Those Who Came Before
They dismounted at the village entrance, tethered their horses to a tree, and the three of them stepped into the Wailing Ghost Village.
Just as Han Jo had said, there was not a single corpse to be found.
Pung So-cheong pushed open the door of one house and muttered under her breath.
"They vanished awfully cleanly."
That house, too, held nothing but a layer of gathered dust.
Ouyang Qiangang circled the village slowly and spoke to Akasha.
"Have you finished scanning everything?"
"Yes, Doctor."
She had already released her nanobots and combed every inch of the Wailing Ghost Village.
"Anything unusual?"
"I have not detected any corpses. However, Doctor — the soil of this village is not normal."
"What do you mean?"
"After prolonged exposure to a high concentration of death qi, every microorganism in the soil has died off and its molecular structure has been deformed."
"Can you trace the death qi?"
"Yes. The trail of deformed soil extends in a single direction."
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes sharpened.
"Which way?"
"Toward Manghon Valley. To be precise, it is flowing toward the deepest point of the gorge."
Han Jo came over and asked, "Have you found something?"
"Nothing certain yet. But I believe the answer to what happened in this village lies in Manghon Valley."
After completing a full circuit of the village, Ouyang Qiangang took the lead and started walking toward Manghon Valley.
The sun had long since sunk beyond the western mountains, and even the moonlight was smothered beneath heavy clouds. The valley, swallowed in darkness, carried an atmosphere entirely different from the daytime — a sinister yin qi seeping up from every crevice of the gorge wrapped around them like some living thing.
Standing before the gorge, Pung So-cheong spoke with unmistakable wariness in her voice.
"We'd best stop here for today. Investigating at night sounds far too dangerous."
Han Jo nodded in agreement. "Young Master, it would be wiser to resume the search after sunrise tomorrow."
But Ouyang Qiangang did not stop. He strode straight into the gorge.
"Young Master Hahu!"
Pung So-cheong called out urgently, but he did not look back.
"Akasha, where's the flow of death qi strongest?"
"Approximately three hundred jang inside the gorge. The energy pattern shifts abruptly at that point."
Following Akasha's guidance, Ouyang Qiangang pressed deep into the gorge, and Han Jo and Pung So-cheong had no choice but to follow behind him.
Then, mid-stride, he came to an abrupt halt before a sheer cliff face. The wall rose vertically for dozens of jang without so much as a hairline crack.
"Is there something here?"
Pung So-cheong asked, scanning their surroundings. Han Jo, whose sharp eyes had been probing the area, tilted his head and murmured.
"There's definitely something here... but I can't see anything out of the ordinary."
He could feel a subtle, elusive energy, yet he could not pin down exactly what it was. But to Ouyang Qiangang's eyes, aided by Akasha, the space itself was minutely warped, and the flow of qi was unnaturally obstructed.
He recalled the formation manuals he had read in the Imperial Treasury.
"Akasha, can you identify this formation?"
"Yes. This is the Illusion-Slaying Ghost Gate Formation, a closely guarded secret of the unorthodox path. It is a lethal formation that uses hallucinations to make intruders lose their way, then kills anyone who approaches with poison-coated mechanisms and traps. However..."
"Why are you trailing off?"
"The formation's central core has been destroyed to a considerable degree. That is why Han Jo sensed something strange."
In other words, had the formation been intact, Han Jo would have sensed nothing at all.
"It appears someone passed through this place ahead of us."
A crease formed between Ouyang Qiangang's brows.
"So we're not the first ones here?"
"Confirmed."
Ouyang Qiangang gazed at the cliff, then spoke to Han Jo and Pung So-cheong.
"A formation has been laid out here."
"A formation?"
The two of them wore identical expressions of shock. Pung So-cheong stared at him as if he were some marvel and asked,
"Do you have expertise in formations as well, Young Master?"
Ouyang Qiangang answered with an easy smile.
"My skill is nothing to boast of, but I can recognize at least this much."
He observed the cliff in silence for a moment, then gave a firm nod.
"It's the Illusion-Slaying Ghost Gate Formation — an unorthodox formation lost to practice long ago. But I believe I can break through it."
Han Jo and Pung So-cheong quietly held their tongues and waited behind him. Breaking a formation was not something either of them could involve themselves in.
Ouyang Qiangang walked up to the cliff wall. The moment he reached a particular point and swept his hand through the empty air, something astonishing occurred — as though a painting drawn upon the void itself were being torn apart, a narrow gap yawned open between the seemingly solid rock.
"...!"
Han Jo's and Pung So-cheong's eyes went wide. Even knowing a formation was at work, they still could not begin to grasp how he had broken through it.
Ouyang Qiangang turned back to the two of them.
"Follow me, stepping exactly where I step. A single misplaced foot could be fatal."
The two nodded, their faces taut with tension, and Ouyang Qiangang cautiously led the way into the gap. His eyes could see what theirs could not.
The mechanism devices exquisitely installed across the floor and walls had been smashed to pieces. Some appeared to have been crushed bare-fisted; others had been severed cleanly by a razor-sharp blade.
"Doctor, the analysis of the destruction patterns has produced interesting results."
"Oh?"
"Three distinct attack patterns have been identified. Precise cutting marks. Powerful blunt impact marks. And marks left by someone who fully understood this formation's core structure and struck only the most efficient points."
Akasha paused briefly before continuing.
"At least one of the people ahead of us appears to possess expert knowledge of formations and mechanism-craft."
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes grew thoughtful.
"So three people passed through here before us."
"That is the working assumption."
Ouyang Qiangang carefully picked his way past the wrecked mechanisms, lost in thought.
"So the expert in formations and mechanisms located the weak points, and masters of the fist and the blade smashed the mechanism cores apart with their hands and their weapon."
Han Jo and Pung So-cheong followed close behind, tracing his footprints precisely. To them, it felt like nothing more than squeezing through a narrow passage — when in reality they were threading a razor's edge between countless lethal traps. Granted, most of those traps had already been destroyed.
Ouyang Qiangang looked back over his shoulder.
"We're almost there."
Having passed completely through the gap, they found themselves before an enormous cavern that seemed to gape like the mouth of a bottomless abyss. The entrance alone was large enough to swallow a city gate, and the passage within stretched so far inward that its end could not be seen.
Ouyang Qiangang entered the cavern first. The ceiling rose well over three jang, and grotesquely twisted stalactites hung from it like fangs — it felt like stepping into the maw of some colossal beast.
He furrowed his brow.
"Vile death qi."
A cold yin energy that chilled to the marrow rolled out of the cavern in waves, and steeped within it was a death qi thick with unspeakable resentment and hatred — a single breath was enough to make one's entire body shudder.
The cave descended underground, the path bending sharply every twenty-odd jang. It was an eerie structure, like descending along the coiled innards of a gigantic serpent.
The one mercy was that a faint glow seeped from the walls and ceiling, enough to make out their surroundings — they had no need to light fire tubes or kindle torches.
The party moved with great care. When you had no idea what might be waiting ahead, caution was always the best policy.
They had descended about a hundred jang when it happened.
KWAANG!
"UWAAAHAHAHAHA—!"
A thunderous crash rang out, followed by a booming laugh that echoed up from deep within the cave. threaded through the laughter came the dull crunch of bone breaking, and a foul stench of rotting earth mingled with blood stung their nostrils.
The three exchanged a look. Han Jo's hand drifted instinctively to the hilt at his waist, and Pung So-cheong's eyes turned razor-sharp.
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes gleamed.
"Let's go."
The three of them unleashed their lightness skills and raced toward the source of the noise. Roughly a hundred jang farther down, a scene beyond anything they had imagined unfolded before them.
A colossal underground cavern. And in that vast subterranean space, three men were fighting — surrounded by a hundred and more.
But the appearance of their attackers was grotesque beyond description. Faces with patches of rotted flesh sloughing away, black fluid oozing from hollow eye sockets, bodies shambling forward as clawed at the air with fingers stripped to the bone.
They were corpses, utterly devoid of life.
"No... jiangshi?"
Pung So-cheong stammered, shock written across her face.
"It can't be... every sect that used jiangshi was wiped out after the Righteous-Demon Great War..."
Her words even faltered. The art of the jiangshi was an evil sorcery regarded in Murim as taboo beyond all taboos. Decades ago, during the Righteous-Demon Great War, the forces under the Demonic Cult had driven jiangshi legions before them and plunged the entire martial world into terror. But they, too, were said to have been utterly exterminated by the army of the orthodox alliance in the end.
"Doctor, those corpses are bioweapons with abnormally reinforced muscle tissue. Judging by the secret records of the Imperial Treasury, they are presumed to be jiangshi."
Having recalled the records on jiangshi himself, Ouyang Qiangang spoke in a flat, unconcerned tone.
"They are jiangshi, yes — but low-grade ones."
The jiangshi before them were far weaker than the ones that had rampaged during the Righteous-Demon Great War. The sight of them being blown apart by the men's fists and blades proved it. A proper jiangshi would not have taken so much as a scratch from attacks of that caliber.
And at the very center of those jiangshi, three men were performing feats of staggering martial prowess.
"Three of them, just as I thought."
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes deepened. They were the predecessors he had deduced from the traces left through the formation.
The men fought in a split formation, left and right, centered on the one who carried a folding fan.
On the right stood a man in his mid-thirties — mid-sized, solidly built, with fists that were unusually large. Every time he swung one of those fists, a torrent of fist shadows and fist wind erupted, bursting jiangshi heads like overripe fruit and caving in their chests.
KWAANG! THUD!
"Kraha! You bastards — still this stubborn even after dying?!"
On the left, a giant of a man eight chi tall was swinging a six-chi great blade while bellowing in a voice like grinding gravel. Each time his blade flashed, jiangshi necks were severed, waists were cleaved in two, and bodies were split from crown to groin.
SHAACK! CHUNK!
The most striking of the three was the young man in white scholar's robes standing at the center — a fan-bearer in his early twenties, slightly short of stature with a lithe build. He was remarkably handsome, his sharp, sensitive features leaving a deep impression.
He did not fight directly. Instead, he stood between the two fighters, languidly waving his folding fan and issuing calm, measured instructions.
"Hwangbo Dae-hyeong — third point of the Xun Palace. That's the heart of the formation."
The words, delivered in the strict logic of the Nine Palaces, had scarcely left his lips before the enormous fist swept ruthlessly through that exact spot.
KWAANG!
"Brother Paeng — Dui Palace, now!"
SWISH!
The great blade carved through the point he indicated like a typhoon, and each time it did, jiangshi were blasted to pieces. They were outnumbered to a degree that made comparison meaningless — yet not one of the three showed the slightest sign of strain. If anything, they looked plainly annoyed.
"Doctor, their skill is considerable. The fan-bearer in particular possesses an exceptionally deep understanding of formations."
"I can see that for myself. He's analyzing the formation the jiangshi form in real time and picking out its weak points as he goes."
Ouyang Qiangang stole a glance back at Han Jo and Pung So-cheong. Even the two of them — whose expressions rarely changed — were watching the battle half entranced.