Swordless Demonic Path

Chapter 5 : Number Ninety-nine, Jin Sawoon (5)

In the dark room, about one zhang square, there was only a single bed and a small table. On the bed were two blankets, neatly folded.

Jin Sawoon sat cross-legged on the bed, closed his eyes, and began to circulate his energy. It was the Ink Shadow Heart Art he had learned in Ghost Spirit Valley.

In the room, which didn't even have a window, black smoke rose like a haze and enveloped Jin Sawoon's body.

The energy of the Ink Shadow Heart Art became black smoke, concealing the practitioner's body. It was a heart art that assimilated with the darkness, becoming the darkness itself.

Jin Sawoon, who had fallen into a state of selflessness through energy circulation, recalled his time in Ghost Spirit Valley.

The Slaughter Ghosts of Ghost Spirit Valley were divided into a total of ten ranks.

When one first enters Ghost Spirit Valley, everyone becomes a training ghost. Training ghosts spend about ten years in Ghost Spirit Valley, learning and training in martial arts.

After that, when they reach the seventh rank, they leave for the martial world, undertaking relatively easy tasks. It could be called their first real combat experience.

If they return safely from there, their rank rises to the sixth rank.

Once they become sixth-rank, they are assigned more serious missions. Among them, the outstanding ones are gathered separately to form teams.

The Slaughter Ghosts who form teams gain experience in the martial world and, upon achieving merits, are promoted to fifth-rank Slaughter Ghosts.

That period is three years, during which they must accumulate a lot of experience in the martial world.

The reason for forming teams was to prevent capable Slaughter Ghosts from dying due to minor mistakes.

From the perspective of the Heavenly Divine Cult or Ghost Spirit Valley, it was a matter of course. The cost of raising a single sixth-rank Slaughter Ghost was thousands of nyang in gold alone. They couldn't let such talent die easily.

On top of that, they were individuals who carried out orders in various fields, making them very useful.

The first time he learned to kill in Ghost Spirit Valley was when he was ten years old.

He killed a person, but he felt no particular emotion.

He killed simply because he was told to kill.

The target to be killed was standing tied to a tree like a scarecrow. With their eyes covered and a gag in their mouth, he couldn't see their expression.

He had no interest in who they were or where they came from.

With a small, light dagger, he stabbed the heart. In a single motion, he thrust the sword between the ribs and pulled it out.

The instructor who was with him said, "Well done," but he didn't smile. He didn't know what praise was, and he had no desire to smile.

Moreover, he had no desire to speak. It was a place where everything was understood without words.

To him, Ghost Spirit Valley was a very comfortable and cozy place.

The instructors of Ghost Spirit Valley were strict and fear-inducing beings, but not to him.

The children who were dissatisfied with life in Ghost Spirit Valley were punished and had to experience physical pain.

If one had no complaints, it was a place with no major problems.

The instructors took good care of the children. Meat was served for all three meals, and if they were sick, a physician would come and treat them.

Still, a few died, unable to overcome high fevers in the cold winter. The instructors called their deaths fate.

Life in Ghost Spirit Valley was comfortable if you followed the set rules well.

But the world outside Ghost Spirit Valley was a world without rules. That's why it was uncomfortable and awkward.

But now, he had to get used to that world. Like an instinct, he knew that now that he was a grown adult, he had to become independent.

This small room was the safest place in the entire world, and it was also the only place where he could sleep with a peaceful mind.

Until now, he had believed so.

Knock! Knock!

At the sound of knocking on the door, he finished his energy circulation and opened his eyes.

Creak!

With the sound of the door opening, a round-faced, plump middle-aged woman set down a tray and closed the door.

It was a meal.

Meals were brought to the room, and eating with someone else was forbidden.

He placed the tray on the table and sat on the edge of the bed. Since there was no chair in the room, the bed served as a chair.

The meal consisted of rice and soup, and various kinds of meat were served in rotation. Today, it was vegetables and stir-fried lamb.

He also placed a leather pouch filled with water on the table.

As Jin Sawoon picked up his chopsticks, a piece of paper sticking out from under the plate of meat caught his eye.

"......?"

Having never seen anything like it before, he felt a sense of strangeness, lifted the plate, took out the neatly folded paper, and unfolded it.

Tomorrow. Kill. Beware.

Jin Sawoon quickly folded the palm-sized paper, put it in his mouth, chewed it, and then drank the soup.

Tomorrow meant the next day, but since it would be tomorrow after the hour of the rat tonight, it meant the early morning.

'Who is it?'

Jin Sawoon simultaneously thought of someone who had informed him of this and someone who was trying to kill him.

It was the beginning of a small change that hadn't happened in the past ten years.

If there was someone who held a grudge against him, it could only be the acquaintances of the deceased Number Two.

The words Jang Muryong had said in the afternoon brushed past his ears.

Jang Muryong had spoken to him as if he knew someone was coming to kill him today. As that memory settled in his mind, a deeply sunken emotion rose up.

The master of Ghost Spirit Valley was not the Valley Lord, but the Na family, one of the Seven Great Martial Families of the Heavenly Divine Cult.

The Na family was the least known within the Cult, and he had never even seen the family head. No, he had never seen a single person from the Na family until now.

He had only heard a rumor that Number One was the son of the Na family head.

He heard he was the third son, not the eldest. And he was the son of the second wife, and the Na family head had three wives, four sons, and three daughters.

There was a possibility that Number One would avenge the deceased Number Two. With his abilities, it was certainly possible.

'They're going to kill me here?'

With that absurd thought, Jin Sawoon lay down on the bed and covered himself with a blanket.

He had to fall asleep early to be able to wake up after the hour of the rat.

There was only one passage into this room: the door. There was nothing else.

This was a rock cave made by digging into the ground in the mountains and carving out the rock walls, with only one entrance and exit.

At the bottom edge of the firmly closed door, there was a small gap. It was a hole created by a slight indentation in the stone of the floor, large enough for a single chopstick to fit through.

Rustle!

From there, a centipede with dozens of legs, wearing armor as black as lacquer, poked its head out. Its legs were red, and it emitted a strong, fishy smell.

As if someone had pushed it in, the centipede slowly wriggled, approached the bed, and climbed up the leg.

It was known as the Black Centipede, a venomous creature with a strong poison.

In Ghost Spirit Valley, there was a place where many venomous creatures were raised. It seemed one had escaped from there.

Rustle!

From the hole in the door, smoke once again crept in and seeped into the room. The smoke, which covered the floor like a gentle fog, slowly enveloped the bed.

The centipede, climbing up the bed, was caught in a thin celestial silkworm thread, moved its antennae, and then climbed onto it.

Zzzing!

The celestial silkworm thread vibrated very faintly. As if something had been caught in a spider's web.

That vibration stimulated the wrist of the lying Jin Sawoon.

Whoosh!

In an instant, Jin Sawoon's figure shot up to the ceiling and stood poised in a blind spot on the wall.

With his legs stretched wide and pressed against the wall, he looked at the centipede moving along the celestial silkworm thread with an indifferent face.

'Black Centipede?'

Seeing the sleep-inducing smoke slowly rising onto the bed, he recalled the lamb he had eaten for dinner.

If he had fallen into a deep sleep after smelling the sleep-inducing fragrance, the centipede, which had smelled the unique scent of the lamb, would have entered his mouth and gone into his stomach.

If one eats the highly poisonous Black Centipede, one will vomit blood and die in less than a quarter of an hour.

Swish!

Placing his hand on his waist, Jin Sawoon drew the flexible sword he wore like a belt, landed on the floor, and killed the centipede by cutting it into pieces.

He picked up the dead centipede, put it in the leather pouch filled with water, and then opened the door. The thick sleep-inducing smoke sank to the floor and spread into the hallway.

There was no one in the hallway.

In the stone room on the opposite side, a comrade was sleeping. There were no signs of human movement anywhere.

'No one?'

The hallway was wide and high enough for two adults to pass through, and thick candles were lit at intervals of one zhang.

It was a faint light, but to Jin Sawoon, this was as bright as day.

Jin Sawoon closed the door and slowly walked down the hallway.

Not long after he disappeared, a black shadow flickered in front of the door on the opposite side.

* * *

Number One was sitting in a spacious room. Unlike the other Slaughter Ghosts, Number One's room was a separate building in Ghost Spirit Valley. As the son of the Na family head, he naturally received special treatment.

No matter if he was the son of the second wife, a son was a son, and he was of the Na family's bloodline.

The reality was that even the Valley Lord of Ghost Spirit Valley could not treat him carelessly.

There was a rumor that the reason he came here was to become the next Valley Lord.

A large brazier emitted a hot heat, warming the air in the room.

He sat in front of it, drinking tea and looking at the sword placed on the table. It was a luxurious sword with a scabbard made of black ox leather and a hilt decorated with a silver wolf that caught the eye.

It was a sword his mother had given him when he first left Ghost Spirit Valley for the martial world. With that sword, he had killed two martial artists.

Thump!

At the faint knock from within the room, Na Hyungi quietly opened his mouth.

"Five years ago, there was a guard who stole a secret manual from the Gongson family and fled. He went far away, but recently, he is said to have appeared in Guangdong Province as a Green Forest bandit. He's a fellow who calls himself the Fox Howl King."

Na Hyungi, who was muttering to himself, poured tea into his teacup and spoke again.

"Our team is leaving for Guangdong Province tomorrow to kill him. The round trip alone will take half a year. And that's if we're fast. It seems the various chivalrous figures and sects of Guangdong Province have tried to subjugate him several times but failed."

He drank from his teacup, then turned his head and looked at the door.

"I won't be seeing you for a while."

As Na Hyungi finished speaking, the door seemed to shake, and Jin Sawoon, dressed in black, appeared there like a ghost.

Jin Sawoon leaned against the wall full of shadows and threw a water pouch.

Thump! Drip!

From the mouth of the water pouch that fell to the floor, the chopped-up Black Centipede flowed out along with water.

Discovering the Black Centipede, a wrinkle briefly appeared on Na Hyungi's brow before disappearing.

"What is this?"

"An assassin that entered my room."

"Pfft! Heh!"

Na Hyungi, who was about to drink his tea, let out a light laugh without realizing it and put down his teacup. Shaking his shoulders slightly and laughing under his breath, he stood up from his chair, picked up the dead Black Centipede with his hand, and threw it out the window.

"You're quite the joker."

Although he heard Na Hyungi's words, Jin Sawoon instead asked a question.

"It seems to be a gift from someone who holds a grudge against me. Who could it be?"

"You have a guess, don't you?"

"I need a clear answer. Because there's no evidence."

"It is forbidden to make hasty judgments without physical evidence."

At Na Hyungi's answer, Jin Sawoon touched his chin and showed a troubled expression. He looked indifferent, but he seemed quite serious and was silent for a while.

There was nothing wrong with what Na Hyungi had said.

Na Hyungi asked.

"But this is something you could have taken to the Valley Lord or the steward to discuss. Why did you come to me? Did you suspect that I sent it?"

"You can't know what's inside a person, so I came to find out. Looking at your expression, it seems you don't know anything about it."

"I have no reason to send it."

Na Hyungi shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

The number of people who could send such a venomous creature to Jin Sawoon's room within the valley was extremely small. One of them was Na Hyungi.

But if it wasn't Na Hyungi, it meant that the culprit was among the Valley Lord, the steward, and a few other executives.

"If it's because you killed Number Two that someone holds a grudge against you, it can only be Steward Soo. He would have no major problem moving Ghost Spirit Valley."

(End of Chapter)