Chapter 230: Turbulent South-3
Chapter 230: Turbulent South-3
White Mountain Iron Sword Gong Han-seong was a famous wandering knight active in Guangdong Province.
A peak-level expert, he was renowned as a man of unyielding integrity who never compromised with injustice, and was famous for his iron backbone—no matter who the opponent was, if he deemed them to be in the wrong, he would charge headlong into them first.
Recently, he had clashed with the Galsubang, a large bandit gang in northern Guangdong, and had avenged the victims who had suffered unjustly. With a refreshed heart, he was now making his way south.
It was because he had grown intrigued by a man named Inparang, who had named the Hainan Demon Sword Jin Tae-do and the Hengshan Sect as his sworn enemies and was waging a campaign of vengeance.
It was while he was walking along a long, secluded forest path.
Suddenly, an inn appeared ahead of him.
Gong Han-seong murmured, a glint of curiosity in his eyes.
"Hmm? Was there an inn in a place like this?"
Though his expression briefly showed puzzlement, he had gone a long while without eating anything, so he decided to step inside for the time being.
Kki-ik!
Immediately, a brisk greeting sounded out.
"Welcome, please come in!"
At the courteous voice that rang out the moment he opened the door, Gong Han-seong smiled faintly and looked around the interior of the inn.
It was unexpected.
Contrary to his expectations, the inn located in such a remote place was already half-filled with guests.
Groups carrying bundles who looked like merchants, a couple who seemed to be traveling with two young children, and even brawny men who looked to be ronin.
It seemed quite a number of people passed through this road.
Perhaps that was why an inn could be situated in such a remote place.
At that moment, the brisk voice rang out again.
"Aigo, a warrior, is it? Are you alone, Warrior-nim?! What can I get for you?!"
At the young server's courteous greeting, Gong Han-seong headed toward an empty table between the couple and the merchants and spoke.
"I'll have some simple dumplings, thin noodles, and bamboo leaf wine, please."
"Yes! An order of dumplings, thin noodles, and bamboo leaf wine!"
Gong Han-seong sat at the table and casually surveyed the people around him.
The first thing that caught his eye were the two young children running around the inn, playing boisterously.
The children came right up near Gong Han-seong, kicking up a ruckus.
At that, the woman who appeared to be their mother hurried over with an apologetic expression, took the children away, and greeted him.
"You two, come here this instant! Where do you think you are, playing around like that?! Aigo, Daehyeop. I am so sorry. The children are still young...."
Gong Han-seong smiled gently and said to her.
"It is all right. Children will be children."
But even after being dragged off by their mother, the children kept playing pranks, eventually making their way behind Gong Han-seong's seat again.
And in the meantime, the server promptly brought his food out.
Whether it had been prepared in advance, the speed was remarkably fast.
The server skillfully moved the dishes from the tray onto the table and called out.
"Enjoy your meal, Daehyeop!"
"Heh, thank you."
Having accepted the server's greeting with a friendly smile, Gong Han-seong, as he always did before eating, first took out a silver needle from his bosom.
Wherever he went, it was his long-standing habit to test his food with a silver needle for poison before eating.
But it was just as he was about to plunge the silver needle into the food to check it.
Abruptly, one of the burly men who looked like ronin spoke to him in a drunken voice.
"Hey, brother! You any good with that sword?"
It was a rude manner of speech, a tone that clearly sounded like he was picking a fight.
The ronin was probably drunk and looking to show off his strength.
Gong Han-seong glanced at him and chuckled lightly.
And he decided to simply laugh it off.
For a peak-level expert such as himself, dealing with mere ronin one by one was a waste of his standing.
He answered with a faint smile.
"Good? I suppose I must be. I manage well enough."
At that, the ronin laughed fiercely, then abruptly shot to his feet and began approaching him.
"Yeah? Then why are you talking down to me? Huh? Don't you see me standing right here? You think I'm funny?! Huh?!"
At his shouting, the surroundings suddenly fell silent.
The merchants eating at the next table also looked at the two with tense eyes, and the children's mother hurriedly reined in her kids.
"Children! Come here right now!"
"Huh? Why?!"
"Come here this instant!"
Gong Han-seong subtly observed the atmosphere around him and suppressed his mood, which was steadily souring.
He had tried to let it slide amicably, but the other party kept crossing the line.
Gong Han-seong now hardened his expression and spoke to the ronin.
"It seems the drink has gotten the better of you. The people around us are being inconvenienced, so it would be best to stop...!"
That was when it happened.
The ronin suddenly lunged at him, swinging a fist and shouting.
"You're the one inconveniencing me, you bastard!"
Bwaaang!
It was a sudden ambush.
But there was no way a drunken ronin's attack could pose a threat to Gong Han-seong.
Gong Han-seong let out a dumbfounded, hollow laugh, easily blocked the ronin's fist, and with his opposite hand, lightly pushed against his stomach.
Tuk!
"Uk!"
At that, the ronin floated up into the air and then dropped straight to the floor.
Kudangtang!
Perhaps because he was drunk, he failed to perform any breakfall whatsoever, and the back of his head slammed against the ground.
Seeing this, his fellow ronin cried out in alarm and rushed toward him.
"Wang-ga ya!"
"Wang-ga ya, are you all right?!"
Gong Han-seong clicked his tongue inwardly.
It was because the man had fallen much harder than he'd expected.
It seemed that in his ill temper, he had used a bit too much force.
Thinking this, he was about to go over to where the ronin had collapsed to check his condition.
Suddenly, the shouts of the fellow ronin reached his ears.
"H-he's dead! He's not breathing!"
"Wang-ga ya! Wang-ga ya!"
"Wang-ga ya, come to your senses!"
Gong Han-seong was startled.
No matter how excessive the force, it was absolutely not to the degree that a man would die.
At this, the merchants sitting at the next table also began to cry out in shock.
"S-someone's dead?!"
"M-murder! It's murder! That man committed murder!"
Gong Han-seong looked at the merchants with a troubled gaze.
And then he hastily approached the fallen ronin.
"Step aside! Let me take a look!"
It was as he pushed the ronin aside and was about to check the condition of the one who had collapsed.
Suddenly, a chilling sensation pricked the nape of his neck.
"!"
Startled, he urgently flung his body backward.
Pabak!
At that, the ronin's blades stabbed into the spot where he had been.
Shwiik!
Puh-bubuk!
Gong Han-seong felt a chill run down his spine.
Had he been even slightly careless, he would have nearly died in that brief moment to the blades of such third-rate ronin.
Thinking that they were likely trying to avenge their comrade, Gong Han-seong shouted at them in a fury.
"What is the meaning of this...!"
But that was when it happened.
Puuk!
"Keuk!"
A sudden, searing pain lanced through his back.
Someone had stabbed him in the back.
Shocked, Gong Han-seong tried to turn around to see who it was.
It was because there had been no one behind him capable of attacking him.
'Who in the world...?!'
But he could not turn around.
Because the ronin in front of him came swinging their blades at him again.
Shwiik!
'So fast!'
Gong Han-seong was startled.
The attacks were far too sharp.
It was a level utterly unbelievable as the attacks of third-rate ronin.
Moreover, the burning pain from his back was gradually spreading throughout his entire body.
It seemed poison was spreading.
Gong Han-seong first suppressed the poison with his internal energy, and rather than defending against the ronin's attacks, he decided to fling himself to the side.
In a situation where he did not even know who was behind him, he could not afford to face them head-on.
Pabak!
Shwiik!
It was when he threw himself toward the merchants' side, rather than where the children's parents and merchants sat.
As he flung himself, Gong Han-seong managed to catch sight of the one who had attacked him from behind, and he was simply aghast.
"!"
For the two children who had been playing near him were staring at him with sinister grins on their faces.
"What!"
At that moment, the bloodied dagger clutched in the children's hands entered his sight.
'This cannot be....'
Gong Han-seong felt he could now grasp the nature of this situation.
'Assassins...?'
That was it.
If such young children had skillfully stabbed him in the back, they could never be ordinary people.
And the moment he realized that, three swords plunged into his back.
Pupupuk!
"Kuh-heok!"
This time, he felt he knew whose doing it was even without turning around.
Because there had only been the three merchants on that side.
Within his fading consciousness, Gong Han-seong abruptly recalled a story he had heard long ago.
The story of the martial world's supreme assassin group, who would construct buildings or even create an entire village to eliminate their target....
He murmured his final words.
"The Blood Rain... Lotus."
And in the end, he breathed his last.
Tulssuk!
Everyone in the inn watched him collapse with expressionless faces.
The innkeeper, the server, the merchants, the children and parents, even the ronin—all of them.
Among them, the server muttered with a cold gaze, wholly unlike before.
"He should have just eaten the food and died quietly. For trying to check for poison for no reason, he met a miserable end, did he not."
On Gong Han-seong's table, the silver needle he had taken out to test for poison lay there, stark and alone.
Having looked at it for a moment, the server—in truth, Number 17, a top-grade assassin of the Blood Rain Lotus—spoke to his comrades.
"Tidy up the inn quickly. We must move fast to handle the next commission target."
At that, the boy who had stabbed Gong Han-seong with a dagger—in truth, Number 34, a first-class assassin of the Blood Rain Lotus—asked.
"Who is the target this time?"
To his question, Number 17 answered expressionlessly.
"The successor of the Hainan In Clan, Inparang. He does not seem to be at the transcendent peak yet, but he is a skilled man who brought down the Hapsan Sect alone and defeated the Blood Sea Demon together with the Jin Family."
At those words, the assassins of Hyeoluryeon exchanged glances and asked again.
"They're running an operation on a seasoned expert like that with just our squad?"
At that, Jeom So-i, Number 17, curled up the corners of his mouth in a smile and answered.
"No way. We're going village-level this time. They said it's been four years since they last built a village to handle a target."
At those words, the other assassins nodded as if convinced.
Then they moved with practiced skill and began tidying up the scene.
A day after that, the inn where Gong Han-seong had met his death vanished so cleanly it was as if it had never been there at all.
Not just the inn building itself, but even the traces that a building had ever stood there were completely gone.
A situation akin to a goblin's prank.
This was precisely how the world's greatest assassin organization, Hyeoluryeon, handled their targets.
***
Hawon, in the east of Guangdong Province.
This place, where countless rivers converged to form the vast lake Pumcheongho that resembled the sea, had been ruled for generations by a band called Hawonbang.
Hawonbang had long lorded over Hawon like kings, but surprisingly, their reputation was not so bad.
Though they were an unorthodox faction, they did not harass the common people living in Hawon. Rather, they protected them from outside invading forces and managed Pumcheongho well—the lake that could be called the lifeline of the people here.
Because of this, the common people of Hawon all liked Hawonbang and followed their words well.
The current leader of such a Hawonbang was a woman.
She was Yeon Taejin—the daughter of the former Hawonbang leader, a great woman who had killed all her male elder brothers and finally ascended to the position of faction leader. People called her Jaerim Dalgi, or Hawondalgi.
As her epithet Dalgi suggested, she had reached the transcendent peak level while still in her thirties and was counted among the Five Great Beauties of the Evil Faction.
That Hawondalgi Yeon Taejin was now leaning back in her chair with a languid, not-fully-awake expression, receiving an audience with a challenger.
Yawning as if still half-asleep, she asked the man standing before her.
"Haaam, so who did you say you were?"
At that, the bald, brawny man—whose physique looked incredibly solid and muscular even through his clothes—chuckled and answered.
"I am the Iron Fist of the East, Yuk Jugang. Among the fighters active in Jiangxi Province, there is no one who doesn't know my name."
As he answered, his glistening gaze swept over Yeon Taejin's entire body.
She was leaning lazily against the large chair in a loose attire where the slit of her skirt revealed up to her thigh, and her upper garment had slipped down to expose her shoulder.
At her smooth, snow-white exposed body, Yuk Jugang swallowed hard.
He felt he could see why she was counted among the Five Great Beauties of the Evil Faction.
Her appearance was nothing short of overwhelmingly alluring.
Yuk Jugang grinned greedily and asked her.
"If I may ask just in case, truly, if I can deliver a bout that satisfies Faction Leader Yeon...."
At that, Yeon Taejin, who had been smiling lazily without a care in the world despite his greedy stare, cut him off and answered.
"That's right. If you give me a heated match that satisfies me, you can definitely sleep with me. How about it? Will you challenge?"
The Iron Fist of the East, Yuk Jugang, slammed his two fists together with a bang and answered.
"I'm always hot! Hot when I fight, and even hotter in bed!"
At his words, Yeon Taejin smiled brightly and slowly rose to her feet, saying.
"Alright, I'll look forward to it."
And soon, the bout between the two began inside the hall.
Still in the loose attire with her upper garment slipped down to her shoulder, Yeon Taejin grinned and said.
"Here I come."
At the same time, her body shot forward like a cannonball.
Paaang!
The next instant, Yeon Taejin's front fist, which had closed the distance in a flash, shot out toward Yuk Jugang.
Yuk Jugang hurriedly crossed his two arms to defend against her front fist. But....
Ppakagak!
"Keuk!"
With a single strike, Yuk Jugang's two thick arms were crushed.
It was a tremendous destructive force one could never believe came from so slender a body.
Yeon Taejin didn't stop there.
The moment her downward kick, following her front fist, detonated against Yuk Jugang's thigh, a tremendous sound burst out.
Ppakak!
"Kuaaaak!"
Yuk Jugang could only let out a scream.
He simply could not endure the agony as if his entire thigh bone had been pulverized.
Unable to hold on any longer, he tried to collapse on the spot.
But Yeon Taejin did not let him fall.
Eyes blazing as if they would spew flames, she began to pummel Yuk Jugang relentlessly.
Ppakagak! Ppukak! Ppeok! Pukak!
Yuk Jugang howled in that excruciating pain.
"Kueeeeee!"
Yeon Taejin shouted as she pounded him ceaselessly, as if intent on turning him into minced meat.
"Seems like you hadn't heard that story?! That if you can't make it hot for me, you'll die the most agonizing death in the world?!"
"P-Please spare me!"
A moment later, Yeon Taejin, who had been looking down with contemptuous eyes at Yuk Jugang writhing like a beaten piece of meat, spun around and returned to her chair, saying.
"A bastard not even worth killing. Patch him up roughly and throw him away."
At that, the subordinates nearby immediately answered and moved.
"Yes! Faction Leader!"
But however well they treated him, it didn't seem likely that Yuk Jugang could ever live as a martial artist again.
Because with every bone in his body seemingly shattered to fragments, he was no different from having already died as a martial artist.
Yeon Taejin sat back languidly in her chair and muttered with a dissatisfied face.
"Just woke me up for nothing. I can't even remember the last time I had a really hot fight. As expected, should I just follow Senior Son, the Seductive Ghost, and go do some lecherous wandering?"
Yeon Taejin, who loved hot battles more than anything in the world, idolized the Seductive Ghost, Son Eun-sang.
It was because the career of that woman—who became the first Lust Demon in martial world history that no one could touch—was the ideal Yeon Taejin dreamed of.
But when she gritted her teeth and muttered that, her adjutant beside her grimaced slightly and said to her.
"Faction Leader, you're saying such things again.... If you go on a lecherous spree and become a public enemy of the martial world, you might be fine, but the members of Hawonbang will all be as good as dead."
At that, Yeon Taejin yelled in a sharp voice.
"Ah, I know! I said I know! I was just saying it!"
Yeon Taejin squeezed her eyes shut with a sulky expression.
If there was one thing she bitterly regretted lately, it was having killed all her brothers and become the leader of Hawonbang.
Her brothers had annoyed her by looking down on her and acting all high and mighty, so she had crushed them, and they had cowardly tried to kill her with trickery, so she lost her temper and killed them all....
If she had known she would be tied down to Hawonbang because of that, she would have held back a little back then.
'I should've just left home instead.'
Having muttered that through gritted teeth, Yeon Taejin sighed and asked her adjutant.
"Have you still not found Senior Son's whereabouts?"
At that, the adjutant again made a pitiful face and answered.
"Yes, it's certain she went to the Seonwoo clan and then returned to where the Eccentric Physician, Ma Jong-hwan, in Guangxi Province was, but after that, the Eccentric Physician and even his daughter all vanished without a trace along with her. My apologies, Faction Leader."
At his words, Yeon Taejin let out a deep sigh.
"I'm not going to hit you, so stop making that pitiful face. Haah, if only I could meet her in person just once, I'd have no other wishes. As expected, dreams are hard to achieve after all."
It was then.
The adjutant, who had been subtly gauging Yeon Taejin's expression, carefully opened his mouth.
"Um, Faction Leader. A messenger hawk flew in from the Hainan Demon Sword, Jin Tae-do."
At those words, Yeon Taejin's eyes twitched sharply.
"Jin Tae-do? What does that snake-like bastard want with me? All old and shriveled up, does he want to sleep with me?"
At that, the adjutant shrank back greatly and answered.
"W-Well, he, he said he wants to put in a contract request...."
As expected, Yeon Taejin immediately exploded.
"What?! That worm of a bastard dares to put in a contract with me?! Does he think I'm some filthy assassin?! Huh?!"
The adjutant squeezed his eyes shut and shouted quickly.
The sense of crisis was creeping up on him that if she got angrier, he might get hit again.
No, maybe getting hit himself would be for the better.
But if Yeon Taejin got peeved and declared she would fight the Hainan Sect, the members of Hawonbang would be finished.
"T-The target of the contract is Inparang!"
"Who is this bastard Inparang?!"
"T-That, Hae, the successor of the Haenam In-ga.... You know, the guy who single-handedly destroyed the Hapsan Sect not long ago! The one who toppled the White Religion Sect alongside the Jin Family Stronghold and even fought the Blood Sea Demon...."
In that instant, Yeon Taejin fell silent.
At that, the terrified adjutant cautiously opened his eyes a moment later.
Then he could see it right away.
A captivating smile spreading across Yeon Taejin's lips.
"Ho-oh, single-handedly destroyed the Hapsan Sect? Fought the Blood Sea Demon too?"
Anyone could see she was intrigued.
The adjutant quickly shouted.
"Yes, yes! That's right! Moreover, there were rumors he's a stunningly handsome man still only in his twenties!"
At that, Yeon Taejin's eyes twitched sharply again.
"Still only in his twenties? But fought the Blood Sea Demon, whom even I haven't fought? Hmm, I absolutely can't let this slide. This is an insult to me, isn't it?"
It was entirely impossible to understand how Inparang fighting the Blood Sea Demon constituted an insult to Yeon Taejin.
But the adjutant nodded his head vehemently.
Because he thought fighting Inparang was a hundred times better than fighting Jin Tae-do's Hainan Sect.
"Yes! Yes! Of course! That is surely an insult toward the Faction Leader! Absolutely!"
At that, a bright smile blossomed on Yeon Taejin's face.
"Good! Let's go!"
The blades that Jin Tae-do had recruited were slowly closing in on Seonwoo Jin.