Descent of the Demon Master-Chapter 1298. Making Deals (3)

After exiting the restaurant, Kang Jin-Ho wordlessly mouthed yet another cigarette.

Lee Hyeon-Su jokingly muttered while lighting his boss’s cigarette. “Looks like the Prime Minister’s feet are on fire, sir.”

“Mm?”

“If I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t have combined these two matters together and handled them separately. That would’ve been far more beneficial, after all.”

Kang Jin-Ho casually shrugged. He couldn’t quite understand, but since Lee Hyeon-Su said so, it must be true.

“In other words, the Prime Minister didn’t have the leeway to handle them separately. That thing about next week being the deadline of sorts must be true, sir.”

Kang Jin-Ho coolly nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

It wasn’t as if Kang Jin-Ho had developed a hostile attitude toward Kim Myeong-Chan. The latter was merely doing what he thought was the best in the current crisis, after all.

Kang Jin-Ho’s thoughts wouldn’t change even if the government wanted to use him. He would’ve done the same had he been stuck in the same situation.

Of course, understanding the man’s position didn’t mean Kang Jin-Ho would humor the Prime Minister’s request.

Without a doubt, that request was unreasonable in the extreme.

Kang Jin-Ho slowly sucked in the gray cigarette smoke. After swirling inside the depths of his lungs, the smoke lazily escaped through his mouth. It mixed dizzily with his white, warm breaths and scattered in the cold night air.

Lee Hyeon-Su held his breath a little after noticing the look on Kang Jin-Ho’s face. The way Kang Jin-Ho’s eyes were half-closed and his mouth stubbornly clamped shut suggested that he was buried deep in his thoughts, and it’d be better to leave him alone for now.

Lee Hyeon-Su waited for a long while for his boss to organize his thoughts, then cautiously spoke up. “Excuse me... Sir?”

“Mm?”

Kang Jin-Ho responded faster than Lee Hyeon-Su had expected.

“Sir, I know you’re disgruntled, but it might not be a bad idea to consider the administration’s position.”

Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head slightly. “I’m disgruntled?”

“But... Weren’t you displeased about Kim Myeong-Chan’s request?”

“Why would I be?”

“...”

Kang Jin-Ho stared while making a confused face. That was when Lee Hyeon-Su realized his guess was off the mark and tilted his head. “Sir, you looked quite displeased back then, so, uh...?”

“Oh, that...?” Kang Jin-Ho chuckled softly. “I figured Kim Myeong-Chan would cough up better compensation if I looked a bit pissed.”

“...!”

Lee Hyeon-Su’s expression cramped up a little.

That’s utterly uncool, sir! And you were so innocent not too long ago, too! To think you’d become an expert politician in that situation!

Kang Jin-Ho chuckled louder. “People use and get used all the time in this world, anyway. Besides, the Martial Assembly is not some amazing place existing beyond the reach of humanity’s rules.”

Actually, he frequently received “commissions” like this during his time in the demon cult. Not only those who lost the political game from various regions, but even the imperial court would dispatch envoys to the cult and request the elimination of their opponents while promising a handsome reward in return.

Didn’t Kang Jin-Ho also receive a request from a renowned cultivator from the orthodox faction, asking him to kill his sect master that one time?

Only those who viewed mastering martial arts as their source of pride got offended by such requests. And Kang Jin-Ho didn’t belong to that group.

His pride stemmed from his strength. He didn’t view martial arts as something sacred in the first place. To him, a martial artist was no different from, say, a soldier or a technician.

While some people mastered specialized techniques for their fields, and some others learned military strategies, martial artists cultivated. That was all. Even though the unique quirks of cultivation meant martial artists had to be separated from the rest of humanity, in the end, they weren’t all that different from ordinary people.

Didn’t Kang Jin-Ho detest the most those people who viewed themselves as demigods or something just as ridiculous because they cultivated?

Kang Jin-Ho glanced at Lee Hyeon-Su. “What’s so strange about asking a bunch of people who learned techniques to kill people to eliminate someone for you?”

“...”

Lee Hyeon-Su couldn’t reply immediately. His lips bobbed up and down in stupefaction.

Kang Jin-Ho was right. It was possible that most people also thought this way, although no one would be ballsy enough to say that out loud like him.

“Then... Sir, are you going to do it?”

“Well, I wonder,” said Kang Jin-Ho with a smirk. “Is there anything we can get from the government?”

“Please don’t underestimate the country, sir. There’s practically no limit to what it can give us.”

“Is that right?” Kang Jin-Ho nodded, although he didn’t seem all that enthused. “What do you think, then?”

“You mean... regarding this request, sir?”

“Yeah.”

Lee Hyeon-Su frowned, deep in thought, before slowly nodding away. “Sir, I think this trade is worth considering if the other side can match our expectations. After all, it’ll be a win-win situation for both sides.”

“Really? Why?”

“First of all, even I can tell that this Rhee Ki-Gwang is dangerous, sir. What makes him scary is his unpredictability. But what makes him even more dangerous is that... He’s in China’s pockets.”

“Mm...”

“You can look at the Tibet situation to understand how cruel the CCP people can get toward their neighbors. I honestly wish to avoid the situation of China’s influence over North Korea growing stronger which, in turn, would negatively affect us in South Korea.”

Lee Hyeon-Su sighed deeply.

“The worst outcome is the ripples not just rocking the surface world, but even the martial societies of both Koreas. There’s no guarantee that their provocations will be limited to the surface world, after all.”

“Mm?” Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head. “Wait, what? North Korea also has a martial society?”

“Of course, sir. It exists.”

“Really now?” Kang Jin-Ho asked back in amazement. “How can martial artists exist in such a dictatorship?”

“It shouldn’t be surprising when you think about it, sir. North Korea is the result of the Korean Empire being split into two at the end of the Japanese occupation.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“At the time, there were more martial artists up north than in the south. Which means...”

Kang Jin-Ho nodded slightly. “I see. Being in the north must’ve made it a little easier to cultivate.”

“Yes, sir. As such, you can safely say North Korea’s martial society was more advanced than ours during and right after the division. All those people and their descendants are now under the Communist Party’s control.”

“All of them?”

“What can they do when loaded guns are pointing at them?”

Lee Hyeon-Su chuckled wryly.

“The South Korean government can’t just point its guns at people to find hidden martial artists. Sure, something similar happened a few times during the military regime in the past, but even that administration couldn’t ignore the pointed glares of the public and other countries. However, the situation in North Korea is completely different.”

Lee Hyeon-Su’s expression stiffened.

“The North Korean bastards don’t care about slaughtering hundreds just to find one person, sir. Worse still, there aren’t any shadows the martial artists could hide in up there, like in South Korea. In order to survive, the martial artists had no choice but to go along with the dictatorship.”

“I see.”

A country’s martial society could survive for two simple-enough reasons. One was the ability to hide their identities as martial artists. And two, the existence of the shadowy underworld, where having such strength was great for improving one’s financial situation.

Even in a country with lax surveillance and policing, a martial artist wouldn’t be able to keep surviving as a martial artist if no shadowy underworld existed.

Despite hailing from a powerful country, the Russian martial artists in the past couldn’t exert much influence in the martial world because its underworld was largely under the thumb of the Communist Party. Of course, the situation there had changed a lot these days.

“From what I know, the North Korean martial society has managed to survive to this day by acting like the... special forces of the military. The number of martial artists is low when considering the population of North Korea, but I heard that their strength is the real deal.”

“How is that possible, though?”

Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head again.

As it was the case with sports, the quality of martial artists depended on how many martial artists there were in the country.

Zhongyuan’s ability to preserve the world’s best martial arts back in the ancient times was easy enough to understand. It simply had a lot of people living there, which gave birth to a lot of martial artists, too. This also explained why South Korea’s martial society was in such doldrums before Kang Jin-Ho’s entrance.

Even if Lee Jung-Geol and his ilk made a mess of things, and even if Korean society had developed a historical disdain of martial arts and discriminated against martial artists, the Korean martial society would’ve still flourished had the nation’s population been as abundant as China’s.

So, to hear that North Korea’s martial artists were strong, despite the country having fewer than half of South Korea’s population? That sounded incomprehensible to Kang Jin-Ho.

Lee Hyeon-Su chuckled wryly. “Well, it’s possible because we’re talking about North Korea here, sir. That country can do whatever they want with its populace, including the martial artists. Not only did they unhesitantly deploy the martial artists into war zones like mercenaries, but they also have created training regimes with an extremely high risk of death and forced people to partake in them. As such, the North Korean martial artists are infamous for their broken humanity and unspeakable cruelty.”

“Mmmm?”

Wasn’t that like...? In a way...

Kang Jin-Ho grimaced. “...Isn’t that totally like the demon cult?”

“...”

“...”

Kang Jin-Ho chuckled in dismay.

What Lee Hyeon-Su said exactly matched what the demon cult did back in the ancient past. Back then, the cult was the “home” for those people whose humanity had broken down from mastering demonic cultivation, and those didn’t give a damn about the side effects of extreme training methods. Unsurprisingly, those people were crueler than most. They were demonic cultivators that constantly thirsted for bloodshed.

Kang Jin-Ho didn’t expect to learn about a place like that in the modern era. Naturally, he felt a bit strange about that.

The current-day demon cult was a lot different from the one Kang Jin-Ho knew. One could look at this situation and say the inheritances of martial arts had been preserved somewhat, but the mindset definitely had not.

But to his dismay, a place with no connection to the demon cult was preserving the demon cult’s ideals. Should Kang Jin-Ho laugh at this? Or feel alarmed about it?

“My apologies, sir. I’m not sure how my, uh, explanation strayed like that...”

Lee Hyeon-Su muttered awkwardly with a cramped face.

“It’s fine. In any case. So, the North does have martial artists, then. Not only that, but in a vague state that’s between a full-fledged soldier and a martial artist.”

“Yes, sir. But this isn’t unique only to North Korea. There are rumors of several other nations nurturing martial artists in a similar manner.”

“Hmm...”

Kang Jin-Ho slowly nodded.

“I see. Then... We should wait for what Kim Myeong-Chan will offer us.”

“I have a proposal for that, sir,” said Lee Hyeon-Su.

“Mm?” 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“The Prime Minister will, most likely, ask us to make our demands first. Since he doesn’t know what can make us move, he won’t have a choice but to choose this option.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why... I believe we should have a list of demands ready. May I go ahead and create this list?”

Kang Jin-Ho nodded. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”

“Thank you, sir!”

Lee Hyeon-Su bowed deeply.

Kang Jin-Ho turned around and walked toward their car. “Looks like I have a business trip to China next week to look forward to, then.”

“You don’t have to go personally, sir.”

“No. It’s always better to make sure. And I have something else to deal with, too.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t mind me. Anyways. It sounds like next week will be a busy one for you, so make as many preparations as possible.”

“...”

Lee Hyeon-Su’s expression grew weird just then.

Kang Jin-Ho glanced at him. “Mm? What is it?”

For some reason, Lee Hyeon-Su began fidgeting. Eventually, though, he groaned loudly. “Sir...”

“Yeah? Speak.”

“Next week is when my vacation is supposed to start.”

“...”

“...”

Kang Jin-Ho and Lee Hyeon-Su stared at each other in silence. The former was stupefied, while the latter looked forlorn. Eventually, they averted their gazes, unable to continue looking into each other’s eyes.

“Ah, that’s right, your... vacation,” said Kang Jin-Ho.

“Yes, sir. My vacation.”

Kang Jin-Ho slowly nodded. “Right, right. Vacation. Since it’s already been scheduled, you should go.”

“Ah! Thank you, s...”

“Before that...”

“Sorry?”

Kang Jin-Ho continued to avert his gaze while asking, “Where were you planning to go for your vacation, again?”

“It’s... the Maldives, sir.”

“The Maldives, is it...? Yes, that’s a nice place.”

Of course, Kang Jin-Ho had never been there before. And he never even heard of that place either!

“But, uh, I heard many people go to China for a vacation these days?”

“...”

“I’m just saying, Chief Lee. It’s not like I’m telling you to come with me or anything like that.”

“...”

“Mhm, the weather is a bit chilly today, don’t you think?”

Kang Jin-Ho briskly walked toward the car while shivering a little.

Even the one-and-only Kang Jin-Ho could feel the iciness of this particular winter night.