Chapter 358

Chapter 358: Intelligence (3)

Snap.

Dokgo Ryong was thoroughly enjoying his days, passing the time with a series of tranquil, picturesque slaughters.

His targets were those fools who had migrated from the Central Plains, lingering around the northern nomad camps while posing as traders. Even with widespread rumors of bandit raids, these individuals possessed the audacity to press forward toward the Western Regions regardless.

Information regarding their path was relayed by the nomads who had converted to the Maitreya Luminous Cult, and Dokgo Ryong would masquerade as a bandit to wipe them out completely. Of course, calling it a “masquerade” was stretching the truth. In reality, he was simply having a magnificent time, butchering the Martial Alliance’s informants with a wide grin on his face.

Leaving no one alive meant no clues existed to connect any of the bloodshed back to the Demonic Cult. And if there were no observers and no proof, it remained a flawless assassination no matter how much noise was made during the conflict.

“Everything is taken care of, Grandfather.”

“Tsk. I would prefer if the Alliance Leader himself arrived for a change. Every single one of these weaklings is so pathetic, I can scarcely feel a thing when my strikes land.”

“My thoughts precisely.”

Dokgo Ryong and Dokgo Pae shared their thoroughly unhinged observations while the remaining observers nearby slowly shook their heads in dismay.

Right at that moment, Dokgo Ryong abruptly pivoted and locked his vision onto the horizon. A sizeable company was approaching from afar.

Dokgo Ryong narrowed his eyes at them for a brief moment before his expression completely fell with irritation. It was merely the Heavenly Light Merchant Guild, the caravan that traveled back and forth between the Central Plains and the Western Regions.

As the caravan drew nearer, a single horseman separated from the pack and trotted toward them.

“I offer my respects to the Head of the Dokgo Family.”

“It has been some time, Sixth Young Master. No, I suppose it is proper to address you as the Deputy Hall Master of the Missionary Hall now.”

Jong-ri Chu, who had been tasked by Il-mok to oversee the pathways between the Central Plains and the Western Regions, exchanged brief pleasantries with Dokgo Ryong.

“You must be weary managing such an exhausting assignment.”

Jong-ri Chu cast his eyes over the corpses strewn across the earth as he spoke, and Dokgo Ryong bared his teeth in a wide smirk.

“It keeps me occupied with combat every day, so it is quite pleasant. Hehehe. But what of yourself, Deputy Hall Master? Journeying back and forth to the Western Regions seems like its own brand of misery.”

“Hahaha. I am gaining a massive amount of knowledge out here. Oh, and you agree, do you not? Hahaha.”

Jong-ri Chu had suddenly shifted to using informal speech with someone, though Dokgo Ryong paid little attention to it, given that Jong-ri Chu’s focus had already wandered past him toward an empty space off to the side. To a patch of ground where nobody stood. He was even whispering in an odd tongue that no one nearby could comprehend.

‘The backfire of the Mad Soul Sword Art is truly remarkable. Anyone observing this man would conclude he has lost his sanity.’

Not that Dokgo Ryong wasted a single moment fretting about how outsiders perceived reality.

With their brief conversation finished, Jong-ri Chu and the Heavenly Light Merchant Guild journeyed through Dokgo Ryong’s bandit encampment and pressed onward to the west.

Their trek persisted even after entering Xinjiang and making a brief stopover at the Cult’s main headquarters, ultimately bringing them directly into the domain of the Muslims.

Weeks marched on until the far-off battlements of Merv finally materialized in their sight.

Jong-ri Chu whispered to himself, “I trust I can acquire more fascinating volumes on this excursion.”

Ohalak, riding to the left of Jong-ri Chu, replied in English.

“Do not make your eagerness so apparent, master. Those avaricious traders, the instant they notice your curiosity, they will multiply the price several times over.”

Then James contributed in the tongue of the Muslim people.

“Even so, for the prosperity of the magnificent Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, we are obligated to secure those volumes.”

To which Jong-ri Chu responded in the dialect of the nomads.

“Both of you speak the truth. We shall remain as inconspicuous as possible while ensuring we collect every volume we require.”

As the trio animatedly conversed away in their private bubble, the remaining members of the Heavenly Light Merchant Guild’s caravan deliberately turned their faces away with empty expressions. Hearing those three pivot between multiple tongues in the middle of a sentence was enough to make anyone’s brain spin. For individuals who cultivated Demonic Arts, it was practically an open invitation to Qi Deviation.

Upon arriving in Merv, they liquidated the various merchandise they had transported from the Central Plains and reaped a massive fortune. With those funds, they acquired resources to bring back for sale in the Central Plains, and they also purchased captives and volumes.

The captives would be dispatched to the Missionary Hall, where they would be liberated from their bonds and reborn as equivalent devotees of the Divine Cult. The volumes, on the other hand, were exclusively for academic pursuit.

Precisely as Jong-ri Chu had mentioned to Dokgo Ryong, he was expanding his mind significantly with every excursion he took between the Western Regions and the Central Plains.

Among all the disciplines he had recently developed a profound curiosity for was computation, or as it was alternatively known, mathematics.

“Just as I suspected, if we truly desire to assist the populace, we require capital. And to allocate that capital effectively and without a single shred of waste, mastering computation is mandatory.”

James and Ohalak both nodded their heads in concurrence.

“Our thoughts align with yours, master. We ought to introduce the Muslim numerals into the lessons at the Grand Teaching Pavilion as quickly as possible.”

“Precisely. Presenting computation that was previously recorded in Chinese characters using Muslim numerals renders it far more elegant, meaning youngsters would be capable of initiating their mathematical education at a much tender age.”

Muslim numerals, which is to say, Arabic numerals, were already demonstrating incredible utility in commerce.

Having become familiar with Arabic numerals and mastering Arabic through their western expeditions, the trio had commenced analyzing Muslim scripts and had recently been digesting various mathematics volumes. Furthermore, because all three were magnificent linguists, they were collecting volumes in a dozen separate tongues, and since the Muslims conducted commerce with the Western lands, documents in Western dialects were also circulating among them.

Past that, Jong-ri Chu’s understanding had been expanding in every path with each excursion to the Western Regions. He periodically had to repel bandits blinded by avarice for their cargo, and the trial of encountering their combat styles had driven his own martial prowess forward as well.

“I gathered that an immense conflict erupted somewhere deep in the West recently. Supposedly, some western nobleman made a small fortune trading with those Christian groups and chose to initiate an uprising.”

He was even capable of gathering intelligence regarding the realm beyond the borderlands.

“I understand a conflict has broken out in the west.”

Jong-ri Chu had reappeared after three months and was already organizing the subsequent commercial expedition. Il-mok offered a grimace at the update.

“The situation in the Central Plains is far more critical at present, so we must monitor it from afar for now, Sixth Brother. However, just to be secure, I would appreciate it if you could investigate it every time you make an excursion.”

It might signify little to the Central Plains, but from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s viewpoint, the progression of events in the Western Regions was an incredibly vital matter.

Not only existed the hazard of blocks to the trade pathways, but Xinjiang, where the Divine Cult’s main headquarters was situated, shared a direct frontier with the Muslims’ domain. If their fortune collapsed, they faced the ultimate nightmare of being pressured by emergencies on both flanks simultaneously.

“I shall attend to it. Oh, as an afterthought, I have developed quite an affection for computation recently. What are your thoughts, youngest? I am contemplating integrating it into the Demon-Teaching Pavilion’s lessons.”

“…Computation, you mentioned?”

Il-mok’s expression was somewhat difficult to decipher, but Jong-ri Chu unfolded the mathematics script he had been reviewing and began explaining rapidly.

“In particular, these four computational symbols I discovered in a recent volume are remarkably practical.”

“Hahaha… Computation is undeniably valuable, so incorporating it into the instructional regimen would greatly aid the Divine Cult’s advancement.”

Il-mok chuckled somewhat uncomfortably as he uttered those words. Jong-ri Chu departed in high spirits, and Il-mok gazed at the vacant air his Sixth Brother had just left behind with a painful grin.

“Sixth Brother, you have retrieved something truly horrifying.”

Il-mok and mathematics had never exactly existed on pleasant terms.

He dedicated a brief moment of quietude to petition the heavens. It was a period of silence reserved for the youngsters of the Cult who were about to be thrust directly into numerical purgatory.

Even so, he harbored no intention of halting that approaching purgatory. Because, irrespective of his individual disdain for the discipline, he genuinely desired that they would locate some children with a talent for calculation.

‘If mathematics progresses, engineering progresses as well. It cannot be a negative thing.’

Since he was already a mature adult, he himself would not have to endure any instructions, so it did not truly impact him anyway.

After dedicating a minute to considering the youngsters who would endure hardships in the future, Il-mok released a soft breath. “Haah. This is scarcely the hour to be fretting about future generations.”

Months had already slipped past and there was still no fresh intelligence, neither from the Blood Cult’s faction, nor from the Imperial Family that he had already notified through the main headquarters. The solitary bright spot was that there appeared to be no indication that the Martial Alliance had discovered anything either.

Owing to that, the Central Plains maintained an atmosphere of serenity, at least superficially.

In the shadows, however, the various organizations were completely enmeshed in a massive web of friction. The entire landscape was essentially a titanic storage of gunpowder simply waiting for a single ember to obliterate the territory into nothingness.

‘I truly require the Dark Shadow Pavilion to unearth something of substance rapidly.’

Il-mok kept his agitation concealed within and visualized a specific individual.

Seo Wan-pyeong, the Vice Pavilion Lord of the Dark Shadow Pavilion.

And then, several additional months slipped away.

On one specific evening, Il-mok was solitary in his chambers preparing for sleep when he jerked upright and unsheathed the Ascension Sword.

“Who goes there?”

He had detected someone entering his chambers under the shroud of night. It was a remarkably familiar sensation. After all, back when he had initially affiliated with the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, he had been subjected to this precise scenario multiple times owing to his Third Brother’s behavior. Furthermore, the enigmatic shape clad in dark attire that had coalesced out of the darkness was emitting a very recognizable frequency.

“…Third Brother?”

Il-mok finally identified who stood before him.

The explanation for his delay was straightforward. The obscuring method felt slightly unusual for an expert like Seo Wan-pyeong, who was already nearing Transcendence. And beyond that, there was a subtle scent of copper fluid emanating from the person he had mistaken for a killer.

“Brother!!”

Il-mok broke from his confusion and sprinted across the room.

“…My apologies, I am late, youngest.”

The form in dark clothes uttered in a recognizable tone.

It was genuinely Seo Wan-pyeong, precisely as Il-mok had suspected.

Obtaining a clearer view in the low light, Il-mok discerned that Seo Wan-pyeong’s flesh was riddled with horrific lacerations. Perhaps to avoid leaving a trail from his life force, he had simply restricted his meridians to halt the flow and bound his gashes with dark fabric to arrest the bleeding before racing to Il-mok’s quarters.

Attracted by Il-mok’s exclamation, Hyeokryeon Seon-ah and the Maitreya Luminous Cult’s sentries guarding the perimeter immediately crashed through the entrance.

“Fetch a healer, immediately!”

The sentries spun around and sprinted away to assemble the medical staff.

With the command issued, Il-mok turned back to observe Seo Wan-pyeong, only to discover him collapsed over with his eyelids entirely dropped.

He was not deceased, fortunately.

He had located Il-mok and experienced security. The second the stress departed from his frame, he lost consciousness on the floor.

The split second he set eyes on Il-mok and recognized he was out of danger, all the survival energy in his body departed and caused him to instantly black out.

Shortly thereafter, healers mobilized by the sentries entered Il-mok’s chambers and commenced inspecting Seo Wan-pyeong.

“Exhaustion, extreme sleep deprivation, and massive fluid loss are the primary elements. Furthermore, there is slight internal trauma, and he has clearly been neglecting nourishment completely, because his fundamental energy has also withered drastically.”

“Is his survival in jeopardy?”

“Not at this instant, but if a few additional days had transpired, it would have been exceedingly grave.”

Il-mok released a soft breath at the healer’s diagnosis. Put simply, the medical practitioner’s words indicated his brother was not going to expire immediately.

The medical staff labored without rest from that evening all the way through to the early dawn to treat Seo Wan-pyeong. They cleaned and bound his lacerations to avert decay, and carefully dripped medicinal fluid into his throat as he slumbered to assist in rebuilding his vitality.

Whether it was due to their focused attention or simply because he had finally obtained some of the rest he had been missing, Seo Wan-pyeong’s eyelids unsealed by the subsequent twilight.

When he recovered consciousness, his features contorted into a profound grimace.

Not from the agony.

He was merely incredibly aggravated with his own weakness for blacking out before he could even convey the vital intelligence he had shed blood to obtain. But he recognized this was no hour to lounge about indulging in self-pity.

“Fetch the youngest here, this instant!”

He possessed urgent knowledge that he required to transfer to their youngest brother without delay.