Chapter 109

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'Young Master Baek.'

The voice of that man calling his name had something strangely sticky and unpleasant about it. Although Cheong-ra tried to faithfully follow his master's order not to judge people by their appearance, he still found Yeon Jeok-san uncomfortable from the beginning.

It wasn't that Yeon Jeok-san had done anything strange to Cheong-ra from the start. Rather, when they first met, he was a man with an almost rustic purity about him.

Moon Lake Sect often held friendly competitions and exchanges with various sects to provide their disciples with diverse sparring experiences and improve their skills. Yeon Jeok-san was someone Cheong-ra had met in Hubei as part of such a martial arts exchange. At that time, Cheong-ra was fourteen, and Yeon Jeok-san was twenty.

Back then, Yeon Jeok-san was the martial artist who came out as Cheong-ra's opponent. With unkempt hair and shabby martial arts uniform, he looked as if he had dressed hastily, not out of poverty but as a typical martial artist focused solely on training. Even then, Yeon Jeok-san had already gained the reputation of Thousand Forms Sword, said to possess a thousand forms of sword techniques.

At that time, Cheong-ra had managed to defeat Yeon Jeok-san by a narrow margin. Yeon Jeok-san seemed quite shocked to have lost to someone six years younger and of a lower rank. And for some reason, whatever impression he got from Cheong-ra then, he left Hubei abruptly a year later and came to Chang'an.

When they met again in Chang'an, Cheong-ra didn't recognize Yeon Jeok-san. His appearance had completely changed from before. The unkempt hair and shabby martial arts uniform were gone, replaced by neatly combed hair and clean new clothes.

'Young Master Baek! Oh, it's been a while. Do you recognize me? It's me, Yeon Jeok-san.'

Until then, Cheong-ra's impression of Yeon Jeok-san had been one of mild favorability. His appearance, which had been hidden by his unkempt hair, was quite handsome. Moreover, for a while, he acted like a normal visitor to Chang'an, maintaining seemingly normal interactions.

He seemed strangely anxious and fearful, yet oddly overly excited. As he continued to interact with Cheong-ra, he tried hard to imitate Cheong-ra's attire and behavior. Later, even Ju Mu-gwang expressed his discomfort.

'Cheong-ra. That guy feels strange somehow. It would be better not to get close to him.'

As Ju Mu-gwang's intuition was usually good, Cheong-ra tried to follow his friend's advice. However, by then, Yeon Jeok-san's obsession had already exceeded expectations.

He followed and imitated everything Cheong-ra did, and then started sending animals strangled with ropes and strange love letters...

'It wouldn't be surprising if he collaborated with the Blood Cult.'

As Cheong-ra was thinking this, he suddenly opened his eyes. Blinking, he looked up at an unfamiliar ceiling and abruptly sat up.

"What is this..."

Confused, he looked around. The place where he had been lying was a spacious room that looked like a bedroom. When he parted the red curtains hanging from the bed posts, not a single piece of furniture was familiar. It meant he was in a completely unfamiliar place. Cheong-ra checked his last memory and put his hand to his forehead with a sigh.

"Ah...! This is why they say not to eat anything given by those Tang Clan people."

He had said there was no need to worry about Yeon Jeok-san, and to get some good sleep, but now it was clear those words were all part of this plan. This was already the second time he had fallen victim to Dang Ran-yeong's poison.

Was Dang Ran-yeong planning to do something with him one last time before ending their deal? Even so, wasn't poisoning him every time going too far?

He hadn't eaten the tea and snacks given by the Blood Cult members, but the tea and snacks he had drunk without worry contained poison. Lamenting his situation, Cheong-ra first surveyed his surroundings.

The place where he had been lying was a fairly spacious bedroom. A bed with red silk curtains, a dressing table with a large copper mirror, elegant furniture, and various other decorations. Every single item scattered around was luxurious and splendid, each seeming to be worth a fortune.

After admiring and examining the items for a while, Cheong-ra suddenly came to his senses. This wasn't the time to be admiring furniture. He jumped up from his seat and strode to open the bedroom door, only to be dumbfounded once again.

"No, these clothes..."

Dozens of silk outfits that Dang Ran-yeong had bought along with the clothes made for the Phoenix-Qilin-Iris-Orchid Contest were hanging everywhere. He had thought they were for use elsewhere since they weren't made for him, but that elsewhere turned out to be here. Come to think of it, the furniture also looked familiar. They seemed to be the items the servants had been busily carrying.

By this point, Cheong-ra began to realize that the situation was not normal. He passed through the dressing room and opened the door with somewhat urgent hands. This time, a tea room appeared. Anxiously opening the tea room door, he found the inner chamber. Opening the inner chamber door with great tension, he finally saw the outside. Cheong-ra's face, which was about to brighten, hardened again.

"Where on earth is this...?"

A splendid garden full of exotic flowers and plants, and beyond the walls, a majestic mountain landscape that looked like a painting. It was a beautiful scene as if he had entered a paradise, but at the same time, it gave him a strong sense of dissonance. Was there such a place in Beijing?

Cheong-ra urgently jumped over the villa's wall to determine his exact location. However, the next moment, what unfolded before his eyes was the familiar garden. He jumped over the wall once more, but he was still standing in the garden. There was only one explanation for this strange phenomenon.

He was trapped in a formation, something he had experienced once before at Dang Ran-yeong's mansion.

Cheong-ra had studied formations before. However, he only understood the concept of the Ten Linked Formation, not enough to know how to break out of a formation like this. Not just Cheong-ra, but most martial artists don't know much about formations. There was a reason why formation masters existed separately.

'Formations are difficult to set up and expensive, so they're usually only found in important buildings of sects.'

The landscape beyond those walls must surely be an illusion, not real. Formations were designed to deceive all five senses, including sight and hearing. They also serve to prevent intrusion from the outside and escape from the inside. In this case, it was clearly the latter.

Cheong-ra gave up on crossing the wall again. Even if he was lucky enough to find the life gate and get out, formations weren't like mazes where you could escape by feeling your way along the walls. If unlucky, he could fall into a death gate and die, or end up in a state worse than death.

Instead, he decided to examine the structure of the villa where he was trapped. The villa's structure was simple. A bedroom, a dressing room, a tea room, a bathroom, and an inner chamber that seemed to be for main living. Finally, a garden and high walls surrounding the building.

He climbed onto the roof and searched for a basement, but that was all there was. By the time he had thoroughly explored the villa, the sun was already setting. He was thirsty, but he didn't even think of touching the teapot and kettle in the tea room. As Cheong-ra, who was mentally exhausted though not physically tired, sighed and looked at the evening sky turning blue, he heard a voice.

"Beauty, have you finished looking around?"

Cheong-ra was startled when someone asked in a deliberately affectionate voice.

"Dang Ran-yeong!"

At the familiar voice, Cheong-ra shouted the other's name and jumped to his feet. As always, Dang Ran-yeong had appeared suddenly without any presence or sound. In fact, he should have been angry at seeing the other, but after spending a whole day alone, he also felt glad. Cheong-ra rushed at the other and demanded,

"What is the meaning of this? Why did you keep me locked up in a place like this all day?"

Dang Ran-yeong's answer to the angry question was so simple it lacked sincerity.

"Just because I wanted to."

Cheong-ra was momentarily speechless at this brazenness. The best answer he had imagined was something about doing base acts before the contest. Among all the answers he had thought of, there was no "I just did it because I wanted to." What an arrogant and insolent attitude!

Dang Ran-yeong was sitting on the wall, looking down at Cheong-ra. With the full moon rising above his head, it felt even more surreal. It should have been a waning moon close to the new moon, not such a full moon.

"Are you serious? Just because you wanted to? Not because you don't want to tell me the reason?"

Wondering if he was joking with him now, Cheong-ra asked again. However, there was not a trace of playfulness in the other's utterly expressionless face as he looked at him. Cheong-ra unconsciously stepped back. The gaze looking at him seemed like one looking at a mouse in a trap. In fact, his situation was similar.

"I just told you the reason. I simply wanted to. Beauty..."

Dang Ran-yeong jumped down from the wall. His footsteps touching the ground were so light that they made no sound.

"I've been saying it from the beginning, haven't I? That I want to keep something like you in the deepest part of the inner chamber to appreciate for a long time. Look, I'm being this honest, but if you think I need to be even more honest for you to understand, fine."

His deep eyes above the tear mole curved long.

How much better it would have been if he had said it was a joke or a prank. But for some reason, Dang Ran-yeong's words sounded sincere to Cheong-ra's ears.

"Should I say that from the day I first saw you, I wanted to pin you down and violate you?"