Chapter 1003

The realization that we’d finally entered Gansu Province brought a strange tension over the group.

It reminded us why we’d come here.

And of the danger lurking somewhere in this land.

How many of us will make it out alive?

I swallowed the thought as soon as it came.

The great battle looming ahead was unavoidable. The only questions were when and where. Countless people would die, and blood would spill across the land.

If not Gansu, then Qinghai. If not Qinghai, then Tibet and Sichuan.

Or it could break out on several fronts at once.

If the Hidden Shadow Pavilion’s information was right, Dark Heaven’s forces were approaching from beyond the desert. Their numbers rivaled those of the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples—if they didn’t surpass them.

An army that size wouldn’t have to concentrate on a single target.

As many as the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples, even more dangerous, and they have Moving Formations on top of it all… This isn’t going well.

With the Great Nation joining us, our own forces were formidable. But there was no denying that the enemy had more options than we did.

And if even part of my vague suspicion was right, Dark Heaven wasn’t just a group held together by dark arts and fanaticism.

It can’t be helped. The Murim Alliance leadership knows what Dark Heaven is capable of. I’ll have to trust them.

I’d never once held back. I’d survived one brush with death after another, defeated opponents stronger than myself, and fought to prevent even greater disasters.

But I couldn’t solve everything alone.

This time was no different.

Just as they’d trusted me, I had to trust them.

One person could light a fuse. Dealing with the aftermath of the explosion took many.

My thoughts came to an end along with the mountain road.

Once we crossed the rugged range between Shaanxi and Gansu, a completely different landscape appeared, as if a layer of camouflage had been pulled away.

High ground, and the cold air that came with it.

Beyond lay a vast, open plain, with ocher-colored city walls rising at its center.

No one could mistake the city that appeared through the blowing sand. This was Tianshui, on the eastern edge of Gansu Province, bordering Shaanxi.

“…Well, that’s one hell of an atmosphere.”

Hyuk Mujin’s uneasy remark probably spoke for all of us.

Bleak. Desolate.

That was my first impression of Gansu, and I suspected most of the others felt the same.

“Ugh, what’s with this weather?”

Hyuk Mujin shivered in the chilly, dust-laden wind and pulled his collar shut. Plenty of people were breathing out white clouds.

There were exceptions, of course: those whose Supreme Peak martial arts had brought them to the realm of being Unaffected by Cold and Heat, and Peak masters who could at least use their internal energy to ward off the cold.

Or…

“Taishan likes it! Nice and cool!”

Right. One of them was from here in the first place.

Actually, make that two.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

At my question, Sama Pyo stopped looking around and answered.

“Hard to say. It feels strange. I’ve only been gone a little over a year, but… it feels like ten years.”

A little over a year could be short or long, depending on who you asked. I understood how Sama Pyo felt.

From the rebirth of the Murim Alliance to today, we’d faced too many crises together as members of the Fire Dragon Pavilion to fit into so little time.

Yeah. Has it really been that long already…?

Watching Sama Pyo and Taishan return to the place where they’d been born and raised stirred something in me, too.

So much had happened. We could have talked for days without getting through it all.

And at every desperate turn, those two had been beside us.

No. They were us.

Comrades bound by the name of the Fire Dragon Pavilion. Men we could trust to watch our backs.

Maybe that was why my gaze lingered on them. Sama Pyo looked back at me, his eyes trembling as though he felt it too.

“Pavilion Master. May I say something?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“I have no interest whatsoever in men.”

“…What?”

“I trust you don’t either, Pavilion Master, but I thought it best to say so, just in case. I hope there’s no misunderstanding. I’ll be going now.”

“…!”

A moving moment, my ass.

Sama Pyo hurriedly rode ahead. I stared after him, then felt a pointed gaze from beside me and let out a long sigh.

“What? Got something to say?”

The Lower District Sect member who’d been keeping pace with me quickly shook his head.

“No, sir—well, actually, I do, but I’ll say it later.”

“…”

“…”

“Please say it now. Putting it off makes you look even more suspicious.”

“W-Would that be all right?”

“Oh, for the love of—”

He flinched as I scratched the back of my head, then studied my face and spoke.

“The mission I was assigned ends here.”

“Ends here…?”

“I was to evacuate the nearby residents and travelers, then tell Great Hero Jin what’s happened recently. Fortunately, we’ve entered Gansu without incident, so I believe it’s time for me to turn back.”

“Where to?”

“Our sect and the Beggars’ Sect have members watching the western region in case anything happens. I intend to report this to the Branch Leader as quickly as possible.”

The man belonged to the Lower District Sect’s Shaanxi branch, and I knew its Branch Leader well.

Wolhwa, proprietor of Honghwaru in Shanxi Province—and the first martial artist I’d met in this world.

“Give Wolhwa my regards. The Branch Leader, I mean. Tell her I appreciate her looking out for us.”

“The Branch Leader is looking forward to seeing you again, too. She originally planned to come in person while you were passing through Shaanxi, but circumstances…”

He trailed off, reached into his robe, and held something out.

“What’s this?”

“The Branch Leader ordered me to give it directly to you. She told me again and again—make sure, absolutely, don’t you dare forget!”

He offered me a tightly sealed bamboo tube, then gave me a suggestive smile and a thumbs-up.

“Personally, I have a great deal of respect for you.”

“…All of a sudden?”

“Doesn’t seem all that sudden to me.”

I followed his darting eyes and saw Ju Hwaran staring our way. More precisely, she was staring at the bamboo tube he’d extended toward me, her expression subdued.

But only for a moment. As soon as our eyes met, she turned away and began talking to the people beside her as naturally as could be.

It happened so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it.

What was that about?

I blinked, then took the tube. With his final task complete, the Lower District Sect member began to slow his horse.

“I’ll be going, then. I wish you good fortune in battle.”

He clasped his hands in farewell and turned his horse. Just then, something I’d left unresolved flashed through my mind.

“Oh, wait. May I ask one last favor?”

“What would that be?”

“I want to know everything that happens in Qinghai and Gansu. Even the smallest sign. Please get word to us as quickly as you can.”

“You needn’t worry about that. The Murim Alliance’s intelligence network has been operating for some time. Information should already be reaching every nearby sect under emergency orders.”

I’d asked out of caution, but I wasn’t too worried about it. The Hidden Shadow Pavilion had learned what was happening beyond the desert—a place called the Land of Ruin. That alone showed how broad and thorough our intelligence network was.

There was still one thing on my mind.

“Does that network include Ningxia Province?”

“You’re worried about those mounted bandits?”

“From what I’ve heard, I have reason to be.”

Of course I was.

A little over ten years ago, peace had suddenly come to a lawless land that could give the American Wild West a run for its money. At the center of it all was an unidentified Supreme Peak master.

If there was even a chance he was another hidden blade Dark Heaven had planted somewhere in the world, I had to consider turning my horse around right now.

Stopping the enemy coming at us head-on will be hard enough. If we end up fighting on two fronts, it’ll be a disaster.

But the Lower District Sect member smiled.

“It seems I didn’t explain it well enough. I’ve worried you for nothing, Great Hero Jin.”

“What do you mean?”

“Though it’s a frontier region, it’s still part of the world. Our sect and several other intelligence groups have been keeping an eye on Ningxia Province for a long time. We watched even more closely after the trouble there ended at the hands of that unidentified master.”

“Ah.”

I’d overlooked something. Information was money, and that wasn’t true only in the modern world. If anything, useful information was even more valuable here.

And despite being spoken of in the same breath as the Beggars’ Sect, the Lower District Sect was far less of a martial sect. They were information merchants through and through.

There was no way they’d ignored the major incident in Ningxia Province.

Sure enough, his next words were matter-of-fact enough to make my worries seem misplaced.

“The mounted-bandit gangs in Ningxia Province disbanded long ago. Their most notorious leaders were all killed, and the rest didn’t dare resist. We carefully reexamined everything that happened at the time and found nothing particularly suspicious.”

“Then what about the mounted bandits said to have appeared nearby?”

“Horse caravans. Or rather, horse caravans made up of people who used to be mounted bandits.”

Horse caravans.

They roamed the land with their horses and the stars for company. Merchants and guides alike, they were fixtures of the regions they traveled.

“So the disbanded mounted bandits became horse caravans.”

He nodded.

“They couldn’t remain mounted bandits. Some became horse caravans; others formed merchant companies or Escort Bureaus. They changed with the times.”

“Then what about the Supreme Peak master who pacified the mounted bandits?”

“That’s the one question we haven’t answered. We’re told he’s remained in Ningxia Province ever since, but no one knows who he is. All we know is that he isn’t a fiend. Even our best informants have thrown up their hands.”

If he wasn’t a fiend, perhaps he was an eccentric recluse from some remote mountain valley.

It wasn’t certain, but his answer eased my mind for now.

The Lower District Sect member set off, and when we reached Tianshui, we came face-to-face with someone we’d never expected to see.