Swordless Demonic Path

Chapter 26 : Comrade (1)

Jo Mal-sang, who was staring at the back of Jin Sa-wol as he went outside, let out a short sigh.

"He's a good friend. It's a shame."

The more capable wanderers there were, the better.

When Jin Sa-wol first came here, he thought he would die soon. It was because he was in plain common clothes and didn't even have a weapon.

Becoming a bounty hunter meant risking one's life to earn money. Many newcomers to the martial world went out to earn bounties, but half of them did not return.

But Jin Sa-wol had returned, and since then, he had consistently eliminated unorthodox martial artists with a bounty on their heads.

The government also offered bounties and did the same work as the Martial Alliance, but he did not go to the government office and came to the branch.

When asked for the reason, Jin Sa-wol answered that he didn't go to the government office because it was complicated.

It was said that when paying out bounties, the government office had many things to write down. But the Nanchang branch of the Martial Alliance had no such thing.

They paid the money as soon as they confirmed it. They didn't ask trivial questions about the past, nor did they ask where or how he had caught them.

But the government office had to write down everything. Because of that difference, the wandering hunters came to the branch.

* * *

Bounty hunting was a dangerous job, but the income was good, so Jin Sa-wol was able to get a house on the outskirts of Nanchang City.

It was a house with a wall and a small yard.

The kitchen was spacious, and there was also a small bathroom. There were also three rooms, but the room he slept in was one.

There were wide warehouses attached to the left and right of the main gate, and there was a well in the backyard of the house, so it was also good for doing laundry.

It was a house he had bought for twenty nyang of silver, and although it was spacious for one person to live in, he placed meaning on the fact that he had a house.

When he first came to Nanchang City, he was penniless.

When he had nothing but his body, he saw a wanted poster for a bounty on the city wall. They were things he had seen in other cities, but at that time, he had only thought of getting far away from the Demonic Cult.

It was only after crossing the Yangtze River and entering Nanchang City that he could properly examine the wanted poster.

At first, he did an easy job, not a difficult one. It was a bandit with a bounty of ten nyang of silver.

Ten nyang of silver was a large sum of money that a family could eat and play with for half a year.

He killed the bandit, received the bounty, stayed at an inn, and then caught another bandit with a bounty on his head.

After living like that for a few years, he got a house, and now he could live without worrying about his meals.

After buying the house, he found out that the houses in this neighborhood all looked similar. It was also like a village where people with a certain level of income in Nanchang City lived.

"Hahahaha!"

"Hey! Stop!"

Thud-thud-thud!

The noisy sounds of children were heard from beyond the door. They were children returning from school.

The laughter of the children meant early evening. If he went out the door, an alley appeared, and walls were lined up in a long row.

The house to the right beyond the wall was a tofu shop, and in the morning, with a noisy sound, the smell of beans would seep into the room.

There was a middle-aged couple and three children, and he had heard that the eldest among them had gotten married and moved out.

The house to the left was originally lived in by a family of six, but they had moved out half a year ago, and it was now empty. But smoke was rising from the chimney.

'Did someone move in?'

Jin Sa-wol, who had lit a fire, filled a large tub in the bathroom with hot water, and then went inside, felt his whole body melt and closed his eyes.

As he was lying like that for a moment, he heard the presence of someone entering the yard.

"Young Brother Jin, are you there?"

It was the middle-aged man from the tofu shop, Im Woo.

He was a neighbor who always came to visit when he returned home from an outing.

Jin Sa-wol, who had roughly finished his bath, came out to the yard wearing a blue robe.

In the yard stood Im Woo in a white long robe, holding a bottle of wine in his hand. He was a middle-aged man with wrinkles around his eyes, a slightly protruding belly, and half-bald hair.

"I saw the smoke and knew that Young Brother Jin had come. How about a drink?"

Im Woo held up the wine bottle and a basket containing food towards Jin Sa-wol. Jin Sa-wol nodded with a face that said he couldn't refuse.

"Please come in."

As Jin Sa-wol gave his permission, Im Woo quickly came inside.

Im Woo, who sat at the dining table with Jin Sa-wol, put down the wine bottle, then found wine cups with familiar movements and also placed the food on a plate. When he saw that the chopsticks in the bamboo container were dusty, he roughly wiped them with his sleeve.

Jin Sa-wol also picked up his chopsticks and ate the fragrant stir-fried pork and vegetables.

Im Woo poured wine into the wine cup.

"Where did you go this time?"

"I went around the Lushan area."

"I'm envious."

Im Woo drank the wine and raised his head to stare at the ceiling.

"When I was young, I also wanted to hold a sword and kill evil people like you. But my father nagged me to make tofu, so I made tofu, and isn't that what I am now? Now I'm trying to pass this work on to my son, but my son says he's sick of tofu and has moved out, and my second son also says he hates tofu and is cooped up in his room, saying he'll take the civil service exam. My youngest daughter will be someone else's when she gets married, so... I'm worried."

The beginning was a martial artist, but the end was worry. It felt like he was just talking about things without any order.

Im Woo was a talkative person.

Jin Sa-wol just nodded with a face full of frowns.

He was just listening, but Im Woo had no complaints about Jin Sa-wol.

Jin Sa-wol poured and drank wine and ate the fried tofu that Im Woo had made himself. The fried tofu he made was a delicacy and melted in his mouth.

"My wife went to our eldest's place yesterday."

Jin Sa-wol, who was savoring the taste of the tofu while nodding, raised his head at Im Woo's words.

Jin Sa-wol frowned. The next words that would come out when his wife was not around were obvious.

"Let's go to the brothel."

"Please go alone. I just got home and need to rest a little."

"Tch!"

Im Woo clicked his tongue with a disappointed face and then spoke again with a face that said he couldn't give up.

"If you're next to me when an unfortunate accident happens at the brothel, I think my mind will be at ease."

All the people in this village knew that Jin Sa-wol was a hunter who hunted for bounties.

When he first moved in, when the villagers asked what he did, he had revealed that he was a hunter, and since then, not many people had come close to him.

Everyone consciously avoided him, but this person, Im Woo, did not avoid him and rather approached him.

He was a strange person.

And he also knew that the reason he was trying to drag Jin Sa-wol to the brothel was 'because he could be at ease even if he caused trouble'.

It was said that when one drank wine with a courtesan, one's voice became loud and one's spirit soared to the sky. So, there were often quarrels and fights over trivial matters.

In such a situation, if Jin Sa-wol was next to him, he would be at ease.

"They say there are many new courtesans at Cheongwolru. They are all so beautiful that the men of the city seem to go there every day. I'm a man too, so shouldn't I go and see?"

At Im Woo's words, Jin Sa-wol looked at his bald head. It seemed that even if the courtesans were coming, they would run far away if they saw the shining light.

"Let's go tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow is good. Tomorrow is also fine."

Im Woo nodded with satisfaction at the word 'tomorrow' and drank wine. Since his wife would only return home in a few days, tomorrow was also fine.

But Jin Sa-wol had no intention of going tomorrow.

As the sun set and darkness fell, Im Woo returned home. Although he looked like that, he was a diligent person who woke up every morning to make tofu.

Can I live in a place where ordinary people live? It was a thought he had when he crossed over to the Central Plains, leaving Cheonsu behind.

What Jin Sawoon, Jin Sa-wol, had seen was the way people lived. No matter where he went, there were people, and they were all ordinary people.

He rarely saw martial artists.

All he had seen a few times were people wearing the martial arts uniforms of the Martial Alliance. What he had realized then was that what ruled the world was not the martial world, but ordinary people.

So he wanted to live like an ordinary person.

But that was also a difficult task. He had no particular job, and there was nothing he knew how to do.

He had just lived a life faithful to the business of killing, and that was all he had learned.

So he became a hunter and aimed for bounties.

It felt like he was half a martial artist and half an ordinary person.

Jin Sa-wol came out to the yard early in the morning and moved his sword. It was a daily routine that was repeated when he came home. It was something he did even when it rained.

On some days, the wind blew so strongly that it was hard to even stand, but the training of the sword art, which was repeated as it was, did not stop.

Without it, it felt as if the existence of 'I' would disappear. He trained in the sword art to fill that emptiness.

Whoosh! Hwing!

As the sound of the sword cutting through the air echoed in the yard, the smell of beans drifted in from the house next door.

It was a daily occurrence.

Brother Im from the house next door was also a truly amazing person.

Even when the seasons changed and it rained, he made tofu and went out to deliver it every day. He also acted as if that was his everything.

Since he had been doing that work since he was a teenager, he had spent about thirty years of a repetitive daily life.

The Ghostly Soul Sword Art consisted of a total of thirty-five forms and seven stances. It was a sword art with not many changes.

Although it was simple, it was a sword art with a strong killing intent, a killing sword that had to be a fatal blow with a single strike.

The reason the orthodox martial artists disliked the sword arts of the unorthodox was because they were killing swords that killed people.

It was said that it was not helpful for self-cultivation because it had a concept opposite to the life-giving sword, which was trained to protect and guard people and for self-cultivation.

The Ghostly Soul Sword Art he had received from Na Hyungi was a sword art that killed ghosts, and speed was everything.

He had to move his sword faster than anyone else.

The reason there were almost no changes in the forms was there. Since it was a fast sword, if the changes were diverse, the speed would inevitably slow down.

Whoosh!

As he moved his sword once, five sword shadows faintly appeared and then disappeared.

Papapat!

It was immediately after the sword shadows disappeared that a small scratch appeared on the wall about a zhang away.

It was a trace of a sharp sword wind like an awl piercing the wall.

Jin Sa-wol closed his eyes, greeting the quiet morning air for a moment. The smell of beans tickled his nose.

"Young Brother Jin."

He saw Im Woo opening the door and coming in. In his hand was freshly made tofu with warm steam rising from it.

"Eat. It's the best for your health. If you eat it every day, your hair won't fall out."

Jin Sa-wol's eyes went to Im Woo's bald head. It was an unbelievable statement.

"Thank you."

"Then I'm busy, so I'll be going."

As Im Woo waved his hand and went outside, Jin Sa-wol ate the tofu and went inside.

Jin Sa-wol, who had placed the plate of tofu on the dining table, sat in a chair, looking at the wanted poster next to it.

It was a wanted poster with a drawing of a man with a square face, slender eyes, narrow eyebrows, and a wide forehead.

His name was Hyung Jo-geo, and he was a man called the Slaughter Ghost of Doksan.

He was a murderer with a bounty of one hundred and fifty nyang of silver.

If low-level criminals were people who could be dealt with alone without any problem, from the mid-level, they were classified as people who were difficult to deal with alone.

There was also advice from the Martial Alliance and the government to form a team of several people and move in a group.

The reason they had asked him to join the subjugation team when the branch said they would subjugate the bandits was because of the leader of the bandit fortress, who was called a first-class master and was a criminal.

Besides the leader, it was also known that there were many unorthodox masters in the bandit fortress of Noryeon Mountain.

It was a very difficult and arduous task to subjugate them alone.

Life was one. There were not many people who would test their luck with a single life.

Jin Sa-wol looked at Hyung Jo-geo with his eyes, then washed his face and left the house.

(End of Chapter)