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

Chapter 309: God (3)

In a massive estate somewhere within the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's main headquarters, a peculiar scene was unfolding.

In stark contrast to its location in Xinjiang, a wildly diverse crowd of different races had been herded together for a tutoring session that looked more like a kindergarten classroom.

"River (川). Look at the picture! Doesn't it look like a stream flowing?"

Handpicked instructors from the Grand Teacher's office were teaching them Chinese characters and the Central Plains language. Some of the gathered students wore expressions of understanding.

"Heh?"

Others stared blankly with completely confused reactions.

Three months had passed since Il-mok first brought the slaves to the main headquarters.

To say their learning speeds were "inconsistent" would be an understatement.

Those with poor comprehension and memory were progressing no faster than children learning the Thousand Character Classic for the first time. Some had even started over from scratch alongside the newly arrived slaves.

Learning characters imbued with meaning when you couldn't even speak the language was an enormously difficult task, so it couldn't be helped.

On the other hand, there were a few who showed a genuine talent for learning foreign languages.

"River. It means River. Look at the shape of that character. Doesn't it look like water flowing?"

James, the fastest learner of the bunch, had already completely memorized the Thousand Character Classic in just three short months.

Thanks to his exceptional comprehension, he'd been given the role of a teaching assistant and helped the instructors educate the other slaves.

The instructors watched James diligently teaching the slaves with satisfied expressions.

"That fellow's really something, isn't he?"

"No kidding. Without him, I can't imagine how much we'd have suffered trying to teach this lot."

"You probably would've snapped again by tomorrow. Hahaha."

"Then shouldn't you step in and stop me? Oh, wait! Your martial arts are worse than mine, so I guess you couldn't handle it."

"...Want to settle this today? Seems like there are parts of your head you're not using correctly. I'd be doing you a favor by lopping off a third of it."

James actually let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the two instructors on the verge of going berserk.

It had nothing to do with their impending rampage.

'They've acknowledged my usefulness. Phew. I won't be on the chopping block for a human sacrifice anytime soon.'

James was terrified.

The moment he was deemed useless, he was certain these devil worshippers would offer him up as a human sacrifice.

But his dedication to teaching wasn't purely about self-preservation.

"Please, I'm begging you, study harder! If you guys don't learn this, they're going to use you for a human sacrifice!!"

Maybe it was the sheer trauma of surviving the last few months together, but James really wanted the rest of the slaves to make it out alive too. After finishing his frantic lecture to the white Westerners, James cast a helpless, pitying look at the black and nomadic slaves.

Since he couldn't speak their languages fluently, there was barely anything he could do to help them. The only reason he could even manage basic communication through wild hand gestures and pantomiming was because of his sheer linguistic talent.

To make matters worse, about a month ago, seventy women and children had joined them, dramatically swelling the nomad population.

James was gazing sympathetically at the women and children newly captured by the devil worshippers when a strange sight caught his eye.

The Demon King's brother and Head Instructor.

Jong-ri Chu.

The downright insane young man had completely lost his mind and started seeing ghosts on the very first day of class.

That exact man was now having a full-blown conversation with the nomads in their own language, a language even James struggled to decipher.

Jong-ri Chu was explaining the meaning of Chinese characters in the nomadic tongue. The only flaw was his slightly awkward pronunciation.

'W-wait, did he know how to speak their language this whole time?'

If so, why had he been playing dumb until now?

While James was racking his brain over this, Jong-ri Chu wrapped up his lecture and strolled over to him.

"Hahaha. You've been working hard."

James offered one of the polite phrases he'd heard frequently during his time here.

"I only did. What I was supposed to."

His pronunciation was still quite awkward, but he managed the courtesy. Then he slipped in a question.

"But. You knew their language?"

"Hahaha. Not at all. Some friends I made recently taught me."

"Friends?"

When James looked puzzled, Jong-ri Chu smiled with a dreamy look on his face and glanced around.

At the empty air where no one stood.

"Spending so much time with them must have rubbed off on me; I've made quite a few nomad friends lately."

"......"

"Hahaha. Don't worry. Thanks to all of you, I've made several Western friends too."

After chatting with the empty space with a smile, Jong-ri Chu turned to face the speechless James.

"By the way. What does 'human sacrifice' mean? I understood most of what you said, but that's a term I've never heard before."

Faced with Jong-ri Chu’s completely innocent smile and genuine curiosity, a torrent of cold sweat ran down James's spine.

* * *

Around the time James was trembling with fear.

Lanzhou, Gansu Province.

Il-mok was handing Jeong Hyeon the completed bow and arrows.

"Congratulations, Miss Jeong."

Il-mok offered the bow with a light smile, but Jeong Hyeon's reaction was strangely hesitant and uneasy.

"Y-Young Master. Wh-what is that?"

"Hahaha. Can't you tell? It's a bow."

"...For a bow, it s-seems far too large, Young Master."

Jeong Hyeon stared at the bow Il-mok was holding out with both hands.

With only the slightest exaggeration, it was nearly as tall as she was.

"Hahaha. I wanted to preserve as much of the mountain goat's horn as possible, so I suppose it turned out a bit bigger than I planned. Why don't you try drawing it?"

Hearing Il-mok's casual explanation, a certain memory suddenly clicked in Jeong Hyeon's head.

'...So that's why he said it was a good thing I'm tall for a woman.'

And here she had secretly hoped he was talking about his personal type. Flushing with embarrassment, Jeong Hyeon immediately shook her head back and forth to snap out of it.

To clear her mind of useless ideas, she awkwardly accepted the bow and tried pulling the string.

Creeeak.

The tension was immense. Jeong Hyeon realized immediately that drawing it to full with muscle alone was impossible.

When she channeled internal energy from her dantian and pulled the string all the way back, Il-mok nodded with satisfaction.

"Impressive, isn't it? That’s the power of a Spirit Beast's horns and tendons for you. I'm told ordinary wood couldn't withstand the force, so they used a special timber called Vajra Wood for the frame."

Hearing Il-mok's explanation, Jeong Hyeon released the bowstring she'd been holding with internal energy.

THWAAANG!

She'd only let go of the string, but a vicious ear-piercing snap echoed through the air like a giant whip tearing through space.

Jeong Hyeon stared down at the weapon in her hands with an absolutely baffled expression before slowly turning her head to Il-mok.

"Y-Young Master."

"Yes, Miss Jeong?"

"I appreciate the gift, but I c-can't shoot arrows with a bow like this. It's t-too big and powerful. N-nocking an arrow would be difficult enough, and the arrow would p-probably snap b-before it even left the bow."

"Ah, don't worry about that. The craftsman actually thought of that too."

Il-mok unslung a tube from his shoulder and held it out.

She had been wondering why Il-mok was carrying around a quiver stuffed with short spears.

It turned out that those things she thought were short spears were actually meant to be her arrows.

(TL Note: What the fuck, Il-mok? Are you trying to hunt a dragon?!)

A bow that was ridiculously larger and boasted an absurd amount of power compared to her old one, paired with arrows that were straight-up absurd in size.

Staring at this freakish combination of weaponry, Jeong Hyeon couldn't help but feel a bizarre sense of déjà vu.

She had definitely seen a bow and arrow setup like this somewhere before.

'...It's a ballista.'

A weapon of war used by the military since ancient times.

A mechanical crossbow that required multiple grown men to draw the string.

And now Il-mok had prepared one for a single person to carry and shoot.

"Didn't you tell me before, Miss Jeong? You said you didn't feel like your firepower was increasing even though your martial realm went up. That's exactly why I had this made for you."

Jeong Hyeon’s dumbfounded expression melted away, replaced by an inexplicable wave of warmth and relief.

'H-he actually remembered my worries and kept them in mind all this time.'

It was a weapon that defied common sense, but she accepted it soon enough.

At the end of the day, as long as she pumped it full of internal energy, she could draw the string. And just like Il-mok said, if she could draw and fire it, the power and speed would be several times greater than her old bow.

"I-I'll do my very best to be of h-help to you, Young Master!"

"Hahaha. I'm counting on you, Miss Jeong."

Blushing furiously at his praise, she gathered up the giant bow and her spear-sized arrows and politely excused herself.

And the next day, they were on the road heading north out of Lanzhou to resume their journey.

Jeong Hyeon belatedly realized the bow's most critical drawback.

"I've never seen a bow that big."

"Heh. I wonder if she can even shoot that thing."

The absurdly oversized bow strapped to her back made her impossible to miss.

It was the fact that walking around with a ballista strapped to her back made her stick out like a sore thumb.

'E-everyone keeps staring at me because of this bow...'

Her face burning bright red, she ducked her head. She wanted nothing more than to hurl the bow into the nearest ditch, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

It was Il-mok's gift for her, after all.

'I-I need to hide somewhere... anywhere...'

She looked around at the nearby carriages and quickly despaired.

The bow was so ridiculously huge that she couldn't even squeeze through the carriages’ doors.

* * *

Thanks to Il-mok's repeated journeys from Gansu to the Western Regions, the name of the Maitreya Luminous Cult began to spread little by little among the nomadic tribes of the grasslands.

"Did you just say there are merchants freely moving between the Central Plains and the Western Regions?"

And those rumors traveled through the grasslands near the Central Plains until they reached a certain massive tribe based north of the Tianshan Mountain Range.

"That is correct, my Khagan. We have received word that they depart from a region in the Central Plains known as Gansu and skirt the eastern edges of the Tianshan Mountain Range."

Taragai, the Khagan of the Oirat Tribe, mused aloud while looking down at the subordinate kneeling before him.

"How curious. How is it that merchants using the north to travel to the Western Regions haven't offered us a single tribute?"

The man hastily bowed his head at Taragai's question.

"I-I was unable to determine that much."

Whether from fear of Taragai or simple nervousness, the man swallowed dryly.

Taragai looked down at him and smirked. "Think nothing of it."

It was a light laugh, but one that carried the scent of blood.

"We're constantly pushing our borders to the east as it is. We can just hunt those merchants down along the way."

As Taragai said, they had been steadily pushing their territory eastward.

Because there were no other options.

Going further north was out of the question. Aside from the absolute peak of summer, the frozen tundras above were completely uninhabitable for humans.

The west was a dead end too. With Islam spreading fast, the Western Regions were rapidly devolving into a literal hornet's nest of religious fanatics.

To the south lay the impenetrable wall of the Tianshan Mountain Range, and that wall was occupied by zealots every bit as fanatical as the Muslims.

And above all else,

'West or south, any victory there would be pyrrhic at best.'

Both regions were just as harsh and barren as the Oirat tribe's own territory.

Taragai, Khagan of the Oirat Tribe and the Great Baatar of the Steppes, had a clear objective.

Expand east and subjugate as many tribes as possible.

Then harness the combined strength of every tribe to invade the land called "the Central Plains."

'I will seize that land, no matter what.'

Unlike this brutal land, that place was said to be a land of abundance where rice and fruit grew in plenty.

"Hehehe. The money from these Central Plains merchants will be just the thing to fill our warriors' bellies."

In the eyes of the predator who dreamed of conquering the Central Plains, the flames of greed burned bright.