Chapter 306: What Kind of Demon Supreme Believes in Superstition?

TL: FoodieMonster007

After leaving the Thousand Poisons Forest, I headed for the Great Drunken Forest.

As always, Yeo Bin of the Three Great Drunkards guided me to the Drunken Demon.

As we crossed the lake by boat, I asked her, "Is the Drunken Demon still drinking a lot these days?"

"He cut back a lot for a while, but I think he's been drinking heavily again lately."

Her eyes pleaded with me to talk some sense into the Drunken Demon. Yeo Bin was the only woman who loved him and genuinely cared for him.

We arrived at the island and went up to the Drunken Dream Palace.

The Drunken Demon was already drunk.

"Did you really have to come to me last?" the Drunken Demon asked, not hiding his disappointment. "Am I the lowest-ranked among the Demon Supremes? There's no other explanation."

"I had to meet you last so we could drink comfortably, Hyung."

"A fine excuse."

"Oh my, you have to understand, Hyung. It's been a tiring day."

I stretched my legs out and sat comfortably in front of the Drunken Demon.

"Don't you know? I'm most comfortable when I'm with you, Hyung."

"You probably just think I'm a pushover!"

"Is that so?"

The Drunken Demon shook his head as if I were hopeless and poured me a drink. His expression had already softened. Sometimes, a single phrase like 'Is that so?' was more powerful than a long-winded excuse.

We drank together.

The strong liquor burned its way down my throat. It was even stronger than the alcohol the Drunken Demon used to drink.

"You said you cut back on drinking, but you're drinking something even stronger."

"If it's too strong, drink this one."

The Drunken Demon fetched another bottle from a pile in the pavilion and poured it for me. He, however, kept drinking his original strong liquor.

What on earth is troubling him?

I was curious but didn't ask first. There are only two ways to get the truth from a drunkard. Sober him up, or get him even more drunk.

"Here, have another drink!"

Whatever his worries were, drinking with the Drunken Demon like this after so long lifted my spirits.

"The atmosphere is amazing."

The thick water fog and the moon, shining hazily through the clouds, enhanced the mood of the night.

"Even when I was away, this place always came to mind whenever I thought of drinking. I'd wonder, is Hyung drinking? Is he floating in the lake?"

"It's too cold to go in the water much anymore."

"Time really flies."

It felt like spring just yesterday, but it was already cold. We drank for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. The Drunken Demon was definitely drinking more than usual.

"That female martial artist was really worried about you drinking so much, Hyung."

"Yeo Bin is always worrying."

"Treat her well while she still cares. Don't regret it later."

"Regret?"

The Drunken Demon gave me a look that asked what I meant, but I didn't answer. Why ask when you already know? He might seem to do nothing but drink all day, but the Drunken Demon was a delicate and sensitive person. How could he not know that Yeo Bin liked him as a man? He had to be pretending not to know.

Come to think of it, none of the Demon Supremes had started a family. The Fist Demon was the only exception, having recently had a daughter. Everyone else lived alone like this.

Is it because family is the enemy, as the Blood Heaven Blade Demon always says? Or is it because family is a weakness?

"There's somewhere we need to go for a moment."

The Drunken Demon had me get on a boat.

He rowed to the shore opposite the entrance. After we got off, the Drunken Demon walked into the forest. I had only ever visited the Drunken Dream Palace, but the Great Drunken Forest was a vast place.

After walking for a while, a thick fog surrounded us. Something felt strange. When I looked closer, I realized it wasn't fog. It was the qi of alcohol. I had never seen alcohol qi spread out like a mist before.

"If you're exposed to this, you'll get drunk and collapse. It's not the kind of alcohol qi that can be expelled with qi, so an ordinary person could never pass through. Stick close behind me."

As the Drunken Demon walked, the alcohol qi parted, creating a path.

The parted alcohol qi merged back together after we passed, as if it were alive, and the path vanished.

I couldn't even use movement arts to dash through. The alcohol qi, spread like a fog, obscured my vision, and the path was as complex as a maze. In the end, this path was the forbidden ground of the Great Drunken Forest, a place only the Drunken Demon could traverse.

Once we escaped the maze, the alcohol qi finally cleared.

A single building stood before my eyes.

"This is where the Great Drunken Demons have brewed and drunk their alcohol for generations."

I followed him inside. The place was set up like a brewery. The facilities looked old and worn, but every single one of them seemed extraordinary. On the display shelves along the walls were the favorite liquors of the previous Drunken Demons.

"I like to drink a variety of alcohol, so I don't drink much from here. Besides, while I have a talent for drinking, I'm not very good at brewing. So I just come here to rest sometimes."

A strangely shaped cup sat in the center of the brewery.

The Drunken Demon looked down at it with a grave expression.

"A while ago, the alcohol spirit spoiled."

A rotten smell was indeed coming from it.

"This has never happened once since I became a Demon Supreme," the Drunken Demon added with a dark expression.

"It's a bad omen."

Now I understood. I finally knew why the Drunken Demon had looked so troubled.

"Am I perhaps going to die?"

"You don't seem to want to die."

"There's still so much alcohol I haven't drunk yet."

"Don't worry. If you die, Hyung, I'll buy all the alcohol in the Central Plains and pour it on your grave."

The Drunken Demon sighed. His heart, sensing the bad omen, felt as if flocks of birds were taking flight and herds of animals were running before an earthquake. I truly never imagined he was this serious for such a reason.

"What kind of Demon Supreme believes in superstition?"

"My Master once said something. That if the alcohol spirit spoils, something terrible will happen. That there will be a problem for the Great Drunken Demon or a problem for our Cult. Of course, I didn't believe it."

But now that the alcohol spirit had actually spoiled, he seemed deeply disturbed.

"If it bothers you that much, tell your father."

"No! I just finally cleared up the misunderstanding with the Cult Leader."

The Drunken Demon had originally misunderstood that his father hated him. He cleared up the misunderstanding, however, after learning that his father hated his master, not him.

"I even gave the Cult Leader a gift of alcohol. We've been on good terms, but if he hears that the alcohol spirit has spoiled, won't he feel uneasy? He'd think, 'Of course, like Master, like disciple. What a bunch of unlucky drunkards.'"

I wondered why he would worry about such things, but this was how sensitive the Drunken Demon was, especially when it came to his relationship with his father.

"Father will dismiss it as a superstition and move on. He's that kind of person."

I examined the cup containing the alcohol spirit and asked, "How do I clean this up? Don't startle me by saying something like, 'I accidentally broke it, and it was a thousand-year-old treasure of the Great Drunken Forest.'"

"Why? You're going to clean it now? It's fine. I'll do it later."

"What do you mean, later? You're just going to clean it by yourself while thinking all sorts of depressing and negative thoughts. Let's clean it up quickly while I'm here."

Together with the Drunken Demon, I emptied the spoiled alcohol spirit from the cup.

While I fetched water and washed the cup, the Drunken Demon prepared to brew new alcohol.

As I washed the cup, I said to him, "It didn't spoil because of you, Hyung. There's someone trying to throw our Cult into chaos these days. It probably spoiled because of that unlucky bastard."

"You don't have to make things up just to comfort me."

"I'm not making it up. I've mobilized both the Sanzu River Hall and the All-Knowing Hall to investigate him."

"Is there really someone like that?"

"There is. I shouldn't underestimate you, Hyung. You even figured this out."

Despite that, the Drunken Demon's expression didn't relax. I couldn't just stand by and watch another Demon Supreme be consumed by superstition.

"Hyung, do you think a person's future is predetermined?"

"To some extent."

"I don't. Depending on what I say to you right now, our relationship could change in an instant, so what exactly is supposed to be predetermined? I think the alcohol spirit spoiled because it was destiny's way of making you bring me here. If that hadn't happened, I would have never known a place like this existed. Who knows what the future holds? Maybe one day I'll be in a crisis and have to flee to this place. This isn't a bad omen, it's a great notification from fate to save your little brother's life."

"You really have a way of spinning things."

He laughed in disbelief, but it seemed to have eased his ominous feelings quite a bit. The Drunken Demon's expression brightened.

"You were waiting for me so you could hear something like this, weren't you?"

The Drunken Demon readily admitted it.

"It was more than I expected."

"Please use my services often in the future, customer!"

I placed the clean cup back in its original spot and said, "The price for my services is just a glass of alcohol and my superstition-loving Hyung."

When I returned to my quarters, the night shift bodyguards greeted me warmly.

"You look tired."

Since returning from the Jiangxi Branch, I had been meeting people almost without rest, and they weren't exactly ordinary people.

"I'm going to rest now, so don't disturb me."

I entered my room as if I would throw myself onto the bed immediately, but instead of sleeping, I opened the Spacetime Manipulation Technique.

My way of dealing with bad omens was training. If something ominous happened, I just had to eliminate it. I would endure by becoming a being that even misfortune could not touch.

I'm trying this hard to endure. Misfortune, what can something like you possibly do to me?

Within the Spacetime Manipulation Technique, I once again used the Heavenly Space Secret Art to make time flow differently. Through painstaking effort, I had managed to make time flow twice as fast as the outside world. I wasn't hoping for infinite time. Creating a tenfold time difference was the ultimate goal of the Heavenly Space Secret Art. Just enough time to achieve complete mastery of the Nine Calamities Demonic Art, the Twelth Star, please.

Today's training was the Nine Calamities Demonic Art. I had only trained the First Stance repeatedly until now, but I instinctively felt it was time to learn the Second Stance. Such was the state of my martial arts, having reached the pinnacle.

The Nine Calamities Demonic Art, Second Stance, the Great Annihilation Stance.

If the First Stance, the Human Destroying Stance, was an attack aimed at a single person, the Second Stance, the Great Annihilation Stance, was a technique for dealing with multiple opponents.

When I unleashed the Second Stance, a single demonic fiend appeared silently before me with its back turned.

It was the most terrifying-looking of the four demonic fiends that appeared in the First Stance.

For a moment, the creature's body seemed to sway slightly.

SHHHHK.

The demonic fiend split. It divided into a total of three.

KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!

The three demonic fiends thrust their swords, sweeping forward.

Nothing remained in their wake. It was an attack that wiped out everything in its path.

The higher my mastery of the Second Stance, the more times the fiend would split. Eventually, it would become a technique that split into dozens of copies, wiping out everything in sight. Of course, the amount of inner arts' Yang Do consumed would also increase with the number of divisions.

How many times can Father make it split?

I will surpass the number Father can create.

I wonder, what is my limit?

My heart pounded as I imagined the demonic fiends sweeping past, annihilating everything before them.

The thought of it made it impossible to sleep.

I immersed myself in training this technique until morning, and by sunrise, I was in a state of near exhaustion.

Now, it was truly time to rest.

I released the Heavenly Space Secret Art and activated the Spacetime Manipulation Technique again. My most cherished space unfolded.

A hot sun, a blue sea, a white sandy beach, and a comfortable chair under a broad-leafed tree.

It had been a really long time. I had saved it on purpose. To open it on a day like this.

I flopped down into the chair as if collapsing.

Looking at the sea and sky, as blue as the color of my enhanced sword qi, my mind grew calm.

Whether the alcohol spirit had spoiled, whether Sa Woojong was causing trouble, or whether there was someone pulling the strings. In this moment, I forgot it all and rested.

I took the Secret Box from my robes and placed it beside me. I had drawn eyes and a mouth on the Secret Box, like a person. It was a wide, smiling face.

I had said I would eventually open it by telling it to 'open, open' every day, but I had never actually said 'open' to the Secret Box since I obtained it.

"You rest too. It must have been so hard all those years with people urging you to 'open, open'. You rest, and I'll rest."

Sleep washed over me. The demon of slumber guided me to a being I hadn't seen in a long time.

In my dream, I was standing in the sky.

Above a sea that resembled the sky, within my qi.

Then a shadow fell, and the world darkened. I turned to see something enormous blocking the sun. At first, I thought it was a tidal wave as high as a castle wall, but it wasn't.

The Heavenly Demon Soul.

The being that had shown itself to me several times had appeared in my dream. The Heavenly Demon Soul was looking down at me with its arms crossed. With the sun at its back, I couldn't see its face clearly.

But I knew instinctively. This was my Heavenly Demon Soul.

I wanted to see its face, so I stared intently at the Heavenly Demon Soul, but in this moment, not even the Divine Eye Technique worked.

Do you also wish for me to reach you sooner?

The Heavenly Demon Soul just looked down at me in silence.

Three days later, I received the first report in Seo Daeryong's office.

"Despite thoroughly examining Sa Woojong's financial status, we haven't found anything suspicious."

"No trace of money changing hands either?"

"Correct. Analyzing his saving and spending habits, he's a man with little interest in money."

Seo Daeryong asked cautiously, "Could it be that he really just wanted to die at the hands of the Soul-Stealing Demon Supreme?"

I shook my head. "That's actually worse. Your words mean he was moved by something other than money, right? If he were a righteous warrior, he might have acted for a great cause, but he's not that kind of person."

"So you believe there's someone behind him, Young Cult Leader."

"I'm considering all possibilities."

Considering Baek Cheongeong of the Wood Heaven Clan, who had infiltrated the Murim Alliance, we couldn't guarantee that there wasn't someone like that in our Cult. For any incident that occurred from now on, we had to always consider the possibility of someone pulling the strings.

"This is the surveillance report on Sa Woojong's daily routine."

I calmly reviewed his day, written on the paper. In a daily routine no different from that of an ordinary martial artist, one thing stood out.

"What's this flower garden here?"

"He's been visiting that flower garden frequently lately. They say he just goes there and sits blankly for a while. Since he was someone who helped the Flower Sword Supreme tend to her garden, it wouldn't be strange for him to frequent it."

"No, that is strange. If I were him, I wouldn't even want to look at flowers. I wouldn't have been suspicious if he had randomly gone to learn the guqin, but he periodically visited a place that everyone would assume is normal and not be suspicious of?"

"When you put it like that, it does seem suspicious. Ah, it's a real relief you weren't in my class, Young Cult Leader. I never would have graduated at the top."

I chuckled at his banter and rose from my seat.

It was clear where I was going next. Seo Daeryong looked at a flowerpot on the windowsill and remarked, "Hey, number three, looks like you're about to get a friend."