martial arts was pitiful beyond words, and even his position within Yeon Mok Sword Forge had been the worst possible.
Rather, the one known to possess innate martial talent was a fellow called Mok Yu-cheon, who had been brought along as an orthodox hostage together with him.
‘It is hard to understand.’
The evaluation within the family was far too poor.
At this level, he had been a person not even considered in the succession struggle.
Then how could something like this be possible?
‘Before being dragged away as a hostage, he was only at third-rate level?’
If the report was accurate, then compared to his current self, he should have been called trash rather than talented, and it was impossible even to imagine.
It felt as if he were simply looking at the records of another person.
Thus he even wondered whether Yeon Mok Sword Forge had perhaps scrambled the information in order to hide one of its talents.
‘The only part that fits is…’
Looking at the position he held within Yeon Mok Sword Forge, it would have made sense for him to feel dissatisfaction.
After all, he stood in a position not recognized by the family at all.
But even that was not enough.
[Look further into it.]
[Understood.]
In the end, he needed information that was even more certain.
If the information had matched the person he currently knew, this alone would have been sufficient, but the man himself was different from the information they had brought.
Up to that point it had been so, but the third worry was an issue now directly before him.
-Tap tap tap!
The Shadow Sect Master tapped the floor with his fingers out of habit and muttered,
“What should I do.”
The reports piled high on his office desk had all been written by watchers observing Mok Gyeong-un’s every movement.
Since they had observed him for seven days, he had thought that at least one thing would emerge.
But nothing had.
As if written according to a set template beforehand, Mok Gyeong-un’s daily routine consisted only of martial practice, meals, circulating qi and regulating breath, and reading books before sleep.
For seven days there had not been a single deviation from this cycle of behavior.
‘…Too regular.’
This pushed his suspicion to its peak.
Because there had been no change in the records sent by the watchers for two days, he replaced them all just in case.
But their records too were the same as those of the previous watchers.
So two days later he replaced them again with different watchers, yet once more the same.
At this point it might have been possible to think it truly was just like that, but instead the Shadow Sect Master felt a sense of incongruity from these records.
‘Is this for display?’
The sense that he was trying too hard not to stand out was too strong.
Because of that, all of his actions felt as though they were being put on for show.
Because he knew he was being watched, it seemed he was deliberately restraining himself in order to reassure them, no, in order to gain their trust.
‘Hmmm. What should I do.’
Because of the case with Guard Seok-jung, he considered that Mok Gyeong-un might perhaps coax or threaten the watchers, so he had replaced them as many as three times.
That meant a total of eighteen watchers had observed Mok Gyeong-un.
In any case, it was effectively impossible for Mok Gyeong-un, who had spent only seven days in the training hall and detached residence, to persuade or threaten all of them and use them according to his will.
‘If anything, I may have only heightened his vigilance.’
Mok Gyeong-un was not merely outstanding in martial talent.
He was also extremely crafty, so he would naturally have noticed by now that he was under surveillance.
Thus there was no meaning in continuing to replace watchers like this.
‘There is no helping it.’
A target who is conscious of being watched does not show what one wants to see.
In that case, it was better to change methods.
“Jade.”
At the Shadow Sect Master’s call, a voice came from the ceiling.
“Yes.”
The one called Jade was both the Shadow Sect Master’s guard and his trusted confidant.
His martial prowess had reached the extreme of the peak realm, and he had once come from Soundless Sorrow-Kill Sect, one of the fourth-generation assassin sects, making him someone who had reached the very highest level in concealment.
“Jade. Replace the attendants with ordinary people, and leave only two guard warriors while withdrawing the others.”
“Yes. Understood.”
This was the Shadow Sect Master’s next move.
He would lower Mok Gyeong-un’s vigilance by reducing the number of watchers.
And then,
“Jade will have to work hard for a while.”
“Understood.”
Rather than watching him openly, he intended to watch him secretly through Jade.
Though his martial prowess was similar to Mok Gyeong-un’s, Jade, a top-class assassin from the fourth-generation assassin group Soundless Sorrow-Kill Sect, was such a master of concealment that if he truly hid himself, even experts in the transcendent peak realm would find it difficult to detect his presence.
Of course, even within the transcendent peak there were degrees, and once one had gone beyond maturity, deceiving them was difficult.
But he believed that he could easily deceive the level of Mok Gyeong-un’s qi perception.
* * *
Mok Gyeong-un’s detached residence.
Jade, moving while suppressing his presence with Soundless Passing Step, carefully slipped into a gap between the roof tiles.
Once inside, he headed toward the room from which light was leaking upward.
From there came the sound of someone chanting something at length.
At this, Jade quietly moved there and looked down from the ceiling into the room lit by lamplight.
‘!?’
Jade frowned.
There he saw Mok Gyeong-un gripping the head of a man and chanting some strange thing.
“Takhwadoyo ogeumsiyeogong yagneo seonggyeongjung illipbyeon simman…”
‘What?’
What in the world was this?
As Jade watched this gravely, he quietly drew something from his bosom, waited for a chance for a moment, then jumped down from the ceiling.
Dropping behind Mok Gyeong-un while he was defenseless, Jade at once,
-Swoosh!
Presented an old scroll toward Mok Gyeong-un.
Then Mok Gyeong-un, having finished the incantation, turned his head and said without the slightest disturbance,
“You came quickly.”
“Yes, Master.”
What in the world was this?
Astonishingly, Jade was calling Mok Gyeong-un Master.
Then Mok Gyeong-un received the scroll Jade held out and said with a bright smile,
“How is the new body, Demon Monk?”