I Need to Make Sure (3)
Covered in dust, Jin Yang-geon found himself clawing at the ground without meaning to, as though he could dig his way into it. His eyes darted helplessly from side to side, unable to settle anywhere.
Kwaang!
Along with the blast that erupted ahead of him, debris from the collapsed building shot toward the place where he was crouching.
“Hiiiiiik!”
He screamed and threw himself flat against the floor. Broken wall fragments and splintered pillars whistled past the back of his head by a hair’s breadth. Even the force of it made his scalp prickle.
Jin Yang-geon’s face was smeared with dust and cold sweat.
He hadn’t asked for much.
All he’d wanted was to pull off a bit of fraud, pocket some money, and run. Of course, trying to scam Geum-geom-bu wasn’t something just anyone could do without the guts for it—but if one reckless gamble could change the rest of his life, wasn’t it at least worth trying?
So how the hell did it end up like this?
Looking at the front, now blown wide open, he saw the Cheol-mo-bang fighters sprawled miserably on the ground, their dark red blood seeping from their bodies.
His trembling gaze shifted again. The Cheol-mo-bang Lord’s corpse came into view. His neck was bent at a grotesque angle, and he had died with his eyes still half open.
The moment Jin Yang-geon saw those dead eyes with all their focus gone, strength drained clean out of him. He had only just managed to push himself halfway up, but now he sank right back down where he was.
“W-why...?”
His jaw trembled uncontrollably.
Why the hell did it have to turn into this?!
Who could have imagined that one thing he’d done would lead to such an absurd disaster?
Cheol-mo-bang...
At the very least, Cheol-mo-bang was a faction with absolute influence over this entire Nam-chang region. The fact that Geum-geom-bu had been unable to handle them and had called for help from all over was proof enough of their overwhelming power.
And with even a guest expert from Maninbang joining in, there was no sect in Jiangxi that could possibly stand against Cheol-mo-bang.
That was why Jin Yang-geon had been able to scam Geum-geom-bu in the first place, and why, when his life was hanging by a thread, he had sought refuge with Cheol-mo-bang just to survive.
But the scene unfolding before his eyes now had completely shattered every one of those expectations and plans.
Paaaat!
Sword qi surged upward. The instant that brilliant—not so much dazzling as majestic—sword qi flashed, the people blocking its path were swept aside like withered leaves in the wind and crashed down in a heap.
“...”
Watching the formation collapse and revealing the owner of that sword qi, Jin Yang-geon swallowed hard.
Th-that young...
No, perhaps calling him young was wrong. Dust clung all over that handsome face, yet it still couldn’t hide how strikingly refined he was.
But the sword qi and martial skill he displayed simply did not match the age his appearance suggested.
Hadn’t the Cheol-mo-bang fighters, who looked as though they’d lived twice as long as he had, been driven back in disorder without even daring to fight that sword qi head-on?
Suddenly, the image of the ideal elite swordsman he’d once seen portrayed alongside the Taehang Three Swords overlapped perfectly with this man.
And he wasn’t the only one.
The others standing to his left and right were clearly no ordinary people either.
The female swordswoman easily sidestepped a spear flying at her like a butterfly dancing out of the way, and from the tips of her fingers her sword shot out like a shaft of light.
She found the opening as though by instinct, stabbed, withdrew her sword in an instant, and then thrust again toward the vital point of the man behind her.
It was swift, precise, and stripped of every unnecessary motion.
“Aaaahhh!”
The one whose shoulder had been pierced let out a scream and crumpled. But before his body even hit the ground, her sword had already stabbed into the side of another man behind him and withdrawn again.
Paaaat!
How much training it would have taken to turn such a plain, simple form into a killing blow like that was impossible to imagine. It was even more impressive than the scattering sword qi, more striking than a single devastating strike that dropped five or six men at once.
“Hiiiiiik!”
Every time her sword pierced a Cheol-mo-bang fighter, Jin Yang-geon flinched and staggered back as though it had been his own stomach split open.
I must’ve been insane...
How in the world had he gotten himself into this?
Once all those Cheol-mo-bang men were down, it was obvious who would be next to be skewered by that sword.
And that wasn’t all.
“Watch the back, since the ones you’ve knocked down might still swing their swords— Watch out, you idiot, I said watch out!”
The man fighting on the right shouted as he kicked a stone from the ground. The stone flew fast and true, striking the jaw of a Cheol-mo-bang fighter who had been trying to sneak up on the curly-haired man in front.
“Huh? But I definitely knocked him down.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed, seriously!”
“Aw, come on, Senior Brother should’ve kept an eye on it!”
The curly-haired man grinned shamelessly, then lunged forward another step and lightly sprang into the air.
“Orachaaaaaaa!”
At last, red sword qi bloomed in streams.
“Ah...”
The sword qi pouring from the blade’s tip gradually took on a clearer shape, then transformed into something like petals fluttering in the wind.
Jin Yang-geon’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief.
P-petals!
How could he not know what it was?
It was the Maehwageomgi of the Mount Hua Sect, whose fame currently shook the jianghu.
I thought they just called it sword qi like flower petals as a metaphor!
Who would have imagined the sword qi really turned into drifting petals?
T-that’s actually possible?
At that point, it finally made sense how people had been fooled by the sword techniques he himself had shown off. Of course, in Jiangxi, so far removed from Mount Hua, there were few who had ever actually seen the Mount Hua Sect’s Maehwageomgi, so it was possible—but still.
Jin Yang-geon clenched his fists tightly. Then, in a hollow voice, he muttered, “So they really are... really the Mount Hua Sect...”
Now that he had seen even that sword qi, he had no choice left but to admit it.
Even without seeing the sword qi, if they weren’t the Mount Hua Sect, how could only six people have driven back so many Cheol-mo-bang fighters like this?
Of course, nearly fifty of them had already gone down, and there were still several hundred Cheol-mo-bang men left. But their momentum was no longer the same. Those who had once radiated overwhelming force like well-trained soldiers were now panicking like sheep driven together by wolves attacking the outskirts, inching backward and bunching up toward the center.
The Cheol-mo-bang Lord, who should have held that situation together, had long since become a corpse with his neck twisted the wrong way.
The end of this battle was obvious now.
And the fate awaiting Jin Yang-geon was just as obvious.
I-I have to run.
He had impersonated the Mount Hua Sect, after all. If those people caught him, even a three-year-old could guess what would happen to him.
With Cheol-mo-bang no longer able to protect him, he had to get out of here immediately.
But... where to?
These lunatics had heard about him, rushed all the way here from faraway Shaanxi in a single breath, and even stormed Cheol-mo-bang with only six people, slashing and demanding that he be handed over. How was he supposed to escape monsters like that?
There was no doubt those lunatics would chase him to the ends of the earth, wherever he tried to run.
But still, somehow...
Jin Yang-geon hurriedly rose to his feet and scanned his surroundings, looking for a gap to flee through. Then, all at once, he stiffened and slowly opened his mouth.
Beg-beggars...
The beggars were perched in dense rows atop the wall behind the battlefield, watching him intently. In that instant, Jin Yang-geon felt as though the sky had come crashing down on him, and he understood his fate before it even arrived.
The Beggar’s Union bastards are already all over the place.
There might be a way to escape Mount Hua’s grasp. But there was no such thing as hiding from the Beggar’s Union’s eyes. That was common sense for anyone who lived in the jianghu.
Jin Yang-geon’s breathing grew more and more ragged. His eyes rolling wildly, he was drowning in despair when—
Kwaaaaang!
With a tremendous explosion, an enormous wave of force shot upward.
Kurururung!
The instant that force slammed into the roof of the hall, the tiles shuddered violently and rained down like hail. Rafters also burst apart and scattered in every direction like arrows loosed from a bow.
The kind of power that could blow an entire roof clean off in one strike.
It was a sight so terrifying it made his knees weak and his heart nearly stop.
And the monsters who had created that sight were now tearing at each other like three tigers fighting over territory.
Kagang!
Sword and dao clashed in midair.
Even against a heavy dao, the young swordsman’s thin blade did not give an inch. More than that—
Kagagagak!
The shriek of metal grinding with all its might rang out, and the sword actually began to press the dao back.
With the sword and dao between them, the two men’s faces drew close.
The expression of the one gripping the dao with both hands and struggling with all his strength gradually twisted. By contrast, there was no real expression on Cheong Myung’s face at all.
He simply gripped the sword with a look that went beyond calm and bordered on indifference, adding more force to his hand.
Uduk!
Cheong Myung’s wrist twisted in a sudden, savage turn. The tip of the sword pressed against the dao tilted forward sharply and began scraping along the dao wielder’s neck.
Scrape. Scrape.
It was less a cut than a scrape, a grinding drag of steel.
The sword’s tip, barely touching him, drew a red line across the thick neck. The dao wielder desperately tried to push it away, but before long another crimson mark had been carved into his skin.
Within a very short time, five or six red lines had formed across his throat.
“Kk...”
The dao wielder’s face went deathly pale.
Each time the sword touched his neck, it felt as though he had one foot in the gates of hell and then stumbled back out again. If the blade pushed even a hair farther, his carotid artery would be cut clean through.
“Grrrgh!”
The dao wielder’s face twisted in shock.
What kind of strength is this...?
Almost reflexively, he flicked his gaze downward.
Cheong Myung’s slender wrist came into view.
Of course, even through the clothing, it was obvious that this man’s body was well balanced and thoroughly conditioned. But even so, compared to the arm that held the dao, it was barely half the thickness.
Then where in the world was this strength coming from?
“Hey.”
Kagagagak!
The sword bit into the edge of his dao and scraped at it.
“You’ve been running your mouth like you’re something special this whole time. So go on—say something else.”
“Y-you...”
It happened in that instant.
Kwaaaaaaaang!
Another monstrous wave of force came flying from behind Cheong Myung. It was the same attack that had blown the hall’s roof clean off just moments ago.
Udeuk!
Gnashing his teeth, the dao wielder forced Cheong Myung down with all the strength he could muster. He meant to pin him here and keep him from dodging that wave of force.
But just as he was about to draw on every last scrap of strength he had, he froze.
He had seen the corner of Cheong Myung’s mouth curl upward.
It was unmistakable mockery.
Kwadeuk!
“Kk!”
In the next instant, a tremendous pain shot through the top of his foot. Cheong Myung had stomped on it and shattered every bone in the foot.
As the pain made his body jerk slightly—
Swish.
The force pressing against the dao suddenly slackened.
There was no way the man who had been pushing the dao with all his strength could resist that change, especially with his foot bones crushed and his body thrown off balance.
When his body pitched forward, the sword coiled around the dao like a snake, shaking his center of gravity.
Twirl.
Before he could even fully grasp what was happening, his body spun in midair, and a moment later he had landed on Cheong Myung’s other side.
It was a movement entirely beyond his control.
What...
Just as the stunned man tried to tighten his grip on the dao again, Cheong Myung drove a hard kick into his chest.
Kwaang!
His body shot backward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
The pain in his chest, the impossible situation from just a moment ago—none of that mattered. What mattered now was the wave of force flying toward his back.
Udeuk.
He twisted in midair with all his might. The violent motion, thrown together without any preparation, made his spine scream.
“Huaaaap!”
The full-force dao strike smashed into the incoming wave of force.
Kwaaaaaaang!
The collision between the dao energy and the force wave unleashed a tremendous explosion.
The one who had hurled the force staggered back several steps, while the one who had launched the dao strike from midair crashed into the ground and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“Y-you...”
At the moment their faces twisted and smeared with pain and rage—
“If I’d shown this to the Mount Hua kids, Sasukjo would’ve loved it.”
Cheong Myung rested his sword on his shoulder and said it with a smile that made anyone watching want to tear their hair out.
“It’s the perfect teaching material for why you don’t do a combined attack like that.”
“You bastard...”
At that moment, Cheong Myung, who had been lazily tapping his shoulder with the flat of his sword, vanished from that spot as though he had simply collapsed out of existence. Then, in an instant, he reappeared right in front of the dao wielder who had just planted his hands on the ground.
Ghk!
So startled his heart seemed ready to leap out through his throat, the dao wielder raised his blade over his head to block the sword coming at him. But as the dao moved upward and left an opening, Cheong Myung’s foot drove straight through it. It slammed into his jaw.
Kwaang!
It was only a foot colliding with a jaw, but somehow it burst with the sound of an explosion.
The dao wielder, kicked hard into the air, sprayed blood and slammed into the hall.
Kurururung.
In the end, the hall collapsed completely and buried him underneath it.
Cheong Myung stared at the wreckage with an impassive look, then said slowly, “Sorry, but I’m not in a very good mood right now.”
Then he pointed the tip of his sword at the one remaining Maninbang fighter.
“So I’d advise you not to keep running your mouth.”
The blood in the Maninbang fighter’s face began to run cold.