Nice to See You Again, You Bastard! (3)
“Let’s see….”
Chung Myung’s gaze drifted to Saperyeon across the way.
“I don’t like those bastards either.”
Then he looked down at the cliff below with obvious displeasure.
“And I don’t like those bastards either.”
He clicked his tongue, looking utterly bored.
“What, is there nobody in this world I actually like? That’s a problem. A real problem!”
At that moment, Yoon Jong moved up right behind him and whispered,
“Hey, Chung Myung.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re only saying that, right? You’re actually planning to help the orthodox sects down there, aren’t you?”
Chung Myung turned to look at Yoon Jong with a face full of pity for the world.
“No, what kind of disease has gotten into you, old man? Why the hell would I help those bastards because they’re pretty? If it were up to me, I’d pour oil over them and set them on fire.”
“…….”
“Why? So they’re orthodox, what of it?”
“Th-that’s not the point, you idiot!”
“Huh?”
Yoon Jong frantically jerked his eyes toward the slope below.
“There! There!”
“What?”
Chung Myung still didn’t get it, so Yu I-seol, unable to listen any longer, frowned and backed Yoon Jong up.
“Hye Yeon. Below.”
“Huh?”
“Right! Monk Hye Yeon is down there! I mean, forget the orthodox sects—don’t we have to save Monk Hye Yeon?”
“That’s right, sahyung!”
Only then did a look of realization flicker across Chung Myung’s face.
“……Now that you mention it, he is down there.”
Hye Yeon could be seen standing in the middle of Shaolin, looking up at them. The sight of his sorrow-bright eyes, as huge as a cow’s, was so pitiful that no ordinary person could have ignored him. Chung Myung stared at him for a moment before saying,
“But….”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t monks usually get cremated after they die? Build a stupa and all that?”
“……Why the hell are you bringing that up now?”
“No, I mean….”
Chung Myung scratched the back of his head and then grinned.
“If that’s how you’re gonna end up anyway, wouldn’t it be less unfair if I just burned you first and called it cremation?”
“What are you talking about, you crazy bastard!”
“Say something that makes sense!”
“Are you even human? Are you?”
In the end, the Five Swords all rushed him at once, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him hard. Once their eyes had gone bloodshot, Saperyeon or no Saperyeon seemed to have vanished from their minds entirely.
Chung Myung protested with an aggrieved look.
“No! Buddhism starts with letting go of attachment, right? Valuing your own life is the biggest attachment of all! In a way, I’m helping him!”
“Shut that mouth! That rotten mouth!”
“You deserve a beating!”
Yoon Jong slapped a hand over Chung Myung’s mouth, and Yu I-seol tapped his head with the scabbard, thunk thunk thunk.
“Hey! Quit bothering me and let go! Fine, if it’s like this, then do it like this! Hey! Baldy!”
Chung Myung shoved Yu I-seol and Yoon Jong aside and shouted at the top of his lungs. Hye Yeon looked at him with wide, confused eyes, blinking as if he couldn’t understand what was happening.
“You come up!”
“……Pardon?”
“You. Come up. What, you think those guys will have a fit just because you climb up here?”
“…….”
“If you come up, this gets solved cleanly. Hurry up and climb!”
Hye Yeon smiled faintly.
He had long since known Chung Myung was mad, but….
He’s more insane than I thought. This is beyond imagination.
Chung Myung was proving with every inch of his body that madness didn’t care about time or place.
“……How could I come up and leave my fellow disciples behind, benefactor?”
“Huh? You’re not coming?”
“I can’t….”
“Hah. Our baldy really does have loyalty. Then I guess you can die together.”
“…….”
Clear tears gathered at the corners of Hye Yeon’s eyes.
I actually wanted to see that bastard, even for a little while.
And after all that, he was still….
Meanwhile, Byeok Hyeon had lost the ability to speak and could only stare at Chung Myung in a daze.
Unruly. Absurd.
“……How can he be so outrageously reckless?”
“There’s no other word for it but mad.”
Namgung Hwang’s face was also marked by unmistakable disgust.
Chung Myung had clearly gone too far. Yet there were exactly two people among them who looked at him differently from everyone else.
One of them, Heo Do-jin-in, had eyes that sank deep and heavy.
That isn’t the kind of thing you can do just because you want to.
After all, humans were still animals at heart, and instinct made them feel danger. Even the wildest madman couldn’t keep frolicking if a blade was pressed to his throat.
But Chung Myung was, if anything, more unruly than usual now.
Which means not even Shaolin, Wudang, or even Maninbang and Black Ghost Fort can make that boy tense up.
He knew it. The Mount Hua Divine Dragon was not some fool who couldn’t grasp the situation. On the contrary, he was frighteningly quick to calculate and unbelievably sharp at reading the flow of events.
Recklessness from someone who didn’t understand the situation was just stupidity. But when someone understood perfectly and acted anyway, wasn’t that confidence?
Does he really think he can still put this situation under his feet?
Heo Do-jin-in bit his lip hard.
He had always held Chung Myung in very high regard. In all the world, there were few who valued Chung Myung more than he did. And yet, in this moment, Heo Do-jin-in could not shake the suspicion that his assessment of Chung Myung had not been entirely wrong—but perhaps not entirely right either.
And apart from Heo Do-jin-in, there was one other person who looked at Chung Myung differently.
Jang Il-so slowly opened his mouth.
“You’re not planning to keep up this uninteresting farce forever, are you, Mount Hua Divine Dragon?”
Chung Myung shot him a sharp look.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut that trap?”
“I’d like to, but you know as well as I do that if I don’t speak, this stalemate will go on forever.”
Chung Myung scratched his head without saying anything. The words had come from Jang Il-so, but he knew they weren’t wrong.
“Fine. Then talk. But watch your mouth. If you spout bullshit, I’ll ram right through you without even looking back.”
Everyone who heard that gaped.
Just a moment ago, he’d told him to shut his mouth, and now he was warning him not to talk nonsense. Even Beop Jeong, the abbot of Shaolin, would never dare treat Jang Il-so like that.
What was even harder to understand was that Jang Il-so didn’t seem particularly annoyed by the abuse from a fresh-faced youngster.
Man-geum Daebu, who had been watching in silence, twisted his lips into a smile.
“What a specimen.”
“That doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Jang Il-so nodded and gazed at Chung Myung with a faint, pleased look. Man-geum Daebu thought that expression looked oddly cheerful.
So, madmen really do understand one another?
It was a truly bizarre thing.
In terms of standing within the martial world, Man-geum Daebu’s reputation was actually a little higher than Jang Il-so’s. And as for that brat called the Mount Hua Divine Dragon, they weren’t even in the same league.
And yet Man-geum Daebu could not bring himself to intervene in the conversation between those two.
There was some other force between them, something unrelated to the prestige or rank normally discussed in the martial world. Something that could not simply be called madness, though madness was surely part of it. Something else, something he couldn’t name.
Jang Il-so’s red lips curved into a smile.
“How about it, Mount Hua Divine Dragon? Do you like the gift I prepared?”
“……What kind of bullshit is that?”
“There’s no reason to hide it from each other now, is there? Of course you want to tear me apart and kill me.”
“You know it well.”
“But at the same time, you’re the kind of man who can cooperate with even his mortal enemy if it’s for something he wants.”
“…….”
Jang Il-so’s smiling face looked almost grotesque at a glance.
“You link sects to sects, build bonds out of thin air, gather people who should never be in the same place under one roof. That isn’t something anyone can do unless they’re ruled by desire.”
“You seem to have mistaken something. Heavenly Alliance isn’t like that.”
“No, no. That’s not it, Mount Hua Divine Dragon.”
Jang Il-so shook his head.
“That part doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have no intention of stopping here. What you want is for Heavenly Alliance to grow even bigger, isn’t it? Bigger still! Enough to devour everything in sight! More!”
Chung Myung’s eyes grew cold.
“Do you know me or something? You’re talking like you do.”
“I know you all too well. I have no choice but to know. We’re alike.”
Chung Myung’s face twisted sharply.
“Just because something comes out of that stinking mouth of yours doesn’t make it true. I told you, if you start spouting bullshit, I won’t sit still.”
“No, no. There is at least one thing we definitely share.”
Jang Il-so’s eyes swept over Chung Myung with meaning.
“We don’t know how to be satisfied.”
“…….”
At those words, it wasn’t Chung Myung who flinched, but the Mount Hua disciples standing beside him.
Yeah… can’t really deny that.
If Jang Il-so was the incarnation of desire, then Chung Myung was practically the incarnation of greed. Had Mount Hua not grown so quickly thanks to Chung Myung’s greed?
He was the one who had achieved a level of growth in a short time that other sects couldn’t even imagine, and still remained dissatisfied—coming all the way to the Yangtze to stir up another storm.
“So, look at it this way, Mount Hua Divine Dragon. Isn’t this the best opportunity you could ask for?”
“…….”
“Heavenly Alliance and Saperyeon alike are bound to hit a ceiling as long as the Nine Sects and Five Great Families exist. But… if we can bring those bastards down, then the vast land of the north can be divided between Heavenly Alliance and Saperyeon!”
Everyone saw Chung Myung simply as Chung Myung.
But Jang Il-so alone saw Chung Myung’s true position clearly. The one he was facing was not only Chung Myung, the Mount Hua disciple and Mount Hua Divine Dragon, but also Chung Myung, the true decision-maker of Heavenly Alliance.
“Dao, righteousness, chivalry… You must know exactly how worthless those words are. You understand how disgusting it is for them to talk about such things!”
Chung Myung said nothing, only glared across at him. Jang Il-so slowly calmed the edge from his voice and smiled.
“Help me, Mount Hua Divine Dragon.”
“…….”
“Not a single ant will survive. Not one person here will be allowed to live. Then what happens here will never be known by anyone under heaven. Saperyeon will take all the blame for slaughtering them. All you have to do is stand there and watch.”
Jang Il-so spread both arms lightly. His red robes billowed in the wind, and the gold and jade ornaments on his body chimed with a sinister, delicate sound.
“Then you can take half the world.”
“…….”
“What’s collapsing here isn’t them. What’s collapsing is the rule of the Nine Sects and Five Great Families that has lasted these last hundred years! The world turns over right here! You and I will twist this world with our own hands!”
Every word from Jang Il-so dripped with conviction.
Baek Cheon found himself stepping back without realizing it.
The pressure, though impossible to reach him physically, seemed to be pushing him away all the same.
Jang Il-so….
The black madness he exuded, almost pure in its form, blanketed the cliff.
Heo Do-jin-in’s eyes shook.
What in the world is that man… talking about right now?
Heavenly Alliance joining hands with Saperyeon to strike the Nine Sects?
What kind of utter nonsense is that…?
Something like that could never happen. No, it must never happen. How could the evil faction and the orthodox faction unite to attack the orthodox faction?
And yet, unlike the furious rejection of common sense in Heo Do-jin-in’s mind, his reason kept whispering that this was not an impossible story.
His wavering eyes followed Chung Myung.
Here, the core of the Nine Sects and the Five Great Families had gathered. If they were annihilated here, the Nine Sects would be left as nothing but shells.
Could the Nine Sects, without Shaolin and Wudang, and the Five Great Families, having lost Namgung and Qingcheng, withstand a joint assault from them?
Absolutely not.
No. Even if they could somehow endure, it would amount to the same thing.
Even if the Nine Sects won a long, drawn-out war, Shaolin and Wudang, Namgung and Qingcheng would have no place in it afterward.
Whatever the outcome, by Chung Myung’s decision, these four sects could end up erased from the history of the martial world.
That can never happen!
Even if Mount Hua held a grudge against them….
At that moment, Heo Do-jin-in inhaled sharply.
Even if they held a grudge?
What was he trying to say?
Even if there was a grudge, they should still follow propriety? Even though the side that had first violated the proper way was the Nine Sects themselves?
“…….”
Only then did Heo Do-jin-in finally realize how ruthlessly they had been holding Mount Hua to a standard of their own making under the name of the righteous faction.
The standard they had thought they understood but had never truly understood at all.
And so he was forced to think.
If he were in the same position, would he fight to protect the people who had stood by and watched his sect burn? For the sake of his own righteousness?
All he had to do was take one step back and watch.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
That would simply be Mount Hua returning to the Nine Sects what the Nine Sects had done to them in the past. So could anyone really say that choosing such a path was wrong, and condemn it so easily?
Heo Do-jin-in’s face twisted, and he opened his mouth.
“Mount Hua Divine—”
But before he could continue, Chung Myung, who had been standing quietly listening to Jang Il-so, spoke first.