Handsome and Annoying Means He’s From Jin (3)
“The entrance is too narrow.”
“Hmm... and there are too many obstacles.”
The sect leaders’ gazes turned toward the river.
In front of the deep valley carved into the middle of the cliff on the far side, water bandit ships were packed so tightly together there was hardly a gap to see through.
This is far more troublesome than I expected.
Fighting water bandits was difficult for exactly this reason.
If they had been positioned on open ground like other sects, then with the overwhelming strength of Shaolin, Wudang, Namgung, and Qingcheng, they could have simply swept them away.
But to attack terrain like this, they would have to pay a price just to get in.
No, not even just to get in.
It would be more accurate to say just to approach it.
They would have to fight through those ships and the bandits on the water before they could even enter the valley.
At times like this, I almost envy the heretic factions.
Namgung Hwang grit his teeth.
Just looking at the shape of that valley made his stomach churn.
On their side, their methods were limited because of the civilians who might or might not still be inside. But those bastards had no such problem. No one could know what kind of vile traps were lying in wait within that narrow valley.
“We should secure the upper ground first.”
“Indeed. We don’t know what tricks they may try.”
“...This will not be easy.”
No one was even thinking about defeat. Against Black Dragon Clan alone, they had gathered more than enough force—more than enough to be excessive.
But the most important thing right now was not simple victory.
They had to minimize their losses while still achieving greater merit than any of the other sects. That was why each of them was tangled up in thought.
If we want merit, we have to step forward aggressively. But if we do that, we’ll take heavy losses.
If we bleed, those bastards will only be pleased.
What do we do?
As the others exchanged uneasy glances, Beop Gye spoke first.
“Shaolin will take the lead.”
“As expected of Shaolin. Who in the world could doubt Shaolin’s heart for righteousness? However, this time, please allow Wudang to go first.”
“Namgung even brought boats.”
“Qingcheng brought boats as well.”
The four of them stole glances at one another.
“Then, for now...”
“Wahahahahahaha!”
“As for who stands in the vanguard...”
“Come on, have a drink!”
“...That is what needs to be decided first...”
“Hey! Empty out every bottle you brought! I know you packed them!”
“...”
The veins in Namgung Hwang’s face, which had finally begun to settle, bulged up again.
“T-This...”
“Please calm yourself, Namgung Gaju.”
“Do not mind them.”
“Kuhh...”
At the other sect leaders’ restraint, Namgung Hwang glared with the face of a man who was moments away from exploding from liver fire.
And no wonder. While they were all struggling with their own concerns, a full-on feast had broken out behind them.
Mount Hua disciples in black robes, forest bandits in green, and even water bandits in blue had all mixed together and started drinking like they were at a festival.
“To bring alcohol onto the battlefield...”
Even Hyeoncheonja, who had shown considerable favor toward Mount Hua, frowned as if he could not understand it at all.
“Just ignore it! What do you expect from people who mingle with heretic-faction trash? You can’t put people like that on a battlefield. Unless they want a blade in the back.”
“Hmm.”
The three men looked displeased.
But one person—Heo Do-jin-in—clicked his tongue inwardly as he watched.
Fools.
There was no reason to be irritated by the fact that they were drinking.
What mattered was that they had brought alcohol.
In other words, one of them had already realized, on the way here, that the Nine Great Sects and the Five Great Families would join forces to push them to the back and prevent them from taking part in the battle.
You might ask whether that was really so hard to guess.
Impossible.
They were Mount Hua.
A sect whose reputation was rising fast, yes, and perhaps the most vigorous and high-spirited sect in the Central Plains at the moment. But they were also a sect that had been expelled from the Nine Great Sects for nearly a hundred years.
Which meant none of them had experience dealing with the Nine Great Sects or the Five Great Families directly.
Those who had encountered them often enough to understand their nature might have been able to infer something, but for Mount Hua, which had been pushed beyond that world for more than a century, to bring alcohol with complete confidence?
What deserved attention here was their insight.
And the one who had probably seen through it was...
Heo Do-jin-in’s gaze settled on Chung Myung, who was guzzling liquor in the middle of the group with carefree swagger.
He truly is an impossible person to read.
How could someone that young possess that level of insight? He had seen many geniuses in the jianghu, but he had never once seen anyone like this.
There are many people with talent.
Of course, the talent of the Mount Hua Divine Dragon was beyond comparison as well. But what made Heo Do-jin-in more wary than that talent was the ease and insight that made Chung Myung seem like a man who had rolled around in the martial world for decades.
I may need to rethink this.
His judgment had definitely not been wrong. Mount Hua would still be struggling to close the gap with Wudang for some time to come.
But... when time passed and they were dead, and that child became Mount Hua’s sect leader, would Wudang truly be able to face Chung Myung’s Mount Hua?
The more I think about it, the more frightening...
“Wahaha! Sect Leader! Have a drink! Wow, the view here is unbelievable!”
“...I’ll take tea.”
“Aw, come on! Days like this call for booze, not tea! Chug, chug, chug!”
“...”
The corner of Heo Do-jin-in’s eye twitched.
Impressive, yes...
Really impressive, yes...
And yet somehow, praising that bastard felt worse than death to him.
“...Is this really fine?”
“...”
“Is this actually okay?”
By now, Baek Cheon had seen more than enough of Chung Myung’s outrageous behavior to take it in stride.
At this point, even if an ancient serpent suddenly sprang out of Mount Hua’s rear courtyard, tried to ascend to heaven, got caught by Chung Myung, was beaten senseless, handed over its sacred pearl in submission, and fled with its tail between its legs, he was confident he could watch it all with his hands behind his back.
But still...
Can this really be all right?
Before their eyes were the elite forces of four great sects gathered together.
Shaolin, Wudang, Qingcheng, Namgung.
Each name alone was enough to make the jianghu tremble. Could anyone fail to understand how monumental it was to have not one, but all four of them in the same place?
And yet... right in the middle of them, Daoists, bandits, and water bandits were all gathered together, drinking themselves silly.
This would be strange even if it weren’t happening here!
Worse still were the expressions of the people drinking.
“...I feel like there’s a hole in my stomach.”
“Is this actually safe to eat?”
“I-I’d honestly rather be fighting.”
Mount Hua felt the pressure from the sects in front of them, but in truth that was nothing compared to what the forest bandits and water bandits were feeling.
The Green Forest bandits had gone completely slack-faced, their eyes unfocused.
“H-Haha... one drink...”
The hand lifting the cup was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
I feel like I’m going to throw up.
What if they suddenly change direction and attack us instead?
Mountain Spirit, please save me!
It was a natural reaction.
The situation had somehow ended up like this, but the righteous sects in front of them were not their allies—they were their enemies. If those people ended up being wiped out instead of the Black Dragon Clan’s water bandits, it wouldn’t have been strange at all.
And yet here they were, forced to sit down in front of them and drink. It would honestly have been less stressful to pour oil over themselves and set it on fire.
But if one were to compare, they were still the better off of the lot.
“Hic!”
“...”
“Hic!”
A corpse would look healthier.
The bandits glanced at the water bandits with pity.
The water bandits were elite fighters of the Black Dragon Clan at best, and there was even a Water King here. But those water bandits were, quite literally, ordinary men from a single water stronghold—and until very recently, they had been the ones being hunted, not the ones doing the hunting.
For people like that to be dragged here like slaves and made to drink in front of the place where their former comrades were being crushed, it was amazing they were still sane at all.
“...So, why did you bring the alcohol?”
“W-We were told to bring it... what special skill do we even have to say no...”
Well, yes.
If someone told you to do it, you did it. The one doing the asking was the Mount Hua Divine Dragon, after all.
The water bandits looked like they might collapse from a heart attack at any moment, the bandits sat opposite them and seriously wondered whether they should either run or be buried alive, and Mount Hua’s disciples, told to drink, were drinking—while still unable to tell whether this was really all right, constantly stealing glances at the others.
And then there were the four sects, watching all of it with stomachs churning.
Everyone occupying the riverbank was stuck in an uncomfortable, irritable, awkward mess.
In the middle of all that, there was only one person having the time of his life.
Gulp, gulp, gulp!
Chung Myung knocked back the liquor cleanly, then pulled the bottle from his mouth with a pop.
“Kaaaah! This tastes great! Absolutely fantastic! And the view’s killer too!”
Hyun Jong stared at him with a sour expression.
He understood. There was a calculation behind everything Chung Myung did. Even if it seemed absurd at first, following his lead tended to pay off in the end.
He knew that. He did know it, but...
“Chung Myung.”
“Yes, Sect Leader.”
“...Is this truly all right?”
He was keeping pace perfectly with the rhythm, yes, but the unease was still there.
“They said they don’t want us getting involved.”
“Even so...”
“If we just sit at the back looking miserable, those bastards are the only ones who’ll feel good about it. Sect Leader, you need to understand this if you want to survive the nasty world of politics from now on.”
“...What?”
“Politics isn’t something you do so you can feel good! You do it to make the bastards you hate feel miserable!”
At Chung Myung’s words, Hyun Jong smiled with satisfaction.
Ancestors above.
I’m truly struggling these days. Sometimes even more than I used to.
Please, do something about this brat...
“And also.”
“Hmm?”
Chung Myung wiped the liquor from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve and spoke in a slightly more serious tone.
“The kids need to learn how to watch from the sidelines, too. Until now, whenever something happened, they’d just run off first and fix it, but you do remember what happened to Mount Hua because of that, don’t you?”
“...Of course I remember.”
“Mount Hua was on the verge of collapse, and the fools just stood there watching. So what’s so weird about them being desperate to help over a little thing like this? Personally, I feel like pouring oil over the river and setting it on fire.”
The moment he heard that, Hyun Jong’s face stiffened.
“Still, if the Sect Leader gets up to help them when they’re in trouble, that’d be exactly like you. You’re not the type to just sit and watch. But those bastards, huh? When Mount Hua was burning and the disciples were being slaughtered in front of their eyes, did any of them come to help? No. They sat on their hands, drank themselves half to death, and then went off looting the warehouses.”
Hyun Jong clenched his fist.
I...
Anger surged up in him all at once.
Thinking back, those sects were the ones who had watched the Demonic Sect invade, burn Mount Hua, and massacre its disciples without lifting a finger to help.
What Mount Hua was doing now was not watching a fire from across a river. What those sects had done back then was the true act of standing by and watching from across the river. And yet those same people were uncomfortable watching a war unfold?
Have I really become so comfortable that I’d forgotten all of that?
Hyun Jong ground his teeth briefly.
“Wine!”
“P-Pardon?”
“Bring me wine! I’ll have a drink myself!”
“S-Sect Leader!”
“Hurry!”
At Hyun Jong’s bark, Hyun Young hurried off to fetch alcohol. Watching that, Chung Myung grinned.
“You understand now.”
Hyun Jong nodded with a rigid face.
“There are things one must forget, and things one must never forget. It is not that I wish to repay them in kind in exactly the same way, but...”
“That’s enough.”
Hyun Jong turned and shouted to his disciples.
“Drink! Let us all properly enjoy a little river play!”
“Yes, Sect Leader!”
Hyun Jong snatched up the wine Hyun Young brought him, poured it into the cup, and downed it in one go.
“Krrrgh!”
“Come, come. Have a bite of food too.”
“Aye!”
Watching Hyun Jong tear into jerky, Chung Myung snickered.
Yes, they must never forget.
What those people had done to Mount Hua in the past. And Chung Myung, too, must not forget what mistake Mount Hua had once made.
This is only this much for now...
Someday, those same sects would have a day when they cried tears of blood just like Mount Hua had.
“Let’s just watch them put on a little show. But, hmm...”
“Hmm?”
Chung Myung’s mouth curled.
“I hope this doesn’t end up being a real fire across the river.”
“...What are you talking about?”
“No. Is that how it should end up? I don’t know. Heh heh heh.”
Hyun Jong gave up trying to understand Chung Myung’s nonsense and shook his head, while Chung Myung laughed with that same foul, unholy look on his face.