Chapter 9
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Destruction - 3
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She had to flee, but she couldn't. The day had grown too late to cross the mountains, and she couldn't slip into the burning village without catching people's eyes. All the girl could do was watch from the bushes as the Dragon Star Clan went about their work.
Hidden deep in the undergrowth, she couldn't make out their voices. The two men's gestures looked like a pantomime—a silent play from the troupes that occasionally visited during the autumn harvest festival.
The pair chatted animatedly. The man in dragon-patterned robes gestured exaggeratedly this way and that. More than twenty men bustled about in response to his hand signals. Some slammed their heads into the mud and flopped down flat; others bellowed as if the mountains themselves might crumble.
The lead actor roared at the top of his lungs. The man with the folding fan fanned himself anxiously. Memories crumbled one by one between each sweeping gesture. The stone wall that old Park had slaved over for months repairing collapsed in a heap. The expensive roof tiles the Village Chief had splurged on tumbled down. The fields they'd always toiled over during weeding season caved in.
In the meantime, the fan wielder inspected the statue—then snip. He lopped off its head. The feather fan sliced into the stone like a butcher's cleaver. The headless Mountain Immortal wobbled. When the fan man shoved the statue over, his underlings swarmed it in an instant. One prodded the arms, another the legs. But they must not have found anything worthwhile.
The statue was abandoned soon after. It was tossed aside next to the ruined shrine and left to rot.
'Mountain Immortal.'
Shock reached the girl before the sorrow of those vanished memories. The statue she'd once been careful not even to brush her clothes against now lay decapitated and rolling carelessly. Next, the ancestral tablets enshrined in the shrine came spilling out into the courtyard with a clatter. The lead man, still in his dragon robes, rummaged through each one. They were the village's memorial tablets.
Her own parents'—the ones who'd died—had to be in there somewhere.
The girl crept forward a step in secret. She moved her feet while holding her breath. Her parents were buried among those tablets. The village elders lingered there. They'd told her the Mountain Immortal was watching over them, that harvest would come once the grief passed. That pain was fleeting, and so too was joy and merriment. Those same people were now being flung onto the dirt floor.
Worry gnawed at her. She had to check her parents' names. The men were too focused on demolishing the shrine to notice her approach. The girl hid behind a tree, clamped a hand over her mouth, and sobbed.
Why. Why.
How had it come to this?
She'd thought nothing bad would ever happen. She'd wanted to live like a springtime rabbit. Without desiring much, grateful for small joys. Her mountain had been a small one, and the stumbling stones to watch for were nothing more than sudden illnesses or disasters. When that time came—when she tripped over one—she'd believed the whole village would band together to overcome it. Wounds heal. Memories fade. Sorrow gradually wears away in the relentless flow of time. Like a torch sputtering out in a river.
"It'll be like that, dear."
The old voice from her memories faded away.
The sun set. Darkness fell. Bonfires sprang up one by one where the Dragon Star Clan had gathered in clusters, illuminating the night. The girl stirred to flee—and immediately sensed she'd stepped on something strange. Squish. It wasn't the feel of gravel or wood. As her gaze dropped to her feet, a distant streak of dry lightning cracked across the sky.
Flash.
For an instant, the world flickered between black and white. The blinding light struck everyone. In that split-second sliver of time—where one second was shattered into a hundred frames—the girl saw it clearly. The squishy thing she'd stepped on revealed itself. A corpse.
A rabbit's corpse.
The freshly killed rabbit's eyes held no spark of life. Its cloudy gaze, lost and adrift, stared up at the girl. It wasn't just the eyes. The oil sheen in its fur, the molting brown pelt, the mouth leaking blood—they all seemed to gaze steadily at her. It was still warm from death so recent. That's why it had gone squish. Otherwise, it would have been a rustle... or maybe a crunch.
Rumble.
Thunder caught up to the lightning belatedly. The nine-chi-tall giant who appeared at the shrine's main gate seemed to wield some unprecedented sorcery, drawing an aura of majestic presence. There was a voice. It was thick and deep, mimicking the rumble of thunder itself. The Dragon Star Clan's men, sprawled in disarray; the girl's eyes, hastily hidden—all were captivated in a single moment.
"What a pathetic sight."
Iron Blood Fist King Huangfu Hu declared.
Worried the Flash Guest's remains might have been recovered, he'd brushed off his retainers' attempts to stop him and raced here alone. But it had been needless concern. The shrine lay in shambles, the Dragon Star Clan men frittering away time pointlessly. The view beyond the shabby main gate was wretched.
The narrow gate got in his way. Huangfu Hu pressed his fist lightly against it, and the heavy inner energy of the Earth Yellow Qi Art slammed home. Crack... craaaack. Cracks spiderwebbed out. Then—boom. The gate and wall shattered in a single blow. Thud... thud. He strode forward.
In that moment, a golden throwing knife flew. It was the signature technique of Flying Heaven Golden Blade Yong Heisha. The blade whistled through the air with a chilling whine, infused with power identical to Huangfu Hu's own. Its razor edge targeted his head. A flash gleamed in the darkness—snap. The knife returned smoothly to Yong Heisha's hand.
"Bro, looks like you've packed on more fat. Body's all swollen."
Huangfu Hu felt no need to dignify the crude taunt with a response. Huangfu Clan retainers appeared behind him one after another. Three Blades One Flash Jin Bo. Gale Sword Gwan Ryeong. Rock-Piercing Spear Wang Zhishan. And finally, Huangfu Wind Division Leader Huangfu Yu.
"Heavens. You dragged all your lackeys along? What if the Flash Guest left nothing here?"
"Shut your mouth, Tin Powder Clan. The clan head has no desire to converse with your vulgarity."
Yong Heisha's eyes flashed with veins for a moment. Tin Powder Clan—a slur for the drug peddlers who made their living off Five Stone Powder. A mocking nickname implying every last bit of Five Stone Powder from Mt. Bul passed through the Dragon Star Clan's grasp.
"Loyalty's gone too far. Three Blades One Flash. Now you're tailing the Iron Blood Fist King even on his strolls?"
"His strolls?"
"Coming all this way, working up a sweat, gaining nothing—it's no different from a stroll."
"Enough. The greetings are over."
Clang—Three Blades One Flash drew his sword, only to be restrained. Huangfu Hu's gaze met Yong Heisha's.
"Get out. This land belongs to the Huangfu from now on."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll have to execute the evil faction that oppresses the common folk and show this land that justice prevails."
"Evil faction? Huangfu, you sure do stink. The blood reek from those poor villagers is wafting all the way here."
"Don't spout such nonsense."
"Am I wrong? Hey, Zhang Yi—what do you think?"
Bird Pattern Viper Master Zhang Yi flared his nostrils. Then he grinned, baring his buckteeth fully.
"Smells like blood. A foul blood stench coming off Gale Sword."
"There you have it."
Gale Sword, singled out, offered no reply. Yong Heisha spoke up boldly.
"Putting on righteous airs up front while forging hidden blades in the shadows—isn't that the righteous faction's specialty? Huangfu. The evil faction oppressing commoners? That's you lot."
"Disgusting..."
Huangfu Hu's single word plunged the mood even lower. The tedious standoff dragged on. Fighting now would benefit neither side—they both knew it. They hadn't even found a clue to the Flash Guest's remains. With no stakes on the table, it would be utter folly for their elites to clash full-force and spill blood.
The tension allowed not even the slightest twitch. Then, the turning point arrived.
Bird Pattern Viper Master, who'd been sniffing around, bolted into the forest like lightning. Huangfu Clan's swiftest in movement arts—White Shadow Chasing Wind Huangfu Zhenling—moved at the same instant. The two men plunged into the dense thicket not far from the courtyard and discovered the girl trying to flee. She was dressed like a villager.
The resisting girl couldn't handle both of them and was captured. Dragged along roughly, she was forced to her knees before Yong Heisha and Huangfu Hu. Her hair was a tangled mess, her clothes ragged. Torn in places, bloodstained, her eyes half-dead.
A survivor of the village massacre. Neither man knew how she'd escaped, but instinct told them instantly. A witness. A clue. Yong Heisha was quick to speak.
"That kid was found by Bird Pattern Viper Master, so she's ours. The Dragon Star Clan will protect her."
"Nonsense. Shouldn't we ask the child's own wishes? What's the difference between forced protection and outright detention?"
"Handing a victim over to her killers isn't right, even by our evil faction standards. We'll yield the spot. But the child's custody is ours."
Barbs flew swiftly between them. In the midst, the girl knelt blankly. To the left—she turned her head and saw the man called Gale Sword. And the faint blood traces on his scabbard. This time, her head turned right. There, the killers of Gangil leered hideously at her.
No thoughts came. Something in her chest felt on the verge of dying. From the depths of her heart came the sound of something shattering to pieces, breaking irreparably. So the girl asked softly.
"Why... did you kill them?"
She said it to all of them.