Roar 4
As agonized screams and the encroaching glow of torches threw us into panic, a martial artist who had launched himself from a low hill toward us let out an urgent cry.
“Deputy Leader! It appears to be an ambush by the Blood Sect. They’re pouring in from all sides! One of the scout teams must have been captured—the location of the rendezvous point has been exposed!”
“Th-This!”
It wasn’t that the Blood Sect had already staked out the rendezvous point before we arrived, the way Sister Seol had fretted earlier. The attack had simply begun with perfect timing, locking into place the moment we showed up.
At the martial artist’s shout, three or four more figures burst from the wolf den and stared at the Deputy Leader with startled faces.
“Deputy Leader!”
“Deputy Leader, what do we do?!”
“Your orders!”
The Deputy Leader pulled several sheets of paper from his robes and, with a resolute look, pressed them swiftly into Geom-bong’s hand.
“Geom-bong, entrust these to the Alliance Leader!”
“These are…?”
It was clearly the compiled intelligence they had gathered, yet he was handing it over.
“Based on everything we’ve collected, this is a map of the places where we believe the Blood Sect’s stronghold may lie. It must reach the Alliance Leader!”
“Why give this to me? What about you, Deputy Leader?!”
“When something like this happens, saving the young is the duty of old men like us, isn’t it?”
“Th-That…”
His tone carried the clear sense that he meant to sacrifice himself for us. The Deputy Leader swept his gaze over our party, a bitter smile touching his lips.
“We cannot lose the Two Dragons, the One Phoenix, and the One Flower in a place like this. You are the future of the Murim, after all. We will draw them off—live, and meet us again at the Murim Alliance. Now! Everyone, follow me!”
“Yes, Deputy Leader!”
“Let’s go!”
He strode forward with the five martial artists under his command and shouted again.
“Open a blood path! You lot wait here, then head south.”
South? Not north?
The place we needed to flee toward was Yunnan, which lay to the north—yet the Deputy Leader had told us to go south. When I frowned in confusion, Hwa-eun seized my wrist and pulled me along.
“He means for us to strike at their blind spot. The Blood Sect will naturally assume we’ll run north toward Yunnan and have concentrated their forces there. While the Deputy Leader draws every eye northward, we slip out to the south.”
Oh-ho.
I was impressed that she had grasped the plan so quickly. Following her, we reached the wolf den. We held our breath at the entrance and checked the surroundings. Soon the clash of weapons and distant screams and shouts began to rise.
—Clang!
“N-North! They’re to the north!”
“Kuaaaaagh!”
“The Murim Alliance dogs are trying to break through the north!”
Just as Hwa-eun had said, the ring of torchlights surrounding us began to distort. The southern torches thinned while those to the north gathered and thickened, drawn after the Deputy Leader’s party.
That was when a shadow suddenly fell across Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and me. The sun had already set, and the distant firelight was blocked by something large; the world before us plunged into sudden darkness. The something turned out to be Big Brother Gyu-seong’s massive back. His deep voice rolled out of the dark.
“I’ll take the lead. Changryong and Geom-bong will follow. So-ryong, you come after them. Dok-hwa and Miss Seol, cover the rear.”
Had the words “the tank takes the front” ever sounded so reassuring?
We three nodded. Big Brother Gyu-seong’s huge frame shot southward like a wild bear. Geom-bong and Changryong followed hard on his heels.
—Swaaaaaash.
Grass grown taller than a man flattened left and right under Big Brother’s bulldozer charge, leaving a long corridor in his wake. We had run only twenty or thirty meters when his low warning dropped.
Something’s coming!
—Swaaaash.
—Thud, thud.
Just as he said, the sound of grass being flattened and the glow of firelight approached from the opposite direction. Big Brother immediately changed course and hurled himself at the leading figures while still flattening the tall grass.
“Something’s coming this way— Wait! Murim—!”
—Crunch!
“Keuhk…”
Without slowing, Big Brother Gyu-seong’s body slammed straight into the man at the front. We burst out into the already-flattened grass and saw the blood spray erupting from the mouth of the man who had just dropped his torch. He flew backward as if struck by a truck, blood mist blooming behind him. The torch he had lost arced overhead, briefly lighting the night before the darkness swallowed it again.
Roughly a dozen Blood Sect martial artists froze in shock at our sudden appearance. The moment they hesitated, Geom-bong and Changryong—who had been hidden behind Big Brother’s bulk—exploded left and right. Spear and sword pierced chests and severed necks of the red-robed men flanking the one who had been sent flying.
—Thuk!
—Seogeok!
They had clearly practiced this combination many times. The spear that shot from Changryong’s hands—hands I had thought clumsy—punched clean through a man’s throat. Geom-bong’s blade flashed under the moonlight and reaped necks.
“Mu-Murim… Keheok!”
“Kuaaagh.”
“Mu-Murim Alliance!”
—Shiiing!
One of the startled men recovered enough to raise something like a whistle to alert the others—only for a glittering silver point to appear in the center of his forehead with a sharp whistle of air.
“Keuk…”
“Grrrk…”
Poison needles from Hwa-eun’s hand had buried themselves in the foreheads of the remaining Blood Sect martial artists. The dozen or so enemies were cleaned up in an instant.
Big Brother lifted his head, scanned the surroundings once more, and spoke while looking toward the place where no torchlight showed.
“Good. Dok-hwa, if any more of those appear, I’ll leave them to you.”
“Yes.”
Tank in front absorbing the charge, two melee fighters supporting, long-range cleanup of the stragglers. The seamless three-man link, now joined by Hwa-eun’s attacks, felt satisfying. When the commotion of the fight began drawing nearby torches toward us, Big Brother shot forward again.
After the first clash, the same pattern repeated twice more. Just when we thought we had slipped free of the encirclement, the tall grass that had reached our heads finally ended. What met us as we burst out of the field was a seething mass of Blood Sect martial artists.
Under the moonlight, without even lighting torches, a hundred or more of them waited for us. Just as we had tried to strike their blind spot, they had struck the blind spot of our blind spot.
Big Brother, who had been running in the lead, skidded to a halt in dismay.
“What a disaster!”
A man stepped out from among the Blood Sect crowd, face bright with glee.
“Heh-heh. So the north really was a diversion? Well now, three pretty girls among you. This might actually be fun.”
The shock of finding them waiting for us lasted only a moment. Rage surged when the man licked his lips. His eyes were locked on Hwa-eun.
Then he said something that hastened his own death.
“Kill all the men and capture the women! And… heh-heh-heh… that one is mine.”
Hwa-eun’s face flushed crimson with fury and shame. I shouted inwardly at once. This was the moment to call Cho. I would not feel better until that face was ruined.
Cho! Punish all these bad uncles for me!
What answered inside my head was the feeling of having waited too long already, and Cho’s cry telling us to fall back.
I immediately yelled to the others.
“Big Brother! We have to get back! It’s coming!”
“Coming?!”
Perhaps they remembered Cho at my shout. We recoiled several steps in alarm. The man who had been leering at Hwa-eun also flinched and retreated a few paces with the other Blood Sect members. When nothing changed no matter how they looked around, he snorted a laugh.
“To think I almost fell for a brat’s words. I don’t know where the four of you came from, but no one is coming to help you. Except for the ones who entered the Forbidden Zone, the nine scout teams of the Murim Alliance are all underground right now, having their blood drained.”
“Th-That’s—!”
“When we caught the first three, they spilled everything so nicely. Kuhahaha.”
At the news that every Murim Alliance scout team had been captured, Geom-bong’s eyes flared. The man who appeared to be the Blood Sect leader raised his hand to give the attack order—
—Tuk.
From far off came the shouts of other Blood Sect men and the clash of weapons. Cutting through that noise, something struck the back of the man’s gloved hand with a clear sound.
—Tuk. Tuk-tuk. Hudu-du-duk.
Then, as if rain were falling only where they stood, droplets began to drop from the sky.
“Rain?”
He looked up with a doubtful expression—then his face began to twist. Not an expression of emotion. His face itself started to warp. Or rather, to melt.
“Kuaaaaaaaah!”
Men struck by the falling droplets clutched their heads and collapsed. A wave of self-reflection followed; the surrounding Blood Sect martial artists also dropped to their knees, gripping their skulls as if in mass repentance.
“Keueoeoe!”
“Kuaaaaaagh!”
The hair-raising screams of a hundred men filled the night.
—Kung!
—Tseureureureureu!
Cho descended between them and us and let out a roar of pure rage. As if struck by killing intent itself, the men gurgled and melted where they stood.
I-Insane.
Even I, who had called Cho, stared with eyes wide in disbelief. Beside me Hwa-eun’s dazed voice floated out.
“One of the Ten Great Poisons of Murim… the king of all centipedes. The calamity among calamities that flies through the heavens and scatters the mist and rain of death—the Flying Centipede. Th-That’s what Grandfather said. So this is what the rain of death meant…”
Strangely, the grass, the clothes, and the weapons remained untouched. Only the bodies melted away. It was clearly not any substance that existed in the natural world. None of the poisons I knew fell into this category.
Once every last man had fallen, Cho came to my side and pushed its head forward as if asking for praise for a job well done.
—Tseureureu.
Still half-dazed, I stroked Cho’s head and muttered,
“Cho, you mustn’t drool on Daddy or Mommy, okay?”
—Tseureut?
Grandfather had said that because I had absorbed Cho’s poison I would be fine, but I was still afraid. The Tang Clan’s poison arts granted resistance to poisons one had taken in, yet a single drop of Cho’s saliva felt as if it would punch a hole straight through something. That rain had not felt like poison at all—something else entirely.
“Wh-What in the world is this…?”
Mae Cho-gwi, Elder of the Blood Sect known as Blood Wind Flying Snake, stared blankly at the traces of more than a hundred martial artists who had vanished, leaving only weapons and clothing behind. He had never imagined such losses just to seize six Murim Alliance members and a few children. On the northern side he had been assigned, even after being hit by the dispersing-force poison the Murim Alliance had newly created, only three low-ranking martial artists had been injured. The sight of an entire force annihilated in a single stroke was beyond comprehension.
Here had stood Blood Ghost Unit Leader Gu Pung-so and one hundred men of the Blood Ghost Unit. Gu Pung-so was skilled in tracking and ranked among the top five of the Blood Sect’s eight combat unit leaders. One hundred of the three hundred under his command had simply disappeared with him.
“Have they still not arrived?”
“Yes, Elder!”
“Do they mean to break the agreement?!”
Mae Cho-gwi was cursing the tardy party with a face full of fury when a cool voice drifted from behind him.
“Surely not. How could that be?”
He stepped back and turned. A pale-faced woman in long, flowing black robes stood smiling at him. He had not even sensed her approach; she had taken his back completely.
Mae Cho-gwi roared in anger.
“N-Next time, do not stand behind me!”
The woman answered with a bright smile.
“As you wish.”
The woman before him belonged to the force the Blood Sect had encountered on the border between the Great Yue Kingdom and the Central Plains when they withdrew from the Central Plains and settled here. They had been devouring the small border villages and growing their power when the Blood Sect, still unrecovered from the damage suffered in the Central Plains, had foolishly charged them and suffered heavy losses. Though enemies at first, once they learned the Blood Sect harbored deep grudges against the Central Plains they had proposed an alliance. They called themselves the Lords of the Five Poisons. Only later did the Blood Sect learn they were descendants of the Five Poisons Gate.
—Whoosh!
Still irritated at feeling mocked, Mae Cho-gwi packed inner force into the poison bottle he carried and hurled it. The woman caught it gently. She tipped a drop of the poison onto a fingertip, tasted it with her lips, and smiled again.
“Mmm… as expected, the poison of the Striped Oil Serpent. Did we not tell you? That martial art has a weakness.”
“Damn it—so it was discovered after all?”
Just as the woman had once warned, it was the Striped Oil Serpent’s poison. Because there was no antidote, the best policy had been to keep it secret even from the other elders, revealing it only to the Great Elder, the Divine Maiden, and himself who handled intelligence. Yet the Central Plains dogs had found the flaw. A sense that infiltrating the Central Plains again would not be easy settled over Mae Cho-gwi’s face of defeat—then another poison bottle flew at him.
“What is this now?! Hmm? What is it?”
Thinking it another prank, he flared with anger, but the bottle was different from the one he had thrown. When he caught it and asked, the woman answered with a smiling face.
“The antidote for the Striped Oil Serpent.”
“What?! Y-You finished it?!”
“Of course. We keep our promises. Unlike certain others.”
She was clearly referring to the matter of Blood Eagle Blade Claw Gu Cheon-ak attacking the Tang Clan. Their side had been preparing an assault on the Tang Clan, only for that bastard’s actions to make everything far more difficult. Though reluctant, Mae Cho-gwi apologized. Completing the antidote was reason enough to bow his head.
“We already apologized for that, did we not? Even we had no idea how that man would move.”
“Well, let’s say that’s true. So why did you call for me?”
“Ah, right. Look at this. It’s some kind of poison, but I have no idea what.”
Mae Cho-gwi stepped aside and showed her the melted site. The woman’s eyes flew wide; she dropped to the ground and began crawling. Moments later she cried out in a voice of pure astonishment, as if she had found something.
“Th-The First Poison Lord! Still young, but it is unmistakably the First Poison Lord! Is Heaven answering the long-cherished wish of us Lords of the Five Poisons?! Summon the Toad Unit and bring out the Roar!”
At her command, silhouettes rose from the surroundings, prostrated themselves, and immediately launched into the air.