## Chapter 28 – 28. Martial Arts (5)
#28. Martial Arts (5)
After losing everything due to the First Young Master’s scheme, the humiliation that Cheon Yeo-hwa endured was beyond words.
Even so, she considered the anger she was feeling now to be greater than back then.
“What’s the second method, I’m asking!!”
“Snooore…”
Cheon Yeo-hwa shook Kang Hyun-woo back and forth with a resentful expression.
But Kang Hyun-woo didn’t wake up, as if he’d eaten a mountain of sleeping pills.
Cheon Yeo-hwa glared down at Kang Hyun-woo, huffing and puffing.
Come to think of it, he must have brought up that strange topic of how to make people angry just to tease her from the start.
“To dare play such tricks on this lady…!!”
Outrageous! Too outrageous to bear.
In the end, Cheon Yeo-hwa decided to punish him.
Before being poisoned, Cheon Yeo-hwa, once known as the Moon Spirit Witch, who had caused countless casualties regardless of justice or evil, unleashed her Moon Spirit Divine Art on Kang Hyun-woo.
“Hehe, you lecherous fiend, how dare you.”
Squish, squish, Kang Hyun-woo’s cheeks were repeatedly mashed and stretched like clay.
“Ugh…”
Goodness, grabbing a sleeping person’s cheeks and playing with them like a toy.
The land wept and the heavens turned away at the Moon Spirit Witch’s cruelty.
As she was playing with Kang Hyun-woo’s cheeks, who wouldn’t wake up, Cheon Yeo-hwa’s complexion suddenly turned pale.
Slap! A sharp pain rose from her reddened cheek, which she had struck quite hard.
‘To think I’d become so lax after just one meal and a night’s sleep.’
It was an action she would never have tolerated in her past self.
What’s more, to even share a bed with a strange man she’d only known for a little over half a day.
“Haa…”
How did things end up like this?
She had changed so much from her past self.
What would her past self and her subordinates say if they saw her getting along with others so openly?
Weakened. Ugly. Changed.
They would denounce her with such words.
Of course, having lost the successor competition, it was an undeniable fact that she couldn’t return to those days.
Then, wasn’t there no need to go back to her past self?
‘…What a cheap excuse.’
It was a self-justifying excuse.
The instinct crouching within her was speaking.
Kill him right now, leave this place, and build up her power. Even if she had lost all her power, she could start again as long as she survived.
Even if all the animals drinking water from the lake died, the significance of the lake would not disappear.
Eventually, new animals would come to the lake to drink.
This lady is a lake.
A vast lake that will enrich the wide and barren land of the Divine Cult.
A lake only needs to be clear and clean.
Unnecessary impurities are unnecessary.
‘If I kill him now…’
Would this weak heart, wanting to settle for the present, disappear as well?
Cheon Yeo-hwa stared blankly into space with empty eyes, unable to come to any answer to her own question. Not even remembering when she had fallen asleep.
***
Chirp, chirp-
When I opened my heavy eyelids to the sound of noisy birds, I felt puzzled.
It was clear that it was morning, judging by how bright it looked beyond the tent, but why was I still in this world?
[Remaining Matching Time: 13:51:34]
“Why… is there 14 hours left?”
Clearly, Iris had given me about 8 hours of leeway for the first matching.
So, it was right to assume that I would be given about 8 hours in this world as well.
I had set foot in this world around 1 PM, and I had fallen asleep around 7 or 8 PM, so my body should have returned to Earth while I was asleep.
I had gone to sleep taking that into account.
But I was still in this world, and there was a whopping 14 hours of matching time left.
‘Why?’
Ting-
[Tip. Sleep time is not included in the matching time when matching with a new connection]
‘Really?’
What is this?
There’s no way the app would be this kind?
I was suspicious of the app’s excessive kindness, but it was too sweet of a condition to simply reject.
In fact, this was something I had been worrying about.
If the time I spent sleeping in another world was included in the matching time, I would have to return to Earth every time I slept or spend a lot of time.
If I returned to Earth like that?
I would have to wait for the matching waiting time of several days again.
When my connection level with Iris was 0, the matching time was only about 8 hours.
But it increased to 12 hours when it became level 1, and after the last meeting, the connection level became 3.
‘If I exclude the sleeping time, I’ve been here for about half a day, so roughly 20 hours?’
It seemed that the connection level was applied separately for each person, but the increased matching time due to it followed the maximum connection level.
‘I don’t know why the app is being so kind, but at least I don’t have to worry about being pressed for matching time every time… but why is my arm so heavy?’
I had been feeling an unknown weight on my right arm for a while.
Wondering what it was, I turned my head and saw.
“Ugh…”
“…?”
Cheon Yeo-hwa was sleeping soundly, using my arm as a pillow.
‘No wonder my arm was numb…’
I looked around, wondering what was going on, but I clearly hadn’t moved from where I had fallen asleep yesterday.
Rather, it was Cheon Yeo-hwa who had rolled over to my side.
As evidence, there was quite a bit of space left behind Cheon Yeo-hwa’s back.
“She’s talking in her sleep.”
Is she really a Divine Cult princess?
I’ve been feeling this since yesterday, but her actions seem a bit clumsy.
‘Should I wake her up?’
I hesitated for a moment, but decided to just leave her alone.
If she woke up in this state, she would definitely make a fuss, calling me a lecherous fiend or saying that I was revealing my true colors, and I was too tired to get into that mess from the morning.
Even if my arm was numb, circulating my magic power would naturally circulate the blood. If I used that, numbness was nothing.
“Still, she’s damn pretty.”
Clear and transparent skin, slightly sharp and gorgeous eyelashes, and hair that was definitely the same black color, but while my black hair was like rough crow feathers, Cheon Yeo-hwa’s hair was like silk.
If Iris smelled like fragrant grass, Cheon Yeo-hwa smelled like an endlessly soft perfume.
Not an artificial perfume that women spray, but a truly pure yet stimulating, contradictory scent.
As I was admiring Cheon Yeo-hwa’s sleeping face for a while, the words she had said to me last night came to mind.
-I thought you were an assassin sent by the First Young Master to assassinate me.
Thanks to that one sentence, the strange things I had felt from Cheon Yeo-hwa until now began to make sense one by one.
The fact that a woman who was the Second Princess of the Demonic Cult was bathing in a lake deep in the forest, and that she was wearing worn-out clothes that she seemed to have been wearing for months.
The fact that she was loitering near Shaanxi, which was incredibly far from the Demonic Cult’s base, the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.
Everything could be explained by that one sentence Cheon Yeo-hwa had said last night.
‘Is it a successor fight or something?’
Judging by her eccentric personality, it seemed like she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and had been living by throwing her weight around.
“…Looks like she’s been living a hard life in her own way.”
I had also suffered a lot as a war orphan, but at least I hadn’t worried about being assassinated.
And I had never wandered around like a homeless person in a distant land that would take roughly half a year to reach.
At this point, I felt a little sorry for the feisty Cheon Yeo-hwa.
‘But why is she sleeping with hair in her mouth?’
She was having a hair-eating show in real time, so I was about to take it out for her, but I accidentally touched her lips.
The feeling was very soft and moist, which was nice.
“…?”
Whether that was the cause or not, Cheon Yeo-hwa ended up waking up.
“Oh, did you sleep well?”
“…You.”
From Cheon Yeo-hwa’s mouth, who lightly ignored my friendly morning greeting, came a very heavy and murderous voice.
“Do you remember the conditions I set for you to accompany me?”
“…Walking ahead, answering questions truthfully, giving me chocolate?”
“You remember well. Then answer honestly to my question.”
Cheon Yeo-hwa, who had gotten up from my arm, was holding something familiar in her left hand before I knew it.
“Stabbing or cutting, which do you prefer?”
***
After a commotion in the tent, the two walked through the forest towards Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi, again today.
“…”
“…”
Maintaining the same heavy silence as yesterday.
Clearly, the two had become a little closer through the short conversation they had last night.
But for over 4 hours, no conversation had passed between the two.
Kang Hyun-woo was wronged, and Cheon Yeo-hwa was embarrassed.
At first, she had thought that he was trying to reach out with dirty hands while she was asleep.
Of course, it didn’t take long for her to realize that it was her misunderstanding, but by the time she realized that fact, he had already been battered by the scabbard she had wielded.
Even if it was a disaster that occurred in a state of drowsiness, it was clearly her fault.
But unfortunately, Cheon Yeo-hwa didn’t know how to apologize to others.
She only knew it in theory, and Cheon Yeo-hwa, who had never apologized to anyone even once, didn’t know how to start or how to end it.
In the Divine Cult’s law of the strong prevailing, an apology was a humble plea from the weak to the strong.
For Cheon Yeo-hwa, who would later become the successor to the great leader, an apology was nothing more than a low-class act that should never be done.
She had been taught that way, learned it, and lived a life that she had to practice.
In the first place, Cheon Yeo-hwa was not a foolish person who had to apologize to others.
Her judgment was always right, and the subordinates who could not follow her instructions had to bow their heads in front of her and beg for their lives disguised as apologies.
However, after being tricked by the First Young Master’s scheme, she had become unable to be sure of what was the right judgment.
Even whether it was right to apologize to him now.
‘Arbitrarily using his arm as a pillow and hitting him with the scabbard because of a misunderstanding were all my mistakes, but…’
Should I apologize?
Then how should I do it?
Should I bow my head like the subordinates did?
No matter how I thought about it, it didn’t seem right.
Then should I simply say I’m sorry?
‘…Is an apology really that simple?’
Wouldn’t trying to get away with just a word seem even more outrageous?
Then should I give him a gift that he might like?
But all I have now is a sword and a worn-out robe…
Slap!
‘I, I must be crazy. To think I’d even consider offering my body!’
Cheon Yeo-hwa blamed herself for even thinking such a thing for a moment.
Even if she were to sit in the leader’s seat, she had no intention of marrying a man.
She had even less intention of offering her body.
But to have such absurd thoughts about a man she had only met a day ago!
That’s no different from being a prostitute!!
“Ouch, what is it? Why are you suddenly slapping your cheek??”
“…There was a bug.”
“A bug?”
A martial artist woman slapped her own cheek so hard that it made that sound just because there was a bug?
Kang Hyun-woo couldn’t understand, but he didn’t want to pry since she said that’s what it was.
Cheon Yeo-hwa chewed her lips as she watched Kang Hyun-woo, who was walking ahead again with an indifferent expression.
If she didn’t say it now, she felt like she wouldn’t be able to say it at all.
“…Are you okay?”
A word as heavy as a thousand pounds barely escaped her throat and into this world.
“With what?”
“I was wondering if you were hurt because I wielded the scabbard…”
As evidence, Kang Hyun-woo’s face was swollen in places.
Even Cheon Yeo-hwa, who was a princess of the Divine Cult, a group of madmen who followed the law of the strong prevailing, was aware that she had gone too far this time.
He had not only saved her, but also given her a delicious meal and a warm place to sleep.
“I, I… I think I should apologize to you…”
Cheon Yeo-hwa eventually couldn’t finish her sentence and hung her head low.
Kang Hyun-woo chuckled at the sight.
“What, were you silent all this time because of that?”
Cheon Yeo-hwa shook her head, which was hanging low.
She didn’t want to show her flushed face.
He’ll probably tease me again.
“You’re being considerate in strange ways. I didn’t think you’d care about that at all.”
Kang Hyun-woo seemed to have understood Cheon Yeo-hwa a little.
“I’ve already forgotten about it, so don’t worry about it.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
Kang Hyun-woo, surprised by the unexpected twist, spread out a mat nearby.
“Let’s have lunch.”
Cheon Yeo-hwa, who ate the cream pasta that came out for lunch that day, widened her eyes and made a fuss.
Women liking pasta is the same in other worlds too.
***
A gorge near Xi’an.
Due to the presence of the Mount Hua Sect and the Jongnam Sect, all the major evil sects had been pushed out of Shaanxi, but a third force had settled here without anyone knowing.
“Great Lord.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve found her.”
In the past, the Demonic Cult, which had failed to conquer the Central Plains twice, changed its direction and decided to establish secret branches in the areas where the righteous sects’ clans and families were located.
The possibility of being discovered also increased, but all of this was to prevent those guys from uniting under the name of the Martial Alliance in the face of the Cult’s great conquest in the future.
Even if the righteous sects discovered the location of the branch, it didn’t matter. Because there were no traces of the Cult here anyway.
All the members except the Great Lord had not mastered demonic arts. What they had mastered was either the martial arts of the evil sects or a partial imitation of the martial arts of the righteous sects.
Those belonging to the First Young Master were stationed at the Third House of the Demonic Cult’s Shaanxi Branch.
They were cooperating with the First Young Master’s forces in other branches to search for and assassinate the Second Princess who had fled to the Central Plains.
“It’s the White Wolf.”
The Great Lord smiled at the report of the member, whose whole body was covered in black.
It was a grotesque smile covered in scars.
