Chapter 9. First Experience
Dong Bong-su stepped into the opened hole and took one step forward. Now he was no longer in Machil's room, but standing in the room next to it. With that, he had completely slipped off the list of suspects. With just a single step.
It was already a situation where the incident would be concluded as Machil and Choseon's suicide anyway, but even if someone suspected they had been murdered, they would not be able to find the culprit.
Soon.
Thud -.
That room would become a sealed room.
With a light sound, a wooden pillar appeared again in the hole that had been empty. This technique is not actually that simple. Pulling the pillar out wasn't much of a problem since it wasn't like there was glue smeared between the pillars, but putting it back in required quite a sophisticated "inventory control."
Because when taking it out of the inventory, it had to be pulled out in a single try, aligned to fit every joint. For that, Dong Bong-su had honed a meticulous method of using the inventory over the past few months. He could be sure of it. That this inventory would be of infinite help to him going forward.
This was no more than his "first experience."
Now there would be no way for anyone to know exactly how Machil and Choseon died. Whether it was a sealed-room suicide or a sealed-room murder, it didn't matter which.
There are only the dead, and no killer. Whether the murderer is oneself or another, that is.
Dong Bong-su went to the center of the room and sat down.
He had just confirmed yet another rule of Murim Online.
People are experience points. It still wasn't perfect, but there was no denying they were experience points.
If experience points pile up, you can level up. If you level up, you get stronger. If you get stronger, you can hunt more easily. If hunting becomes easier, you can accumulate experience points faster.
If experience points pile up.....
An infinite "virtuous cycle" occurs. Of course, for someone else it would become an infinite "vicious cycle."
With that, a new motive for murder was bestowed upon Dong Bong-su.
Rrrk.
Soon, the door opened and a woman with a sensual figure, Aeng-aeng, entered the room with a lavish spread of food. This was something Dong Bong-su had ordered to buy time so he could deal with Machil.
Warm steam rose in wisps from the dishes.
The sight was as if.
It looked like it was celebrating a murderer's adaptation.
***
The festival began.
"Ahhhk!"
Dong Bong-su's hips moved quickly. In time with that motion, Aeng-aeng's hips rippled like waves, and her moans heated the room in a sticky way.
Dong Bong-su's s*x technique—what they called here the bedchamber arts—was truly flawless. When it came to sex, this place, murim, had no way of keeping up with modern Earth. Dong Bong-su was an expert in every skill needed for murder.
She didn't know it, but Aeng-aeng was lucky today. She had dodged the fate of death, and she was seeing paradise while still alive—what greater fortune could there be?
Dong Bong-su's hips twisted strangely, pounding Aeng-aeng's pleasure point like a storm.
"Hngh!"
Aeng-aeng convulsed, feeling an orgasm she would never experience again in her life.
But if Aeng-aeng had turned her head right now and looked into Dong Bong-su's eyes, the heat that had climbed over her body would have gone cold in an instant.
Dong Bong-su's eyes were calm. Low and still and lewd, like the surface of the Sanzu River said to be crossed by the dead.
As if even the sky was startled by that chilling sight, thunder suddenly crashed.
KWA-KWA-KWANG!
Then the rain poured down.
Today was the first day since Dong Bong-su came here that he committed murder and had sex.
The sky, too, was crying out of fear at that "horrific adaptation."
***
New Murim Online Rule #2 : Dong Bong-su can put into his inventory any object that is in direct contact with any part of his body.(However, its size must be smaller than the inventory, and it must not be a living creature.)
New Murim Online Rule #3: Insects and animals (this is not certain yet. Further experiments on animals other than rats are needed) have no experience points, and killing humans increases experience points.(Verification needed for differences based on strength and weakness.)
***
Anhui Province.
In the north flows the Huai River, and in the central region the Yangtze River flows east, forming a vast pastoral belt. Along the shores of these two rivers, humid regions surrounded by marshes and ponds are widely distributed, flaunting the fertility of the land. The symbols of it were the pride of the Central Plains, the North China Plain and Chaohu.
Since ancient times, thanks to the exchange between rich, fertile land, great rivers, and lakes, commerce and trade developed in this land. Geographically it was also advantageous for business, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces to the east, Shandong to the north, and Hubei and Henan Provinces to the west.
Naturally, goods from all over the nation gathered here, and money flowed in.
Just as flies swarm where there is a foul stench, where the smell of money is strong, thieves or ruffians from heterodox sects inevitably gather.
And in Anhui Province, many sects also emerged to drive them back and uphold the chivalrous code of the martial world.
Among them, the most representative sect was the Namgung Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains, located in Hefei. The Namgung Family was by far the foremost even among the Five Great Families. Since they opened their gates, Anhui Province had not been ravaged even once by bands of the unorthodox or demonic path.
Imperial King Sword Form, Vast Firmament Boundless Sword Art, Great Swallow Sword Art, Flash Lightning Thirteen Sword Thunders, Heavenly Wind Sword Art, Heavenly Thunder Imperial King Divine Art, Vast Firmament Great Swallow Divine Art, Heavenly Thunder Energy, Heavenly Thunder Three Palms, Heavenly Wind Palm Force, Great Vast Firmament Boundless Sword Formation.....
Even merely listing their names was enough to make members of heterodox factions tremble—armed with such martial arts, the Namgung Family stood alone as the lofty, Anhui's greatest sect.
The Namgung Family's prestige was so overwhelming that other sects in Anhui Province were as insignificant as fireflies before the moon, but still, there were sects in each county and city.
Among the many sects, there was also the Danri Family. Though it couldn't be compared to the Namgung Family, within Bongyang it was the greatest family. Otherwise, how could a saying have arisen in Bongyang that anyone with the surname Danri rides in a four-horse carriage even after death?
Within the Danri Family, there was the Black Five Group as an intelligence and law-enforcement organization, and the Cross Heavenly Sword Group as the family's specialized combat force. All of them had mastered the family's secret martial arts, the Flying Heaven Sword Art and Dancheon Flying Sword Technique, and their fame within Anhui Province was quite considerable.
In particular, the Black Five Group's information-gathering ability was unparalleled. To what extent? Even the beggars of the Beggars' Sect, who would feel wronged if called second best in information, had to concede a step to the Danri Family's Black Five Group—at least within Bongyang City.
However, right now, that very Black Five Group was getting a headache because of a recent incident.
***
The Suicide Plague.
That was the phrase spreading among people these days, saying that suicides were going around in Bongyang like a plague.
In just the past month, as many as over two hundred people committed suicide.
How abnormal a phenomenon is that?
There had been suicides before, but not this many. At most, one or two a month.
Even if two hundred murders occurred in a month, it would be a huge disaster that would turn everything upside down, but since there were two hundred suicides, it was no ordinary matter for a mid-sized city like Bongyang.
Naturally, the city's residents were shaken.
That a ghost was secretly killing people and disguising it as suicide, that horsehair worms were making not only insects but humans commit suicide, that a real suicide plague had broken out.
Other hypotheses, too, were circulating as rumors.
No matter which of the many rumors was true, the atmosphere was equally ominous.
Among them, there was one hypothesis the authorities took notice of.
It was the theory that a heterodox sect had entered Bongyang.
That some terrifying unorthodox group unknown to murim had recently come into Bongyang and was causing this.
The reason this gained persuasive power was simple.
Murim has always been an existence that built walls with ordinary people and the authorities. In the eyes of ordinary people, they were people of an "outside world"—citizens of the nation, yet in some sense not citizens.
People who fly through the sky, use qi-based movement techniques, and split mountains and rivers. If such things are possible, how could it be impossible for them to secretly kill people without anyone knowing? Moreover, among them, those of the unorthodox path kill people and suck out their liver and brain, or their vital essence, to cultivate inner power. None of the discovered corpses were like that, but who could say it was a new method of cultivating internal power?
However,
Bongyang City's inspector was not a murim person. If this hypothesis was correct, there was no way for him to ferret them out, nor any way to catch them.
Of course, the authorities also had masters. But most of them belonged to the imperial court, and in principle they would not come all the way to help a small city like this.
In the end, the inspector reached the point of requesting help from murim sects. The counterpart was, naturally, the Danri Family.
The Danri Family's head, the Flying Heaven Beautiful Sword Danri Cheon-u, willingly accepted the request from the authorities, living in a symbiotic relationship with them. It wasn't something that happened often, but it did happen from time to time.
And each time, the Black Five Group would step in and resolve it splendidly.
But.....
***
The leader of the Black Five Group, Gi Dae-hyo, was bewildered. By Danri Cheon-u's order, he had no choice but to begin an investigation into the "Suicide Plague," but he simply couldn't grasp its true nature.
'It's definitely strange somewhere....'
But that was the end of it. There were only over a hundred cases with nothing but evidence of suicide—no circumstances whatsoever that could be seen as murder.
What made him think these cases were strange was that, although the scene clearly said "suicide," it still didn't look easy to assert it was suicide.
A significant number of the suicides were people who had reasons to commit suicide. Life was hard, they were abandoned by a lover, they couldn't endure their parents' abuse. Suicides like these were understandable.
But the problem was that there were many people who weren't like that. People who had lived happily, satisfied with their lot their whole lives, suddenly committing suicide overnight?
Gi Dae-hyo found it hard to understand.
Does suicide necessarily have to have a reason? If you ask that, maybe it doesn't...but still...
'It doesn't sit right.'
He was someone who had experienced everything in murim—mountain battles, water battles, sea battles, even dog fights.
His sense of smell was strongly insisting that these cases reeked of something foul.
"Who was the first one to die?"
Gi Dae-hyo decided to trace it from the very beginning.
To his question, Gi Man-ji, the vice-leader of the Black Five Group and his son, answered.
"Machil and Choseon—our family's sickly servant and a young woman."