## Chapter 191 – (3)
“Disciple.”
I glanced toward the voice.
Judging by her youthful appearance, she didn’t seem much older than me.
If anything, she looked a bit younger.
“Yes, Master.”
Despite that, I felt no resistance calling her Master.
As everyone knew, the Murim was a world of the strong preying on the weak, and she was undeniably powerful.
Besides, it wasn’t unpleasant to use polite speech with a beautiful woman.
Why, some people even paid to become slaves.
Master and disciple was a good deal in comparison.
“You are my disciple.”
It always sounded awkward, like a sentence with a missing subject.
I guess the fact that it felt charming was thanks to her looks.
“…Yes.”
I wondered if she was happy to have a disciple.
She had been sitting in the inn for almost ten minutes, calling me her disciple and drinking tea.
“Thank you.”
“…”
I couldn’t answer that.
I had become her disciple because I couldn’t resist her coercion, so it was difficult to react to her gratitude.
“May I ask a question?”
“Mm.”
“That… you still look young, so why a disciple…”
“Because I don’t know when I’ll die.”
“…Do you perhaps have a chronic illness?”
I was just curious, but I was taken aback by the unexpectedly heavy answer.
She looked healthy on the outside.
Seol Young, who had the Yin Severing Meridian, had pale lips and skin that made her look weak, so anyone could tell she was sick.
But the Master in front of me looked quite healthy.
Her skin was fair, but her cheeks and forehead were flushed as if she had put on makeup.
Her body was also well-toned and muscular, the result of training, which made her look good.
I couldn’t say that her outside matched her inside, so I cautiously asked if she had some kind of illness, but the Master tilted her head as if wondering what I was talking about.
“No?”
“…Then are you being chased by someone?”
If it wasn’t an illness, could it be that she was being chased by a dangerous enemy?
That was a common reason in martial arts stories.
But this time, the Master’s answer was the same.
“No?”
“…Then what do you mean by not knowing when you’ll die…”
“It’s just that people never know when they’ll die.”
“Ah…”
That wasn’t wrong.
The Murim was a place where you could suddenly die at any moment.
Still, I thought there would be some deeper reason given the flow of the conversation.
Then, as if meeting my expectations, the Master spoke up.
“You always have to be prepared, because the martial art I learned is passed down to only one person.”
“Ah.”
There was such a thing as a martial art passed down to only one person.
It meant a martial art that a master who had mastered it passed down orally to only one disciple.
There were various reasons why a martial art was passed down to only one person.
The most common reasons were that the sect itself had to be kept secret, or that the conditions for the disciple were extremely strict.
I felt like I knew why she had been so insistent on finding a disciple.
A martial art passed down to only one person always needed a disciple to be taught in order to continue its lineage.
If she didn’t have a disciple and died, the lineage of the martial art would be cut off.
The fact that she was urgently looking for a disciple to teach the martial art passed down to only one person meant that the master who had taught her was already—
“I see.”
“Mm.”
When I nodded as if I understood, she didn’t say anything more.
But I still had a question.
“…So, what is your name, Master…”
When I asked for her name, the Master hesitated for a moment, then slowly told me her name.
“Moyong Yeon.”
As she said that, Moyong Yeon looked off into the distance.
Moyong.
I definitely seemed to have seen the name Moyong Clan among the noble families.
Why did she, from a noble family, possess a martial art passed down to only one person instead of the Moyong Clan’s martial arts?
I still had questions, but it was too soon to ask such deep questions.
“Are you done asking questions?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, follow me.”
Then Moyong Yeon slowly moved, heading out of the city.
Tap, tap.
Her steps weren’t fast, but her speed didn’t slow down due to any obstacles, and she moved forward at a constant pace.
As I followed behind her, I felt a sense of wonder.
Even when a crowd of people surged like a wave in the middle of the market, she moved smoothly like water, freely passing through the gaps between people.
I tried to follow her movements, but.
Thud.
“Ugh!”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Perhaps because of my large size, it wasn’t easy.
Even when we left the city and climbed the mountain, Moyong Yeon’s speed didn’t slow down, regardless of whether it was an uphill path or a path full of trees.
Thanks to that, even though Moyong Yeon seemed to be walking, I was moving at a similar speed, running a little faster, and we were moving side by side.
And, after walking for about five minutes.
We arrived at a certain place.
“This is—”
What I saw after following Moyong Yeon was a cave.
Hidden among the bushes and rocks, making it difficult to find by ordinary means, the cave seemed to be a small cave that only one or two people could enter.
However, the inside was a little different from what I expected.
The ceiling was so high that I couldn’t reach it even if I stretched my hand all the way up.
The floor was flat enough to walk on, as if it had been carved out, and there were also furniture such as drawers, a small bed, and bedding in good condition.
The room was also divided into several rooms, with two bedrooms and a large open space like a training ground.
Each room had a proper door installed.
It felt like a small martial arts training hall built inside a cave.
But Moyong Yeon’s expression wasn’t good.
The space between her eyebrows, which had been expressionless, was furrowed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone came in here.”
Moyong Yeon slowly sat down on the floor and picked up a long needle.
Then, as if it was supposed to be there, she placed the needle on the doorknob.
And, when Moyong Yeon opened the door—
Thud.
The needle fell weakly.
“Ah.”
The needle placed on the doorknob was designed to fall naturally when someone opened the door.
The person who dropped the needle probably didn’t even notice that the thin, light needle had fallen.
Moyong Yeon, who opened the door and entered the bedroom, opened a drawer first.
When Moyong Yeon looked inside the drawer, she began to emit a murderous aura that made my spine tingle.
“The elixirs that my master and I spent ten years collecting…!”
“…”
I was surprised that Moyong Yeon could emit such a murderous aura.
She had shown little change in expression or emotion from the first time I met her until now.
And somehow, I could guess who the culprit was.
To come all the way to this well-hidden cave and steal the elixirs.
Moreover, the cave wasn’t far from the Inmu Academy where I was.
‘Pungun…’
If it was him, the regressor, wouldn’t he have rushed over to plunder this opportunity that was so close?
“There’s a palm print here…”
Fortunately, because dust had accumulated, a large male palm print was imprinted on it.
Moyong Yeon carefully observed the print.
If that palm print was Cheongun’s, then Cheongun seemed to be facing a crisis in a place he didn’t even know about.
“Hoo.”
A lot of emotion was contained in one breath.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Moyong Yeon, with a calm expression, scanned me up and down.
“Sorry, I have nothing to give my disciple.”
“…I’m fine.”
Elixirs.
In fact, internal energy didn’t matter much to me right now.
My internal energy had increased considerably by absorbing the Yin energy of many ghost stories in the ghost story world I had visited before.
Of course, the more internal energy, the better, but there was no point in blaming what was gone.
“Have you ever used a sword?”
Moyong Yeon glanced at my waist and asked.
There was nothing on my waist.
Usually, a martial artist who used a sword would always carry a sword on their waist, so Moyong Yeon seemed to have judged that I didn’t use a sword.
There was a reason why I didn’t carry a sword on my waist.
‘Because I have an inventory.’
There was no reason to bother carrying a sword on my waist.
But there was no way Moyong Yeon would know that.
“Here.”
Moyong Yeon went to a corner of the room in the cave and threw a wooden sword at me.
I skillfully caught the thrown sword and lifted it up.
It was quite heavy for a wooden sword, and it seemed to be made of very sturdy wood.
‘Come to think of it, is this the first time I’ve held a sword since reaching the maximum level of weapon mastery?’
A sword wasn’t necessary in the battle with the ghost stories.
Rather, it was much easier to absorb Yin energy by using my hands, so I fought using only my hands.
“Swing it once.”
My swordsmanship was nothing special.
I was just swinging the sword according to my senses and the guidance of weapon mastery.
Even so, it was enough.
“Hoo… Hup!”
Whoosh!
As if releasing a pulled rubber band in one go, I breathed and quickly moved my crouching body.
When internal energy was put into the mercilessly swung sword, a thin sword aura formed on the swung wooden sword, and it left a long scratch on the cave wall that it didn’t even touch.
“Hah…”
I swung the sword and stopped.
It had been a long time since I had swung a sword, so it wasn’t easy to control my strength.
I wondered if it would be a problem that I had scratched the wall, so I looked at Moyong Yeon, but Moyong Yeon was slowly approaching the wall and looking at the cross-section.
“Oh…”
Moyong Yeon, who was admiring and slowly stroking the wall, said to me.
“You are indeed my disciple.”
“…Yes? No… Yes.”
It seemed like her love for her disciple had grown.
Following Moyong Yeon, who was making an expression that she was proud of her disciple’s growth, I also awkwardly smiled.
