Chapter 449

From the moment they crossed the unnaturally powerful current of Tianling Falls and entered the territory of Donghu Stronghold, Ship-Fire Boy Mu Song’s heart had been beating faster and faster.

Uncle Hwang. I’ve come.

Hwang Chung, the Yangtze One Saber and Lord of Donghu Stronghold, was like a master to Mu Song. No—perhaps he was even more than that.

Mu Song’s true master, the Seafaring King, was not an affectionate man, and their relationship was as dry and barren as sand.

When Mu Song was young, it had been Hwang Chung’s warm advice and consideration that allowed him to endure his master’s harsh scolding and grueling training.

I believe in you, Uncle. You’re not the kind of man who would do such a thing.

Hwang Chung was more serious and thoughtful than anyone else in the Yangtze River Channel League.

There was no way a man like him would make the worst possible move by eliminating the Sea Serpent Society and the Dongting Fisherman in such a manner.

It was because of his unshakable faith in Hwang Chung that Mu Song had chosen to come here in person.

But despite that faith, his unease continued to swell with every passing moment.

Why is it so quiet?

The Hwang Chung he knew, the Yangtze One Saber, was thorough and cautious in everything he did. He would never neglect the stronghold’s defenses simply because Tianling Falls protected it.

Donghu Stronghold was a natural fortress built on the Yangtze.

If unauthorized intruders crossed Tianling Falls, they would soon see a gorge several hundred zhang¹ long, along with countless arrowheads waiting to greet them from above.

But…

We’re already right in front of it. Why hasn’t there been any reply?

Even after they raised the Yangtze River Channel League’s flag and beat the drums to signal their arrival, the surroundings remained as quiet as before.

Mu Song’s heart hammered against his ribs as he stared at the island shrouded in thick fog.

Something has gone wrong.

The thought flashed through his mind.

It was not long before his vague unease took shape.

“It seems something has happened.”

“What do you mean…!”

Mu Song turned toward the young medical apprentice Mungyeong, but the rest of his words died in his throat. He swallowed hard.

A moment later, alarm spread like wildfire among the people aboard the ships.

“Th-that’s…”

“A corpse! It’s a corpse!”

Everyone present was a martial artist accustomed to blood and death. They had seen enough corpses to be sick of them, but this time was different.

This was Donghu Stronghold. With the Sea Serpent Society’s key figures wiped out and the Dongting Fisherman all but confirmed dead, there should have been no one in Hubei Province capable of crossing the now even fiercer Tianling Falls to reach this place.

And yet a corpse had appeared out of nowhere.

Amid the commotion, Mu Song forced out a strained command.

“…Pull it aboard at once. We need to identify it.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Before the river bandits of Water Dragon Stronghold could move, someone strode forward.

“Stand back.”

Fire King Jeok Cheongang had been raging only moments ago. Now he spoke in a low, somber voice as he extended one hand.

Powerful internal energy shot across the distance and seized the corpse submerged in the water.

Whoosh—thud!

The body landed heavily on the deck of the swift ship.

Half of its upper body was gone, and its face was bloated. Mu Song’s eyes widened the moment he saw it.

“This man…”

“Do you know him?”

Jin Taekyung strode over, and Mu Song nodded dazedly.

“Little Tide Demon Wang Pil. Uncle Hwang’s right-hand man and the Deputy Stronghold Lord of Donghu Stronghold.”

Donghu Stronghold ruled the Yangtze in Hubei Province. Naturally, the name and sobriquet of its Deputy Stronghold Lord—and the right-hand man of Yangtze One Saber Hwang Chung—were widely known.

Ignoring the sighs that escaped at the name Little Tide Demon, Jin Taekyung stared at Mu Song with a stiff expression.

“The Deputy Stronghold Lord? Are you certain?”

“Without a doubt. The body is badly damaged, but not enough to keep me from recognizing his face.”

“…Damn it.”

Jin Taekyung’s expression hardened. So did the faces of everyone who understood what this meant.

The death of even an ordinary river bandit would have been ominous enough. But this was the Deputy Stronghold Lord of Donghu Stronghold, a Supreme Peak master of the Yangtze River Channel League whose name was renowned throughout Hubei Murim.

What this sequence of events meant was obvious.

Something has happened at Donghu Stronghold.

Jin Taekyung was the first to act on the thought that had flashed through all their minds.

Whoosh!

He crossed the deck at blinding speed, reached the stern of the swift ship, and thrust both arms out with all his strength.

Boom! Booooom!

The Scorching Yang Qi carried by the Flame Divine Palm evaporated the river water and propelled the swift ship forward.

Only then did the others recover from their shock and begin moving after him.

“Boatmen, return to your positions and take up the oars! Every second counts!”

“Tell the other ships! Send the signal at once!”

Boom, boom, boooom!

Urgent shouts and drumbeats shattered the silence.

Amid the chaos, Mu Song raised his head, his heart pounding harder and louder than the drums echoing around him.

And then—

“…!”

He saw it.

No—all of them saw it.

Beyond the fog parting before the bow of the swift ship lay a shattered ferry landing and countless corpses filling the river.

“What the fuck…!”

The curse burst from my mouth at full volume before I could stop it. But no one gave me a disapproving look or blamed me.

Maybe they were too overwhelmed to care. Or maybe I had simply said what they all wanted to say.

That was how horrific the scene before us was.

“This is a hellscape.”

“…How could this happen?”

Jeok Cheongang muttered in a grim, subdued voice, while the usually cheerful Cheongpung looked around with trembling eyes.

Everywhere he looked, there were collapsed houses and corpses.

The bodies we had seen around the ferry landing were only a fraction of the dead scattered across the island.

“C-Captain. Over there…”

“I know.”

I forced myself to ignore Hyuk Mujin, who was calling to me in a trembling voice.

I had already seen what he was pointing at. My teeth clenched before I even realized it.

Children and commoners who never learned martial arts.

Donghu Stronghold was not inhabited solely by river bandits.

They had brought their families and relatives to this safe, natural fortress, and the people who gathered here had formed a village of their own.

And…

They’re all dead.

Children who looked as though they had only just been weaned. Frail old people and women. Even the hundreds of river bandits who should have risked their lives to protect them.

Every single one of them was dead.

That was the conclusion my companions and I had reached after searching every corner of the island for more than half a day, along with the martial artists of Wudang and the Zhuge Clan and the river bandits of Water Dragon Stronghold under Mu Song.

And among those countless dead was one particular person.

“Uncle Hwang!”

Mu Song’s beastlike roar echoed from far away. Gung Gibang muttered in a heavy voice.

“Looks like he finally found him.”

Some people said that no human life was more valuable than another.

But that was not true. There was a difference in weight. A person’s death weighed differently depending on who they had been in life and what relationship they had shared with you.

For Mu Song, at least, Yangtze One Saber Hwang Chung must have been such a person.

“The Family Head has ordered me to bring you to him at once.”

At the words of the Zhuge Clan martial artist who came hurrying toward us, Jin Wikyung nodded.

“This concerns Great Hero Hwang, I presume.”

“Yes. Great Hero Hwang’s body was just found. However…”

“Let’s go. We’ll hear the rest directly from the Family Head.”

We set off without another word.

Not to mourn Hwang Chung’s death, but because even in death, the Yangtze One Saber was important enough to demand our immediate attention.

Jeok Cheongang was the only one among us who had known him, but grief was not the reason his expression had hardened, either.

“What do you think?”

The sudden Sound Transmission slipped into my ear. I slowed my steps and answered.

“The same as you, Old Master.”

“You know what this old man is thinking?”

“You’re thinking the same thing I am.”

“I feel an urge to use the Flame Divine Palm.”

“I’ve needed to piss for a while, too, but I’ve been holding it in. You should hold it in as well, Old Master. I’m still organizing my thoughts.”

I calmly laid out what I had been considering over the past half a day.

“Donghu Stronghold is a natural fortress that can only be reached by crossing Tianling Falls. I don’t know every detail of the situation here, but no ordinary force could dream of defeating the Supreme Peak master Hwang Chung and the river bandits under his command.”

“Even a mongrel has the advantage in its own yard. To face men who have spent their entire lives on the Yangtze, you would need overwhelming strength.”

Jeok Cheongang’s Sound Transmission continued.

“The Yangtze One Saber in particular is a veritable water ghost. During the Great Faction War, he won overwhelming victories against the Demonic Cult in every battle fought on water. To wipe out Donghu Stronghold, the attackers would have needed at least twice its strength.”

Twice the strength of Donghu Stronghold…

I had only realized it after coming here, but Donghu Stronghold was on a scale utterly incomparable to the other water strongholds.

The number of bodies discovered so far had already surpassed a thousand. In terms of size alone, it would not have been an exaggeration to call it a faction in its own right.

Mu Song said something like that before, too. Donghu Stronghold is the strongest water stronghold in the Yangtze River Channel League after its headquarters.

One look around was enough to understand why.

Everything had been shattered and destroyed, but this one water stronghold had once maintained a fleet of some fifty ships and built a settlement filled with houses that would not have looked out of place in a bustling city.

It might not have compared to prestigious great factions such as the Nine Sects and One Gang² or the Five Great Families,³ but the river bandits under the Yangtze One Saber must have been formidable elites in their own right.

And very few groups could deploy twice that much force against Donghu Stronghold.

No—only a handful.

“If we’re talking about places capable of mobilizing that many men and ships…”

“As far as this old man knows, there are only four in Hubei Province. One of them is already as good as gone.”

“Wudang, the Zhuge Clan, the government, and the Sea Serpent Society. Correct?”

“Correct. But most of the Sea Serpent Society are fishermen and boatmen who banded together for their livelihoods, so they have far too few masters. Wudang and the Zhuge Clan have the strength, but neither has any reason or justification to attack Donghu Stronghold.”

“The government is the same.”

“Of course. Even a child knows that Murim and the authorities maintain a relationship of mutual noninterference. Even if the Son of Heaven⁴ had issued an imperial edict to subjugate the stronghold, it could never have been carried out this secretly, hidden from the eyes of the entire realm.”

Murim was a tree rooted deep within the forest of the world.

It had grown too tall to prune, and anyone who tried to chop it down carelessly risked damaging the blade of their own ax instead.

That was one of the reasons Murim had endured even though the owner of the forest had changed many times.

A towering tree that even the Son of Heaven,⁴ the woodcutter, could not easily raise his ax against.

That was Murim. The countless branches and leaves that had sprung from this great tree had grown by joining forces—and, at times, by breaking one another.

The Yangtze River Channel League was one of the thicker branches.

If all the water strongholds scattered across the realm were gathered in one place, they would be a major force in their own right, and the number of masters among them would not fall far behind the Nine Sects and One Gang² or the Five Great Families.³

And now that very branch of the Yangtze River Channel League had been broken.

By someone whose identity remained unknown.

“Do you think the culprit is one of those four? Wudang, the Zhuge Clan, the authorities, or the Sea Serpent Society?”

“This waterway sees hundreds of ships pass through every day. Mobilizing enough force to cross Tianling Falls while avoiding all those eyes would be… extremely difficult.”

“It might have been extremely easy.”

I finally let out the words that had been hovering on the tip of my tongue.

“If it was Dark Heaven.”

“…!”

“They had no need to load hundreds or thousands of men onto ships and cross Tianling Falls. If a warp—no, if the formation they call a Moving Formation is hidden somewhere around here, that would explain everything.”

Dark Heaven had already proved it could be done in Shaolin and Sichuan.

If my guess was correct, it would also fully explain how they had gone unnoticed by the countless eyes traveling along the Yangtze.

Jeok Cheongang remained silent for a while before letting out a low groan.

“So this old man isn’t the only one who thinks so.”

“In a situation like this, we can’t rule out Dark Heaven. It stinks too damn much.”

“But why the Yangtze River Channel League?”

“I don’t know.”

I continued as I watched the familiar faces slowly approaching from the distance.

“That’s what we need to find out now.”