Monopolizing Fortunes (200)
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Monopolizing Fortunes (200)
"If you insist on being dragged away after seeing blood, I'll grant your wish."
Do Tong-dal reached over his shoulder, then belatedly realized he had no sword.
"Ah, right, I lost my sword. Yeon-seon, is there a sword lying around anywhere?"
Jang Yeon-seon was about to order someone to bring a sword, but Do Tong-dal promptly snatched Jang Yeon-seon's own blade.
"You won't have any reason to fight, so let me borrow this. It's light and good."
"I'm going to fight too!"
"You're ten years too young to kill anyone. Go have bathwater drawn. I'll finish this quickly."
Do Tong-dal hoped Jang Yeon-seon would live her whole life without ever staining her hands with blood. Do Tong-dal pointed his sword at the middle-aged man and asked.
"Are you the one in charge of today's little event?"
The middle-aged man's pupils shifted to the left. Others wouldn't have noticed, but to Do Tong-dal it was unmistakable.
Do Tong-dal turned his head to the left, and his gaze stopped. That man was also middle-aged. With his neatly grown beard, he would have looked like a scholar if not for the scar on his cheek.
Do Tong-dal asked the scarred man.
"Do you happen to have a poison pill or something tucked in your back teeth?"
The scarred man flinched in surprise.
"You do, don't you. Tsk, tsk, tsk... What's so damn important that you'd go around with poison in your mouth? What in the world is more precious than your life? People like you really do live this world upside down. Anyway, I've got questions for you, so drop the idea of biting that poison pill. I've had a brief taste of it myself, and even rolling in a shit field in this world is better than the next. Got it?"
The scarred man showed no reaction.
"I said, got it?!"
Do Tong-dal shouted and launched himself forward. The startled scarred man blocked the descending sword with his own blade.
Clang!
The scarred man's sword was driven straight downward. The force behind Do Tong-dal's blade was beyond imagination, and the man was lucky just to have held on.
"Urgh!"
He let out a groan as his own sword bit into his shoulder, but then his body suddenly stiffened. Do Tong-dal had already struck his pressure points.
In one breath, Do Tong-dal also sealed the acupoint on the now-rigid scarred man's jaw, denying him any chance to bite down on the poison pill in his mouth.
"Yeon-seon! Keep a good watch on this bastard!"
Jang Yeon-seon awkwardly caught the scarred man Do Tong-dal tossed over.
"Du-sik! If you're scared, you fall back too!"
"Brother! Do you think I'd miss a chance to fight at your side?"
"Living it up in the pleasure house, you must have slacked off on your martial training!"
"You'll see!"
The middle-aged man shouted.
"Kill them all!"
The enemy's attack began, seething with venom. No matter how high Do Tong-dal's martial arts were, he couldn't handle this many opponents at once.
It was a true melee. The numbers were similar, but he had to admit the enemy's overall martial skill was higher.
However, this wasn't an army, and in the martial world, the number of masters decides the outcome of a fight.
Do Tong-dal was an absurdly powerful master. Even Do Tong-dal himself was surprised as he fought.
Every time he swung his sword, the thought 'Have I really gotten this strong?' came naturally. His opponents were clearly not weak.
Before, dealing with enemies attacking from all sides would have given him considerable trouble.
But now, they posed no threat at all. The enemy's movements were plainly visible, and their techniques were completely exposed.
Do Tong-dal's sword was a farmer's sickle, and the enemies were sheaves of wheat at harvest time. No one could withstand a single exchange with him.
Clang!
The first person to clash weapons with Do Tong-dal was the middle-aged man.
"This is insane!"
The middle-aged man couldn't help but shout. The sword that had blocked Do Tong-dal's blade was forced back so hard it nearly sliced his own face.
"I told you, didn't I? I don't forgive anyone who touches my people."
As Do Tong-dal applied force, the man's sword was pushed back, slicing his face vertically. Then Do Tong-dal's blade cut across horizontally once more, quartering it.
After killing the middle-aged man, Do Tong-dal glanced at Wang Du-sik. Wang Du-sik was also quickly dispatching enemies.
His body, nearly as hard as diamond, took blows from weapons all over. With the Mukryong Armor Do Tong-dal had given him, even attacks from masters weren't very threatening.
The disciples led by the Twelve Zodiac Shadows were fighting well despite their disadvantage in martial strength. From the look of it, the harder Do Tong-dal worked, the more casualties could be reduced.
So he moved diligently. He flashed east and west, swinging his sword like a madman.
Before he knew it, the fight was drawing to a close. With a tiger rampaging among a flock of sheep, the terrified sheep could hardly be expected to fight properly.
The enemy, having lost their will to fight, threw down their weapons when about twenty remained. Not all of them had the loyalty to bite down on poison pills like the scarred man.
Of course, pawns on a chessboard wouldn't have much information. Still, it was better than nothing, so the surrendered were bound, and the wounded were given treatment.
The situation had been desperate enough to worry about the annihilation of the sect, but with Do Tong-dal's appearance, the fight ended in a resounding victory.
"Where in the world have you been doing closed-door training all this time?!"
Jang Yeon-seon snapped at Do Tong-dal, who was wiping the blood from his sword. Judging by his martial arts, it was clear he had undergone closed-door training.
"It's a bit hard to say exactly where..."
"Even so, closed-door training or not! You should have at least sent word that you were alive! Over three years without a single letter..."
Jang Yeon-seon belatedly launched into a rapid-fire scolding, and Do Tong-dal, the guilty party, simply listened.
Only after a long while was Do Tong-dal able to ask what he was curious about.
"How did all this happen?"
Jang Yeon-seon explained in detail everything that had happened in the meantime. After hearing the whole story, Do Tong-dal asked, 'So Won Dae-hyeop went to rescue Hall Master Yeon, and Seol-rin and Protector Jang went to rescue your father?'
"Yes. I don't know how it turned out."
"Won Dae-hyeop went, so what are you worried about?"
"Then should I only worry about Protector Namgung and Protector Jang?"
"No, their target is the Righteous Chivalry Sect anyway, so nothing serious will happen."
"Still, shouldn't you go check on them, Master?"
"If I went now, I'd just be late to the party. First, I need to wash up."
"Brother! Where in the world did you learn such martial arts?"
Wang Du-sik ran over with a look of astonishment and asked. Inwardly, he had thought that at his current level, he might be able to hold his own against Do Tong-dal, but seeing him today, he felt he could only barely measure up to Do Tong-dal's little toe.
"You were pretty impressive yourself."
"Heh heh heh... Even if it looks like I only spent time in the pleasure house, I trained secretly quite a bit."
"Why train secretly?"
"To surprise you!"
"Right. At least you're using that idle head of yours for something."
The bathwater hadn't been heated. Do Tong-dal had given the order, but Jang Yeon-seon was in no state of mind to think of such things.
Do Tong-dal had them fill a tub with just water, then got in and heated the water with his qi. Anyone watching would have been shocked.
It wasn't that martial artists capable of heating water with Internal Energy were rare. But heating that much water in a bathtub required a considerable expenditure of Internal Energy, so no martial artist would do such a pointless thing.
But for Do Tong-dal, heating the water wasn't difficult at all. By raising the heat of the Boundless Blazing Fire Art just a little, he could make it boil in no time.
After bathing and even shaving his beard, his face returned to that of a pretty boy. Do Tong-dal walked over to the warehouse where the scarred man was locked up.
He still couldn't tell exactly what level his martial arts had reached. He knew he had gotten stronger, but he couldn't gauge whether he was on par with Namgung Seol-rin or Jang Yu-seom, or whether he was at a level where he could even take on Won Dae-yeon.
So he had assessed the enemy's strength by observing those who had fought the Twelve Zodiac Shadows.
A significant number of the attackers had martial skills that could give the Twelve Zodiac Shadows trouble.
Here in Hebei, there wasn't a single place with that kind of military force.
"Another hidden faction? Damn it! Why are there so many hidden factions?"
The first name that came to mind was Won Jin-u, but the possibility was slim. Even if Won Jin-u knew the truth and prepared, a little over three years was too short a time.
"I've got plenty of enemies, but they can't be thugs from Hangzhou. They can't be thugs from another province either. Could they be remnants of the First Prince or Second Prince's factions?"
Even if he tried to force the pieces together, the possibility didn't exceed ten percent. Do Tong-dal stopped in front of the warehouse where the scarred man was held.
Even if he intended to interrogate him, there was a vast difference in the quantity and quality of information obtainable between knowing something and blindly charging in.
Still, he couldn't just waste time, so he had no choice but to try interrogating him first. Thinking this, he was about to enter the warehouse when Jang Yeon-seon came running up breathlessly.
"Master!"
"What is it?"
"I forgot to tell you one thing. Oh, you've cleaned up nicely?"
"Like a male gigolo?"
"Yes. Whoever came up with that phrase did a fine job."
"So what did you forget to tell me?"
"I told you the Bulyeo Six Spears were the first to attack, right? They were all from the military."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. I looked into it, and they were famous in the military as masters of the spear, but they weren't masters of the level that attacked the Righteous Chivalry Sect. They disappeared about five years before that time, so we have to assume they trained their martial arts and got stronger in the meantime."
Do Tong-dal's brow furrowed.
"Did you just say five years?"
"Yes. That's definitely what I heard."
"But that was before I returned... no, before I had even made a name for myself."
"That's right. At that time, you would have been about fifteen, Master?"
"So there is a faction scheming something, but I wasn't their original target. Hmm. That simplifies things."
Do Tong-dal entered the warehouse. The scarred man, his acupoints sealed, was lying on his side on the floor. While he was unconscious, Do Tong-dal searched the scarred man's clothes.
He was wearing a long robe, and the way the knots were tied was unusual.
"Military background, I see."
During his three years of penal military service on the battlefield, he had tied this knot until he was sick of it.
He opened the man's mouth, removed the poison pill lodged inside his back teeth, and handed it to Jang Yeon-seon.
"Find out about this poison."
It was wrapped in something like leather so it wouldn't dissolve in saliva. As Do Tong-dal carefully searched the man's clothes, he discovered a small bronze plaque tucked into the collar of his shirt.
On one side of the middle-finger-sized bronze plaque, the characters for 'Directive' were engraved horizontally, and 'Envoy' vertically.
The top was likely his affiliation, and the bottom his rank. Do Tong-dal put the bronze plaque back into the collar. Besides the plaque, all the man carried were silver coins and copper coins.
With nothing else to examine, Do Tong-dal was about to wake the scarred man when he noticed a red stain on the inside of the robe.
It looked like something spilled while eating, and the stain was quite old. He sniffed it, and a sharp, spicy scent hit his sensitive nose.
"Mala tang?"
People of the Central Plains don't usually enjoy spicy food. They don't use hot peppers unless a dish specifically calls for them, and the exception was Sichuan Province.
In Sichuan Province, people enjoy spicy dishes, and mala tang was a representative food there.
"Poison in Sichuan Province. Come to think of it, we still haven't figured out who made the Blue Snake Poison that nearly killed Cheol-hyeon and the old Alliance Leader."
No matter how much they searched the Revenge Society's documents, nothing about poison came up. With Sichuan Province and poison mentioned together, the name Sichuan Tang Clan naturally came to mind.
"The evidence is a bit flimsy... Well, I'm not trying to catch the culprit with evidence anyway. I'll just ask, and if not, so be it."
Do Tong-dal straightened the scarred man's clothes and then released the pressure points he had sealed.
"Ugh—!"
The man woke with a faint groan and started up in alarm. The first things the scarred man checked were whether he could use his internal energy and whether the poison pill was still in his mouth.
"I've blocked your Internal Energy, and I removed the poison pill. If you want to bite your tongue, I won't stop you. But you won't die easily."
Do Tong-dal brought over two chairs from one side of the warehouse and handed one to the scarred man.
"If you're not going anywhere, have a seat for a moment. I won't keep you here too long."
"You're going to let me go?"
"What would I do holding onto a small fry like you?"
The scar on the man's cheek twitched.
"There's nothing for you to find out from me."
"That's what you think."
Do Tong-dal sat down first and pointed to the chair opposite. The scarred man, his face full of suspicion, also quietly perched on the edge of the seat. Just the very edge, so he could spring up at any moment.
"You must have done a lot of research on me, so you know I have divine powers, right?"
* * *