Chapter 11: Somewhere Between Seizure and Borrowing
Rather than serving the Queen Mother of the West, saving the lives of the disciples who stood on the edge of a hundred-foot precipice took priority right now, so the Sect Master ran in frantic haste.
Rushing in such urgency, the Sect Master was able to meet Gwangseongja, who commanded the guards of the mountain foothills—the very first defensive line of Kunlun.
“Where is he?”
“He said he would be waiting over there.”
As the Sect Master moved to head toward the inn Gwangseongja had indicated, Gwangseongja hurriedly grabbed him.
“Why… are you going alone?”
“He is not someone who can be stopped by two or three people. You know that.”
“Even so…”
“If numbers cannot stop him, then in the end there is nothing but sincerity.”
Hearing those words, Gwangseongja realized that the Sect Master was staking his life on this matter, and he could not bring himself to grab him again.
Leaving Gwangseongja behind, the Kunlun Sect Master moved on, his expression resolute.
Reincarnation Pavilion
It was amusing enough that an inn standing at the foothills of Kunlun—called a sacred mountain of Taoism—bore a name steeped in Buddhist flavor, but true to that name, the food it dealt in was just as unusual.
Temple cuisine.
Food and drink one would eat and drink at a monastery were sold here.
For that reason, Yul Han and his group, who had arrived early and were waiting, sat vacantly with cups of an unfamiliar root tea placed before them.
It was so bitter they could not properly drink it, and the tea water remained untouched in the cups.
The Kunlun Sect Master, who entered the inn belatedly, gave those teacups a brief glance and sat down across from Yul Han.
“The tea is bitter.”
“It is.”
“This poor monk is called Shinji, the Sect Master of Kunlun, whom people refer to as a divine being.”
“I am Yul Han.”
Now, feeling no burden at all when giving this name in introduction made him feel slightly bitter.
Unaware of Yul Han’s inner feelings, the Kunlun Sect Master nodded.
“So you are the Vice Cult Leader of the Bright Cult, surrounded by so many rumors.”
“Am I… that famous?”
“Since no one who has met the Vice Cult Leader has survived, there can be nothing but rumors.”
At those words, laden with many implications, Yul Han merely smiled faintly.
Of course, in the eyes of Shinji the Honored One, the Kunlun Sect Master, it seemed as though Yul Han was casting killing intent at him for saying something inappropriate.
“Ahem.”
The Kunlun Sect Master forced away the chill creeping up his nape with a dry cough and asked,
“Did you come to hold Kunlun accountable for something? As far as this poor monk knows, Kunlun and the Bright Cult have not clashed recently…”
“I did not come to ask for accountability.”
“Then why…?”
“I came to ask a favor.”
At Yul Han’s reply, an unusual light appeared in the Kunlun Sect Master’s eyes.
“A favor… you say?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
At Yul Han’s answer, the confusion on the Kunlun Sect Master’s face deepened.
If there was something they needed, the Bright Cult’s way had always been to seize it.
If necessary, they did not hesitate to kill in the process, and because of that, quite a few sects of the Hundred Paths had suffered total annihilation.
Of course, Kunlun was the greatest victim. Whenever something was needed, Kunlun was always the first place to be stripped bare.
Thus, he could not help but ask again.
“You truly said… a favor?”
“Yes.”
At Yul Han’s calm reply, the Kunlun Sect Master, whose face plainly showed disbelief as if he had heard nonsense, seemed to recall something and asked again with hardened eyes.
“Surely you are not here to tell Kunlun to leave Cheonghae, as before…?”
“The Kunlun Sect is Kunlun only when it resides on Mount Kunlun. Who would dare tell it to leave? I did not come for something so absurd.”
“Absurd… you say?”
“Of course. If someone told the Bright Cult to leave the Heavenly Mountains, there would be no way we could comply.”
That absurd thing was something the Demonic Cult had repeatedly done to Kunlun. And refusals, as always, led to battles and plunder.
The most recent time such a thing had happened was six years ago, just before the Vice Cult Leader went into seclusion.
Even while refraining from clashes with the Hundred Paths, the Demonic Cult never ceased plundering Kunlun.
Among the Bright Cult forces that had swarmed in back then, the one who stood at the very front was the very man now sitting beside the Vice Cult Leader with an expression that said, ‘I know nothing at all’—Cold Blade Blood.
The wealth the Demonic Cult had stripped away at that time amounted to tens of thousands in gold.
Even so, there was no point in bringing up those past events now.
The person sitting across from him now was someone who could calmly commit far more desperate acts than back then—the Demonic Cult’s Emperor Salyejin, the Vice Cult Leader himself.
“I, I see. Then what favor…?”
As he spoke, the Kunlun Sect Master swallowed dry saliva without realizing it.
He could not even begin to guess what this brutal individual might demand under the name of a ‘favor’.
To the tense Kunlun Sect Master, Yul Han said,
“Rice… please lend me some rice.”
“…Pardon?”
“Rice, I mean. These days there has been a poor harvest, so there have been problems with securing food supplies. Would it be… possible?”
At Yul Han’s question, the Kunlun Sect Master could not answer right away.
It was because he was far too shocked.
The Vice Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult had come—not to demand rice under threat of death, but to ask to borrow it.
He wondered if he had misheard, to the point that the Kunlun Sect Master asked again just to be sure.
“Um… You are not asking us to give it to you, but to lend it to you?”
“Of course I am borrowing it. Once the poor harvest is resolved, I will repay it little by little.”
Only after confirming that he had not misheard did the Kunlun Sect Master sit there blankly for a long while before finally regaining his senses.
“First, let me ask you just one thing. Why?”
“Well, obviously because there is a shortage of rice—”
“No, I mean why are you asking?”
At the Kunlun Sect Master’s question, Yul Han spoke in a voice that sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Well, obviously because there is a shortage of rice—”
“No, no. I mean why are you asking to borrow it instead of seizing it or simply demanding that we hand it over?”
“That is because I am using what belongs to others, so borrowing it is only natural. Or is Kunlun the kind of place that only helps neighbors in distress through plunder or coercion?”
At Yul Han’s counterquestion, the Kunlun Sect Master’s eyes widened.
“O-of course not! Kunlun is not such a place!”
“That is a relief. I was startled, thinking Kunlun might be a narrow-minded sect that only looks out for itself, contrary to its reputation.”
“Absolutely not!”
“If so, that is fortunate. Then you can lend it to us.”
“Of course—”
He stopped mid-reply, and the Kunlun Sect Master’s eyes widened again. Only then did he realize that he had been led along by the other party’s words.
To be honest, he had wanted to confirm whether there was some hidden scheme behind this talk of borrowing.
Yet to be lectured on Kunlun’s conduct by none other than the Vice Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult—the very embodiment of arrogance—had shocked him so much that he had answered without thinking, and it had come to this.
Still, he could not back down.
The man sitting before him was the Vice Cult Leader, someone who might seize on the slightest excuse to commit who knew what.
So…
“Ghn… How much do you require?”
“To start with, six thousand five hundred loads. Of course, if you have the leeway to lend a bit more, I would be grateful. There are likely more starving people nearby.”
“S-six thousand five hundred loads?!”
“Yes. It is not a small amount, but Kunlun receives donations of several hundred loads a day, so I thought it would not be too difficult.”
“Several hundred loads a day?! Just which lunatic is spouting such absurd nonsense!”
“Our Lord of the Ten Thousand Swords… was it not…?”
“Of course not. Ever since the Yangtze flooded years ago, a great deal of grain was consumed in relief efforts for flood victims. After that, we have already had three straight years of drought and poor harvests. The entire land lacks grain, and people are dying of famine everywhere. Who would donate several hundred loads a day to a monastery? Even in times when rice overflows across the world thanks to a great harvest, such a thing would only happen once in a blue moon.”
“I see. Then… would it be difficult?”
The Vice Cult Leader’s gaze as he asked was endlessly cold. Sensing the danger in it, the Kunlun Sect Master answered carefully.
“If it is around a thousand loads, we might manage somehow, but anything beyond that…”
“A thousand loads…”
It was far short of what was needed, but in a famine like this, even that would not be easy.
That was why he felt grateful to Kunlun for being willing to lend even that much. The problem was where to obtain the remainder…
The expression on Yul Han’s face as he pondered this looked, to the Kunlun Sect Master, like someone deciding whether to kill him or not.
With a face colder than a northern blizzard and murderous intent leaking from his eyes in visible strands, the light of conflict was unmistakable.
Seeing Yul Han like that, the Kunlun Sect Master grew desperate.
He himself had already steeled himself for death and had nothing to lose, but there was no guarantee that the Vice Cult Leader’s show of force afterward would not extend to Kunlun’s disciples as well.
In the end, the Kunlun Sect Master made a proposal that would be quite burdensome given Kunlun’s current state.
“We will scrape together everything we can and provide two thousand loads. But that is the limit.”
“Will you do that for us? Thank you.”
The Vice Cult Leader’s face, wearing a faint, hairline smile with an expression that showed no real gratitude at all, seemed to say, ‘Very well. I will let it slide in consideration of your sincerity.’
It was humiliation too great for the head of a sect to bear, but the Kunlun Sect Master forced himself to endure it.
The other party was someone Kunlun could not handle alone, especially with no preparation.
He did not want to become a foolish sect master who, out of paltry pride, pushed innocent disciples into the abyss of death over something impossible.
So the Kunlun Sect Master felt fortunate that this incident would not spread to the disciples being harmed.
Letting out a sigh of relief inwardly, he hurriedly spoke before the Vice Cult Leader could change his mind.
“Then I will have preparations made at once.”
“Will you? Then please take good care of things all the way to the Bright Cult.”
As Yul Han rose from his seat with those words, the Kunlun Sect Master asked with a puzzled expression.
“You are not taking it with you personally?”
“I am thinking of visiting another place. To fill the remaining amount, I will have to borrow from elsewhere as well.”
To the Kunlun Sect Master’s ears, the Vice Cult Leader’s words sounded like, ‘I need to go loot other places too.’
Of course, he called it borrowing, but with Emperor Salyejin himself stepping forward, who would take those words at face value?
“I-I see. Then where will you be going next…?”
At the Kunlun Sect Master’s question, Yul Han’s gaze shifted to Cold Blade Blood and Flashing Light Blood, who had stood up along with him.
Flashing Light Blood, realizing first that the look meant he should name a place capable of producing rice, answered.
“Mount Dian. The Mount Dian Sect would be suitable. It is far, but they are close to Đại Việt and the Law State, and are known for having abundant rice.”
Nodding at Flashing Light Blood’s answer, Yul Han replied.
“If that is so, then next I will go to Mount Dian.”
After leaving behind several words of thanks and promises that he would definitely repay the debt, Yul Han and his group departed Mount Kunlun.
Watching the Vice Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult’s group grow distant, the Kunlun Sect Master hurried into action.
Before the Vice Cult Leader’s thoughts could change, he needed to scrape the warehouses clean to select rice to send, and also inform Mount Dian—a fellow member of the Nine Sects—that Emperor Salyejin was on the move.
In the Kunlun Sect Master’s mind, Yul Han’s words about definitely repaying the debt had already vanished.
He had never believed them in the first place.