The Regressed Sword Demon Changes the Future

The distance from Gangjeong County to Mount Qingcheng was considerable.

If one were to ride a carriage or a horse, it would be a different story, but if one were to walk normally, it would take a good ten days even if one walked all day.

But if one used lightness skill, the story changed.

If one used lightness skill, one could ignore the general official roads and run, ignoring forests, cliffs, or mountains.

That's why, for the masters of the martial world, the travel time could be drastically shortened.

But.

"…Aren't you using lightness skill?"

"…I'd like to, but…"

Saying so, Cheongmu looked at Ju Yeongchan, who was walking leisurely behind him.

"It seems that Senior Uncle is uncomfortable with using lightness skill for a long time because of his age…"

Jang Baekseo looked back at Ju Yeongchan, who was still walking leisurely, with a dumbfounded look.

'What kind of person is that?'

Jang Baekseo's party had not been walking so leisurely from the beginning.

Although they had been considerate of Jang Baekseo, who was still at the second-rate level, when they first left the sect, they had definitely been running while using lightness skill properly.

Of course, they had set out on their journey with plenty of time in case of an unforeseen situation.

The time they were effective as bait was only before the Qingcheng branch meeting began!

Grandmaster Gwangha had wanted to find out the identity of the third power somehow before the Qingcheng branch meeting began.

Most of the sects belonging to the branch would come to Qingcheng before the branch meeting began, at the earliest, more than ten days before, and at the latest, three days before, and wait for the branch meeting.

That's why Jang Baekseo's party had also decided to go to Qingcheng at that time and wait for the third power to approach them.

It was a natural story, but the sooner they went, the longer the third power would have to try to make contact.

'…But that old man…'

But what was the point of getting angry?

In this situation, the generation was the gangster and the truth.

If Ju Yeongchan, who was leading the party, wanted to go at that speed, there was nothing they could say.

As Jang Baekseo was thinking that, a person stealthily approached him from the side.

"Baekseo~"

"Senior Uncle Cheongdo…"

The identity of the approaching person was Cheongdo.

Cheongdo, who was a junior brother to Cheongmu and a senior brother to Cheong Yeonah, was not as good as the two, but he was considered quite promising among the disciples of the second generation.

The peak realm at the age of the early twenties was by no means a level to be taken lightly.

'Of course, I reached the peak before I was twenty.'

Jang Baekseo, who was burning with a sense of rivalry in his heart, asked with his eyes what business he had to talk to him.

Cheongdo, who had read Jang Baekseo's eyes, continued.

"This brat, I knew his skills had improved recently, but I didn't know he had grown this much."

Saying so, Cheongdo glanced at Cheongmu.

"Senior Brother could have boasted about this a little more specifically~"

Jang Baekseo thought about why Cheongdo was suddenly being so friendly, and then concluded that it was because they had been running together using lightness skill.

Although they were walking leisurely now, until before, the party had been running continuously while deploying lightness skill at a considerable speed.

Of course, since Jang Baekseo, who was still only at the second-rate level, was included, they had to deploy lightness skill at a speed that matched Jang Baekseo's speed. That's why, except for Cheongmu, all the other people had expected to be running at a fairly leisurely speed.

But what was this?

Jang Baekseo's lightness skill speed was faster than they had imagined.

Ju Yeongchan and Cheongdo, who had already been surprised by the fact that Jang Baekseo had reached the second-rate level at such a young age while they were on the road together, had to be surprised once more here.

In addition to that, Ju Yeongchan and Cheongdo, who had thought that he would get tired quickly if he ran this fast, had to be greatly surprised once more when Jang Baekseo did not even show a tired expression even after running at the same speed for a day and a half.

And in the end, Ju Yeongchan had raised the white flag first.

Of course, no matter how old Ju Yeongchan was, he was still a master who had reached the peak realm.

He was not really getting tired or running out of internal energy before Jang Baekseo.

In the end, the problem was fatigue.

No matter how much internal energy one had and how much one's body was trained, as one got older, one's resistance to fatigue was bound to weaken.

For Ju Yeongchan, who was now more accustomed to sitting down and looking at documents than moving his body vigorously as a great elder of Mysterious Profound Sect, it was quite a tiring thing to deploy lightness skill and run without rest, even if it was only for half a day.

Jang Baekseo, who was dealing with Cheongdo, who was showing his favor to him, appropriately, thought.

'It's a good thing. Since I'm out like this, it would be good to get some information in advance.'

***

About two days after the journey began, Jang Baekseo's party was able to arrive at Yaan County.

They could have arrived much earlier if Ju Yeongchan hadn't whined, but no one could argue with Ju Yeongchan, who had the highest generation in the party.

The party, which had arrived at Yaan County, hurriedly entered an inn and finished their meal.

After finishing his meal, Cheongmu was about to go straight to his room to relieve his travel fatigue, but he was caught by Cheong Yeonah and Cheongdo, who were already drinking from a bottle of alcohol, so he had a troubled expression.

Cheongmu, who was trying to soothe the two and send them to their rooms, had no choice but to do so when his senior uncle, Ju Yeongchan, also joined in and said to drink together.

While the other people were drinking themselves into a stupor at the inn, Jang Baekseo hurriedly left a message saying that he would go in first and sleep, and entered his room.

Fortunately, since he had gotten a room for one person, Jang Baekseo was able to do the 'work' he was about to do without worrying about others' eyes.

Jang Baekseo, who had returned to his room, rummaged through his luggage and changed his clothes.

The clothes he was wearing now were the martial robes of Mysterious Profound Sect, so his identity could be guessed just from his clothes.

That's why he had prepared a black robe with no special features in advance so that his identity could not be guessed from his clothes.

Jang Baekseo, who had changed his clothes, covered his face with a black cloth and slipped out through the window without a sound or a presence.

***

The night in Yaan was quite noisy.

Although it was not as prosperous as Chengdu, since it was a city built on the great official road of Sichuan, there was a lot of floating population, and as such, there were many people on the night streets.

Jang Baekseo passed them without a sound and entered the alleys of Yaan County.

Jang Baekseo, who was walking through the winding, ant-like alleys as if he were familiar with them, checked his memory several times to see if he was going to 'that' place, which he had never been to in person… but had only seen in records, correctly.

And fortunately, Jang Baekseo was able to arrive at the place he wanted without getting lost.

The place he arrived at was a dead end.

In that place, where there was no more road due to various buildings and walls, Jang Baekseo found a wall with a small pattern drawn on it.

Looking at the pattern, which would have looked like a graffiti that was usually drawn in a deserted alley to someone who didn't know, Jang Baekseo was convinced that he had arrived at the place he was looking for correctly.

Jang Baekseo knocked on the wall where the pattern was drawn with a small 'knock knock'.

There was no answer or any reaction.

But there was no agitation or bewilderment on Jang Baekseo's face.

Caw!

A crow's cry was heard from somewhere, and a crow flew up from the wall that Jang Baekseo had knocked on and flew away to the western sky.

Seeing the crow, Jang Baekseo approached the building in the direction the crow had flown.

And he said to the building from which the crow had flown.

"Since the white swan has flown away, it will need a place to rest."

And at the same time as Jang Baekseo finished his words…

"Since the white swan has flown in Sichuan, Qingcheng will command Qinghai."

"Since Kunlun is there, the peace of Sichuan is guaranteed."

An answer was heard from the building with no windows, and at that strange remark, Jang Baekseo answered with an incomprehensible strange remark.

Then…

Rumble!

A part of the wall of the wooden building, which had no door, rotated and became a door.

'Ho ho, this is quite interesting.'

The one who greeted Jang Baekseo, who had entered through the revolving door, was a beautiful woman with a seductive attire that revealed her figure and a strong smell of powder.

The woman with a decadent atmosphere, whose chest was mostly exposed, bowed her head briefly to Jang Baekseo.

"Jeokhong greets the esteemed guest."

"…It seems I've come to the right place."

Jang Baekseo, who had changed his physique and voice with the Bone Shrinking Art in advance, was making a creepy, grating sound like when he had dealt with Jeongpung before.

But the woman who had introduced herself as Jeokhong did not show any fear or agitation against such a Jang Baekseo.

'I see. As expected of a person of the Black Dot, they have some guts.'

The place where Jang Baekseo was currently was the Sichuan Yaan branch of the Black Dot, a secret group that dealt with various secret information of the Central Plains martial world.

There were two famous information groups in the Central Plains martial world. The first was the Beggars' Sect, which was in charge of one of the Nine Great Sects, and the other was the Hao Mun, a group of the lower class of the underworld.

Although they were two groups that would be sad if they were second in terms of information, the quality of the information that the current Jang Baekseo could obtain from those two groups was not that good. To be precise, those two groups did not sell high-quality information to just anyone.

The Beggars' Sect, of course, would trade high-quality information with a prestigious sect or person of the same Orthodox Faction, and the Hao Mun would also trade high-quality information with a powerful sect or person of the Unorthodox Faction, or a famous wanderer.

In other words, it was not a place where Jang Baekseo, a disciple of the small to medium-sized sect Mysterious Profound Sect, which had no prestige or anything, could obtain proper information.

That's why the place Jang Baekseo had chosen was the Black Dot.

The Black Dot had the disadvantage that the quantity and quality of its information were a little lower than those two, but it had the advantage that it would sell high-quality information to anyone as long as the price was paid.

Of course, one might have a question here as to how Jang Baekseo knew the location of the Black Dot in Yaan.

After his regression, it was natural, but even if you looked at Jang Baekseo's life before his regression, there seemed to be no point of contact with the Black Dot at first glance.

But that was not the case.

Of course, in his life before his regression, Jang Baekseo had no point of contact with the Black Dot until he pledged himself to the Demonic Cult.

But after he pledged himself to the Demonic Cult, it was different.

The Demonic Cult, which had conquered Sichuan, had tried to sweep through the Central Plains, but had to stop its advance due to the interference of the martial world of the world, which had gathered late. Then what did the Demonic Cult, which had stopped its advance, do?

It was simple. They focused on stabilizing the occupied territories.

And the existence that had been a hindrance to that stability until the end was the forces of the Black Path, and among them was the Black Dot.

When the Demonic Cult first occupied Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan, the Black Path and Unorthodox Factions that existed there had cheered.

Since the place they were in had become the territory of the Demonic Path, they had dreamed that they could now walk the streets with their chests held high, unlike in the days of the Orthodox Faction's territory.

But it didn't take long for their dreams to be shattered.

Because the first thing the Demonic Cult had done to stabilize the occupied territories was to wipe out the forces of such Unorthodox and Black Path.

Unlike the small to medium-sized sects of the Orthodox Faction, which they had tried to persuade by urging them to surrender several times, the Demonic Cult was merciless against them.

And Jang Baekseo had also been deployed there.

As they wiped out the Black Path and Unorthodox Factions that had been sucking the marrow out of the residents in one fell swoop, the trust in the Demonic Cult within the occupied territories soared to the sky.

The story got a little long, but to put it simply, thanks to that experience, Jang Baekseo knew the location of each Black Dot in the major cities of Sichuan and their contact codes.

Jeokhong calmly guided Jang Baekseo to the inside of the building.

While walking through the building, Jang Baekseo counted the number of martial artists who were ambushed in this building.

'8… 9… 11 people… the number is smaller than I thought. The Black Dots I went to before my regression, although not this Yaan branch, had at least 20 people ambushed…'

There was a part he could guess.

The time when Jang Baekseo had attacked the Black Dot was when the Demonic Cult's Black Path hunt was at its peak.

As a result, the surviving remnants from the other Black Dots that had already been attacked had gathered at each Black Dot, and as a result, the number was greater than now.

Jang Baekseo passed this matter over as if it were nothing.

That was because…

'Well, whether it's 20 people or 11 people, the time it takes to kill them is not much different.'

(End of Chapter)