Stop the Hiatus
Kang Seokho had been kidnapped.
The culprit was a reckless lunatic claiming to be a Green Forest stronghold chief.
After confirming that the bastard had the gall to post a brazen declaration of war before fleeing, Sanwol cast everything else aside to focus entirely on resolving the crisis.
His declaration of an indefinite hiatus for Nangahyeopjeon was not merely a stunt to attract attention; he genuinely intended to pour every second he would have spent drawing into investigating the matter.
The issue was that the main tournament of the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering was scheduled to begin in just a few days.
Even so, there was no helping it. Tossing aside a man who had helped him so immensely just to scout a few martial techniques at a tournament went against every shred of basic decency.
Sanwol dispatched his servants to dig up every scrap of information regarding Mount Okhwa's Green Forest Stronghold and Mangchonru.
They were a massive outfit, one of the elite Green Forest Eighteen Strongholds.
Worse still, Mangchonru, who had brazenly advertised his own name, was a martial artist in the late Transcendence Realm.
He was an imposing figure closely watched even by the orthodox Murim Alliance, widely considered a prime candidate to eventually attain the Profound Realm.
“A martial artist of the Transcendence Realm stooping to kidnap a civilian in secret and negotiate ransom?”
Typically, bandits slaughtered first and plundered later.
Negotiations be damned—their minds operated on the simple logic that once the original owner died, everything became theirs.
Their twisted mentality differed fundamentally from normal human beings; back when Sanwol worked at the escort agency, he had cut down dozens of them without a second thought.
Yet here was an elite Transcendence master, not merely an ordinary mountain rogue but a chief of the Eighteen Strongholds, kidnapping a helpless civilian?
It defied all common sense, but right now, none of that mattered.
There was a bastard that needed killing, and more than enough reason to do it.
“Young Master, I have investigated the damages to Muho Bookstore as you commanded.”
“Report.”
The servants trembled at the icy, emotionless demeanor washing over Sanwol's face.
His attitude had shifted far too drastically since Kang Seokho's abduction.
Sanwol was famous for treating his staff with exceptional kindness.
The tasks he assigned were usually minor chores he simply found bothersome to do alone, and he strictly enforced reasonable working hours and regular breaks.
He even provided rooms in the manor for those with difficult commutes, and ensured every meal was delicious, hearty, and served right on time.
Nor did he ever nitpick trivial mistakes or browbeat anyone; instead, he showered them with genuine praise and encouragement whenever they worked diligently.
His pay wasn't low either—his generosity with wages was legendary.
Even servants bound strictly by financial employment felt compelled to swear undying loyalty to him; that was how extraordinarily well Sanwol treated his workers.
Of course, from Sanwol's perspective, this was nothing more than basic human resource management and compliance with the Labor Standards Act.
Yet in this era, Sanwol's manor was considered a paradise where one practically got paid for doing nothing.
In the Central Plains of this time, the concept of human rights was practically nonexistent, let alone modern labor laws.
And now, that very same Sanwol looked as though he had crossed paths with his mortal enemies.
There was nothing more terrifying than when a gentle, soft-spoken person's patience finally snapped past the breaking point and exploded into incandescent rage.
Naturally, the servants were terrified by this sheer contrast, but it also hammered home the gravity of the crisis.
For the Young Master to be this enraged... this is no ordinary disaster.
“Uncle Kang kidnapped, Muho Bookstore ransacked, and every displayed copy of Nangahyeopjeon stolen.”
Reciting the servant's report through clenched teeth, Sanwol's grip tightened around the wooden table before him.
Crack!
The solid wood splintered cleanly beneath his fingers, surrendering a chunk of itself to his grasp.
The physical might of a Peak Realm martial artist could shatter wood like brittle dry kindling.
Sanwol cast aside the splintered fragments and rose to his feet.
Less than two hours later, a single proclamation plunged all of Wuhan into a chaotic fervor.
Sanwol had called upon the martial artists of Wuhan to help him extract vengeance—and attached an astronomical bounty to the plea.
✦ One silver tael will be paid for each bandit head brought in.
✦ Anyone caught beheading innocent civilians and falsely claiming them as bandits will be executed immediately.
✦ This bounty remains in effect until Kang Seokho, proprietor of Muho Bookstore, is safely recovered.
One silver tael was equivalent to roughly one thousand common copper coins.
In other words, slaying just a single bandit and bringing back his head yielded enough cash to eat, drink, and idle away for months on end.
One could call it extravagant squandering, but to Sanwol, money was something overflowing in such absurd excess that it was practically rotting in his storerooms.
He had long since moved beyond mere strings of coins and begun stacking shoe-shaped silver ingots; if not now, when else would he spend it?
Besides, he figured he might as well stimulate the local economy by putting that hoarded wealth into circulation.
Naturally, the martial artists rejoiced and charged toward the mountains, eagerly grabbing their weapons.
Even able-bodied commoners took up farming tools or sharpened bamboo spears and climbed the hills.
These bandits were vermin who did nothing but bring misery to the world anyway, and now, putting one down would line their purses with cold, hard silver?
Even if they came up empty-handed, it was a gamble well worth taking.
Notably, Sanwol had never specified that the targets had to be from the Green Forest Eighteen Strongholds.
Which meant so long as someone was a bandit, anywhere would do.
Thus, the bandits lurking around Wuhan found themselves caught in an unexpected crossfire, thrown into sheer pandemonium.
Every conceivable sort of person—from ordinary laborers dropping their day jobs to masters from rival sects—surged into the mountains, each desperate to claim a single severed head for themselves.
Under normal circumstances, bandits would scatter for their lives if a martial master appeared, or easily slaughter and toy with commoners wielding bamboo spears.
Yet when dozens of masters formed coordinated lines and hundreds of raging commoners swarmed them from all directions, the dynamic changed completely.
“Mangchonru, you bastard son of a bitch...!”
That was the unanimous dying curse of bandits across the region as they underwent a real-time promotion into the headless horsemen of the far-off Western lands.
Even before Sanwol announced the shocking bounty of One Severed Head for One Silver, Wuhan was already seething on the brink of an explosion.
All because a single bandit had destroyed their sanctuary for reading Nangahyeopjeon, plunging the titan of the era into such profound despair that he laid down his brush!
The mood was so primed that if even one person drew their sword, a mob of thousands would eagerly join in.
“How dare they! The bastards have truly crossed the line touching Young Hero Dokgo!”
Jegal Jahyeok, a man whose instances of raising his voice could be counted on one hand, roared in uncharacteristic fury as he leapt from his seat.
Nor was he alone.
The direct descendants of the Five Great Families and the Murim Alliance were in the same state, to say nothing of the die-hard readers whose admiration for Sanwol bordered on religious devotion.
“We must pull up every bandit in the vicinity by the roots, crush each Green Forest stronghold one by one, and obliterate them completely!”
“Well spoken! They are vile villains who force us to bloody our hands on the road and bleed innocent people dry!”
“Eradicate them from the source so they can never commit such atrocities again!”
It was right then that Sanwol's declaration of One Severed Head for One Silver spread across the city.
"One Severed Head for One Silver" meant exactly what it said: one bandit's neck traded for one silver tael.
Now armed with both righteous justification and lucrative incentives, everyone marched in absolute unison to slaughter the bandits.
No one attempted to stop them; they weren't attacking an established sect or noble family, but bandits whose continued existence offered not a single benefit to the world.
If anything, the atmosphere burned with righteous zeal, everyone crying out that they had to protect Nangahyeopjeon with their own two hands.
From the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families of the Murim Alliance, to the vast majority of visiting martial artists and commoners seeking solace from arduous lives in the pages of Nangahyeopjeon—
Just listing the factions mobilizing to overturn Sanwol's hiatus declaration was enough to take one's breath away.
“Aaaagh!”
“Mercy! Spare me!”
“Chief, you motherfucker!!”
“Go to Mount Okhwa in Jiangxi Province! We didn't do anything!”
Thanks to their efforts, countless bandits perished, rendering the Central Plains somewhat more peaceful by degrees.
Since they had already drawn their blades with ironclad justification, they took the opportunity to clean up long-festering headaches they had previously ignored.
Instead of taking the shortest path to smash the Mount Okhwa stronghold, they dispersed their forces to systematically crush Green Forest strongholds across the regions, slowly tightening the noose around Mangchonru's neck.
As a result, the Mount Okhwa stronghold felt like a house in perpetual mourning.
They simply couldn't conceive of any way to survive.
If they wanted to live, their only hope was to desert right now and blend in among commoners.
“We might lack reputation, but do we lack loyalty?! We can overcome any threat from the Murim Alliance with the might of the Great Green Forest Eighteen Strongholds!”
“Ch-Chief. No matter how you look at it, this doesn't feel right.”
“Nonsense! Even if they come, they're just peasants and green young fledglings. Besides the Grand Chief, don't we have the secret weapon sent by the Blood Cult?”
Unlike the brimming confidence of Mangchonru, the bandits under his command felt sick to their stomachs with every piece of news that arrived.
Only a few days ago, the Green Forest had boasted immense scale and momentum, commanding terrifying renown throughout the world as the Green Forest 108 Strongholds.
The 108 Strongholds comprised seventeen stronghold chiefs directly appointed by the Grand Chief of the Green Forest, plus ninety chiefs who paid regular tribute to earn the right to carry the Green Forest name.
The elite chiefs directly chosen by the Grand Chief considered the Eighteen Strongholds the true core, but to outsiders, direct appointment or not, they were all the same filthy Green Forest scum.
After all, there were 108 strongholds and 108 chiefs, so calling them the 108 Strongholds seemed only natural.
And now?
108 strongholds? What a joke. In just a few days, multiple fortresses had fallen, whittling the number down to seventy-two.
Even that report had come in days ago; considering the travel time for messages, it wouldn't be surprising if that number had already been halved again down to thirty-six.
“Cast aside your worries and trust in me! Who am I?! The supreme master of Mount Okhwa, an elite martial artist of the Transcendence Realm! Am I not Mangchonru?!”
When their chief, Mangchonru, let out a boisterous laugh and strode into his quarters, the bandits merely sighed and trudged back to their lodgings.
Among them, quite a few slipped away into the shadows, convinced that staying here meant certain death.
As for Mangchonru, who had so loudly boasted that everything was under control—
I... I can't move...! What in the world is this...?!
Unable even to squeeze out a whimper, as though pinned down by a ghost.
He lay stiff as a corpse upon the bed in his chambers.
Utterly oblivious to the presence watching him from above his pillow.