What You Gain, You Must Also Lose (4)
“……”
Shock filled the bandits’ eyes.
Who was Go Hong?
He was the chieftain of Dae-byeol Bandit Band, one of the finest and most notorious strongholds among the countless bandit camps in the world.
It wasn’t merely because he was the chieftain. It was because he was the chieftain that Dae-byeol Bandit Band had earned such a fearsome reputation, standing apart from the rest of the Green Forest camps.
And now that Mad Ox Blade had lost his head to a young swordsman from Mount Hua.
Even seeing it with their own eyes, they couldn’t believe it.
Everyone held their breath as they stared at the corpse sprawled like a rotten old tree and the Mad Ox Blade’s head lying not far away.
He’s… dead.
Was he really…?
Then—
Swish!
Chung Myung, standing before Go Hong’s corpse, flicked the blood from his sword and slowly turned his gaze.
The bandits flinched and stumbled back.
Who wouldn’t know better than to retreat before an enemy? But after witnessing Go Hong’s head fly off right in front of them, what sense could possibly remain in their heads?
“So,” Chung Myung said.
A thin sheath of sword aura shimmered from his blade.
“Who’s next?”
Then he bared his teeth and advanced toward the bandits.
Step. Step.
It wasn’t a hurried pace, but that only made the pressure all the more suffocating to watch.
“Ugh….”
“……”
The bandits, as if their earlier ferocity had all been a lie, could only keep retreating helplessly.
In a bandit camp, the chieftain’s existence was absolute.
And among them all, nowhere was the chieftain more important than in Dae-byeol Bandit Band.
Dae-byeol Bandit Band was made up of men who had endured brutal training and harsh treatment far beyond anything other camps could compare to. The one who had made that possible was Go Hong, that absolute tyrant.
Now that he was dead, the cohesion of Dae-byeol Bandit Band had shattered beyond repair.
“We’re, we’re gonna die for nothing!”
“If even the chieftain couldn’t handle him, how the hell are we supposed to?”
“R-run!”
In an ordinary sect, the death of its leader wouldn’t cause the entire sect to collapse. But those who chased only profit and worshiped strength would never gamble their lives when someone stronger than them had already fallen.
That was the fundamental limit of those who followed evil ways.
Once again, collapse began to spread at terrifying speed.
“If you run into him, you die!”
“Run!”
“Hiiiiiik!”
The hard part was only the beginning.
The moment one man turned his back, fear and despair spread like a plague. Before long, everyone had turned away from Chung Myung and started fleeing.
They shoved and pulled at each other, running like mad to survive.
That was the instant Dae-byeol Bandit Band fell apart.
“T-the—”
Beon Chung clenched his fists hard.
“Good heavens, he just… he just killed Go Hong….”
Anyone belonging to the Green Forest knew exactly how strong Go Hong was. He was one of the top three figures in the Green Forest, one of the Five Hegemons of the Jianghu.
Of course, the Green Forest was not exactly a place known for producing the absolute cream of the crop in terms of experts. Even so, if it was that Mad Ox Blade Go Hong, then anywhere else in the world he would have been treated as a first-rate master.
At the very least, he was strong enough to tear apart and kill an elder from a prestigious orthodox sect.
And yet Chung Myung had killed such a man so easily.
“My word….”
Beon Chung couldn’t even think about hiding his shock.
Of course, he had already known Chung Myung was strong. He had felt it with his very own skin during their struggle for sheer strength the other day.
That was why he had accepted defeat and called Chung Myung brother, despite their age difference.
But even he hadn’t been certain that Chung Myung could beat Mad Ox Blade. This wasn’t just winning. This was complete annihilation.
The Green Forest King’s foresight is truly extraordinary.
Not just Chung Myung, but Im So-byeong looked even more impressive for having recognized his talent and his sect, then rushed without hesitation all the way to Mount Hua.
“My king.”
“Hmm.”
Unlike the visibly thrilled Beon Chung, Im So-byeong merely gave a small nod without much change in expression. Yet inside his sleeve, his fist was tightly clenched.
Daoist Chung Myung always shows us more than we expect.
Defeating Go Hong was impressive enough.
But overpowering him completely after winning—that was something even greater.
If Chung Myung hadn’t shown that overwhelming difference while killing Go Hong, the remaining bandits might have fought to the death. And if that had happened, the casualties would have been incomparably greater than they were now.
Calculation… or is it instinct?
Either way, it was terrifying.
Whether he had crushed Go Hong by careful calculation or simply sensed, on instinct, that this was a place where he had to dominate, the result was the same.
Watching Chung Myung sheath his sword, Im So-byeong’s eyes gleamed.
“Then what remains is….”
A moment later, he turned his gaze and muttered.
These guys are just as frightening.
The disciples of Mount Hua were still calmly dealing with the Blood-clad men.
At a glance, it looked like a fierce and desperate battle, but if one looked closely, that wasn’t really the case.
For some time now, the only ones falling in sprays of blood had been the Blood-clad men—not Mount Hua.
Im So-byeong narrowed his eyes.
So that’s the strength of a prestigious sect?
Their movements had clearly become more compact.
Once the swords of those who had once obsessed over flashiness and sharpness steadied themselves, the layered foundation they had built over time began to reveal its true worth.
Anyone can force themselves through grueling training. Anyone can attempt dangerous cultivation methods.
But the reason prestigious sects were truly frightening was that they kept repeating the boring basics—training that became tedious after only three months—for years, even decades, without ever stopping.
The foundation built that way didn’t always show itself, but when crisis struck, it held a person up more firmly than any dazzling martial realm ever could.
This isn’t something you can understand just by thinking about it.
There were countless sects that had left their names in the world. There had also been sects that once swept across the realm and seemed as though they would enjoy a thousand years of glory.
But in the end, the ones who preserved their names through the passage of time were not those who flourished most brilliantly, but those who kept to their basics.
The light Mount Hua now radiated must have been born from that very strength.
Maybe it’s an even more incredible sect than I thought.
Crack!
A fierce thrusting sword was cleanly knocked aside.
Slash!
Immediately after, a follow-up thrust pierced the Blood-clad man’s shoulder.
“Kuhh!”
The Blood-clad man clutched his shoulder and stumbled back.
And as if there were no need to chase him, the Plum Blossom Sword was withdrawn.
Whoosh!
But at that instant, a sword shot like lightning sliced through the retreating man’s heart.
Slash!
“……”
The Blood-clad man stared down at his own chest, split wide open, then collapsed on the spot with an expression of utter disbelief.
“S-sasuk.”
“If your mercy gets your martial brothers killed, will you still go looking for mercy then?”
“……”
“On the battlefield, the first to die are the ones with soft hearts. No, they have to die first. Better that than some other man dying because of your mercy.”
At that cold voice, Gwak Hoe gritted his teeth.
“I won’t hesitate.”
Baek Cheon gave a small nod.
“Don’t let your guard down until the very end.”
“Yes!”
When he was done speaking, Baek Cheon swung his sword again at once and bit his lip slightly.
Strange.
There were quite a few injured disciples of Mount Hua, but fortunately, none had suffered a fatal wound yet. Meanwhile, the enemy’s numbers had already been cut nearly in half.
If they simply guarded against growing lax after gaining the upper hand, this battle should end in a clean victory.
The problem was…
There’s no way they don’t know that.
Unlike the bandits who had already sensed defeat and begun fleeing, these men showed no sign of retreating at all, even in this situation.
Loyalty?
No, that was impossible.
They were definitely not Go Hong’s direct subordinates. Baek Cheon had heard them mocking Go Hong with his own ears, hadn’t he? That was not the sort of thing that could be explained away as mere bandit freedom.
Even if he set that conversation aside, it was obvious that these men were fundamentally different from the other Dae-byeol bandits in temperament.
I don’t get it.
He couldn’t understand why people who had nothing to do with Dae-byeol Bandit Band would throw away their lives in a fight that had already been decided.
But soon, Baek Cheon’s confusion was resolved in a way he had never expected.
“Grrraaaagh!”
One Blood-clad man, his entire body covered in wounds, let out a shriek so ghastly it was almost chilling.
“Damn it, why! Why are we in a place like this!”
His clothes were soaked through with blood pouring from his whole body, and he half-sat on the ground as he unleashed a horrifying wail.
“Why! Why! Why do we have to die for nothing here? Why the hell us? Aaaaghhhhh!”
The way he screamed toward the heavens, the sheer misery and despair in his voice, made even the Mount Hua disciples, who were fighting to kill one another, startle in spite of themselves.
“Why! Why must we suffer such… such humilia—! Cough! Cough!”
Puuh!
Suddenly, he clamped his mouth shut. But for all that, dark blood burst out of him in a violent spray.
No, “dark red” was being generous. The blood he spat was black as ink.
Poison?
The one to react fastest was, naturally, Dang Soso.
The moment the Blood-clad man coughed up black blood, her scream-like voice rang out sharply.
“Fall back, now!”
“Soso!”
At Hyun Sang’s shout, she studied the Blood-clad man carefully with narrowed eyes.
“...No.”
Then she clenched her lip and shouted again.
“I don’t think it’s a contagious poison! But just in case, be careful not to get hit by any of the blood splatter!”
“Understood!”
By now, Baek Cheon was even more baffled.
Why are they poisoned?
Who on earth had spread poison among them?
“Cough! Cough!”
The man vomiting blood clutched at his chest and groaned in pain.
It seemed the toxin that hadn’t surfaced while his body was normal had started spreading throughout him the moment he was badly wounded.
“I… I don’t want to die h—”
Slash!
Thud.
The muttering man’s head fell to the ground.
Baek Cheon’s eyes flew wide open.
The one who had severed his head without hesitation was not a Mount Hua disciple, but another Blood-clad man standing beside him.
“Pathetic fool.”
After cutting down his comrade in a single stroke, the Blood-clad man turned toward Mount Hua with a grotesque expression on his face.
“Do you really think you’ll survive if you get out of here?”
“……”
“We’re all going to die anyway.”
At those words, the Blood-clad men’s eyes hardened once more. Madness seeped into them. Tightening their grips on their thrusting swords, they snarled.
“Die like warriors, you trash!”
“Hyaaaaaah!”
They were like moths racing straight into a flame.
Knowing they had no chance of victory, they still charged toward Mount Hua’s formation.
This wasn’t about winning the fight. It was the ferocity of men determined to leave at least one more wound on their opponents’ bodies, even if they died doing it.
The disciples of Mount Hua clenched their teeth. This was the final clash that would bring an end to the long battle.
Yet even amid all that, Baek Cheon’s eyes still trembled with doubt.
What in the world…?
What was happening here?