Chapter 89
Han Baek, who watched Baek Mu-Gun overpower the demonic practitioners from the side, was deeply impressed by his thorough attitude, which was unbefitting of his young age. That was a separate matter altogether, however. This young man suddenly spoke to him informally and even criticized his appearance, which was unforgivable.
“Let’s have a little chat now, shall we? Who are you? Why are you speaking informally to me as if we’ve met before?” Han Baek went straight to the point.
“I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Start from the beginning. We have plenty of time anyway.”
“You don’t know me, but I know you very well. To be exact, we went through life and death together in my past life.”
“Past life? Why is a young man like you spouting such nonsensical crap? Do you really think I will believe that?” Han Baek asked, baffled.
“The first time we met was during the Great War of Yueyang. Back then, I saved you from a crisis just as I did today. That’s where you got the scar on your left rib, and it was also the start of our connection. From there, I traveled through battlefields and fought the Hell-Blood Demon Sect with you and the other Peerless Wanderers. After every battle, we would always drink all night, during which you would always tell me that you would introduce me to your younger sister, whom you claimed was the greatest beauty in Jiangnan. If I remember what you told me correctly, your sister’s name was Han Ho-Kyung, right?”
Han Baek’s eyes widened upon hearing Mu-Gun’s story. What Mu-Gun just said was something that only five people in the world knew. Among them, only one person had died.
“Are you claiming to be Guyang Hwi in your previous life?” Han Baek asked, still half in doubt.
Including him, the other three Peerless Wanderers were still alive, so only one of them could have reincarnated—the Heavenly Thunder God's Swordsman, Guyang Hwi.
“It seems you still haven’t forgotten my name,” Mu-Gun said with a smile.
As soon as Han Baek saw him smile, Guyang Hwi’s face seemingly overlapped for a moment with Mu-Gun’s. The vibe that Mu-Gun gave off was so similar to Guyang Hwi, and now that he thought about it, the martial arts that Mu-Gun used when he saved him a while ago were similar to Guyang Hwi’s. Though it sounded ridiculous, he could not help but believe Mu-Gun’s claim that he was Guyang Hwi in his previous life.
“Is it really true that you were Guyang Hwi in your past life? No, is reincarnation even really possible?”
“What do you want me to do? Will you believe me if I recite the names of the women who turned you down one by one?”
“The moment you say even just one of their names, I will kill you.”
Mu-Gun giggled and laughed at Han Baek’s threats. Han Baek’s face turned red.
“Your laugh when making fun of me is the same as Guyang Hwi’s, that annoying bastard.”
“Does that mean you believe me?”
“Although it’s absurd, I can’t help but believe you because of all the things you know about me.”
“Long time no see, Han Baek.”
“It’s nice to see you too. Sending you off like that gave me lots of regrets. I should have gone with you no matter how hard you tried to stop me back then.”
“It’s fine, isn’t it? We’ve met again anyway.”
“You’re right. But what should I call you? I can’t call you Guyang Hwi when you’re in that body, right?”
“Call me Baek Mu-Gun, which is my current name. That being said, it does feel weird to speak informally to you since you’ve become an old man.”
“Do you think I feel great having a young man talk informally to me?”
“Keke, if you want to, I can speak formally.”
“It’s fine. There’s no point doing so after coming this far.”
“How are the other three doing? Do you still keep in touch with each other?”
“We’ve all found a place of our preference and began living in seclusion. We don’t contact each other very often, but we have a meeting once a year.”
“Where are the others living?”
“Jin Yoo-Sung is staying in Mount Tianzi, Hunan Province, Yang Cheol-Gon in Mount Huang, Anhui Province, and Hwang Rei in Mount Wuyi, Fujian Province. All of them would be very happy to hear that you have reincarnated. Speaking of which, should I contact them and ask them to come? It’s been a long time since the five of us have gathered, so we should have a hearty catch-up.”
“We certainly should, but the Heavenly Killer Sect, your assailants, would have likely sent assassins their way as well. It would probably be better for us to get in touch with them and ask them to hide instead.”
“Assassins will be sent to them too?”
“The Heavenly Killer Sect is one of the Nine Celestial Demons Sect’s factions. Their mission is to find and assassinate the hidden masters of murim before the Nine Celestial Demons Sect begins their full-scale activities. The fact that the Heavenly Killer Sect ambushed you means that the other Peerless Wanderers could also be targeted.”
“So there’s a high possibility that the Nine Celestial Demons Sect will start making a move soon?”
“They have already taken some actions behind the scenes.”
“Another bloodbath will strike murim again, huh.”
“We have to prevent that.”
“You’re still saying that after you died fighting the Hell-Blood Demon?”
“It’s the right thing to do as a martial artist. Also, I did not die fighting the Hell-Blood Demon. I died because the patriarchs of the Seven Great Families betrayed me.”
“What? The patriarchs of the Seven Great Families betrayed you?” Han Baek asked in shock.
“After defeating the Hell-Blood Demon, the Seven Great Families’ patriarchs ambushed me.”
“Why did they ambush you?”
“They were afraid that I would become a hero of murim and take away their authority within murim if I lived.”
“Those despicable bastards. After doing something like that, they cried in front of the people of murim, pretending to grieve over your death! Why are you just leaving them alone? We should kill them now!” Han Baek furiously exclaimed.
“I have been growing my strength all this while, so I never got the chance to do so. Moreover, our top priority right now should be to prevent the Nine Celestial Demons Sect from running rampant.”
“Are you worried that killing them would cause murim to collapse? They’re just a bunch of old people hiding in the back room now.”
“I’m not so sure about that. They will probably still have it easy for the next ten years. Moreover, if I kill them, the Seven Great Families will turn murim upside down to find the culprit. That would literally be helping the Nine Celestial Demons Sect.”
Mu-Gun had no intention of forgiving the Seven Saints, but now that the Nine Celestial Demons had begun executing their schemes, stopping them took precedence over everything else. It would not be too late to deal with them after that.
“Even if your body has changed, you are still the same old Guyang Hwi. You think so dearly of murim, after all.”
“Why does it sound like you’re being sarcastic?”
“That’s just because the one listening is a twisted person. That aside, you are still so annoyingly handsome even though you’re in a new body, huh?”
“The heavens are just taking good care of me.”
“Did the heavens abandon me, then?”
“Keke, why? Didn’t you say that you would find the Great Art of Camouflage and become a handsome man?”
“Do you think it’s that easy to find it? And what’s the point of meeting a woman after becoming a handsome man? They would only like me because of the fake shell I am in, not my real appearance.”
“Don’t worry. There will surely be a woman somewhere who will like you for how you look.”
“At this age? Please, I’m at the age where I should be watching my grandchild acting cute, so what’s the point of meeting a woman now?”
“You don’t even look like a fifty-year-old on the outside. Since when did age matter, anyway? The only thing that matters is if you get along well.”
“Stop spouting nonsense and tell me about yourself.”
“There’s not much to tell. I was just reincarnated as the eldest son of a martial family in Zhejiang Province, and I came to find you to grow our family’s martial prowess.”
“Which martial family?”
“The Baek Sword Sect.”
“One of the Ten Clans of Zhejiang?”
“That’s right. I guess you haven’t heard about it yet, but we have become the Zhejiang Martial Alliance leader some time ago.”
“Is that so? I haven’t been interested in the affairs of murim since I began living in seclusion here.”
“Why don’t you stop living in seclusion and become active again?”
“So that’s why you came to find me.”
“That’s right. After confirming that the Nine Celestial Demons Sect has reappeared, I thought of contacting and gathering the Four Peerless Wanderers. Of course, I don’t have any intention of forcing you all.”
“Are you asking me to join your family?”
“If you are fine with it, I was planning to treat you as a venerable elder of the Baek Sword Sect.”
“You should know that we don’t like to be affiliated with anything.”
“Then don’t think of it as being affiliated with the Baek Sword Sect but rather living in seclusion within its territory. Our sect won’t be making any sort of demands from you guys anyway, so you all can just do whatever you want.”
“What’s the real reason the Baek Sword Sect wants to recruit us?”
“Naturally, it’s to increase our power.”
“What do you plan to do once you’ve accomplished that?”
“I will turn the Baek Sword Sect into the greatest martial family, exceeding the Nine Prominent Sects and the Seven Great Families.”
“So you want to rule over murim?”
“Not at all. I only want the Baek Sword Sect to instill so much fear in the Three Greatest Demonic Sects that our existence would be enough to make them tremble. In doing so, they would no longer dare raise their heads.”
“That may be what you would do, but I wonder if the Baek Sword Sect is on the same page. If the Baek Sword Sect possesses the power to rule over murim, wouldn’t they try to take advantage of that power to dominate murim?”
“That’s possible. In fact, we might even rule over murim for a while. However, if the Baek Sword Sect is blinded by self-interest and goes against the righteous paths of murim, they will certainly be judged by murim in return, just as how it had always been thus far. Anyway, if that’s what you’re worried about, why don’t you join the Baek Sword Sect and create an organization that can monitor and keep them in check so they wouldn’t go down the wrong path?”
“I understand what you mean. I will decide after discussing it with the others.”
“Okay. That aside, I think it would be best to meet the others somewhere else. This place has already been exposed, so we don’t know when another surprise attack will come.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait here and kill the fuckers who’d try to ambush us?”
“That’s not a bad idea, but we have to think this through because we don’t know how big the combat forces the Heavenly Killer Sect will mobilize next time. After all, they’ve already failed once.”
“They will probably send a bigger one. A master in the Absolute Demonic Realm could even accompany them. They probably don’t have enough combat force for us to be unable to handle it, though. Considering their combat forces should be limited, it will be difficult for them to send all their fighters here. Of course, if they fail again, the story will be different.”
“Alright. Let’s wait for them here, as you suggested. You will have to pull yourself together and buck up your rusty martial arts, though. When I saw you fighting a while ago, you seemed like you haven’t done your martial arts training in so long.”
“Ehem, who would expect something like this to happen anyway? I’ll start training again as you said, so don’t worry about it,” Han Baek awkwardly replied.
“Let’s stay here for a few more days, then. You should contact the others. I will interrogate the demonic practitioners we captured.”
“Got it.”
Mu-Gun dragged the two demonic practitioners and interrogated them separately. However, he couldn’t get anything out of them. Mu-Gun knew that they would not leak any information no matter what torture they had to go through.
Even if they ended up dying, the Nine Celestial Demons Sect’s demonic practitioners would never spill anything. The fact that the Nine Celestial Demons Sect had never been discovered before already showed everything there was to know about how strong-willed their demonic practitioners were. Unable to get any intel from them, Mu-Gun eventually ended the interrogation and killed the two of them.
* * *
In a shabby Guan Yu Temple, Gu Yeo-Pung, a man in his fifties, sat alone. The energy he exuded was extraordinary, especially his eyes, which were akin to that of a snake. His gaze was breathtakingly cold. As one of the Heavenly Killer Sect’s Nine Heavenly Killer Monarchs, he was in charge of getting rid of Thunderous Wind Palm Han Baek, who lived in seclusion at Poyang Lake.
After a while of waiting for a report from the people whom he had sent to get rid of their target, a person entered the Guan Yu Temple.
“What happened?” Yeo-Pung asked him.
“I’m sorry. We failed.”
“What? He is an old man stuck at Poyang lake fishing at best, yet you still failed?” Yeo-Pung asked, bewildered.
“Well... an unidentified master intervened.”
“An unidentified master?”
“It was difficult to identify him from afar, but he is presumed to at least be in the Absolute Realm.”
“Could he be one of the Four Peerless Wanderers?”
“That’s unlikely. Although we saw him from a distance, he looked very different from the Four Peerless Wanderers.”
“Who the hell is he, then? Other than Han Baek, I have never heard of another Absolute Realm master near Poyang Lake.”
“I’m sorry. At this point in time, we do not have any clue about that person’s identity,” the man replied with a perplexed expression.
“So, the people who went to the Yunxia Manor had been wiped out?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that master still there?”
“Yes.”
Yeo-Pung frowned. Killing two Absolute Realm masters was an entirely different problem from just killing one. Although it seemed as if they could just double the combat forces they had deployed, that was not the case at all. Two Absolute Realm masters working together would have a huge effect on their combat prowess. In other words, the Heavenly Killer Sect would have to deploy even more combat personnel than just twice the people they sent before.
Yeo-Pung decided to make a move himself. If he and the demonic generals, who were Upper Peak Realm masters under his command, took care of this themselves, they could probably annihilate the two Absolute Realm masters.
“Get all our combat personnel ready now.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I’ll handle this myself. Together with the demonic generals, even two Absolute Realm masters wouldn’t be a problem for us.”
“Understood. I will make preparations right away,” the man answered and left the Guan Yu Temple.
Within an hour, the combat forces under Heavenly Killer Saber Monarch Gu Yeo-Pung, which numbered a hundred, had gathered in front of the Guan Yu Temple. Among them were the Twenty-Eight Heavenly Killer Demonic Generals, who were Upper Peak Realm masters.
With Yeo-Pung in the lead, about a hundred people immediately left the Guan Yu Temple and headed for the Yunxia Manor.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢