Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 180 - Embroidered Uniform Guard (7)

Chapter 180 – Embroidered Uniform Guard (7)

“…The Cult Leader?”

For a moment, I had no choice but to doubt my own ears.

“Then wouldn’t that make him the Heavenly Demon?”

“The Heavenly Demon and the Cult Leader are different. The Heavenly Demon is the god they worship. The Cult Leader is literally just the Cult Leader.”

Seo Jong-haeng answered readily. This was news to me as well.

“Is that so? Why did I think the Heavenly Demon was the Cult Leader?”

“Because Cult Leaders often called themselves the Heavenly Demon. It was probably an attempt to gather the Demonic Cultists under them, even if only a little.”

Had that been the case? It seemed like the sort of fact not generally known to ordinary people. I had naturally assumed the Heavenly Demon was the leader of the Demonic Cult, so it was strange to learn otherwise.

“The Heavenly Demon is a figure of myth. The same as our Founding Emperor.”

“I see. But is this man actually alive?”

I lightly tapped one of the chains once. The man bound in chains did not move at all and kept his head lowered. He was kneeling, yet his hair was so long it had reached the ground and spread across it. It made it seem as though he had been imprisoned here for a very long time.

“He’s alive. He gets up if you wake him.”

After saying that, Seo Jong-haeng kicked the man called the Cult Leader in the face without even a preparatory motion.

“Ugh….”

The man moved with a groan. Of course, since he was bound by chains, he had barely managed even that much.

“Wake up, you sham cult bastard.”

“Heh heh, so something has happened again.”

The Cult Leader laughed in a low voice while his bound body trembled.

“Whenever something happens, you always wake me.”

I warily alternated my gaze between the Cult Leader and Seo Jong-haeng. Naturally the Cult Leader was someone to be wary of, since he was the Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult. And Seo Jong-haeng was also someone to be wary of, because he had a reason for bringing me here. As expected, Seo Jong-haeng suspected that I carried the Heavenly Demon’s energy. No matter how well I had hidden it with Primordial Mixed Qi, it must have bothered him that the energy itself was so foreign and that I had retched at the sight of palace martial arts.

“And who is that beside you?”

The Cult Leader cast me a glance. Seo Jong-haeng’s eyes narrowed.

“He’s a new technician we’ve brought for your sake.”

At that, I turned to look at Seo Jong-haeng. What exactly was that supposed to mean? What kind of technique did he think I possessed? Certainly I had a few useful tricks, but there was nothing I could use for this man here.

“Dirty collaborators.”

After that, the Cult Leader did not even look at me again. In the first place, his face was more than half covered by hair, so it was difficult even to tell where his gaze was directed.

“To start with, there’s no need to pay any attention to anything this bastard says. You know deviation, don’t you? Think of him as being in that sort of state. He’ll keep spouting ridiculous things.”

“Is that so.”

People said that when martial artists suffered deviation, they descended into madness. He seemed rather subdued for someone mad, but that was what Seo Jong-haeng said.

Hearing Seo Jong-haeng say that, the Cult Leader burst into loud laughter.

“How petty. Are you afraid the truth may come to light?”

“See there, see there. He’s already speaking nonsense. The truth, is it? Isn’t that a word far too noble to come from the mouth of a sham cult leader like this?”

Seo Jong-haeng sneered at him. The Cult Leader sneered even louder, refusing to yield.

“When the truth is finally known one day, the world will be overturned. When that time comes, you collaborators will prostrate yourselves on the ground and weep, and when tears no longer suffice, you will bleed and repent. The people will pave a road of flower petals for the returning king, and the lowly bloodline you now serve will be driven out the back gate so that no one sees them.”

“Silence!”

Seo Jong-haeng kicked the Cult Leader in the face again. The Cult Leader’s face snapped sideways. Yet his laughter did not stop.

“The more you oppress me, the heavier the punishment the Emperor who has already gone on ahead to the Immortal Realm shall pronounce upon you. You shall be summoned before the Emperor, severely rebuked, and then burn forever in the pits of hellfire.”

“See? Doesn’t he look mad at a glance?”

Seo Jong-haeng said. I nodded.

“Yes. He does.”

He certainly did seem insane, laughing while being beaten and spouting an apocalyptic worldview. Then again, Seo Jong-haeng also looked insane in his own way, enjoying himself as he kicked a man who could not resist. Seo Jong-haeng’s thinking was obvious. If I had ties to the Demonic Cult, then surely I would not dare watch their Cult Leader be abused like this without reacting.

The unity of the Demonic Cult was famous for being extraordinary. It could only be described as a religious kind of power.

They sacrificed themselves for each other, and even while dying they did not betray their brothers. It was the same even among ordinary believers, not only among cadres. Because they were all so sincerely devoted to the Demonic Cult, completely exterminating them was difficult.

But that logic was the wrong answer where I was concerned. I was someone who had once been killed by the Demonic Cult. To avoid repeating that death again, I would sooner hope for their annihilation than sympathize with them.

“Would you like to kick him too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Seo Jong-haeng stared at me with sharp eyes.

“Because I don’t want to do anything that would deepen your suspicion of me. But one of my senior brothers once said something.”

“What was it?”

“That when we go out into the world, we do so not as individuals but as representatives of Wudang.”

“That’s awfully arrogant coming from a lay disciple, isn’t it? Is that something Wudang itself agreed to?”

“More than enough. Wudang is proud of me, and I too take pride in Wudang.”

At my words, Seo Jong-haeng’s face hardened even further.

“So as a martial artist of Wudang, you’re saying you can’t do such a thing?”

“Yes. Kicking someone who can’t even resist would only disgrace Wudang.”

“Even if that person is a Demonic Cultist, the archenemy of His Majesty the Emperor?”

“Yes.”

“This is why I hate hoodlums. They don’t understand the grace of His Majesty the Emperor and insist on stubbornly clinging to things like conviction and chivalry. In the end, what you lot learn is swordsmanship meant to harm people. You should at least know that much.”

“It’s obvious enough, but a sword can become something that saves people as well. Naturally, using a sword to save people is far harder than using it to harm them. Wasn’t a sword itself made as a weapon to kill people? That’s why martial artists must constantly restrain and refine themselves. That’s why learning martial arts is called cultivation in the first place.”

Seo Jong-haeng fell silent. As Commander-in-Chief of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, he was a man who had spent his entire life hunting people down. There was no way he could beat someone like me, who had spent a whole lifetime talking people around.

Of course, I did not want to end it there either. I too had ill feelings toward the Demonic Cult. “But I also don’t find it pleasant that the Commander suspects me of being part of the Demonic Cult, so I’ll prove myself in my own way.”

“How?”

“By revealing information that would be fatal to the Demonic Cult in front of the Cult Leader himself.”

“…Information?”

The Head of the Peng Clan had said it before. Information naturally became higher rank the fewer people knew it. By that logic, what I knew now about the Demonic Cult was information of the highest grade.

“Let’s hear it and judge it from there. You’re saying you possess information greater than what the Embroidered Uniform Guard has?”

“I do.”

The Cult Leader too turned his swollen face toward me. He naturally had no choice but to be curious when I spoke of information fatal to the Demonic Cult.

“First, confirm this for me. From what I know, the Demonic Cult is no longer one whole and has split into factions. Is that right?”

The instant I said that, both Seo Jong-haeng’s and the Cult Leader’s expressions changed. If their faces changed that much, then this alone must already have been a major piece of information.

“How did you learn that? That isn’t the sort of information a martial artist should know.”

“I met a Demonic Cultist.”

I said it readily. This was not something worth hiding. If anything, it was a good opportunity.

A good chance to cross-check the information I possessed.

“It’s true. From what we’ve identified, there are at least four factions now.”

At least four. There were more than I had thought. As far as most people knew, and as far as I had known too, the Demonic Cult was an organization of absolute cohesion. The fact that such an organization had split into factions was astonishing.

“What in the world happened inside the Demonic Cult? Of course, this bastard here won’t tell us.”

Seo Jong-haeng nudged the Cult Leader with his foot. I took the chance to ask what I really wanted to know.

“Then does this Cult Leader represent only one of those factions?”

“….”

Seo Jong-haeng stared at me.

After a moment, he slowly shook his head. “No. This man is the one every faction of the Demonic Cult recognizes as Cult Leader.”

“That’s rather surprising. What sort of man is he to hold that much authority?”

“That much I can’t tell you.”

That was another startling revelation. He had clearly shown reluctance a moment ago as well, so if even the Commander-in-Chief of the Embroidered Uniform Guard was being this cautious, then it had to be under imperial order. It only made me more curious about what kind of person this Cult Leader really was.

“All right, what other information do you have?”

Seo Jong-haeng pressed me. The Cult Leader also looked at me with uneasy eyes.

I recalled Gwan Seoye’s face.

A friend from the past.

But she was not the Gwan Seoye I had known. Even so, I could not help but see the face of the woman I had known overlaying her.

I set my heart in order once more. The Demonic Cult was an enemy of the Central Plains. It was also the enemy that had killed me. Even if the faction Gwan Seoye belonged to was not the one that had killed me, it did not change the fact that she was Demonic Cult.

“The Yunchang Merchant Company is made up of Demonic Cult infiltrators.”

“…What?”

Seo Jong-haeng’s eyes widened. Naturally, this could only be the highest-grade information. It had come directly from Gwan Seoye herself.

If Gwan Seoye was a Demonic Cult infiltrator, then the entire Yunchang Merchant Company had to be Demonic Cult infiltrators. She had said she had belonged to the Demonic Cult from birth. That meant even Gwan Yeong-sang, who had seemed so warm and personable, was one of them.

“Can you take responsibility for those words?”

Seo Jong-haeng asked. He could hardly help it. The Yunchang Merchant Company was one of the giant merchant companies supporting the Central Plains. To accuse such a merchant company of belonging to the Demonic Cult would have immense consequences.

“Yes.”

I nodded.

At that moment the Cult Leader cried out convulsively,

“You bastard! The ancestral tablets enshrined in the imperial ancestral shrine shall curse you!”

“Ignore the nonsense. This is the first time I’ve seen that bastard react like this, which means what you’re saying is probably true.”

Seo Jong-haeng laughed loudly. Since I had now revealed intelligence harmful to the Demonic Cult, his suspicion toward me naturally eased. “Did you say you were curious what kind of man I am?”

“I said be quiet!”

Seo Jong-haeng shouted, but the man called the Cult Leader only spat as he kept shouting in an agitated voice.

“Remember this well! I am Zhu Zhenwei, descendant of Great Ming and the one who ought to have become Emperor of these Central Plains! I am a true Zhu, utterly unlike the baseborn Zhou clan of this lowly empire!”

“See? I told you. He’s someone who spouts nonsense, so just let it pass.”

Seo Jong-haeng circled his forefinger at his temple. I simply nodded along.

“…Ah, yes.”

In truth, what the Cult Leader said was nonsense. I had read many books, yet I had never once heard of a country called Great Ming, nor had I ever heard of any Zhu clan existing apart from the Zhou imperial line of the empire. It really was pure madness. Seo Jong-haeng had been right to say in advance that the man was insane.

“Glory to Great Ming! Curse upon the filthy traitor empire!”

The Cult Leader kept screaming loudly, and Seo Jong-haeng silenced him by striking the back of his neck until he lost consciousness.

“Let’s go. The way he reacted makes it clear enough that you can’t be one of the Demonic Cult.”

With a face full of trust, Seo Jong-haeng thumped my shoulder and headed out. Just before leaving, I looked once at the unconscious Cult Leader with his head hanging down.

What exactly had he been talking about? As far as I knew, there had never been an imperial dynasty in the Central Plains other than the current empire. Was he truly just mad?

The moment we stepped outside, Seo Jong-haeng ordered a search of the Yunchang Merchant Company. But the Yunchang Merchant Company had already vanished with astonishing speed. Every single person at the main branch had disappeared as if they had evaporated into thin air, which meant that even the lowly servants there had been members of the Demonic Cult.

Then again, Gwan Seoye was intelligent. Once their secret had leaked, of course they would have had no choice but to clean up and vanish at once.

It was a chilling thing. In my previous life, the Yunchang Merchant Company had continued to prosper without issue. And yet it had been a nest of Demonic Cultists all along.

It left me with mixed feelings. Bitterness toward Gwan Seoye, who had deceived me in my past life while continuing to treat me like a friend, and at the same time relief that she had not been caught.

Had even the friendship we shared then been false?

I wanted to ask, but the Gwan Seoye of the present would not be able to answer such a question. It was merely a torment I would have to carry for the rest of my life.

In any case, I thought the matter had ended there.

“Prepare yourself to receive an audience with His Majesty the Emperor. His Majesty wishes to see you.” If not for those words from Seo Jong-haeng.