Chapter 60

The Head Elder thought,

Have I lived too long?

The Murim he remembered had not been like this. Martial artists had not been like this.

Ganging up on an opponent was shameful. Ambushes were condemned. A man who got so much as dirt on his back became a laughingstock.

And yet…

“Throw dirt! Keep throwing it!”

In all his eighty years, he had never seen anything like this. What? Throw dirt?

It was a cheap, cowardly trick that not even the Demonic Cultists he had fought like mortal enemies decades ago had stooped to using.

Is that bastard truly a martial artist?

Even more appalling was the reaction of his so-called subordinates.

“Squad Leader’s orders! Throw dirt!”

“Keep your distance! Watch the Sword Energy!”

Watching the men obey without a word made his head spin.

What kind of goddamn bastards are these?

They were not martial artists.

No, they were not even human.

This was an insult to all martial artists—and to the Head Elder himself, who had devoted his entire life to the sword.

“How dare you…”

He was drawing his sword when—

“You idiots!”

A stern shout rang out half a beat sooner. A young man whose face was swollen as though he had been stung by a swarm of bees swept a fierce glare around him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He looked ridiculous, but he had real spirit. Yes. That was how a martial artist ought to behave.

At least one of them has some sense.

The Head Elder was nodding to himself when the young man shouted,

“You think dirt’s enough? Mix in rocks too!”

“…!”

The Head Elder shuddered as though struck by lightning.

The humiliation was so unprecedented that he forgot even to swing his sword as a clod of dirt flew straight into his face.

Splat!

He could say with certainty that in all his eighty years, he had never taken an attack so humiliatingly or with his guard so completely down.

As the dirt pattered off him, he spotted a hefty rock thoughtfully mixed in with it.

“Uh-heh. Uh-heh-heh-heh.”

The Head Elder laughed like a madman.

Then his laughter abruptly stopped.

At the same moment—

Tssssss.

Sword Energy surged from his blade, laden with one jiazi¹ of internal energy.

“Are you prepared?”

Jin Taekyung watched him and muttered,

“Shouldn’t have mixed in the rocks…”

Before the words had even left his mouth, the Head Elder charged like a lion. The dozen or so sheep screamed and scattered.

“Spread out! Spread out!”

“Keep throwing dirt!”

Even as they fled, they did not forget to throw dirt.

Fwoooosh—

A fierce gale blasted from the tip of the Head Elder’s sword. Sand, dirt, stones—it made no difference. Before that overwhelming power, everything shattered and scattered.

How are we supposed to fight this guy?

Head-on?

Calling us melee damage dealers was being generous. If I sent the reconnaissance squad against the Head Elder, they’d be dying in heaps before I could blink.

I’d gotten attached to the bastards, though. I couldn’t let them die like dogs for nothing.

“Caaaptain!”

That bastard deserved to die, sure.

Why did you have to mix in rocks? Seriously, the rocks.

The Head Elder’s first target was Hyuk Mujin. Naturally. He had boldly struck the opening blow.

I heaved a deep sigh and launched myself toward him.

Shiiiiing!

I thrust my spear at the Head Elder’s chest with all my strength.

The Sword Energy about to carve through Hyuk Mujin’s back immediately changed direction.

Shing.

That goddamn Sword Energy.

There was no time to look at the spearhead it had sliced clean off. I snatched the terrified Hyuk Mujin by the scruff of his neck.

“Run!”

But the Head Elder was not about to give up so easily.

Swoooosh!

The air shrieked, and my side burned. A mere graze tore away a handful of flesh and sent blood spraying.

Kh.

It hurt like hell. But right now, even screaming was a luxury.

I need to buy time.

I shoved Hyuk Mujin aside and turned back. The Head Elder raised an eyebrow.

“You?”

It was only one word, but the meaning came through perfectly.

You think the likes of you can stop me?

I answered as calmly as I could.

“Yeah. Me.”

“Do you not value your life?”

“If I tell you it’s damn precious, will you let me live?”

“Heh heh. What an insolent tongue for one so young.”

“Gramps, does your pecker still stand?”

Tssssss.

It rose ramrod straight.

Large, magnificent Sword Energy.

“…Still going strong, I see.”

The hand gripping my spear grew slick with sweat.

Looks like I’ll have to use every last trick I’ve got if I want to survive this.

I had far more secrets than the Head Elder knew.

I could attack using my Inventory, and I had One Annihilation—a Skill that poured several times my normal strength into a single blow.

I’ve never shown it to anyone, just in case something like this happened.

Was this what people in Murim called a final, last-resort technique?

One thing was certain. Neither the Head Elder nor anyone else in Murim would see it coming.

And on top of that…

“Encircling formation. Form up.”

Shff.

Hyuk Mujin and the reconnaissance squad began closing in from every direction.

A flimsy net for a fish as big as the Head Elder.

But with a sharp enough harpoon, we had a chance.

“You think this will be enough?”

“To catch one old man? More than enough.”

The Head Elder smiled, amused.

“What a fearless brat. The kind who only comes to his senses after a beating.”

But he never got the chance. A voice suddenly cut in.

“I must have misheard you. Say that again.”

A mountain of a man stood there, his eyes wide and fierce. The voice that emerged from between his thick lips was cold as ice.

“You said you were going to lay a hand on our boy?”

Fwoooosh.

Sword Energy blazed up along his blade like wildfire and pointed at the Head Elder.

Jin Wikyung had appeared like a savior. He winked at me.

“Well? Your big brother looks cool, doesn’t he?”

Still the same.

It was the first time I had seen that face in a month.

The moment Jin Wikyung appeared, the tension drained from my body.

I was glad.

Just glad.

Thank goodness he’s alive.

Wikyung was covered in blood, as though he had fought a brutal battle to get here. Wounds large and small showed through the tears in his clothes.

But that was enough. All that mattered was that he was alive.

There’s a lot I want to say, but it can wait.

We could have our reunion after the war was over. Wikyung seemed to feel the same way. He turned his gaze forward.

At the end of our gazes, the Head Elder slowly began to speak.

“If you have made it this far, then…”

Jin Wikyung’s icy voice cut him off.

“The Second and Third Elders are dead. The First Elder is only a matter of time.”

That was good news. If Wikyung put it that way, the Elders must have played a major role in this war.

The Head Elder had lost his hands and feet.

“Did the two of them… go peacefully?”

“Probably.”

The Head Elder nodded readily.

“They always said they wished to die fighting as martial artists. They got their wish. I’m glad.”

“They’ll be remembered as traitors, not martial artists. Every last one of you.”

“History is written by the victors.”

The Head Elder leveled his sword at us. Even before dozens of men, including me and Jin Wikyung, he stood utterly composed.

“Now, let us decide who the victor will be.”

Jin Wikyung opened his mouth as if he had something to say, then closed it firmly.

The next moment, a thunderous roar burst from him.

“Strike down the rebels!”

Shing. Shrrring.

Dozens of weapons were drawn at once, all aimed at a single man. It was quite a sight.

“We obey!”

With a tremendous shout, dozens of martial artists charged as one. I was no exception. My grip tightened around my spear, and my chest felt ready to burst.

We can win. No. We win, no matter what.

It was an all-out melee without the slightest formation. But we had Jin Wikyung, a Peak master, and dozens of martial artists at his back.

And there’s me.

The Head Elder had placed too much faith in his own strength. He had committed every last man to the front without keeping even a minimal guard around himself. As a result, the black-clad men were now pinned down by the combined assault of the Jin Family of Taiyuan and the Mount Heng Sword Sect.

The Head Elder…

dies right here.

It’s over!

It did not take long for that certainty to shatter.

Shushushushush!

Dozens of tiny points shot out of nowhere, slicing through the air faster and harder than any of us had expected.

“It’s the finger-flicking technique!”

Jin Wikyung’s shout rang out, but I had no time to wonder what that was.

Pow-pow-pow-pow!

Clang!

“Aaargh!”

“Guh!”

Some men fell. Others knocked the projectiles aside.

Those who fell did not rise again.

Don’t tell me…

It had lasted only an instant, but I had seen it clearly. Tiny fragments were embedded like buckshot around their hearts and across their faces.

Stones?

They were little more than shards now, but they had definitely been stones. Unable to withstand the Head Elder’s internal energy, they had shattered the moment he fired them at us.

That’s possible?

Goose bumps rose across my skin, but it was not over.

The Head Elder was extending one hand toward us.

“Scatter!”

This time, Wikyung and I shouted at once. The martial artists, already on high alert, scattered in every direction.

Good. We weren’t too late this ti—

My relief lasted only a moment.

Swoooosh!

This time, what came shooting at us was not the finger-flicking technique.

It was the Head Elder.

He plunged into the martial artists and rampaged among them like a wild beast.

Slash. Slash. Slash.

“Grrk.”

“Hhk.”

Each time his sword flashed through the darkness, another life went out. Wherever the Head Elder passed, he left only strangled screams and corpses behind.

“Head Elder!”

Jin Wikyung charged at him in fury. By then, the Head Elder had already killed five people. Yet his pale face remained untouched by so much as a drop of blood, making him look like a ghost.

“You’ve come?”

“How dare you!”

“You’re all so clumsy. Peace must have lasted too long.”

There was one undeniable fact.

The Head Elder was a hero of the Great Faction War.

He was stronger and more experienced than anyone else here—a Peak martial artist honed through countless battles.

Shiiiiing!

The Sword Energy Jin Wikyung unleashed stabbed through empty air. The Head Elder evaded it with nothing more than a slight tilt of his head, then flicked a finger.

His target was me.

Shhk!

I could not see a thing, but instinct told me what it was.

Internal energy.

It was exactly that—a solid mass of qi.

I threw myself into a roll without hesitation.

Pshk.

“Guh.”

I should have blocked it with my spear, but the attack was too unfamiliar for me to think that far ahead.

An unnamed ally paid the price with his life.

I felt rotten.

“Narye tagon? You truly are a donkey.”²

I spat out the dirt in my mouth.

“When your life’s on the line, you do whatever it takes.”

“Haha. You’ve already become a proper man of Murim.”

Clang! Clang-clang-clang!

What kind of monster was this?

Even as he spoke, the Head Elder deflected every one of Jin Wikyung’s Sword Energy attacks. The sight left me speechless.

Thud!

Even then, a fist loaded with internal energy smashed the skull of a martial artist who’d gone for his back.

“You’re still twenty years too early.”

The battle had barely begun. Not even enough time had passed to drink a cup of tea, yet nearly twenty martial artists had already become cold corpses.

“You bastard!”

Shiiiiing!

A middle-aged warrior whose face looked vaguely familiar lost his head to Sword Energy.

“Die!”

Boom!

A young man with a baby face that might have been twenty had his chest caved in and dropped to his knees.

They were not NPCs.

They were real people.

Faces I had seen at least once around the Jin Family of Taiyuan. Faces belonging to people whose hands I had shaken.

I gritted my teeth.

I’m sorry.

I was not apologizing because I lacked the power to stop it. I was apologizing because I had used their deaths.

Shhk!

Another man fell to the Head Elder’s finger-flicking technique like a puppet with its strings cut. But just as the corpse seemed about to topple backward, it sprang upright like a roly-poly toy.

Then it pitched toward the Head Elder.

“Cheap trick!”

Boom! Bang!

With one hand, the Head Elder blocked Jin Wikyung’s sword. With the other, he sent a palm strike hurtling into the corpse.

And then…

Now.

Hidden behind the corpse as it flew through the air, I thrust my spear.

“One Annihilation.”

The next instant—

Goooooong.

A deafening roar left my ears numb.