“Who else would it be? Those vicious mounted bandits.”
The moment I heard the man’s answer, Jeok Cheongang and I looked at each other.
And for good reason. Mounted bandits were the last people I’d expected to hear about now.
Mounted bandits.
Just what the name said: bandits on horseback.
Just as the Yangtze River Channel League had strongholds along every branch of the Yangtze, and the Green Forest Alliance had mountain strongholds on every mountainside with a road, mounted bandits could be found wherever broad plateaus and plains stretched out.
Pung Yang’s Red Wind Band had been one of them.
The vast northern Great Steppe wasn’t home to nomads alone.
It was a refuge for all kinds of people who’d crossed the Great Wall—and their only sanctuary.
For those who could never return to the lives they’d left behind, there were two choices.
Eat or be eaten.
Naturally, most chose the former.
It was a hundred, a thousand times better to survive as a predator than become prey.
Pung Yang had probably followed the same path.
I had no idea how he’d obtained a Temporary Strength Pill or learned demonic martial arts worthy of being called a secret technique, but he’d made quite a name for himself as a predator.
He’d even had the nerve to lead hundreds of subordinates across the Great Wall.
In the end, though, Pung Yang and the Red Wind Band had met their end at the Mount Heng Sword Sect.
However large they grew, they were still bandits.
Even in Shanxi Province, dismissed as a backwater compared with the Central Plains, there were clear limits to what a band of mounted bandits could do.
And now mounted bandits are hanging around here? Right on the border between Gansu and Shaanxi?
Even the craziest bastards knew to check whether they had somewhere to lie down before stretching out their legs.
With the Kongtong Sect and the Black Dragon Demon Gate standing firm in Gansu, and Huashan and the Zhongnan Sect in Shaanxi, it made no sense for mounted bandits to swagger around here.
Something’s going on. It has to be.
Jeok Cheongang must have been thinking the same thing.
He was frowning in thought, so I spoke to the man.
“Could you tell us more about them?”
“You mean the mounted bandits?”
“Yes. Their exact location and numbers, if you know them. If not, even a rumor would help.”
The man had been blinking at us in silence, apparently picking up on the serious mood. Then he spoke.
“How much will you pay?”
“What?”
“Four silver nyang1. That should be enough.”
“……?”
What was this guy’s deal all of a sudden?
Before I could answer, the man scratched his cheek awkwardly.
Or rather, he pretended to scratch it while tracing letters on his cheek.
The name of someone who wasn’t here—but whom I could never forget.
Wol…hwa. Wait. Wolhwa?
I finally understood. My mouth fell open as the man—or rather, the Lower District Sect member—winked at me.
“You seem to be in a hurry. Why don’t we talk on the way?”
“……!”
I’d almost forgotten.
The Lower District Sect’s eyes and ears were everywhere.
I let out a quiet laugh at his shameless act, as though nothing had happened, then called out.
“Mujin.”
Hyuk Mujin came hurrying over and answered at once.
“Yes, Captain. What do you need?”
“Give this gentleman four silver nyang1—no, ten. And provide him with a horse.”
I was turning away after delivering the order when Hyuk Mujin’s muttering reached my ears.
“You could at least toss me a money pouch before saying that. And if you give him a horse, what am I supposed to ride?”
“……Ahem.”
“See? You heard me, but you’re pretending you didn’t. I’m so fed up, I ought to just quit—”
“Ahem!”
“Uh, what is it? Did you have another order for me?”
Hyuk Mujin’s eyes went wide and innocent, as if he’d never said a thing. I gave him a cold look and tossed him the money pouch I’d just taken out of my Inventory.
“Oh my, you really shouldn’t have. You could just deduct whatever you spend from my monthly pay, and if it’s not enough, I could ask my family for more. Or beg.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“What do you have to apologize for, Captain? Even if the pillars of the Hyuk Family Textile Shop start shaking, that’s my problem. Right?”
“I get it. Just stop already. That should cover it, right?”
“What about the horse?”
“……!”
“If you give away the horse too, what am I supposed to ride? Are my dead ancestors going to carry me?”
Out of answers, I quietly turned my head toward a nearby Zhongnan Sect Disciple.
More specifically, toward the fine horse he was riding.
After that whirlwind of shakedowns, we got an outcome everyone could be satisfied with and set off toward Gansu Province again.
Of course, one Zhongnan Sect Disciple had to climb down from his comfortable saddle and travel on his own two sturdy legs. But that wasn’t my problem.
What mattered to me was the information the Lower District Sect member had.
“You should all stay around here for the time being. No—better not stay anywhere near here. Head toward Shaanxi. Those vicious mounted bandits could attack at any moment.”
The Lower District Sect member repeated his warnings to the civilians who remained, then mounted his horse. The Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord left a dozen or so Disciples behind to lead them safely to Shaanxi if danger arose.
As soon as we set off, the Lower District Sect member’s first words were enough to leave everyone feeling as if they’d been smacked in the back of the head.
“To be honest, there are no mounted bandits.”
“……?”
“……?”
After a brief silence, Hyuk Mujin fingered the hilt of the sword at his waist.
“Ten silver nyang1. Spit it back out while I’m still asking nicely.”
“Enough! Hold your tongue! Threatening an ally—how are you any different from those demonic, heterodox villains?”
Jeok Cheongang sternly rebuked Hyuk Mujin, then turned to the frightened Lower District Sect member and spoke with unusual kindness.
“Don’t mind that fool. Go on. Ten silver nyang1 is a small price to pay for your fare to the afterlife.”
“…….”
God, he’s terrifying.
Just from listening to them, you’d think we were the Demonic Path Alliance, not the Murim Alliance.
The Lower District Sect member, who didn’t seem to have a shred of internal energy, had gone pale under the pressure. He stammered out an explanation.
“To be precise, there were mounted bandits, but they’ve disappeared.”
“Oh? They were there, and now they’re gone.”
Jeok Cheongang let out an appreciative sound and smiled kindly.
“That makes perfect sense, given the situation. You’ll soon disappear from this world, too.”
“Eek!”
“I’ll take back nine silver nyang1. You can keep one for the trip.”
“Gah!”
“Enough, all of you!”
Only after I stepped in did tempers, boiling like a cauldron over a charcoal fire, finally settle down. The poor Lower District Sect member hurriedly explained the details.
“So the mounted bandits in Ningxia Province really have started acting strangely?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Then all those people gathered in the village…”
“I deliberately spread an exaggerated rumor. Trouble is about to break out in the western region, so we wanted to keep the civilians from getting caught up in it as much as possible.”
“Dark Heaven is far away, but the mounted bandits are close?”
“Exactly. Ningxia Province is pretty close, so the mounted bandits there are a greater threat than Dark Heaven beyond the desert. All the more so for someone like me, who hasn’t learned martial arts.”
The Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord, riding alongside us, frowned and cut in.
“Wait. Ningxia was once a lawless land ruled by mounted bandits, but weren’t they put down long ago?”
What was this now?
Everyone turned toward him. The Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord cleared his throat and continued.
“To start from the beginning, Ningxia used to be a longstanding headache for us. Hundreds of mounted-bandit groups, large and small, were scattered across the region. Even the government troops couldn’t control them.”
“If even the government troops wouldn’t step in, what happened to the civilians living in Ningxia Province?”
“Would any fish remain in a rotten stream? Most of the civilians either left or joined them.”
“So it was no different from the steppe.”
“You could call it another steppe. Ningxia lies between Gansu and Shaanxi, but it was also the final destination for nomads who’d come down from the north and minority peoples driven out of the Central Plains. And the final touch was…”
“Fugitives. People who’d fled after committing unforgivable crimes.”
Namho cut in, picking up where the Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord had left off.
“That’s why Ningxia had always been a prize the Murim sects of the Central Plains couldn’t quite bring themselves to claim. The land was small and barren, and the people left there were all sorts of vicious bastards. Even if a sect took losses securing the territory, dealing with it afterward would be another problem. Am I right?”
The Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord smacked his lips softly and nodded.
“I don’t like admitting it, but I can’t deny it. Before the Great Faction War, we could only watch one another. Afterward, we suffered such heavy losses that we had to focus entirely on recovering.”
I was starting to get the picture.
The Nine Sects and One Gang.
The Five Great Families.
They were symbols of the orthodox faction’s honor, but on the other side of the coin, they were a ruling class that had monopolized power and privilege for ages.
Even the Murong Family, which had recently caused a bloodbath, had started harboring other ambitions partly because it had been excluded as a foreign people during the fierce power struggles before the Great Faction War.
Though that’s still nothing but a traitor’s excuse.
I muttered to myself, then asked the Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord, whose face had reddened as he admitted that shameful truth, the most important question.
“But you said the mounted bandits in Ningxia Province were put down long ago. Which sect led the effort?”
His answer took me by surprise.
“No one stepped forward.”
“What?”
“No, they couldn’t. Ningxia was already lawless, and not only our sect but every martial faction in the surrounding area had only just recovered from the aftermath of the Great Faction War.”
“Then how on earth…”
“I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard Ningxia Province became stable because of one person alone. That was nearly ten years ago.”
“……!”
Not a major sect like the Nine Sects and One Gang, but a single individual?
Everyone’s eyes widened at the answer they’d never expected.
No wonder. From what we’d heard, Ningxia Province had once been utterly lawless.
It was practically Murim’s Wild West. For one person to put down hundreds of mounted-bandit groups…
“A master, then. At least someone who’d reached the Supreme Peak realm.”
Jeok Cheongang, who’d been listening in silence, made the brief remark. It matched my own thoughts exactly.
A mysterious Supreme Peak master who swept away countless mounted bandits and pacified Ningxia Province a decade or so ago…
That wasn’t the only suspicious thing.
The problem was that Ningxia Province’s mounted bandits had started acting strangely after a decade of quiet—long enough for the mountains and rivers to change.
What the hell is going on?
I frowned and rode on in silence until a voice rang out.
“Gansu. It’s Gansu!”
Four days had passed since we’d set out from the Jin Family of Taiyuan, driving our horses onward without rest.
Beyond the rugged mountain range that had hidden it from view, a vast plateau spread out before us.
Gansu.
No one could know whether the land before our eyes would become a place of death or a staging ground for another battlefield.
No one.
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