Chapter 9 - First Experience

Dong Bongsu stepped through the opening. Now he stood not in Machil’s room, but in the room next door. With that, he had placed himself entirely beyond suspicion. All with a single step.

The case was already set to be closed as the suicides of Machil and Choseon anyway, but even if someone suspected they had been murdered, no one would be able to find the culprit.

Because in another moment...

THUD.

That room would become a locked room.

With a soft sound, a wooden post reappeared in the empty opening. This technique was not actually all that simple. Removing the post had presented little difficulty, since the posts had not been glued together, but fitting it back into place required remarkably precise “Inventory control.”

When he took it out of his Inventory, he had to align it with every joint in a single attempt. To accomplish this, Dong Bongsu had spent the past several months honing his precision with the Inventory. And now he was certain: this Inventory would be of boundless use to him in the future.

This incident was merely his “first experience.”

Now no one had any way of knowing exactly how Machil and Choseon had died. A locked-room suicide or a locked-room murder—it made no difference.

There were only the dead, and no killer to be found. Whether the killer was the deceased or someone else.

Dong Bongsu went to sit in the middle of the room.

A moment ago, he had confirmed another law of New Murim Online.

People were experience. His understanding was not yet complete, but there was no denying that they were experience.

Accumulate experience, and he would be able to level up. Level up, and he would grow stronger. Grow stronger, and hunting would become easier. Easier hunting meant accumulating experience faster.

Accumulate experience...

An endless “virtuous cycle” would unfold. Of course, for some people, it would be an endless “vicious cycle.”

And so Dong Bongsu acquired a new motive for murder.

RATTLE.

Soon the door opened, and Aeng-Aeng, a woman with a voluptuous figure, entered with a lavish spread of food. Dong Bongsu had ordered it to buy himself time to dispose of Machil.

Warm steam curled up from the dishes.

The sight seemed almost like...

A celebration of a murderer’s adaptation.

● ● ●

The festivities began.

“Aaah!”

Dong Bongsu’s hips moved rapidly. In time with his movements, Aeng-Aeng’s buttocks undulated like waves, and her moans heated the room with their sultriness.

Dong Bongsu’s command of what people here called the arts of the bedchamber was flawless. In such matters, this world of Murim could hardly rival modern Earth. He was an expert in every skill his murderous pursuits required.

Though she did not know it, Aeng-Aeng was fortunate today. She had escaped a fate of death and found herself in what felt like paradise while still alive. How lucky she was.

Dong Bongsu’s hips rotated strangely, battering Aeng-Aeng’s erogenous zones like a storm.

“Hnnng!”

Aeng-Aeng writhed as she experienced a climax unlike any she would ever feel again.

Yet if Aeng-Aeng had turned her head just then and looked into Dong Bongsu’s eyes, the heat suffusing her body would have cooled in an instant.

His eyes were still. Like the surface of the River of the Dead, which the departed were said to cross, they were subdued, tranquil, and depraved.

As though even the heavens were startled by that chilling sight, thunder suddenly sounded.

KRA-BOOM!

Then rain came pouring down.

Today marked the first time Dong Bongsu had committed murder and had sex since coming to this place.

Even the heavens were weeping in fear of that “horrifying adaptation.”

● ● ●

New Murim Online, Law 2: Dong Bongsu can place any object directly touching any part of his body into his Inventory. (However, it must be smaller than the Inventory and must not be a living organism.)

New Murim Online, Law 3: Insects and animals yield no experience (not yet certain; experiments with animals other than rats required), while killing humans increases experience. (Need to verify differences according to strength.)

● ● ●

Anhui Province.

The Huai River flows through its north, while the Yangtze River flows eastward through its center, forming vast stretches of countryside. Along both rivers lie extensive wetlands surrounded by marshes and ponds, displaying the land’s fertility. Its symbols were the North China Plain and Soho Lake, both sources of pride for the Central Plains.

Since ancient times, commerce and trade had flourished here thanks to its rich, fertile land and the traffic along its great rivers and lakes. Its geography also favored business: it bordered Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Shandong to the north, and Hubei and Henan to the west.

Naturally, goods from across the country converged here, and money followed.

Just as flies swarm around a foul smell, thieves and ruffians from unorthodox sects inevitably flock wherever the scent of money is strong.

Many sects had therefore arisen in Anhui to drive them away and uphold the principles of Murim.

Foremost among them was the Namgung Clan in Hefei, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. Even among those five families, the Namgung Clan was unquestionably the greatest. Since its founding, Anhui had never once been ravaged by the forces of the unorthodox sects or the Demonic Path.

The Imperial Sword Form, Boundless Firmament Sword Art, Grand Expansion Sword Art, Thirteen Lightning Sword Thunders, Heavenly Wind Sword Art, Heavenly Thunder Imperial Divine Art, Firmament Grand Expansion Divine Art, Heavenly Thunder Qi, Three Heavenly Thunder Palm Strikes, Heavenly Wind Palm Force, Great Boundless Firmament Sword Formation...

Armed with martial arts whose very names would make members of unorthodox sects tremble, the Namgung Clan stood alone at the summit as the greatest sect in Anhui.

The Namgung Clan’s prestige was so overwhelming that the other sects in Anhui were as insignificant as fireflies before the moon. Even so, sects did exist in every county and city.

Among those many sects was the Danri Family. Though it could not compare with the Namgung Clan, within Fengyang it was the foremost noble clan. Why else would people say that in Fengyang, anyone with the surname Danri rode in a four-horse carriage even after death?

The Danri Family had the Black Five Unit for intelligence and law enforcement, and the Cross Heavenly Sword Corps as its specialized fighting force. Both practiced the family’s secret martial arts, the Flying Heaven Sword Art and Heaven-Severing Flying Sword Art, and enjoyed considerable renown within Anhui.

In particular, the Black Five Unit’s intelligence-gathering capabilities were second to none. So much so that even the beggars of the Beggar Sect, who would resent being called second-best in intelligence, conceded its superiority within Fengyang.

Yet now that very unit was struggling with a recent series of incidents.

● ● ●

The Suicide Plague.

That was the term spreading among the people, for suicide had lately become as widespread as an epidemic in Fengyang.

In barely a month, some two hundred people had killed themselves.

How could anything be more abnormal?

There had been suicides before, but never this many. At most, one or two a month.

Even two hundred murders in a month would have been enough to turn the place upside down. Two hundred suicides were no ordinary matter for a modest-sized city like Fengyang.

Naturally, the residents were growing unsettled.

Some said a ghost had come to kill people in secret and disguise their deaths as suicides. Others claimed horsehair worms were making humans kill themselves, not just insects. Still others said an actual suicide plague had broken out.

Various other theories circulated as rumors as well.

Whichever of those rampant rumors was true, they were all equally ominous.

Among them, one theory caught the authorities’ attention.

An unorthodox sect had entered Fengyang.

According to this theory, a terrifying unorthodox group unknown to Murim had recently arrived in Fengyang and was responsible for these incidents.

The reason it gained credibility was simple.

Murim had always kept a wall between itself and ordinary people, as well as the authorities. To the common folk, its people belonged to a world outside the realm: subjects of the nation, yet in some respects not subjects at all.

They flew through the sky, used arts that shrank distances, and cleaved mountains and rivers. If they could do such things, why should killing people without anyone noticing be impossible? Besides, some unorthodox martial artists killed people and consumed their livers, brains, or vital essence to build internal energy. None of the bodies discovered had shown signs of that, but who could say this was not some new method of accumulating internal energy?

However...

Fengyang’s investigating officer was not a martial artist. If this theory was correct, he had no way to root them out, let alone capture them.

Of course, the government had experts of its own. But most belonged to the imperial household, and as a rule, they did not come to small cities like this to offer assistance.

In the end, the investigating officer requested help from a martial sect. Naturally, he turned to the Danri Family.

Its patriarch, Danri Cheon-u, the Beautiful Flying Heaven Sword, readily accepted the commission as part of the family’s mutually beneficial relationship with the authorities. Such requests were not frequent, but they did come from time to time.

And whenever they did, the Black Five Unit would step in and resolve the matter splendidly.

This time, however...

● ● ●

Gi Daehyo, leader of the Black Five Unit, was perplexed. At Danri Cheon-u’s command, he had been obliged to begin investigating the “Suicide Plague,” but he could make no sense of what lay behind it.

'Something about this is definitely strange...’

But that was as far as he got. Well over a hundred cases showed only evidence of suicide, without a single circumstance suggesting murder.

What made these cases seem strange to him was that, although the scenes clearly pointed to suicide, he found it difficult to declare them suicides with certainty.

Many of the dead had reasons to take their own lives. Life had become unbearable, a lover had abandoned them, or they could no longer endure their parents’ abuse. Those suicides he could understand.

The problem was that many others had no such reason. People who had lived their entire lives happy and content with their lot suddenly killed themselves overnight?

Gi Daehyo found it difficult to understand.

Did suicide have to have a reason? Put that way, perhaps it did not...

'It doesn’t add up.’

In Murim, he had seen it all: battles on land, on water, at sea—even dogfights.

His nose was insisting, emphatically, that something about these cases stank.

“Who died first?”

Gi Daehyo decided to start from the beginning.

Gi Manji, his son and the unit’s deputy leader, answered.

“Machil and Choseon. An armory servant of our family and a prostitute.”