The Vice Alliance Leader
The leader of Mokyang Gate's eyes went round. The Cha Huiming he knew had always been a fairly clever man.
He liked to lord his learning over people by waving about his treatises on the Dark Path now and then, but what he said was generally right.
"People you can guess at, you say?"
"The two who wiped out the leader of Salyugang's fortress. And the two who tore through Mokyang Gate in the dead of night. Even now, nothing comes to mind?"
The Mokyang Gate leader's big eyes rolled around in his head for a moment. Before long, his face lit up with the look of a man who had figured something out, and he spoke with genuine admiration for Cha Huiming's insight.
"Of course! So Salyugang's fortress fell to Blue Night Valley too! Those depraved, wretched bastards!"
"……"
Cha Huiming pressed a hand to his forehead.
Since things had already come to this, he felt a powerful urge to simply beat the Mokyang Gate leader to death and split Deokyang's profits down the middle with Blue Night Valley.
Blue Night Valley were assassins, after all — but at least they were men who moved with reason.
It would not be easy, however. The reason the brutes of Mokyang Gate had survived in the underworld despite this kind of intelligence was obvious.
Ignorant fools. They're just disgustingly strong.
Mokyang Gate was powerful. If only they could hire a decent strategist, they were more than capable of making a name for themselves well beyond Deokyang.
That was only natural, given that the gate leader himself had reached a seasoned Peak Realm.
Of course, the strategist would die long before that happened.
He would likely perish either from a beating after offering honest counsel, or from a stress-induced collapse while struggling alone among those dimwitted bald heads.
In any case, Cha Huiming had neither the luxury nor the desire for open war with Mokyang Gate, so he exercised the very limits of his patience and said,
"Remember this — if you do anything rash, I can hardly stand by and watch. You ought to consider my position as well. Understood?"
"……"
The Mokyang Gate leader stared long and hard at Cha Huiming.
An intense exchange of glances passed between the two men.
Their subordinates around them watched with bated breath. Cha Huiming was far smaller in build by comparison, yet he did not look small in the least.
For a while, a strange tension hung in the air.
Then the Mokyang Gate leader broke into a grin and answered.
"I know, I know. I understand your heart just fine."
Cha Huiming could not entirely wash away his unease, but he realized he had nothing left to do here.
Nodding, Cha Huiming shot a couple of warning glances at the man before making his way out of Mokyang Gate.
The next day, at night.
Cha Huiming was in his office atop Twilight Pavilion, reading as he always did. Even while keeping a close eye on Deokyang's movements these past several days, he had not abandoned his habit of reading.
"The ignorant are weeded out. It's the natural order."
Cha Huiming had seen plenty of ignorant underworld thugs in his time. Of course, ignorance was forgivable if one possessed overwhelming martial force to back it up — but such cases were exceedingly rare.
Just then,
Hurried footsteps sounded from outside.
Cha Huiming closed his book with an anxious heart.
"L-Leader!"
A subordinate flung open the office door and burst in without permission. Cha Huiming's brow twitched — his men almost never forgot their manners.
"So the bald bastards finally moved, did they."
"……Yes. They've already set out for Blue Night Valley, they say."
"How many?"
"All of them."
Cha Huiming let out a deep sigh and clutched the bridge of his nose. At the sight, his subordinate asked carefully,
"What should we do?"
Cha Huiming looked his subordinate straight in the eye.
Orthodox underworld organizations were of a different caliber entirely from assassins, bald monks, or loan sharks. If word went out, every one of his men would strap on a blade and march on Blue Night Valley.
But on the eve of his grand undertaking, Cha Huiming had no wish for his men to be sacrificed. And decisively, both Blue Night Valley and Mokyang Gate were troublesome opponents.
"Something is off about all this. The timing is far too convenient. Could this be the Thousand Poisons Alliance's doing?"
"……Pardon?"
"Where on earth did masters of that caliber suddenly crawl out from? The Alliance may have decided, at this late stage, to swallow Hwaun Merchant Group whole — or they might be masters hired by Guild Leader Hwa Yeonseol……"
Having run through one hypothesis after another, Cha Huiming scrubbed vigorously at his head. Nothing was certain, so no judgment could be reached.
Before long, he draped the robe he'd left over his chair across his shoulders and said,
"I suppose I have no choice but to confirm it with my own eyes. If I haven't returned by tomorrow evening, take the men and stay far away from here for the time being."
Sichuan Province, Sipbang Mountain.
It was a region of treacherous terrain and countless ravines, traversed by so few that it was nearly always silent — even the wild beasts were strangely scarce there.
Fwoooosh—!
A fire demon of truly colossal scale was sweeping across the entire mountain and its gorges.
"You absolute fools!"
Someone's heartfelt lament burst out.
A man clad in black from head to toe.
Leader of Blue Night Valley, Gok Gwi.
His eyes, a churning mix of fury and futility, swept his surroundings.
Countless corpses blanketed the ground.
The broad-shouldered renegade monks lay dead with their vitals pierced or hacked apart, while the black-clad assassins had mostly died with parts of their bodies torn clean away.
"Hahahaha, you fool, Gok Gwi! This is what you get for disregarding us and looking down your nose!"
The Mokyang Gate leader's booming laughter rolled across the mountain.
His robe was shredded to ribbons as well, and his body bore the marks of countless sword and blade wounds.
Blood streamed down his entire body, yet his eyes brimmed with nothing but madness and exhilaration.
The Mokyang Gate leader beckoned toward the Blue Night Valley leader.
"That afraid of me, are you? Come closer, quickly. I'll snap that pitiful little neck of yours in one go."
"I don't know what scheming wretch set you to this, but I certainly understand why they chose you. You dull-witted oaf."
Gok Gwi lamented from the depths of his heart.
When the Mokyang Gate leader had first appeared, he had sneered. But when the brutes set the mountain ablaze and began smashing everything in sight, he had been struck with horror.
In all his years, he had never met such ignorant, simple-minded men. What made it worse was that these brutes were not lacking in martial skill.
There were limits to evasion, too. The assassins who had fled to the farthest reaches of the ravines ultimately had no choice but to fight the fake renegade monks of Mokyang Gate.
And naturally, talk and persuasion had no effect on them whatsoever.
"Fine. Let's see this through to the end, then."
Gok Gwi ground the words out in a voice dark as a grave.
Whoever's scheme this was, whatever their purpose — the sight of the assassins he had raised with vast sums of money and endless time dying in droves stoked a rage he could not contain.
Once the grand undertaking was complete, I believed we could reach even Salmak.
Salmak, the foremost assassination organization of the Central Plains.
Building an assassin organization that could stand beside it had been Gok Gwi's lifelong ambition. With the Hwaun Merchant Group's funding combined with his own experience, he had believed it entirely within reach.
And now those stupid bald brutes had ruined the plan he had prepared for so long.
Gok Gwi slammed his foot into the ground with all his fury. His body skated low across the earth like something slipping on ice and came rushing in.
The Mokyang Gate leader let loose a hearty roar and tightened his grip, both fists laden with qi.
Just as the two men's trajectories crossed,
the Mokyang Gate leader swung a fist.
Gok Gwi's form blurred and vanished.
The Mokyang Gate leader was no stranger to fighting assassins himself. With a calm bearing, he rotated his body and thrust out another fist.
"Where do you think you're going!"
Gok Gwi, who had been aiming to circle behind him, jolted in alarm and hurled himself into the air once more. The corner of the Mokyang Gate leader's mouth curled into a vicious sneer.
Fighting an air-borne duel against an external-qi master like himself — this was why assassins were nothing once you dragged them out of the dark.
Thud—! The Mokyang Gate leader stamped the ground and leapt. He rose into the air a full two times faster than Gok Gwi had.
The distance between them closed in an instant.
The Mokyang Gate leader bared his yellowed teeth in a wide grin and reached out with an enormous palm. He meant to seize Gok Gwi's ankle and snap it then and there.
The moment his hand closed around Gok Gwi's ankle,
Gok Gwi's sleeve fluttered.
Shaaaaaang—!
With a sharp, threatening shriek of cutting air, slender silver needles came hurtling forth. The needles were exceedingly thin, but the Mokyang Gate leader saw them perfectly clearly — because they were streaking straight for his eyes.
Thuk—!
A hideous wet sound of flesh tearing rang out.
Moments later, the two men landed on the ground at the same time.
The Mokyang Gate leader clutched his left eye. Blood was streaming between his fingers.
Gok Gwi's ankle was hardly in better shape. It wasn't broken outright, but the joint was wrecked, and he would need a long convalescence.
Both had taken damage, but the Mokyang Gate leader had come off somewhat worse.
And yet the one laughing was the Mokyang Gate leader.
"Heh heh. No more running for you now, is there?"
He was certain of it. If he pinned the assassin's foot, there was no way he could lose.
Gok Gwi's face made it plain that he too knew his situation was dire.
Just as the Mokyang Gate leader was about to hurl himself at Gok Gwi once more —
"You wretched vermin."
A bone-chilling sneer settled over the field.
In the same instant, the fake renegade monks and the assassins alike all froze mid-motion. Though the voice was not loud, it carried a force that rooted every soul in place.
The Mokyang Gate leader and Gok Gwi stopped dead as well. They both knew the owner of that voice.
Before long, two men emerged into the open field.
The leader of Twilight Pavilion shook his head as though thoroughly sick of it all and spoke.
"So you went and started something after all, you bald bastard. You know, I should have killed you outright when I had the chance. You were always a disaster waiting to happen."
The Twilight Pavilion leader stood utterly unafraid before the assassins of Blue Night Valley and the masters of Mokyang Gate alike — because the man who had come with him towered above them all.
A gaunt old man, so withered that his skull showed plainly beneath the skin, swept the field with a look of pure contempt.
"What do you all think you're doing?"
A short question.
And in the same instant, Gok Gwi dropped to his knees. The quick-witted assassins of Blue Night Valley knelt in a row beside their leader without needing to be told.
"We greet the Vice Alliance Leader!"
The old man was none other than Saryeonggeuk, Vice Alliance Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance. His gaze, which had been moving over Gok Gwi and the assassins, slid slowly toward the Mokyang Gate leader.
The moment their eyes met, the Mokyang Gate leader flinched hard. He was not a man who frightened easily, but there was something in Saryeonggeuk's eyes — a bleak, wintry darkness that defied explanation.
"Ah, Vice Alliance Leader — to what do we owe the honor of your presence?"
The Mokyang Gate leader forced the words out.
At that very moment, the Twilight Pavilion leader silently sneered within. That's what comes of his pride, his ignorance, and his hopeless lack of tact.
Thuk.
A low, chilling sound echoed out.
The Mokyang Gate leader blinked. Saryeonggeuk, who had clearly been standing over there, was somehow beside him already.
Saryeonggeuk's straight saber was carving into his shoulder like a blade through tofu, sinking deeper and deeper.
By the time he perceived it, the saber had already cut through to the bone. Only then did the dreadful pain arrive.
"K-Kuaaaaagh!"
The Mokyang Gate leader's shriek rang across the whole field.
Saryeonggeuk's thin brows furrowed.
"You're loud."
In a flash, Saryeonggeuk sheared off the man's arm and swung the straight saber once more. The thin blade, moving with such utter serenity, swept clean through the Mokyang Gate leader's neck.
FWOOSH—!
Blood fountained into the air.
By then, Saryeonggeuk was already standing a dozen paces away, watching the scene. He loathed even a single drop of blood staining his clothes.
The straight saber had returned to its sheath as though it had never been drawn at all.
"Move."
Saryeonggeuk said quietly.
The Twilight Pavilion leader and the Blue Night Valley leader, both sharp-eyed by nature, scrambled into action at once. Without a word between them, the two men threw themselves into butchering the remnants of Mokyang Gate with single-minded purpose.
Mokyang Gate had been abandoned. The Thousand Poisons Alliance had decided it would no longer tolerate their impulsive nature.
The appearance of an unstoppable master.
The death of their leader.
With the tide already turned, the fake renegade monks of Mokyang Gate had no way to reverse it.
What followed was a one-sided slaughter.
Blood and screams filled the field in waves, again and again.
.
.
.
Before even a single hour had passed, the Mokyang Gate disciples had been wiped out to the last man. The Twilight Pavilion leader and the Blue Night Valley leader were still catching their ragged breath.
Saryeonggeuk looked the two men over, then spoke in a tone of utter indifference.
"Twilight Pavilion and Blue Night Valley are the two great powers of Deokyang's underworld. The Hwaun Merchant Group is yours to take."
A one-sided decree. Yet not a single man dared open his mouth in protest. This had always been the relationship between the Thousand Poisons Alliance and Deokyang's underworld.
"Ah — before we proceed with the undertaking."
Saryeonggeuk turned his gaze toward the empty darkness above. His eyes, sharp as a serpent's, seemed to stare unblinking at something beyond the night.