One Line for a Life
Arrows were supposed to bounce off stone walls — that much was only natural. But the arrows loosed by the Northern Blades were different.
Thwick-thwick!
The sound of shafts punching clean through stone sent a fresh dread rippling through the defenders: even hiding behind cover was no longer safe.
“Hyaah! Hyaat!”
The sharp creak of bowstrings, drawn taut as riders wheeled hard around the small fortress, was terror itself to the men within.
“They go around boasting that the North Sea Ice Palace stands above all the forces Beyond the Border — and it turns out they're nothing but a pack of cowards!”
“How dare that wretch—!”
“Do not take the bait!”
One of the Ice Palace's disciples flared up in fury, but the Grand Elder of the Ice Shadow Corps calmed her with a steady hand.
“Bring the wounded over here.”
“Little Palace Master… sob… sob……”
“It's all right… you're all right……”
The Little Palace Master soothed the young disciple, her girlish face composed. She was doing everything she could to keep her fear from showing — but her trembling hands refused to obey her.
“Gyaaah… aargh!”
“We can't pull it out here. First… the bandages……”
She was tearing strips from her own skirt to dress the wound. Having lost a childhood friend, she still had no time to grieve — the people of the Ice Palace needed her.
Watching her, the Grand Elder felt a bitter despair settle in his chest.
There is nothing to be done, however furious I am… At the very least, I must see the Little Palace Master safely away.
On paper, the Little Palace Master had been dispatched to receive Ming's aid against the remnants of the Northern Yuan. But everyone who knew the truth understood what this operation really was: not a request for support, but an evacuation — carrying the Little Palace Master to safety.
We cannot lose the Ice Palace's future here.
The Grand Elder steeled himself.
Even if every one of us dies, the Little Palace Master must survive — no matter what!
His eyes met the Vice Elder's. After so many years at each other's side, the two could read one another's thoughts without a word.
“I will do it.”
The Grand Elder shook his head at the Vice Elder's offer. “No. It will be me.”
“Grand Elder……”
“Do not forget. Our true mission……”
“…I understand.”
At the Grand Elder's words, the Vice Elder bowed his head, his face heavy with grief.
“The Little Palace Master will refuse, without question.”
“I know.”
“Forgive me. You are the only one I can trust with this.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
Their eyes held for a long moment — and then the Grand Elder shouted.
“Little Palace Master! It has come to this — we must fight to the last!”
Her face firm with resolve, the Little Palace Master nodded.
“Stay with me until the very end!”
“Of course! I'll be at your side until the—”
Thud!
The Vice Elder, standing behind her, struck her unconscious.
Watching, the Grand Elder spoke with grim resolve. “Listen well, all of you. We will buy the time the Little Palace Master needs to escape.”
“Yes, Grand Elder!”
Amid the thunder of their answering cry, the Grand Elder climbed to the top of the wall and studied the movements of the Northern Blades.
“How many sound horses do we have?”
“Five, sir.”
“Then……”
He issued his orders to the unit. And so, after the sun had sunk and only moonlight lit the night, the warriors came forward one by one, leading their horses before him.
“If you can live, then live! If not, then buy even a moment more of time!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Every heartbeat you gain matters.”
With faces grim as funeral masks, the riders mounted up — and the Grand Elder swung silently into his own saddle, hauling hard on the reins.
“Go!”
Screech!
The moment the gate swung open, four riders burst forth, splitting in different directions and galloping into the dark.
Watching two riders to each horse as they scattered, Oyangga, commander of Squad 10 of the Northern Blades, turned to his men.
“Cute little tricks. Split up and hunt them down.”
“Yes, sir!”
At their commander's word, the Northern Blades divided and gave chase.
Once the pursuers had vanished into the distance, the Vice Elder led his horse slowly out, lifted the unconscious Little Palace Master from her litter, and settled her onto the saddle behind him.
“I'm sorry.”
“It is not your fault, sir.”
“Go.”
The instant he confirmed the Northern Blades were gone, the Vice Elder dug his heels in and rode like a man possessed, never once looking back.
“Neigh! Neigh!”
The horse was winded, snorting raggedly — but the Vice Elder only wrenched the reins harder and spurred it faster.
I must not stop! If I stop—!
He was pulling the reins until his hands ran red with blood when it came.
Shrraaa—!
A sound like the air itself tearing — and with it, a chill of killing intent crawled up his spine.
“Ghk! Damn it all!”
Thwick-thwick!
From far off, a murderous hail of arrows came screaming in.
“Gyaaah!”
Crash!
He wrenched the reins and managed to swerve clear of the first few shafts — but the volley kept coming, and when the horse finally took a hit, the Vice Elder went sprawling across the rough grassland.
“Hrk! Khh!”
The fall punched the breath from him; blood sprayed from his lips. Yet heedless of his injuries, he dragged himself up and gathered the Little Palace Master, still wrapped in her litter.
Oyangga's sharp eyes took in the whole scene in vivid detail, even from far away.
“They're struggling hard, aren't they.”
“Commander!”
Soldiers appeared, slicked head to toe in blood. In their hands they carried the severed head of the Grand Elder of the Ice Shadow Corps.
He hadn't even known how he died — his eyes, wide open, had met his end staring.
“The rest of them?”
“We killed every last one, though they resisted harder than expected.”
“Our dead?”
“Two, sir.”
“And the fallen?”
“Tied up inside the fortress for now.”
“The wounded?”
“Three in total, all of them light injuries.”
At his subordinate's report, Oyangga's face twisted. The scar-seamed features turned uglier, more murderous still.
“Two of our precious men, lost to rabble like this. I'll have no face to show the Great Emperor. Kill that one — and take the Little Palace Master alive.”
“Yes, sir! Hyaah!”
The Northern Blades wheeled and thundered after the fleeing Vice Elder.
Even with the man throwing every ounce of lightness skill he had into his steps, the gap closed in an instant.
“Haah… haah!”
Before he knew it, the Vice Elder was surrounded. Sword in hand, he planted himself between his enemies and the bundle cradled against his chest.
“Surrender quietly, and I'll send you off without pain.”
The crescent blade caught the moonlight and breathed out a blade-cold killing aura.
“Don't make me…… laugh.”
Rumble.
He was opening his mouth to roar that they talk nonsense when something rolled to a stop at the Vice Elder's feet — the Grand Elder's severed head.
Bloodshot veins burst across his eyes.
“You bastards! Have you no decency — not even the barest respect for the dead?!”
“Does decency feed anyone?”
“Silence! Honorless barbarians — savages with neither righteousness nor courtesy!”
“Ha!”
The man with the crescent blade stepped forward, planting himself before the Vice Elder.
“Fine! Then let me taste the sword of the Ice Palace — the blade that knows honor and righteousness!”
“You cur — Snowflake Sword Art!”
Was the northern cold truly this bitter? A frosty chill came crashing down. The strikes were light as snowfall — but within that feather-light movement lurked lethal intent.
“Hyaap!”
Shatter!
A thin sheet of ice and frost spread across the ground and flew at the Northern Blades warrior.
“Hmph!”
But the soldier slipped aside with unhurried grace and thrust his crescent blade.
“Ghk!”
“Haha! Is that all you have?!”
Bam! Bam! Kaang!
The Vice Elder's slender sword shrieked against the massive crescent blade, and his body was hurled backward, skidding across the earth.
At least one of them—!
Crackle!
He pressed his fingers to his own acupoints — and in the same breath, inner energy came roaring out of his body like a dam breaking.
Whiiiing!
A powerful killing frost coiled around his sword. The Northern Blades could tell at a glance that this was no ordinary attack, and they flared their own inner power in answer.
“Die! Snowflake Blossoming Shadow Slash!”
“Burning his primordial core to fuel that strike! He never meant to survive this from the start!”
Blades of searing ice fanned out in every direction, tearing into the Northern Blades standing nearby.
KWA-KWA-KWANG!
In the middle of the mist-shrouded grassland, the Vice Elder's face aged decades in the span of a breath — withering until every line was plain to see.
“Haah… haah… At least… a few of them……”
“Hrk! Hrk!”
“Damn it!”
As Northern Blades warriors groaned in pain all around him, the Vice Elder raised his sword and readied himself for one final charge—
Shrraaa! Thunk! KWANG!
—the very moment he moved. A massive crescent blade came flying from far away, punched clean through his body, and buried itself in the earth.
“Khk… hrk… ka… hah……”
Hummmm.
Did the blade feel wronged, somehow, for what it had been made to do? It rang, long and low, as if keening.
“Cowards…… all of you……”
Having failed to take even a single enemy with him, the Vice Elder bowed his head, his face a mask of bitter regret.
“A stubborn one, aren't you.”
Leaving the dying man gripping his sword even in death, the blood-streaming Northern Blades moved toward the litter where the Little Palace Master lay bundled. For all the chaos of battle, she hadn't reacted at all — had they caught the acupoints properly, then?
They unwrapped the litter — and a woman was revealed.
“Huh?”
“Damn it!”
Thud.
Her arm dropped limply to the ground. It was the corpse of a woman dressed in the uniform of the Ice Shadow Corps — not the Little Palace Master at all, but a face none of them knew.
Watching from a distance, Oyangga's face turned terrible.
“Those… those accursed wretches — they pulled a trick like this!”
Only now did it register: this direction did not lead south. It led north — the one direction no one fleeing for their life would ever choose.
They came this way deliberately — baiting us! Then the Little Palace Master is… the fortress! She's still in the fortress!
Oyangga looked back at his men.
“The prisoners are tied up in the fortress, are they not?”
“Yes, sir — for rapid deployment……”
“Damn it! Everyone, about-face! The Little Palace Master is in the fortress!”
And so the Northern Blades wheeled and galloped back toward the fortress — but by then, the Little Palace Master and the remaining Ice Shadow Corps warriors were already riding hard for the southern horizon.
“Hk… hukk… sob, sob……”
The young Ice Shadow Corps warrior wept as she hauled on the reins hard enough to split her palms — and behind her horse, clinging on without understanding anything, rode the Little Palace Master. Across the endless grassland, they fled like the wind itself.
“Haaah……”
Ever since arriving at the front, Yu Yangcheol had spent his days sighing over the mountains of paperwork that never stopped coming.
Was it because there was so much to do? No.
It was a sigh brimming with sorrow.
“Twenty years old… and this soldier's life and death end in a single line.”
Watching him, Samryong slowly poured him a cup of tea.
“You should rest a little.”
“Every time I read one of these, I find myself wishing I'd gone out to the battlefield to fight in their stead……”
“That's… just what war is, Uncle.”
In his past life, after clearing a dungeon, Samryong had handled the bodies. And when a dungeon investigator came asking how the deceased had died, the Samryong of that life — Kim Samyong — had needed only a single sentence.
Killed by a monster.
Wasn't that the very height of emptiness? Before entering the dungeon, a person would talk of their dreams, of the life they had lived, of how they meant to live going forward — and then, mere days, mere hours later, they were a cold corpse, and everything they were was closed out by that one line. Killed by a monster.
How bitter it all is.
No cause, however noble, could ever justify war — and even in victory, it was never a complete victory. Any victory was one purchased with someone's blood.
Yu Yangcheol watched his nephew lost in thought, his eyes full of pity. Before coming here, Yu Yanghui had told him roughly how Samryong had fared in the Tang Clan, and what he had been through of late.
“Is life in the Tang Clan — the life of a martial artist — truly like this?”
“Well… it's not usually quite this bad.”
He seemed to have misunderstood, but Samryong had no particular desire to correct him. And so, at Samryong's smile, Yu Yangcheol let the subject drop.
“Still, is the work bearable? With that clever head of yours, doesn't spending it all on a physician's duties seem a terrible waste?”
“I'm clever, am I? Careful, you'll get tea spilled on you.”
“You rascal!”
Samryong took a slow sip of tea and went on. “Honestly? I'd rather save one more person than sit at a desk reading reports. It's rewarding, you know?”
Samryong had been working as a combat medic, treating the wounded — putting into real practice everything he'd once only learned from books.
“You're right… you've grown into a better man than I am.”
“There's no such thing. Each of us simply does what we do best.”
They were resting over their tea when a thunderous voice rang out across the ward.
“This blood isn't mine! Physicians — treat the wounded, not me!”
At Hang Jeoksan's bellow, they realized: the men who had marched out to battle were returning.
“I should go. Uncle.”
“Go on. Mind yourself out there.”
Samryong headed for the casualty ward, already overflowing with the wounded.
“Bandages! Bandages! You there! Where in blazes did you run off to?!”
“Just stepped out for some tea.”
“Tea?! You have time to lounge around drinking tea?! Get over here and help!”
The moment Lee Jitae, chief physician of the expedition, laid eyes on Samryong, he started bellowing.
At first Samryong had wondered why the man shouted so much — until he learned that the pained moans of the wounded drowned out everything, and shouting was the only way to be heard at all.
“Th-that… the, the, the—!”
“The disinfectant spirits?”
“That's it!”
Of course, the shouting wasn't only about being heard — the man simply had a foul temper. And yet he was far more open-minded than Samryong had expected.
No matter how clumsily Samryong tried to explain the medical knowledge of his past life, Lee Jitae grasped it at once — and embraced it. Physicians who reached a certain level of renown were supposed to have egos that scraped the heavens, but Lee Jitae had none of that. He was the kind of man who would use any method at all, so long as it was more efficient and saved more patients.
Which meant there was a great deal Samryong could learn from him.
“I'll need to suture this. Put him under with that clever acupuncture of yours.”
“Would you like to learn it, while you're at it?”
Lee Jitae nodded at once. “Later. You go look after the other patients for now.”
“Yes, sir.”
And so Samryong threw himself into caring for the wounded in earnest.
“I said bring clean water! Go draw it again! Cleanliness! The casualty ward must be spotless at all times! Wash those cloths and bring them back!”
Matching Lee Jitae's temper blow for blow, Samryong had soon made himself one of the indispensable physicians of the entire expedition.
“Physician! Physician!”
Just then a soldier burst in, frantically searching for Lee Jitae.
“Treating the wounded comes first! Come back later!”
Lee Jitae snapped at him coldly — but the soldier's errand was something else entirely.
“Th-the Grand General is asking for you.”
“…The Grand General?”
Lee Jitae glanced over his patients for a moment, then looked at Samryong.
“Take that one instead. I'm busy.”
“Ah……”
“You've been treated by him yourself, haven't you? You know his skill! You said it was urgent!”
“Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”
“Physician Yu! Come with me, please—”
“I'm not actually a physician……”
“Please, I'm begging you……!”
Caught in the soldier's desperate eyes, Samryong finally followed after him, quietly wearing a look of deep displeasure.