Bite and Be Bitten
Once Song Yu-yeong of the Jangan Sect and Jeo Pung of the Yeosan Sect had both taken their leave, Jang Hyeon-nam spoke up.
"Hyung-nim, let's go to our Jang Family Clan. I'll treat you well. You're my sworn older brother—how could I possibly neglect you?"
Looking at that innocent face, Seo Joo-cheon could only chuckle.
"I'd like that too. But I have things I need to do. If I ever had to rest my head somewhere, it would be wherever my little brother is. So don't feel too disappointed. We'll meet again whenever we want. The Yongcheon Sect sits in the same region as the Jang Family Clan—as long as we have the will, we can see each other anytime."
Even after being turned down again and again, Jang Hyeon-nam kept pressing the invitation. It was obvious how sincerely he cherished Seo Joo-cheon.
"I understand."
Seo Joo-cheon patted Jang Hyeon-nam's drooping shoulder.
"I'll take Yu Seong back. Little brother, you and Hero Sang, please wait a moment."
The party already knew Hak Yu and Yu Seong's circumstances, so no explanation was needed. Sang Ryo pointed toward an inn visible in the distance.
"We'll wait at that inn over there. Please come join us."
Hak Yu and Yu Seong climbed down from the carriage and bowed to Jang Hyeon-nam.
"Thank you for looking after the two of us—this old man and his grandchild—all this time."
"Not at all. Please take care of your health. And Yu Seong, you take care too."
"Yes."
Yu Seong, too, seemed to have grown attached in that short span; regret filled his eyes.
"I'll come visit the Jang Family Clan later."
"Sure. Come anytime."
When Seo Joo-cheon approached Kang Chu-mi and Dokgo Ho-in, Kang Chu-mi struck first.
"Big Brother, I'm coming with you this time. You always dump us at some inn and only take Second Brother around with you. I'll follow you even if it kills me."
"Daehyeong, Fourth Sister is right. We're coming too."
The three of them had recently learned through Seo Joo-cheon what kind of man Sanho-ong truly was, and the knowledge had made them wary. Seo Joo-cheon had decided his younger siblings needed to know Sanho-ong's identity, and he had told them.
To every martial artist, an assassin inspired a wariness of a different kind. And this was no ordinary figure—this was the master of the Slaughter King, one of the Twelve Demon Lords of Macheonchong. That was where they were headed. If the place turned out to be a trap, they felt that Daehyeong and Second Brother alone would struggle to hold out.
But Seo Joo-cheon could not leave Jang Hyeon-nam behind at the inn by himself either. Sensing his dilemma, Jeong Geum-sik stepped forward.
"I'll stay here with the young brother. Hero Po, you go with your siblings."
Seo Joo-cheon stared at Jeong Geum-sik, who went on,
"I'll take responsibility and stay right here."
Only then did Seo Joo-cheon nod. If Jeong Geum-sik was watching over Jang Hyeon-nam, nothing could be better. With Jeong Geum-sik's skill, he could be trusted completely. He was stronger than anyone else here, after all.
"Then I'll go, trusting in Hero Jeong."
Seeing Seo Joo-cheon place such open trust in him, Jeong Geum-sik felt a swell of satisfaction.
He really does know how to read people.
Jeong Geum-sik knew full well that Seo Joo-cheon cherished Jang Hyeon-nam like a true younger brother.
"Hyung-nim, don't worry about me. Go on ahead."
Jang Hyeon-nam was still smiling with that same innocent face. Seo Joo-cheon soothed the reluctant Yu Seong, hoisted the child onto his back, and spurred his horse toward Hwang Manor.
After the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes and Hak Yu had ridden off toward Hwang Manor and vanished from sight, someone was watching them from the second floor of a small inn at the village entrance.
Only once Jang Hyeon-nam, Sang Ryo, and Jeong Geum-sik had moved to an inn deeper in the village did the middle-aged man who had been watching finally address the man seated before him.
"Once they enter Xi'an, the opportunity will vanish. You will need to move quickly. And I will say it again—what I want is revenge."
"Yeah, I said I'd get you your revenge. But you claimed you could give me what I want—is that actually true? If you've sent me on a fool's errand, you'd better be ready for the consequences."
"How could I possibly speak empty words before the Heinous Saber Fiend, one of the Three Great Evils of the Martial World?"
The title of one of the Three Great Evils might have been a mockery coming from anyone else, but to the Heinous Saber Fiend it was an honorable epithet. He stroked his gray beard and leaned his torso forward.
"So who exactly do I need to kill?"
His eyes gleamed.
"The ones who caused my son's death. Jang Hyeon-nam, the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes, and that man who was with Jang Hyeon-nam just now."
Pyo Byeong-jik ground his teeth. He could not let the people who had driven his only son to death go unpunished.
His son had fallen into demonic qi from improperly practicing martial arts, and Pyo Byeong-jik had been searching for a way to cure him. Knowing it was a stretch, he had still sent his son Pyo Seon on an escort run all the way to Tibet and back. Tibetan martial learning was said to be bizarre and uncanny, so he had believed there might be a method there to treat the boy's demonic qi. If only that qi could be purged, his son had the talent to make a name for himself as a rising star of the martial world.
While searching for a treatment, he had coincidentally obtained the Empty Green Stalactite Milk. But that had been the root of the disaster. His yang energy had not been so excessive as to require the wicked art of Yin Absorption to Nourish Yang—yet the Empty Green Stalactite Milk, taken to purge the demonic qi, had instead caused his yang energy to erupt so violently that nothing but Yin Absorption to Nourish Yang could settle the demonic qi again.
Pyo Byeong-jik's last resort had been the Mount Hua Sect. He had intended to offer the Empty Green Stalactite Milk to Mount Hua and seek a method to purge his son's demonic qi, believing that Mount Hua's little-known inner arts could drive it out. So before that, he had tried to cover up Pyo Seon's incidents. Incidents could be suppressed with money. There was nothing in this world that gold could not do.
But so many women had died that grim rumors began to circulate. To hide even the slightest hint of their involvement, Pyo Byeong-jik had deliberately spread word of the Empty Green Stalactite Milk, drawing every eye toward the elixir. That way, even as women in the area were violated and murdered, the crimes would be buried beneath the clamor. Precious as the Empty Green Stalactite Milk was, he did not begrudge it if it was a way to save his son.
And then those bastards had killed the boy he had cherished so dearly.
Especially that man with Jang Hyeon-nam—I cannot forgive him.
From the authorities, he had heard that the man had been chasing his son since the border of the Shaanxi Regional Military Commission.
The Heinous Saber Fiend pulled his torso back against the chair.
"You want me to kill every last one of them? Even I would struggle with that. Those Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes aren't the pushovers you think they are. They're the ones who beat the Undying Demon. On top of that, that Jang fellow fought the Undying Demon as an equal. One of them, maybe—but if you want the whole lot dead, I wouldn't take the job even if you handed me the entire Xi'an Escort Agency."
Hong Seok-hun, the Heinous Saber Fiend, believed Po Un had made a fool of him, and he had been tracking them ever since. He wanted to take out his anger on them no matter what it took. And then, as luck would have it, someone had come looking for him.
He had been about to swat the escort agency people away like flies, but they said they would give him what he wanted, so he had met with the agency chief. And to think the payment was the Empty Green Stalactite Milk he had so desperately coveted—honestly, the Heinous Saber Fiend would have licked Pyo Byeong-jik's ass if asked. But what the man wanted was a contract killing. Asking him to kill people—there was no simpler, more convenient request. Murder was one of his favorite hobbies.
"If you carry out the revenge, I will give you this much more."
Pyo Byeong-jik produced a small jade bottle the length of a finger.
"Heh heh heh. So this is Empty Green Stalactite Milk?"
"That's right."
"To think you're holding this much. Who would believe this is the real thing?"
"I already set aside the portion for my son. What kind of fool would have offered all of this precious treasure to the Mount Hua Sect?"
"So in the end, we were all played by the escort agency chief's scheme."
The Heinous Saber Fiend took the jade bottle, dabbed the Empty Green Stalactite Milk with his tongue—and his cheeks trembled with rapture. Even a taste on the tip of his tongue made his inner energy shudder. Then his whole body trembled. When he thought of how he had suffered, deceived by a fake elixir...
"Fine. If I do the revenge, you'll give me this much more?"
"That's right."
"Then I'll see the agency chief's revenge done, no matter what it takes."
Once he had tasted it, greed took hold. This amount would be enough to raise his inner power and drag himself up to the Peak Realm. Then even if they all came at him at once, he would have nothing to fear.
The Peak Realm that every martial artist dreamed of could be reached without enlightenment, if one obtained a Jia—sixty years—of inner power. But those who managed it were vanishingly few. Beyond Peak Realm lay Transcendent Peak Realm and the Immortal Realm, but those were the supreme, untainted worlds of martial learning that inner power alone could never reach. They were worlds of enlightenment, and the path to them was a lifetime of training that lasted until death.
With Empty Green Stalactite Milk, reaching Peak Realm and killing those bastards will be child's play.
The Heinous Saber Fiend tucked the jade bottle into his robes and stood.
"The deal is struck. I'll kill them—just wait."
"No. When you kill them, you must cut off their heads and bring them to me."
"Eh, I can do that much."
The Heinous Saber Fiend grinned and walked out of the inn.
And there were others watching them as well.
A young man dressed like a Confucian scholar, body hidden on the opposite rooftop, spoke to the young man beside him.
"Think the Heinous Saber Fiend will interfere with our work?"
"He won't be able to. After taking the Empty Green Stalactite Milk, the Heinous Saber Fiend will spend a full day just circulating his energy. Half a day at the very fastest. That's how long it takes to convert Empty Green Stalactite Milk into true qi. We can finish our business before then."
"True enough. Even if the Heinous Saber Fiend did interfere, it's not like we'd need to care."
"What if we attacked the Heinous Saber Fiend and took the elixir? If he hasn't taken it yet, we'd have a good enough chance."
"Didn't you hear the squad leader? We don't have the luxury of splitting our forces right now. And the Heinous Saber Fiend might die fighting the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes, or he might get wounded. We can reap the fisherman's profit then. No need for us to fight a healthy opponent and take losses ourselves."
"Khuhuhu, that's true. Our lord can extract elixirs from the Heinous Saber Fiend's body, so there's no need to take the risk."
"Right. All we need is the Heinous Saber Fiend's corpse."
"And if we can get the elixir the escort agency chief is holding too, we could look beyond just being a squad leader."
"But can the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes or that Jang fellow handle the Heinous Saber Fiend after he's taken Empty Green Stalactite Milk?"
He asked because Empty Green Stalactite Milk was no ordinary elixir.
"The squad leader said Jeong Geum-sik would take care of it rather than those guys."
"Is he that strong? He looked like a First-Rate master to me, at best."
"That's why you're stuck as a mere squad member. The squad leader said he saw that man once on a previous mission. Have you heard of the Red Snow Ice Demon?"
"Of course—who doesn't know the Three Great Eccentrics of the Martial World? Wait, is that him?"
"You're only figuring that out now? We've been watching them for days."
"I never saw him use martial arts, so how was I supposed to know?"
"Fair enough. A guy who just came out on a mission for once wouldn't know. They investigated after he relieved himself—the leaves his urine touched were frozen. That's a symptom that appears when ice arts reach their extreme. The ice-cold qi even comes out through the urine."
"If the ice-cold qi is that strong, shouldn't the piss itself freeze?"
Half a joke.
"Oh, come on. You don't know a damn thing about ice arts. So if you practice ice arts, does a person turn into a block of ice? Why doesn't a person's body freeze even while cultivating ice arts? Because there's an inner art that controls the ice-cold qi."
"You think I don't know that? I was joking and you're giving me a lecture."
"Whatever. We just need to report the escort agency chief's movements to the squad leader. Then he'll make a plan."
"We're attacking an old man and a little kid—why is the squad leader being so cautious? It's not like him."
"Aigoo, this is why I can't stand the ones who only push papers inside. You don't even know who that old man is, do you?"
"He's an herb gatherer."
"Let's not even talk about it. Just don't."
"Then why did he tell the other squads to gather in this village too? That other squad was looking for something else."
"Because what they were looking for and what we were looking for are in the same place."
"Really?"
"You don't know a thing. Well, a mere squad member just follows orders—no way you'd know the circumstances."
"Tch, you sure know a lot."
"Of course. I'm the squad leader's adjutant."
"Since when does a squad leader have an adjutant? You mean his confidant."
"Same difference. Let's go. Don't even open your mouth in front of the squad leader. If you start acting like you know something, you'll get an earful."
Confirming that Agency Chief Pyo Byeong-jik had left the inn, the man stood up.
