A Debt of Blood
Ouyang Qiangang gave Baek Mu-ok's shoulder a light pat.
"Hop on."
The moment the boy clambered onto his back, the warmth drained from Ouyang Qiangang's eyes, leaving them cold and still.
"Whatever happens, don't be startled."
"Understood."
No sooner had the answer left the boy's lips than Ouyang Qiangang's foot slammed into the earth.
Swoooosh—!
The Phantom Shadowless Divine Art unfolded, and his body split the night wind as it soared into the air. A hundred-odd jang of distance collapsed in the blink of an eye, and the two-jang-high wooden palisade swept past beneath his feet.
The bandits below, dead drunk and sprawled where they had fallen, never noticed the intrusion. Sober, it would have made no difference — at their level of martial skill, merely sensing a man moving under the Phantom Shadowless Divine Art was beyond them entirely.
Without slowing, Ouyang Qiangang tore toward the central building.
A dozen-odd bandits stood guard there like an iron wall, and they were a different breed altogether from the drunks rolling around the courtyard. Not one had touched a drop of alcohol; sharp eyes swept every direction, and the aura rising from the weapons in their grips was anything but ordinary. Even at a glance, they were unmistakably the elites of Gusan Stronghold.
I can't afford to waste time trading blows with them.
The image Akasha had transmitted flashed across his mind once more. The desperate plight of the man under pincer attack was worsening by the second. This was a race against the clock.
"Akasha."
Yes, Doctor.
"Take them out."
Understood.
A faint tremor began in the empty air above Ouyang Qiangang's head. Nanoparticles drifting there were rearranging themselves under Akasha's meticulous control, weaving into shape.
Baek Mu-ok's eyes went round. Ten daggers had materialized out of thin air. Jet-black and no longer than a man's hand, they hovered in midair as if alive, awaiting their master's command.
They were hidden weapons born of Akasha's matter-reconstitution ability fused with Ouyang Qiangang's internal energy — the Flying Star Hidden Blades.
A cold killing intent bled into Ouyang Qiangang's eyes. He had come here fully intending to spare not a single bandit of Gusan Stronghold.
As if answering his will, the ten blades hummed in unison and turned toward their respective targets.
Shff-shff-shff—!
With a whisper of parted air, the Flying Star Hidden Blades tore through the night. The sentries keeping watch in the darkness never knew what had happened; small holes simply opened between their brows.
"Guh..."
"Huh...?"
A few short groans, and the men dropped where they stood. Thin rivulets of blood traced down from their foreheads, gleaming dark red beneath the moonlight.
It was a perfect single-strike kill. Having pierced their marks, the blades scattered and faded into the air, vanishing without so much as a drop of blood upon them. The whole process had taken less than a single breath.
The Flying Star Hidden Blades were weapons worthy of being called divine artifacts of Heaven's Exterior. But nothing in this world is perfect, and this ultimate hidden weapon concealed a fatal flaw: each and every use consumed a staggering twenty years' worth of internal energy in an instant.
Even Ouyang Qiangang, whose cultivated power spanned a hundred and eighty years, could not currently unleash them more than six times in succession. The price of such power was always a cruel one.
With the obstacles cleared away, Ouyang Qiangang flung himself at the building without hesitation.
Kwaang!
With a crash like a thunderbolt, the thick-reinforced door blew apart, wooden shards spraying in every direction before scattering across the floor.
Inside, the chamber was as spacious as befitted the stronghold chief's own hall — more than five jang to a side. Ouyang Qiangang's gaze locked onto a single point.
The two men and one woman who had been pressing a cornered man against the wall had whirled around, their faces frozen in open shock at the intruder's sudden appearance. Two corpses already lay sprawled across one side of the room. The bloodstains said they had fallen only moments ago, and the wounds said the attackers had put them there. In all likelihood, they had been subordinates of the burly man now fighting for his life.
"Hold on tight," Ouyang Qiangang said to Baek Mu-ok.
The boy tightened the arms wrapped around his neck and the legs locked about his waist. At the sight, disbelief crept over the faces of the two men and the woman. An intruder who charged in with a child on his back — it would be hard to find a sight less suited to the moment.
Ouyang Qiangang paid it no mind. Without pausing for even an instant, he closed the distance to his enemies like a bolt of lightning.
Shff—
The Phantom Shadowless Divine Art unfolded, and his body moved at a speed the naked eye could not hope to follow. Of the three, a fierce middle-aged man in his forties reacted on pure instinct, raising his great-toothed saber into a middle guard to bar Ouyang Qiangang's path. Killing intent flashed in his eyes.
"What bastard dares—!"
The roar never finished.
Kwaang!
A dull, heavy impact rang out. By the time the gap between them had closed to two jang, the man's neck had already been snapped sideways, and his body went hurtling lifelessly into the wall. The great-toothed saber slipped from his fingers and clattered across the floor.
The remaining man and woman, and the man who had been under attack, stared as if their eyes would split. Not one of them had seen what Ouyang Qiangang had done. However fast a technique, it should at least leave an afterimage — there had been nothing. Not even a whisper of displaced air.
Such was the true power of the Gale Lightning Palm that Ouyang Qiangang had brought to completion.
His gaze swept over the remaining enemies.
"Who wants to die first?"
There was nothing in his voice but a cold ruthlessness utterly devoid of emotion.
The last man and woman exchanged a look and gritted their teeth. Instinct had told them the truth: this was a peerless master beyond anything they could hope to oppose. But no choice remained to them. There was no fleeing, and no surrendering either.
"Die!"
The woman moved first. A dagger flashed from her hand like a bolt of lightning while the man lunged his sword toward Ouyang Qiangang's flank — sword qi rippling, sword light surging. Both were masters of the Peak realm. Yet their desperate strikes carved nothing but empty air. Ouyang Qiangang was already slipping between them.
Thud! Thud!
Two short impacts sounded in quick succession. The man and woman staggered back, clutching their chests. The woman, a great hole punched through her heart, died on the spot without even a scream; the man's arms hung broken at grotesque angles.
"Guh..."
With that groan, the man — his numbing and muting acupoints sealed — crumpled to the floor.
The battle was over in the space of a heartbeat. Only then did Ouyang Qiangang set Baek Mu-ok down.
Not once through all of it had the boy let slip so much as a startled gasp. For a boy of thirteen, the composure was chilling.
What had just transpired was a massacre — ten people meeting death in the same instant. Any ordinary child would have been screaming by now, lost in shock. Baek Mu-ok was different. He had watched Ouyang Qiangang's killing art unfold with the calm attention of someone observing a curious spectacle, and in those hollow eyes there was no fear, no pity — not even curiosity.
Ouyang Qiangang clicked his tongue inwardly and murmured to himself.
Is this simply what it means to be born under the Heavenly Calamitous Star?
Analysis complete. The boy appears to possess a constitution congenitally deficient in emotional response.
Akasha's calm voice sounded in his mind.
Unlike an ordinary person, his capacity for empathy toward the pain and death of others is markedly deficient. He also registers almost no aversion to slaughter.
Ouyang Qiangang understood now, beyond all doubt. This boy had been on familiar terms with death from the day he was born — and that was why he could take in a scene of slaughter as though nothing at all were out of the ordinary.
"So he's a psychopath?"
Yes.
At that moment, the man who had been under attack cupped his fist and bowed deep before speaking.
"My thanks, elder brother. Had you not come, I'd have died a dog's death right here on this floor."
The voice boomed like a great bell, yet carried genuine gravity. Ouyang Qiangang studied him closely. A man of about thirty, with large, bold features that gave him a hearty, forthright air. His gaze was uncommonly deep, and the dignity that hung about him was extraordinary — though his clothing, oddly enough, was utterly ordinary.
"It seems I wasn't too late. But might I ask how you come to be in a place like this?"
At Ouyang Qiangang's question, the man cupped his fist in another respectful salute.
"Yu Jong-ui of the Green Forest League."
"The Green Forest League..."
Something shifted faintly in Ouyang Qiangang's eyes. The Green Forest League was a vast confederation of the bandits of the world. Outwardly it belonged to the unorthodox paths of Murim, but in truth it was a colossal power on an entirely different plane from any common gang of thieves.
Ouyang Qiangang returned the salute.
"Jang Woo-myung."
Behind the human-skin mask, he looked to be of an age with Yu Jong-ui.
"Ah — so you're Brother Jang, then."
There was no time to keep trading life histories. Names exchanged, Ouyang Qiangang walked over to the man he had spared until the very last. Both arms broken and his numbing and muting acupoints sealed, the man was utterly helpless.
Yu Jong-ui looked at him again and heaved a deep sigh.
"It's truly hard to believe."
As Ouyang Qiangang turned to him, Yu Jong-ui went on.
"That man's face is identical to mine. My skin crawled the first moment I laid eyes on him, but with my life hanging by a thread, I had no leisure to think it through."
Disbelief still rang plain in his voice.
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes went cold. He studied the helpless man, then exhaled a quiet sigh. The man was conscious, but the light in his eyes was utterly dead. Extracting a confession from someone in such a state would be next to impossible — and there was no reason to try. Whatever the story behind it was, it was Yu Jong-ui's affair, not his.
Ouyang Qiangang tipped his chin toward the man.
"I've left this one breathing. He's yours to do with as you please, Brother Yu."
"Why... why, of course it is."
Yu Jong-ui murmured the words, still reeling. That a man wearing his own face had tried to kill him — and that it had happened inside a Green Forest League stronghold — was not a thing easily absorbed.
Once he had steadied himself somewhat, Yu Jong-ui asked, "But tell me, Brother Jang — what business brings you to this stronghold?"
"I've come to collect a debt."
"A debt? What do you mean?"
Ouyang Qiangang rested a hand lightly on Baek Mu-ok's shoulder as he answered.
"The bandits of this stronghold butchered this boy's family and every soul in his village. I've come to collect that debt."
The killing intent laced through his voice stiffened Yu Jong-ui's face for a moment — but then he nodded.
"They may be brothers of my own Green Forest League, but they are the Stronghold Chief's men, and they turned their blades on me. I've no face to beg mercy for them at your hands, Brother Jang."
Ouyang Qiangang turned to Baek Mu-ok.
"Let's go."
"Yes."
The two of them headed for the door. The thunderclap of the shattering door had already rolled through the whole stronghold, and the drunken bandits who had been swaying on their feet now scrambled upright, staring toward the heart of the commotion. What they saw was a stranger walking out of the chief's hall with the boy in tow.
Perhaps because the drink had not yet worn off, they could only gape at the scene, too muddled to grasp what was happening. A few snatched up their weapons just in case, but their hands moved as though through molasses, and their footing swayed and stumbled.