Let Them Die Like Vermin (3)
Hong Dae-gwang’s eyes flew wide open.
The pain from the cuts all over his body throbbed dully through him, but at this moment, even that seemed to have vanished from his senses.
“……What in the world is this?”
The Mount Hua disciples were hammering the evil sect members back, one-sided and relentless.
They unleashed lightning-fast sword qi and drove the enemy into a corner with seamless coordination. The Maehwageomgi, Mount Hua’s signature technique, bloomed everywhere in blossoms of exquisite, dazzling beauty.
“My word……”
Watching the evil sect fighters collapse helplessly in sprays of blood, Hong Dae-gwang could barely contain his shock.
He had braced himself for death and pinned all his hopes on Mount Hua. But hope was one thing; reality was another, and reality rarely turned out so conveniently.
What he had truly expected was for Mount Hua to arrive in time and stand shoulder to shoulder with them, meeting the enemy evenly. He had never imagined Mount Hua would seize the field and run them down by itself.
For Hong Dae-gwang, who knew full well who these evil sect members were and what sort of monsters they were, even entertaining such a hope had been absurd.
But here, right before his eyes, something he had never even dared to dream of was becoming reality.
What the hell did those lunatics do over the last three years?
The faces that had once still carried a touch of boyishness had already turned into the faces of true swordsmen.
Fwoosh!
They shoved the enemy back with terrifyingly swift swordsmanship, deflected counterattacks with supple, fluid blade work, and whenever the distance opened even a little, Mount Hua’s trademark illusory sword techniques burst into splendid bloom.
“This is Mount Hua……”
Once upon a time, this was the sect said to have even driven back Wudang and seized the title of the world’s greatest sword sect. And now, here it was, roaring its defiance at the world once more.
Hong Dae-gwang clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles whitened. Heat rushed to his face, and something hot and fierce surged up in his chest.
Unable to hold it in, he shouted at the top of his lungs.
“That’s it! Smash the bastards to pieces! All of them!”
“……”
Gal Cheon-lip’s face drained of color at the unexpected turn of events.
“Big Brother!”
“……”
“Big Brother! We need to do something!”
“……”
“Big Brother!”
Gal Cheon-lip flinched and turned his head. Damhae was staring at him, white as a sheet. Not only him—the rest of his subordinates, who had been gathered around him guarding his flank since Mount Hua’s arrival, were also visibly panicked.
“If this keeps up, everyone will collapse!”
Gal Cheon-lip ground his teeth.
Damn it.
He swept the battlefield again with bloodshot eyes. Those brats—no, he could no longer even bring himself to call them brats—the Mount Hua swordsmen were slaughtering the elites he had brought here as if they were nothing.
The evil sect fighters, overwhelmed by the momentum and unable to hold their ground, were steadily being driven backward, retreating step by step toward this side.
It was an incomprehensible sight.
How can this be happening……?
It should have been the other way around.
However famous they might be as disciples of a renowned righteous sect, the people here were not the kind to be crushed by mere reputation. If anything, those boys who had likely never properly experienced a battlefield should have been the ones buckling under the weight of seeing heads fly and arms severed right before their eyes.
Wasn’t a battlefield the kind of place where, if you couldn’t endure that pressure, you couldn’t even use half your real strength?
And yet……
“Hiiik!”
“B-back off! Those damned flower petals are coming again!”
“Aaaagh!”
It was the evil sect side, not Mount Hua, that was losing its nerve and failing to fight properly.
No matter how he looked at it, this made no sense.
Men who had earned their fame and skill through decades of battle in the martial world were being crushed so miserably by boys who hadn’t even lived half as long.
And on top of that, those demon-like bastards of Mount Hua weren’t letting their guard down in the slightest, even as they watched the scene unfold. Their sword qi remained as cold and murderous as ever.
Is this what it means to be a major sect?
No. Impossible.
If every righteous sect could do this, the world would never have split so evenly between righteous and evil in the first place. This wasn’t the strength of a great righteous sect. It was wholly and entirely Mount Hua’s own strength.
We lost our momentum too badly at the start. Those damn bastards!
The first clash had been the worst. A few of his men had been cut down before they could even properly raise a hand.
Their methods had been not merely decisive, but cruel.
Even if they were only temporary allies, the moment the others saw comrades butchered right in front of them, of course they’d be frightened……
As Gal Cheon-lip anxiously followed his train of thought, his eyes suddenly snapped wide open.
Wasn’t that what we were supposed to be doing?
“Y-you……”
He bit down hard on his lip to suppress his fury.
“Big Brother!”
Yet another frantic voice rang out.
Gal Cheon-lip forced himself to calm down. This was no time for analysis. Once momentum had been broken this badly, if he didn’t recover it now, the situation would spiral completely out of control.
He poured inner force into his voice and roared.
“Iron Ghost! Blood Cleaver! Sweeping Line Ghost! Broken Soul Blood Beast! How long do you intend to stand there and watch?”
There was only one way to restore a shattered momentum—crush it back down with even greater force. The tide of battle always turned on the actions of a few experts.
“You too, join in! Before this gets any worse, show those brats just how high the sky really is!”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
The members of the Gangseo-chilsal guarding his surroundings rushed forward with swift, precise movements.
“Damn it……”
Cold sweat dampened Gal Cheon-lip’s palms.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. They were only meant to cleanly sweep through Xi'an, strip the Eunha Merchant Guild of its wealth, and head for Qinghai.
So why had everything gone so horribly wrong?
No! Not yet!
But it wasn’t irredeemably broken yet. If he could just deal with those cursed bastards, everything would still proceed according to plan.
I will.
Gal Cheon-lip’s jaw tightened as he saw the figures of his men hurling themselves toward the front line.
Faaaat!
A sword tip pierced in like lightning, boring straight toward a shoulder.
“Aagh!”
The man’s agonized scream tore out of him as the blade stabbed clean through his shoulder. In the same instant, the Mount Hua swordsman who had driven the sword in twisted his wrist and wrenched the blade free without the slightest hesitation, then drove it again, stabbing straight into the man’s dantian.
“Kuh……”
The man clutching his lower abdomen wore utter despair in his eyes. If his dantian was destroyed, he would never again be able to live as a martial artist. For one who had spent his whole life as a martial artist, that was a punishment worse than death.
Thud.
The kneeling man collapsed face-first onto the ground.
Having subdued his opponent, Mount Hua’s third-generation disciple Jin Tae drove his foot into the fallen man’s chest.
Bang!
He kicked the man aside and sent him sprawling backward, then quickly steadied his breathing.
The stink of blood surged up into his nose. Along with it came the heat pouring off men struggling desperately to live, the shrill screams, the clash of weapons, the sharp, explosive crack of steel striking steel. Every single thing was vivid against his skin.
Yet his gaze only grew calmer, settling deeper and deeper.
Swish!
At that moment, a saber wreathed in brilliant blue killing intent came flying at his head. Confirming the blade’s trajectory, Jin Tae quickly checked his surroundings.
Nothing.
This was all he had to deal with. His back was covered by his martial brothers.
Having assessed the situation cleanly, he instead lunged forward. A saber was, in the end, a weapon meant to overpower an opponent with sheer force.
But—
Clang!
The tip of Jin Tae’s Maehwa Sword struck just beside the saber’s hilt, and the blade was knocked sharply upward. The instant the saber flew skyward, shock flashed across his opponent’s face.
Naive.
There was no reason to meet brute force head-on just because the enemy tried to crush him with it. If he struck where the force wasn’t properly gathered, even a thin sword could easily deflect that saber.
And the moment the saber lost its strength, a terrifying series of thrusts followed—attacks that made the most effective use possible of the sword’s own strengths.
It’s not this shallow!
A battlefield of blood splashing and flesh tearing?
It was a joke.
The training they had endured had been a hundred times fiercer than this, a hundred times more brutal.
Killing intent?
For someone who had stood right in front of that damn bastard’s killing intent and lived, this was no more than an itch. More than that, there wasn’t even a clear, unwavering intent to kill him coming from these men.
So what reason did he have to fear them?
He was a survivor—someone who had lived through the odds against that cursed monster. Compared to that, their momentum was gentle enough to make him yawn, and their attacks were far too straightforward.
Jin Tae calmly aimed to sever the opponent’s tendons and immobilize him.
But then—
Faaat!
A blade surging with killing intent suddenly flew straight toward his face.
“Tch!”
Jin Tae’s waist bent sharply backward.
When did that happen?
He had clearly checked and confirmed there were no other enemies nearby. His martial brothers should not have lost track of their own opponents, so where on earth had this sword come from?
The blade that had just skimmed past his face spun wildly in midair, then dropped again like a venomous snake hunting its prey, aiming once more for his throat.
A situation on the edge of catastrophe.
But Jin Tae didn’t panic. Even with his posture thrown off, he parried the blade upward in a glancing motion. The incredible impact transmitted through sword against sword sent spasms all the way to his shoulder.
“Kh!”
Even after letting half the force slide off, it was no easy thing to absorb that blow. And that told him everything he needed to know: this man was on a completely different level from the enemies he had faced so far. Jin Tae quickly spun his body, trying to escape the enemy’s range.
But—
Swish!
Once the opponent had taken control of the momentum, the sword would not let him off so easily. It pursued him doggedly, leaving him no room to recover his stance.
“You……”
Jin Tae gritted his teeth.
He sensed instinctively that if he tried to flee clumsily, it would become truly dangerous, so he tightened his grip on the sword, ready to sacrifice his own side if necessary.
Then—
Clang!
Something flashed before his eyes, and the sword that had been chasing him was knocked backward. Jin Tae looked up and recognized the face of the person who had stepped in front of him. Relief flickered across his face.
“I’ll take this one, martial brother.”
At those words, Jin Tae nodded without a moment’s hesitation.
At Mount Hua, what mattered wasn’t status but skill. It was only natural that the stronger one would take on the stronger enemy.
And the person standing before him now had arrived later than he had, but was unquestionably stronger.
“Hmm.”
The evil sect fighter, flexing his wrist as though it ached from the impact, looked at the Mount Hua swordsman before him with eyes faintly sharpened by tension.
That blade-like presence, that perfectly steady stance without the slightest opening—it was the very model of a swordsman.
“Since we both use swords, we might as well exchange names. I am Huang Seong, the Nine Ghost Swordsman. And you are?”
“I have no name worth giving to the likes of you.”
“……”
At that instant, a brilliant blue light burst from the Nine Ghost Swordsman’s eyes.
“You damned bitch……”
The Mount Hua swordswoman slowly raised her blade and pointed it at his throat. Facing that cold, razor-sharp killing intent, the Nine Ghost Swordsman clenched his teeth.
“Since we both use swords?”
A voice colder than the wind of the North Sea slipped from her lips.
“That’s an insult to my sword. There’s no way your sword and mine could possibly be the same.”
“……”
“Remember this clearly before you die. This is the sword of Mount Hua.”
The proud Mount Hua swordswoman, her blade filled with the spirit of Mount Hua, stood before him like a living embodiment of the sect itself.
Dang Soso, hardened by three full years of time, unleashed a sword gaze sharp as a blade and charged straight at Huang Seong.