“Are those your friends?”
Sama Pyo laughed aloud before answering in a weary voice.
“As if.”
“Yeah, you do seem to be on pretty bad terms for friends.”
I scratched my chin and slowly looked around.
The already ancient pavilion had collapsed. Blood stained the weeds that grew thick across the clearing.
All right. Situation assessed.
What a complete fucking mess.
I’d only been away from our quarters a little while, and now there were some twenty corpses to clean up. We could have used a snail bride to handle that.1 Instead, we’d gotten snail assassins in the middle of the night.
I glanced at the assassins who had faltered when I appeared, then shrugged at Sama Pyo.
“Oh, you’re better than I thought.”
Blood drenched his upper body. He answered between ragged breaths.
“Yeah, I’m not bad. For an unorthodox goon.”
Honestly, I was starting to feel bad calling him that. He’d been badly outnumbered by skilled enemies, and fighting this hard against them meant he’d truly put his life on the line.
Impressed, I nodded.
“You’ve done enough that I can’t keep calling you an unorthodox goon… From now on, you’re an unorthodox hardcase.”
“An unorthodox hardcase. How kind of you.”
“Oh, you’re grateful? That’s a surprise. I thought you’d start cursing me as soon as you heard it.”
“Cursing takes energy. I’m about to collapse, so stop talking to me.”
His honesty drew a quiet laugh from me.
“Then collapse.”
“What?”
“I said collapse. Don’t worry about the rest.”
“Damn it. You could’ve said that sooner…”
His words trailed off as his eyes began to close. At the same time, Sama Pyo’s body slowly tilted to the side, and I stepped toward him.
Whoosh. Thud.
The three-zhang2 gap vanished in an instant.
Just as I caught him before he could pitch face-first into the ground, a sharp whistle split the air and wind whipped up behind me.
Whoosh!
It happened behind me, but I could see it. No—I could sense and read everything through my sharpened instincts.
Now that I’d stepped into this space, it was practically my domain.
Crack!
Without turning, I threw a punch. Something shattered beneath my fist, and a masked man with his head crushed like tofu fell into a pool of blood.
Splash.
Sticky blood sprayed across my back. Ignoring it, I laid Sama Pyo on a relatively clean patch of ground and raised my head.
The masked men stood frozen like stone statues.
“Why are you just standing there? That was pretty much your last chance.”
“……”
“……”
“What’s so surprising? Were you planning to ding-dong ditch me, you fucking bastards?”
In the suffocating silence, the more than ten pairs of eyes visible above the masks shook violently.
Papap!
Whiiiiing!
A gale far fiercer than the first swept out in every direction.
Every masked man still standing was a Peak Master capable of injuring others with Sword Energy. Swords, sabers, spears, sickles… Destructive qi surged from their weapons, tearing through the air toward the vital points across my body.
I watched it all without the slightest fear.
The flow of qi. The direction of each weapon.
Even the faint fear in their wide eyes.
That settled it. They had already lost. They knew they were no more than wolves, yet they refused to accept it and charged at a tiger anyway.
Then I’d better teach them. Teach them that they should have run somehow.
Dozens of forms flashed through my mind. I chose the cruelest, most destructive one and moved.
Whoosh! Crunch!
I twisted smoothly aside. Four weapons missed me by a hair and tangled together as their paths crossed. I brought my straightened hand down through their center.
Slash!
Force cut the weapons apart. I struck one of the masked men in the abdomen as he stood frozen, still gripping what remained of his prized weapon.
Flame Divine Palm.
Boom!
Terrible heat burned away the life force inside his body. I lowered my head as he crumpled behind me, smoke pouring from his seven apertures.3
Shaaak! Whoosh!
A strike had come from behind without warning. The long sickle meant to reap my neck swept through empty air, while my backward-thrust elbow struck its wielder square in the chest.
Crack!
More than a dozen ribs broke. He gave a dying gasp.
But my blow wasn’t what killed him. His comrade’s spear did.
Thrust!
Look at these bastards. Not a shred of comradeship.
Clicking my tongue, I seized the spearhead jutting from his chest and squeezed.
Crack!
He was a Peak Master who had reached the level of injuring others with Sword Energy. I was a Supreme Peak master who had entered the realm of Sword Energy Becoming Force.
I snapped the spearhead off as easily as a wooden chopstick and returned it to its owner.
Whoosh! Thunk!
The result was instant death. The spearhead lodged between the masked man’s brows, and he collapsed without a scream. His comrades swallowed their gasps. Three of them had died in less time than it took to call it a moment.
Seven left.
I counted them calmly and took a step.
Whoosh!
Space vanished with the wind, and another enemy appeared right in front of me. No—I was the one who had reached him.
“……”
His wide eyes seemed to be trying to say something. Too late. I tightened my grip around his neck.
Crack!
Six.
I felt the life leave him as his body went limp. I took the sword from his hand and hurled it at the nearest enemy.
“Hng!”
With a panicked gasp, the man raised his curved moon saber diagonally. My sword flew straight into the saber, which was charged with saber qi.
Boom!
The ground heaved with a deafening roar. A staggering figure emerged from the billowing dust.
The moon saber had shattered against the qi in my sword. Dozens of fragments were embedded across its wielder’s body.
“Grrk. Grrr…”
Thud.
The largest fragment was lodged in his throat. Perhaps that was why he fell without even managing a last word, blood bubbling in his throat.
I pushed aside the corpse with the broken neck and spoke quietly.
“Five left.”
“……”
“……”
I could feel the fear filling the suffocating silence. Five Peak Masters had fallen in mere moments, and I didn’t have a scratch on me as I looked for my next target.
“Who’s next?”
No one answered.
Then the masked men, frozen in place and staring at me with eyes wide as if they had seen a ghost, chose to target someone else instead of me.
Papap!
Of the five, three went for me. The other two went for Namho and Taishan.
I had to admit, it was probably the best choice they could make. That didn’t mean it would end well for them.
“I saw it with my own eyes! Those bastards ate both chicken legs!”
“Legs? Not wings—legs? Both of them?”
Taishan blinked at Namho in disbelief, then drew the two-section staff from his side.
“Both chicken legs! Too far! You’re not human!”
We’d have needed a vote to settle who wasn’t human, but Taishan made voting irrelevant with his enormous two-section staff.
Wham! Crack!
His innate divine strength was enough to make a defense useless. One masked man instinctively raised his sword to block the staff. Both his wrists broke, and before he could scream, Taishan smashed his head along with the other man’s.
Crack!
The two bodies hit the ground without so much as a dying cry.
From behind Taishan, Namho clenched a fist and shouted, “That’s it! You commendable bastard, I could kill you!”
“Uaaaaaah! Taishan is commendable!”
“Well done, you goddamn bastard! All you ever do is eat, but you’ve finally earned your keep!”
I gave a quiet laugh at Namho’s praise—or abuse; it was hard to tell—then turned to the remaining enemies.
“All right. Three left.”
“……”
“……”
“……”
Their eyes twitched. They understood.
Even as their comrades died, they had been backing away, unable to bring themselves to attack me.
“I’m telling you this just in case, but if you run, you’ll die. Of course, unlike your friends who went sightseeing at Mount Beimang first, you’ll die much more painfully after lingering a long time before your breath finally stops.”
At my quiet warning, someone’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.
They’d all watched their comrades die. If they ran, they would end up wishing they’d died the same way.
“But surrender here and tell me what I want to know, and I’ll keep you alive no matter what it takes. If you don’t believe me, I’ll stake my life on it.”
I didn’t want to spare men who had come here to do this. But I had to find out who was behind the ambush.
I named the people who came to mind, one by one.
“Baeksang. Heugung. Yohi. If one of them is your master, tell me now. If someone else sent you, tell me everything you know about them.”
Who was it?
I had my suspicions, but I couldn’t be certain. Only a handful of people were bold enough to stage an attack inside the Inner Palace, powerful enough to send warriors of this caliber, and well-informed enough to know I was gone.
It has to be one of the three Great Chieftains.
I’d moved so discreetly. How had anyone noticed? I didn’t know who had found out, or how. The timing of the ambush was too perfect, too.
I couldn’t even rule out Heugung. We’d parted barely fifteen minutes ago, after he promised to cooperate.
Did he ask to meet me just so he could stab me in the back? Fool me first, then seize the Fire Dragon Pavilion members and use them to threaten me?
Or it could have been Baeksang, who had been watching Heugung, or Yohi.
One thing was certain: whatever name came from these masked attackers’ mouths would belong to a Dark Heaven hound.
“Who is it? Tell me.”
Ssssss.
I pressed down on them with an overwhelming wave of qi. The foreheads visible above their masks creased in pain.
Then, in the next moment, I saw the corners of the masked men’s mouths twitch.
Crunch.
“……!”
A chill swept over me. I hurriedly fired Finger Qi and struck their pressure points, but dark-red blood burst from the mouths of the men who had severed their own heart meridians.
“Grrrk. Cough.”
Fuck.
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