Chapter 638: Do You Know Where That Place Is?

TL: FoodieMonster007

Geom Mugeuk and Jin Hagun departed from the Murim Alliance. To avoid attracting unwanted attention, Geom Mugeuk kept his bamboo hat on.

"They'll know that I met with the Chairman."

Geom Mugeuk did not underestimate the enemy's intelligence network. Wuhan was, after all, a stage they had meticulously created. On this stage, they were the main characters.

A serious expression settled on Jin Hagun's face. If Geom Mugeuk's words were true, it meant the enemy was observing them from very close by.

"Does that mean they have eyes inside the Alliance?"

"You should consider that they've been preparing for decades."

Geom Mugeuk tapped the bamboo hat he wore.

"This isn't enough to block out the passage of all those years."

Hearing this, Jin Hagun felt a sentiment that echoed Jin Paecheon's. This battle was going to be more difficult than any he had ever experienced.

"Is it them?"

The "they" Jin Hagun spoke of was the shadowy organization that had orchestrated the tripartite meeting between the orthodox, unorthodox, and demonic factions.

Geom Mugeuk understood immediately and gave a nod.

"Yes, I believe it's them."

Only such a group could devise a conspiracy of this scale against both the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and the Murim Alliance.

Jin Hagun asked cautiously, "You still think it's the Heaven's Edge Hermit, don't you?"

He wanted one final confirmation. Jin Hagun believed that Geom Mugeuk, with his superior insight, had a better understanding of the situation.

Geom Mugeuk defended his belief by looking at the alternative.

"Of course, it might not be him. But there's no need to consider the possibility that it isn't."

"Why not?"

"If he's innocent, we can just apologize for the misunderstanding."

Jin Hagun stared at Geom Mugeuk with an expression that clearly asked, 'How can you be so casual about it?' To Geom Mugeuk, it was truly that simple.

"That's what decades of friendship should be used for. It's not something so precious that it should cause confusion."

"!"

Jin Hagun felt that this statement held the key to how he should approach this entire affair.

"A momentary misunderstanding with a friend is nothing compared to the consequences of failing to see the Heaven's Edge Hermit's dark intentions."

Yes, he was right. In any case, his grandfather would not kill the Heaven's Edge Hermit based on a mere feeling without solid evidence. He concluded, therefore, that he was free to suspect him as much as he wanted.

Geom Mugeuk's straightforward conclusion instantly lifted the burden from Jin Hagun's heart.

"Thank you for coming."

Jin Hagun expressed his sincere gratitude. He would never be able to fully convey just how grateful he was that Geom Mugeuk had come.

"Of course I had to come."

That single sentence was enough. Yes, of course he had to come. If their situations were reversed, it would be the same. Of course he would have to go.

"So, where are we going?"

At Geom Mugeuk's question, Jin Hagun smiled and answered.

"A friend came from far away, so I have to provide a place for you to sleep."

The manor Jin Hagun had prepared was one utilized by the Demon Slaying Brigade. It was situated at the foot of a mountain on the city's outskirts, far from the marketplace. Since everyone knew it was owned by the Murim Alliance, they did not need to worry about being searched by Wuhan's martial artists for the time being.

"Look, the moment I show up, the treatment changes, doesn't it? This is the kind of person I am."

Geom Mugeuk boasted loudly from the entrance, but naturally, nobody acknowledged his bragging.

Geom Muyang, sensing something was amiss, started to inspect the manor's interior. Meanwhile, the Demonic Buddha went outside to check the exterior. The Poison King stealthily trailed behind the Demonic Buddha.

Seeing this, Geom Mugeuk shouted.

"You mustn't fall for it even if the Poison King tempts you to go dig for medicinal herbs! He thinks of the Demonic Buddha as an herb-gatherer!"

He could feel the Poison King flinch from behind him.

As the two of them moved outside, Geom Muyang scolded his younger brother.

"Don't be rude to the Demonic Buddha."

Geom Mugeuk then gave a meaningful smile.

"You have to scold me when he's right next to us, so the Demonic Buddha will know how you feel."

"I'm not saying it for him to know."

"I know, I know. But wouldn't it be better if he knew anyway?"

He's your Demon Supreme, after all. The only Demon Supreme you like.

Geom Mugeuk sincerely hoped this relationship would stay unchanged until the very end of their lives.

After inspecting the courtyard, Geom Muyang entered the building. He walked down the corridor, carefully checking for any hidden mechanisms.

"Are you worried Commander Jin might have rigged this manor with something? You don't have to worry."

Geom Muyang answered without turning back.

"What makes you trust him so much?"

Geom Muyang was voicing the same concern Jin Paecheon had for his grandson. Don't trust people so easily.

"Not everyone is like you."

Geom Mugeuk followed closely behind him.

"That's a compliment, right?"

Geom Muyang did not answer. Instead, he opened doors to check the rooms.

"You use this small room. We'll give this one to the Demonic Buddha."

Geom Muyang chose the largest and best room for the Demonic Buddha. Naturally, he assigned the smallest one to Geom Mugeuk.

"The Demonic Buddha is the type who would be fine with the smallest room…"

As Geom Muyang scowled and spun around, Geom Mugeuk scurried into the small room as if he were fleeing.

"You should act like that when the Demonic Buddha is around."

Geom Mugeuk flopped onto the bed.

"Ah, this is so comfortable and nice!"

Lying down, Geom Mugeuk gazed out the window. He watched the clouds drift by for a moment before asking in a loud voice.

"I heard you were the one who called for Commander Jin first?"

After a short pause, Geom Muyang's voice came from his room.

"There is someone who needs to be saved."

Geom Mugeuk was also aware that the younger sister of a craftsman named Gwak Yeong was being held hostage.

"It feels so awkward hearing that a man who only ever thinks about killing people is going to save someone."

Even when branded a murderer, Geom Muyang showed no reaction. Of course, Geom Mugeuk was not one to miss a chance to tease his brother.

"Is she pretty?"

He might have snapped, but no reply came.

Geom Mugeuk may have seemed carefree, cracking jokes like this, but inwardly he was more tense than anyone.

Hwa Yulcheong.

How could he be complacent when he was facing a member of the Hwa family for the first time since his regression?

Just then, a rebuke came from the doorway.

"You should not have come. You should have stayed and protected our Cult."

Turning his head, he saw his brother standing at the door. Geom Muyang was well aware that having two people of the Heavenly Demon's bloodline in one dangerous place was absolutely forbidden.

"Our Cult will be protected only if I'm not there, you know?"

After all, the Heavenly Demon Archives were currently being plundered by the Acting Cult Leader.

"Don't joke around!"

"What's there to worry about? You'll protect me, Hyung."

"Me? Why?"

"You said you came all this way because of me, didn't you?"

Caught off guard by the unexpected words, Geom Muyang was flustered.

"Who told you that?"

"Who do you think? Someone with a loose tongue, I guess."

Three people had heard him say that. When he said it to Jin Paecheon, Jin Hagun was below the pavilion, and the Demonic Buddha was in the mist.

"Was it Commander Jin?"

He naturally assumed his friend Jin Hagun had told him. But the culprit was someone unexpected.

"The Demonic Buddha told me."

The Demonic Buddha had discreetly informed him via telepathy on their way here. He had said it in the hopes that his relationship with his brother would improve.

"He didn't say it for my sake, but for yours. So that I would treat you better."

At times like this, he could feel a surge of emotion even on his stoic brother's face.

"So you should try to express yourself more, too. How many years has the Demonic Buddha spent looking only at you? It's okay to show some emotion now."

Then, Geom Muyang said abruptly.

"Thank you."

"Not to me. I'm telling you to say it directly to the Demonic Buddha."

However, Geom Muyang's words were not intended for the Demonic Buddha.

"I'm thanking you."

"Suddenly?"

It was such an out-of-the-blue thanks that Geom Mugeuk sat up on the bed.

"I've done so many things for you to be thankful for that I don't know what you're talking about, but anyway, it's fine. It's nothing between brothers."

Then, Geom Muyang slightly opened his collar. He had Top-Quality Heavenly Silk wrapped around his chest.

It seemed his request for the Demonic Buddha to wrap it around his brother's heart had succeeded. As expected, the person who handled his brother best was none other than the Demonic Buddha.

"Ah, this isn't 'nothing'. I tore off a piece of my life for you."

His former self would have unwrapped it immediately, demanding he take it back and asking if he was being looked down upon. No, he would not have even wrapped it around his heart in the first place. Even if it were wrapped by force, he would never have shown it like this.

While he had changed in this way, there was also a part of him that was still unmistakably his brother.

"I will return this when we go back."

Saying he would return it when they went back was his way of declaring he would fight at the forefront. He was already furious that they had nearly killed his younger brother, and now they had made his brother come to this dangerous place. He was truly pissed off at them.

"My brother's angry now. I don't know who you people are, but you're in big trouble."

Geom Mugeuk and Geom Muyang began their investigation in earnest. Through the All-Knowing Hall, they received data on all the sects that had been established in the years surrounding the time the Heaven's Edge Hermit settled in Wuhan.

There were a total of eight target sects.

Geom Mugeuk and Geom Muyang split the list of sects to investigate and went to check on them personally. Since they could not grasp the reality from reports alone, they went to the sects to see for themselves. Weren't they the kind of people who could sense something suspicious just by looking at a gatekeeper's face or feeling the air in a courtyard?

After the two finished their investigation, they returned.

"The Ning River Sect is out because it has too many branches in the Central Plains. The Tyrant Sword Sect is out because its Sect Leader recently died in an accident and his heir took over. The Warrior Sword Sect is out because they're too fervent in their worship of the Heaven's Edge Hermit. And the Survival Gang has too many members."

The two shared what they had investigated, and Geom Muyang's findings were no different from Geom Mugeuk's. They could not find the guardian sect that had been secretly protecting the Heaven's Edge Hermit.

"It seems our prediction was wrong."

The two Demon Supremes nodded at Geom Muyang's conclusion. Since the two of them had gone out and investigated personally based on the All-Knowing Hall's data, the results were unlikely to be wrong. This meant there was no sect protecting him here in Wuhan.

Had he really been handling this all by himself until now?

Geom Mugeuk shook his head firmly.

"That can't be right."

He was certain they had overlooked something.

"This isn't something that ends in a year or two. It's a plan that has been in progress for decades. You think they'd entrust everything to one person's effort and luck? No way."

What if he did well for twenty years and then died in an accident the next year? Then those twenty years would have been for nothing. Someone must have been supporting and helping him from the side. He must have overcome several unknown crises. There had to be someone who had weathered the storms of time with him.

"Couldn't he have won over another sect after gaining fame, instead of establishing one at the time?"

Geom Mugeuk nodded at the Demonic Buddha's thought.

"Of course, that's possible, but I don't think that's the case this time. For some reason, I feel like he would have kept his most trusted people by his side from the very beginning."

This time, Geom Muyang offered his opinion.

"Then couldn't an individual have helped him, instead of a sect?"

"He was friends with the Chairman. The Murim Alliance would have naturally monitored and investigated him according to their rules. They would have been extremely thorough. Imagine if our father had a best friend. Think how thoroughly we would investigate him."

And according to the All-Knowing Hall's investigation, the Heaven's Edge Hermit had no friends other than the Chairman. He was truly and utterly alone.

"Didn't they say they handle poison?"

The one who answered the Demonic Buddha's question was Geom Muyang. He was the one who had experienced it firsthand while tracking the counterfeit hidden weapons.

"That's right. The counterfeit hidden weapons were coated with a powerful poison."

That was not all.

"Furthermore, they controlled people's minds, either with drugs or some kind of grand technique."

They made people commit suicide at critical moments and forced specific confessions. That alone showed they were no ordinary practitioners. The four people here knew this better than anyone. They knew how on edge the Murim Alliance was about poison and how much they loathed soul-manipulation arts.

Martial artists feared the Poison King and the Soul-Stealing Demon Supreme the most.

But the Murim Alliance had missed the fact that the Chairman's only friend was associating with someone who used poison or soul-manipulation arts?

Geom Mugeuk thought that was impossible. They were the ones who had missed something. He reviewed the documents again, reading them with a different mindset than before.

There's definitely something we missed. The answer is here.

As he read through the documents with that thought, Geom Mugeuk's gaze stopped at one spot. A slow smile spread across his lips.

"It's not an individual, and it's not a sect. Do you know of a place that can legally use poison and also stick needles in people's heads?"

Geom Mugeuk and the other three sat in a teahouse, looking at a building across the street. In the middle of the bustling marketplace, a large building occupied an expensive plot of land.

The Clear Heart Hospital.

"This is the place the Heaven's Edge Hermit, who often performed good deeds, visited most frequently. He would bring poor people here to get treatment every time. That's why it's a place no one would have suspected."

It was a place that Geom Muyang and the two Demon Supremes had truly never considered. A physician? The place supporting the mastermind behind this conspiracy was a physician? Who could possibly imagine that?

There was another reason to suspect this place was the base of operations.

"The physician here, So Cheongrak, is highly skilled and has a good reputation, making him the most popular physician in Wuhan after the Murim Alliance's Divine Physician."

Even the Poison King and the Demonic Buddha had heard his name before.

"So Cheongrak is particularly famous for his skill in detoxifying poisons. It's said that when it comes to detoxification, his skills surpass even the Murim Alliance's Divine Physician. That's why martial artists from the Central Plains come here first when they're poisoned. The number of martial artists he has saved is not just one or two."

Then the Poison King, who had been silent until now, calmly pointed out the core of the matter.

"The flower of the poison arts is not administering poison, but detoxifying it."