Chapter 451

“Benefactor, where are you going?”

“Huh?”

I flinched as I quietly edged toward the door. Cheongpung, who had gathered up his belongings, tilted his head at me.

“What? Why?”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I, uh… something urgent came up.”

“You said we had to leave right away.”

“Listen, Young Hero Cheong. I wasn’t going to go into this, but…”

I deliberately hardened my expression.

“I’m going to relieve myself. Happy?”

“But the privy isn’t in that direction.”

“…”

He was annoyingly sharp.

Martial arts were his minor, while eating and shitting were his major. He had to know the location of every privy on the island.

After a moment’s hesitation, I answered.

“…I’m going to piss outside.”

Even I had to admit it was a desperate excuse.

Only then did Gung Gibang and Hyuk Mujin realize something was off. They stopped packing their bags and turned toward me.

“Young Hero Gung, doesn’t the Captain seem unusually talkative today?”

“Yeah. Why does he look so restless?”

“That’s because I’m trying to decide which of you two to hit first.”

Normally, they would have backed down the moment I said something like that. But after being thoroughly conditioned by my violence, the two of them had grown considerably.

“Hmm. If this were our usual Captain, his hands would have moved before his words. But he’s trying to talk his way out of it? There’s definitely something going on.”

“Right?”

“Absolutely. Do you think I’ve only been beaten once or twice? There’s a logic and flow to these things.”

As Hyuk Mujin stared at me through narrowed eyes, Gung Gibang’s eyes suddenly widened, and he glanced around.

“Wait. Where did Mungyeong go?”

“Oh, you’re right. He was here a moment ago. Where the hell did he go?”

Where else? He was already outside waiting for me.

Let’s talk.

I sighed as I recalled the Sound Transmission Mungyeong had sent me earlier.

Denying it any longer would only make them more suspicious.

“He’s outside. We have something to discuss in private.”

“In the privy? Just the two of you?”

“…What the hell are you talking about, you lunatic? You’re making it sound suggestive.”

Hyuk Mujin gave me a dubious look.

“Captain, I’ve already been conditioned to insults and violence, so I’ll be fine. But please don’t expose Mungyeong to any strange influences.”

“…”

What the hell was this lunatic talking about? I was the one about to end up covered in blood.

I was too dumbfounded to speak, and Gung Gibang added his two cents.

“Hyuk’s right. The more I see that kid, the more thoughtful and kind he seems. Don’t pick on him for no reason.”

“Wow. You bastards, seriously…”

I stopped myself.

“Forget it. What would you two know?”

Cheongpung had at least finally noticed what was going on and kept his mouth shut like a mute with honey in it…

No, now that I looked closer, he really was stuffing candy into his mouth.

Where does he keep getting that candy?

If I stayed here any longer, I was going to lose my mind.

Shaking my head, I ignored the voices behind me and left the house.

Outside, Mungyeong stood waiting in the courtyard, dressed in spotless white robes.

“You’re late.”

“It didn’t take that long…”

“You’re late.”

“Sorry…”

“You’re late.”

“…”

Please save me.

The pressure of that broken-record routine was no joke. His aura bore down on me so subtly that no one else could detect it, and I swallowed hard.

“S-sorry I’m late. But what’s going on?”

“Pardon?”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean? You called me out earlier because you had something to say.”

Had Cannes named him Actor of the Year or something?

He blinked as if he truly had no idea what I was talking about. For a moment, even I nearly fell for it.

The monster wearing the skin of a young medical apprentice smiled brightly and continued.

“Oh, you want us to move somewhere else for a moment? Understood.”

“No. If possible, I think it would be better to talk right here…”

“Oh, you want us to move somewhere else for a moment? Understood.”

“…Fine. Let’s go.”

I miss my mother.

Holding back tears, I followed Mungyeong.

We avoided the occasional disciples of the Zhuge Clan and Wudang, along with the river bandits of Water Dragon Stronghold, until we reached a deserted area. Only then did Mungyeong finally speak.

“Dark Heaven. Was this their doing?”

“Yeah. It looks that way.”

“There’s no one here.”

I corrected myself at the speed of light.

“It appears so, sir.”

“So it is not certain yet.”

“There is always some possibility of error. But although we haven’t found the formation, I’m convinced Dark Heaven was responsible.”

“Dark Heaven. Dark Heaven…”

Mungyeong muttered the words under his breath, then suddenly raised his head.

He silently gazed at the dark night sky, where even the full moon had hidden itself. After a moment, he abruptly asked, “Did you notice anything strange about the corpses?”

“Something strange?”

“The wounds left on them.”

Every death left traces. This was especially true of deaths caused by battles between martial artists.

I had heard that a widely experienced master with a deep understanding of various martial arts could identify the weapon used—and even determine which form had killed the victim—simply by examining the wounds on a corpse.

And the young medical apprentice before me possessed both the discernment and martial prowess to make him one of the finest examiners of the dead in Murim.

“I have never seen wounds like these before. They seem to follow the principles of the very basic Three Calamities Sword Technique, yet they undulate like waves. They are exceedingly strange.”

Mungyeong slowly raised one hand and swept it through the air. Thread-thin strands of internal energy flowed from it, glowing faintly in the darkness.

“If I had to guess, the culprit did not use an ordinary weapon. It was an unusual weapon with a winding blade, something akin to a Snake Sword.”

“I thought they’d been cut with Force.”

“Your guess is correct. It was Force—or something every bit as sharp.”

The only thing as sharp as Force was Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.

And no matter how thoroughly Dark Heaven had prepared, there was no way so many of its forces could have been armed with weapons made of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.

No matter how much gold you have, Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron is difficult to obtain.

This was not a question of capital. It was a question of resource scarcity.

As I stood lost in thought, Mungyeong asked, “Did you examine all the corpses?”

“Not all of them. I looked at the ones that stood out. I’m not particularly knowledgeable, so even after examining them myself, I couldn’t tell which martial arts or forms had been used.”

“One of the corpses you examined belonged to Hwang Chung, the Yangtze One Saber. What did you make of it?”

“He’d been cut cleanly in two at the waist by Force. But the decay was so severe that I couldn’t determine anything beyond that…”

“And the Mad Water Saber Demon and the Wave Fox?”

“Those two…”

I suddenly frowned.

A detail shared by all three corpses had just occurred to me.

…Only their upper bodies remained.

The lower halves of all three corpses were nowhere to be found.

I had seen several other corpses like that, so it had not struck me as strange at the time. Now that I thought about it, though, it was certainly suspicious.

“Didn’t the fish eat them?”

“That would not be entirely wrong. From what I determined, the massacre at Donghu Stronghold took place ten days ago. The cold has been gone for some time, so severe decay is only natural. The corpses submerged in water would have fared even worse.”

Warm sunlight and damp air had erased many of the traces left behind by death.

But they had not erased everything.

“By comparison, the commoners’ corpses still had their limbs relatively intact. Did you notice that?”

“Yes. Those who hadn’t learned martial arts weren’t cut apart. They were crushed.”

Unlike the corpses of the river bandits, the bodies of the children, women, and elderly had not been severed. Their entire bodies had simply been crushed and pulverized.

And there was one more thing.

“The houses and the surrounding ground had caved in everywhere. That would have been impossible without a force of ten thousand geun,¹ and it is not a method an internal-arts master with profound internal energy would choose.”

“So, an external-arts master?”

“There’s no one here, remember?”

“…I was just talking to myself.”

He was awfully sensitive about this.

After hurriedly making that excuse, I fell silent and considered the matter.

Martial arts in Murim could broadly be divided into two categories.

Internal arts emphasized the efficient use and application of internal energy. External arts also used internal energy, but focused on tempering the body to their absolute limits.

Most people faced those two paths upon entering the world of martial arts, and most chose the former.

Partly because training in external arts was excruciating, but also because achieving any meaningful results required long years of grueling perseverance.

Which means there are only a handful of Supreme Peak external-arts masters capable of this level of destruction.

There were hardly any Supreme Peak masters in the world to begin with, even if you turned the whole realm upside down and shook it out.

I glanced at Mungyeong, silently asking for an answer. A faint crease appeared on the young medical apprentice’s smooth forehead.

“Looking at me will do you no good. I do not know his identity either. No—I should say their identities, not his.”

“There are two?”

“At least two. Three at most.”

“Three Supreme Peak masters…”

“Based on my guess, they are even more formidable than the Qilian Three Fiends we faced in Sichuan. At least one of them uses an unusual weapon.”

For fuck’s sake. This isn’t some five-star establishment. Why are there three Supreme Peak masters?

It was only because Mungyeong and Jeok Cheongang were holding down the fort that I could afford to leave at all. Without them here, I would have been too worried about what might happen to go anywhere.

“With this much information, the Third Fiend might know something. He must have at least heard who his comrades were.”

The Third Fiend we had captured in Sichuan was one of the reasons I was going to the Zhuge Clan.

I had heard that he had become like a bipolar patient after his balls were crushed, but if I worked him over with enough care and dedication, he would not last long.

Maybe we can even put him out front and have him lead us to the formation.

That hopeful thought had barely crossed my mind when Mungyeong spoke.

“Perhaps it is someone everyone already knows.”

“What?”

“I mean the one who uses that unusual weapon.”

It took me quite a while to grasp what he meant.

The realization struck like a hammer to the back of my head.

I stared blankly at Mungyeong.

“Are you serious?”

“A seasoned Supreme Peak master. Forms and wounds so unusual that they are difficult to read. There cannot be many people at that realm who wield such a weapon.”

“Then it really is…”

A dry voice emerged from between Mungyeong’s lips.

“The Dongting Fisherman. For now, he is the most likely suspect.”

“…!”

The eccentric master who had never left the area around Dongting Lake in his entire life.

Unusually, he used a fishing rod made of black wood as his signature weapon. He was a Supreme Peak master who had crossed Tianling Falls and disappeared after becoming enraged by the tragic news concerning his friend, the head of the Sea Serpent Society.

Everything fits perfectly.

I had forgotten for a moment.

I had forgotten about his existence.

This was no baseless suspicion.

Unlike the others, the Dongting Fisherman’s corpse had never been found. The only trace he had left behind was his broken black-wood fishing rod.

It was only a guess, but what if the Dongting Fisherman really was a member of Dark Heaven?

“But the Dongting Fisherman Zhuge Feng told me about had absolutely no reason to do something like this…”

“Everything has a reason. The Dongting Fisherman is only human. He must have had a shadow he showed no one. Zhuge Feng is likely suspicious of him by now as well.”

Mungyeong turned away, his voice cold.

“Always be suspicious, and stay alert. May martial fortune be with you.”