Survival of the Fittest
It is not the strong who survive—it is those who survive who are strong. The so-called survival of the fittest.
Whish!
"That's a pretty decent line, Boss. But why did you snatch that grasshopper… Uwaaah."
Ilhong recoiled in horror the instant I brought the snagged protein to my mouth.
City girls, I swear. Getting shocked over something this small.
How she ever made it through those filthy beggar days is beyond me.
"What's it taste like? Sounds crunchy."
Jo Harang, on the other hand—raised in the mountains—eyed me with open curiosity and asked for a review.
Now that was a proper mountain girl for you.
"Tastes like grasshopper."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"Roast them and they're a real delicacy."
"Oh, I should try that later."
I chewed, then swallowed with a gulp. Only then did Ilhong look over at me, thoroughly disgusted.
"Thanks to the advance, we stocked up plenty of food. Why snatch one and eat it on purpose…?"
"Because what fails to kill me only makes me stronger."
"…What the hell are you even talking about."
I wiped the remnants from the corner of my mouth with a perfectly serious face.
"No matter how hard a person resolves themselves, they grow lazy with time. Every so often you need to top up the venom like this."
Memories resurfaced one by one as I retraced the path I had fled along.
I had sworn on this very soil, chewing grass roots, that I would survive no matter what it took.
Lately, with no clients and a thin wallet, I had been living on cheap noodles and bitter tea leaves.
Looking back, even that had been luxurious compared to those days.
"Topping up venom? What are you, a gu-poison jar, Boss?"
Ilhong deadpanned at the sight of me picking and sampling survival food like I was filming a wilderness show.
"Mujin, give me one too."
Claiming she had eaten plenty of the same stuff with her master in the mountains, Jo Harang sidled up and started munching the mushroom I had been working on.
"…Doesn't that make your stomach churn or anything?"
That was a poisonous mushroom I had once eaten without knowing better.
Jo Harang only shrugged, completely unbothered.
"It's sharp and spicy—but it tastes great?"
Looks like she had an unusual constitution like mine. Ridiculous durability, and a fair amount of poison resistance on top of it.
"…If you ever feel like making money by eating sharp-and-spicy stuff, tell me. I'll set up the introduction."
If Dang Yeohye heard about this, her eyes would light up with pure curiosity.
She might even shove a fortune at us for research rights.
"There's a commission that pays big money just for eating this stuff?"
"Yep. Sweet deal, right?"
"Sweeet… deal? Not sure what that means, but it sounds good."
"Right?"
I really needed to make sure this girl never got scammed out in the world. She believed every word people said without a shred of suspicion.
"You mean Lady Dang Yeohye, right? And she believes it because it's you saying it, Boss."
Ilhong squinted at me, having watched me spike food for experiments far too many times.
"Ah. Is that it."
Her faith in me was excessive. What had I even done to deserve it?
Anyway, we headed for the meeting place listed on the commission to meet the named client.
The journey stretched on for quite a while longer.
As I cut through the geography of Liaoning Province without the slightest difficulty—as if I knew every trail by heart—the two women following me cast faintly puzzled looks my way.
Then we crested a high hill, and a winding river came into view.
Even the sound alone was extraordinary: a violent torrent twisting in a jagged course as if it meant to coil around the mountain's waist and crush it.
Faced with a river that looked ready to swallow and pulverize anyone who fell in, I stopped walking without realizing it.
"Incredible. What kind of river is raging like that?"
Jo Harang muttered in open surprise.
Having seen that river flowing straight from the cliff, the Moyong Clan people must have been certain I was dead.
"Boss, why are you glaring at the river like it's your mortal enemy…?"
Ilhong looked at me with something close to pity, muttering that even someone as weird-headed as me shouldn't hold a grudge against nature itself.
"What do you think happens if a person gets swept by rapids all day and smashed against rocks."
"Well… they usually die, right?"
"Yeah. Dead."
Especially back then, when rain had poured in sheets and the rapids had run wild like a mad stallion.
Shaaa—
Salsung seemed to recall the memory just as vividly; she flared her red energy to the fullest.
Wagging that bright crimson form with smug pride, as if demanding thanks.
What thanks. You only saved me because you wanted to live too.
She had forced repairs on this body so she could take it over.
And the moment I could breathe again, she had poked at my skull looking for a place to squeeze inside.
Shaaa.
Ungrateful…
Funny creature. Ungrateful for what? I never received any grace from her.
"If we go a little further down, the river narrows. We'll cross there."
Once we put this river full of bad blood behind us, the rendezvous point was right ahead.
"So why do you know the geography here so well, Boss."
Questions I had no intention of answering.
Soon it would be time to meet the named client who had thoroughly poked every one of my traumas.
People inevitably confront the past as they live.
Some reminisce and yearn for happy moments.
Others suffer as they re-live times of regret and pain.
Rustle. Rustle.
And here was a woman climbing the rugged mountain range of Liaoning Province.
Eyes gleaming like black pearls, a neatly tied high ponytail, and the worn, frayed uniform of a Myeolmade vice-captain.
She was slowly climbing the very path where, long ago, she had stabbed her younger brother and watched him fall—savoring every step as if tasting old poison.
Thud. Thud.
With each footfall, the memories of that day returned in perfect clarity.
A body chilled by the pouring rain. Blood dripping from the blade. Her brother's wide, startled eyes. The final image of him throwing himself from the edge with a wounded face.
"I was only… trying to keep my promise…"
Whenever her brother had trembled in fear, she had sworn she would protect him no matter what.
And her brother, Moyong Cheongjin, had answered her in turn:
If the moment ever came when the evil star consumed him beyond return—
If the moment ever came when he truly tried to burn the world and kill even her—
Then she was not to hesitate. She was to stab him.
"But then, Cheongjin… what was that last look…"
He had cried that it was a misunderstanding, that it was not the Heavenly Killing Star at all. He had begged her desperately to save him.
That figure had seemed so lucid that she herself had been seized with sudden fear.
"Hard as it is to believe… if you truly are alive…"
Even after the star lost its light, the Blood Sect groups had moved with absolute certainty that he still existed somewhere.
If that child was truly alive, and yet no great disasters had been reported all this time… then perhaps he had truly regained his senses, just as he had desperately cried that day.
"Then I…"
Should she rejoice? Or grieve that she had failed to believe him?
The closer she came to the cliff where it had happened, the heavier her steps grew—as if a thousand geun had been laid across her shoulders.
Wanting to savor the aching memories, she could not even think of using light-foot technique.
Forcing herself forward one step at a time, she finally reached the cliff from which her brother had fallen. The first thing that struck her was the depth—the sheer, impossible height.
"…"
Shaaaa—
The roar of the rapids tickled her ears.
A cliff that made survival seem impossible every single time one looked at it.
"…Hm?"
But today, it seemed she was not the only one who had sought out this hidden place.
"Curious. I followed the traces of the evil star, and at the end I find a martial artist."
Black martial robes. A villain whose eyes gleamed with a blood-soaked light looked at her and smiled an eerie smile.
"This is the place—where the vicious Heavenly Killing Star's energy flared the strongest for the last time."
An elderly man following him unfurled a wooden astrology board with a clatter and spoke as if confirming the location.
"Lord Left Blood Dharma, that woman… is likely the Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden of the Moyong Clan."
Black-clad warriors with red headscarves.
After confirming the unfamiliar woman's face, they hurriedly crowded around the man called Left Blood Dharma and whispered her identity.
"Hoh."
Left Blood Dharma's eyebrows twitched with interest.
A cliff in a rugged mountain range no one would ever seek out. And a woman and a force who had climbed it at the same moment, as if by appointment.
Confirming that each side harbored unusual intent, tension instantly whipped across the cliff top.
"Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden. That madwoman who dyes every place she visits with the blood of the wicked."
"Yes. Thanks to the blood that woman spilled, they say the seed of the wicked has dried up throughout Liaoning Province."
At his subordinate's words, the master called Left Blood Dharma grinned, showing yellow teeth.
"Slaughtering the wicked like a maniac. She must have been unable to control her killing intent."
As if certain of something, the blood-red eyes fixed on the woman burned with even more sinister fire.
"And one who has endlessly killed people like that comes, of all places, to the site where the Heavenly Killing Star's energy remains strongest?"
When coincidence repeats often enough, it becomes inevitability.
As if he finally understood, his ominous smile deepened.
It was the face of a man who had at last found the thing he had yearned and searched for without end.
"I don't know by what means you're keeping your sanity, girl… but have you not harbored the Heavenly Killing Star?"
At that ominous remark, every Blood Sect member present turned on her with faces full of madness.
"…"
Feeling those greedy, hideous gazes, Moyong Cheonghye silently drew her white sword.
"Who are you people, and for what reason are you seeking the Heavenly Killing Star here?"
"Heh heh. Well, there are various purposes…"
As if preparing a ritual, Left Blood Dharma slashed a subordinate's palm with a blade and splashed the blood across the ground with a wet slap!
"First of all, I need that body. I would prefer you quietly offer it up for the Blood Sect's great enterprise."
They were almost certainly the Blood Sect group that Blue Cloud Sword Namgung Jin had warned about—the ones hunting the Heavenly Killing Star.
And they seemed to be laboring under some enormous misunderstanding.
But whether her Heavenly Killing Star brother was alive or already a corpse—
She would never place him in their hands.
"Today this Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden shall perform a sword dance for you."
Fierce light erupted from her fingertips, the ultimate blade of the Moyong Clan blazing to life.
A cool breeze swept across a hill in Liaoning Province.
At this place not far from the cliff I had once fallen from, we finally met the long-awaited client.
"Aigo, you must have had a hard time coming all this way."
The client was a frail-looking old man. Figures who appeared to be bodyguards stood close at his sides.
"You are the Dog-Beating Dragon Young Hero Dan Mujin, whose fame is widespread in Beijing, correct?"
He asked with a kindly smile.
Has our reputation already reached Liaoning? It really didn't feel like the right time for that.
"Yes, that's right, but…"
What kind of commission would make someone call us out to a remote mountain range with almost no people around?
"Heh heh. I heard the rumor that you're exceptionally good at finding things."
The old man and his party approached us with welcoming faces, stepping forward briskly.
"I am pretty good at that sort of work."
I was making the usual contact, playing modest as always—when a bright red aura suddenly surged right in front of my eyes.
It pointed at them in the shape of a finger, as if issuing a warning.
Yeah. I felt it too.
The moment I sensed something wrong and opened the Heavenly Killing Eyes, they could no longer hide their murderous intent in front of me.
That peculiar sensation people carry when they intend to kill.
I began to see the murderous trajectories drawn in red toward me.
Looks like these bastards had a reason for naming me specifically and luring me all the way out here.
Not good clients at all.
Shiiik!
And as if to prove the thought correct, the moment they stepped within three paces they wiped every trace of friendliness from their faces and thrust daggers.
Chaeng!
I blocked the attack with the Dog-Beating Staff as if I had been waiting for it and stepped back.
My companions behind me flinched in shock.
"Harang."
Sometimes you get clients who stab you in the back like this.
Years of life as a wandering martial artist had taught her to read the situation instantly; Jo Harang nodded at my call, fighting spirit already rising.
"Go ask them."
"I'm not a hunting dog, Mujin."
A heavy greatsword that looked ready to shatter flesh even if it only brushed past. A woman of unusual power who handled it as lightly as chopsticks.
"I'm the Tiger of Mount Song—!"
Jo Harang charged the enemies like a starving beast.