When the Red Flags Rise
There was not a breath of wind.
Not a single leaf stirred.
And then, as if to announce the beginning of everything, a single cool thread of early autumn breeze brushed across my brow.
I looked up at the sky.
Like a bold stroke of a brush, a solitary line of cloud was cutting across the heavens.
Moyong Bi. Are you ready?
Jegal Sea's voice rang through my mind. I touched the silver thread bracelet bound around my wrist—a telepathy artifact I had used before—and answered.
"Ready. Eun Seollyeong is standing by as well."
We still need a little more time on this end. Keep watching the front.
Jegal Sea whispered.
I drew in a deep breath and let it out.
—Shaaaaa…
Eun Seollyeong and I were hidden in a reed thicket atop a high hill. Through the telepathy bracelet, other voices filtered in one after another.
Units Ten through Seven, all ready.
Thunder bombs buried from Five through Three. Complete.
We'll need about another half-shichen here.
I looked down.
The reed field spilled down the hillside and stretched endlessly toward the distant horizon. Far below, countless martial artists of the Jegal Family moved with careful precision, preparing against the Eight Demon Dragons—faint shapes in the dark. Beside them lay a vast lake. A full moon hung over its surface, a single streak of cloud drawn across it.
I swallowed hard in the taut silence.
It was so quiet that the idea of the Eight Demon Dragons approaching this place felt almost impossible to believe.
Then it happened.
Far off in the distance, a single red flag rose.
—Pa-bat! Pat! Pat!
One after another, red flags climbed skyward in rapid succession, like the strides of a giant walking toward us. I focused my vision until the last of them rose into the farthest reach of my sight.
That final red flag stood at a distance so great it barely registered, yet under the bright moonlight the signal it carried was plain enough to read.
I murmured in a distant voice.
"So the Eight Demon Dragons are coming at the end of that line of flags."
The procession of red banners stretching from far away shifted and twisted with every change in the Eight Demon Dragons' path, writhing like a snake. The creature could hurl killing force from a full ten majang away. Once the operation began and I sprinted at full speed in a straight line, a single wrong bearing could send me charging toward empty ground nowhere near the target. We needed markers that could correct my course down to the finest margin, right up until the very last instant.
—Pa-bat!
The red flags surged up again in a swift, wave-like crest, then dropped.
Our opponent was not something that thought like a person. It felt like an animal—pure instinct given form.
"Consecutive red flags means—"
Eun Seollyeong, lying prone beside me, narrowed her eyes.
"The enemy's true form is coming into view."
Jegal Sea's voice came through.
Do not move until I give the order.
She was stationed on the highest ground far behind us, watching every piece of the board.
Also—Moyong Bi, Eun Seollyeong. One more piece of intelligence just came in. You already know Thunder Emperor walked the entire way without using a single movement technique. But in the middle of that, he was seen using an unusual sorcery involving gems—just once.
A sudden new variable. The night air, already stretched tight with tension, felt ready to tear.
Some of the squad that engaged Thunder Emperor tried to detonate a mass of buried thunder bombs along the Eight Demon Dragons' path. Whether he sensed it or not, he pulled out two red gems in front of the burial site, threw one of them across, and—according to a report I can barely believe—transferred his body to that location.
Eun Seollyeong spoke.
"Spatial transfer sorcery of the Blood Sect. Gems carved from Crimson Spirit Stone, no doubt. Creatures who corrupt themselves with demonic energy for the sake of power—using one or two filthy Blood Sect arts on top of that is hardly surprising."
I had seen the Blood Sect's distinctive spatial transfer sorcery before, back when Ryu Hwasa offered up every last one of his subordinates as sacrifices for Ilmanhyeolje.
Jegal Sea continued.
There's only one gem left anyway, so it shouldn't swing the battle much. Just keep it in mind.
I checked the emergency pills Jegal Sea had given me—medicine for internal injuries—and answered.
"Understood."
Before the battle, she had asked whether I wanted elixirs to boost my inner energy. I had refused. There was no time to dissolve them, absorb them, and let them take effect. With four jiazi of pure qi already in my body, ordinary spiritual medicines meant nothing unless they were on the level of Shaolin's Great Return Pill—and they carried the risk of tangling my meridians besides. In the end, the only things I had brought were basic medicines for treating wounds.
"Moyong Bi."
I looked beside me.
Still lying in the reeds, Eun Seollyeong turned her body. Her white martial robes were growing filthy with dirt, but she paid it no mind. She gestured toward the empty air.
—Hwirik.
Fragments of blade rose from where they had been stored in her robes—pieces clear and dark as obsidian. She caught the shards she commanded through Sword Control, the ones she called Chammajeong—Demon-Cleaving Thunder—and began fitting them together.
"I will lend you these. This fight will be decided in a single clash. Live or die."
"These are…"
What she held out were two long, handle-less blades shaped into greatswords, radiating a cold, cutting chill.
"Ordinary iron weapons turn to charcoal the moment you pour more than a single jiazi of internal energy into them."
I knew that well enough from countless battles of my own.
"Even in the old days of the jianghu, the Chammajeong were counted among the Three Great Treasures—ornaments of a great immortal sage who cleaved demons. Their edge surpasses any famed sword in this world. Whatever else may be true, you may pour your vast internal energy into them freely. They will not break."
I looked at the greatswords that were nothing but naked blades without hilts.
"I won't cut myself holding them?"
"I am their master, and I have temporarily permitted it. You will not be cut. However."
Eun Seollyeong regarded me with a flat, expressionless gaze.
"Should even the slightest trace of demonic energy remain in you when you grip the Chammajeong, your palms will be severed in hellish agony. Remember that."
"…Right."
I felt a strange awkwardness as I pushed myself up and took the two blades from her.
—Pa-jik.
Something flashed past my eyes. My upper body swayed hard.
"Moyong Bi?"
"N-no. It's nothing."
For an instant, the way it did when I copied a martial art, some landscape had flickered across my vision and vanished. I shook off the memory hovering at the edge of sight and looked down at the Chammajeong in my hands.
Through my palms I felt their cold, keen killing edge. They truly deserved to be called treasures. Even gripping barehanded blades sharp enough to shear a single strand of hair, the Chammajeong only answered the pure qi in my hands and did not bite into my flesh at all.
I crossed the two swords over my back and bound them with the cord she had given me. Eun Seollyeong gestured again, gathering what remained of the Chammajeong. After that, neither of us spoke.
We lay in the reed thicket and received the cold moonlight. Through the telepathy bracelet, the voices of the Jegal Family and their martial artists rose now and then out of the dark silence.
Preparations complete.
We're ready as well, Lady Jegal.
The target is approaching at a steady pace. The moment it enters the agreed range, I will signal at once.
Listening to them, I spoke toward Eun Seollyeong.
"…Eun Seollyeong. You said that if I didn't come, you would stake your life on this alone. In a way, Shaanxi has nothing to do with you. Why go that far?"
For a long while she said nothing, eyes fixed on the front.
"In this world that flows on and on like a vast river… to live alone like a stone lodged in the riverbed is a truly vicious curse."
Her voice was quiet.
"Amid endless friction and spray, every sense is forgotten one by one. The people who shared all my memories scatter and crumble away. And little by little, everything grows faint—what my true name was, what I was living for. And among all of that, the most painful thing of all—"
Her silver eyes shone blue beneath the moonlight. With a face as still as ice, she looked at me.
"—is that the precious memories, the happiness, the bonds all shatter and blur… while the pain that was the beginning of everything only grows sharper, stroke by stroke, like a brush drawing a line."
For a long time, whenever I looked at her, I had felt a certain strangeness. I had never been able to name exactly what it was. Now I understood where that dissonance came from.
Above her cool expression, every feature stood out with piercing clarity. Under the blue moonlight I saw the high bridge of her pale nose, the intelligent flicker of her eyes. She did not seem to belong to this world.
I had never once seen her smile. And because of that, she seemed even less a person of this world.
Then she spoke suddenly.
"Before all of this begins, there is something I must say to you."
I looked at her.
"It may be forgotten now—but as the Guardian of the renowned Mount Hua Sect, one of the Nine Great Sects, and with a martial artist's pride, I will make you one promise."
I blinked. I looked at her. Eun Seollyeong fixed me with those blue eyes.
"Once you break through the ten-majang distance—throw me, and run."
"What?"
"That thing is karma I must clear. An ending I failed to reach in my own era."
Gazing toward the Eight Demon Dragons approaching somewhere far away, Eun Seollyeong spoke with iron resolve.
"I am a forgotten ghost. I will be the one to settle it."
I felt I had to say something. I opened my mouth.
"I—"
—Flash.
Beyond the far horizon, I thought I saw a yellow flare of light.
—KWAAAAANG!!!!
"Kh—!"
A colossal blast of dirt and wind swallowed everything.
"Aaaagh!!"
"Urgh!"
Screams tore through the air from every direction. Blood and scraps of flesh ripped through the reed thicket that had been so still only a moment before.
"There was no warning—?! How did—!"
Eun Seollyeong's voice cracked with shock. Then she shouted toward me.
"Moyong Bi—he already knows you. You will be his first priority. Especially the demonic energy! You must hide the demonic energy until the very end or this entire operation will—!"
—Flash!
The black sky on the far side lit up.
—Pyu-pyu-pyu-pyut!
—Flash! Flash-flash-flash!
Six straight lances of light shot up into the heavens.
"Ah."
Everyone who had been preparing against Thunder Emperor's assault stared blankly upward at the rising cluster of light. The radiance stabbed toward the sky with the full moon behind it, seemed to slow, then began to arc. It bent its path—and plunged straight down.
—KWA-KWA-KWANG!
—KWA-REUNG! JJEONG!
In an instant, the quiet reed field became a scene of pure, screaming hell.
Mumyeong murmured.
At last. It begins.