WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Episode 19: Essence-Absorbing Demon Valley (9)
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“...I’ll tell you.”
At last, the old woman lowered her head and readily revealed everything she knew.
Gyeon Donu. The Bloodsucking Maniac. Cheon Uibaek.
She named all three, along with where they lived.
One was still missing.
Even with death hanging over her, the old woman had not mentioned Jin Yeonhwa, the female demonic cultivator known as the Flower-Midst Strategist.
Ise suppressed his anger at the old woman who had deceived him and calmly sorted through his thoughts.
Everything he had seen so far.
The strange details he had missed at the time, though they had left him uneasy.
Several theories blended together like dyes until he reached the most likely conclusion.
Instead of pressing the old woman about her scheme, Ise decided to find Jin Yeonhwa himself.
Rather than blindly trusting information from someone who had lied to him, it was safer to confirm it with his own eyes.
According to Wang Gyu, Jin Yeonhwa often appeared at an inn near the entrance to District 4.
He spread his divine sense wide, then checked each divine sense that came into contact with his.
Though demonic cultivators found it relatively easy to reach the Foundation Establishment Realm, most of the demonic cultivators in District 4 remained in the early stage.
It should not be difficult to find Jin Yeonhwa just by judging the scale of their divine sense.
Unless they were deliberately concealing it, Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators normally kept their divine sense spread as wide as possible.
Restricting divine sense was like holding one’s breath.
Ise moved too quickly for anyone to react, checking the divine sense of every Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator he passed.
Then he encountered a divine sense that seemed to belong to a late Foundation Establishment cultivator.
The divine sense that had struck his immediately shrank as though fleeing, but Ise simply walked toward its center.
He was standing in the middle of a street. The divine sense was beneath his feet, underground.
Looking around, he saw a street lined with empty houses and inns that did not seem to be operating, if they had ever operated at all.
One inn stood out from the rest because its exterior was still intact.
It was the first place Ise had entered in District 4, the inn supposedly run by an exceptional Yellow Armband.
‘There are watchers.’
He had often felt strange gazes when he first entered District 4, but they were even more obvious now.
Suspicion became certainty.
Jin Yeonhwa, the Flower-Midst Strategist. She had clearly approached him on purpose.
She had known of his existence from the moment he entered Demon Valley City, then deliberately sent the Corrupted to stir his curiosity and lead him into investigating them.
She had intended to use him after luring him in, eliminating her other competitors through him.
She had likely created the Corrupted as well.
He needed to know exactly why she had approached him.
Whether there was another reason. How much she knew about him.
If necessary, he would not hesitate to eliminate her.
The moment Ise entered the inn, he saw a wooden sign on the reception counter that read, Closed.
Looking closer, the inn did not seem as though it had ever truly been open.
When he tore down the locked door leading to the guest rooms, he found a staircase to the second floor.
A double formation had been deployed beneath it.
A secret passage hidden by a Foundation Establishment illusion formation and blocked by a warding barrier.
The most valuable things were always kept behind the tightest locks.
Ise used a Formation-Breaking Talisman to open a gap in the warding barrier and entered the passage. Beneath the dead-end wall created by the illusion, a staircase appeared.
He continued down the path.
Before long, a vast underground complex unfolded before him.
Who would have thought such a large hideout lay beneath one shabby inn?
Quite a few demonic cultivators were within the range of his divine sense.
Just by the number of subordinates she commanded, it was easy to guess Jin Yeonhwa’s standing in District 4.
At the end of a passage that gradually widened, two Qi Condensation Realm female demonic cultivators, one wearing a yellow armband and the other a white armband, blocked his way.
“Senior, what brings you here? I’m sorry, but you can’t proceed any farther without an appointment.”
“I don’t recall giving you permission to block my path.”
As soon as he spoke, he crushed the two demonic cultivators into the ground with spiritual pressure.
It was not pressure that Qi Condensation Realm cultivators could withstand.
The two could not even let out a proper groan before they were pinned flat to the floor.
Ise continued on as though nothing had happened.
Farther inside, several early Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators appeared and blocked his way.
‘They’re all female demonic cultivators.’
Ise realized that every demonic cultivator in the underground facility was female.
He spread his divine sense wide, found Jin Yeonhwa hiding somewhere deeper inside, and sent her a voice transmission.
- Do you think you can stop me?
He gripped the Black Phosphorus Axe threateningly and took a step forward.
The Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators blocking his way slowly moved aside, their expressions like they had bitten into bugs.
It seemed Jin Yeonhwa had ordered them by voice transmission to let him pass.
At the deepest part of the underground complex, Jin Yeonhwa sat inside a spacious cave chamber.
At her side, a late Qi Condensation Realm female demonic cultivator who appeared to be her attendant quietly served her.
The cave chamber was neat and uncluttered.
The interior looked like the home of a noble family from the Three Peninsula Kingdoms, right in the middle of brutal Demon Valley City. It made Ise feel even more uneasy.
Jin Yeonhwa struggled to maintain her composure, but she could not hide the faint tremor in her thoughts.
Ise stared at Jin Yeonhwa calmly and spoke as if reciting a verse.
“This is different from what that one said. You’re not beautiful enough to die for.”
“...”
Jin Yeonhwa did not answer. She only looked at him directly.
Even objectively speaking, his master and Hall Master Woo Yu-hui were far more beautiful.
He had only said it to disturb her thoughts, borrowing the words of one of her subordinates, but she remained composed.
“Who are you? What brings you here?”
At Jin Yeonhwa’s gesture, the attendant who had been standing quietly brought water and placed it on the table before Ise.
Ise pushed the cup aside, then quietly called her name.
“Jin Yeonhwa.”
Even after hearing her name, her expression remained as still as a lake.
That calmness only strengthened Ise’s certainty.
“Yes. I am Jin Yeonhwa. What brings you all the way here, young master?”
“Why did you approach me?”
“Oh my, what do you mean?”
“The demonic cultivator at the inn I entered. You planted her there, didn’t you? You probably sent the beggar suffering from rot disease too.”
“Me? Weren’t you the one who entered that inn of your own accord?”
At her shameless denial, Ise twisted one corner of his mouth in a faint, mocking smile.
“The poisonous aura I felt from that old woman reeks from your demonic qi too. How can you deny it? It wouldn’t have mattered which inn I entered anyway. You had informants planted in all of them.”
At the time, he had withdrawn his divine sense in a hurry and failed to notice it, but there had clearly been no one inside the inn within the range of his divine sense.
Despite what the demonic cultivator had said about the owner being upstairs dealing with a heart demon.
They had used calming a heart demon as an excuse, but no one had been in the inn from the beginning.
There was only one reason to lie.
To buy time to lure him in and use him.
She had been lying in wait from the beginning to approach him.
Someone Jin Yeonhwa had planted to deliberately leak information and locations about the Corrupted.
“Are you connected to Demon Valley?”
“Could you tell me why you think that?”
“You couldn’t have known about me in advance without hearing from the guards that a late Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator had newly entered Demon Valley City.”
“Hmm.”
“When a new late Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator appeared, you put watchers on me. You must have thought, ‘A late Foundation Establishment wandering cultivator with neither home nor sect. They must have some hidden strength.’”
This was not a string of artificial coincidences.
The southern part of District 4 was Jin Yeonhwa’s territory.
She had laid a dense net that he could not help but get caught in, then waited.
The inn and the Corrupted were only parts of it.
Through the surveillance that had continued since District 5, she must have quickly grasped Ise’s tendencies and carefully designed a way to involve him.
The assumption that he would be curious when he saw the Corrupted.
Even the judgment that he would withdraw his divine sense upon hearing news of another person’s dual cultivation.
An ordinary demonic cultivator would have tried to spy on it instead.
Even if that failed, she would have prepared two or three more contingencies afterward.
Perhaps that entire process had been meant to observe and judge him.
The title of strategist was no exaggeration. She was meticulous.
There was only one mistake.
“...”
“A wandering cultivator would want to enter farther inside and obtain a Heart Art manual. You intended to use that desire to involve me naturally and eliminate your competitors. Even if you failed, you had nothing to lose.”
She had chosen the wrong target.
That was how hunters laid traps and waited, and Ise had been raised as a demon hunter from the age of ten.
“You created the Corrupted too, didn’t you? You threatened them for profit. At this point, I’m curious. What else are you doing here?”
Ise questioned the attendant beside Jin Yeonhwa rather than Jin Yeonhwa herself.
“You answer. Isn’t that right?”
Yet the attendant, facing his gaze, lowered her head and played dumb.
“I know nothing.”
A lie.
Ise used the Mind-Reading Art and persistently pressed the attendant.
“If I’m wrong, deny it.”
“I don’t know what Senior is talking about. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Despite her words, the attendant’s eyes trembled slightly.
He did not even need the Mind-Reading Art to see through her thoughts.
Of course, the Mind-Reading Art confirmed she was lying.
“Sohyang, stop. This person is using the Mind-Reading Art.”
“...”
The demonic cultivator called Sohyang finally fell silent.
“Hmm. Someone clever has entered Demon Valley City, unlike the blockheads here. You are partly right. I did intend to use you to get rid of them. I never dreamed you would see through it so quickly. Have you come to retaliate?”
“There’s no reason to retaliate. You haven’t done anything that harmed me yet. Of course, I’d like to cut off your head, but you should consider the rules of District 4 the reason you’re still alive. Do you have a Heart Art manual?”
“Yes.”
She readily admitted the truth.
“I’ll give you ten thousand Spiritual Stones. Sell it to me, and I’ll overlook the fact that you deceived me.”
“I refuse. How about we make a deal instead?”
When Ise said nothing, Jin Yeonhwa continued in an excited voice.
“If you eliminate the other late Foundation Establishment demonic cultivators, I’ll give you the Heart Art manual for free. You may ask for anything else you need as well.”
“Why would I take a roundabout path when there’s an easy one before me?”
She wore a gentle expression, but the demonic cultivator before him was a vicious person who had inflicted rot disease even on ordinary mortals.
A typical demonic cultivator who could not be trusted, someone who had approached him and worked behind his back.
It was better for his own safety not to get involved with someone like that.
Letting this pass peacefully already required considerable patience.
If this were not Demon Valley, neither Jin Yeonhwa nor any of her demonic cultivators would have been left alive.
“I’ll say it again. Hand it over while I’m asking nicely. I’ve already assessed your strength. Even together, you are not worth one Wang Gyu.”
“...”
“Are you perhaps curious what happened to Wang Gyu?”
Ise’s presence grew steadily stronger.
Demonic qi rose greedily around him, as though crying out that it wanted to devour the demonic cultivators before him and take their strength.
Sohyang began to tremble under the increasing pressure, while Jin Yeonhwa swallowed hard.
Just as Ise thought his patience was nearing its limit, Jin Yeonhwa opened her red lips with a faint sigh.
“I haven’t watched you for long, but you seemed like someone who kept their principles even as a demonic cultivator. Could you tell me why you refuse?”
“You saw it clearly enough. What explanation do you need?”
The absurdity made him laugh.
She couldn’t even reflect on what she had done, yet she dared speak of principles.
“You watched me without permission, plotted behind my back to use me, dragged unrelated mortals into this, infected them with rot disease, then threatened and used them.”
The lives of the Corrupted were beyond horrible.
Their flesh rotted away. They lived amid terrible stench and filth, and if they wanted to beg, they had to be prepared to be pelted with stones.
The crippled demonic cultivators were one thing, but most of the ordinary mortals were elderly people and children.
He did not even expect a Dao heart from her.
Still, no one with even a shred of human feeling could do such things.
“I’ve seen plenty of selfish demonic cultivators, but you are the worst of them. Why would I trust someone so vile and completely untrustworthy with anything?”
Even under Ise’s scathing condemnation, Jin Yeonhwa only received each sharp blade with a calm expression.
Footnotes:
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