“Yes, piss on me. Hnng.”
Perhaps he thought the request was only meant to excite them. The man's face, which had been moaning and gyrating his hips, gradually turned pale. Tae Cheon-oh had peed while still buried in his cock.
The man recoiled in horror, which, in turn, flustered Tae Cheon-oh. He rushed to soothe and coax him, saying, Why? You told me to, all the while continuing to piss without stopping the stream.
“Shit, what a diverse way to be a fucking mess.”
Mu-won left the captain's quarters, holding only the report in one hand. The sea wind was strong, matching the speed at which the ship was moving forward. The sound of the plants inside the dome rubbing against each other was similar to the crashing waves, making them indistinguishable.
The Peira, which had set sail for the first time in a long time, was circling Cheonghwajin, cleaning up pirates. The small islands that had sprung up around Cheonghwajin were the pirates’ strongholds. The land wasn't suitable for human habitation, but it was perfect for a hideout.
Pirates preyed on not just Cheonghwajin but also traversed the various continents, raiding them. Recently, because of Peira, it had become difficult to plunder Cheonghwajin, so a significant number of them seemed to have turned their attention to the First Continent. Traces of pirates abandoning their islands and moving elsewhere remained everywhere.
That being said, they hadn’t completely disappeared. Although the scale of the damage had decreased, Cheonghwajin was still subject to pirate raids.
Peira never intended to exterminate the pirates in the first place. They were closer to periodically threatening them to prevent them from growing beyond a certain scale. This was because the people of Cheonghwajin needed to maintain a certain level of tension for Peira to remain essential. In a way, Peira, which belonged to no continent, was also a pirate organization.
Tae Cheon-oh often took a lover when he went out to sea, and this time, without fail, he brought a handsome guy onto the ship. The situation was absurd; he’d brought the guy along because he whined that he wanted to see the captain's quarters.
‘Why not just give him your gallbladder, too?’
Mu-won, who was already sitting in the captain’s quarters, mocked Tae Cheon-oh when he entered with his lover, but he didn’t stop them, lacking interest. The lower-ranking members would take care of the cleanup, but if he had known the man would piss himself, he should have half-killed him first.
Mu-won entered the dome and sat on the rocking chair, opening the report again.
Seeing Tae Cheon-oh fucking while holding this made his mood even fouler. It was because the herbalist’s eyes, full of disgust as he looked at him, came to mind.
As he flipped through the report, it suddenly occurred to him: What would happen if he peed on the herbalist? He'd probably die of a heart attack the moment the stream hit him.
He let out a short, hollow laugh at the utterly ridiculous fantasy.
[Native of Cheonghwajin.]
Mu-won quickly scanned the content of the report.
[Even while his biological mother was alive, he was practically raised by Hwayun, the flower shop owner. Contrary to rumors, the flower shop owner treated Cheongyeon with utmost respect. It is true that the flower shop was submerged in water, but no body was found. Afterward, he drifted from house to house, selling wild greens and medicinal herbs. The person who tried to sell Cheongyeon to a pirate ship was the hardware store owner who had taken him in for a time...]
The hardware store owner was currently missing. The rumor that Cheongyeon was ill-fated and consumed people wasn't entirely baseless.
A significant number of people who were around the young Cheongyeon could no longer be found in Cheonghwajin. The only ones who were still alive were those who hadn't harmed Cheongyeon in any way or had taken care of him materially and emotionally.
Cheonghwajin was not a place where a child could survive alone. A beauty with nothing to his name couldn't possibly be safe in a place rife with plunder. After all, everyone's eyes are the same.
According to the report, there was a time in the past when the medicine shop had been closed for over a month. At that time, Cheonghwajin had suffered a major flood.
Tap. Mu-won playfully struck the paper of the report.
This much information was what he had received when he first ordered an investigation into Cheongyeon. Following this, Cheongyeon’s daily activities over dozens of days were neatly listed.
[7:00 AM: Rides his bicycle to Cheonghwa Mountain to forage for wild greens and medicinal herbs. 9:00 AM: Opens the shop. Noon: Enters the room at the back of the shop. Presumably eats lunch. Afterward, brushes his teeth while looking out the window of the medicine shop. 2:00 PM: Briefly closes the shop and goes to Cheonghwa Store. Returns after buying Sol-Sol Chocolate and bean sprouts. 4:00 PM: Teaches arithmetic to neighborhood kids. 5:00 PM: Cleans the medicine. Separates and puts out the trash for recycling. 6:00 PM: Closes the medicine shop and goes to the wharf's fish market. Returns after buying three squids. Does not come out again until the next day.]
The results of monitoring him for over 50 days were consistent. Cheongyeon’s life was so boring and monotonous that one might wonder how he could live like that. He showed no interest in any form of indulgence and was devoted only to his herbalist work, to the point where a monk would weep.
Even the subordinates conducting the background check wondered why they had to do this from the 20th day onward. They argued that whatever Mu-won suspected, the herbalist was innocent. But did the herbalist notice the tail and act in a way that wouldn’t raise suspicion? No, that wasn't the case either.
It was just over 50 days into the surveillance.
[Around midnight, the herbalist suddenly came out pulling his bicycle. We were excited, thinking he was going out for some nightlife, and followed him, but he headed toward Cheonghwa Mountain. We lost him halfway. (Please save us, Boss.) When he returned, there were medicinal herbs and wild greens in his basket. It is presumed that he did his morning task in advance.]
What kind of lunatic goes to a dark mountain where you can't see an inch ahead to pick medicinal herbs? It was utterly suspicious.
However, since that day, he had returned to the same routine. Thanks to this, they even memorized the name of the chocolate Cheongyeon ate. Mu-won knew it was an expensive snack for a beggar like Cheongyeon to buy, so it seemed he was using the 20,000 Hwan sparingly and sensibly.
[On the day the herbalist was dragged to the sea building, the phenomenon of a tree trunk extending occurred on the 5th floor. The lower-ranking men cut it off and used it for firewood. They said the shape of the extending trunk was bizarre.]
Mu-won slowly rubbed his finger over the words tree trunk. He was going over the report again, which he had ordered to meticulously investigate every detail related to Cheongyeon.
“Why don’t you just admit it now?” Tae Cheon-oh, who suddenly entered the dome, spoke, and he was alone. He must have showered, as the rancid scent of coitus was gone. “That you’ve fallen for the herbalist.”
Since the day Mu-won forced the herbalist to drink his blood, Tae Cheon-oh had entirely removed him from the Flower Clan list. Thus, he couldn't understand why Mu-won was still digging into the herbalist’s past after dozens of days.
“Or is it because you don’t want to admit your intuition is dead?”
Tae Cheon-oh plopped down on the floor next to the rocking chair. Mu-won handed him the entire cigarette pack in response to his request for a single cigarette.
“Do you remember when we were kicked out of Cheonghwajin?”
Tae Cheon-oh frowned at the unexpected question but answered readily.
“Of course I do. I was so angry when I later heard that bastard Aduran had already died.”
“What about the kid we met in the mountains?”
“The incredibly pretty one? I remember him. Why?”
The tree that suddenly grew and pierced the sea building.
That day coincidentally was the day he left Cheonghwajin. It wasn't a memory that would fade just because he was young. It was the day he committed his first murder.
Mu-won recalled the man he had first killed and the trunk that abnormally wrapped around his feet. The trunk seemed to move with intent, as if protecting someone. Since neither Tae Cheon-oh nor he had such an ability, he suspected the child might have been involved.
‘What if the child I saw that day was Flower Clan? And what does the tree growing through the sea building mean?’
“Why are you asking about that all of a sudden?” Tae Cheon-oh urged when Mu-won remained lost in thought.
Tae Cheon-oh was also quick-witted. Seeing no particular reaction after mentioning the child, Tae Cheon-oh did not seem to have noticed the child's image in Cheongyeon.
Mu-won understood. For one, their hair and eye colors were completely different, and since it was so long ago, he couldn't gauge what the child would have grown up to look like.
“Cheon-oh, you need to seriously think about why we’re stuck here and not going to the First Continent.”
“You said it would be easier to find the Flower Clan here because Cheonghwajin is much smaller than the other continents. But is there any guarantee that the Flower Clan even exists in Cheonghwajin?”
Not all existing continents were supported by the Flower Clan. Just as there were uninhabited islands that didn’t sink into the sea.
However, the Eleventh Continent sank as soon as the Flower Clan member died, as if it had been waiting. That meant the Flower Clan had been supporting a continent that should have been submerged below sea level.
To float the Eleventh Continent again, which had been maintained by the Flower Clan, they needed a Flower Clan member.
As a survivor and a member of the Royal Clan of the Eleventh Continent, Tae Mu-won had to find the Flower Clan.