Blades Have No Eyes
Geum Wang had been dozing on Ouyang Qiangang's shoulder when his eyes snapped open without warning.
As if he had caught some sound, the little monkey pricked both ears upright, screwed his face into a fierce frown, and let out a low cry toward a single point beyond the trees.
Kkiee—!
"What is it, Brother Geum?"
It was the very moment Ouyang Qiangang asked that the sounds reached him.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
"Aaagh!"
Faint but unmistakable, the sharp shriek of steel on steel and a distant scream drifted to his ears.
Hwang Nodae pulled to a stop, his face hardening. "Young Master, it appears there is a battle being fought ahead of us."
"I heard it too."
"Nothing good ever comes of entangling ourselves in the storms of the jianghu. Even if it costs us more time, I believe we should circle around by another road."
Brows knitting, Ouyang Qiangang called for Akasha. 'Akasha, how much longer would a detour take us?'
Even by the nearest alternate route, estimated additional travel time is a minimum of four hours, Doctor.
Clicking his tongue, he spoke aloud. "Nodae, another road would cost us two shichen—four full hours of backtracking."
"And that road may hold dangers of its own, Young Master."
Ouyang Qiangang answered with an easy smile. "All we must do is slip quietly past without catching their eye. Surely we can manage that much?"
"Young Master, men maddened by battle look at nothing around them. And blades have no eyes."
Hwang Nodae pressed the point once more, but Ouyang Qiangang's mind was already made up.
"I understand your concern well, Nodae. But I will take all the more care to see that what you fear never comes to pass."
When the master he served put it that way, there was no room left for objection. Hwang Nodae bowed his head.
"If such is your will, Young Master, then this old servant shall go ahead and watch the road for you."
A hundred jang or so farther on, the battlefield revealed itself between the leaves.
In a wide clearing beside the mountain path, two groups dressed in unmistakably different garb were locked in savage combat, blood and flesh flying. One side was a young woman in costly silks, shielded by the desperate defensive ring of some four warrior escorts. Attacking them were five men in black martial dress, faces hidden behind masks.
Even at a glance, the masked men moved nothing like a common gang of bandits. Like emotionless killing machines, they employed only the most efficient lethal strikes, each one aimed solely at cutting short their victim's breath.
Shk!
"Khhk! My lady, dodge—!"
One of the escorts took the saber reaching for the lady and crumpled where he stood.
The masked man drove his blade into the fallen man's neck as casually as if confirming a kill. There was not one shred of mercy in their assault. Not one moment of hesitation.
Ka-ka-clang!
"You bastards—!"
Another escort hurled himself forward, ready to die for it, but three of the masked men moved in flawless unison, deflecting his sword and in the same breath skewering his heart, his throat, his dantian.
Red blood fountained up and soaked the dirt.
A dozen or more corpses already lay in their own blood across the clearing, and the escorts still standing were barely holding on inside death's shadow. Before long, it seemed, the fight would end as nothing more than one-sided slaughter.
Ouyang Qiangang's gaze settled on the woman behind the escorts.
She looked no older than her early twenties—a woman who, under ordinary circumstances, would have struck anyone as radiantly beautiful, the very picture of keen intelligence.
But there was little trace of that woman now.
Her expensive silks were torn in a dozen places and stained with blood and dirt, and her lustrous hair had come loose, plastered by sweat against her cheeks.
Yet even in this hopeless strait, her eyes alone burned furiously with a will that had not bent and a fury that had not cooled.
'No ordinary woman, this one.'
Each time the sword in her hand carved a white flash through the air, its eagle-talon blade raked viciously toward the masked men's vital points.
Whish-whish-whish—
Her swordsmanship was as wild and merciless as a desert sandstorm. But against the masked men's endless, wave-like assault, her desperate resistance looked perilously frail.
"Hahh... hahh......"
Her lovely face was fouled with sweat and blood, and the rough, ragged gasps tearing out of her declared that her body had reached its limit.
"Aaagh!"
When even the last escort collapsed with that piteous scream, the masked men's encirclement began to close slowly around her.
She was still holding off several of them with the secret sword arts of her sect, but under the enemies' relentless, converging assault her blade was slowing with every exchange. More and more often now, she was staggering out of the path of a strike rather than meeting it.
'If Uncle Yeom were at my side, I would never be toyed with like this by the likes of these petty cutthroats... To think he let himself be lured away by their vile scheme—it galls me......'
In that fleeting instant, her mind sunk in regret, the blade of one masked man punched through her guard and raked across her shoulder.
Shk—!
"Ugh!"
Silk tore, and red blood leapt from the wound. A sliver of sickening pain made her body sway.
The enemy did not miss the opening.
At first, Ouyang Qiangang had watched the scene in silence.
His reason sent warning after warning. This was the jianghu's fight. The moment he meddled carelessly, he too might find himself rolling in this mire of blood.
Doctor, the probability of becoming entangled in unnecessary conflict upon intervention is extremely high. I do not recommend it.
Akasha's analysis backed his judgment.
And yet his eyes remained fixed on the woman standing alone with her sword, drenched in blood and sweat.
Even with death an arm's length away she refused to give up—those fierce eyes, a will that would bend but never break, had seized hold of his heart and would not let go.
Over her face, he seemed to see the image of Heo Cho-ryeong as he had last seen her at Bamboo Forest Manor.
"Damn it......"
A low curse slipped from his lips. 'I can't simply walk away.'
Just then, the blade of the man who seemed to be the masked leader struck her sword from her hand.
Clang—!
She lurched violently, her chest flung wide open and undefended. Chilling killing intent flared in the masked man's eyes, and he swung his saber at her breast with dreadful force.
Shrieek—!
The instant that keen whistle of cleaved air rang out, Ouyang Qiangang moved.
Fwa-a-a-ash—!
Blending the Ghost Shadow Divine Art he had obtained into his Heavenly Meteor Divine Art to lend it perfect stealth, he crossed some ten jang in a mere three strides and hurled himself onto the battlefield. Terrifying as the speed was, it raised not so much as a whisper of displaced air.
Kaang—!
With a razor-sharp shriek of steel, the saber that had been a hair's breadth from the woman's neck crashed into something and was flung aside. Ouyang Qiangang, who had somehow already planted himself in the man's path, had knocked the very edge of the blade away with his fingertip.
"......!"
Outright disbelief flooded the masked man's eyes. He could not accept that a handsome youth who looked for all the world like a wandering scholar had just batted aside his full-power strike with a bare hand.
Having flicked the saber away with nanobot-reinforced fingers, Ouyang Qiangang said not a word, only stared at the masked man. His eyes were as deep and as cold as the abyss.
Thump.
Behind him, the woman lost consciousness and fell. She had pushed herself far past her limit, and the moment an ally appeared, she finally could not hold on.
"Kill this one first!"
At the masked man's shout, the remaining four—who had formed a ring around the woman and Ouyang Qiangang—swung their sabers as one.
Shrieeeek—!
Every last one of them was a First-rate expert whose bones had been tempered by a decade or more in the killer's trade. The ferocious killing intent pouring from five such masters froze the very air of the forest.
At that very moment, Hwang Nodae emerged from behind Ouyang Qiangang like a shadow. Loosely curling his old, wrinkled hands, he spoke with the leisurely air of an old man butting into the young folk's quarrel.
"You two there—come and amuse this old man."
He planted himself squarely in front of two of the masked men. In an instant the battlefield split in two: Hwang Nodae against a pair of them, and around Ouyang Qiangang three more—their leader among them.
Geum Wang had already scurried to the fallen woman's side, where he stood guard over her with a worried expression, warily watching everything around them.
The leader and his two men bore down on Ouyang Qiangang in a triangular formation. When one struck head-on, the other two charged for his flanks.
Whish-whish-whish-whish—!
Their saberwork, hunting only his fatal points, was simple and nearly without variation—and for that very reason blindingly fast and merciless.
But before the superhuman dynamic vision that now activated on its own, even without Akasha's aid, their blades might as well have been crawling. Unfurling the Springing Flash Step, he slipped through the shadows of death cast by three blades as though folding space itself—then bored like lightning into the chest of the masked man driving his sword straight at him.
"Fool!"
The instant the man cried out in triumph and fed more strength into his blade, Ouyang Qiangang's hand shot out faster than the eye could follow.
Crrack!
"Kraaagh!"
The Dragon-Binding Capture Hand seized the masked man's wrist joint and wrenched it apart with perfect precision. And in the very breath of his agonized scream—the sword spinning from his fingers—Ouyang Qiangang's other palm came to rest, feather-light, upon his heart.
Kwajik—!
His heart shattered, the masked man went down foaming blood. Death was instantaneous.
He had neutralized one man in a blink, but the remaining two only grew more ferocious. The leader's saber art in particular was every bit as ponderous and destructive as Jin Mun's had been when he faced Heo Il-bi.
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes flicked toward the fallen woman.
'If I let this drag on, I may miss my window to treat her.'
He called for Akasha. 'Reinforce my left forearm—time it for me.'
That is an exceedingly dangerous gamble, Doctor—
'It's what's needed.'
Haah... Understood, Doctor. Increasing nanobot density in the left arm to maximum capacity, effective immediately.
Ouyang Qiangang gambled, deliberately taking the leader's saber on his own arm.
Thud!
The leader's saber slammed head-on into his forearm. But what rang out was not the sound of flesh and bone parting—it was a strange clangor, as of iron striking iron.
The saber, laden with force enough to cleave boulders, bit into his arm and blood surged up, yet the wound was hardly more than skin deep. At the impossible sight, the leader's eyes tore wide open.
"You've trained in external body-hardening arts, have you, you dog!"
That instant of shock. That sliver of an opening. It was precisely what Ouyang Qiangang had been waiting for.
His left palm lashed out like a storm, its force ripping across a dozen jang. The Gale Chain Palms—strike upon strike chasing the last, at a horrifying speed.
Stunned, unable even to track the onslaught with his eyes, the masked man could neither dodge nor deflect, and took the full force of every palm square in the chest.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM—!
"Gyaaaagh!"
With that hideous scream, his upper body caved in.
The carnage was grimmer than he had anticipated, and for an instant Ouyang Qiangang's mind went white. But he clenched his teeth and wheeled toward the third masked man, unleashing the Exploding Thunder Flame King Hammer, laden with ninety percent of his internal power, and smashed it into the man's heart.
Wham—!
"Kehk!"
Given no room even to flinch, his chest crushed, the masked man was flung backward a full jang with a final piteous scream.
Only then did Ouyang Qiangang turn his head—and there was Hwang Nodae, who had already burst two masked men's heads like watermelons and stood smiling at him as if nothing at all had happened.