Blood Shadows in the Downpour
Tadadat.
The secretary was running through the torrential rain.
Mid-sprint he suddenly glanced back.
“…!”
Before he could fully turn, the instant his forward charge halted I dove behind a nearby wall and hid.
“Huuuk… huuuk….”
I had entrusted every scrap of situational awareness to Mumyeong.
The secretary seemed to have sensed something off.
He stood stock-still in the downpour for a long while, staring back the way he had come.
Swaaaa—.
The torrential rain blanketed every line of sight. It swallowed every sound of breathing.
White steam rose in thin curls from my shoulders.
Carefully I scooped up the freezing winter rainwater in my hands and soaked my shoulders with it.
“There are no people nearby…”
Mumyeong whispered.
“It’s safe.”
Every shred of my sensory focus was locked on the secretary.
I missed not a single fine hair on his body, not a single breath. He began to run again.
Kiiing.
My eyes turned crimson.
Namsang Samadhi
Possession Experience Synchronization
Extraction System — Full Display Complete
1st-class, Blood Sect’s Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul
The Blood Sect’s Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul—raised from 3rd-class to 1st-class while breaking through their Heavenly Net—settled into my body.
My form began to leave red afterimages as I sprinted left and right.
I closed the distance on the secretary who was charging straight ahead at full speed.
Tadadadat.
Where my feet passed, only the faintest traces of my big toes remained.
Better than I thought.
By the standards of the Cheonma Dae-seogo, only two of the martial arts I had learned were classified as 1st-class.
The Heavenly Demon Cult’s Heaven and Earth Great Shift.
The Blood Sect’s Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul.
Ironically, both of those 1st-class arts belonged to the two unorthodox powers that were mortal enemies of the orthodox world.
I’m clearly an orthodox man…
I could not tell where fate was leading me.
The shared trait of these two arts was that even beginning to master them felt impossible.
Their potential was impossible to gauge.
In particular, Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul was incomparable to the Kongtong Sect’s 5th-class Hwan-yeong-dae-sin-bo that I had previously learned and used.
I have to make it completely mine.
I had not sat idle while resting at the Namgung Clan and returning to Cheonsubaekryeonsa.
I always felt that time was insufficient.
The newly elevated 1st-class Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul was like a wild stallion.
It refused to settle into my body and kept slipping away.
Just as when I had broken through the Heavenly Net, for a while the only option available to me was “full-speed straight-line breakthrough.”
I could not even attempt curves or irregular movements.
At the very least I tried to change direction.
I focused on that alone.
More than once I failed to reduce speed and smashed head-on into trees and boulders.
Then, one day before arriving at Cheonsubaekryeonsa, I finally succeeded in turning the head of that blood-red wild stallion.
Of course the path is still far too honest…
But for tracking a half-baked secretary like this one, it was more than enough.
Leaving red eyes and afterimages, I pursued him like a vengeful spirit.
“He’s running while watching every direction far more carefully than expected.”
Mumyeong muttered.
“If some amateur had been tracking him he would have been caught ages ago.”
I nodded.
I suppressed every sensory emission from my body to the absolute minimum.
When it came to caution, I yielded to no one either.
Even while chasing him I moved under the assumption that someone was following me from behind.
“He walked five steps to the left. No one on the right. Damn. One ordinary person approaching at this jang’s distance.”
From the moment the pursuit began I had offered Mumyeong one gapja of internal energy as payment to activate his sensory net.
I did not feed him the full gapja and push it to the maximum the way I had when breaking the Heavenly Net, but this level was sufficient.
Unless someone was a true supreme master, approaching me without awareness was now impossible—beyond even Mumyeong’s expectations.
This was Cheonsubaekryeonsa, the absolute pinnacle of training institutions even within the orthodox world.
I had no idea what dangers might be lurking.
More than anything, if I were caught while infiltrating, I had no idea what punishment would fall.
It might create exactly the situation those people who were waiting for any excuse to snare me most desired.
Yet I had to do it.
In my steadily worsening situation, the single greatest problem no matter how I looked at it was the information gap.
They knew me, but I did not know them.
I was already fighting a battle I was destined to lose from the information stage alone.
The difference in raw power might not even be that important.
At the very least I needed to know who the other side was, what their weaknesses and strengths were, before I could respond.
To smash them in the back of the head when they tried to toy with me, I first had to know who they were.
“Look up.”
I frowned against the white downpour beneath the dark clouds and looked upward.
“Third watchtower from the left red flag. Two sentries.”
I flung my body sideways.
I extended both thumbs.
Pabat!
I kicked off the mud with my thumbs, flipped through the air, and vanished into the shadow of the wall.
On the ground only two thumb-sized marks remained—no footprints at all.
I sprinted at full power through the building shadows directly beneath the sentries.
“Five jang ahead, one servant in a straight line. Wearing a bamboo hat. Corner one jang behind him.”
Huung!
I pushed Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul to its extreme.
My toes touched the ground and, before the water droplets even finished rising, I was already three steps ahead.
“Eung?”
The servant pressing down his bamboo hat as he walked lifted his head at the sense of something wrong.
There was no one in front of him.
He tried to look up.
“Ah, this damn hat.”
It took him one ryo of time to push the bamboo hat up.
Between the raised brim he saw only the black sky and white raindrops.
I had already leapt over his head.
“What was that? Just my imagination? I definitely felt something pass by.”
The servant looked behind him.
No one there either.
I had already landed far behind and rounded the corner.
“You’re still maintaining proper distance from the secretary. Can you see him?”
I nodded.
“I can see him perfectly. And it looks like we’ve arrived.”
Paat!
I slammed on the brakes.
The water clinging to my body failed to keep up with the sudden stop and sprayed forward all at once.
The secretary hurriedly pounded on a certain door.
“Urgent business! Open the door at once!”
He glanced left and right while knocking.
I pressed myself deeper into the shadows.
In the darkness only my white eyes gleamed as they watched the secretary’s back.
The door opened.
“…Teacher, you can’t just show up here so openly!”
Someone beyond the door spoke in a startled voice.
“Beyond the wall, at least twenty people estimated to be martial artists. Level is borderline Second-rate with First-rate as the majority.”
My eyes widened.
“They’re not random wanderers.”
I swallowed.
Mumyeong continued.
“But you don’t need to worry too much. Even if they search the surroundings while hidden between the walls, they won’t find us in the winter night shadows. Still, don’t even think about going inside that house.”
“….”
Beside the main gate stood a single carriage with three horses hitched to it.
White steam rose from the horses’ backs in the downpour.
It looked as if someone had been riding them until moments ago and had hurriedly tied them at the entrance.
With Mumyeong’s whispers as background I watched the situation unfold.
The secretary’s lips had turned blue in the rain; they trembled as he shouted.
“There is something the master must know! Something’s wrong! It’s different from what we know!”
“Didn’t the master go to dig into the suspicious parts of that bastard son? Did something happen in the meantime?”
The secretary slapped his own chest in frustration.
“That bastard is already far beyond the level of a Ha-mu-gwan disciple! The kids the master attached to him couldn’t even lift a finger and all ended up half-crippled! There’s something we don’t know right now!”
“What?”
In the pouring rain the secretary sprayed spit and rainwater as he roared.
“That’s why I tried to stop it! We never should have gotten involved in another family’s power struggle in the first place! And not just any family—the Moyong, crawling with wolf cubs! Doing this insane thing for a few coins and some connections?! So open the damn door…!”
The secretary shoved his hand into the crack and tried to force the door open.
“What the hell.”
The shaking door refused to budge.
The secretary lowered his voice in panic and shouted.
“You joking? Open the door right now?!”
“I’m sorry, but the last order I received from the master when I took the gatekeeper post was to let absolutely no one in.”
“Hey! You know who I am! You ignorant bastard!”
The man’s voice beyond the crack was apologetic yet firm.
“And the master isn’t here.”
“What? Where did he go?”
“One more thing—the master seems to know everything already.”
“…What?”
The secretary said blankly.
The unseen man’s rustic voice flowed slowly through the crack.
“The master said that if the teacher sent to the bastard son ever came rushing back as if being chased…”
The secretary flinched.
His face immediately twisted with rage.
“You… you sons of bitches. Don’t tell me!”
The man spoke as if bringing down a guillotine.
“He ordered us to act under the judgment that there would be a tail within a ten-jang radius. Because that’s the Moyong for you, he said.”
“You bastards!!!!”
Paaaak!
A kick shot through the crack in the door.
“Keok!”
The secretary took it in the gut and tumbled.
Something was going strangely wrong.
I raised myself a little higher in the shadows to catch any words that might spill out.
I pressed my ear closer.
The secretary rolled in the mud.
His once-clean clothes were ruined with filth.
His neatly bound hair came loose and fell.
Coughing wetly again and again, the secretary shouted.
“You… you fucking bastards…! Me, me!”
Piiiiii—.
Something rose into the sky trailing white smoke.
Hidden in the shadows I watched that smoke.
A thick unease welled up inside me.
Peoeong!
Heaven and earth turned bright.
It was a massive cluster of light.
A flash of light that lasted only an instant.
In that enormous burst of light, for a single moment every shadow was stripped away.
“Who’s there!!!”
Beneath the world dyed pure white, a martial artist beyond the wall spotted me.
I urgently looked at the secretary.
Kururung!
Thunder and lightning crashed down.
A pure white bolt flashed.
Our eyes met.
“…Shit.”
The disheveled secretary’s bulging eyes locked with my startled ones.
“I… ugh!”
The secretary kicked off the mud and began to run.
Martial artists poured out from every direction.
“Catch the tracker!”
“As of this moment we move to phase two of the operation. Destroy all evidence and pull all personnel!”
“Kill the tracker—or at least kill the teacher and erase the evidence!”
Chaos erupted on all sides.
I sprang to my feet.
Hiding any longer was meaningless.
“Host! The secretary!”
The secretary scrambled onto the driver’s seat of the carriage and cracked the whip.
Hiiing!!
The horses went mad and bolted.
The carriage shot away like an arrow.
“Damn it!”
I burst out.
Behind me roughly twenty martial artists were already closing in.
“Chase him! You can’t let him escape!”
Mumyeong shouted.
One martial artist hurled a throwing spear.
I tried to dodge.
“Eh?!”
My foot slipped on the rainwater.
My center of gravity collapsed.
A mistake that would never have happened under normal circumstances.
It was the result of relying on the still-unfamiliar Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul as my primary footwork.
Seeing my form break, the martial artist cried out.
“Got him!”
“Th-this!”
The spear flew straight toward my face.
My legs were already completely tangled.
Dodging was utterly impossible.
Kaaang!
Sparks flew.
I tumbled backward.
The martial artist who had thrown the spear widened his eyes.
“A spear that pierces shields…”
The spearhead was gripped whole in my left hand as I lay sprawled.
“Caught it?”
Kwajijik.
The blade of the throwing spear was compressed and shattered as if being crushed inside the gauntlet on my left hand—the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap.
From my eyes as I stared up at the martial artists while still on the ground, crimson light flowed out like mist.