Resolving the Conflict 5
“……!!”
As soon as the leader of Salui-dang, Wi Ryong-cham, heard that sound, he jerked his head around.
Where his gaze fell, unbelievable as it seemed, stood the boy he had dismissed as nothing more than a scrap.
“You are... no, you are... ”
Startled enough to lose his composure, Wi Ryong-cham began speaking to Seok Geum-ryong without due respect, then quickly caught himself.
No matter how little he thought of him, this was not yet a relationship low enough to warrant dropping honorifics.
“Young Master Seok Geum-ryong, why are you here...?”
Still dazed, Wi Ryong-cham asked.
“Isn’t it the duty of a merchant to move about until his feet are sweating? Besides... this is neither a forbidden district in Hebei nor a place where terrifying assassins are lying in wait.”
“……!!”
With each calm thrust of Seok Geum-ryong’s words into the softest part of his chest, Wi Ryong-cham found himself increasingly unable to think straight.
Why did he feel this growing sense of foreboding?
Swish, swish.
At last, Wi Ryong-cham hurriedly turned his head and searched for someone.
He was looking for the advance party from Salui-dang.
Yet for some reason, aside from Seok Geum-ryong and the few men accompanying him, there were hardly any people to be seen.
There are no people, only the stench of blood. What in the world happened here?
Unable to contain his curiosity, Wi Ryong-cham had no choice but to ask.
“Young Master Seok. Have you seen... our Salui-dang fighters who were here?”
“I have.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I killed them.”
Seok Geum-ryong answered folly with wisdom.
Those words shocked Wi Ryong-cham, and when he turned toward the source of the blood stink, he could hardly believe his eyes.
He had clearly assumed those corpses belonged to the Nine Yin Association’s men, but every one of them was dressed in tight black assassin garb.
“Deputy leader! Chu-sal!”
When he finally found Chu-sal’s headless corpse, Wi Ryong-cham was so shocked that his limbs actually began to tremble.
He had expected them to have secured total victory and be basking in triumph, so to find them butchered like this was beyond shocking.
“You bastard! How dare you, as a merchant, do something so shameless?!”
Wi Ryong-cham, who had hidden his black-hearted nature beneath a veneer of politeness, threw even that away.
Whenever he was enraged, his hand always flew to the hilt of his sword.
“If your mouth is crooked, at least keep your words straight.”
“What?”
“The one who acted shamelessly first wasn’t me. It was Salui-dang.”
The sparring of foolish questions and wise answers continued.
“What nonsense are you spouting?”
“Who I sell my goods to is my own business as a merchant. And if you had the nerve to interfere and act like you were in a position to lecture me, then isn’t it only right that you bear the proper consequences?”
“Y-you...”
Plain truth was often a sharp arrow that tore straight into the heart.
Seok Geum-ryong’s composed words only provoked Wi Ryong-cham further.
“So because of my letter, you joined hands with the Nine Yin Association and struck us after all.”
“Get the causality straight. Salui-dang threatened us first, so we merely dealt with it before you ever joined hands with anyone.”
Watching Seok Geum-ryong refuse to yield even an inch, Wi Ryong-cham’s fury deepened.
The tension rose to its limit, swelling tight and taut, on the verge of bursting.
Whoooaah!
At last, the members of the Nine Yin Association who had been hiding themselves revealed their presence.
It was Song Nan-hyang, the Nine Yin Witch and leader of the Nine Yin Association, together with Cho So-yeon and her people.
The reason they had waited to show themselves was clear enough.
“Young Master Seok. We’ve gathered all the advance party members who were scattered, along with the wounded.”
They had come to tend to the Salui-dang advance force that had been defeated and scattered in the morning battle.
The injured had been sent back to the Nine Yin Association’s main camp, while the unhurt had regrouped and returned with renewed force to strike at Salui-dang’s head.
“The Nine Yin Association!”
Seeing the Nine Yin Association and its leader on the field of battle, Wi Ryong-cham’s expression changed.
From the moment he had spoken with Seok Geum-ryong, he had already realized that today’s plan to charge in and smash the Nine Yin Association’s plaque had failed.
Part of him wanted to turn back right then and head for Salui-dang’s temporary hideout, but he could not.
By then, many of the Nine Yin Association’s members had already completed a loose encirclement, and Wi Ryong-cham and Salui-dang’s elite experts had been careless enough to lose their escape route.
“You bastard! Was this a trap?”
Sometimes the sister who stops the beating can be more irritating than the mother-in-law who throws it.
Instead of venting at the Nine Yin Association, Wi Ryong-cham directed all his resentment at Seok Geum-ryong, his face flushing red with rage.
“A trap? You were the ones who provoked me first, and you were the ones who looked down on me and launched a preemptive attack. If Salui-dang had left me alone and challenged me fairly, who knows what the result would have been... But you went out of your way to invite this fury on yourselves, so who is there to blame? It is all your fault.”
Seok Geum-ryong looked down at Wi Ryong-cham, who was in his mid-forties despite being only fourteen years old in appearance, and showed the wisdom of a far older man.
To anyone watching, it was exhilarating. To Wi Ryong-cham, who had to bear it, it was enough to make his blood boil.
“Fine. Let’s settle this here and now!”
In the end, Wi Ryong-cham could no longer bear the rage. He clenched the hilt of his sword and launched himself at Seok Geum-ryong, the nearest target.
There was a reason he attacked Seok Geum-ryong before anyone from the Nine Yin Association.
No matter how you look at it, this brat and the Nine Yin Association must be close. If I can take Seok Geum-ryong hostage...
If he could do that, Salui-dang would not only escape this near-impossible situation intact, but he could also use Seok Geum-ryong’s life as bargaining weight to extort an enormous sum from Seokga Manor.
Once I’ve earned the enmity of Seokga Manor, I won’t be able to keep footing in the Hebei martial world, but the Central Plains are wide, and there are plenty of places to go.
At this point, Wi Ryong-cham intended to kidnap Seok Geum-ryong, secure a vast reserve of funds, and then flee to a more remote backwater he had originally considered as an alternative after Hebei, such as Zhejiang Province or Anhui Province.
“Young Master Seok Geum-ryong, be careful! Salui-dang’s martial arts are the essence of assassin techniques!”
As Wi Ryong-cham shot forward at terrifying speed, setting his target solely on Seok Geum-ryong, Cho So-yeon, who secretly admired him, cried out.
The description of Salui-dang’s arts as the essence of assassin technique was entirely accurate.
Assassin martial arts were, by nature, about one strike, one kill. They existed to kill the opponent cleanly with a single blow.
That was only natural, because an assassin never got a second or third chance.
Thus, the martial art of Salui-dang’s leader, Wi Ryong-cham, was a swift sword style that accelerated the moment the blade left the scabbard.
-Wind Annihilates the Heavens!
The name of that swift sword technique was the Wind-Annihilating Swift Sword Formula.
Originally, it had been derived from the Great Desert’s Sandwind Swift Sword Formula, but in Wi Ryong-cham’s grandfather’s generation the art had been refined so that, from a swift sword like a sandstorm’s fury, it had become an ultimate technique embodying the speed to annihilate even the wind itself.
Shwaaaash!
True to the domain of swift swordsmanship, the sword Wi Ryong-cham drew from its sheath used the scabbard as a brace and accelerated even further.
The strike was so fast that even the sound of it slicing through the wind was no simple thing.
This is the swift sword of a peak master swordsman!
Seok Geum-ryong could not help but admire this superb display of swift swordsmanship, something he had not felt in a long time.
Many pursued the sword of speed, but to reach the peak through speed alone was an arduous and distant dream.
Yet when that was fused with the simple, plain, practical blade characteristic of assassin arts, the killing power became unimaginable.
He shifted lightly backward and continued to appraise Wi Ryong-cham’s swift sword until the very last instant.
That kind of composure was possible only because Seok Geum-ryong himself had already entered the Peak Realm.
And so.
Slash!
Wi Ryong-cham’s confident strike succeeded in cutting Seok Geum-ryong’s sleeve.
The sword was so fierce that it nearly took off Seok Geum-ryong’s entire wrist.
“……!!”
That alone would have been a considerable achievement, but Wi Ryong-cham was not satisfied.
He did not know that Seok Geum-ryong’s current skill was on par with his own.
And the more astonishing part came now.
This is not an opponent I can afford to underestimate.
His opponent’s martial skill was roughly equal to his own, but as a man who had lived his life as an assassin, his practical battle experience was vast, and he was clearly the sort who excelled in real combat.
At this rate, the advantage would likely slip away.
-Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique: Second Form, Great Gate!
To reverse the momentum, Seok Geum-ryong chose the second form of the Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique, Great Gate.
In terms of sheer force alone, the first form, Greedy Wolf, might have been superior.
But against a swift sword, it was not tricks or cunning that mattered; rather, the orthodox sword style that faced it head-on and crushed it with heavy weight was the better choice.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
Each of the seven forms of the Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique possessed its own distinct character and attributes.
Where Greedy Wolf carried the practical ferocity of a demonic sect sword, Great Gate pursued the profundity of the orthodox sword schools, making it suitable for suppressing the swift, but weightless, blade of an assassin.
And there was one more thing.
Crack!
The instant Seok Geum-ryong’s sword and Wi Ryong-cham’s sword collided, the air thrummed with tension before a sudden disaster struck.
Wi Ryong-cham’s sword shattered to pieces on the spot.
“Huh!”
Wi Ryong-cham had not anticipated such a development and was stunned.
By contrast, Seok Geum-ryong smiled brightly with a composed face.
He had already predicted this outcome.
My Calming Sword is an extraordinary, peerless blade, so excellent that it is hard to find a rival for it.
Since it was the first work created after the master artisan Heaven-Earth Scholar Na Cheon-lip reformed himself and was reborn, its toughness and perfection needed no further explanation.
Wi Ryong-cham’s sword was not of poor quality, but the moment it met the Calming Sword, it shattered like broken teeth.
“Uh, uh, wha...?”
By the time Wi Ryong-cham realized that the blade itself had vanished and only the hilt remained in his hand, he was beside himself.
He should have been forcing Seok Geum-ryong down right now, not getting tangled up like this. He had no time to spare for such a disaster.
What in the world is this sword made of?
Instinctively, Wi Ryong-cham fixed his gaze on Seok Geum-ryong’s Calming Sword.
At first glance, it looked utterly plain, far too ordinary to have been forged from the massive bones of some spirit beast.
But on closer inspection, the shape holding the light, and even the color itself, seemed subtly different.
“Ah!”
At last, Wi Ryong-cham understood.
A true divine blade, a truly perfect work, was made by countless tiny differences in details so small that most people would never notice them.
But regret, however fast it came, was already too late.
-Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique: Third Form, Preserving Wealth!
Following Great Gate, the second form of the Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique, came the form of Preserving Wealth, carrying an even greater and more weighty meaning as it swept down on Wi Ryong-cham.
“No, no, noooo!”
Wi Ryong-cham struggled beneath the immense light that blanketed his body, but he could not possibly resist that sword force, vast as the sea.