The Bay of Screams
The thirty-li route from the wild hills down to the bay—Cheonhaebang's stronghold—was one unbroken stretch of terrain so treacherous it drew involuntary clicks of the tongue.
It was a fortress made by nature itself, so forbidding that even seasoned martial artists of the Murim hesitated to set foot inside. Sheer cliffs marched on without end, and wherever the path folded into dense forest, swamps spread wide at every turn. Whenever the wind stirred, roots writhed like serpents to snare the ankle, and venomous things seethed in the muck. It was enough to make plain, without a word of explanation, why no Cheonhaebang men bothered to patrol the approach.
But the closer they drew to the bay, the more the breathing of hidden enemies multiplied, and crudely built yet effective watchtowers rose ever thicker among the trees. Time and again the party skirted catastrophically close to discovery. Each time, Ouyang Qiangang turned them aside or brought them to a halt a heartbeat early, as though he had foreseen it all.
Working from the real-time data Akasha streamed into his mind, he threaded the enemy's surveillance net like a ghost, without an inch of error. What he failed to notice was what Ju Pyo and Du Jeong-gwang, following at his back, were thinking. To the two old men, he was mystery itself, and the astonishment never left their faces.
Du Jeong-gwang's gaze deepened.
'How… how is this even possible? Gu Hyeonjil sees through the enemy's positions as though he had eyes on top of his head. Even a Peak-Exceeding master can hardly push his sense of presence beyond ten jang… Don't tell me that boy has already reached the Transformation Realm? No… that cannot be…….'
Ju Pyo's thoughts ran along a different current. In his eyes, awe had already swallowed the astonishment whole.
'The gangho has seen masters of the Listening Art who could fix an opponent's position from dozens of jang away by sound alone, and grandmasters of qi-sense who tracked their enemies through the flow of energy. But the Young Master's realm is nothing like theirs… It is neither hearing sound nor feeling qi.'
His eyes grew deep.
'The Young Master simply knows. Like a man gazing down upon the earth from the heavens themselves, he already knows every trap and every enemy's position—and merely walks the path. A monster has been born into the Ouyang Clan……'
The two old masters said not a word, following silently in his wake.
Before long they reached the shadow of a hill commanding a full view of the bay and concealed themselves there—and at the sight spread out before them, Ju Pyo and Du Jeong-gwang both swallowed involuntarily.
It was a fortress bestowed by heaven. Within the vast bay, embraced like a folding screen by towering cliffs, dozens of ships great and small lay moored thick upon the still water.
Most striking of all was the great warship at its center. From its soaring mast hung a flag bearing a black serpent dragon on a field of crimson, fluttering with sinister grace. Around it clustered sleek single-masted sloops and oar-driven galleys, huddling like chicks about their mother. Dozens upon dozens of masts standing shoulder to shoulder made a grotesque forest grown out of the water itself.
Along the shore, hundreds of shabbily built wooden houses clung together like an anthill, and at their heart rose a single hall conspicuously larger and grander than all the rest. Raucous shouting and screams, and beneath them a nauseating reek of blood, drifted faintly on the wind up to the hillside where they hid. This was the lair of Cheonhaebang, the pirate horde that held all of Poyang trembling in terror.
From the hill's shadow, Ouyang Qiangang looked toward Du Jeong-gwang and spoke in a low voice.
"Elder, my master and I will handle the rescue. I must ask you to take a different task."
Du Jeong-gwang's face stiffened. "Out of the question. How could I stand aside from that? And there are five hundred of them or more. The two of you alone will surely find it beyond you."
"I'm afraid it will not. Rather than explain why two are enough, it will be quicker to show you. Elder, forgive me for a moment."
Ouyang Qiangang took hold of Du Jeong-gwang's hand.
Du Jeong-gwang caught the meaning of the gesture at once, and his brows twitched. A contest of internal power. This green whelp dared invite him—a man who had lived his whole life in the knife-wind of the gangho—to measure strength.
'Hyeonjil, you have grown far too arrogant.'
With an inward scoff he raised his power, meaning to flick the young man's hand lightly away. He failed. The hand clasping his own sat as immovable as Mount Tai, not stirring the slightest.
"Ngh…!"
Pride stung, Du Jeong-gwang summoned his full internal energy. Yet that mighty force simply drained away without a trace into his opponent's palm, like a single cup of tea emptied into a boundless sea. The other's power was not merely strong. It was the abyss itself—embracing all things and unmaking all things into nothing.
Du Jeong-gwang's complexion changed. He, whose internal energy had been cultivated through a full sixty-year cycle, was being overpowered. It was a result he could scarcely believe. Never had he imagined Ouyang Qiangang's power ran so deep.
The truth, however, differed slightly from his imagining. Ouyang Qiangang's internal energy was not so very far beyond Du Jeong-gwang's own. His advantage lay in the subtlety of the Transcendent Peerless Divine Art: he had drawn his opponent's force in through the Absorption Aperture, then scattered it through the Dispersal Aperture.
Ju Pyo, watching from the side, was no less astonished within. 'Impossible… When the Young Master faced me in that Jiujiang tavern, he was nothing like this. What I witnessed then was merely the tip of the iceberg.'
As though nothing at all had happened, Ouyang Qiangang slowly withdrew his hand and addressed the stunned elder. "Elder, will you follow my lead now?"
There was a weight in his voice that brooked no refusal. Du Jeong-gwang stared at him blankly for a moment, then answered with a bitter smile. "…So I shall. But who in the world are you, young master? However I look at you, you are no disciple of Brother Ju's."
Even his tone had shifted, the rough familiarity giving way to guarded respect. Judging there was no further need for concealment, Ouyang Qiangang slowly peeled away the human-skin mask. In the wan light of approaching dawn, his true face emerged, refined as a master's carving.
"I am Ouyang Qiangang, eldest son of the Ouyang Clan."
"……!"
At words beyond all imagining, Du Jeong-gwang's jaw dropped.
Ouyang Qiangang went on in a courteous tone. "I will explain everything in full once this affair is finished. For now, we must concentrate on saving the people."
With his shock settling, Du Jeong-gwang nodded, his expression set firm. "If that is your will, young master, then so be it. What exactly would you have me do?"
"While Master Ju and I infiltrate their den to free the captives and raise havoc, you will slip into their harbor and secure the fastest ship there."
"Hmm……"
"And the rest of the fleet must be dealt with—crippled as thoroughly as you can manage. If you fail to secure our way out, none of us leaves this island alive."
Du Jeong-gwang understood then: he had not been cast aside, but handed the single most decisive task on which the whole operation would stand or fall. The light in his eyes hardened. "Understood. This old man will stake his life on seeing it done."
Ouyang Qiangang tipped his chin toward Geum Wang. "Take Brother Geum with you. He understands human speech, and he is a spirit beast strong enough to shatter boulders with his bare hands and tear sheet iron apart. He will serve you well."
"Ah…!"
"Let Brother Geum lead the way as you work. His qi-sense surpasses even a Peak-Exceeding master's."
Du Jeong-gwang stared, wide-eyed, at the golden monkey perched on Ouyang Qiangang's shoulder.
Ouyang Qiangang spoke to the monkey. "Brother Geum, go along with the elder and help him. You can do that, can't you?"
Geum Wang nodded without hesitation. A spirit beast who understood human speech knew perfectly well this was no moment for tantrums.
With Geum Wang leading the way, Du Jeong-gwang melted swiftly from sight.
Ouyang Qiangang signaled Ju Pyo with a glance. "Shall we, Master?"
The two began to move—silent, swift, seamless. Like ghosts they slipped toward the very heart of Cheonhaebang's lair. Akasha's support was there if he wanted it, but in truth he hardly needed it: the island's coastal watch was airtight beyond compare, yet astonishingly, the security along the inner paths toward the stronghold was lax by comparison. As though every last blade had been concentrated somewhere else entirely.
The nauseating stench of blood thickened with every step, and the faces of Ouyang Qiangang and Ju Pyo set like stone. The terrible screams in the distance were growing louder, too.
They reached the highest ground of the lair—a small grove where colossal ancient trees walled off the interior like a living rampart, hiding whatever lay within. But the moment they laid eyes on those trees, fury flared unmistakably across both their faces. From every thick bough, human corpses hung in rows, strung up like laundry left out to dry. There were forty or fifty of them by even a conservative count. The withered, shrunken bodies were blotched with dried black blood, and beneath them the ground lay pooled dark.
Choking down his boiling rage, Ouyang Qiangang asked, "Old Master Ju… are pirates naturally capable of this?"
"…No."
Ju Pyo's voice came out rough, as though flecked with iron filings. "Pirates are cruel, aye, but this… this is no sight that mere cruelty explains. Forty years ago, even in the places the Demonic Cult overran, I never once saw horror like this. Those things are not pirates. They are devils crawled up out of hell."
Leaving the mutilated dead strung upon the trees behind them, the two pressed on toward the source of the screams with even greater stealth and speed. The closer they came to the center, the more suffocating the reek of blood grew, and the agonized cries bored into their ears like awls.
"AAAAAAGH—!!!"
"Save… me……!!"
"Kraaagh!"
A woman's pleading shrieks, a man's last broken gasp of agony—and over it all, as if in mockery, coarse breathing thick with lust and laughter gone mad with delight, all tangled into one hideous chorus.
Strangely, not a single sentry stood watch within the grove. The reason soon became clear: this hellish uproar was itself the most perfect guard there could be, for no one on earth would dare approach it.
The two reached the mouth of a clearing ringed dense with trees, from which the sounds spilled out. Ouyang Qiangang and Ju Pyo exchanged a glance, then rose soundlessly into the nearest of the giant trees.
Through gaps in the leaves, they could see the scene unfolding in the clearing below. In that instant, bloodshot eyes and a bone-deep killing intent kindled in them both at once. It was a living hell—a sight no human tongue could bear to put into words.