Chapter 47
"Hmm... so this is Qixing Mountain."
A girl with green hair tied up on both sides straightened her back and looked up at the mountain.
With one hand holding a drink and the other planted squarely on her hip, she struck an impossibly imposing pose, but the difference between the girl and the mountain was especially stark.
Even standing before the towering heights of Qixing Mountain, she was shorter than most girls her age, so the whole thing just...
"Well, compared to my hometown, this is nothing."
Despite the mountain slopes thick with trees, the girl smiled as if they were child’s play.
It was not the smile of someone putting on airs, but one born of fact.
The girl’s homeland, Sichuan, had been famous for its infuriating geography long before the Ming Dynasty.
Sichuan takes the shape of a vast basin, and mountains ring it all around.
Because of that, any outside force trying to invade Sichuan had to use the narrow mountain roads, which is why it was called a natural fortress.
Emperor Gaozu of Han had used that very advantage to build his strength in the Sichuan lands, bringing the era of "Can’t Even with Xiang Yu" to an end and unifying the realm.
After conquering such a blessed piece of land, Liu Shan — unlucky Liu Bang — just surrendered? Come on, man...
Of course, if you really thought about it, Liu Shan had a right to feel wronged.
Who could have guessed that the enemy general would be a downhill king who surpassed even Ma Su, the mountain-climbing enthusiast?
The legend of him wrapping himself in a blanket and hurtling down a mountain is still told to this day.
Anyway, as with any advantage, there was a disadvantage: the same mountains that protected Sichuan also made it a pain to get out.
No matter which way you went, you had to pass through mountains and gorges!
At least the land was fertile.
If it had been a wasteland, Sichuan would have become a battlefield of endless desperate escapes.
In the end, you could say Sichuan was absurdly miserable whether you were trying to get in or get out.
Li Bai, the immortal of poetry in the Tang Dynasty — known to the superior human race of the Korean Peninsula as Li Taibai — once visited Sichuan and left behind these lines:
-Shu dao nan, nan yu shang qing tian.
-The road to Shu is harder than climbing up to the blue sky.
That was a wonderfully poetic way to put it, but the reality was different.
The real meaning was more like, “What the hell is this cursed place! I’m one trip into Shu away from dying on the road!”
The academic consensus was that, because everyone kept calling him a sage and an immortal, he couldn’t bring himself to swear openly, so he wrote a poem instead. (Not liable if this is wrong.)
That was what Sichuan did to even the most cultivated brush in the land: it made poetry come out sounding like curses.
And Qixing Mountain, by contrast?
It sat in Hubei Province, the polar opposite of inconvenient Sichuan. Had anyone ever even said anything memorable about it?
Sure, it probably counted as rugged enough, but compared to Sichuan it was nothing more than a mortal mountain on the same continent.
Whoosh-!
The girl — Dang Yulin — sucked her milkshake through a straw. Hayoung had packed it for her.
Dang Yulin was so serious about milk that she had chosen the heretical path of drinking a milkshake even with a hamburger.
Growth was inevitable.
“S-sis... are we really going...?”
Just then, Dang Seorin, who had been watching her, asked the question. She still hadn’t been properly told why they had come all this way.
“We are. Because there’s a crooked manufacturer on this mountain.”
Dang Yulin narrowed her eyes into sharp little triangles.
How dare they even leave their address in the letter?
The last letter she’d received included the location of the workshop, something that hadn’t been written there before.
She didn’t know whether it had been a mistake or what, but honestly, perfect.
How long had it been since she’d placed that order, and they were still dragging it out?
She never expected them to assume she’d come in person, but Dang Yulin was the kind of woman who did what she said she would.
“I-I mean... I thought maybe they’d send it eventually if we just waited...”
Dang Seorin muttered a small protest. She was the type to wait endlessly whenever something she ordered was late.
And now her sister had dragged her all the way out here, even ditching the academy over it!
Squeak!
With the force of an indignant guinea pig, Dang Seorin protested, but the guinea pig’s tender little teeth never managed to bite through.
“Wait? What are you talking about? Seorin, what’s our Dang Clan motto?”
“Keep poison in mind... morning and night?”
“No! Not that one!”
Dang Yulin’s twin braids sprang up in irritation.
“Uh... check the poison you’ve used? Don’t leave the lid open on poison? After using poison, wash your hands thoroughly for thirty seconds... and... um...”
As expected of the famed clan of poison, a stream of safety rules about poison came tumbling out of her mouth.
“That’s not what I asked!”
But that wasn’t it at all.
Clap-clap-!
Growing impatient, she smacked Dang Seorin’s Cerberus-like left and right sides at the same time.
“Eek...!”
“Ugh!”
As the force of her own beating hands sent the left and right mounds wobbling in centrifugal misery, Dang Yulin clutched at her own chest.
Empty. Like the infinite expanse of space.
Dang Seorin had been the one getting hit, yet in the exchange of damage, she was the one who had won by a landslide.
“Our family motto is that kindness gets repaid twice, and grudges ten times over!”
“Ah.”
That was, in fact, the short and simple motto of Sichuan’s number one powerhouse, the Sichuan Dang Clan.
It was something even a child would know, not just a member of the Dang Clan, so what did she mean, “Ah”?
No matter that they were twin sisters; at times like this, it was hard not to be at a loss.
“I’m going to settle a grudge right now.”
If Lia-rudol was delaying the commission over some pathetic little excuse, then she’d have to pay back the time damage and the mental damage.
Revenge was a serious matter for anyone of the Dang Clan.
“Um...”
But Dang Seorin’s response was vague.
She wasn’t sure whether that was the right way to use the phrase.
“Then... do I have to fight too...? I’m not really confident in fighting...”
Not everyone from a martial arts clan was skilled in martial arts, and Dang Seorin belonged to that category.
“Don’t worry. If there’s fighting to do, I’ll handle it. You just follow quietly with Hayoung.”
Of course, Dang Yulin knew that much too.
“And besides, we’re only going to see a sculptor. What fight?”
From the start, she had never intended to start anything, and she snorted.
Martial world folks were forever hiding their strength — peddlers, scholars, innkeepers, even men with black hair — but a sculptor over sixty?
There was no way.
What she’d brought her little sister here for was because she was worried about the girl, who spent every day holed up in her room, giggling to herself.
She knew Seorin wasn’t just lazing around doing nothing inside, but that didn’t stop the worry.
If she didn’t do something like this, her sister would never come out, not in a thousand years.
“Anyway, I’m going in first, so follow at a reasonable pace.”
“Understood.”
“Y-yes...”
Dang Yulin lightly sprang to her feet and began climbing the mountain.
* * *
Tap-tat— tap—!
Deep in the green-shadowed mountain.
A small figure darted through the oak forest.
The figure was Dang Yulin, using the Dang Clan’s defensive movement art — Shadow Wind Steps.
There was no need to trudge up the mountain like a common pedestrian, so she was cutting down on time with her movement technique.
“....!”
Halfway through that effortless advance, Dang Yulin stopped.
She landed on a tree branch, but her body was so light that the branch barely stirred.
She looked quietly down below.
What’s this? Those guys are...
Down there stood a group of burly men.
Seeing people on a mountain was not especially strange.
But if those people were wearing masks, carrying weapons, and standing guard at the path up the mountain, then yes, that was strange.
Bandits?
Every mountain and river on the continent belonged to the emperor living in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
What about the people with land deeds?
They were only borrowing the land from the emperor for a little while.
If someone stood guard over a mountain that had such a perfectly legitimate owner as if it were their own, then they were either mentally ill or bandits.
Killing either of them would cause no trouble...
Hmm... what should I do?
Dang Yulin wiggled her fingers inside her sleeve.
As a so-called righteous young heroine, she couldn’t just kill people on a hunch.
Yeah, that’s better.
A mischievous smile bloomed at the corner of Dang Yulin’s mouth.
She undid her hair tie.
* * *
“Haaah~”
“Hey, pull yourself together. If you’re like that, you’ll make me sleepy too.”
One of the men on guard let out a long yawn, and another burly man scolded him.
“So what? There’s nobody coming anyway. You think this is my first or second day on guard?”
“You’re right, you only started a day or two ago.”
“Nice one.”
The men traded jokes and snickered.
Cracking jokes during sacred guard duty would’ve been enough to make a superior beat their chest in outrage, but it couldn’t be helped.
It was just too damn boring.
In this place, where human footsteps were rare, the most interesting thing to watch had been three rabbits engaging in a frantic mating frenzy.
“Goddamn it. When’s the relief coming? I want to switch out and go to the brothel already—”
“Hush.”
Then the men straightened their slouched postures.
Someone was coming, and their shift wasn’t even close yet.
Could it be an unannounced inspection?!
The two of them clenched everything from their shoulders down to their asses, forcing military discipline into every inch of their bodies.
Clomp, clomp—
But unlike their fears, the approaching footsteps were light.
This wasn’t a man’s step. It was a woman’s.
“Stop. Don’t come any closer.”
As the figure of a girl climbing the slope came into view, the burly man raised a hand and blocked her with the flat of his dao.
“W-wha...!?”
When the hulking men barred her way, the girl stumbled back like a startled hamster.
“W-why are you doing this...”
The girl, with her glossy green hair pinned up with a hairpin, asked in a trembling voice.
“You can’t pass through here. Get lost.”
The man threatened her in a gruff tone.
“P-pardon? B-but I need to meet my grandfather...”
“Your grandfather?”
The men looked at each other.
-That old man had a granddaughter?
-No idea.
“Your grandfather is Lia-rudol?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
At the girl’s confirmation, the men’s eyes shifted in a strange way.
They’d been told to scare off anyone who tried to climb the mountain, but the sculptor’s family?
That old man was planning to use some mysterious method to smooth over awkwardness once this job was over anyway.
If that was true for the man himself, what about his family?
The two of them looked the girl over from top to bottom.
Pale skin, large eyes.
A small face with a straight nose and lips like ripe cherries, all arranged in perfect golden ratio.
Her height and, in some ways, her pectorals were a little regrettable, but even that had its own charm.
The back of her neck, visible beneath the pinned-up hair, stirred something in them.
...one of the men thought.
“Isn’t there any way...? I really need to see my grandfather...”
The girl looked up at them with pleading eyes, and the man with bronze skin and tattoos said,
“Well now, looks like there’s nothing for it.”
He shook his head slowly and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
At his touch, the girl flinched.
“If you’re begging me this hard, it’d be rude to refuse. I’ll make an exception just for you, miss.”
It was an awfully possessive thing to say for a man who didn’t even own the mountain.
“Come along with me~”
“Wha? W-wait a sec...”
“It’s fine. It’s fine.”
The brown-skinned man pressed her on with sticky eyes and a sticky hand when the girl tried to hold back.
-What the hell are you doing? Just kill her and be done with it.
-And miss out? She’s dead anyway, so I might as well have a little fun first. That’s the good part.
At his companion’s words, the man licked his lips and shook his head.
“You’re getting worked up over some kid who still looks like she’s barely old enough to have finished elementary school.”
“It’s not like that, you son of a bitch.”
And then came a remark that simply could not be ignored.
“What? What’d you just say—urk!?”
Thunk—!
A wooden pin shot into the man’s throat.
On closer inspection, it was the hairpin the girl had been wearing in her hair.
“Gghk...!”
With the path of his blood and breath pierced in an instant, the burly man clutched his throat, gushing blood, and toppled backward.
“Y-you little...! What are you!?”
The man who had his arm on the girl’s shoulder hastily retreated.
Clang!
“I’ll cut off your arms and legs first!”
The man drew his sword to threaten her, but the girl only gave a faint snort.
“With that body? You think you can?”
“What?”
The man looked where the girl was pointing.
There were small needles stuck near his wrist and chest.
“Wh-when did you do thaaat...”
His tongue was rapidly going stiff.
Thud-thud— clang—!
As the paralysis spread from his tongue to his arms and legs, and then into every muscle and organ within them, the sword slipped from his hand.
“Kkh... kkhk...”
At last, as his lungs and breathing muscles stiffened as well, the man began to suffocate.
With oxygen to his brain rapidly dwindling, his face turned ashen.
“S-save me... p-please...”
“Just die, you pervert.”
He reached out desperately, but the girl answered in a cold voice.
“Gk...”
And so the man choked to death.
“Well, that makes it certain.”
The girl — Dang Yulin — murmured as she retrieved her hairpin.
“Guys wearing masks can just be killed.”
She had wondered, but as expected, she’d been right.
These bastards were the sort it was perfectly fine to kill.
And besides, liking women with big chests was merely a sign of being a pervert, but liking small-chested women was something that had to be rooted out and destroyed.
It was a painful truth, but one she could not deny.