Mak-i Is Now a Slave! -1
Ugh...
At that moment, Mak-i was trembling with terror. His pressure points and mute point sealed, he had been left abandoned.
This damn mouth of mine is the problem. The problem!
Remembering how he had ranted about filleting someone’s leg, Mak-i desperately wanted to slap his own snout. He had spewed such nonsense at the man whom that monstrous expert treated with the utmost respect as a benefactor!
Even if heaven’s luck somehow let the other bandits walk free, Mak-i himself would never escape unscathed.
Thud. Thud.
Footsteps approached from outside.
Tap. Ta-da-dak!
The sensation of his pressure points being released flooded through him, and freedom returned to Mak-i’s body. He flinched and lifted his head to find the veiled woman who had once revealed her sword aura standing before him, her eyes gleaming sharply.
“I’ve sealed your internal energy and mute point, so don’t try anything foolish.”
Mak-i nodded like a madman. Having already run his mouth so carelessly, the only path to survival was to show the most obedient attitude possible.
After waking all five bandits, Yeo Il-ye led them back to Dokui’s cabin.
“Elder. I’ve brought them.”
“Good.”
Ugh...!
Mak-i’s legs gave out under a sudden crushing pressure. He was not alone. Dokui had simply raised his internal energy and suppressed all five bandits at once. Mere First-rate warriors, they could not withstand the force and crumpled to their knees.
“Tsk. Causing trouble because you couldn’t wait even that short while...”
The bandits felt wronged by Dokui’s muttering. The very man who had locked them in the mountain stronghold for a full month was now criticizing their patience!
If we went a whole month without working our trade, that counts as holding out pretty long, doesn’t it?
With their mute points sealed, they could not even voice their grievances. Of course, even if the points had been free, they never would have dared complain out loud.
“Cough, cough...!”
“My word, you! Why has a critically ill man come outside?”
“Hngh. Please don’t concern yourself.”
Mak-i’s eyes flew wide. The man who had thrown a flying dagger at him—after barely half a day—had become a critical patient. His face was deathly pale, his lips blue, and worst of all, blood-soaked bandages wrapped his entire body.
What the hell is going on? Why is that guy a critical patient?
Mak-i instinctively sensed something was off. The man had only been Second-rate, yet his body had been sturdy enough to chase a First-rate like Mak-i through the mountains. And now, overnight, he was a wreck?
But Mak-i’s thoughts did not last long. Murderous intent suddenly poured from Dokui’s body.
“You forced labor and even wounded a man who already came to me sick. I could tear you all apart right now and it still wouldn’t be enough...”
The bandits trembled under Dokui’s killing aura. Yet a faint hope flickered across their faces. “Tear you apart and it still wouldn’t be enough...”—something hopeful seemed about to follow.
“In a wretched place like this I cannot properly care for a patient with severe symptoms, so I will leave within three days. There are two reasons I am sparing you and sending you back to the stronghold. First: deliver my message to the stronghold so that not a single bandit shows his face until I am gone.”
Every bandit nodded frantically. Dokui was leaving in three days? Then there was no reason to operate for those three days.
“Second: I need a means to transport my belongings and the patient, so bring a cart or carriage by the time I depart.”
This condition was also something the stronghold officers could accept, so the bandits nodded vigorously once more.
Mak-i still harbored doubts about Ho Cheon-an’s condition, but right now those doubts were the least of his worries.
“Cough, cough... Dokui-nim, I have one request.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“It seems... there is an irredeemable villain among them, cough, and it troubles me.”
Mak-i’s face turned as pale as Ho Cheon-an’s.
“What are you talking about?”
“That one.”
Ho Cheon-an’s weak finger pointed, and the gazes of Dokui, Yeo Il-ye, Heukmyo, and even the fellow bandits all locked onto Mak-i. Mak-i instinctively shook his head hard.
“When the young lady appeared to help me, do you know what that man—who had taken a flying dagger to the leg from my full-powered throw—said?”
Mak-i shook his head even more violently. Completely suppressed by Dokui’s energy, he could not move his body, and that was pure torment.
“He screamed at the top of his lungs that since I had wounded his leg, he would fillet my thigh a hundred times and feed it to the dogs.”
Rustle.
The fellow bandits swiftly put distance between themselves and Mak-i.
Mak-i shook his head until his neck nearly snapped, but the truth was the other bandits had heard his shout as well. He had bellowed so loudly and powerfully that even the comrades rolling on the ground with their pressure points sealed by Heukmyo had heard every word.
Mak-i looked to his comrades for help, but they had already retreated far away and were sending him looks of pure disgust.
Told you to keep it down.
I always knew that bastard would cause trouble someday.
How can a person even say something like that?
Seeing those eyes, sparks flew in Mak-i’s own.
“L-look at those eyes! He’s a man who’s killed plenty of people!”
Mak-i quickly put on a pitiful face, desperately trying to force out innocent tears by immersing himself in sad thoughts.
“I heard it clearly as well.”
Yeo Il-ye’s additional testimony plunged Mak-i into despair.
“Well, listening to you, he truly is a vicious one. So what do you propose?”
“If we send a man like that back to the stronghold, who knows how many more innocent lives will be sacrificed? Cough. Besides, you’ll need at least one person to help with packing, so why not keep him and try reforming him?”
Mak-i trembled from head to toe. Others might not notice, but Mak-i felt the same tenacious, viper-like glint in Ho Cheon-an’s eyes. He had clearly taken the filleting remark to heart.
You bastards, save me!
The other bandits’ expressions shifted slightly with reluctance as well. Even so, they had shared the same pot of rice. Leaving him behind like this left a bad taste...
“Come to think of it, I heard there are many torture specialists among the stronghold comrades. Perhaps it would be better not to send them back either...”
The bandits shot murderous looks at Mak-i.
“Cough, cough. Seeing how poorly you get along, it seems none of you are the torture specialists.”
“Well now... hearing you talk, maybe sending only one back would be better.”
Shing.
Yeo Il-ye drew her sword as she spoke.
“Shall I just cut down the rest?”
“No. Seeing blood while treating a patient invites impurity. Send the other four back, and we’ll keep this one as a laborer for a while and observe the results.”
The mute points of the four bandits who had already ridden the elevator between heaven and hell several times that day were released.
“Thank you, thank you! Dokui-nim! We will never forget this grace!”
“From now on we’ll wash our hands and live righteously!”
“We will pass down Dokui-nim’s mercy for generations!”
“A dog will stop eating shit first...! Just deliver my demands properly to the stronghold! And... none of you are ‘torture specialists,’ are you?”
The bandits’ faces turned serious.
“That bastard Mak-i is famous even in our stronghold for being sneaky and vicious!”
“Hahk, spit. What a lightning-struck bastard! Even a bandit has some code—filleting a person’s body?”
“I couldn’t speak earlier because my mute point was sealed! But I clearly heard what he said while I was lying there!”
“Is that true?! This is a man who deserves to be torn into six pieces! You have no right to be a bandit of Gaewang Stronghold!”
“Enough!”
At Dokui’s roar the bandits instantly tucked their tails.
“I will stake my life on delivering Dokui-nim’s demands to the stronghold!”
“Please set your mind at ease, Dokui-nim!”
Mak-i desperately watched his comrades, but they fled without looking back.
“Well now... yes. Only you remain.”
Mak-i kept his head bowed and thought. Fine. It had come to this; there was no choice. Better to wait for an opportunity. Someday a chance to escape would come. Until then he would act as obedient as possible and create an opening.
While he was thinking that, his pressure points were released.
“Elder! Please kill me!”
“Haha. The one you should apologize to is not me.”
“Great Hero! I’m sorry! At that moment the pain must have driven me out of my mind! I have been deeply reflecting!”
Dokui laughed heartily.
That head of his spins damn well.
Watching Mak-i cling to Ho Cheon-an’s pant leg and put on a weeping performance, Dokui marveled at Ho Cheon-an’s schemes.
Martial artists try to solve everything with martial arts.
There is a saying that to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If a joint does not fit, the proper way is to pull it out and set it correctly—but if a hammer is already in your hand? Most people simply pound the joint into place by force.
The joint might shatter from the impact, yet they still just smash it.
Martial artists who have spent their entire lives training and solving problems only with martial arts default to drawing the sword first.
More than the cleverness of the scheme, the idea itself is truly fresh.
It seemed the Wind Shadow Pavilion Master had not written those words in the letter for nothing.
The mind that devised the plan was excellent, but what truly impressed Dokui was the unimaginable creativity. In his eighty years of life, he had never met anyone who came up with ideas like this.
“So, you have been reflecting?”
“Of course, of course, Great Hero! Aigoo! Great Hero! A fox-like wife is waiting for me at the stronghold. If I’m gone even a few days, more than a few bandits will try to make a move on her! Please, Great Hero, have mercy on my situation!”
“What a noisy fellow.”
Dokui sealed Mak-i’s pressure points again.
“Since you wished to reform this bandit, you also bear responsibility, do you not? Do you agree?”
“Cough, of course, Elder.”
“Good. Give me your finger.”
Mak-i stared at Dokui’s hand with a face full of dread. In that hand writhed a madly wriggling insect. Red carapace, purple spots—anyone could see it was a dangerous arthropod!
W-what is he going to do with that bug...!
All sorts of horror stories flooded Mak-i’s mind. The terrible gu insects that poison masters were said to use! Gu that burrow into the brain and control a person’s reason, gu that awaken in the belly after time passes and gnaw the organs... gu that, once placed in a body, suck all the internal energy and finally burst out through the stomach!
Dokui pricked Ho Cheon-an’s finger, drew a single drop of blood, and smeared it on the gu. The blood-soaked gu writhed even more violently. To Mak-i’s eyes that writhing looked exactly like the cheer of a demon that had manifested from hell.
Ta-tak!
When Dokui pressed a pressure point, Mak-i’s mouth opened of its own accord. Mak-i desperately rolled the only free part of him—his eyes—trying to say something to Dokui, but Dokui merely smiled calmly and spoke.
“Hehehe. As you can tell at a glance, this is an extremely dangerous creature. It is called the Blood-Extreme Brain-Shell Gu. If you do not feed it a neutralizing agent every six hours to calm it, it will awaken in the belly and gnaw the brain. It advances in a straight line, devouring every organ until it reaches the brain, so you will taste suffering no less than the Eight Great Hells of Buddhist lore.”
Putting something that horrific into a person’s mouth! Mak-i wanted to roll his eyes back and faint on the spot, but reality would not allow it.
Dokui pushed the gu down Mak-i’s throat and tapped the pressure point again; the esophagus automatically gulped and swallowed the insect. Mak-i wanted to retch immediately, but his body had long since been robbed of freedom by the sealed points.
Dokui handed a pouch to Ho Cheon-an right in front of Mak-i’s eyes.
“A Blood-Extreme Brain-Shell Gu can generally live inside a human body for about a year. Until then, the only way to calm it is a detoxification pill smeared with your fresh blood. You may use any commercially available detoxification pill, but it must be one coated with blood drawn that very day.”
Mak-i stared blankly at Ho Cheon-an accepting the pouch. In the end, even if he escaped, he would die the next day after experiencing extreme agony.
Waiting for Mak Yeo-bu had not been a bad choice, but I felt that with just a little more staging I could summon him faster, so I formulated a plan.
I set up a scheme that would force Mak Yeo-bu to return whether he wanted to or not.
Dokui was a physician, after all. Leaving the mountain to treat a patient with severe symptoms was perfectly persuasive. Now that every person in the stronghold knew of it, Mak Yeo-bu would have no choice but to come back even if he hated the idea.
With Dokui frightened and the stronghold lord having fled, how kindly would the bandits look upon their lord? In any case, since Dokui had officially announced he would leave in three days, safety was guaranteed.
Wherever Mak Yeo-bu was, the moment he heard the news he would have to race back as fast as possible.
To create this situation I needed a critically ill patient, and the perfect person for the role was me. However, there was someone who knew full well that I was not actually a patient and that only yesterday I had been flying along mountain paths throwing flying daggers.
That someone was the bandit named Mak-i.
The other bandits had only briefly crossed paths with me, so they could dismiss it as “he must have been sick or in poor health and overexerted himself.” But Mak-i, who had run the mountain trails with me, could not help but feel suspicion at my sudden transformation into a critical patient.
Therefore I could not send Mak-i back to the stronghold.
Fortunately there was a perfect pretext for keeping him: the filleting remark he had spat out!
What? Fillet the leg?
A heinous statement so extreme that even the bandits themselves were shocked into cutting ties! Truly, justice returns. Mak-i’s filleting rant was the ideal excuse for leaving only him behind.
Well... the truth was I had already wiped that filleting nonsense from my mind long ago. Analyzing the Mixed Blood, rising to First-rate, the matter with Yeo Il-ye...
With major events exploding one after another, I simply had no mental space left to hold a grudge over some small fry’s petty words.
Yet justice lives and breathes.
When such a natural opportunity for revenge arrives, what other flowery phrase is needed beyond “justice is alive”?
Blood-Extreme Brain-Shell Gu.
As if a convenient gu like the Blood-Extreme Brain-Shell Gu actually existed. Even if a gu with similar effects did exist, it would hardly be common enough to waste on a mere First-rate bandit.
I had simply asked Dokui to catch a bug and dye it dangerous colors. The blood? The detoxification? Just devices for me to control Mak-i.
But if a madly wriggling, dangerously colored insect is introduced by none other than “Dokui” under the grandiose name Blood-Extreme Brain-Shell Gu and shoved down a throat—while being told that without an antidote every twelve hours you will die after hellish torment—who would dare cut open their own belly?
If not, then he would simply have to spend a year faithfully serving me. Compared to trying to fillet someone else’s leg, it was an extremely cheap price.
To put it properly, this was also a precious opportunity for Mak-i to correct the character that would fillet another person’s leg. After a year of being thoroughly worked as a slave—no, after undergoing reformative labor—he would come to true repentance for his actions and gain the chance to live a proper life.
I wonder if I should charge him money when I finally release him.
“Let’s get along well for the next year. Hahahahaha!”
Looking into Mak-i’s dead eyes, I burst out laughing.