Stop the Hiatus
What on earth was happening?
Had he, after clawing his way to such a sublime realm of martial arts, succumbed to the shameful indignity of sleep paralysis?
While Mangchonru desperately racked his dull wits to make sense of the situation, a shadow fell across his pillow.
“I have no curiosity about who you are, nor do I care to know.”
The moment Mangchonru realized the silhouette was the head of a human being, he began to tremble like an aspen leaf in a gale.
He had failed to sense the slightest hint of presence until the stranger was right on top of him. Worse, whatever trick had been played on him, his body refused to budge an inch. In the wild, having one's freedom of movement stripped away was synonymous with death. An instinctual terror, etched into his very marrow over tens of millions of years of evolution, swept over him, draining the ruddy flush of drink from his face until he was as pale as a corpse.
“Yet there is one lesson I wish to impart to someone who forgets their place.”
As Mangchonru strained his eyes to comprehend what was happening, a rough, shadowed hand blocked his vision.
“It has been quite some time since I last deigned to instruct a fool like you.”
“W-Who… who are you? What brings you here, what do you want…!” Mangchonru asked in a voice quivering with terror, having barely regained control of his tongue. Who under heaven are you, and what could you possibly want from me?
To his fear-choked question, the shadow answered coolly,
“Put right the mess you have made. It has been an eternity since I last found something entertaining, and having it disrupted has put me in an exceedingly foul mood.”
When Mangchonru fell silent, the shadow let out a bloodcurdling laugh. The hand covering his eyes shifted, clamping down over his skull.
The agonizing pressure felt as if his cranium would cave in at any moment. Mangchonru tried to scream, but the thief of his mobility had stolen his voice once more. All he could do was endure the blistering agony, his eyes turning bloodshot with strain.
“If you clean up this mess properly, I shall not visit you again. However… should you fail to take responsibility for what you started…”
The agony flared violently.
It ceased being confined to his skull and erupted across his entire frame, feeling as though his flesh were being hacked to ribbons with dull blades. For all his shortcomings, Mangchonru was still a master of the Super-Peak Realm. He could tell that the figure clutching his head was ruthlessly flooding his acupoints with internal energy, tearing through his meridians and blood vessels at will.
Of course, understanding the mechanism did not grant him the power to stop it. He could only shudder helplessly, praying that this torment would end as a mere threat.
As the searing pain gradually ebbed, his hyper-sensitized hearing drove the shadow's parting words deep into his brain.
“No matter where under the heavens you attempt to hide, I will find you and slaughter you.”
“Aaaaaargh!”
Confronted with a terror he had never tasted in his entire life, Mangchonru jolted upright with a shriek.
“Pant, gasp…!”
Yet there was no one else in his bedchamber.
Scan the room as he might, he found not a single footprint or displaced object—nothing beyond his own disheveled presence. It was as if he truly had just woken from a horrific bout of sleep paralysis.
Even so, Mangchonru did not for a second believe it had been a dream or a hallucination.
I… I meddled with something I never should have touched…!
Lurking inside his flesh was the solitary trace left behind by that dreadful shadow: a residue of demonic arts carrying a domineering intent more tyrannical than anything under heaven. That martial imprint spoke with terrifying clarity. The one who had just paid him a midnight visit was a nameless supreme master from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult of Heavenly Mountain.
If he wanted to live, he had to release Kang Seokho immediately. Mangchonru scrambled out of bed and dashed outside. He felt as though the phantom would materialize beside him at any second to reap his soul if he did not act this very instant.
The moment he burst through the doorway of his quarters, however, his knees buckled and he collapsed into the dirt.
“Ha… haha…!”
Laid out before him in plain sight was the gift given to the Green Forest by the Blood Cult, bestowed upon him by the Grand Chief himself. The Living Jiangshi, said to have been forged from the dying husk of a Super-Peak master, greeted Mangchonru in a state of gruesome dismemberment.
He had been told it possessed enough prowess to trade blows with a master of the Transformation Realm. Yet that same Living Jiangshi now lay shattered across the earth like cheap kindling. What was more chilling was that from the moment Mangchonru went to sleep until he stumbled out, not a whisper of a skirmish or the slightest clamor of battle had reached his ears.
Mangchonru was merely in the Super-Peak Realm; he was far weaker than a creature that could challenge a Transformation Realm grandmaster. The slaughtered puppet was a gruesome warning: I can extinguish your life at any second, so do not even dream of playing tricks.
“Please, I beg of you, please leave this place! If you require silver to compensate for my wrongdoing, I will load your pockets until they burst…!”
And so, Mangchonru sprinted straight to the dungeon where Kang Seokho was held, dropping to his knees and rubbing his hands together in frantic supplication. He swore he would return every volume of Nangahyeopjeon and heap precious treasures upon him if only the bookstore owner would return to Wuhan and reopen his shop.
Kang Seokho was utterly baffled by the sudden change in attitude, but he gladly walked out of the iron cell. He was sick to death of rotting in that dismal, damp pit anyway.
The Green Forest hunt that had ignited around Wuhan had swelled beyond all control.
Naturally, dire reports had rippled outward as remnants of shattered bandit forts fled to neighboring outposts. Like wildfire, the news spread until it finally reached the ears of the Grand Chief, who had been lounging in leisure at the Green Forest's main stronghold.
“What the hell did you just say?!”
Hundreds, if not thousands, of common folk wielding hoes, pitchforks, and sharpened bamboo spears, accompanied by swarms of Wuhan's finest martial artists, were mercilessly wiping out Green Forest forts across the provinces. That was the frantic message wheezed out by a bandit scout, drenched in sweat as though he had just stepped out of a bath, his breath hitching on the verge of collapse.
“Why in blazes is the Murim Alliance attacking us?!”
To an outside observer, his outrage might have sounded like they had signed a mutual peace treaty. In truth, while they appeared to be mere highwaymen, the Green Forest Federation was among the most hazardous organizations within the Unorthodox Factions. They maintained one hundred and eight mountain strongholds scattered across the Central Plains, each garrisoned by dozens or even hundreds of bandits, with numerous Peak and Super-Peak masters serving as local chiefs.
Furthermore, Grand Chief No Hwi-gon himself was a late-stage Transformation Realm grandmaster. A peerless expert peering toward the Profound Realm had gathered an army of capable outlaws into a massive subordinate network. If this had been an ordinary martial academy or an aristocratic family, nobody would have batted an eye. But this was the Green Forest.
Objectively speaking, it would not have been surprising if the Murim Alliance had launched a crusade against them long ago. The federation had grown far too large, and common sense dictated that the Righteous faction should crush them beneath their boots before they expanded any further.
Even so, such wars always had preludes.
No Hwi-gon did not expect a courteous declaration of war or a polite formal notice between the Righteous and Unorthodox factions. Even without those, ominous rumors and uneasy tensions invariably drifted through the martial world prior to any full-scale invasion. Given the sheer size of the Green Forest, the Murim Alliance could not expect a clean, overwhelming victory simply by marching in blindly on a whim.
Why? Did they prepare this campaign in utter secrecy just so I wouldn't notice?
While outlaws of the Unorthodox faction scattered and gathered at the whim of convenience, the Righteous Murim Alliance placed paramount importance on righteous causes. Even if they vanquished the Green Forest, suffering heavy casualties would erode the common people's trust in the Alliance. If that happened, the enterprise would result in a net loss.
For that reason, the Murim Alliance always unfurled a grand propaganda banner first, rallying the public with resonant proclamations. They would convince the masses that every blade drawn served a just and noble cause, urging the people to place their faith in the Alliance. Normally, their forces only mobilized in earnest after that entire political theater had played out.
“Phoo… What is the extent of the damage? Which regional strongholds have fallen?”
“Th-That is…”
“Don't tell me you've only heard we were raided, and you don't even know where?!” No Hwi-gon roared, unleashing a vicious aura that sounded ready to tear the scout limb from limb.
Terrified out of his wits, the underling dropped to his knees, kowtowing frantically to beg for his life. “Excluding thirty-two outposts and this main stronghold, every single one has been wiped out!”
“…What?”
Out of one hundred and eight strongholds, seventy-six had already been ferried across the River of Three Crossings into the afterlife. The report was so shocking that No Hwi-gon's mind ground to a dead halt, an utterly dazed sound slipping past his lips.
Yet the world was merciless. Before No Hwi-gon could even gather his scattered senses, fresh reports flooded the hall one after another. Outlaws who had fled their ruined outposts threw themselves at the main hall's gates, weeping and blabbering about the catastrophes that had befell them.
“The Mount Hyeongmun stronghold was overrun by masters led by the rising stars of the Wudang Sect!”
“Wudang was gentle compared to ours! Our fort on Mount Daebyeol was assaulted by Shaolin! Half our brothers have been dragged off to the Cave of Repentance!”
“You only had one sect to deal with! Over by our mountain, the Mount Hua Sect and the Zhongnan Sect joined hands to butcher us together!”
No Hwi-gon pressed his temples against a throbbing headache. What in the world had provoked them to launch such a rabid, coordinated invasion? This was a level of force deployment that would have seemed excessive even if they were waging war against the Imperial Court.
Still, there is a way to weather this.
Grandmasters viewed the world through a different lens than low-level thugs. Even in the face of imminent doom, No Hwi-gon sought a calculated path to survival. The problem was that grandmasters did not only exist within the Green Forest. In terms of both raw numbers and martial caliber, the Murim Alliance held an overwhelming advantage.
Before No Hwi-gon could stitch together a viable plan, another barrage of scouts tumbled through the doors.
“Grand Chief! Please, save us! The Tang Clan has deployed their poisons!”
“Why the fuck is the Tang Clan moving?!”
In the Central Plains, the Tang Clan invariably referred to the Sichuan Tang Clan. They were infamous for keeping to themselves, never seeking trouble unless someone provoked them first. Who under heaven had dared to pull the whiskers of that sleeping tiger?!
“The fort on Mount Palgong has fallen as well! The Young Patriarch of the Namgung Clan led their main family's swordsmen and swept through the entire ridge!”
“The Namgung Clan?! Mount Palgong may be within the same province, but it's an eternity away from their estate!”
The tide of catastrophic news showed no sign of receding. The names of the Nine Sects and One Gang were rattled off in their entirety, while the Five Great Families charged forward as if seeking vengeance for their slain fathers. Independent masters and wandering martial artists swarmed the hills, and scattered bandits fleeing like routed soldiers were being ambushed and beaten bloody by mobs of commoners.
Having listened through the entire avalanche of reports while barely retaining his sanity, No Hwi-gon let out a long, shuddering sigh, his gaze darkening.
“Right. It seems the worst has come to pass. I must go into hiding at once.”
Clashing with a few elders from the Nine Sects or the Five Great Families was one thing, but standing against the entire Murim Alliance swarming like a nest of hornets was sheer lunacy. There was a paper-thin line between bravery and foolhardiness; No Hwi-gon's life creed had always been to strike hard when the odds favored him, and to duck his head when the storm rolled in.
Having resolved to flee without delay, No Hwi-gon reached out to grab his pudao broadsword and the satchels of accumulated treasure he kept stashed away. At that precise second, a soft voice drifted from behind him.
“…So this is where you were.”
A sudden presence.
Shocked out of his skin, No Hwi-gon whipped around, leveling his broadsword at the source of the sound. The figure standing there was…
Why the fuck is that bastard here?!
The reality before his eyes was so ruthless, so entirely unmoored from reason, that No Hwi-gon let out an involuntary, hollow laugh. Seeing the Grand Chief's reaction, the surrounding bandits recognized the intruder and cried out in sheer panic.
“W-Wuhan's Number One Sword!”
“It's the Alliance Leader!”
“Why is that monster standing here?!”
Having witnessed Dokgo Sanwol's announcement of a hiatus, Geuk Cheonrang had channeled the Supreme Art of Empathy fifty-trillion-fold, working himself into an incandescent fury. Now, he had made his surprise entrance right in the heart of the Green Forest's inner sanctum.
He emanated a terrifying presence like an evil rakshasa crawling out from the absolute abyss of hell. His expression was as cold as a frozen tomb, yet beneath the surface, the white stellar fury of an erupting volcano coiled with explosive violence. The moment the Number One Under Heaven—a legendary titan of the Profound Realm—looked ready to paint the halls in blood, the bandits collapsed into utter pandemonium.
“Surrender Lord Kang Seokho of Muho Bookstore peacefully, and I shall spare you a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.”
A mountain of corpses and a sea of blood—a ghastly phrase promising butchery on an apocalyptic scale. It was originally an idiom famed for bloody massacres in Sanwol's past world, but when spoken by a master of the Profound Realm whose methods were vastly more destructive, its horrifying scope expanded tenfold.
Whether that was true or not, No Hwi-gon gritted his teeth, screaming internally.
Where the fuck is Muho Bookstore, and who the hell is Kang Seokho?!
No Hwi-gon desperately choked down the urge to fly into a howling rage, swallowing the blistering stream of curses that threatened to burst from his mouth. He had never heard of a Muho Bookstore in his entire life, nor did he have the faintest clue who this Kang Seokho was. Naturally, there was no such man in this stronghold, which meant he had no way to hand him over even if he wanted to.
Which son of a bitch laid hands on this Kang Seokho bastard…?!
What good was it if he played his cards carefully when the brainless runts under his command stirred up a disaster that rained hellfire down on his own head? Having tasted the exquisite terror of collective punishment firsthand, Grand Chief No Hwi-gon found himself utterly despising the world.