The Cannibal Raiders
In the state of Qi, the land of Yue that Yeo Hong-seong spoke of had once been the kingdom of Yue itself. It was the realm once ruled by King Goujian, the famous protagonist of the tale of sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall. Yet that kingdom had fallen to Chu some fifty years earlier. Such conquests were commonplace in the Warring States period. Qi had swallowed Lu, Zhao had devoured Zhongshan. The strong devouring the weak was hardly remarkable. In the end, even the Seven Great States would be destroyed, paving the way for Qin's unification of all under heaven.
At any rate, my guess seemed to have been correct. Yeo Hong-seong's family had been nobility of Yue, but when Chu destroyed the kingdom, their house collapsed. Forced to leave her homeland, she had come alone to the unfamiliar Central Plains. While speaking of her homeland, she also gave a brief account of herself. She explained that the surname Yeo came from her dark skin, and boasted that none in Yue had been stronger than her. Yet she revealed nothing about her family or status. Her story was hollow, stripped of any real substance.
Well, she must have reasons she cannot easily share with others. A person who had traveled all the way from distant Yue to this place surely carried some hidden past. It would be strange to bare such secrets on the very first day, and I figured that as we traveled together toward Linzi, we would grow closer and learn more in time.
Besides, I am the one hiding my own identity. It would be hypocritical to press her.
The more we talked, the more I found Yeo Hong-seong an interesting person. She had a certain way with words—not the magnetic charm of Lord Xinling, but the easy camaraderie of an old drinking companion. Even though she was a woman, she spoke with a blunt, refreshing directness that felt more masculine than most men I knew.
"By the way, Lady Yeo, how old are you?"
"Age? Now that you mention it, I stopped counting years ago. Hmm… I do not know exactly, but I have not yet reached thirty, and I am well past twenty. Perhaps twenty-four? Or twenty-five?"
She was about ten years older than me. Honestly, I had assumed she was closer to thirty. Whether her face showed youth or age, I could not yet tell, but because the only older woman I had known was Lord Xinling, I had developed the habit of adding a few extra years to anyone's age. Lord Xinling's youthful appearance had warped my sense of such things. There was also Jing Ke, but our time face-to-face had been too brief. In that regard, I hoped Yeo Hong-seong would become someone I could know for a long while.
My circle already contained plenty of clever minds, but when it came to raw martial prowess, only Mao Sui and Jing Ke stood out. Even they, I was not sure, would prove decisive in actual war. Yeo Hong-seong, however, radiated strength from the very way she carried herself. She was not grotesquely muscled like some drug-enhanced brute, yet the solid, tightly packed power of her physique was unmistakable. Still, I knew better than to judge her true skill from first impressions alone. If possible, I wanted to see her fight at least once. But that would require us to be attacked, and hoping for an ambush that might cost lives felt selfish. It would be best to test her strength through a sparring match after we reached Linzi.
Yet an opportunity to witness her ability arrived far sooner and more abruptly than I had expected. The very next day after we began traveling together, while our caravan was crossing a mountain path on the way to Wuling and had just passed the midpoint, they appeared.
"So the rumors of bandits plaguing Mount Tai were true after all…"
From their ragged appearance, they did not seem to be living well, but the murderous glint in their eyes and the way they gripped their weapons told me these were no amateur highwaymen. They had done this many times before.
"Hah! Perfect. If they are the sort who prey on honest folk, their blood will suit my mace just fine. My lord, watch closely. I will strike them all down in a single blow!"
Before Yeo Hong-seong could leap from the carriage, iron mace in hand, the caravan manager rushed forward in a panic.
"Wait a moment!"
Breathless from the short sprint, he gasped out, "Master Choi, please leave this matter to me. Rather than fighting them, it would be wiser to pay the toll and pass. These men have not attacked blindly—they are openly blocking the road. That suggests they are willing to negotiate."
It was no wonder Lord Nogucheon had chosen him to lead this expedition. The man possessed a sharp eye. If they had simply intended to slaughter us and take our goods, they would have hidden and struck without warning. His reasoning made sense. Yet Yeo Hong-seong found the suggestion deeply offensive.
"What nonsense is this! To bargain with wretches who suck the lifeblood of the people!"
"Do you think we enjoy dealing with them? But if we fight, people will be injured or killed either way. Paying a small sum is the lesser evil."
"There is no need to worry about that! I, Yeo Hong-seong, swear that not a single one of them will lay a hand on any of you!"
"Perhaps. But what if they have hidden reinforcements?"
"That is…"
The manager argued on principle that human lives mattered more than money. Faced with that logic, Yeo Hong-seong could only grumble in frustration, unable to refute him. When their debate ended with the manager's victory, I gave him the chance to act. Though I had wanted to see Yeo Hong-seong's strength, his point about preserving life was correct.
"Then I leave it to you."
After a quick bow, the manager hurried ahead, clearly worried about wasting time. He called out to the bandits.
"Listen! In these sorrowful times following the Queen Dowager's passing, must we add yet more tragedy to the world?"
His words were an appeal to negotiate amid troubled times, but the bandits remained coldly indifferent. A bad feeling crept over me. Then one of them stepped forward and confirmed my suspicion.
"Sorrow, my ass. We were already struggling to fill our bellies, and now the Queen Dowager's death has cut off our livelihood completely."
The Queen Dowager's death had drained Qi's economy of vitality. Merchants who once paid tolls on this road had stopped traveling, leaving the bandits without their usual income. Her passing had directly threatened their livelihood.
"Still, your words are not entirely wrong. Hey, friend, we are not the kind of scum who enjoy killing people either."
"So you understand the principle of mutual benefit! Then name your price. How much will it take?"
"Because of the Queen Dowager, we have suffered greatly, and now you have gone and poked at that old wound…"
The bandit chuckled as if joking, then suddenly pointed his blade at the rearmost supply cart with a serious expression.
"Leave all of that behind and go."
"W-what? Everything? That is far too much!"
"Too much? You still do not understand the situation. Merchant friend, do you really not know what is happening here?"
The bandit leader glanced at his men on either side, then pretended to count our caravan's numbers with his fingers. Unable to count properly, he merely waved his hand a few times before shrugging. The man who had just shown off that his group outnumbered us by at least two to one spoke with chilling nonchalance.
"You should be grateful we are not going to eat you."
At first, I took it as an exaggerated threat meant to intimidate. But when the bandits began snickering and reminiscing about how tender the human flesh had been last time, and when the faces of our caravan members turned from mere fear of a bluff into genuine, visceral terror, I understood. It was no empty boast.
Once I realized that, I noticed several of them wearing ornaments that looked like human bones. These men had truly eaten people.
Why had I not noticed until now? This was an age of chaos and war. Farmers were dragged into battle, leaving fields untilled. Nobles used force to practice usury, forcing commoners to worry about their next meal the moment they opened their eyes. When food grew scarce, the starving turned to the easiest prey around—their fellow humans.
My body trembled. It was not fear, yet my limbs shook. I felt as though I had learned something I was never meant to know. If possible, I wanted to rip out the part of my brain that held this knowledge and wash it clean. Behind that revulsion came a surge of rage and disgust toward the bandits who spoke so proudly of eating human flesh.
I was not the only one who felt it.
"You—filthy beasts worse than animals!!!"