I Have Won This War (1)
Yoon Jong gritted his teeth so hard that the muscles in his jaw went rigid. The blood drained from the hand that held his sword.
He felt as if he were being swallowed whole by madness.
Jang Il-so’s insanity pressed down on people like it had weight, so vivid and raw that you could almost reach out and touch it. It was the sort of merciless savagery no one could have imagined actually existing in this world. Merely standing before him felt as though his heart were being gnawed apart.
How are we supposed to face that?
He looked at Chung Myung standing toe-to-toe with Jang Il-so.
Yoon Jong could tell.
Chung Myung was already at his limit. No—perhaps he had gone beyond it. The faint tremor in Chung Myung’s legs proved as much.
And yet Chung Myung did not retreat even an inch.
How…?
Then Jang Il-so slowly brushed back the hair that had fallen over his face.
He swept the sweat-soaked locks neatly away, wiped the blood from his cheek, and fixed Chung Myung with an odd look.
“Young punk, huh…?”
The smile on Jang Il-so’s face, baring his teeth, made him look like a blood-starved wolf.
His cruelty seeped through so clearly that it was chilling. It felt as if those teeth might lunge for a throat at any moment and tear out the breath within.
“How many people in this world can afford to call me that?”
Calling him a young punk really had nothing to do with Jang Il-so.
Especially not Paegun Jang Il-so.
“How amusing. And yet, I don’t even feel offended.”
“……”
A bright smile bloomed at the corners of Jang Il-so’s mouth.
At the sight of it, the Five Swords all felt a new, more ominous chill crawl over them.
How should they describe this feeling? How could they explain the ache in their chests, the anxiety that made their hearts sting?
Jang Il-so spoke with a mocking laugh in his voice.
“But… if I just let that slide, wouldn’t I lose face? Don’t you think?”
In an instant, Jang Il-so unleashed a horrifying surge of energy from his entire body.
Chung Myung, taking the force of it head-on, swayed as if he might collapse any second.
“Kgh!”
A waterfall of blood poured from Chung Myung’s mouth.
He had overdrawn his inner power to fight Jang Il-so. He had forced himself beyond his limits for a brief instant, but the backlash was now crashing down over his entire body.
“Kh….”
Just as Chung Myung was desperately trying to squeeze out strength that would no longer come and tightening his grip on the sword—
Thud.
Yu I-seol stepped forward.
Her face was bloodless and pale from enduring the pressure Jang Il-so radiated, but she took one step, then another, and finally stood in front of Chung Myung.
Then she lifted her trembling sword and pointed it at Jang Il-so’s throat.
Jang Il-so’s eyes sank into darkness.
This was not the same as when they had first charged in with burning confidence. By now, they all understood clearly that even if they blocked him together, fighting Jang Il-so was impossible.
And yet some still stepped forward anyway.
Thump.
Baek Cheon, too, forced a foot that seemed rooted to the ground to move, and walked out.
With a stiff, hardened face, he stood beside Yu I-seol and leveled his sword at Jang Il-so.
“Ha….”
Yoon Jong did the same, and so did Jo Gul. One by one, they stepped forward, shielding Chung Myung and baring their swords against Jang Il-so.
Jo Gul forced the corners of his mouth upward and said with feigned nonchalance, “Looks like this is as far as we go.”
“We have to keep Chung Myung alive.”
“……Sasuk. Get the kid and run. I’ll… I’ll hold him off somehow for now.”
“Cut the crap. I’m the one who dies first.”
“You really are stubborn, Sasuk….”
They all tried to throw out jokes in voices that trembled.
Those quips, spoken through shaking legs and bloodless lips, were nothing more than desperate attempts to hide their weakness.
But…
Even Jang Il-so, who mocked and sneered at everything under heaven, did not laugh at them this time.
Stepping forward was not difficult.
A puppy has no idea how terrifying a tiger is. And this world was full—overflowing, in fact—of such puppies.
But this was not the reckless bravado of an ignorant fool.
Courage was not the absence of fear. A person who knew no fear was merely a fool.
It was stepping forward despite fear.
It was knowing terror of the enemy and dread of death, trembling like a poplar in the wind, and still taking another step.
It was lifting a sword with shaking hands anyway.
That was courage.
At that moment, Jang Il-so understood something clearly.
When they stepped in front of him, Chung Myung’s breathing changed. With the great Jang Il-so before him, he still dared to slow his breath, gather himself, and begin drawing strength again.
Do these bastards think they can stop me for even a moment?
There was no way that brilliant mind believed something so stupid. And yet Chung Myung was clearly trusting the people who had blocked his path.
Those young punks.
“Ha… ha-ha-ha!”
Jang Il-so laughed in his sneering way and looked at Chung Myung standing behind them.
“I’ll admit it. Your courage is admirable. But… that doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing. Cowards are the ones who survive longest, and the brave die first, after all.”
“……”
“So… which of you is the bravest?”
Crack.
Jang Il-so clenched his fist. With a face that looked possessed, he stepped forward and crushed them all with his presence.
“Come on then. Prove your courage with your lives.”
Jang Il-so’s existence began to bear down on the entire Five Swords.
The overwhelming pressure, like a typhoon bearing down, tightened around their throats. All of them groaned under that force.
Then, from behind the Five Swords, a twisted voice drifted out.
“Man, your mouth never shuts up….”
“……”
Jang Il-so’s gaze shifted toward Chung Myung.
Chung Myung cracked his stiff neck from side to side.
“For a bastard from the Orthodox Faction, you sure do talk a lot. If you think that way, then just come at us. Why keep barking like some scared mutt?”
Chung Myung bared his teeth.
Limit? An unbeatable enemy?
So what?
Anyone who kept tallying that kind of crap would never have climbed the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.
Jang Il-so did not know.
No matter how many fierce battles he had fought, no matter how many wounds he had collected, no matter how many times he had thrown his life away and crossed the boundary between life and death as casually as eating a meal, that alone would never make him equal to Chung Myung.
He did not know.
He did not know what it meant to fight despair.
He did not know what it felt like to have no hope of even scratching the enemy, to know you would die even if you fought with everything you had, and still grit your teeth and battle on anyway.
And above all… he did not know what it meant to overcome that!
“Sorry, but….”
Chung Myung smiled faintly, brushing away the many faces that flashed through his mind in an instant.
“I’ve been through too much to call this a crisis.”
“……”
“So quit barking and come at me. I’ll show you exactly why you’re the young punk here.”
Jang Il-so stared at him in silence.
By all rights, Chung Myung should have already been at his limit—barely able to keep his sword up.
And yet…
That look.
Why did those eyes believe in their victory without even a shred of doubt?
In that moment, Jang Il-so had a premonition.
For the first time in his life, he had met someone he could not decipher.
And then it happened.
“Ughhh….”
From beneath the cliff, which had been silent until now, a hand suddenly rose and seized the edge of the precipice.
Everyone’s eyes turned that way at once.
“Ugh….”
One battered hand after another appeared. The swordsmen of Wudang and the monks of Shaolin had finally managed to climb that hellish cliff.
“Keep climbing!”
“Don’t let your guard down! Those who get up first, protect the rear!”
More and more people began to haul themselves over the top of the cliff.
And by some strange twist of fate, those who climbed up naturally gathered behind Chung Myung.
Then the waiting combat forces of the Haomun and the Ghost Sword Unit of the Black Ghost Escort rushed swiftly behind Jang Il-so and began releasing murderous intent of their own.
The tension on the cliff top tightened to the breaking point.
Chung Myung slowly turned his gaze back to Jang Il-so.
“Well, well….”
The mocking expression on his face now carried undisguised contempt.
“Looks like all that grand talk of yours hasn’t gone so well. What should we do? Everyone’s come up already.”
“……”
“You should have fought instead of wasting time running your mouth. Things might’ve turned out a little different.”
There was no way Jang Il-so could argue with that. His plan to deal with them below the cliff had been effectively shattered.
Everyone looked at Jang Il-so’s face.
They couldn’t help it. Now that his plan had gone sideways, they were dying to know what expression he would make.
But when Jang Il-so’s face finally changed, everyone was left speechless.
Across his entire face was the brightest smile he had shown yet.
“I’ll admit it.”
“……”
His slow tone was strangely buoyant.
“This battle….”
He paused, licked his lips while looking at Chung Myung, and then said very slowly,
“...you’ve won it.”
“……”
Chung Myung’s face hardened at once, and he glared at Jang Il-so. That answer was so far outside his expectations that it only made him more suspicious.
Then, in a voice strained with what sounded like restrained anger, he said, “...What kind of bullshit are you pulling?”
“Exactly what I said.”
Jang Il-so shrugged, his face still carrying that same carefree ease from before.
“Being pinned down by you this badly wasn’t part of my calculations. You really did twist the picture I laid out beyond recognition. So I have no choice but to acknowledge it, don’t I?”
“……”
“It’s my defeat. You’ve won this battle. It’s true that in a battle, the strong don’t always win. This one stings, I’ll admit it. Ga-myeong will laugh at me for this.”
Chung Myung glared at him without the slightest wavering. There was no way Jang Il-so was done speaking yet.
“But….”
As expected, Jang Il-so’s lips parted slightly, revealing white teeth.
“That’s only the battle.”
“……”
“I’ve won this war, Mount Hua Divine Dragon.”
If it had been the usual Chung Myung, he would have ignored that line completely.
But not now. The moment he heard the certainty in Jang Il-so’s voice, he could not help feeling that something was terribly wrong.
“You still don’t understand.”
Jang Il-so’s mouth twisted.
“You ought to understand this better than anyone here, and yet you don’t understand it at all. That’s strange, isn’t it? You really are unusual.”
“What the hell are you talk—”
“I’ll explain.”
Jang Il-so cut Chung Myung off and looked at him gently. Then, as though instructing a beloved disciple, he spoke in a soft voice.
“Listen well, Mount Hua Divine Dragon. Just like battle, war is not won by the strong. War is won by those who have something to protect.”
Jang Il-so tapped his own temple with a finger.
“That’s why you can’t defeat me. Do you understand?”
Chung Myung tightened his grip on his sword.
“This bastard….”
Crack, crack, crack.
His body tensed as though he might leap forward any second, and his feet dug into the ground.
He couldn’t tell exactly what Jang Il-so meant, or what kind of trick he was pulling. But the instant he heard the words “something to protect,” faces flashed through Chung Myung’s mind—faces of the Five Swords, of Mount Hua, of Hye Yeon, and many others.
And one thing was certain now.
He had to shut that mouth before Jang Il-so could pull something else.
Chung Myung lowered his stance like a hungry wolf, and Jang Il-so smiled faintly, shaking his head.
“You didn’t understand me at all, did you, Mount Hua Divine Dragon? This war….”
Jang Il-so spread both arms as if making a grand proclamation.
“...is already over.”
“Shut your mouth, you bastard!”
At last Chung Myung slammed his foot into the ground and shot straight at Jang Il-so. How he found the strength, no one knew, but the sword energy clinging to his blade burned red-hot.
But Jang Il-so merely watched him come with that same grotesque smile.
As though he knew that sword would never touch him.
What the—?
That was the exact instant a terrible sense of wrongness swept over Chung Myung.
Flash!
Chung Myung, charging at Jang Il-so, suddenly widened his eyes. His head snapped violently to the side.
KWA-A-A-AANG!
But there was no time to react. A surging palm strike slammed into Chung Myung’s side.
“Chung Myuuuuuuung!”
Yu I-seol, who had been about to rush after him, let out a tearing scream at the unimaginable turn of events.
“Ch, Chung Myung! Chung Myuuuuung!”
Chung Myung was flung through the air like a severed kite string and smashed into the ground.
The Five Swords bellowed and ran toward him.
But only one of them—
Baek Cheon—turned his head with a face like a demon’s and looked elsewhere.
At the one who had sent the palm strike at Chung Myung.
The one they could never have anticipated, and therefore could never have stopped, despite the sneak attack.
“Y-you…!”
Crack.
Baek Cheon’s teeth ground together, and veins burst up all over his eyes. A low, animal-like sound leaked from his throat.
“Heo… Do….”
At last, a voice like a beast’s howl burst from his mouth.
“Heo Dooooooo!”
The Sect Leader of Wudang, Heo Do-jin-in.
He was staring back this way with a face steeped in sinister energy.