How Covetous
How greedy of them.
Tsk.
Clicking my tongue, I began to count.
Sixty-one in total, counting Chief Manager Sang Cheol-jin. Sang Cheol-jin was dead, which made it sixty.
I brought the Cloud Dragon Sword down hard.
Shrrk—!
The warrior charging from the front split neatly in two.
Fifty-nine.
Lowering my head, I drew up the refined pure qi within me in the same breath. My legs pushed off the ground, and in an instant I had burrowed into the gap between the five warriors before me, whirling my body as I swept the Cloud Dragon Sword around.
A dragon of unmistakable form tore the five warriors to ribbons.
Fifty-four.
My senses sharpened to a razor's edge. A vicious killing intent pressed in from the right. I extended my left arm — thwack — and a sword landed in my grip. I drove the Cloud Dragon Sword toward it.
Thud. It buried itself in one warrior's throat.
Fifty-three.
Kicking the corpse away to buy distance, I felt five swords hammer down into the spot where I'd stood a heartbeat earlier. I snatched up the table beside me and hurled it — five warriors went down along with it.
I invoked the Heavenly Steed Divine Steps. Head tilting left, balance recovered in an instant, my whole body wrenching right, then rolling forward across the floor.
More than ten swords and spears thrusting at me swept past in staggered succession, cutting nothing but air.
Rising, I seized the head of the warrior standing right in front of me.
"Let... let go of me...!"
With a blade pressed to his throat, I turned to face out over his shoulder. Fifty-two warriors glared at me with murder in their eyes.
A smile touched my lips.
Let's see. Killing every last one of them here would not be difficult. But the Salmak had built a stage this elaborate — there was no way these were all of them. More were surely waiting outside. I had to conserve my strength.
Without hesitation, I opened the throat of the hostage I was holding. Blood geysered in every direction.
That was when it happened.
A familiar face came charging in — Cheol Baek of Neungsando, the very man I'd traded words with not long ago.
"Hahahahah—! Not bad at all!"
The saber raised high overhead came thrusting down with ferocious force. I twisted sideways and it grazed past me.
Lightning gathered into the Cloud Dragon Sword.
Krarurung.
The Moonlit Heaven Thunder Sword Art.
I cut him down as he came.
Shrrk—!
Cheol Baek's head dropped to the ground. I kicked the falling head away.
BOOM—!!
The head burst apart, dragging every nearby warrior's gaze with it. I was already moving, sword flashing through the spray of blood.
CRUNCH—!!
Three warriors were skewered clean through the skull one after another, like meat on a spit. I wrenched the blade free and swung it hard across. Two heads went flying. I caught an incoming sword with my left hand, severed the arm holding it, then took the head as well. Spinning backward, I flung out my left hand.
A wine cup that had been hurled at me landed in my palm. The thrower's eyes had gone wide as saucers. I channeled my strength into it and threw it right back at him.
Splat—!
His head burst and he toppled over backward.
I turned my head to the side. A sword skimmed past my cheek. My hand shot out and closed around a woman's neck. Crack — I crushed it outright. My gaze was already locked on the warrior charging straight at me. He faltered mid-stride; I saw him take a step back. I bolted forward. Footwork? There was no need for it.
Krarurung!
The descending Cloud Dragon Sword split him effortlessly in half.
I straightened up.
No one was coming at me anymore. Men nailed in place, trembling where they stood...
I didn't know. How many were left.
I swept the hair back from my face.
In them I could read the will to end this fight right here. And yet.
A warrior must keep his word once it is given. I had offered them the chance, and they had refused it. Whether I died here, or every last one of them died here — only one of those two outcomes would remain.
It was quiet.
I lunged at the warrior nearest me. Panicking, he twisted around to flee, but it was meaningless.
Chrrk.
The falling Cloud Dragon Sword cleaved his body in two.
The moment I turned my head, a palm struck my solar plexus. It had to be Yu Su-gyeom of the Azure Sea Palm — the one Cheol Baek had spoken of earlier. The man had some skill after all; his movement was quite fine.
A torrent of internal force came crashing in through his palm. I immediately kicked off backward, rotating my body midair — much like that movement Cheon Yeo-bi had once demonstrated for me. I turned three full revolutions in the air before landing, and Yu Su-gyeom's surging qi dispersed into the empty air like smoke burning off. Quite the spectacle it made.
His level was impressively high. Far stronger than the Cheol Baek I'd just killed — at the very edge of Five Dragons Bearing the Sage, clearly on the verge of stepping into Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown.
He came charging in. And then I did something he never expected.
I threw the Cloud Dragon Sword I'd been holding.
Alarmed, he jerked his head aside. The sword grazed his cheek and buried itself in the wall. By the time he turned back, I had vanished entirely from his field of view. He whipped his head the other way.
Despair seeped into both his eyes.
My movement, having bored completely into his blind spot, he predicted far, far too late.
CRUNCH—!!
My fist burst Yu Su-gyeom's head apart like an overripe fruit.
I saw another warrior rushing in, fist extended. I lashed out with my foot. CRACK—! With a thunderous report, his hand bent in a direction the human body was never meant to bend.
"I heard... I heard you were only at Five Dragons Bearing the Sage...."
I seized his bewildered head with my left hand.
Splat.
And crushed it. Spinning straight into a kick, I deflected an incoming sword. My foot touched the ground and I pushed off immediately, driving forward. My shoulder slammed into one warrior's solar plexus — thud — his balance shattered. I pinned my fingers and chopped down.
Crack—!
His neck vertebrae gave way with a crunch and the corpse folded. Reaching out, I caught a sword mid-swing and threw a punch.
Splat — another head burst apart.
I lunged at the man beside him. Swinging, and swinging again.
Heads burst, arms burst, legs burst. Blood and flesh flew everywhere, and screams rang through the entire inn.
I killed.
Killed, and killed again.
Snatching a sword off the floor, I hurled it at a warrior across the room who was already preparing to bolt. He slammed into the wall along with it.
I raised my head.
The Cloud Dragon Sword I'd thrown earlier stood embedded in the wall right in front of me. I gripped the hilt and drew it free.
Not many were left now. Six warriors, and two chief managers.
"P-please, spare me."
All six warriors had dropped to their knees, begging.
Among them was a martial artist of Five Dragons Bearing the Sage called Jo Yu-chang, the Absolute Shadow Sword. A genuinely promising talent, one who would distinguish himself in the coming Righteous-Demon Great War and earn a place in the Azure Dragon Platoon.
But he was already broken.
I cut off the six heads one by one. Men whose fighting spirit had shattered could be killed without the slightest effort. I turned my head.
In the corner, the two chief managers stood with vacant expressions. The idiot who had been shouting so confidently earlier was slumped on the floor, and the crotch of his trousers was soaked.
Pissed himself, no doubt about it.
I walked over in silence and leveled the blood-dripping Cloud Dragon Sword at his throat.
"I thought the Salmak was underestimating its own intelligence network... but thinking it over, I suppose I was wrong."
"...."
"Who is it? Who sold my information to you?"
"...I don't... know...."
"You don't know?"
"Yes... a man with long, narrow eyes told us where you would be... and we moved on that information."
The world is hardly short of men with narrow eyes.
This had to be read as a whole. As a warning. Someone had passed along information about me. So who among them would have cause to warn me? In my past life, the list would have been endless — but not in this one. The candidates were few, and the clues were more than enough.
Where had I gone using the alias Yi Sin? Wi County. What had I done there? Made a purchase. And who was that purchase meant for?
And running a black market meant commanding intelligence capabilities of considerable caliber as well. All of it pointed to a single answer.
Cheonlim.
There was no one else.
I had paid a fair and honest price. Apparently they hadn't cared for that.
Tear it apart.
Wipe them from existence.
I lifted my head.
"Cheonlim?"
"....I... I don't know...."
I drove the sword into his throat without mercy. Shrrk. He crumpled. I turned my head to the side.
"Name."
"Y-Yun Seong."
"Your position?"
"Deputy branch chief of the Salmak's Wi County branch...."
"And the branch chief?"
"You killed him already... Sang Cheol-jin. He was the branch chief of Wi County."
"I see. So — is it Cheonlim?"
"...I wouldn't know that... but I can tell you who gave the order!"
"Oh?"
The face of the man who'd introduced himself as Yun Seong brightened a little.
"Then you'll spare me...?"
"As if."
Shrrk—!
I took Yun Seong's head clean off. Who had given the order — none of it mattered in the slightest. I didn't want to know, either. The answer was obvious anyway. It would be one of two: the Salmak's Slaughter Curtain Master, or his deputy. Whether the master had given the command or the deputy had, I intended to erase this organization called the Salmak from the world entirely — there was no need to ask.
I looked around.
A sea of blood.
I rifled through the clothes of Cheol Baek and Jo Yu-chang. I'd searched them on a whim, since their faces were rather refined compared to the others and their clothes looked expensive — and to my surprise, each carried a pouch of gold coins. There were silver coins mixed in as well, but they were nothing but bulky dead weight, so I dumped every one of them on the floor.
That came to fifty gold nyang in all.
Not a bad take.
I tucked the pouch into my shirt, opened the door, and stepped outside.
It was quiet.
It had no business being this quiet — and yet it was.
Then a considerably young woman came running toward me, gasping for breath.
"W-warrior... good warrior...!"
She drew closer.
"Right now... there's a strange man in our village...!"
I didn't hear the rest. I swung the Cloud Dragon Sword.
Chrrk.
The woman's body split in two. I strolled over and prodded her right arm with my foot. A dagger hidden in her sleeve slid into view. I picked it up and hurled it at the building across the way — the one that had appeared empty.
Not a casual throw, either. I packed the refined pure qi into it to the absolute limit.
KRA-KOOM—!!
The building collapsed outright. Only then did the hidden assassins reveal themselves.
Five emerged from the building that had just come down, and a good number more poured out from the neighboring structures and the underbrush.
How many?
No telling. Counting had become a bother by now.
Roughly a hundred, I'd guess. And every last one of them was at a respectable realm.
The weakest among them was at the Heavenly Circuit Realm. The strongest was... at Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, no less.
The Salmak must have ground its teeth down to the bone over this.
A smile spread across my face.
"You didn't come all this way just to admire my face. So — what'll it be?"
I flicked the blood from the Cloud Dragon Sword in a single motion.
"Come."
The assassins charged all at once.
The Murim Alliance's Azure Dragon Platoon arrived at Yeon-su Town.
And they beheld it — the sight of Yi Do butchering the assassins without mercy.
Ju Cheon-ui, platoon leader of the Azure Dragon Platoon and the Red Dragon Divine Lord, let out a gasp of admiration.
"Hooo... so that is the finest talent the murim has produced...? Extraordinary."
It was genuine through and through, welling up from the very depths of his chest, without a scrap of pretense.
Every time Yi Do's sword swung, the crackle of thunder rolled across the town. And every time that sound rolled out, another assassin's body split in two.
Ju Cheon-ui's eyes narrowed.
That martial art.
He didn't know what it was, but even at a glance it was unmistakably the finest of the finest — a supreme art. The lightning itself wasn't the remarkable part. It was what came after: the qi scattered into the air by each thunderclap flowing back into Yi Do's body.
A martial artist, in the end, must expend internal energy with every fight. When that reserve runs dry, and how much of one's reserve remains compared to the enemy's — that is the heart of every battle. But Yi Do recovered a fixed portion of his energy with every expenditure.
Which meant that against martial artists of his own level, he could seize the upper hand no matter the circumstances — and given enough experience and fortune, he might defeat even those of a higher realm.
And above all — his movement.
It was so utterly economical. Not a single wasted motion. He read every attack, reacted, and answered.
That is a gift from birth.
A genius among geniuses.
Ju Cheon-ui's gaze turned toward the inn, its windows blazing with lamplight. The distance was considerable, but what had happened inside was plain to see. The acrid sting of blood stinging his nose right now came not only from the assassins dying before him — it was rising, unmistakably, from that inn as well.
"...It doesn't appear to be demonic arts, in any case."
That much he could judge with certainty. Not a trace of demonic arts could be sensed from Yi Do. If anything, he was too disciplined.
Nine out of ten who practiced demonic arts became blood-mad slaughterers. Beyond losing their reason mid-fight and tearing people apart like beasts, they descended into indiscriminate slaughter, cannibalism, every manner of atrocity. Above all, their techniques themselves gave off the unmistakable "killing intent steeped in demonic qi" unique to demonic arts — and none of that could be found in Yi Do.
His eyes had remained cold and composed from start to finish, and every motion — whether evading or attacking — had been the work of a seasoned veteran.
Why.
Why was Ju Cheon-ui thinking this way right now?
"...I find myself coveting him."
Yes. Ju Cheon-ui coveted that man.
Viewed from the worst angle, it looked endlessly grim; from the best, endlessly promising.
Ju Cheon-ui's thinking began to shift.
His hand too heavy? That could be understood. Who in the murim had not heard of the life he'd lived as a bastard son of the Yi clan's household? The chief manager, and even the servants beneath him, had scorned Yi Do. When he belatedly awoke to his talent and they all began groveling before him, they stabbed him in the back all the same — and he had put to death everyone connected to that betrayal. It was more than understandable.
A true warrior, after all, must be resolute when resolve is called for.
Consider it. That man was being hunted by the murim right now. The Yi clan, his backing, had collapsed. That man stood alone now. And above all — his talent was staggering. From what he could see, the man had reached Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown at the minimum.
And he was only seventeen.
How long had it even been since he first reached the Heavenly Circuit Realm, and he was already entering the third stage of the Four Realms of Qi Condensation?
It defied reason. In all of history, only a single martial artist had ever shown a growth rate so overwhelming.
Perhaps.
Right now, I may be looking at the future's greatest under heaven.
Now was the moment. Miss it, and the chance might never come again. He had to take that man. Recruit him into the Murim Alliance.
The Salmak's grievance against him? That could be settled within a day. He could drag Mun Hudo, the Salmak's Curtain Master, before Yi Do on his knees if he had to.
That man.
He had to have him.
"...The Alliance Leader will have words for me. But once he sees that man's talent, he will understand."
The Azure Dragon Platoon members had been watching him mutter to himself with puzzled expressions — and then his next words left them aghast.
"We will aid that man Yi Do. Is that understood?"
"...Platoon Leader! That is not our mission!"
"Tut. It matters not. The responsibility is mine to bear."
"...Platoon Leader. I understand your heart, but it is not only the Salmak hunting that man. You must consider the royal house of Jeok as well."
It was almost funny.
The royal house? Why had the accord of non-interference between throne and murim been struck in the first place? Because the throne had respected the murim. Now it was the murim's turn to respect the throne. Ju Cheon-ui could swear to it: that man Yi Do was worth enough to make an enemy of the royal house itself.
He was about to move at once when, turning his head without thinking, he froze in utter shock.
He had no choice.
Two men stood at the edge of the cliff. One of them —
a white-haired man in middle age.
Because of that man.
"...What... is he... doing here...?"
There was no way Ju Cheon-ui could fail to recognize that middle-aged man, his mouth split in a broad grin.
The eight great sects ruled the murim below Jeok Mu-rim. Between those eight, a clear hierarchy existed — and yet, curiously enough, whether in the lower-ranked sects or the upper-ranked ones, each harbored at least one figure who had all but abandoned their duties entirely.
That white-haired man was one of them.
The Great Elder of the Asura Sword Sect — the Flying Dragon Great Hero, Myo Man-li. Currently assessed as a master of the Realm of Harmony, and one who would almost certainly cross into the Realm of Entering Divinity before long.
"Hehehehehehe."
Chuckling in that peculiar way of his, he watched the carnage unfold below.