Is This Really Okay? (2)
Jolt. Jolt.
Seop Pyeong twitched bizarrely with his face buried in the dirt. The martial artists of the Evil Tyrant Alliance stared dumbly at his back, too stunned to react.
There are moments in life like that.
Moments when your eyes see what happened, but your mind needs a little time to catch up. Moments when the brain simply refuses to accept that the world has changed that quickly.
Of course, for them, that was perfectly understandable.
In the middle of this lonely mountain wilderness, someone had suddenly burst in and kicked Seop Pyeong flying without so much as a warning. If they hadn’t been stunned, that would have been stranger.
Normally, this was the point where the Heavenly Friends Alliance should have said something, but the problem was that even they were in no position to open their mouths right now.
The only thought dominating their heads was this:
They knew, of course.
After all, the moment they couldn’t hold back until the very end and kicked against the ground, at the very least, Jo Geol, Yoon Jong, and Baek Cheon no longer had the right to say anything like that.
And yet, Baek Cheon blurted it out anyway.
“Uh... um...”
He glanced back and forth between the convulsing Seop Pyeong and the snarling Cheong Myeong, then finally let the words slip out.
“Is this... okay?”
“......”
For a moment, silence fell.
A little later, the person who should not have answered did.
“What?”
Cheong Myeong’s infuriatingly casual response made Baek Cheon wonder, for a brief instant, whether he was the one missing something or getting confused.
“N-no. I know I don’t have the right to say that, but... still... we’re in Jiangnan.”
“What’s the problem? Those bastards explained everything already.”
“Huh?”
Cheong Myeong pointed at the man he had knocked down.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Uh.”
“It’ll take at least a few days before the news spreads.”
“......”
“And we’ll be on Hainan within three days, at the latest.”
Cheong Myeong answered with complete indifference.
“What’re the Sapa bastards gonna do when they find out then?”
...Come to think of it, that almost made sense...
“Still, what if they chase us at least that far...”
“Aw, come on, Sasuk.”
Cheong Myeong clicked his tongue.
“What kind of grand loyalty do those Sapa bastards have that they’d chase us all the way to Hainan just to avenge a bunch of bottom-feeding trash like this? If they had that kind of loyalty, they wouldn’t be Sapa bastards.”
“......”
“And if they do chase us, then let them. We just dump the lot of them into the sea and drown them!”
Ah. So that was what he really meant. Understood.
At that moment, Jo Geol stepped forward with a grin.
“Well... it’s already turned out like this. What else are we supposed to do, Sasuk?”
And Yoon Jong, too, wore a strange expression as he quietly drew his sword.
“Since it’s already happened, all we can do is clean it up properly.”
Baek Cheon stared blankly at the two men stepping forward. The two of them spoke as calmly as if they had forgotten Baek Cheon even existed.
“How exactly do we clean it up properly, Saje?”
“What a foolish question. Think about it. If any of them were to go back and start talking about us, things would become very troublesome indeed.”
“Oh. That definitely can’t happen.”
“Exactly. So there’s no helping it, is there? We have no choice but to settle this cleanly so none of them can open their mouths.”
“That sounds a little cruel, doesn’t it?”
“If you fear punishing evil, more people will suffer. Righteousness does not exist to satisfy my own small conscience.”
“Truly, those are wise words.”
Jo Geol grinned and raised his sword.
At that moment, Namgung Dowi, who had been watching from a few steps behind, started edging around behind the remnants of the Evil Tyrant Alliance.
“...If possible, it would be good to hide the fact that they ever arrived here as well.”
A sinister expression that hardly suited the Young Patriarch of the Namgung Clan flickered across his face.
“If they vanish without a trace, people might think they ran off as a group after getting greedy for the grain. Wouldn’t you agree, Brother?”
Tang Pae nodded and quietly began to encircle the Sapa men from the opposite side.
“...A fair point. Don’t worry. Erasing traces is our family’s specialty. We can clean this up without leaving so much as a single hair behind.”
Tang Pae pulled a small vial from his sleeve and smiled faintly. To anyone who didn’t know what he was holding, it would have looked like nothing more than a good-natured face, but to those who did, it would never seem that way.
Ah, of course, even those who didn’t know what the vial was still didn’t seem inclined to think well of him. Judging by the way the faces of the encircled men were draining white, that much was clear.
“So, basically, you’re saying we should make this as clean as possible and erase the traces.”
“As quietly as possible.”
“And ideally, we should make it look like they vanished instead of died, so the villagers won’t get dragged into this?”
“Not exactly difficult.”
The vicious, righteous bastards began to press in on the frail Sapa men with ominous expressions. Overwhelmed by that terrifying aura, the Sapa men kept darting nervous glances around them, panic written all over their faces.
“Y-you! Who are you!”
“Us?”
“Y-you dare interrupt an event of the Evil Tyrant Alliance and think you’ll get away with it...”
“Is that idiot really this stupid? We already interrupted it. If he keeps talking like that, they’re just gonna bury him harder. Does he not understand the situation?”
“Tsk, tsk. Geol. Why would a man with a brain become Sapa?”
“Then what about the Green Forest King?”
“...Let’s make an exception for him.”
In any other place in the world, threatening people with the name of the Evil Tyrant Alliance would have worked beautifully.
The pity was that the ones they had run into were among the very few people under heaven for whom a threat like that meant absolutely nothing.
“So... I guess the conclusion’s obvious?”
All eyes turned in one direction. Under that collective gaze, Baek Cheon let out a long sigh.
“Uh...”
At last, he shook his head as if he still didn’t really know what he was doing and pointed vaguely at the vagrant bandits.
“Deal with them.”
“Yes, sir!”
The moment the words left his mouth, the so-called wicked men who had surrounded the carts surged forward like a pack of wolves at the frail prey.
Baek Cheon shook his head.
There was no need to keep watching. They had simply hesitated a little too long; from the start, the people here were far too much for a bunch of bottom-tier Evil Tyrant Alliance trash like this to handle.
One of them would have been enough to sweep them all away. When there were ten of them, what more was there to say?
Baek Cheon tore his eyes away from the carts and turned to the fallen old man. Dang So-so was already crouched beside him, working to stop the bleeding from his wounds. With his expression darkening slightly, Baek Cheon stepped over and asked her,
“How is he?”
“...The wound isn’t as deep as we feared, so I don’t think his life is in danger. But he’s very old, and...”
“Father! Please, save my father! Please!”
The woman who had not left the old man’s side for even a moment nearly lost her mind at those words. Just as Baek Cheon was about to sigh and comfort her, a voice came from behind him.
“Um...”
Baek Cheon looked back slightly at the voice.
The middle-aged man who had been cringing and bowing shamelessly toward the Evil Tyrant Alliance a moment ago was now bowing just as badly toward Baek Cheon instead.
Baek Cheon frowned before he even realized it. Even in the chaos earlier, he had heard what this man had said quite clearly.
Didn’t he say that an old man’s life wasn’t that important?
He understood, of course. It couldn’t have been easy to speak properly with a blade being shoved in your face by a robber.
But how could he look kindly on a man who had insulted the villagers he had been living with just to save his own skin?
“L-lord. I-if it’s not too rude, may I dare ask who you all are?”
“We’re in the middle of treating him...”
“L-lord. We’re just ignorant bumpkins, so why would you bother with people like us...? It’s not work for hands as precious as yours.”
...Was that really something to say while an injured neighbor was lying there? The man was trying so desperately to flatter him that irritation rose in Baek Cheon’s chest, and without meaning to, he answered a little curtly.
“Are you worried we might be like those bastards?”
“N-not at all, Lord! Not at all! I-I’m merely uneducated and foolish, so... I don’t know how to properly greet such noble people...”
That pitiful sight, as though the man might slam his forehead into the ground and prostrate himself any second, made Baek Cheon consider snapping back at him, but in the end he only let out a low sigh.
Come to think of it, what exactly had these people done wrong? It was the martial artists who wandered around broad daylight with swords at their waists and swung them at other human beings who were at fault.
“I can’t reveal our identities, but we didn’t come with any ill intent, so don’t worry.”
“Th-then perhaps...”
The man’s eyes rolled nervously. Then, as if he were about to say something truly dreadful, he asked hesitantly,
“Th-that is... perhaps from Jiangbuk...”
When Baek Cheon didn’t answer either way, the man’s face turned deathly pale.
“Th-then right now...”
Baek Cheon bit his lip slightly.
What exactly is this supposed to be?
The Heavenly Friends Alliance had clearly helped them. These villagers might not understand that, but how much risk had they taken in making that choice?
And yet instead of expressing gratitude, these people were worrying first about the retaliation from the Evil Tyrant Alliance that might come later. These were the same people who would already have become ice-cold corpses if not for them.
No matter how worried they were, shouldn’t their first words have been thanks? Or at the very least, shouldn’t they have gone to check the condition of the neighbor bleeding on the ground?
It left him with a kind of disgust that was hard to put into words. If he had only let loose and shouted at them, that would have been a relief.
But instead of getting angry, Baek Cheon explained as politely as he could.
“...We’ll do our best to make sure the village suffers no harm.”
“Pardon?”
“If we move the cart a little and set it down below the mountain, then erase the signs of people being here, the Evil Tyrant Alliance will think these men ran off with valuables instead of being attacked. So don’t worry too much.”
“Y-you’d do that? I-it feels like we’re imposing so terribly...”
“Of course we will.”
“Oh, Lord! Thank you so much. T-then what should we give you in return...”
“...I didn’t do this for a reward.”
“Pardon?”
Baek Cheon bit his lip again. The words he wanted to say—that while they were wasting time spouting nonsense, shouldn’t they be checking once more on the old man bleeding on the ground as a basic human courtesy?—rose into his throat and barely went back down.
“We won’t take any payment, so don’t worry. Help yourselves to the grain over there too. Just be careful, since the Evil Tyrant Alliance may come back to check later.”
“Th-thank you. Thank you very much, Lord!”
“Are we done now?”
At that, the man didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to check the situation around the carts. Only after he had confirmed that the Dan Sword disciples and the others were beating the Sapa men like dogs did he turn his head back toward the fallen old man.
Just as Baek Cheon was about to snap at him for only now noticing the man who had been cut down...
“Ah...”
The man’s mouth fell open, and his face twisted into an expression so distorted it was hard to describe. Then, with a cry like a wild beast, he rushed to the old man’s side.
“Father! Aaaah! Fathereeee!”
Baek Cheon’s eyes flew wide open.