Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 163 - The Way I See You (6)

Chapter 163 – The Way I See You (6)

I stared blankly at Gwan Seo-ye. Her moonlit face looked utterly unfamiliar. To think the day would come when I would find her unfamiliar. Even I found that shocking.

From the very beginning, from the very beginning? Just what was that supposed to mean? I wanted to deny it, but the meaning behind it was clear. “You, were you lying to me this whole time?”

My voice came out trembling. It was such a terrifying thing to say that it was hard even to force the words out.

Gwan Seo-ye wore a puzzled expression. The weight carried by the phrase this whole time was simply too different for the two of us. For Gwan Seo-ye, this whole time meant no more than the few days since meeting me, while for me, it included the twenty years with Gwan Seo-ye that I had cherished before regressing.

So of course there was bound to be a difference.

“…Are you crying?” Gwan Seo-ye asked in a startled voice. I did not even realize whether she was talking about me.

Only when a hot tear rolled down my cheek and gathered at the tip of my chin did I realize that I was crying.

Ashamed, I hurriedly wiped my eyes and chin with my shoulder. What kind of pathetic spectacle was this?

From Gwan Seo-ye’s point of view, it must have looked ridiculous. We had only just dropped formal speech and become friends today, had we not? Yet here I was, crying like this over that.

“…Sorry.”

Gwan Seo-ye said. That only made me feel even more embarrassed. I had never imagined Gwan Seo-ye would apologize.

If anything, I had thought she was more likely to sneer at me.

And yet she was apologizing in a genuinely sincere voice. “Shut up.”

Trying to throw off the embarrassment, I even spat out a harsh curse that I never normally used.

“You are more sentimental than I thought.”

“I told you to shut up.” What kind of maddening humiliation was this?

I was so embarrassed that I wanted to crawl into a rat hole and hide, but this was not the time for that.

“More importantly, you are saying you are a demonic practitioner?” “You keep calling me a demonic practitioner, but I am not one. I am a cult member.”

“So you really were from the Demonic Cult.”

People from the Demonic Cult called themselves cult members, or followers. Since the Demonic Cult was, after all, a religion, perhaps that naming made sense. Then another, even more frightening thought occurred to me.

What if Gwan Seo-ye had been involved in my death before regression?

I desperately wanted to ask, but there was no way to question her about a future that had not happened yet. All that would do was trouble and infuriate me.

In any case, there was no longer any time to drown in old sentiment. Resolving what was happening right now was the urgent matter.

“You were a demonic practitioner. That really is a shock. Were you the one who gave the gu worm to the Black Dragon Gate Master?”

“People from our cult have indeed been distributing gu worms among martial artists.” She said it as casually as if she were talking about handing out free food. The absurdity of it made a hollow laugh escape me.

“Unbelievable. Is that something to be proud of?”

“There is no reason it should not be. To us, it is something like destiny.” “If handing out gu worms is the destiny of your life, then you people really do live worthless lives.”

“You do not understand.”

Gwan Seo-ye shook her head. She somehow looked lonely and isolated as she did it.

Coming from a Demonic Cult member, that only stirred a sense of recoil within me. “You have asked a lot of questions, so now it is my turn. What are you?”

“What do you mean, what am I?”

“You know exactly what I mean. There was what you just used to suck away my qi, for one. There is a strange kind of energy about you. Familiar and yet unfamiliar? I do not really know how to describe it.” I knew what Gwan Seo-ye meant.

She was talking about my demonic qi, formed by the Divine Demon Pill.

There were three kinds of energy I could use. The spiritual qi I had accumulated through Wudang’s internal arts, including the Supreme Clarity Pill.

The demonic qi originating from the Divine Demon Pill and built up by absorbing many demonic practitioners.

And the Primordial Mixed Qi created by mixing those two together.

Of the three, the most destructive was the Primordial Mixed Qi, so recently I had been using that alone. The convenient thing about Primordial Mixed Qi was that because spiritual qi and demonic qi were mixed together, no one could identify its source.

Even Cheong-ui, the sect leader of Wudang, had failed to notice the demonic qi mixed within it, which said enough by itself.

And so it had been the same for Gwan Seo-ye. Seeing the Primordial Mixed Qi I had displayed while fighting Peng Chae-hyang, she had become uncertain. “But why did you try to put me to sleep? What were you planning to do then?”

I asked. I understood that she had slipped me some drug combining qi-dispersing poison and a muscle relaxant by mouth. But afterward she had approached to press my sleep acupoint.

That had not been a killing move. Thinking about it, killing me would have been the natural thing to do. After all, I was someone who knew there was a demonic practitioner inside the Yunchang Merchant Company.

“Your qi was unusual, so I wanted to examine it a little.”

“Tell me the truth. You were going to kill me to silence me because I knew there was a demonic practitioner in the Yunchang Merchant Company, were you not?”

“That is only half right. I was going to take you away and erase only that memory with illusion arts.” “…Do not lie. There is no reason not to kill me. It would be much easier that way.”

“If I meant to kill you, would I not have passed you a lethal poison when our lips touched?”

Perhaps remembering what she had done, Gwan Seo-ye’s face reddened. “So it really was passed by mouth. No wonder it tasted strangely sweet.”

“The drug itself is colorless, scentless, and tasteless.”

“…Really?” Then what had that sweet taste been?

Seeing Gwan Seo-ye’s face redden even more, I felt like I understood. My own face began to burn as well.

“Ah, enough about that now.”

“Fine. That is what I was hoping for.” Unable to bear it in the end, Gwan Seo-ye proposed a temporary truce over that part alone. I was just as embarrassed, so I quickly agreed.

“Anyway, you were not planning to kill me?”

“No. You are still a merchant company man, for one. And you yourself said you were not really a martial artist, just someone from the merchant world. Even though you had learned martial arts to a high level, I judged that you were not a true martial artist. I had never heard about you through our sources in the martial world.” “So if someone is from the merchant world, you do not kill them, but if they are a martial artist, you do?”

“That is right. Martial artists are serving the nation of traitors. But merchants are different. They are people contributing to society. When our cult returns to the Central Plains one day with the force of rolling up the earth and coming again, they should remain exactly as they are, as future citizens of the cult.”

“What utter bullshit.” The curse came out of me immediately.

So in other words, the Demonic Cult bastards intended to conquer the Central Plains while sparing merchants, farmers, and other people in trades essential to maintenance and survival, the commoners.

They regarded the people of the Central Plains like livestock needed to maintain the land they meant to make their own.

But I could not believe that either. After all, I myself had been killed by demonic practitioners in my previous life even though I was only a merchant with no connection to the martial world.

And when I had treated people in Hubei, I had confirmed that demonic qi had invaded all of them.

Back then, every one of those people had been ordinary commoners. If the Demonic Cult truly had no intention of harming commoners, then why had that happened?

“Are you really certain? You truly do not kill commoners at all?”

“We do not.” “We?”

I tilted my head. It did not sound as though the word we referred to the entire Demonic Cult.

“It is embarrassing to admit, but our cult is now split into quite a few factions. I have heard that some of the more extreme factions, whose path differs from ours, do harm even commoners.”

Gwan Seo-ye’s words made my head start to ache. I had assumed the Demonic Cult was simply the Demonic Cult. But to hear that even it had broken into several branches. The thought was dizzying.

“For the record, we are the orthodox line. The others are all heretics.”

“Unbelievable.” And in the middle of all this, she still boasted of orthodoxy.

As if it mattered. If the Imperial Court ever caught them, every last one of them would be wiped out just the same.

Still, this too was something I had learned for the first time. Then again, where would I have learned about the internal affairs of the Demonic Cult? I had gained one more thing as well.

Gwan Seo-ye had not intended to kill me.

Even if she had tried, I would not have died, but betrayal by an old friend was something bitter no matter what.

At least, thankfully, the misunderstanding over whether she had meant to kill me had been cleared up. Of course, the fact that Gwan Seo-ye had belonged to the Demonic Cult since birth was still a shocking blow that left the back of my head numb.

“Then what am I supposed to do now?”

“What else?” Gwan Seo-ye smiled.

“You only have one choice.”

“Only one?” “Quietly come with me and have your memories of the cult erased.”

“I refuse.”

I was someone who had died at the hands of demonic practitioners. Even if I did not burn with overwhelming thirst for revenge, I still at least wanted the chance to get one good blow in against them.

So there was no way I could erase my memories of the Demonic Cult. “Then I have no choice but to subdue you and take you.”

“Even now, you still do not say you will kill me.”

“I told you. Our cult does not kill commoners. They are all people meant to become our citizens one day, so why would we kill them?” “Your delusions are severe. Is there even a single person in the Central Plains who does not hate the Demonic Cult?”

“That is only because the traitors twisted history and made it so. The commoners have no sin.”

“That is absurd.” Even as I spoke, I kept trying to stir the dantian.

But the demonic qi inside me refused to budge. The Demonic Cult’s qi-dispersing poison really was potent.

That meant I could not reveal my demonic qi and force her to her knees like I had with the Mara Blood Buddha.

Gwan Seo-ye remained wary of me, poised to lunge at any moment. She knew that if I grabbed her, I could drain her qi. I began breaking apart the perception I had limited to the room and spreading it outward.

Right now, that was my only option.

I needed to draw in as much of nature’s energy as possible if I was going to either resist her or escape. As my awareness widened, the universe I was storing in my mind grew larger and larger.

I could feel my brain heating up, my thoughts growing hazy, and my temples pounding.

I had expanded my awareness too far. Even after stretching it out until my brain felt like it might crack, I still could not extend it more than three chon beyond the building’s window.

Still, there was something to gain.

Once I took hold of the space, every voice resonating through it entered my ears, and among them was one that sounded familiar.

“I am telling you, I could have won. Now I am the only one who ended up embarrassed…” “Young Miss, you are very drunk. You should expel the alcohol with internal energy…”

The voices were coming from outside the window, beyond the building, near the wall.

I saw Gwan Seo-ye rise onto the balls of her feet. She was about to rush me. In my current condition, I was not fit to face Gwan Seo-ye.

I had felt that much when I had absorbed her qi.

The demonic qi she possessed was pure and immense enough to make her claim of being from the orthodox line seem believable. And seeing how she had resisted my qi absorption, her martial skill was considerable as well.

The cards I currently held were the energy of nature and the small handful of demonic qi I had stolen from Gwan Seo-ye.

With that, I could not even properly launch a single form.

I made my decision at once and threw myself through the window. For the record, we were on the third floor.

“…W-what? Hey!”

Gwan Seo-ye’s voice receded rapidly. It seemed she had never expected me to jump out the window. If I had been in normal condition, even falling from the third floor would not have injured me badly. I could have protected my ankles with internal energy.

But because of the qi-dispersing poison, using internal energy was difficult.

So the thing I had to trust was not myself. “Peng Chae-hyang! Help me!”

“Huh?”

I shouted those words just after I dropped, while my body was still at the height of the third floor. Peng Chae-hyang reacted when I had fallen to around the level of the second floor.

That was how people were. If you shouted for help in general, they hesitated and looked around.

But if you called someone by name or pointed out their clothes and asked for help, they could not help but respond.

Drunk or not, Peng Chae-hyang was an elite martial artist of one of the Five Great Houses. So of course she would safely catch me, which was perfectly natural… “This is insane!”

The last thing I saw was Peng Chae-hyang spreading her arms toward me in alarm.

She really did intend to catch me, just as I wanted. But I immediately sensed tragedy in the fact that the place toward which she had stretched her arms was slightly off from where I was actually falling, and in the strong smell of liquor wafting from her body.

“Uwaak!”

Ku-gugung.

In the end, Peng Chae-hyang failed to catch me, and I crashed into her, sending both of us tumbling to the ground together. “Young Miss!”

Black Elder and White Elder cried out in shock and rushed toward us.

Fortunately, it did not hurt that much. That was thanks to Peng Chae-hyang cushioning the fall beneath me. What was more, my body had completely covered hers, enough that I could feel every one of her soft curves.

Naturally, I did not have the leisure to notice that at the time.

Black Elder and White Elder picked me up and hurled me against the wall before checking on Peng Chae-hyang. “Are you alright?”

“…U-uh. I am fine.”

Fortunately, Peng Chae-hyang really did seem alright.

It looked like, in the instant she fell, she had used internal energy to protect herself. At that moment, I looked toward the window I had fallen from.

Gwan Seo-ye was standing there with a wretched expression, staring at me, but then she soon vanished from sight.

With people from the Hebei Peng Clan nearby, she could not very well abduct me. So the crisis of being kidnapped by the Demonic Cult had been averted for now.

“You bastard! What in the world do you think you are doing!”

Black Elder roared. Now it was my turn to explain why I had fallen out of the sky onto the Hebei Peng Clan’s young lady.