Brute Force and Ignorance
It was as if the whole world had been doused in ink.
Seo Yugyeom looked around for a moment, then folded himself down into a cross-legged seat.
“Hmm.”
A short sigh slipped out.
He had tried to cling to Jin Seongun's hand at the last moment, and failed. He hadn't simply fallen — some kind of force had dragged him straight down beneath his feet. By his own reckoning, he'd dropped helplessly through what felt like ten Stories or more. That much alone told Seo Yugyeom exactly what he was dealing with.
“A peculiar formation.”
Assassins know their way around formations — targets have a habit of hiding inside them when there's killing to be done.
Seo Yugyeom extended his qi sense. Not a single point of light existed in any direction, so trusting his eyes was meaningless.
Something lay ahead. Not that he could feel a presence — rather, the qi he sent out felt as though it had snagged against something and been stopped cold.
When he drew closer, he found a table.
“…….”
Seo Yugyeom let out a long breath and sat himself down on the table.
And at that very moment, his head snapped backward.
A sting at his jaw. He touched it with his hand and came away with hot, wet blood. A blade had skimmed past him without so much as a whisper of cutting air.
“Definitely not a Zhuge clan formation.”
The formations of the Zhuge Family didn't wield blades and daggers like this. As if to prove their descent from Zhuge Liang, they called down lightning and unleashed storms.
Or something came bursting up out of the floor, at least….
Seo Yugyeom tilted his head back and forth, thinking. A few names flickered through his mind as he sifted through the famous formation masters of the age — the ones in the Dark Path who'd sell their talents for coin.
Knowing who had built the formation would make dealing with it a great deal easier. And if he managed to walk out of here alive, he intended to pay its creator a visit with the Heavenly Killing Short Knife in hand.
Granted, the man would have only sold his work for money. But wasn't Seo Yugyeom staring death in the face inside that very formation?
That was murim for you. The moment you became entangled with anyone, in any way, you forfeited the right to complain about however you happened to die.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Seo Yugyeom felt the hair on his entire body stand on end.
Thud—!
Seo Yugyeom bolted forward.
He was moving so fast that slamming into a wall he hadn't seen would have cost him his life.
He splashed his qi sense recklessly ahead of him and ran on it alone for a long while.
Shiiiiiing—!
An ear-splitting shriek of cutting air came from behind him. Sharp metal, flying his way. The problem was that it wasn't just one blade.
Dozens — hundreds — of blades were surging toward him faster than he could run.
“……Damn.”
The curse escaped him on its own.
The sound drew closer.
Seo Yugyeom gave up on running. He spun in place and gripped the Heavenly Killing Short Knife tight.
He closed his eyes and held his breath.
Hearing and qi sense. Nothing else. He poured every nerve he had into those two things alone.
If I were Jin Seongun, he thought. Wouldn't that be something.
That monstrous perception — picking out the sounds of the kitchen through the din of a crowded inn, hearing the heartbeat of some fool walking three streets away. Right now, he would have given anything for it.
The shriek of air torn apart by hundreds of blades was like the sea. A wall of sound rolling toward him through the lightless dark, winding the tension in his chest tighter and tighter.
Closer. Closer.
Seo Yugyeom swept the Heavenly Killing Short Knife across.
Chwaaak—!
A black, half-moon crescent of blade-qi poured out ahead of him.
Kagagagagang—!
Dozens of blades and crescents collided with a shrieking clamor of steel.
Amid the din, Seo Yugyeom abruptly twisted his stance. The hem at his waist flapped violently — a heartbeat later, and his stomach would have been torn open.
A single line of blade-qi couldn't block everything. Seo Yugyeom spat out crescents again and again, but blades kept slipping through the gaps and charging in.
Dodge, deflect, flow past, knock aside….
He did everything a body could do.
By the time he'd beaten back some twenty blades, he could feel the limits of his internal energy creeping up on him. Pushing his senses to their absolute peak, churning out crescent after crescent — neither came easy anymore.
Thuk—!
Seo Yugyeom bit down on his lip. A searing pain spread through his thigh.
He pulled the blade free in one long, steady draw. An awkward length, somewhere between a dagger and a full sword. He gripped it tight in his left hand.
He'd probably die here. But if some miracle let him walk out alive, he intended to drive this very blade into the heart of the Saryonggang's leader.
Without so much as a moment spent dulling the pain, Seo Yugyeom ran again. From what he could tell, those blades were honing in precisely on wherever he happened to be.
Staying in one place only meant the swarm of blades grew thicker. By now, he could guess exactly who had made this formation.
Cheol Unjang.
One of the finest formation masters of the age. Everyone caught in his formations died riddled with dozens of blades, from crown to sole.
Seo Yugyeom had once seen the corpse of a man who died inside one of Cheol Unjang's arrays. Remembering that horror gave him the strength to run a little further.
.
.
.
An indeterminate stretch of time passed.
Three more holes had opened in Seo Yugyeom's body.
His eyes kept drifting shut, so he simply let them. Keeping them open was pointless anyway — there was almost nothing to see.
Eyes closed, he swung the short knife on instinct alone.
Kang—!
He tried to deflect a blade, and his whole body went flying backward. He didn't even have the strength left to knock one aside anymore.
Heaving ragged breaths, Seo Yugyeom suddenly found himself thinking: Should've gone to the Hwaun Merchant Group first.
No matter how he turned it over, that was what he should have done.
The leader of the merchant group of this age — his sister. There was something he'd wanted, needed, to ask her just once.
I understand you hating me. But does your father's treachery against me simply not count for anything?
It had rankled in him all this time.
“The leader's probably dead by now anyway.”
Up there, somewhere above, Jin Seongun was.
Forget the leader — Seo Yugyeom half believed Jin Seongun could take the entire Saryonggang and win.
What would he be doing right now, he wondered. Probably tearing the Saryonggang half to pieces first, then racking his brains over what to do about a formation he couldn't crack.
The image rose so vividly in his mind that laughter burst out of him. No matter how many times that overwhelming monster showed his clumsy, half-baked side, it never stopped being funny.
But Cheol Unjang was no careless craftsman. If Jin Seongun were a master of formations it might be another matter, but he'd likely never even seen one before. Cheol Unjang's arrays could never be broken by brute strength alone.
Even if he died here, Seongun Inn would be fine. Han Seong-chun's skills were that good. Losing a son to Sikmugaek had been a tragedy, but the man coming to Seongun Inn — that had been a blessing.
So many thoughts, drifting through him in so brief a moment.
Seo Yugyeom lay flat on his back on the stone floor, clutching the Heavenly Killing Short Knife.
Some great master he calls himself.
It was the gift the Salmak Vice Master had given him.
Even if the man never meant it as a gift, Seo Yugyeom had decided to treat it as one.
Shwaaaaaaeng—!
A blade swept past, ice-cold, directly above him.
Its arc was closing in.
Soon, blades would be hammered into every inch of his body.
Having accepted it, Seo Yugyeom gave up on everything and drew in one deep breath. Ever since his killing intent had slipped its leash, he hadn't slept a proper night. He'd been terrified of killing Noh Sang-won, or Han Seong-chun, or Seomun Ak by accident in his sleep.
Drowsiness washed over him.
His breathing grew hazy.
Just before Seo Yugyeom slipped under—
Kang—!
The ring of steel rang out somewhere far away.
In the direction the blades had flown.
Too weak to rise, Seo Yugyeom only managed to lift his head — and there, he saw something reddish.
“Huh.”
The red glow swelled, growing larger and larger.
In an instant, this pitch-black void turned as bright as high noon.
A colossal pillar of crimson flame. No — look closer, and it was a flame-shaped wave of sword-qi of absolutely monstrous size.
“Aaah….”
The sword-qi came rolling in like a wave.
And that was no mere figure of speech. The qi that filled the entire space was advancing with the genuine force and scale of a tidal wave.
Hwarururuk—!
The fiercely burning sword-qi swallowed every one of the hundreds of blades in a single gulp.
Overwhelmed by the sheer pressure of the qi, Seo Yugyeom squeezed his eyes shut. He had never once experienced anything like it in his life. Perhaps thanks to his born Heavenly Killing Star, fear almost never touched him — until now.
The sword-qi, having churned the whole of the space, vanished along with the hundreds of blades it had devoured.
Darkness returned.
Thud. Thud.
Someone was approaching.
Naturally, Seo Yugyeom knew exactly who it was. He was simply baffled. How, in the world, did Jin Seongun get down here?
The footsteps stopped in front of him. Seo Yugyeom was still sprawled where he'd fallen.
Hwaruk.
A flame bloomed — tiny and precious compared to the earlier devastation — on Jin Seongun's open palm.
Illuminating the dark with his True Samadhi Fire, Jin Seongun looked down at Seo Yugyeom, who still lay flat on the ground.
“You all right?”
“Wait — you know formations?”
“You seem to have assumed I wouldn't.”
“Do you…?”
“Not at all.”
A hollow laugh burst out of Seo Yugyeom.
The confusion only deepened.
“This is Cheol Unjang's formation. Brute force alone couldn't have broken it. Don't tell me you negotiated with the Saryonggang's leader?”
“You just watched me do it.”
“Watched what?”
“That brute force works just fine.”
“…….”
Seo Yugyeom blinked slowly for a moment.
Come to think of it, no blades had come flying since Jin Seongun appeared. That fearsome red sword-qi had torn the formation itself to shreds.
When he'd learned about formations in Salmak, they'd drilled it into him: an artisan's array like Cheol Unjang's could never be broken by strength alone. Not just Salmak — the whole world believed it. That was what people called common sense.
Seo Yugyeom gazed for a moment at Jin Seongun's blank, impassive face.
A man utterly beyond common sense.
“……So that actually works.”
“Let's go.”
“Where?”
“To get you treated, obviously.”
For once, genuine worry showed on Jin Seongun's face as he looked over Seo Yugyeom's body. Holes in his thigh, his waist, his shoulder, his forearm.
Fortunately the wounds weren't extensive — but any ordinary man would have died long since.
“This much? A few needles and I'm fine.”
“Needles, medicine, whatever — sort it out later. We're leaving now. I don't think we have time to waste.”
“Fair enough. That formation could do anything next.”
“It's not that….”
Jin Seongun's voice trailed off.
A flicker of curiosity rose in Seo Yugyeom, but being alive mattered more than answers at the moment, so he kept his mouth shut.
Soon Seo Yugyeom was leaning on Jin Seongun's shoulder, walking for a long while.
“What in the world is this….”
The space itself had been torn open.
The moment he stepped through it alongside Jin Seongun, light came pouring down from above.
A sealed chamber. But the light was far too bright to be mere candlelight. Had the Saryonggang's leader left the door open in his flight?
Whatever the case, Jin Seongun took a firm grip on Seo Yugyeom's waist and shoulder—
Thud—!
—and kicked off the floor, rocketing upward.
Seo Yugyeom's eyes went round. As a first-rate assassin he'd trusted his lightness arts, but he had never once soared like this, as though flung straight into the sky. They pierced through what felt like an extraordinarily deep well in a single bound and burst out into the open.
And then he saw the scene before him.
“Good grief….”
Now he understood why Jin Seongun had been pushing him to hurry. With carnage like this, the authorities or some other murim faction would come swarming before long.
There were around twenty corpses in this small chamber alone. Every one of them torn open, ripped apart, dismembered.
It meant Jin Seongun hadn't seen a single one of them as human — only as things that needed killing.
Among the dead was the Saryonggang's leader himself.
Beyond the door was worse still. The long corridor was awash in blood and bodies, and not one corpse remained intact. It looked as though the legendary Blood Demon himself had descended upon the place.
“You're not secretly the Blood Demon's hidden disciple or something, are you?”
“……!!”
The joke landed, and Jin Seongun's eyes went wide as saucers.