I Need to Make Sure (1)
Anyone who had seen the situation and heard Chung Myung speak would have assumed he was bluffing.
No matter that he was a disciple of Mount Hua, there were hundreds of men from Cheol-mo-bang standing before him with weapons in hand.
One against a hundred. One man against a thousand.
Those sayings existed for a reason: in reality, it was nearly impossible for a single person to take on that many opponents. If it were easy, it wouldn’t have been worth praising in the first place.
So if most people looked at the scene now, it was only natural that they would take his words as empty bravado meant to hide his weakness.
But the ones who did not dismiss it as mere posturing were the men of Cheol-mo-bang facing Chung Myung.
The tips of their spears were trembling ever so slightly.
But what shook even more than the dozens of spearheads was the inability of their eyes to settle anywhere.
After all, the men of Cheol-mo-bang were still scoundrels of the evil path; they were used to bloodshed in their own way. And yet even they could not withstand the murderous intent and crushing pressure pouring off Chung Myung.
“What the hell are you doing!”
Feeling their momentum visibly collapsing, Beon Song barked at them.
He, too, had spent long years in the jianghu. He knew all too well that if your spirit broke before the fight even began, you would be crushed before you had a chance to use even half your strength.
“The enemy is small in number! Don’t be scared!”
In truth, the old Beon Song would have charged at Chung Myung from the very front instead of shouting like this. He knew from a lifetime of battle that the quickest and most effective way to raise morale was for the leader to stand at the head of the charge.
But now he was only shouting from the rear, too terrified to even think of stepping forward himself.
Damn it.
His hand, the one that had blocked Chung Myung’s sword aura, was still trembling.
What the hell was that sword aura...
Even now, the memory of it was chilling.
If he had made even the slightest mistake—just a little—the sword aura would have cut through his spear and split his body clean in half.
The fear of that death that had brushed past him in an instant had locked his feet in place. It felt as if black hands were rising from the ground below to seize his legs and drag him down.
“Kill them all!”
The best he could do was shout as loudly as he could, making sure the tremor in his voice did not show.
It may have been crude, but it worked. These were men who had spent their whole lives being trained to respond to his commands, so the instant the order fell, they twitched involuntarily and thrust one foot forward.
And once that happened, there was no turning back.
The moment the front line moved, those guarding the rear rushed forward as well. The faint relief of not being in the front line spurred their feet on, while the momentum surging from behind made it impossible for those in front to stop.
“Hraaaah!”
“Dieee!”
Eyes bulging, teeth clenched, they charged at Chung Myung.
The fact that they were not alone could sometimes give a person courage beyond measure.
But their mistake was that they failed to remember the obvious: too much courage was nothing but recklessness.
Thud.
Chung Myung took a step forward.
A dozen iron spears shot toward him with ferocious speed, as though they meant to pierce him in an instant and turn him into a hedgehog.
He did not move until the spears were almost upon his body.
The gaze that had been sunk like a calm lake changed in an instant, and his sword traced a flash of lightning through the air.
Clang!
It was less a cut than a blow.
The instant his blade slapped away the spearhead that had stabbed in at the front, something bizarre happened.
The spear that had been knocked aside blocked the path of the spear stabbing in right after it. The spears collided, staggering violently, and began tangling with the others around them.
Grk-grk-grk!
“What the—!”
“N-no way!”
Anyone who had ever even touched a spear, anyone who had practiced a combined attack even a little, would never have made such a mistake.
In truth, there was no flaw in the combined assault of the Cheol-mo-bang men. It was simply that the one they were facing was Chung Myung.
Having thrown their attack into chaos with a single strike, Chung Myung shot like a beast through the space created by the rebounding spears.
“Ah!”
His sword, lowered a fraction, had been hidden among the brush—then snapped upward like a venomous snake launching at its prey.
Fwaaaaah!
The rising sword split into dozens of flashes. And those flashes plunged into the bodies of the Cheol-mo-bang men who had yet to recover from their deflected spears.
Slash! Slash! Slash!
His blade showed no hesitation as it pierced the frail flesh of human bodies. It carved long through the artery inside the thigh, stabbed deep into the abdomen, severed the shoulder bone, and slit the left carotid artery in the neck in one swift motion.
Fwaaaaat!
The blue blade drove into vital points that should have dropped a person dead on the spot. Every movement was precise and relentless.
Shhhaaaaaak!
Blood burst from the severed wounds in fountains.
Anyone could tell at a glance: if the bleeding wasn’t stopped now, they would die. Excessive blood loss could steal a person’s life in the blink of an eye.
If they did not want to die, they had no choice but to let go of their spears and cover the wounds. Instinctively, the Cheol-mo-bang men flung their spears aside and clutched at their necks and thighs.
Slash.
And Chung Myung slipped past them as though brushing by.
His body merely passed at their sides, but his sword never stopped for even an instant. With calm indifference, he cut at the ankles of those whose stances had broken.
The ones who could no longer keep their balance collapsed like rotting sheaves of straw.
“Keh...”
Those whose throats had been cut crumpled while clutching the wound, unable even to scream.
“Aaaaargh!”
Those pierced in the thigh and abdomen let out horrible screams, groaning and convulsing on the spot.
Different cries tore through the air from all directions, enough to shred the eardrums. Naturally, fear spread with them, murmur by murmur.
...
If the men in front had simply died in a single sword stroke, perhaps it would not have felt like this. Even if they were looking at bodies cleaved in two, it would not have been nearly so chilling.
But what lay before them now was a scene strange even to eyes that had seen blood and death on countless battlefields.
Wherever the impassive swordsman passed, people fell writhing, blood spraying from severed limbs.
Fear of death was plain in their eyes.
Their crushed, helpless gazes—those of men who knew they were dying moment by moment—were too dreadful to look at directly.
The expression on Chung Myung’s face, the one who had created this atrocious sight, was unchanged from before. As though this sort of thing were nothing new to him.
The juxtaposition of his blank face against the carnage spreading behind him planted a strange, sickening fear in everyone watching.
“I told you,”
a voice like a whisper said, carrying strangely clearly without any force behind it.
“There won’t be another warning.”
Step.
Chung Myung started walking forward again.
And from his pants, soaked in blood, drops began to fall one by one.
“B-back off—”
Just as Beon Song was about to shout again—
Fwaaaaaat!
Chung Myung kicked off the ground and charged at the Cheol-mo-bang men with terrifying speed.
“Gah!”
The startled men dragged up their inner force and raised their spears.
By nature, a spear was a weapon better suited to defense than to offense. When dozens of spears pointed forward at once, a massive wall of spearheads was formed.
Anyone who saw that wall wrapped in blue energy would have stopped in their tracks, no matter how bold they were.
But there wasn’t the slightest change in Chung Myung’s expression.
Seeing the spear wall rise, he only increased his speed and leapt forward, raising his sword toward the sky.
Then—
Fwaaaang!
With a whistling sound that seemed to tear the air itself apart, the sword came down in a diagonal slash.
The immense inner force pouring from the blade formed a nearly perfect circular sword aura. It came crashing down on the spear wall without mercy.
KWA-A-A-A-AANG!
The sword aura collided with the wall and exploded the instant it struck. Energy meeting energy burst apart, and a massive gale swept through the entire battlefield.
“Ghk!”
“Ugh!”
The upper part of the front line collapsed, but the spear formation did not fully break. The remaining men gritted their teeth and, their hands already slick with blood, gripped their spears even tighter. No—they tried to.
But then, at that very instant—
Fwaaaaat!
Chung Myung’s sword unleashed another streak of sword aura like a flash of light.
It was less like a sword’s thrust and more like a spear’s.
The sword images that burst into dozens in an instant pierced the trembling tips of the spears with perfect precision.
Spear tip and sword tip.
That tiny point triggered dozens upon dozens of collisions in the blink of an eye.
What?
Beon Song’s eyes widened to the limit.
It was absurd.
Even if a spear were standing completely still, it would be impossible to strike the exact tip. And even if that were somehow possible, it would be even more impossible to drive the strike with the same force used in a normal attack.
But weren’t those spears wobbling right now?
He was striking dozens of spears, all shaking in different ways, and making every single one collide perfectly?
That was no longer martial arts. It had already crossed into the realm of the miraculous.
Because of the explosion that had already thrown their grips off, those who could no longer hold their spears had no hope of resisting the force surging through the spearheads. The spears struck by Chung Myung’s sword ripped through their palms and were shoved backward in a violent surge.
“Aaaagh!”
“Guhk!”
The front line of spears only mattered when the spears were held firm and true. Even if a thousand men gathered, a spear line whose men could no longer hold their weapons was meaningless.
Chung Myung plunged into that utterly useless formation.
Fwaaaat!
His sword was as agile as a venomous serpent, stabbing mercilessly at the vital points of the Cheol-mo-bang men.
Slash! Slash!
The horrible sound of sharp steel carving into flesh spread coldly through the air.
“Krrrk!”
“Aaaah!”
Those with their thighs slashed or shoulders pierced were among the luckier ones.
Those with their throats cut collapsed, frothing blood, while those with their lungs punctured fell forward, letting out only a leaking hiss of air.
“You bastarddddd!”
One man, desperately forcing his spears back into his torn palms, shouted and lunged at Chung Myung.
But the thing that instantly chilled the blood boiling in his veins was the cold, emotionless eyes Chung Myung met him with.
In that instant, the man realized what he had done, and his face turned deathly pale.
Thud!
Chung Myung’s sword pierced his shoulder like a shaft of light.
The agony of having his shoulder run through, combined with the physical shock, loosened his grip on the spear. And the sword that had plunged in was pulled back faster than it had gone in, snapping the spear aside.
Clang!
What the man who had finally lost his spear saw was dozens of sword images flying toward him.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Shoulder, chest, stomach, and even ankles.
The body, marked in an instant with over a dozen wounds, collapsed helplessly like a sheaf of straw.
Thump.
The white-faced men of Cheol-mo-bang began to falter.
Then Chung Myung casually turned his body and said with an expressionless face,
“Keep going.”
And like a streak of black light, he surged once more toward the men of Cheol-mo-bang.