The Assault (2)
"The Hour of the Ox passed long ago."
Jang Ryang pulled out his time-disc.
In the cultivation world, knowing the exact hour mattered a great deal when conducting rituals of any kind.
The properties of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements shifted with each time period, so many cultivators carried a time-disc, a dharma instrument for measuring the hours.
On Jang Ryang's time-disc at this moment, the character for Ox was nearly faded away.
Soon the character for Tiger would surface, marking the transition into the Hour of the Tiger.
"We're supposed to charge in the moment the Hour of the Tiger begins... so where the hell is he?"
The plan was to assemble during the Hour of the Ox.
But the newcomer Seo Seol-ryeong had recruited last showed not so much as the tip of his nose.
"Senior Brother, do you think he cut and ran?" Won Pil-so frowned. "He might have gone over to the Poison Sword Sect..."
"That's the one thing that can't happen," Jang Ryang said flatly. "That woman would never tolerate betrayal. Anyone who tried it would be found as a corpse the very next morning."
"That's true enough, but..."
Every broker agency operating in this world had powerful backing.
Which meant that anyone who leaked the contents of a commission couldn't hope to survive in Ghost Head City.
"Still, Senior Brother, we're in trouble if he doesn't show."
"I know..."
Jang Ryang swept his gaze over the Qi Condensation cultivators standing by.
The operation had been drawn up around nine fighters in total, including the newcomer who was supposed to arrive.
If the newcomer never came, eight would have to carry out the assault alone.
"Can't we just postpone the attack? The longer we wait, the more airtight their formation will become."
"You're right..."
The Poison Sword Sect's temporary detention house had no proper defensive formation installed yet.
The Poison Sword Sect had always been weak in formation-craft among the Four Arts of Immortal Cultivation, so slow fortification was only to be expected.
But if they kept stalling, the defenses would eventually be complete. They had to strike as quickly as possible.
"Nothing for it, then. If it's come to this, we'll just have to cover his share too—"
Just as Jang Ryang was speaking, he sensed movement behind him.
"...!"
He flinched and whirled around to find a man in black robes standing there.
Jang Ryang recognized him at a glance as the newcomer scheduled to join them.
"What took you so long?"
At the question, the man answered in an indifferent voice.
"I believe you told me to arrive within the Hour of the Ox."
"Even so, a newcomer ought to arrive a little earlier than that!"
The man's attitude—utterly unrepentant, as though he had done nothing the slightest bit wrong—made Jang Ryang's temper boil over.
Cheon Woo-jin hadn't been dawdling, either—he hadn't arrived at this hour out of laziness.
Until moments ago, he had been making advance preparations for the operation.
This job was far more difficult than anything before it, and he wanted to enter the fight with every advantage he could arrange.
If you wanted someone here early, you should have specified an exact time. Told him to come at the first bell of the Hour of the Ox, say.
The Hour of the Ox spanned from one to three in the morning.
So "come during the Hour of the Ox" effectively meant "arrive sometime between one and three A.M."
In the old Eastern tradition, this was the ordinary way to arrange a meeting time.
For Cheon Woo-jin, accustomed to a modern society where appointments were set to the precise minute, it was a habit he found endlessly irritating.
He had reasoned that since he'd been told to come during the Hour of the Ox, arriving before three was perfectly acceptable... but to the Foundation Establishment cultivators leading this operation, it apparently looked as though a green rookie had shown up late.
Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so.
They were the Foundation Establishment cultivators Seo Seol-ryeong had told him would be commanding this operation.
Both had once belonged to respectable orthodox sects, he'd heard, and after their sects were annihilated, they had been living as loose cultivators in Ghost Head City.
Orthodox upbringing, I suppose... their qi cultivation is remarkably upright.
Cheon Woo-jin had currently reached the Great Perfection of Qi Condensation.
Spiritual energy now coursed not only through his Twelve Regular Meridians, his Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and his collateral channels, but through his five viscera and six bowels, his skin, hair, organs, flesh, sinews, and bones—and he had become consciously aware of the spiritual domain of the Body of the Dark True Abyss as well.
As a result, Cheon Woo-jin's senses had grown far sharper than before.
Simply standing face to face like this, he could feel how the man before him had trained all these years.
Orthodox sects cultivate slowly, but their foundations are rock-solid and don't crumble easily. Dark sects and demonic paths grow fast, but they're riddled with gaps. That's how the game described it.
In the game, that had been nothing but a block of flavor text. The Cheon Woo-jin of now could perceive it directly.
"Hey, rookie."
At that moment, Won Pil-so stepped forward.
"One look at you and it's obvious you're wet behind the ears."
Won Pil-so, Jang Ryang's junior, was a rough-mannered man.
He glared at Cheon Woo-jin, radiating an air that suggested he might grab the man by the collar at any moment.
"If you're a rookie, shouldn't you act like one and bow your head to your seniors?"
"How curious."
"Curious?"
"I came here to work, not to forge senior-junior bonds."
Cheon Woo-jin's reply was cold.
"Why, you little—!"
Within the orthodox sects, the senior-junior hierarchy was enforced with strict formality.
Since one's current realm was distinguishable at a glance from dress and bearing alone, everyone knew instantly who stood above and who below, and was expected to behave accordingly.
But the lower levels of Ghost Head City were a place where cultivators of every realm lived jumbled together, where it was hard to size up anyone's cultivation in a single glance—and the strict observance of seniority simply didn't take root there.
"Hey! No matter how you feel, this is—!"
"And is all this commotion really acceptable?"
"...!"
Both Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so flinched.
Today was the day they would raid the Poison Sword Sect's temporary detention house.
It was a fair distance from the detention house, but raising excessive noise was far from wise.
Besides, Cheon Woo-jin was someone Seo Seol-ryeong had personally introduced.
If they punished him for insolence and it got back to her, they might well pay for it later.
"Ahem. Let's go over the operation first."
The one to recover his composure first was the senior, Jang Ryang.
As long as Cheon Woo-jin had Seo Seol-ryeong standing behind him, there was little more they could say here.
"I heard a rumor. You've learned the Sword-Cultivation Method, correct?"
"You could say that."
At Cheon Woo-jin's answer, Jang Ryang nodded.
"Then we'll treat you as a sword cultivator. I'll need you to take the vanguard."
With that, Jang Ryang called together the Qi Condensation cultivators waiting nearby.
Then, drawing a formation diagram on the ground, he began explaining the operation.
"The eight of you, excluding me, will form the Eight-Star Formation and charge in. Won Pil-so here will hold the formation's center, so move around him as your pivot."
"..."
"I will face Dan Mok-ryeong myself. I'm the only one here who can."
The strongest among them was Jang Ryang at late-stage Foundation Establishment.
Jang Ryang taking on Dan Mok-ryeong while the remaining eight handled her subordinates was the most rational arrangement.
"Of course, I have no confidence in cutting down Dan Mok-ryeong alone. The moment you've dealt with the rabble, join me without delay."
Once the details were settled, the group set out together for the Poison Sword Sect's temporary detention house.
The detention house stood barring the entrance to the forbidden ground.
After securing the entrance, the Poison Sword Sect had thrown together a makeshift structure from materials torn off the surrounding ruined buildings.
Its exterior was correspondingly shabby.
But in the cultivation world, a shabby exterior hardly mattered.
Even a building on the verge of collapse could exert defensive power rivaling a fortress, so long as a powerful formation was installed within it.
"Seeing it up close... they've built the defensive formation better than I expected."
Jang Ryang murmured, keeping his body low.
"Still... it's nothing we can't break through."
Muttering so, Jang Ryang drew a talisman from his robe.
He chanted an incantation, and the talisman transformed into a single owl.
"This little fellow will shatter the weak point of their defensive formation. The instant the formation collapses, we charge."
The owl soared into the night sky.
Ghost Head City contained dense forests within its walls, so an owl on the wing was nothing out of the ordinary.
"I'll conceal our presence."
Jang Ryang took out a second talisman and set it alight.
A smoke of peculiar scent spread in all directions, and wreathed in it, the cultivators' auras grew faint.
A cultivator of considerable talisman skill.
Cheon Woo-jin was thinking as much when Won Pil-so shoved him from behind.
"Move."
In this Eight-Star Formation, Cheon Woo-jin had been placed at the very front. He was expected to lead the advance.
And yet, Cheon Woo-jin stopped dead just short of the temporary detention house.
"Wait a moment."
"What the hell are you doing?"
Ignoring Won Pil-so's rough voice, Cheon Woo-jin turned his gaze toward the owl gliding across the night sky.
The owl was making for the corner of the detention house's roof.
Jang Ryang had judged that point to be the weak point of the defensive formation.
But it wasn't.
That spot is indeed a weak point. But...
The spiritual domain of the Body of the Dark True Abyss.
The vast expanse of consciousness dwelling within Cheon Woo-jin's inner being.
It was sounding an instinctive warning.
Something is there.
"Hey! Move!"
Won Pil-so urged him on.
Stopping dead right in front of the target was enough to make Won Pil-so's blood boil—and Jang Ryang, outside the formation, must have felt the same.
But there was no time to explain.
In moments, the owl would detonate itself against the roof corner and destroy the formation's weak point.
Once the formation fell, the sleeping warriors of the Poison Sword Sect would all wake. Any further delay would squander the window for the ambush.
So Cheon Woo-jin drew the Sunken Sword.
"...!"
The black spiritual domain within him.
From that place, he manifested a sword-forged blade into reality.
The sword qi it produced was far smaller than anything he had generated before.
But its power had grown vastly stronger.
Reaching Great Perfection of Qi Condensation had made it possible to increase the density of his spiritual energy and compress it.
The reason Cheon Woo-jin had arrived at the site only as the Hour of the Ox was drawing to a close was that he had been training this, without pause, the entire time.
"Hey! What do you think you're—!"
Won Pil-so lunged to stop him in alarm, but it was already too late.
The sword qi erupted from the Taiyi Mysterious Marvel Sword Art, grown one stage stronger along with its wielder at Great Perfection of Qi Condensation.
Swaaaaang!
The sword qi tore through the air far faster than ever before.
It struck the entrance of the temporary detention house with perfect precision, shattering the firmly sealed doors to splinters.
Immediately after, the anomaly struck.
KWA-BOOM! KWA-KWA-KWANG!
With a thunderous roar, a terrifying bolt of lightning came crashing down.
Thunder-qi of a caliber that made the sword qi Cheon Woo-jin had just loosed look like nothing—power enough to incapacitate even a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
"There was a trap."
"...!"
The Poison Sword Sect had installed a device for generating potent thunder-qi near the entrance.
A trap designed to annihilate intruders automatically: should anyone neutralize the defensive formation and assault the detention house, the thunder-qi would discharge on its own.
"You saw through the trap?"
Jang Ryang murmured in disbelief.
A rookie in Qi Condensation had detected what he himself, a Foundation Establishment cultivator, had failed to notice.
The others grasped the fact as well and stood dumbfounded.
Without sparing a single one of them so much as a glance, Cheon Woo-jin moved to the front.
"I'm going in."
"...!"
The defensive formation had already collapsed, brought down by the owl Jang Ryang had sent flying.
He could feel the Poison Sword Sect cultivators inside scrambling in haste—but the ambush still held.
The other cultivators hurried after Cheon Woo-jin as he led the charge.
The instant Cheon Woo-jin vaulted through the shattered entrance, a Poison Sword Sect cultivator bearing a sword lunged at him.
The Poison Sword Sect, true to its nature, trained its members in the sword as martial artists of the orthodox world would.
And in truth, in close-quarters combat between Qi Condensation cultivators, an attack like this was genuinely more effective.
But the blade never so much as grazed Cheon Woo-jin.
A black blade surging up from the ground ran the man through his torso.
The Black Shadow Technique, woven together with the sword qi of the Taiyi Mysterious Marvel Sword Art, proved lethal even against a sword cultivator of the sect that had devoted lifetimes to the blade.
Without so much as a glance at the Poison Sword Sect cultivator collapsing in a spray of blood, Cheon Woo-jin shifted his gaze.
From deep within, sword-bearing cultivators were pouring out in a flood.