The Revival Of The Heavenly Poison Grove (4)

Night fell. From dusk the clouds had gathered by degrees, and once the sky turned black, rain began to pour in sheets.

Neung Je-gang slipped into the new tunnel Majil had dug. They could not let the watchers learn they were heading for the Eastern Depot.

Go So-jeong followed him into the tunnel, and once both were gone, Majil set the marble floor slab back in place.

Then he resumed practicing the forging of his Fire Blade. At daybreak challengers would flock to him, so he calmed his qi one last time.

Inside the tunnel, Neung Je-gang stretched out and flew onward, floating in the air by means of Reclining Immortal Floating-Cloud.

Behind him, Go So-jeong crawled on all fours.

At first she followed without a word, but soon she grew angry. She had said she would follow behind so her rump wouldn’t be right before his face — how was she to know he had a qinggong like that?

It was truly aggravating.

“Let him smack hard into something,” she wished,

but Neung Je-gang’s whole body was guarded by protective qi; even if he hit anything, he would feel no shock.

“We’re here.”

The tunnel Majil had bored came to its end.

Neung Je-gang lifted the heavy stone that plugged the exit. Raindrops bounced off the hard-qi aura sheathing his body.

He scanned the surroundings. Thankfully, no one was there.

He rolled the stone aside and rose up. Go So-jeong followed, tried to brush the dirt from her arms and legs, then grumbled as the rain soaked her to the skin.

“Hush. Be quiet. At night even small sounds carry far.”

“Who doesn’t know that? With rain like this, it’s fine right now.”

She snapped back.

“Sigh.”

Neung Je-gang inwardly breathed out. He knew she had a prickly temper, but why follow him only to take it out on him?

“Lady Go.”

“What?”

“If you’re going to keep ignoring my instructions, go back. I dislike trouble and fuss. I don’t know why you’re angry, but every little fit like that is an obstacle to me. So let’s part ways. You return to the Martial Alliance, and I’ll go back to Hwaegye Mountain…”

He truly meant to end the affair here. He had never wanted this job. Worry for Je So-yeon waiting at Hwaegye Mountain would not leave his head.

In the midst of that, Go So-jeong’s inexplicable anger and irritation came at him like a heart-devil.

She shrank. She had already experienced at Huaqing Pool what happened when Neung Je-gang truly grew angry. She might be dismissed as decisively as then.

“I’m sorry. I’ll stop. Please forgive me this once.”

Her expression quickly turned contrite; in a small voice, she begged pardon.

Had she stiffened even a little, Neung Je-gang might have found it easy to send her away.

“Sigh. This once only. If I judge you’re in the way again, we part. Understood?”

“Understood.”

In the end, he let himself be swayed by her act — for the last time, he told himself.

“Follow me.”

He launched first, and she followed. In the darkness, the two in black stealth garb vanished without a trace.

Guilin had once even served as the provincial seat of Guangxi; it was a great city, and the local branch here was correspondingly large.

The Eastern Depot compound was not hard to find. Isolated under heavy watch stood the building of the Operatives Bureau — the unit that handled intelligence.

“Strange. What on earth do they have here to justify such tight security?”

A rainy night like this was the best time to infiltrate. Precisely for that reason, the guards seemed even stricter than usual.

Neung Je-gang worried about Go So-jeong. Alone, he could have moved through even the sternest cordon; she did not have the skill to pierce a net like this.

It was a karmic consequence. Because the two of them had stirred up the Eastern Depot in Luoyang, every Depot post across the Central Plains had tightened security.

“With the watch this heavy, can you get through?”

“No. The security here is unusually strict.”

Her confidence faltered. A moment ago he had dented her pride; now Guilin’s Depot dented her pride in martial skill.

“It’s best that you go back.”

That was the conclusion he reached. He had work to do, and he could not abandon it because of her. If he failed to secure information tonight, another chance might not come.

“…All right.”

Aggrieved as she was, she did not argue. If she did now, he would turn from her for good.

Hiding herself in the dark, she returned through the dugout to the inn. She did not hear Majil calling; she went straight to her room, threw herself onto the bed without even changing her wet clothes, and wept as if the world were ending.

For the moment, there was no other way to soothe her wounded pride.

Thanks to that, poor Majil could only fret and pace outside her door, his Fire Blade practice forgotten.

Once he confirmed she had gone back, Neung Je-gang vaulted the branch compound wall. He had reached the realm where he could sense the exact positions of the sentries. Choosing only the blind spots beyond their lines of sight, he drew close to the building and unfolded the illusion art, Hidden Shadows and Extreme Secrecy Method.

A day of darkness and rain was when illusions showed their greatest power.

Amid the downpour, a large raindrop rolled across the ground. No one noticed. The world was water in all directions; one fist-sized drop left no trace within it.

Bouncing inside the Operatives Bureau, the drop sprang up to the ceiling and slipped into the darkness.

Neung Je-gang watched the movements outside. The sentries had not shifted an inch.

There was, fortunately, no one inside. He went down to the basement. As in Luoyang, Eastern Depot Operatives buildings shared much the same layout. The mechanisms installed were practically identical.

Sealing all sound with hard qi, he worked the devices and entered the intelligence store. Darkness posed no obstacle. He sifted through the Depot’s compiled reports one by one.

“As expected, there’s a merchants’ syndicate here as well.”

But there was no note of when or where that group convened.

“That’s likely where the ‘fox’ the Taepyeong Pavilion mistress spoke of will be…”

It was frustrating, but perhaps more digging would turn up data on that matter.

He continued searching other files for what he needed — and then his eyes widened.

“The Heavenly Poison Grove has revived?”

So it stated: the Heavenly Poison Grove, annihilated at Aenoe Mountain in Yunnan — as he had heard from the No-Poison Sect Lord — had re-established itself.

“Then the Black Alliance affair really was orchestrated by the Heavenly Poison Grove? But how could a sect with only a handful of survivors be reborn so quickly?”

Raising even one martial adept was no child’s play. For a destroyed sect with survivors you could count on one hand — annihilation usually meant the base razed, wealth and manuals seized.

Even if the survivors had been experts, a mere decade was far too short to rebuild a sect.

“Someone helped them — provided wealth, manuals, and men.”

Otherwise, the Heavenly Poison Grove’s revival made no sense.

“The prime suspects are the Necromancer Cult and the Black Alliance. Only those two could re-raise the Grove in such short time — or else a union of the two. The Cult has people, and the Black Alliance had the Grove’s arts in its grasp. That fits. Just as in the Martial Alliance, someone inside the Black Alliance has likely allied with the Cult. For now, the Pavilion Lord is the most suspect. A man who trades in information would find it easy to weave a plot.”

He set the thought aside for now.

Nothing was yet certain. The most reliable method would be to seize Escaping Demon Banwon and confirm it all — but if the Cult or someone inside the Alliance stood behind him, Banwon’s life was far from guaranteed.

He examined other files. Even learning of the Grove’s revival was a major gain.

“Then why has the Eastern Depot not alerted the Black Alliance? Or did they alert them, and the Pavilion Lord erased it?”

Circumstances only deepened suspicion of the Pavilion Lord.

“Top Secret — Black Alliance Case. The culprit is thought to be the missing servant; his last known sighting was Seorim. Judging by his route, he likely crossed into Yunnan; request a trace from the Yunnan Depot branch.”

The Eastern Depot was, indeed, the Eastern Depot. They had recorded Banwon’s trail that no one else could find.

He kept reading.

“The servant’s identity has been established. He is Escaping Demon Banwon, Deputy Grove Lord of the Heavenly Poison Grove. The Grove has reappeared at its old base on Aenoe Mountain. Banwon’s trail was last found at Seoknim. His ultimate destination is presumed to be the Heavenly Poison Grove.”

So the Depot had identified him too. He could not tell whether they or the Black Alliance learned it first, but both called him Escaping Demon Banwon — the name was firm.

“Deputy Grove Lord?”

That was unexpected. So high a rank — yet he had spent over a decade as a servant in the enemy’s shadow. Even without meeting him, one could imagine the depth of his ruthless patience.

“Pursuit of the Heavenly Poison Grove at Aenoe Mountain impossible. Seventeen Operatives killed. Cause of death: poisoning. Entire Aenoe Mountain presumed to have been saturated with a virulent toxin. Pursuit of the Heavenly Poison Grove abandoned.”

Even the Depot had given up the chase. If the Eastern Depot had given up, then no one else would learn more of that place.

“Should I go to Aenoe Mountain? But the Hwaegye Mountain matter is urgent…”

It seemed certain the Heavenly Poison Grove formed part of the hand behind this. If the culprit was a Deputy Grove Lord, one could take it as the Grove’s will.

The problem was the Grove’s other backer. If he had to uncover that, he would have to go to Aenoe Mountain and find evidence himself.

“Whom should I tell? Now that the Heavenly Poison Grove has fully revived, the only man I can surely trust is their sworn enemy: the No-Poison Sect Lord. I’ll consult him first. If merely informing him of the revival satisfies him, I’ll return to Hwaegye Mountain. If not, I’ll have to head for Aenoe Mountain…”

Having decided thus, he reviewed the remaining files.

But nothing else he needed appeared.