A Man Who Draws His Sword Should Aim for the Neck, at Least! (2)
“C-Channel Leader!”
Lee Jeong-bang, known as the Bitter Fox, came stumbling in and threw the door open in a panic.
Go Hong, the Mad Ox Blade, frowned slightly, displeased.
“What’s all this fuss about?”
“C-Channel Leader! We’re in big trouble!”
Lee Jeong-bang shouted, his face drained white. Go Hong clicked his tongue and scolded him.
“For a man called Bitter Fox, you sure do flap around like a loose ass. Well? What is it?”
“M-Mount Hua….”
“Hm?”
“Mount Hua Sect is coming here now, after subjugating the other bandit forts!”
“...What?”
Go Hong asked lazily, his brow furrowed.
“And what of it?”
“Pardon?”
“Wasn’t that your plan? You said if we just sat tight, they’d wear down the other forts for us, and then we’d wait and swallow them whole.”
“B-But this is not how I expected things to go! I thought Mount Hua and the other forts would bleed each other white. But right now, Mount Hua is smashing them one-sidedly!”
“Smashing them?”
“L-Literally. They say they’ve been subjugated without taking any real damage at all.”
When Lee Jeong-bang finished his report, he swallowed hard. He was afraid of the thunderstorm that would come crashing down on him from the chieftain.
But contrary to his expectations, Go Hong did not explode in anger over the report. If anything, he only grinned, as though amused.
“Oh? So those brats are better than I thought.”
“Mount Hua’s strength is far beyond what we estimated! I-It was my mistake. I should’ve seen it from the moment Yacha Hall was wiped out so helplessly!”
“Tsk tsk. Useless fool.”
Rubbing his bushy beard a couple of times, Go Hong looked down at Lee Jeong-bang, who was prostrate on the floor, and spoke.
“So what exactly are you suggesting?”
“W-Well, the situation doesn’t look good. For now, I think you should withdraw….”
“Withdraw?”
At that, Go Hong burst out laughing.
“You spineless coward, have you lost your damn mind? You want me to run away from a bunch of brats like that?”
“B-But, Chieftain… Their momentum is no joke! They’ve already cleared out two forts, and their morale must be sky-high by now….”
Lee Jeong-bang lowered his head as much as possible.
“There’s an old saying: when the rain starts falling, get out of it. I think it would be best if you took cover for the moment.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You pathetic bastard.”
Go Hong sneered.
“With balls as tiny as yours, of course you’d end up licking other people’s boots even with a brain in your head.”
“C-Chieftain!”
Go Hong asked casually,
“Fine. So there’s a rat among those Mount Hua bastards, is there?”
“...Yes. It seems the Green Forest King is also coming here with Mount Hua.”
“Hahahahahaha!”
Go Hong doubled over, laughing so hard his belly shook. His laughter, thick with internal force, thundered through the shack so violently that the whole place trembled and dust rained down from the ceiling.
“C-Chieftain?”
Lee Jeong-bang stared at him blankly, utterly unable to understand.
Of course, Go Hong wasn’t exactly a brilliant man. But neither was he the sort of fool who would recklessly court danger through sheer stubbornness.
A man like that would never have risen to the position of chieftain in the Green Forest, where blades and schemes were everywhere. Even if he had somehow gotten there by luck, there was no way he could have built the reputation he had now.
Which was why Lee Jeong-bang understood Go Hong less and less.
“Hwahahahaha! That little rat is moving his head, is he? He’s probably coming here all puffed up with confidence by now.”
“Chieftain. Please, look at the situation….”
“Yes. I know.”
Go Hong spoke with a lazy air.
“What you’re saying is that the other forts that were keeping me in check have all been crushed, so there are no more eyes watching us, and those Mount Hua brats are coming here with their morale through the roof, together with that rat.”
“That is correct.”
“And what better situation could there be than this?”
“...Pardon?”
Go Hong’s eyes glinted.
“If I just kill those Mount Hua brats and that rat, then who’s left to oppose me becoming the Green Forest King? The riffraff won’t dare to bark at me, and even the ones who think they have some backbone won’t be able to deny that I killed Im So-byeong!”
“C-Chieftain! Of course that’s true. But that only works if our Dae-byeol Band can stop those Mount Hua bastards in the first place!”
Of course, the Dae-byeol Band possessed power that the other forts that had entered Mount Heng with them could never hope to match. Even if those two forts joined forces, it would still be a tough fight against the Dae-byeol Band alone.
But did that mean the Dae-byeol Band could handle the two of them without suffering any damage?
Impossible.
If the Dae-byeol Band had that much power, there would’ve been no need to form a joint front with the other forts at all. They could’ve just swept through everything on their own, Green Forest Main Fortress and all.
There’s no way the chieftain doesn’t know that.
Then where in the world was that confidence coming from?
“Heh… That bastard’s words were right after all.”
That bastard?
Just as Lee Jeong-bang lifted his head in suspicion, Go Hong sprang to his feet.
“Open the gates and welcome them!”
“N-No, you can’t! Chieftain, th-that…!”
Lee Jeong-bang jerked his head up in alarm. But Go Hong’s blade-like gaze pinned him in place.
“...”
Cold sweat beaded on Lee Jeong-bang’s forehead.
“Say one more word, and I’ll tear your mouth open.”
“...”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. This is why fools like you never amount to anything. The opportunity is here and you still can’t seize it. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Go Hong’s face was full of swagger. With a booming voice, he shouted,
“Mujaeomra? Tamhyeolrang? Those trash can be compared to me, Go Hong? I’ll make sure those country bumpkins from Shaanxi know exactly why I’m called the Mad Ox Blade!”
In the end, Lee Jeong-bang swallowed hard and nodded.
It’s too late to stop this now.
Mount Hua would be upon them soon. If the chieftain was going to act like this, then a fight was unavoidable.
All he could do was pray that Go Hong had some kind of trump card hidden away.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“By the way….”
As they climbed the mountain, Baek Cheon looked at Chung Myung in confusion and spoke up.
“What?”
“...Isn’t the Green Forest one of the strongest powers in the world, one of the Five Hegemons of the Jianghu?”
“Yeah. So you’re wondering why they’re weaker than expected?”
“Well. Not weaker, exactly….”
“You’re wondering why they look so damn listless?”
“...”
“Why they look like such a sorry mess that they aren’t even worth dealing with?”
Baek Cheon quietly turned his head and looked at Im So-byeong, who was following behind them.
Seeing those shoulders slumped like a willow branch after the rain, he couldn’t help thinking that Mount Hua had done a terrible lot of things in life.
“...No, I wasn’t saying it quite like that.”
“Sasuk. Still, don’t underestimate the Green Forest too much.”
“Hm?”
At the unexpected remark, Baek Cheon blinked and looked at Chung Myung. He had been expecting a comment that would insult the Green Forest, not this.
Chung Myung said with a serious expression,
“A thousand trained troops can’t necessarily beat ten thousand conscripts. Numbers are a hell of a dangerous thing.”
At that, Baek Cheon’s expression also hardened. Chung Myung thought for a moment, then said,
“If we had about a hundred of us, we could wipe out five hundred bandits as a snack after a meal.”
“...That’s not a snack.”
Of course, Baek Cheon thought so too, but remembering that Im So-byeong was listening, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.
“But if there were a thousand, it’d get annoying.”
“That’s true.”
“Then what about five thousand?”
“...”
“How about ten thousand?”
“...At that point, we wouldn’t even be visible anymore.”
It would be like pouring a ladle of water into Dongting Lake.
“If each bandit fort only had a hundred men, the number of Green Forest bandits would already be well over seven thousand. But as Sasuk knows, there aren’t only a hundred bandits in a fort.”
“...Then there really could be ten thousand.”
“Could be a lot more than that.”
Baek Cheon was left speechless.
There are that many bandits in the world?
Just imagining them all gathered in one place made a chill run down his back.
“They only look weak because we’ve been picking them off one by one. Bandits don’t help each other out, not by default. So even if the fort right below them is being crushed to pieces, they won’t come to help—they’ll clap instead.”
“...What a mess.”
“But if there were someone who could command those bandits, then the moment we attacked the Red Bear Bandit Band, the other forts already waiting there would’ve joined forces against us.”
Then there would have been at least fifteen hundred waiting there.
One hundred against fifteen hundred.
Facing five hundred three times in a row and facing fifteen hundred all at once were completely different problems. The more martial artists there were, the stronger they became—not just linearly, but exponentially.
“Ah, so that’s it….”
Baek Cheon turned around again with a new understanding.
That’s why the Green Forest King matters.
The only one capable of linking together the forts of the Green Forest—forts that all distrusted one another and fiercely guarded their own territory—and issuing orders to them was the Green Forest King.
Didn’t even that ferocious Dae-byeol Band and the selfish Red Bear Band at least pretend to obey his orders, while Im So-byeong still held his position?
But once the Green Forest King disappeared, they became nothing more than ordinary bandits who could no longer be bound by the name of Green Forest.
“You’re more impressive than I thought.”
Baek Cheon spoke with genuine admiration. At that, Im So-byeong gave him a wilted look and said weakly,
“...Baek Cheon Dojang, are you aware that your personality is much worse than you think?”
“Me?”
Baek Cheon tilted his head, unable to understand. Im So-byeong looked up at the distant sky.
Am I really doing the right thing?
Trying to avoid a wolf and ending up dragging in a tiger instead. Of course, this tiger isn’t so much dangerous as it is... well, weird. Very, very weird.
Baek Cheon paid him no real mind either way. Just like Chung Myung, he was a man with little interest in anything beyond Mount Hua.
As expected, he returned to the original topic.
“Still, thinking about it like that, Mount Hua really is short on numbers.”
Shaolin had over a thousand warrior monks, and even Wudang had more than five hundred disciples.
Even if every single swordsman of Mount Hua became so exceptional that they could surpass them, overcoming that disadvantage in numbers might prove harder than it looked.
“We’ve still got a long way to go.”
His spirits, which had been lifted after clearing out two forts, seemed to sink again.
“There’s no need to get so gloomy. On the flip side, it just means a bunch of weak bastards are lumped together and charging us with numbers.”
Baek Cheon quickly glanced around.
I’m glad the Beggars’ Union isn’t here to hear that.
If the Beggars’ Union people had heard it, they’d probably have foamed at the mouth and flipped over in outrage. There’s nothing more painful than hearing the truth.
“But….”
“Hm?”
“I think those bastards are a little different.”
“Oh?”
Chung Myung stared fixedly ahead. Following his gaze, Baek Cheon saw the wooden stockades perched high atop a peak like a fortress.
“The Dae-byeol Band should be in there.”
“Right.”
Baek Cheon nodded as if steadying himself.
Chung Myung’s eyes had gone subtly dark.
They can’t be that stupid.
Everyone in the Green Forest, including Im So-byeong, had called Go Hong the Mad Ox Blade an impulsive man. But if he were really the sort of hotheaded fool who couldn’t think, there was no way he would’ve obediently listened to Im So-byeong’s words until now.
There’s definitely something here.
Chung Myung’s lips curled slightly upward. Things were turning out more interesting than he expected.
Let’s see whether a ghost comes out, or a monster.
He stepped forward with force, heading for Green Forest Main Fortress, where the gates stood wide open to welcome them.