No! This Is Going Too Far! (2)
Huh Gong’s eyes trembled as he clutched the wooden box.
This... this is the Honwon Dan...?
He was an elder of Wudang. He was not such a fool that he could not guess what this object was from the situation alone. The fact that they had finally laid hands on the Honwon Dan sent a surge of elation through his chest.
At that moment, Heo Sanja sprang backward and took his place beside Huh Gong.
"Over here!"
"Yes!"
Heo Sanja took the wooden box. Huh Gong immediately drew his sword and stood in front of Heo Sanja, ready to block Chung Myung if he rushed in.
But Chung Myung, oddly enough, seemed to have no intention of charging them at all. He only stared at the pair with a hollow expression.
With hands that trembled slightly, Heo Sanja clutched the box and let out a low breath.
After all that hardship...
They had gone through far greater tribulations than he had ever imagined, but at last, the thought that they had succeeded filled his body with strength.
Of course, there was still the matter of escaping safely, but even so, they had effectively achieved eighty percent of their initial goal.
Still, I should check it.
Heo Sanja gripped the lid.
The Honwon Dan. And the formula for making the Honwon Dan.
If the former was inside, it would be a small victory. If the latter was inside, it would be a great one. And if both were there, it would be the best possible outcome.
Swallowing dryly, Heo Sanja snapped the lid open in one motion.
Then his eyes flew wide, as though they might split apart.
"Th...!"
His body began to shake violently.
So violently, in fact, that even Huh Gong, standing with his back to him, sensed that something had gone wrong.
Huh Gong glanced back.
"...Senior martial brother?"
Heo Sanja’s face had become so complicated, so unreadable, that even someone who had known him for decades could not make sense of it.
"Why...?"
Heo Sanja fumbled with trembling fingers inside the box, searching wildly. The more frantically he moved, the more agitated he became...
"Why!"
A roar burst from his throat.
"Why is there nothing here! Why is there nothing at all!"
At last, he flipped the box over and shook it out. But nothing fell.
He even checked the box itself several times, wondering if it might conceal some secret compartment. He searched every inch, shaking and turning it over and over. But as expected, all that remained in his hands was nothing more than an ordinary box.
Complete mockery.
What else could he possibly think?
Veins bulged red in Heo Sanja’s eyes. He was so furious that the blood vessels there seemed ready to burst.
"Yak Seon! You... you son of a bitch!"
He snatched up the wooden box and hurled it to the ground, smashing it to pieces.
Even then, he pawed through the splinters, hoping against hope, but no hidden parchment or secret slip of sheepskin was there to be found, no matter how carefully he looked.
It had been nothing more than an empty box.
"Heh heh..."
Nothing?
They had endured all this suffering to get here, only to find that the box contained nothing and the so-called divine swords had all rusted away to dust?
Then what in the world had the Sword Tomb even existed for?
Just as Heo Sanja was struggling to contain the flood of humiliation and rage, Chung Myung finally snapped.
"Hey, you...!"
He started pounding his own chest like a man who was about to explode from frustration.
"Aaaagh! You idiots have gotten old in reverse!"
"..."
"You got slapped around like dogs all the way here, and then you still had to go poke at it?! Are your eyes just decorative holes? You kept yapping about desire and greed and all that crap, and then you go and do this because you couldn't resist your own greed?"
Huh Gong tilted his head.
What the hell is that brat talking about?
Desire? Greed?
What?
Seeing that neither of them seemed to understand a damn thing, Chung Myung became so irritated he stopped pounding his chest and began scratching his head violently instead.
I knew something felt off.
That was the thought he had carried all the way through the Sword Tomb.
Yak Seon had shown no goodwill whatsoever to those who entered the tomb; if anything, he had been openly malicious.
A trial?
Get real.
What kind of trial is this, for fuck’s sake?
He had collapsed ceilings to bury people alive, set blood-sucking bat robes loose to drain them dry, and even hidden jiangshi in the dark.
A trial only had meaning if failure did not automatically mean death.
What sort of trial was this place, where one wrong step left you with nothing but death?
Chung Myung ground his teeth.
Then that wooden box.
Was there really no trap inside it?
As if.
"What kind of idiot pokes the hornet’s nest knowing what’ll happen?! You horse-faced bastards! Damn it, I’m about to bust a vein here!"
Thud!
While Chung Myung was hurling out a storm of vile curses, the disciples of Wudang and Mount Hua arrived one after another. They had climbed the cliff with their nerves fully braced for battle, but the moment they reached the top, they could do nothing but hold their breath at the bizarre standoff before them.
"What are you talking about?"
In the end, Huh Gong could not hold back and asked.
As if he had been waiting for that, Chung Myung barked at him.
"If you’ve got a head on your shoulders, use it! There’s nothing there!"
"...Yes."
"Then what do you think is left?"
That was when it happened.
Rumble.
All heads snapped around.
The rock.
The stone where the box had been placed was shaking.
"...No way."
Huh Gong’s eyes widened so much they seemed ready to split open.
Even Heo Sanja, whose reason had been half-lost to fury, seemed to come to his senses all at once and stared at the rock in panic.
The trembling grew stronger and stronger.
"W-what!"
"Wait, why is that suddenly moving...?"
By coincidence, Baek Cheon had just finished climbing the cliff. Seeing the fragments of the wooden box Heo Sanja had thrown aside and the shaking rock, he grasped the situation at once.
A groan escaped him.
"...Was this a trap too?"
"Grrrrr..."
Chung Myung scrubbed both hands over his face.
No, not now!
The Honwon Dan, or whatever else it was, meant nothing if they died here. Chung Myung quickly looked around.
There!
Above them, where light was pouring down.
That was the path to brilliance...?
"Huh?"
But at that moment, Chung Myung saw it.
The tremor that had begun at the rock climbed up the cliff and reached the cracks in the ceiling.
And at the same time, the entire Sword Tomb began to shake as if an earthquake had struck.
"Eeeeek!"
"W-what is it? Why is this happening?"
"No way?!"
But no one could bring themselves to say the rest. The consequences were obvious, but they were afraid that if they spoke the thought aloud, the disaster would actually come to pass. So they only expressed their shock in roundabout ways.
Chung Myung slowly lifted his head.
Before long, the Mount Hua disciples who had gathered behind him also raised their gazes toward the light overhead and the ceiling of the cave.
In the end, Chung Myung spoke.
"Sasuk."
"Hm?"
"That’s about to cave in, isn’t it?"
"Unless my eyes are lying to me, I’d say yes."
"Then what happens to us?"
"We die."
"Right?"
Chung Myung smiled brightly.
Then, all of a sudden, he screamed as if convulsing.
"No! This is too much, seriously! Yak Seon! You crazy bastard!"
Yak Seon, my ass!
What lunatic had given such a gentle, exalted title to a madman like this? He should’ve been called Medicine Demon or something. Hell, maybe Drug Fiend—what was it, druggie? No, wait, that’s not right.
RUMBLE—!
At that instant, a deafening roar like the sky itself splitting apart thundered through the tomb, and the Sword Tomb lurched violently.
And then...
Crack.
Crackle-crackle-crack.
Everyone heard it clearly. And everyone saw it.
The ceiling began to split open in long lines. The cracks ran lengthwise and crosswise, spreading like a giant spiderweb across the stone.
Chung Myung shouted in a fury.
"The moment I get out of here, I’m going to beat every single one of those Wudang bastards to death! Damn it, you horse-nosed freaks! There’s a limit to how crazy you can get even if your eyes roll back in your head! Even a three-year-old wouldn’t do something this stupid!"
Heo Sanja involuntarily lowered his head.
How humiliating was it to be cursed like this by a boy young enough to be his grandson? And yet he could not even find a word to refute him.
They had lost their reason for a moment and touched an obvious trap; that was undeniably Wudang’s fault. And now everyone here was about to die because of it.
"W-Wudang! What in the world are you doing? I don’t know what’s going on, but shouldn’t you be fixing this?"
"It’s collapsing! It’s collapsing! We’re all dead!"
"Do something!"
It was a sight of unmitigated ugliness.
The ones who had only just clawed their way up the cliff had apparently forgotten everything they themselves had done until now, and were already starting to blame and curse Wudang.
They seemed to have cleanly erased from their minds the fact that if they hadn’t been dragging Wudang down, none of this would have happened in the first place.
That did not mean Wudang was hurling curses back at them, though.
Even so, Wudang was trying their best to solve the crisis.
However—
BOOOOOOM!
Unfortunately, they had no time left.
With a thunderous impact like the sky being split open, the cracked ceiling finally began to collapse in earnest.
Shit, no!
Baek Cheon went pale.
This was a cylindrical chamber. And everyone had climbed up here. In other words, there was nowhere to run.
"Talgeom Muheun! You insane bastard!"
It was obvious from the start that the whole point had been to gather as many martial artists here as possible and bury them all at once. Just how much malice did a person have to be carrying to come up with something this twisted?
"Chung Myung!"
"Don’t worry! I’m Chung Myung!"
Chung Myung gripped his sword and stared up at the collapsing ceiling.
"They say there’s always a way out even if the sky falls, so even if the ceiling’s coming down, there’s no way I’m..."
Huh?
Suddenly, Chung Myung’s head tilted to one side.
"Sasuk."
"Y-yeah?"
"There isn’t a way out."
"...!"
Baek Cheon’s cheek twitched violently.
"Then what are we supposed to do, you bastard!"
"How the hell am I supposed to know if there isn’t one! Look at that!"
Boulders the size of small hills were crashing down. This wasn’t something a sword could deal with in the first place. Chung Myung, the third-generation disciple of Mount Hua, had no way to solve it. Unless the Chung Myung of the Plum Blossom Sword Saint had come in person.
"I’m not some Heavenly Demon! What am I supposed to do with that?"
"Still, we have to try something!"
"Sasuk, you know what?"
"What?"
"In the end, everyone lives and dies anyway. Let go of your attachments."
"...You insane little bastard..."
Baek Cheon’s utterly exhausted voice seemed to speak for everyone there. Despair began to settle over their faces.
"Cut them down!"
Then a voice like rolling thunder boomed through the chamber.
"Wudang disciples, use everything you've got and cut those things down! Right now!"
"Yes!"
At Heo Sanja’s shout, the disciples of Wudang began to line up in a strange formation.
The Taiji Sword Formation?
It seemed they were instinctively seeking the familiar shape that would let them unleash the greatest possible strength.
But—
Do something that actually makes sense!
If they could cut that down with swords, then what in the world couldn’t be done? One man would not only conquer the martial world—he’d conquer the entire Central Plains.
Think.
Chung Myung’s face hardened.
To try to rise upward because the sky was falling was stupid. This was the Sword Tomb. Everything here moved according to Yak Seon’s intention.
Then had Yak Seon really intended to kill everyone who entered this place?
No. There has to be a way. There has to be!
Think. Think. Think...
"Aaaagh! Damn it, when have I ever been good at using my brain!"
That’s not my job!
"No, why the hell would this crazy bastard build a place this ridiculous...?"
Chung Myung’s body jolted as if struck by lightning.
A ridiculous place.
An abnormally twisted place.
They had entered through the mouth, fallen endlessly into the deep underground, endured countless ordeals along paths that narrowed and narrowed still further. That route had eventually merged into one, leading them here.
They climbed and climbed and climbed until at last...
Chung Myung’s eyes widened.
Light!
That had probably been the goal. No! The accomplishment! No... well, whatever!
"It’s not up there!"
That was wrong! If this was Yak Seon’s trap, then it definitely wasn’t up there. It couldn’t be that easy.
Then what was it?
Chung Myung’s head snapped downward.
The place he looked at was the floor.
"JUMP DOWNNNNNNNNNNN!"
Chung Myung’s roar rang out with such force that it seemed ready to tear the cave apart.