So? Did Someone Force You to Become the Heavenly Demon?

Chapter 368 : Upheaval (1)

After the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal and Taoist Un-baek had departed, Il-mok also stepped out of the hall and looked up at the sky, where the sun was sinking into a blaze of red.‘I just need to buy enough time until the Beggars’ Gang finishes their investigation.’

To be honest, the Hwangbo Family, the Beggars’ Gang, and Wudang hadn't really committed to their alliances; it was more like they put them on hold.

The Hwangbo Family and the Beggars’ Gang had promised to return once the conspiracy was confirmed. Wudang had gone a step further, adding the condition that they would only become allies after verifying whether the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult hadn't secretly done anything evil while wearing the Maitreya Luminous Cult's name.

It was a demanding set of conditions, but Il-mok didn't let it bother him. It would just take time, and since he hadn't lied to them about anything, they were bound to end up as allies again eventually.

‘It was only a matter of how quickly the Beggars’ Gang could move. A month at the earliest, maybe…’

Il-mok made up his mind to do whatever it took to keep the Maitreya Luminous Cult's identity a secret and buy as much time as possible until then.

But just a few days later, a warrior from the Dark Shadow Pavilion came rushing to find him with urgent news.

"The Martial Alliance has sent an urgent message to all the major factions. They've revealed that the Maitreya Luminous Cult is actually the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, and they're now recruiting forces to move against us."

***

About ten days earlier, right around the time when the key figures from the Beggars’ Gang, the Hwangbo Family, Wudang, and Qingcheng were making their way toward the Maitreya Luminous Cult in Gansu Province, something was unfolding at a fortress on the border separating the Central Plains from the Northern Steppes.

Grand Eunuch Cha was tossing and turning in agony.

Even in his dreams, Dokgo Ryong was still hunting him.

The Dokgo Ryong that appeared in Grand Eunuch Cha's nightmares looked every bit like a vicious demon.

"Haah—!!"

Jolted awake from the horrific nightmare, Grand Eunuch Cha came to with ragged breaths. He was drenched in cold sweat.

He looked around his surroundings with an expression completely stricken by terror.

The place he was lying in felt familiar, yet completely alien at the same time. The rigid atmosphere unique to lodgings arranged for government officials was familiar, but he had no memory of falling asleep in such a place.

Frowning, Grand Eunuch Cha racked his brain until he finally mumbled under his breath.

"So it wasn't a dream?"

A hazy memory surfaced.

Of running blind with death chasing behind him. Of the demon that relentlessly haunted him in his dream.

He remembers making a desperate beeline for a distant fortress.

His very last memory was getting close to the fortress and seeing a few soldiers sprinting toward him from the horizon before everything went black.

Right at that moment, the door swung open with a clunk.

A middle-aged man stepped in and gave Grand Eunuch Cha a light bow with his fists clasped together. "You're awake, Director of the Eastern Depot. I am Choi Songkwan, Assistant Commander of the Western Military Command."

The current Han Dynasty established five military commands to govern the nation.

The Northern Military Command set up camp in the northeast to keep an eye on the nomads and Later Silla, while the Western Military Command guarded Xinjiang.

The Southern Military Command was stationed in Yunnan to guard against the Southern Barbarians, and the Eastern Military Command was basically a navy that watched over the southeastern seas.

Finally, the Central Military Command was positioned in the heart of the Central Plains, serving as the military force responsible for maintaining order across the entire region.

At the head of each Command were the Left and Right Commanders, who held the highest command as Senior Rank 1 Officials. Serving beneath them were the Vice Commanders, ranked at Junior Rank 1 Officials. And the Assistant Commander who now stood before Grand Eunuch Cha held the Second Ran, the third highest within the Command.

As a rule of thumb, the Director of Ceremonial was treated as the equal of a Rank 1 Official.

It wasn't technically the law, but the Director of Ceremonial practically had the authority of standing right under the Emperor and above everyone else. On top of that, as the new Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch and Director of Eastern Depot, Grand Eunuch Cha was the undisputed number two of all the eunuchs.

Strictly speaking, it would have been proper etiquette for the Vice Commander, the second-in-command of the military commission, to receive him.

Yet even now, Choi Songkwan was doing no more than going through the physical motions of courtesy. His face made no attempt to hide his displeasure.

As a government official, hating the Eastern Depot was practically in his job description.

After all, the Eastern Depot's entire job was to dig up the officials' dirty laundry, torture them half to death, and drag them off to the execution block.

The problem was that most officials were too afraid of the Eastern Depot's reach to dare show that expression openly, let alone right to someone's face.

But right now, Grand Eunuch Cha didn't even bother calling out the man's disrespect.

Under normal circumstances, he'd have blown up on the spot or quietly had the man investigated and pinned with some made-up charge. But he simply didn't have the mental capacity for any of that right now.

"How long was I out?"

"Three days, sir."

"Damn it."

Grand Eunuch Cha responded to the Assistant Commander's answer with a rude curse, then barked out an order.

"Get me a fresh change of clothes and a horse right this second! I need to get back to the capital as fast as possible."

‘I have to tell the Supreme Eunuch that those Demonic Cult bastards are up in the North.’

The moment Dokgo Ryong's face flashed through his mind, a fresh wave of cold sweat ran down Grand Eunuch Cha's spine.

"I'll see to it. But what in the world would the Director of the Eastern Depot be doing all the way out in the North? And in that sort of state, no less."

Choi Songkwan placed a pointed emphasis on "that sort of state," but Grand Eunuch Cha was too panicked to even pick up on the insult.

"The Eastern Depot's affairs are classified!"

He just shrieked back in that incongruously sharp voice of his that didn't match his elderly appearance at all.

After acting so high and mighty toward a Rank 2 Official, Grand Eunuch Cha bolted out of the room the second he heard his horse was ready.

Watching Grand Eunuch Cha literally use his lightness skill just to run away faster, the soldiers watching from behind whispered among themselves.

"Heh. Look at him go running like a dog that's about to take shit.”

"What do you mean needs to? He already let it all out plenty."

It was true.

Grand Eunuch Cha had spent both day and night fleeing from Dokgo Ryong in an utter panic that he shat and pissed himself as he ran. When he'd collapsed at the fortress gates, his clothes had been caked in filth, and it was only when they stripped those foul garments off him that they'd found the insignia marking him as the Director of the Eastern Depot, which was how they'd identified who he was.

Naturally, the whole story had already spread through the entire army like wildfire.

But Grand Eunuch Cha was moving too fast to even hear any of it.

‘Hurry! I need to get south! Now!!’

He was using the Supreme Eunuch's orders as his excuse to himself, but the truth was simpler than that.

He was scared of staying anywhere near wherever Dokgo Ryong might be.

Without even realizing it, his survival instincts were screaming at him to get the hell out of there and run south.

From a corner of the military grounds, an old man stood watching as Grand Eunuch Cha bolted like a colt with its tail on fire.

Old he may have been, but he was a powerfully built man with a battle-scarred face and a steely bearing about him.

A moment later, Assistant Commander Choi Songkwan came to find the old man and greeted him with a solemn bow.

"Assistant Commander reporting to the Commander."

"Well? Did you manage to get anything out of him?"

When the old man asked in a gravelly voice, Choi Songkwan answered with his head lowered.

"I'm afraid not, sir. He just kept babbling about needing to get back to the capital like a senile old woman. There was no getting a proper conversation out of him."

Recalling the sight of Grand Eunuch Cha sprinting away earlier, the Commander nodded his head.

"You're right, he definitely didn't look sane."

Wrapping up their short chat, the two men stood side-by-side and watched Grand Eunuch Cha ride off. As the man's figure shrank toward the southeast, the Assistant Commander muttered with a sour look on his face.

"I just don't understand what that old monster is scheming."

"Our job is simply to guard the border. Focus on that."

The Commander might have scolded his subordinate, but the truth was, he was thinking the exact same thing.

The Director of Ceremonial, widely known to all the other eunuchs as the Supreme Eunuch.

That man was already the Director of Ceremonial back when the Commander was just beginning to build his merits in the military, even a whopping sixty years ago.

He had earned the favor of the previous Emperor and seized power that answered to no one. And now, even with a new Emperor on the throne after the previous one's passing, nothing had changed.

'I honestly can't even tell if I'm taking orders from His Majesty the Emperor, or from the Director of Ceremonial anymore.'

The Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard were both meant to serve as the Emperor's instruments. And yet, both were within the Supreme Eunuch’s hands.

And throughout the area of Beijing, there was nowhere his eyes and ears didn't reach.

So the Commander had no choice but to repeat to himself what he'd said to his subordinate.

All he could do was pour everything into guarding the border.

***

After leaving the base, Grand Eunuch Cha made his way southeast until he reached a safe house in Shaanxi Province used by agents of the Eastern Depot.

There, he drafted a letter and passed down his orders.

"Deliver this letter to Agent Number Two in secret."

With that immediate fire put out, Grand Eunuch Cha got back on his horse and rode on toward the capital.

A few days later, he arrived at the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the Supreme Eunuch summoned him.

"Well. I've already heard. To think that Demonic Cultists were running rampant in the north."

The news that Grand Eunuch Cha had passed along to Agent Number Two through his Eastern Depot operatives had apparently already reached the Forbidden City.

"Y-yes, my lord. The Maitreya Luminous Cult is actually just a front for the Demonic Cult."

As Grand Eunuch Cha answered with a visible trembling, the Supreme Eunuch tossed out a seemingly offhand question.

"And the man you saw there... was it really Dokgo Ryong of the Demonic Cult?"

"Y-yes, it was, Supreme Eunuch."

"Hmm."

The Supreme Eunuch studied him carefully, and he didn't miss the trembling.

The moment Dokgo Ryong's name was mentioned, Grand Eunuch Cha gave an involuntary flinch.

‘Tsk. So the rumors were true.’                                          

The embarrassing rumor that Grand Eunuch Cha had passed out in the north covered in his own filth had already made its way to the Supreme Eunuch as well. That was just how terrifyingly vast his spy network and influence really were.

"Director of the Eastern Depot."

"Y-yes! P-please, give your orders!"

The Supreme Eunuch studied the startled Grand Eunuch Cha with a calm gaze.

"Is Dokgo Ryong really that frightening to you? More so than this old man?"

A dreadful pressure radiated from the Supreme Eunuch's body, and Grand Eunuch Cha hiccuped before managing a reply.

"H-how could I dare compare that lowly insect Dokgo Ryong to you, Supreme Eunuch."

The Supreme Eunuch listened to the answer and issued his order.

"Very well. You look physically and mentally drained, so go take a few days off before coming back to work."

"I-I will follow the Supreme Eunuch’s command."

Once Grand Eunuch Cha practically threw himself into a bow and scurried out of the room, the Supreme Eunuch clicked his tongue.

"Tsk. Broken goods."

There was no sympathy in his eyes.

"Well, as long as I don't give him any jobs involving Dokgo Ryong, he'll still have his uses."

He just felt the mild annoyance of having a good pawn break down on him.

It was nothing more and nothing less than that.

***

Meanwhile, the letter Grand Eunuch Cha wrote was safely handed off by the Eastern Depot to the Martial Alliance Leader, Cheok Pae-myeong.

Cheok Pae-myeong read the letter together with Gongsun Hyeon and two conflicting emotions played out on his face at the same time.

The first was pure disbelief as he couldn't believe they hadn't connected the dots between the Demonic Cult and a brand-new faction popping up in Gansu that is right next to Xinjiang.

"Hah. I can't believe those bastards were the Demonic Cult this whole time."

"My apologies, Alliance Leader. The Beggars Gang sounded so completely sure of themselves that I ruled it out completely."

The second emotion was sheer relief that they finally had an excuse to wipe them off the map.

"At last, we have our cause to move against them. And that's not all, Alliance Leader. Our real target was the Demonic Cult to begin with, correct?"

"Hahaha. You're completely right. I was planning on wiping out the Maitreya Luminous Cult first and going after the Demonic Cult later, but if we play our cards right, we might be able to kill two birds with one stone."

The two men locked eyes with a glint of excitement shared between them.

Their mission was to pit the Martial Alliance and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult against each other and kill as many martial artists as possible.

Once that mission was accomplished, the reward for all their hard work would finally be within reach.

They would return to the Imperial Palace as heroes and instantly be promoted to the absolute highest seats in the government.

The two men let themselves bask in that dream for just a moment before shaking it off and pulling themselves back to the present.

If they wanted that golden future, they needed to finish the job right in front of them first.

"Prepare the letters to be sent to every sect and clan, Chief Strategist."

"Right away, sir. I'll make sure to drag every last faction I can into this war against the Demonic Cult."