The Stage of Death
Before long, sword-light and saber-light began to surge around the summit of Sand Rock Peak, and ear-splitting clashes of metal erupted alongside harrowing screams.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG—!
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
"Aaargh!"
"Hrk!"
"You dare—!"
A full-blown battle had broken out. Greed for the treasure had at last drowned out all reason, and the melee was spiraling into a bloodbath with every man gunning for the next one's life.
He had expected as much, but the unrelenting chorus of dreadful screams hardened Heo Cho-ryeong's face into a stiff mask.
"Haah… human lives should never be cast away so cheaply…."
Sensing what she was feeling, Ouyang Qiangang spoke. "Sister, that is a tragedy born of greed for the divine weapon. There is no room for us to step in—and they wouldn't welcome us if we did. We must wait."
A bitter note ran through his voice as well. However much he had adapted, he was still a man who had spent decades steeped in twenty-first-century human-rights education, in a world where even simple assault earned legal punishment. Growing comfortable with lethal combat and death could never come easily.
A short while passed. The sounds of ferocious fighting seemed to pause for a breath—then a roar packed to the brim with internal energy burst from the summit.
"The Eight Directions Divine Sword is running with the treasure!"
"Catch him!"
"Do not let him escape!"
At that cry as if it were a signal, monstrous shouts ran wild from every direction, and hundreds of warriors could be seen charging like madmen for the far side of the peak.
Only after the warriors vanished beyond the ridge and quiet settled over the area once more did Ouyang Qiangang speak to Heo Cho-ryeong. "Sister, let's go up now."
Ouyang Qiangang unfurled the Celestial Meteor Divine Art and Heo Cho-ryeong her family's Flying Swallow Movement Art, and the two of them scaled the peak at speed.
The summit was a portrait of hell itself. Forty or fifty corpses—limbs hacked off, skulls caved in—lay strewn about in gruesome disarray, and a fishy reek of blood pulsed from the pools that had gathered here and there. The shouts and screams that had rung out moments before were gone without a trace; only a bleak wind circled the dead.
At the horrific sight, Heo Cho-ryeong swallowed without meaning to, her face draining white.
But Ouyang Qiangang was different. He walked calmly among the mutilated bodies, sharp eyes sweeping the surroundings as if hunting for a clue.
Of course, Akasha's help played no small part in his composure.
Doctor, I have detected four corpses that died in a highly unusual manner.
Akasha's voice resonated through his mind.
One young man, and three middle-aged men who appear to have been escorting him. Only these four bodies bear traces of an extremely faint qi-scattering poison. None of the corpses lying right beside them show any.
Ouyang Qiangang frowned.
In the middle of all this carnage, someone killed only these four—deliberately?
His gaze went to the nape of one of the bodies. All that remained was a single thread of blood, far too fine to call a wound—like a thin red line drawn in ink.
All four share the same cause of death. The nerve center linking the cervical spine to the brain was severed in a single stroke by something razor-sharp. Death would have been instantaneous.
Akasha continued.
There is one killer. At this level of skill, the probability that they are a professional assassin, highly trained in covert kills, is 99.8 percent.
Someone used this slaughter to clean house, then. That is no ordinary handiwork. Interesting—but the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade matters more to me right now. Blunder into a strange affair I don't understand, and my goal only drifts further away. For now, I'll focus on my own task.
He had no reason to dig into the secrets behind the deaths of total strangers. He had no time to spare for it, either.
Akasha, find me the way into the underground beneath this peak. The resonance is strongest right here.
Understood, Doctor. Initiating ground-penetrating scan.
A few seconds later,
Found it, Doctor. I detect a cavity behind the peak, inside a crevice between massive boulders. The entrance is sealed with thick rock.
The spot Akasha indicated was a narrow crevice in the rock, barely wide enough for two or three people. And deep inside it, a single enormous boulder blocked the way completely.
Heo Cho-ryeong said, aghast, "You're telling me the entrance is behind this? Then how are we supposed to move it?"
The boulder sealing the entrance was a massive stone that looked to weigh well over five thousand catties. Ouyang Qiangang examined it closely, and his eyes caught a groove cunningly hidden between the boulder and the wall, along with a small gap that could serve the principle of a lever.
"Sister, focus your internal energy on the spot I'm pointing to. Not brute strength—gather your qi into a single point and push, steady and unrelenting."
The two of them raised their Twelve-Star internal energy and pushed against the boulder.
Grrrrrrind—
With a ponderous rumble, the giant stone began to slide sideways, bit by tiny bit. Only after nearly half a quarter hour of desperate struggle did they manage to open a passage just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.
Beyond the entrance yawned a vertical shaft plunging straight down, its end lost from sight—a bottomless cavern.
A troubled look crossed Ouyang Qiangang's face at the sight of it.
Damn it, we can't close the entrance. It's only a matter of time before someone realizes we've come in here. We have to hurry.
Bracing themselves against the wall like rock climbers, they descended some fifty jang before the floor finally appeared. It was a stone chamber roughly two jang high and five jang across. Luminous stones were embedded in the walls here and there, so telling one thing from another was no trouble at all. Even a child could have seen at a glance that human hands had shaped this place.
Drenched in sweat by the time they reached the floor, Ouyang Qiangang and Heo Cho-ryeong caught sight of something. In a corner of the chamber sat a skeleton, slumped dead against the wall. Beside him—clad in rotten old clothes, nothing left of him but bones—lay two dust-covered jade cases.
Ouyang Qiangang knew instinctively that the skeleton was the legendary Great Blade Ghost-Hand Divine Thief of the gangho. Without hesitation he picked up the jade cases and opened their lids one after the other. Inside, respectively, lay a single mass of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade, and a book and an iron tablet whose purpose he could not begin to guess.
Doctor! Someone is approaching from above at high speed!
Akasha's cry cracked through his mind. Startled, Ouyang Qiangang snapped the lids shut and shouted to Heo Cho-ryeong.
"Sister, someone's coming down!"
Before the words had even left his mouth, a single shadow dropped soundlessly from above. It was a masked man with a lithe, supple build. His face was hidden, but his lively eyes and solid frame made it easy to guess he was not old.
He swept his gaze over the skeleton, the two jade cases, and the wary pair in turn—then burst out laughing, as if at something utterly absurd.
"KHAHAHAHA!"
Dust sifted down from the ceiling at laughter laced with extraordinary internal energy. Then, cutting off as abruptly as it had begun, the man went on in a tone brimming with killing intent.
"I prepared this grand stage of death for my foolish eldest senior brother—only for a pair of stray mice to scurry in first and make off with the ownerless offerings! I don't know what's inside those jade cases, but from this moment on, they are mine. Hand them over nicely, brats. Do that, and I'll kill you nicely."
Infuriated by his insufferable arrogance, Heo Cho-ryeong drew her sword first.
Shring!
Ouyang Qiangang, too, silently curled his hand into a fist. It was a plain, unmistakable refusal.
"Fools."
Sneering at their furious gazes, the masked man took a single long step. It was an ordinary step, and yet it created the illusion that the distance between him and the pair had been cut in half in an instant. He slowly extended his right hand.
HUUUUUUM—!
A formless wave of qi poured from his palm, pressing down the surrounding air with a heavy thrum. At that aura, Ouyang Qiangang's face hardened.
This is…
He remembered vividly the aura the Peak masters had displayed only days before, when Heo Il-bi and Jin Mun had crossed blades. But the pressure radiating from the masked man before him far surpassed either of theirs. What lay coiled in that palm-force went beyond mere strength—it was a destructive energy that seemed bent on crushing and swallowing everything in its path.
Doctor. The target's energy output is measuring more than 1.5 times Lord Heo Il-bi's maximum. At your and Miss Heo Cho-ryeong's current full strength, it is absolutely beyond your ability to withstand.
Akasha's dispassionate analysis drove the verdict home.
Before he could move, Heo Cho-ryeong—resolved to protect him—reacted first. Her body shot forth like a swallow in flight, and a dozen streaks of sharp light fanned out from her sword tip. Like a swallow soaring up through a storm, it was the opening form of the Flying Swallow Sword Art—dazzling and deadly at once.
Yet the masked man did not so much as stir at the ferocious assault. He simply flicked his outstretched palm, lightly, as if shooing away an irritating fly.
KAKANG! KANG! KANG!
Heo Cho-ryeong's keen sword-shadows struck an invisible wall of palm-force and scattered into nothing. Shock flooded her eyes.
That was the moment. Ouyang Qiangang, unleashing the Bolt-Flash Step, bored into the masked man's flank at terrifying speed. His hand shot out, sharp as the claws of a beast of prey, seizing for the man's joints—the Dragon-Seizing Grappling Hand, one of the three ultimate techniques of the Sacred Hand Transformation Strike.
But the masked man, as if sneering, let the grasp slide past with nothing more than a slight twist of his shoulder. In the space of a heartbeat, Ouyang Qiangang's hand closed on empty air.
KWAAAAAH—!
The next instant, a monstrous palm-force that could have brought down a mountain burst from the masked man's hand like a storm. Under the inescapable pressure, which seemed to crush space itself, the stone dust of the chamber floor scattered in concentric rings around Ouyang Qiangang and Heo Cho-ryeong.
WHUMP!
"Ugh!"
"Kgh!"
As if they had slammed headlong into a massive wall, the two were thrown backward together, groaning. The crushing weight made even proper breathing impossible.
Three seconds. In that sliver of time—a single blink—the pair felt the overwhelming gulf in skill with their own bodies and stood at the crossroads of life and death.
At that very moment, Akasha's urgent voice rang through Ouyang Qiangang's mind.
Doctor! I've found another passage in the rear wall! There is a groove carved into the stone—its pattern matches the iron tablet from the jade case. High probability that it is the key.
Damn it, no time!
Ouyang Qiangang knew instinctively that he could not evade the masked man's next attack. In that instant, he committed to a wildly dangerous gamble.
Akasha, from this moment, concentrate every scrap of available internal energy into my right hand. Compress the nanobot shield into my palm—maximum density!
What came next was, plain and simple, madness.
I'll take that palm-force head-on, then ride the rebound straight through the door in the rear wall!
Success probability is below 17 percent! Given the target's internal energy level, the likelihood is high that your arm will shatter first, Doctor!
Akasha's desperate warning rang through his mind, but he was already moving. Instead of evading, he thrust his right hand straight at the masked man. Nanobots condensed across his palm, and his transformed skin gleamed like a silver gauntlet.
KWAAANG!
With a dreadful impact that felt as though his flesh were tearing and his bones ringing, his body was flung backward. Though the nanobots absorbed and bled off most of the blow, the residue alone was enough to wrench his organs, and blood burst from his mouth and nose.
By the time the masked man grasped his intent, it was already too late. Riding the rebound of the palm-force, Ouyang Qiangang snatched Heo Cho-ryeong around the waist in midair and flew straight for the stone wall where the hidden door lay. In a flash, he drew out the iron tablet and slotted it precisely into the groove in the wall.
KIIIIIIK—!
The stone wall swung inward, revealing a darkness black as ink. With Heo Cho-ryeong in his arms, Ouyang Qiangang leapt into that darkness. The instant it swallowed them, the door boomed shut once more.
"You dare pull such a trick on me!"
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The enraged masked man hurled palm-force again and again, but the door did not so much as shudder. The fog of stone dust shattered by the blows slowly cleared. At the revealed surface of the stone wall, the masked man's face twisted.
There, holding firm, stood a door of black cold iron whose thickness was beyond all guessing.