Chapter 1083

From the moment good and evil first split apart, things that would never disappear from the world were born.

Bandits were among them.

They stole and plundered, sometimes taking lives in the process. They had been around since time immemorial, and no one had ever managed to root them out.

Where there was light, there would be shadows. As long as people felt desire and emotion, that wheel would keep turning.

Perhaps that was why people had finally accepted this unpleasant fact of life. Rather than spill innocent blood trying to break an unbreakable cycle, they had come to tolerate a measure of coexistence through negotiation.

But now they could sense that the long years of coexistence were coming to an end.

“Hey, have you heard the news?”

Foreboding always ran a step ahead of hope.

In the county towns near the mountains and rivers, people could feel that something was wrong.

“They say a sudden landslide last night completely blocked the road over the mountain. The herb gatherers say it doesn’t look like an ordinary landslide…”

“What do you mean, not an ordinary landslide?”

“I’ve spent all fifty years of my life plowing fields, so I can’t say for sure. But those fellows know what they’re looking at.”

“And?”

“They looked at the ends of the trees swept down with the earth and sand. The trunks hadn’t just bent and snapped. It looked as if someone had taken a few halfhearted swings at them with an axe. And there’d been no real sign of a landslide beforehand.”

“Wait. Does that mean…”

“Who else could it be? Unless ghosts did it, it was those damn bandits.”

“Shh! ‘Those damn bandits’? Watch your mouth. It’s unlikely, but if someone from the Green Forest Alliance hears you…”

“Green Forest Alliance, my ass. What’s wrong with calling bandits bandits? Those highwaymen take two days’ wages just to let you cross a mountain pass!”

“Now, now. I understand how you feel, but the Green Forest Alliance is officially on our side. By imperial decree, they’ve joined forces with the Murim Alliance against the vicious enemies in the west.”

“He’s right. Everyone knows bandits are no good, but they’re not like Dark Heaven, running completely wild. Something similar happened when we were kids, didn’t it?”

“Right. It was the Demonic Cult back then, not Dark Heaven. But I remember the bandits joining forces with the Murim Alliance to fight them. The Green Forest Alliance was formed afterward.”

To these middle-aged men, now well along in years, the Great Faction War was an unforgettable childhood memory.

Ordinary people had suffered little harm, but the news that bloodthirsty murderers who believed in an evil doctrine had invaded the Central Plains had thrown the whole land into turmoil.

So even with these ominous rumors about the Green Forest Alliance, people couldn’t help but remain skeptical. The Green Forest Alliance they remembered was a group formed by bandits who were at least willing to talk. They had long since become a part of everyday life.

But there were other rumors, too.

“Remember those men who passed through our village in the dead of night two days ago?”

“Of course. You mean those strangers? I think they said they were from the Blue Flower Escort Bureau.”

“Right, those men. One of their caravan porters was big as an ox, and he held up that heavy flag without batting an eye. That startled me enough, but then I saw his face. He looked even fiercer than he was big.”

“Why bring them up now? Merchants and escort bureaus pass through here several times a month. There’s nothing unusual about that.”

At the others’ puzzled looks, the middle-aged man who had brought it up lowered his voice.

“They came through, yes. But what matters is where they ended up.”

“What?”

“See for yourself. Herb Gatherer Hong pulled this out of the landslide early this morning.”

The next moment, the middle-aged man pulled a bundled piece of cloth from his robe and unfolded it. Everyone who saw it widened their eyes.

More precisely, they stared at the two characters revealed as the dried mud and grains of sand fell away.

Blue Flower.

“T-This is…”

“If you remember that big porter, you’ll remember the flag he was carrying. That’s right. This is the escort bureau’s flag.”

They looked at one another and swallowed hard.

A flag meant something to any group. Soldiers would give their lives to protect their commander’s banner, and the merchants and escort bureaus these people knew took pride in their flags, too.

So what did it mean that the flag of an escort bureau that had taken the mountain road just two nights ago had turned up buried in a landslide? That a suspicious landslide had blocked the only way through barely a day later?

“You can guess what this means, can’t you?”

“…You don’t think?”

“It’s not a question of what I think. The Green Forest Alliance—those damned bandits—must have done something. For some reason, they killed to silence the witnesses, then tried to hide it with a staged landslide.”

A suffocating silence settled over them.

Their fears were taking shape, and every detail seemed to fit. The thought left them struggling to breathe.

“B-But what would they have to gain? They fought the Demonic Cult in the past. As a reward, they got to call themselves an alliance, like the river pirates on the Yangtze, and live well enough.”

“Remember what you said at the harvest two years ago?”

“Two years ago? What does that have to do with anything?”

“You were disappointed. It was the best harvest in nearly ten years, but you sighed and said it still wasn’t enough. Why would those men be any different?”

“…!”

“It’s obvious. Even we farmers get greedy. What about men who make their living taking what belongs to others?”

Their circumstances were different, but the comparison held.

The middle-aged tenant farmer was speaking only from his own experience and his low opinion of bandits. Still, there was reason enough behind what he said.

The Demonic Cult had wanted only the Central Plains Murim. Dark Heaven wanted the world itself.

Anyone who won this gamble could become a true king of a nation, instead of merely being called one of the Ten Kings.

A new world.

Under a new ruler.

And among the news that had reached this little village was a story far more shocking than the still-unconfirmed rumors of the Green Forest Alliance’s betrayal.

“Even the Murong Family of the orthodox faction—the one supposedly full of Great Heroes of Benevolence and Righteousness—joined forces with those vicious enemies. Why wouldn’t a bunch of thieves?”

At the mention of the Murong Family, one of the Five Great Families, which had unleashed a bloodbath across the northern lands, the others shut their mouths as if on cue.

Of course. Those men were bandits by nature. Taking from others was their way of life. Why would betrayal trouble them?

If they won this enormous gamble—if they survived to the end—they could gain wealth and glory beyond anything they had known before.

“What an age of chaos.”

The old man sitting in the corner had quietly voiced what they were all thinking. His next words came out like a sigh and fed their mounting unease.

“With the mountains in such an uproar, the river won’t stay calm.”

Soon, his words came true.

Two days after the two giants of the dark-path Murim faced one another.

If you asked whose the vast, boundless Yangtze was, those in the Murim would answer without hesitation.

Not the Five Great Families or the Nine Sects and One Gang. The Yangtze River Channel League.

But those outside Murim would give a different answer. Mountain or river, everything beneath the lofty sky had only one master.

The Son of Heaven.

Seafaring King Pa Ryun had never liked that one bit.

“When this old man was a child, an old man who lived next door told me the Son of Heaven had dragon blood in his veins. A child of Heaven, he said, who must be served with all one’s heart and soul.”

His voice was low but carried force, and his profound internal energy made the space around him tremble.

“He had a bad temper, but he was a decent enough old man. When I was orphaned by one bad harvest after another, he took me in for a while.”

Pa Ryun’s gaze grew distant as he looked back on his past.

He had gone over those memories hundreds, thousands of times. Almost none were good. He had lost both parents before he was old enough to grow a beard, and being taken in by that old man—working hard as a servant just to get enough to eat—had been among the better times.

Even that hadn’t lasted.

“It was a damnable age. More than ten fools called themselves kings, and so-called imperial troops could march into a village in broad daylight, loot it, and kill its people without anyone holding them to account.”

Pa Ryun stroked his sparse beard.

It was a familiar story. The old man had died then.

Not at the hands of a defeated army or bandits, but the imperial troops marching forward with sharp spears and tall banners.

The twelve-year-old boy, grateful to the old man, killed the soldier who had driven a spear into the old man’s frail body, then ran.

“I ran for three days and nights without stopping. I finally shook off my pursuers, reached the riverbank, and collapsed. And a thought came to me.”

Pa Ryun pointed at the sky.

“There were so many people claiming the world belonged to them. If the so-called children of Heaven were like that, who was I supposed to serve?”

The long age of chaos eventually ended.

A hero surnamed Zhu unified the continent and proclaimed to all under Heaven that he alone was the Son of Heaven.

By then, the boy had become a young man, and the servant had become a river pirate. Watching the new Son of Heaven ascend the throne, Pa Ryun found his answer.

“That was when I learned that anything could be won with spears and swords. Only the final victor could prove his claim through the outcome.”

But Pa Ryun knew his own limits better than anyone. He had neither a cause that would let him claim the world nor the strength to take it.

He could, however, take this vast river.

And with it came hundreds of ships and thousands of men—enough to face the Great Nation’s warships now appearing in the distance.

“Raise the sails. The time has come.”

Fwoosh.

A great expanse of cloth billowed above Pa Ryun’s broad smile.

As countless ships followed the flag, the black-clad man at his side quietly curled his lips into a smile.