Is This Really Okay? (1)
Jo Geol turned his bloodshot eyes to the side.
Yoon Jong’s hand was pressing hard against his shoulder. If it had been any other time, Jo Geol would have started yelling immediately, but this time even he couldn’t say a word.
Was it because he knew they couldn’t afford to make a scene?
No, that wasn’t it. It was because Yoon Jong’s eyes, fixed straight ahead without even glancing his way, looked utterly terrifying.
Crk.
The faint sound of Yoon Jong grinding his teeth slipped out. Through clenched jaws, he said, “...Wait.”
“...”
Jo Geol bit his lip hard without saying anything and stared back at the village.
“F-Father! Father!”
The village woman standing behind the old village head went deathly pale and grabbed frantically at his chest. Blood was pouring from the gaping wound in his chest.
“Faaather!”
Every villager had gone ghost-white, but none of them could raise their voices to protest or curse. The man’s sword was far too threatening for that.
“...Are you crazy?”
The one who protested in their place was the man’s companion, who had come here with him.
The burly man wiped the blood that had splattered onto his sleeve from his face and gave a crooked smile.
“Do I look crazy?”
“...What the hell are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking? Our orders were to hand out grain and make sure everyone understood the Alliance Lord’s grace, right?”
“...”
“There was nothing about what to do after that. So I haven’t broken any orders.”
“You lunatic... Is that really what you’re saying?”
The face of the man in the scholar’s robes turned blue with rage.
“Do you even know what you just did, Akbong? Do you think the higher-ups won’t butcher you if they find out?”
“And how are they supposed to find out?”
“...What?”
“How are they going to know?”
The man called Akbong grinned.
“Whether one mountain village like this disappears or not, how exactly would those grand, important higher-ups ever hear about it?”
“...”
“The mission’s been carried out. What happens after that isn’t our fault.”
The scholar-robed man narrowed his eyes. He understood exactly what this bastard was saying.
“You want to...”
“No, think about it. They sent a bunch of small fry like us because this place is some little backwater village in the mountains.”
The word small fry didn’t sound very pleasant, but in truth, it wasn’t wrong.
“If we go back empty-handed, what do the higher-ups care whether we actually handed out the grain properly or not?”
“Damn it, and there’s not even a decent place to sell the grain!”
“If you want to sell it, you can sell it anywhere. And there’s no need to sell it at all. This is Jiangnan now—what’s more valuable here than rice? We could do just about anything with the grain alone.”
“...”
“What’s wrong with us wetting our throats a little? The ones in the wrong are the bastards who make people work without paying proper wages.”
The scholar-robed man clicked his tongue. By now, the hard edge of his face had softened considerably.
“Will we really be able to clean up after this...?”
“God, you’re such a bore. If nobody with a mouth is left behind, maybe the higher-ups will hear about it. But... after we leave, something might just happen to the village by coincidence. Maybe some Green Forest remnants raid the place, or wild beasts attack. Right, boys?”
At those words, the eyes of the men following behind the wagon turned cold and eerie.
“We’re heading to Xiangyang next, right?”
“So?”
“If it’s Xiangyang, there’ll be a bigger city, so there’ll be places to have some fun! Let’s handle this quickly, grab the grain, and hit the pleasure quarter too! It’s been a while since we got to wet our throats, so let’s really wet ’em!”
That seemed to be the decisive blow. A strange heat began to rise from the men trailing behind them. Seeing that, the scholar-robed man let out a reluctant sigh.
“Ha... I still don’t like this...”
“Don’t be such a coward. Since when did you turn into such a frightened mouse? Just hearing the name of Maninbang and you’re ready to wet yourself.”
“You done yet?”
“What is Maninbang? We’re Black Ghost Fort! If not for those Demonic Cult bastards, do you think the Great Father would’ve fallen so easily?”
“...”
“Just watching those lucky scum who got to gorge themselves on the Evil Tyrant Alliance strutting around is enough to make me want to throw up. And now they want us to be obedient lapdogs too?”
“Tsk.”
The man’s face twisted as though he’d swallowed something bitter, and Akbong, who had been pressing him relentlessly, quietly changed his tone.
“It’s not that big a deal anyway. Just don’t get caught. As long as we don’t get caught, what’s the problem? Right?”
“...Make sure the cleanup is thorough.”
“Heh heh. That’s my specialty.”
Thinking the matter was settled, Akbong raised his voice.
“Hey, you lot! Since it’s come to this, we’d better hurry a little! That way you’ll have time to enjoy yourselves too!”
No answer was even necessary.
With that alone, the men behind the wagon seemed to understand what they had to do. They rushed forward all at once and surrounded the villagers in a tight ring, as though not a single person were allowed to escape.
The scholar-robed man snorted.
“No wonder he was so careful counting everyone. Felt out of place.”
“Heh. Better to be certain. Being certain’s the important thing.”
Watching everything without missing a single detail, Jo Geol growled through clenched teeth.
“...Senior brother.”
“Wait.”
“Senior brother.”
“I said wait.”
Yoon Jong bit down hard on his lip. He pressed so hard that his lips went white, then began to show traces of blood.
He wanted to rush out right now and smash them to pieces. But this wasn’t just anywhere; this was Jiangnan. One careless move here could cost countless lives. He had no way of knowing how many people would be dragged into the consequences of their recklessness.
“Don’t... move.”
“Senior brother!”
Jo Geol looked at Yoon Jong desperately, but Yoon Jong’s eyes still never turned toward him. The gaze that held his attention was fixed on Baek Cheon’s back ahead of them.
Sasuk.
The one who would make the decision was not Yoon Jong, but Baek Cheon.
Even while holding their breath, the sounds of teeth grinding and swords being fiddled with stabbed noisily into his ears.
And then, down below, Akbong started moving.
“See? You should’ve given us a job that actually suited us. If you’d just told us to raid some homes, grab a bit of the take, and bring the leftover money back, I’d have done it more faithfully than anyone. You don’t tell a dog to graze on grass.”
Even the scholar-robed man couldn’t refute that.
If they’d been the sort of people content to receive a decent wage, train, and stand guard, they wouldn’t have thrown themselves into the unorthodox path in the first place.
They became unorthodox because they were the kind of people who couldn’t survive doing honest work. So was it even reasonable to tell them to live like righteous sects now?
No, this is definitely the higher-ups’ fault.
After justifying it to himself, the man said with a spit-spitting grimace, “Don’t use your sword, just in case.”
“Huh?”
“Too many corpses gone would be suspicious. Tear them apart with your hands. Make it look like wild beasts attacked.”
“Heh heh. Look at the little schemer.”
With a laugh, Akbong shoved his sword back into its scabbard. It was a bit bothersome, but people who didn’t even know martial arts were easy enough to tear apart with bare hands.
“M-Milords... why are you doing this...?”
The villagers, watching the situation turn with no hope of escape, trembled in terror, their faces white as paper.
And among them, one man who understood the situation a little better quickly realized what he had to do.
“P-Please spare us!”
He dropped flat to the ground and cried out in a desperate voice.
“We took it! We, we took the grain!”
“Hm?”
“The milords gave us grain and left, but we were fools and tried to hide it, and it got lost!”
“Oh?”
The scholar-robed man, Cheoppyeong, showed a flicker of interest in his eyes and stared at the middle-aged man bowing before him.
“That’s what I’ll say! If anyone asks, I’ll say it exactly like that, even with a blade at my throat! T-Then the milords can keep their honor too, can’t you?”
“You’re an interesting one.”
Cheoppyeong chuckled.
“But what do we do about this? We’ve already cut down that old man.”
“What’s the big deal about killing one old man with only a few years left anyway? If he’s buried properly, no one will know how he died!”
“Wow...”
Cheoppyeong looked at the man, seemingly impressed.
“O-Or if not that, then a cliff! We’ll throw him off a cliff. Then no one will know he was killed by a blade!”
Cheoppyeong watched the man with an admiring expression. If he kept talking like this, they really could make this easy on themselves.
“Can you really do that?”
“O-Of course, milord! How could we ever dare speak a lie? People as ignorant as us know better than anyone how to survive!”
“And you don’t want revenge?”
“W-Why would we talk about revenge over some old man’s life?”
“...If you open your mouths, we might be inconvenienced.”
“M-Milord. We may be uneducated fools, but we understand how the world works. If we speak carelessly and offend you milords, how could we possibly stay alive?”
“You’re way too clever to be living in a mountain backwater like this.”
Cheoppyeong clicked his tongue.
Even if this was discovered, it wouldn’t necessarily mean everyone who came here would die. No matter how cruel Maninbang might be, the Evil Tyrant Alliance was short on manpower now.
And if even one of them survived, this village would absolutely pay for it later. So it was better to keep their mouths shut from the start.
“That’s true enough... If you do that, it makes things easier for us.”
“T-Then...”
“But listen.”
Cheoppyeong smiled faintly.
“No matter how I look at it, you’re a little too smart.”
“M-Milord?”
Cheoppyeong’s eyes turned cold.
“I’m the kind of person who’d rather put up with a little trouble than leave a bastard like you alive and feel uneasy about it. Killing all of you would only be a bit of bother to me.”
“You... you damn bastards...!”
Hatred flooded the middle-aged man’s eyes.
“I’ll curse you even in hell! You filthy unorthodox bastards, worse than dogs!”
“Fine!”
With murderous intent blazing in his eyes, Cheoppyeong kicked off the ground and shot toward the middle-aged man in an instant. Red energy surged from both his hands.
“No—”
At last, Yoon Jong, Jo Geol, and Namgung Dowi could no longer hold back and sprang from the ground.
But in that very moment, what they saw was Baek Cheon—racing in a straight line toward Cheoppyeong faster than they were.
S-Sasuk!
Meanwhile, Baek Cheon’s face, as he lunged forward, shook with despair.
No, damn it!
Because he had hesitated until the very last instant, he was half a step too late. At this rate, there was no way he could stop that middle-aged man from being slaughtered.
Damn it!
He should have made up his mind—either hold back or step in. Instead, after wavering, he was about to lose both. Just as Baek Cheon was on the verge of letting out a furious roar, unable to contain the rage surging out of him—
“You damn unorthodox bastard!”
KWA-AAANG!
Cheoppyeong, who had been lunging at the middle-aged man, was blown backward even faster than he had charged in.
Spitting blood as he flew, he crashed to the ground and immediately started convulsing.
Baek Cheon stared blankly at the sight. Through the rising cloud of dust, a face more unorthodox than the unorthodox itself ground its teeth in fury.
“I’ve been watching this, and now this bastard really wants to die.”
...Ah, right. Come to think of it, I was the one who couldn’t hold back—there was no way you would’ve been able to either.
Heh...
Heh heh heh...