Chapter 6: Back to the Front Lines-3
Chapter 6: Back to the Front Lines-3
As I approached the bastard, I had drawn up every ounce of the twenty years of internal energy within me, preparing a surprise attack.
Then, while his gaze was turned upward, I launched the ambush.
At that sudden event, his subordinates screamed in horror.
"Wh-what is this?!"
"Ch-chief!"
But they should have attacked first instead of screaming.
Because I had no intention of stopping there.
I released the sword lodged in Mak Gusam's chest, then spun my body around and drew the dao strapped to my back, swinging it in a flash.
Shu-hak!
A single streak of saber light carved across the space horizontally, and the head of the bastard right beside me flew off with a single stroke.
Pu-haak!
"Uwaaaahk!"
"Jang Oh!"
Only when blood sprayed in all directions did the bastards manage to cry out.
"S-surprise attack!"
"Stop him!"
Shu-aak!
"Kreuaaahk!"
Drenched head to toe in blood, I sliced another bastard from his groin up to his shoulder, and thought.
You don't 'stop him.' You say 'cut him down.'
Stupid bastards.
Pu-haak!
"Kreuaaahk!"
Only when I diagonally cleaved the third bastard's chest open did the bastards finally manage to aim their blades at me properly.
"Y-you bastard!"
"How dare you!"
A sneer leaked out of me.
Your reaction is way too late.
I hurled the dao I was holding straight at the terrified bastards who were thrusting their blades out with frightened faces.
The dao, deliberately set spinning, flew toward them with a buzzing hum, and the bastards flinched in shock, barely managing to block it.
"Uwaaah!"
Cha-chaeng!
But in that instant, I had already pulled the sword buried in Mak Gusam's chest and was charging toward them.
And in a single moment—
A rain of sword light scattered through the air as though wings of light were unfurling.
Shu-haaak!
"Euaaahk!"
"Kkeuaaahk!"
It was the first technique of the Seonwoo Thirteen Swords, Divine Eagle Flight, unleashed for the first time across my two lives.
It was around then that the ronin who had come with me began to move.
By my standards, they were a little late, but from their perspective, they had rushed to charge in.
"Charge! Support the Seonwoo young master!"
"Uwaaah!"
The bandits now had no choice but to fall into utter confusion.
After all, aside from the chief Mak Gusam, the rest were nothing but third-rate rabble who couldn't even use internal energy. With no focal point to bind them together, there was no reason for them to risk death and keep coming at us.
"S-spare me! It's a butcher!"
"Run! Everyone scatter!"
I butchered the bastards who recklessly turned their backs mid-battle and grinned fiercely.
My soul was rejoicing in the air of the battlefield, having returned once more.
The battle did not last long.
Since there were only six of us, we couldn't catch every bandit. In the end, the bandits' corpses scattered across the field numbered seventeen in total; roughly fifteen bandits seemed to have escaped.
Only then did the tension drain from me. I tossed aside even my sword and flopped back onto the ground, groaning in aggravation.
"Aigo, I'm dying!"
But the look in the ronin' eyes as they watched me was not the same pitiful gaze as before.
Etched clearly into their eyes was a vivid impression of astonishment, and a measure of fear.
Warrior Jang hesitated for a moment before asking me,
"Seonwoo young master, by any chance, are you a venerable elder who has undergone a return to youth?"
At that utterly unexpected and absurd question, I smiled even with my exhausted face and answered.
"Ei, there's no such thing. And even if there were, would a supreme master who has returned to youth collapse in exhaustion after fighting to this extent?"
Then he shook his head from side to side and said,
"Well, of course that would be the case. But in that brief moment, to kill without a moment's hesitation is no easy thing. Besides..."
He suddenly looked around and continued.
"Seeing the young master stretched out resting so comfortably in a place overflowing with corpses, I was struck with such an absurd thought."
At his words, I abruptly looked around. Indeed, everything was a mess of corpses and blood.
Although, truth be told, my own body was more painted in blood than the surroundings.
The sights were so familiar that I had unintentionally become relaxed, it seemed.
Even so, I couldn't say that openly, so I laughed awkwardly and made an excuse.
"I was so exhausted that I couldn't see anything around me, I suppose. Let us rest just a little longer before moving on."
Even in the midst of that, at my words of resting just a little more, the ronin looked at me with incredulous eyes.
***
While I rested, the ronin collected the spoils and took Mak Gusam's head.
There was probably a bounty on him, so taking it to the authorities would yield a decent sum.
Then, after we relocated and it was time for a meal, we were finally able to share another conversation.
Warrior Jang stole a glance at me and asked,
"Um, Seonwoo young master, are you perhaps a first-rate martial artist?"
I smiled and shook my head.
"No. I am still second-rate. I have only about twenty years of internal energy."
"But when I saw earlier, the sword appeared to have a hazy glow, and I wondered if that wasn't sword qi..."
"It's a technique of the Seonwoo Thirteen Swords. It's originally an illusion sword series technique, so the afterimages likely made it look that way."
At that, the ronin, who had been listening with perked ears, let out exclamations of admiration.
"Ahhh, the famous Seonwoo Thirteen Swords?!"
"As expected, it's the ultimate technique that represents the city of Guizhou!"
Warrior Jang spoke with a slightly envious expression.
"As expected, the sword style of a prestigious house is different. For a sword technique executed at the second-rate level to produce such power... When the young master reaches the realm of first-rate, it will be even more remarkable."
I simply gave him a faint smile at those words.
In truth, I was looking forward to it too.
Because the Seonwoo Thirteen Swords, an illusion sword technique, would show its true might when I reached the realm of first-rate and could release sword qi.
'But that's still a distant story, nothing more.'
I thought that and gave a bitter smile.
In order to release sword qi, at a minimum, one needed thirty years of internal energy—more than half a gap-ja.
When a second-rate martial artist possessing thirty years or more of internal energy attained the state of 'sword energy harming'—that is, they gained the enlightenment to injure others with released qi—then they were called a first-rate martial artist.
As for me, since I already possessed that enlightenment, it didn't matter, but the thirty years of internal energy was unavoidable.
In order to accumulate the insufficient internal energy, I had no choice but to exert myself tirelessly going forward.
Warrior Jang let out a sigh and said,
"At my age of forty, the internal energy I've accumulated so far is twenty years. And yet the Seonwoo young master, still in his early twenties, possesses twenty years of internal energy. It fills me with a sudden regret that I should have lived more diligently. I am nothing but ashamed."
At those words, I merely gave a wry smile.
It wasn't something I especially needed to tell him, but even having accumulated twenty years of internal energy now was only possible because my father had administered a spirit elixir to me the night before last.
If not for that, it likely wouldn't have even been ten years of internal energy.
After that, my father had also given me two more spirit pills of the same kind.
But at the same time, he had absolutely, earnestly admonished me that I must not consume them right now.
Of course, I knew the reason well too.
It was because half of the internal energy currently accumulated in my body had not been cultivated personally but absorbed as external energy.
'Which means it's the perfect state to fall into qi deviation.'
Therefore, for the time being, I had to focus on cultivating internal energy personally as much as possible and work to purify the external energy.
At that moment, a thought suddenly occurred to me, and I asked Warrior Jang,
"Warrior Jang, what kind of mind technique have you cultivated?"
Since he was a wandering ronin, I asked because it didn't seem likely that he had learned a proper mind technique.
Then, looking abashed, he answered with a dry cough.
"Well, just the Six Harmony Mind Method. It was the only thing I could get my hands on... ahem."
"Ahh, the Six Harmony Mind Method."
My eyes turned sympathetic.
I had thought he wouldn't have learned a good mind technique, but for it to be the Six Harmony Mind Method, of all things—it was truly a pitiful situation.
That was a third-rate mind technique that one could easily obtain even in a used bookstore on the marketplace streets.
'Rather, cultivating twenty years of internal energy with the Six Harmony Mind Method—that's even more impressive, actually.'
It wasn't just something I said; it truly was remarkable.
It would have been an accomplishment that could only be achieved through truly ceaseless effort.
As my eyes grew sympathetic, he avoided my gaze, dusted himself off, and stood up.
"Come, come, let's set out now! If we don't press a little further before it gets dark, we won't be able to arrive within three days."
I could say nothing more to him.
Even if I told him that I, too, had once been unable to obtain martial arts to learn and had resorted to copying and begging for others' techniques, it would only sound like pity to him.
My gaze toward him deepened.
***
The remnants of the Green Lake Stronghold who had scattered and fled in all directions were only able to regroup with each other a long while after Seonwoo Jin's party had passed.
Returning to the place where the incident occurred, these men saw the hacked-apart corpses of their chief and comrades piled together in one place and burst into rage.
"Those cruel bastards! Even for enemies, not burying them in the ground!"
"Look at this! They even took all their belongings! These dirty bandit-like bastards!"
"Sons of bitches who ought to be fried in dung water! May you all be caught and devoured by the demonic beings of the Blood Cult!"
As they spent a long while cursing Seonwoo Jin's party and venting their fury, one of them suddenly brought up the reality they had been ignoring for a moment.
"But... what do we do now?"
"What do you mean what do we do? We go back to the stronghold and elect a new chief."
"...If we elect a chief from among us, can we really run the business properly? The only second-rate martial artist among us was the chief, wasn't he?"
It was just when they all closed their mouths at the cold reality that struck deep to the bone.
Suddenly, they saw someone riding a horse from the other end of the road. There was only one horse, and only one person.
Everyone instinctively looked that way.
Then one man, whose eyesight was the best, swallowed his saliva and murmured in a low voice.
"It's a woman."
At that, his startled comrades urgently whispered back.
"What?!"
"A woman?!"
"A woman alone?!"
"Is she pretty?!"
He held out a palm to make his comrades wait, and after a moment, his eyes lit up as he murmured again.
"I can't quite tell because she hides her face with her bangs, but she's probably pretty. First, her figure is good. Her build is somewhat small; she looks to be in her late teens, maybe?"
Then he swallowed again and asked his comrades,
"What should we do?"
At that, one of them, who had been exchanging tense glances with the others, spoke up.
"If a single woman is coming along so confidently, what if she's a master?"
Those words poured cold water over the enthusiasm that had been boiling inside them.
Beware of women and the elderly.
It was an old saying of the martial world.
A hint of fear appeared in their eyes.
The incident earlier with Seonwoo Jin had vividly come back to them.
A shudder ran through them.
"Sh-should we not do it after all?"
When one of them spoke in a frightened tone, the man with the good eyes, who had first seen her, surreptitiously looked her way again.
Her eyes were hidden by her bangs, but beneath them, the egg-shaped jawline was clearly visible. No matter how he looked, she seemed like a beauty.
Agonizing over the regret of having to let such a beauty just pass by, a thought suddenly struck him, and he opened his mouth.
"But, can a girl in her late teens be a master? She's way too young, isn't she?"
That statement shone a light of hope into the other bandits' minds again.
Indeed, that was true.
No matter how dangerous it was for a woman to be alone, how strong could a girl in her late teens possibly be?
Of course, if she were a direct-line disciple of the Nine Great Sects, a child of the Five Great Families, or a child or disciple of the supreme beings—the One Emperor, Two Kings, Three Sages, Four Demons, and Five Monsters—then it might be possible.
But why would such a person come here?
In the end, having reached their conclusion, they boldly charged out toward the girl riding past on her horse.
"Halt, you wench! How dare you cross the territory of us heroic lords without permission?!"
"Get off that horse this instant! And start by taking off your clothes! Kehahaha!"
"No! You can take them off while on the horse! Kehahahaha!"
The girl quietly watched the bandits, who spoke and then burst into laughter among themselves, and suddenly asked them,
"By any chance, did a man named Seonwoo Jin, the third young master of the Seonwoo family, pass through here?"
The moment the bandits heard that name, their laughter vanished.
They were so astonished they even hiccuped.
"Y-you, how do you know that bastard..."
"A-are you also with that butcher of a bastard?"
At that reaction, the corners of her lips drew a satisfied arc.
"So he did pass through. How long ago did he pass?"
The bandits, momentarily seized by fear from the horrible memory of earlier, soon hardened their expressions again.
That bastard passing through was already a while ago, and the fact that this young wench was alone hadn't changed, had it?
"This is actually good! Let's take repayment for the chief's life out on this wench!"
"Yeah, that's right! The bastard who passed earlier isn't coming back anyway!"
As the bandits thus rekindled their fighting spirit, Ha Cheong-yeon, having obtained all the information she wanted, murmured to herself.
"She said he passed by a short while ago, huh? I'll meet him soon."
Then, from atop the horse, she lightly launched herself upward.
Hwi-ik!
The bandits stared blankly at her figure rising lightly into the air like a swallow skimming water.
The sight was so ethereal, and even beautiful.
Then, after an elegant spin through the air, she came plunging down toward the bandits like a lightning strike.
Hwi-ri-rik!
"...!"
There wasn't even a moment to utter a word.
In an instant, a sword light like a spiderweb filled the space, and the bodies of the bandits who had been staring at it blankly were torn apart, spouting blood like fountains.
Pu-haak!
By the time the blood had splattered in all directions, she had already risen back into the air and was returning to the saddle.
She, who had released sword qi and struck down fifteen men in a single second, simply flicked the blood from her sword and sheathed it.
And then, as if nothing had happened, she set off on her horse again.