Chapter 148 : Intuition, Kicks In

Chapter 148: Intuition, Kicks In

Baek Seolyoung came to the Alliance Leader’s Hall.

She left Mujin and Dan Woobin at the entrance even though they had insisted on coming with her, and walked in alone. With the two of them waiting outside, he wouldn’t dare try any tricks on her.

Her reason for wanting to meet him alone was simple. He would only show his true feelings when she came by herself. In those emotions, she might find something connected to Lee Jaseung.

In fact, even before she said she would meet the Alliance Leader, Dan Woobin had considered slipping a martial artist into the Alliance Leader’s Hall. If it was Mook Young, he judged there was a fifty percent chance he could infiltrate deep inside.

She hadn’t sent him for two reasons.

First, infiltration wasn’t easy. However corrupt they were, the warriors tied to the Alliance Leader’s guard were formidable, and Lee Jaseung had gone missing here.

What if there was a master capable of subduing him, or something else waiting? Mook Young would be done for.

If he were caught, even by a slim chance, it could expose the Black Way Alliance’s involvement. Mook Young would never talk, which meant they would lose him.

The other reason was her faith in Lee Jaseung.

Do nothing rash and wait.

Of course, by today, the sixth day, they had reached the limit of that plan.

Baek Seolyoung was guided inside the Alliance Leader’s Hall. Jang Wonso greeted her with delight.

“What brings you here, Lord Baek?”

“My husband’s whereabouts have been unclear for days.”

To hear words like that and still send her such heated eyes. It went past vulgar and felt like a sickness.

Jang Wonso answered as if it were nothing.

“He must have gone out to get some air.”

“Something like this has never happened before.”

“Haha. Men sometimes want to be alone. Though it is surprising to hear that about our Expert Seop, who has such a beautiful wife as Lord Baek. Haha.”

Even in his joke he slipped in a hint of sowing discord, then asked casually.

“But have you noticed anything strange about him recently? Meeting anyone for example?”

Sickeningly, his face was already full of concern.

“There was nothing.”

“Do not worry too much. Is he not the Expert Seop who leads Virtuous Heroes? He will return as if nothing happened.”

“I understand.”

She exhaled a sigh and started to turn away, then suddenly spoke.

“Yet Alliance Leader, the head of Virtuous Heroes is missing and you seem very relaxed.”

Jang Wonso answered with a casual tone.

“I trust Expert Seop more than anyone.”

She nodded once as if she understood, then truly turned to leave.

Jang Wonso spoke from behind her.

“Would you like to have a drink?”

It was a blessing she had already turned away. At those words, her face twisted before she knew it.

“Thank you, but I will decline.”

Crazy bastard.

Feeling his sticky gaze sweep up and down her figure, Baek Seolyoung left that place.

Outside, Dan Woobin and Mujin were waiting.

“How was it?”

“He is hiding something.”

When she asked the final question, Baek Seolyoung had felt it clearly. He wavered for a split second. The head of Virtuous Heroes had disappeared, and he said he wasn’t worried because he trusted that man.

That was a lie, she could say so without hesitation. He wasn’t someone who trusted anyone. In the end, he was concealing something now.

“Is that how you felt?”

She nodded to Dan Woobin’s question.

“Yes.”

Baek Seolyoung looked back at the Alliance Leader’s Hall. Staring at the large building, she spoke.

“It’s just a feeling, but I am certain he is in there.”

Dan Woobin looked at Mujin. Mujin gave one small nod. Dan Woobin knew what that meant. He felt the same.

“It probably isn’t just a feeling.”

Dan Woobin believed in Baek Seolyoung. He knew well that a woman’s intuition for the one she loved surpassed any other sense.

“We will go save our Lord.”

* * *

At the same time, Jang Wonso descended to the underground through a mechanism.

A low hum rang.

His face reflected in the steel plates looked truly savage. He had become a completely different person from the one Baek Seolyoung had seen earlier.

Cold and merciless.

That change reached its peak when he entered the left room of the underground secret chamber.

With a face gone cold and hard, he looked down at the bed placed to one side.

To his shock, the person lying asleep on the bed was Lee Jaseung.

“Fuck! Damn it all!”

Jang Wonso’s eyes flared savagely with a face full of irritation.

Lee Jaseung was completely unconscious. Shaking him did nothing, stimulating his body did nothing, pouring inner Qi into him did nothing. He tried everything imaginable, and Lee Jaseung did not wake.

He had discovered that Lee Jaseung had entered this room six days ago.

When he returned from meeting Yim Sayeon, the mechanism had been dismantled. He rushed inside in alarm and found Lee Jaseung collapsed on the floor.

He shook him, but Lee Jaseung could not get up.

There were no external wounds. Yet he could not regain his senses, as if he had been poisoned.

He had no idea why he was lying here alone.

There were two possibilities.

He had run into an intruder here and been taken down.

But there were no traces of any other intruder at all.

Then the person who had dismantled the mechanism here was Lee Jaseung himself.

But then why had he collapsed here? There had been no one else in this place.

All kinds of thoughts went through his mind, but until Lee Jaseung woke up, he would not know what had happened.

In any case, the place he considered most important had been breached.

The core of this room was deception through the interplay of empty and real. In other words, deliberate looseness. Would anyone really leave something so important in a place like this?

The base of the lamp is dark, they say. No one imagined that the crucial map had been rearranged by using the objects in the room.

Even the forces behind him that had hunted ceaselessly for the map all these years had never known.

Yet that vital place had been breached, and an inexplicable situation had unfolded.

Six days passed and Lee Jaseung did not wake.

Jang Wonso felt uneasy.

Why lose consciousness here of all places? A nameless unpleasantness dominated his mind.

On the other hand, a certain expectation stirred.

What if Lee Jaseung had found some clue connected to the map? If that was why he had fallen unconscious, Jang Wonso might be able to realize what place the map indicated.

“Three Kings!”

A soft rasp of movement sounded.

Three men revealed themselves before Jang Wonso. They were fighters he had personally raised, each one a wielder of sword, saber, and fist.

They were skilled enough to be called kings. They were transcendent masters whom Jang Wonso trusted absolutely.

“Did you find any traces?”

“No. Other than that man, there were no signs of anyone entering.”

“Anything else unusual?”

“There’s nothing.”

For days the same questions and the same answers had gone back and forth.

“Watch him closely.”

“Yes. Do not worry.”

Lee Jaseung lay unconscious, and to be safe they had even suppressed his vital acupoints. Jang Wonso added two more men on top of that.

“What about the Mad Serpent?”

“He has already arrived and is standing by.”

“And Demonic Toad?”

“He will arrive soon.”

The Mad Serpent and Demonic Toad. They were fighters on par with the Three Kings. He had summoned even those brutal men he usually kept away for their cruel temperaments.

The Three Kings felt they were more than enough on their own, even excessive. Jang Wonso thought otherwise.

The Myriad Yin Orb had been destroyed, and now the place holding the map had been breached. The greatest crisis of his life had arrived.

“Someone may come to rescue that man. Regardless of status, remove every last one of them.”

“We accept your command.”

Jang Wonso went to the right room where Cheon Myeongin was held.

Cheon Myeongin looked even worse. Originally, Lee Jaseung should have given him the first Revival Pill at the proper time, but this situation prevented it.

Locked in this underground place, his condition had worsened. His face was so pale it seemed he might stop breathing at any moment.

If not for his will to live for one more year, his life would already have been cut off.

“What trick did you pull with that bastard?”

Jang Wonso barked.

Cheon Myeongin let out a thin breath and spoke with difficulty.

“I know nothing.”

“Nonsense! You planned this, didn’t you?”

“What are you even talking about?”

He had hounded him for days, and Cheon Myeongin only repeated the same words.

Jang Wonso’s eyes changed in a way that felt filthy. Contempt and hatred and irritation mixed together.

“Fine. I intend to wipe all of you out anyway. And your mother will be the one to do it.”

For an instant, Cheon Myeongin’s expression twisted a little. He had expected that much, and Jang Wonso knew he had expected it.

“...It won’t be easy.”

He forced out those words, then lost consciousness again.

Looking down at him, Jang Wonso spoke coldly.

“We will see about that.”

* * *

Back to six days ago.

Lee Jaseung discovered something strange about the map.

In one instant, he was struck by a feeling that was so familiar it shocked him. It felt like stepping into the home where he had lived as a child.

This place, I have been here before!

That was why he was startled. Because of that familiar feeling.

Yet when he looked again, it was clearly a landscape he had never seen.

On the map ran a network of complicated paths.

His gaze followed those paths.

No matter how he looked, he had never been on those roads.

A thought slammed into his mind.

“Ahhhh!”

Lee Jaseung shouted.

Now he understood why the map felt both unfamiliar and familiar.

It was not a map of terrain.

It was a map indicating the movement of meridians in an Internal Qi Cultivation Method.

The roads were blood channels. It was a map built upon the movement of the method used to operate the Ten Heavenly Secret Arts. That was why it had felt so familiar.

No one would connect a map with breath and Qi circulation. No one would think of such a thing.

Moreover, these paths were based on the method obtained from the Limitless Iron Chest. If it wasn’t Lee Jaseung, no one could have recognized it.

This was the moment the secret the map had guarded for so long unraveled.

He began circulating breath and Qi along the paths of the map.

Then he tilted his head.

It was certainly a map built on the movement of the method for the Ten Heavenly Secret Arts.

Yet the route was different.

In other words, the way to operate the method was different.

Just why?

Lee Jaseung’s eyes gleamed sharply.