It happened in an instant no one could have predicted.
Whoosh—BOOM!
Even from several hundred jang1 away, everyone—including me—could see the burst of red light blazing across the distant sky and hear the explosion that followed.
A signal flare!
No doubt about it. The scouts who’d gone ahead of the main force had fired it. And it was red—the signal for extreme danger.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Everyone froze for a moment. Then, as the danger sank in, weapons came free of their sheaths.
“Prepare for battle!”
“Disciples of the Martial Might Sword Sect, prepare for an enemy ambush!”
“Zhongnan Sect Disciples, form the Moon-Shattering Sword Formation!”
The sudden shift in their aura seemed to make the air tremble.
All around me flashed a mountain of sabers and a forest of swords. As our allies moved in unison to the shouted orders, I kicked off from the saddle, leaving a quick word for Hyuk Mujin, who was closest to me.
“Hold your position until I get back.”
“W-wait a—!”
Whoosh!
A fierce gust swallowed Hyuk Mujin’s voice, and the distance of a dozen jang1 disappeared in an instant.
Buoyancy swept through my body. I stepped lightly on empty air, on the wind, soaring upward even as I raced forward.
“Th-there!”
“Archers! What are you waiting for? The enemy’s here! Fire!”
“You idiots, lower your bows! He’s one of ours!”
My movements were so free that a few people below, still caught up in the confusion, mistook me for an enemy.
Someone was following close behind me.
“You don’t give an old man a moment’s peace. What in the world is going on?”
The familiar voice came with the effortless footfalls of Stepping on Empty Air, as though Jeok Cheongang were running along the ground.
I answered without turning around. “Something must have happened to the scouts who went ahead.”
“Something happened? You don’t mean what this old man thinks you mean?”
“We don’t know yet. But one thing’s certain…”
I fixed my gaze on the dust cloud rising over the distant, winding sand dunes.
“Whatever’s happening, it can’t be good news.”
A quarter of an hour later, I realized once again that bad premonitions, as always, never missed.
“Cough. D-Dunhuang. Dunhuang has…!”
The unfamiliar man’s lips were parched, his face pale, and his clothes little more than rags. The scouts were covered in dust but otherwise looked unharmed. He looked as though hardship and desperation had clung to every part of him.
His voice trembled as he finished.
“It’s fallen… to them.”
“……!”
“……!”
Not one of us had any doubt who he meant by “them.”
Dark Heaven.
The Fiends beyond the vast desert had finally crossed the river of sand and set foot in human territory.
The stranger was a messenger sent from the Great Snow Mountain. The news he brought stunned the entire leadership.
“S-say that again. What, what did you just say?”
The Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord was the Sect Leader of the prestigious Zhongnan Sect, a man who should have remained steady in any situation. Yet he stammered, and no one showed so much as a trace of amusement.
No—they couldn’t have. Everyone there felt just as he did. What had come from the messenger’s lips was almost impossible to believe.
But when he repeated his account, it didn’t change.
“I-I regret to report…”
“Start from the beginning. Explain it slowly—come on!”
The messenger squeezed his eyes shut, unable to continue. Then he bit down on his lip and, under the barrage of sharp commands, managed to speak.
“It began when Jade Gate Pass was breached.”
As far as I knew, Jade Gate Pass had long ago been a major gateway on the Silk Road connecting the Central Plains with the Western Regions.
It stood in a wide-open stretch of desert. A small earthen fortress had been built there, making it an ideal place to watch the surrounding area.
In other words, a strategic point perfectly suited to monitoring the border with a small force.
Small, of course, only compared with the total force Gansu’s Murim had mobilized. At the recent leadership meeting, we’d heard that at least a hundred scouts were stationed at Jade Gate Pass.
No—at least a hundred scouts had been stationed there.
By now, they were probably all dead.
“Are you saying they all died? Every single one?”
“We had no way to confirm it, but that is likely. The enemy apparently went undetected until it was within three hundred li2 of Dunhuang.”
“Then when exactly did Dunhuang fall into enemy hands?”
“About three days ago, I was told.”
“Three days ago…!”
Low groans rose from the leadership. I spoke up.
“Wait. I heard you came from the Great Snow Mountain, not Dunhuang. Who told you this?”
“I never learned his Daoist name, but he was a Kongtong Sect Daoist who had been defending Dunhuang.”
“You don’t know his Daoist name?”
“N-no.”
I frowned.
The Kongtong Sect was a Daoist sect, and to its members, a Daoist name was as good as their own. Just as the monks of Shaolin Temple had abandoned their worldly names and introduced themselves by their Dharma names, Daoist names were basic introductions among martial artists.
That he hadn’t even done that suggested two possibilities.
First, the messenger standing before us had brought false information.
Or…
He died in such a desperate situation that he didn’t even have time to give his Daoist name.
The messenger’s next words supported my second guess.
“I was too flustered to mention it earlier, but the Daoist was already seriously injured when I first saw him. He died moments after reaching the Great Snow Mountain.”
“Good heavens.”
Someone let out a groan.
The mood grew heavier, and not only because the unknown Daoist had died.
A messenger in Murim had to be fast enough to break through an enemy encirclement, with the martial skill to back it up. If the man Kongtong had sent died moments after arriving, what state had the forces at Dunhuang been in?
Of course, everyone there—including me—already knew what had happened to them. We’d only been trying to deny the shocking news we’d heard.
“So it was true. All of it.”
The messenger answered Jeok Cheongang’s cold mutter.
“It’s a terrible report, hard to believe, but that’s what I was told.”
It hadn’t exactly been a pleasant dream. Still, it was time to wake up and face the cruel reality.
The others remained silent, looking as though they still couldn’t believe it. A chill ran down my spine as I forced the words out.
“At least two thousand dead, and three thousand seriously injured or missing. Is that right?”
The messenger didn’t answer. He only lowered his head in exhaustion. Seeing him, everyone was finally forced to accept the reality they’d put off for as long as they could.
“H-how can this make any sense…?”
“What can we do? It’s already happened.”
“Ten thousand. A full ten thousand! How could a force that large be defeated so easily?”
Yes. Ten thousand. A full ten thousand.
Yet the force defending Dunhuang under the Kongtong Sect had lost half its numbers—even though they’d fought a defensive battle.
In just half a day.
And that wasn’t the only bad news.
“About thirty percent of the Kongtong Sect’s strength was lost. During the desperate retreat, two Perfected Ones3 serving as Kongtong Elders and all one hundred members of the Demon-Subduing Squad died at Dunhuang.”
“……!”
“……!”
Gasps sounded all around us.
This was the Kongtong Sect. One of the Nine Sects and One Gang. One of the fifteen great pillars supporting the martial world.
And Kongtong had been broken. Its forces had retreated, leaving behind two Elders said to have reached Supreme Peak more than a decade ago and the Demon-Subduing Squad, whose fame had spread even to the Central Plains.
“Then… the Sect Leader? What happened to the Sect Leader?”
At the Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord’s urgent question, everyone held their breath and waited for the messenger’s answer.
By modern standards, thirty percent casualties would be catastrophic enough to call a force annihilated. Murim judged things differently.
What mattered was whether its masters survived. No matter how devastating the losses, if the head of the force was still alive, there was hope.
The Kongtong Sect Leader was Gansu’s strongest martial artist, said to be half a step ahead of even the Black Night King, Sima Gong. If he’d survived, they could still counterattack.
Dozens of pairs of eyes fixed on the messenger. He swallowed hard before giving an answer that was, at least, one mercy amid the disaster.
“I heard the Sect Leader withdrew safely from the battlefield because the two Elders and the entire Demon-Subduing Squad were prepared to fight to the death.”
“Ah…”
“Thank goodness. Heaven was watching over him.”
Sighs of relief escaped all around them. At that moment, someone suddenly spoke.
“And?”
“Pardon?”
“I asked what happened next.”
Most of the leadership had risen and fallen with every word of the report. This voice remained calm.
Sima Gong stared at the messenger with a deeply sunken gaze and spoke again.
“If the Sect Leader withdrew with the surviving troops, he must have headed for the Great Snow Mountain. Yet from what you’ve said, there’s been no word of him since. Why is that?”
Silence fell again. The messenger looked helpless.
“I—I have no way of knowing.”
“No way of knowing?”
“Yes. The tide of battle turned in an instant, so the surviving allies split into two groups and retreated. The Sect Leader led many of them away and ordered a Disciple of the sect to deliver this news.”
The dead could tell us nothing.
The Disciple, sent by the Sect Leader to the Great Snow Mountain, had pushed himself to the limit and died before he could provide any more information. The ten thousand troops defending Dunhuang had been scattered to the four winds, and no word had come from them since.
“However, I left the Great Snow Mountain half a day ago, so it’s possible that the troops from Dunhuang have joined up by now.”
A few members of the leadership nodded hopefully. But I wasn’t so sure.
If the messenger, who must have escaped the battlefield ahead of everyone else, was injured that badly…
Dark Heaven’s great army would already be sweeping the area around Dunhuang like a net as it advanced toward the Great Snow Mountain—hunting down the survivors and moving to break the second defensive line in its path.
They’re moving absurdly fast. Faster than I ever imagined.
At that moment, I realized we had no choice left.
“We’re not too late yet. Send a messenger at once and mobilize every force in the Qilian Mountains.”
“What?”
Sima Gong frowned at my abrupt words.
“What did you just say?”
“I said to mobilize every force stationed in the Qilian Mountains. If the Great Snow Mountain falls, it’s over.”
“We’ve already discussed that and reached a conclusion.”
I shrugged at his dark gaze.
“Then change the conclusion.”
“……You.”
“Ah, just so there’s no misunderstanding.”
The next moment, I pulled something from inside my clothes and added in a low voice,
“This isn’t a suggestion. It’s an order.”
Marquis of Shangshan, Jin Taekyung.
Sima Gong’s eyes widened as he stared at the identity tablet, its characters engraved in elegant script.
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