The Traitor
As we entered the mountains, the moonlight vanished. Pitch-black darkness swallowed everything around us.
I raised a hand to stop the others behind me and slipped into hiding behind a boulder.
I held my breath and made myself as still as a shadow. Only my eyes and ears stayed open, staring into the black forest.
The dense branches overhead swayed in the mountain breeze, scraping together with a sound that raised the hair on my arms.
Then I caught the faint tread of a black-clad man moving through the brush, carried to my ear on the wind.
I could roughly tell the direction, but he had melted completely into the dark. When the wind died, even the footsteps faded away.
After crouching there for a while, Tang Hye-seo finally lost patience and tapped my shoulder from behind.
When I still didn’t react, she came up beside me. The fresh scent of grass and a faint sweetness drifted over my face.
“Why aren’t we moving? We’ll lose him like this.”
I put a finger to my lips and waited until my eyes adjusted to the heavy dark.
The black-clad man didn’t seem to know we were following him, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t laid a trap.
No matter how urgent the situation was, whenever you stepped into a dark place, whether it was a forest, an underground passage, or a sealed room, you had to be ready.
Charge in carelessly, and you’d end up with holes punched through you in all the wrong places.
Won Seo-gang knew that too, so he kept quiet and focused on the dark. Tang Hye-seo clenched and unclenched her fists, anxious, but she didn’t press me again.
Slowly, the shape of the forest began to separate from the dark. Once I’d grown used to the darkness enough to react to an ambush, I got to my feet.
“Let’s go.”
The overgrown mountain path where the black-clad man had disappeared led to an abandoned shrine.
It was fairly large and even had roof tiles, but the walls had crumbled in places, as if no one had set foot here in years.
A dim light leaked out from beside a window frame that had fallen away. I could feel someone inside, and I heard a low voice.
I tightened my grip on my long blade without a sound and lifted my heels. Step by step, I crept closer and pressed myself against the outer wall.
The man’s voice coming from inside sounded familiar. I peered through a fist-sized hole, and there was no doubt.
Inside, a small lamp was lit. The face of a middle-aged man who still wore his bamboo hat was half-submerged in shadow, but it was enough to recognize him.
Tang Hye-seo didn’t look surprised at all. She must have known who the black-clad man was from the start.
She had told us to be ready to leave at night, so she’d clearly expected things to turn out like this.
“How far do you plan to run?”
Tang Do-hun asked it as if he were trying to reason with them.
“As far as I can go. So stop chasing me here. Then I’ll leave quietly.”
At the woman’s voice, Tang Hye-seo’s eyes flashed like a cat’s.
She was sitting with her back to us, so I couldn’t see her face, but she seemed to know who it was.
I thought I knew too. The Tang Clan traitor the Tang Clan was hunting.
I had no idea why Tang Do-hun had slipped out in the middle of the night to meet her, but if he’d said four days would be enough, maybe this was the thing he’d been aiming for all along.
Tang Do-hun clicked his tongue with a cold sneer.
“Tsk, tsk. Don’t you understand what a pursuit squad is? This only ends when the two of you die. The sect has already sent follow-up men. It won’t matter if I turn a blind eye.”
“Then why did the sect let me go in the first place?”
Tang Do-hun’s voice dropped.
“I felt a moment of pity after hearing the unfortunate story of some young lovers and brought disgrace upon the sect for it. Don’t expect that mercy twice.”
“Was that really all? You didn’t encourage us to turn our backs on the sect?”
Tang Do-hun’s brow furrowed deeper.
“Your delusions are severe. Every result has a cause, and every action carries responsibility. Since you ran off with your own feet, the burden is yours to bear.”
The woman shot back without yielding.
“What result were you expecting when you gave me the Sakhonsan?”
“So now you’re pinning what you stole on me as well?”
“How can something be stolen when it’s impossible to steal? You left it out on purpose so I could take it, didn’t you?”
Tang Do-hun glared at her. The coldness in his eyes deepened, but the woman kept going.
“At first, I thought it was the kindness of the head of the branch. But before we’d even left Chengdu, I heard that I’d stolen a Tang Clan secret poison art and run away. Sakhonsan may be a useful poison, but it’s not a secret art.”
Tang Do-hun shook his head.
“You ran off together because you were in love. Why are you trying to put this on me? Where’s Gyeong-jae? Why are you here alone?”
“I’m enough by myself.”
“Tsk. How pathetic. You abandoned your own mate and are now hiding out so you can live alone? And you call yourself a man.”
“If we came together, you’d kill us and bury the evidence, wouldn’t you?”
“Either way, the two of you were never going to live. Don’t you understand? It’s better to die than be dragged back to the sect.”
“I was ordered to bring back the traitor to the sect alive.”
“You little wench... don’t tell me...”
Tang Do-hun had been tilting his head at her ominous words, but then his face jolted with realization. His eyes flew wide open, a twitch ran around them, and his pupils trembled.
“...The fact that Hye-seo lost you in Sichuan wasn’t a mistake? Is that it... So that’s what happened. I thought something was off from the moment that shameless girl buttered up the sect leader and got herself attached to the pursuit squad. So it was that bitch who told you to use poison on the bandits?”
“I figured you’d only respond once I’d hit rock bottom, Branch Head. And here you are.”
“I’ll take that as your last words. Go in peace.”
Tang Do-hun rose and drew his sword. Tang Hye-seo lifted her left arm and fired the hidden weapons tucked into her sleeve.
Paang!
Cheng!
The shots came through the tiny hole. It was a perfectly timed ambush, but Tang Do-hun blocked it easily as if he’d been waiting for it.
He glared at the hole the bolts had come from and smiled with thin cruelty.
“So you were there, you little rat.”
Tang Do-hun kicked off the ground and vaulted through the window. The instant he came outside, he shook his left sleeve toward us.
Won Seo-gang, Tang Hye-seo, and I all dropped away from the wall at the same time and hurled ourselves to the opposite side.
Pyu-pyu-pyu-pyuk!
More than a dozen hidden weapons slammed into the wall.
Peeeee!
The woman who came out after him blew a whistle. Tang Do-hun stopped attacking, checked behind him, and retreated a good distance.
The forest behind the shrine rustled, and three martial artists with blades in hand rushed out. One of them saw Won Seo-gang and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“W-whoa, what’s Lord Won doing here?”
“Came to make money. What about you, Brother Dong?”
“You think I came to stare at the moon? If I want oil in my bowl, I’ve got to work for it. But we... are we on the same side?”
The middle-aged wanderer with a knife scar on one cheek swallowed dryly and watched the situation closely.
Won Seo-gang turned his eyes to Tang Hye-seo. When she gave a nod, the wanderer let out a blatant sigh of relief.
“Whew. Thank heavens. Let’s do our best.”
The blade-wielders pulled out the familiar bamboo shields slung over their shoulders and stepped in front of the woman.
“Knife fighters?”
“That’s right. Their lives are like mayflies rotting in an inn for wanderers.”
Tang Hye-seo walked up to the woman behind the shields.
“Sister Se-yeong, you’ve had it rough.”
“You’re the one who had it rough, Hye-seo.”
Tang Do-hun looked over the people arrayed in front of him with a haughty gaze.
Me and Won Seo-gang, Tang Hye-seo, Tang Se-yeong, and three blade fighters.
He was outnumbered by a mile, but as befit the Tang Clan branch head, he showed no sign of backing down.
Tang Hye-seo fixed him with a murderous stare.
“Branch Head. What happened to the poison secret art you smuggled out?”
“I don’t know what you mean. The traitor is right beside you, isn’t she?”
“Iron Arm Armor.”
When Tang Hye-seo mentioned that cursed treasure, Tang Do-hun’s expression twisted viciously.
“Where is it?”
“Ask those two.”
“If Sister Young and my brother-in-law had Iron Arm Armor and ran off with it, they would have used it when we met in Sichuan. The only things they had were some silver and the Sakhonsan you gave them. Sister Young doesn’t have the authority to enter the secret hall, and she doesn’t have the ability either. How could she have stolen Iron Arm Armor?”
Tang Do-hun gave a cold snort.
“Is that supposed to prove I’m suspicious?”
“There was a witness who saw the branch head entering and leaving the secret hall recently. We also confirmed, through Haomu Sect channels, that you met with someone several times in Chengdu. Want me to keep going?”
“...Does the sect leader know too?”
“Who do you think sent me?”
Tang Do-hun kept glaring at Tang Hye-seo for a while before sheathing his sword. He took a bamboo tube from his robes, held it toward the sky, and pulled the cord hanging from the bottom.
Whiiish! Paaang!!
A firework shot from the bamboo tube, dragging a trail of white smoke as it rose into the night sky and burst into orange sparks.
Somehow the flame didn’t go out. It kept burning as it slowly fell.
“A quarter hour.”
Tang Do-hun lowered both arms and exuded a bleak, murderous aura.
“If the anti-poison hall’s men are still alive in a quarter hour, I’ll give you the answer you want.”
Both of Tang Do-hun’s sleeves fluttered.
“Watch out!”
The moment Tang Hye-seo shouted, hidden weapons ripped through the darkness and came pouring in.
Pyu-pyu-pyu-pyu-pyuk!
I threw myself behind the nearest tree.
There was no angle from where Tang Do-hun stood that should have allowed a hit, and yet the hidden weapons came at my face with a chilling whine.
Startled, I jerked backward and knocked them away with my long blade. The weapons lost none of their force and flew off in another direction, where they slammed into the bamboo shield.
What the hell...
The hair on my neck stood on end, and a tremor ran through my body.
I wasn’t the only one frantic from the bizarre trajectories and rebound force of the incoming weapons.
Won Seo-gang was also darting crazily between the trees, slashing at them with his sword.
Tang Hye-seo, too, was breaking out in a sweat as she fended off the hidden weapons from a flank position, waiting for an opening.
The men behind the bamboo shields couldn’t even risk showing their heads.
I checked the hidden weapon embedded in the tree. Its shape was unusual.
A hidden dart made by cutting iron plates into the shape of a bat.
It was the Bat Dart, something I’d only ever heard about.
The Bat Dart wasn’t a hidden weapon that flew in a straight line. Like a dart guided by a thread, it curved here and there with the wind.
Even when you knocked it aside with a blade, it didn’t drop to the ground. It would whip off in another direction instead...
How deranged did you have to be to invent something like this, even if you were one of those lunatics obsessed with hidden weapons?
Pyu-pyu-pyu-pyu!
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Fighting a man who used hidden weapons in the dead of night was as bad as fighting river bandits in the middle of the Yangtze.
How the hell were you supposed to fight when you couldn’t even see?
We had the numbers, but the hidden weapons were sharp as hornets, and we couldn’t get close at all.
Tang Hye-seo and Tang Se-yeong were firing back with volleys of hidden weapons, but even at a glance, Tang Do-hun’s skill was several notches higher.
If it hadn’t been for the shield, we would have been wiped out already.
No matter how many hidden weapons Tang Do-hun had tucked away in his sleeves, they seemed endless.
“Ghk!”
One of the blade fighters was struck by a Bat Dart that had rebounded off the shield and went flying, collapsing to the ground.
The wound probably wasn’t deep, but if it had poison on it, he was as good as dead.
A chill crawled down my spine.
At this rate, they’d pick us off one by one. We needed a way to turn this around, and fast.
Paang!
Tang Hye-seo, still pouring out hidden darts, fired a bolt. Tang Do-hun twisted aside with light footwork and answered with another merciless barrage.
For a split second, something flashed through my mind and I reached into the sleeve on my left arm.
There it was. The bamboo tube I always carried.
I didn’t hesitate. I loosened the cord, pulled out the stopper, and hurled it in Tang Do-hun’s direction with all my strength.
I braced my abdomen and shouted as the white powder inside spilled wide.
“Seven-Treasure Soul-Breaking Powder! Everybody back!”
One whiff, or even a touch on the skin, hand, or face, and you’d be coughing up blood and dead before you’d taken seven steps. It was one of the Tang Clan’s eight great supreme poisons.
The moment that terrifying poison was named, Tang Do-hun, Tang Se-yeong, and the blade fighters all recoiled in alarm.
Even in the darkness, the unknown white powder made itself felt like a mist of death, and for a moment the two sides were locked in a standoff across it.
On the other side, Tang Hye-seo shot me a stunned, dubious look.
Won Seo-gang grinned and came over, giving my shoulder a light slap.
“This kid’s got a real talent for shocking people. You had a trick up your sleeve after all. Where in the world did you get one of the Tang Clan’s eight great poisons? Don’t tell me Tang miss...”
“It’s just lime powder.”
“What?”
Won Seo-gang let out a baffled laugh at my answer.
“Heh heh heh, you’re insane...”
Even Tang Do-hun, who had retreated a little and was watching the situation, realized he’d been fooled.
“Just a bag of cheap tricks, like the kind of low-life scum you are. Fine. I’ll show you what real poison looks like, the kind that burns flesh and melts bone. Open your eyes wide and go to hell.”
Tang Do-hun’s killing intent thickened as he pulled his hand out of his sleeve. Between his fingers, dozens of hidden weapons gleamed eerily like the claws of a beast.
Then I heard footsteps racing down the mountain path that led back to the village. Emerging from the forest into the moonlight were one of Tang Hye-seo’s subordinates and a monk.
After checking behind him, Tang Do-hun immediately unleashed the hidden weapons in his hand.
The subordinate threw himself behind a tree. The monk charged straight ahead and swung his jiedao.
Even in the dimness of the moonlit night, the monk blocked every hidden weapon. He even smashed aside the ones that curved back in that bizarre way.
It looked as if he wasn’t seeing with his eyes at all, but reading the flow of the air through exquisitely honed senses.
It was clearly swordsmanship, yet the movement felt less like cutting and more like drawing lines through the air.
An absurdly great master. The kind of monster the long-established orthodox sects must be crawling with.
No wonder the Tang Clan, despite its incredible hidden-weapon arts and terrifying poison techniques, remained holed up in Sichuan instead of ruling the world.
While the monk and the subordinate held Tang Do-hun in place, Tang Hye-seo loaded another bolt and fired.
Hearing the sound of the air breaking, Tang Do-hun twisted his body, and the hidden weapon thrown by the subordinate struck his shoulder.
At almost the same instant, the monk’s jiedao slashed across Tang Do-hun’s thigh.
Tang Do-hun collapsed, dropping to one knee. He planted both hands on the ground and retched violently.
It seemed the hidden weapon had been coated with a poison that acted quickly.
The monk stepped back, flicked the blood off his jiedao, and said indifferently, “Donor Tang. This is as far as you go. Resist no more.”
The anti-poison hall’s men swarmed down the mountain path the monk had come from. A tall, unfamiliar man came with them.
Recognizing him, Tang Do-hun’s eyes went wide.
“Gyeong-jae, why are you with the anti-poison hall’s men...”
Seeing the branch head badly injured after the ambush, the anti-poison hall members’ eyes filled with killing intent.
“Everyone stay calm! Don’t rush in recklessly...”
“Move!”
When the man named Gyeong-jae tried to stop them, the senior anti-poison hall man shoved him aside and drew his sword.
“Save Branch Head-nim!”
Before the anti-poison hall members could react, Tang Hye-seo cut in.
“Everybody stop! The branch head is the sect traitor! Anyone who sides with him will be treated as an accomplice!”
“Don’t be fooled! All of them are in cahoots! By the authority of the branch head, I order the anti-poison hall men to kill the traitors!”
With such conflicting commands, the Tang Clan members were left at a loss.
The branch head did have authority over the anti-poison hall, but they couldn’t casually move against Tang Hye-seo, whose status was higher.
As the anti-poison hall hesitated, Tang Hye-seo stepped forward. She pulled something from her robes and shouted, “Tang Clan members, heed the Sect Leader’s Token!”