Inevitability - 1
If the other side has already finished their preparations, it is better to simply avoid them.
That was the first rule every martial artist of the Murim drilled into their bones when facing those who specialized in poison and hidden weapons. Should an opponent armed with toxins and projectiles have all the time they needed—and distance to spare—victory would come only at a catastrophic price.
Which was precisely why Dang Geoho and the black-robed men had driven the bandits in first, forcing the Medical Pavilion to exhaust its stockpile of poisons and hidden weapons.
The Medical Pavilion had completed its battle preparations and now glared across the field at the black-robed ranks, yet the spent arsenal kept them from moving first. That, too, was by design.
“For people who shout so loudly, you cowards certainly know how to shrink.”
Always big talk, never big deeds. The sort of vermin who froze the moment a few dirty looks came their way. Dang Geoho could see the fear plain as day: their poisons and weapons gone, they huddled like frightened rabbits. He sneered at the unmoving Medical Pavilion.
“We are ready as well.”
One of the black-robed men spoke up.
“They were polite enough to yield the first move. No reason to refuse.”
Dang Geoho gave a curt nod. The black-robed fighters assigned to the first rank exploded forward toward the Medical Pavilion.
Even as they charged, no hidden weapons flew to meet them.
The front rank had trained in external arts hard enough that ordinary projectiles would barely pierce their flesh, yet the complete absence of any attack only convinced them their scheme had worked. Break into the heart of the formation, tear it open, and the second rank would pour in to finish the job.
Ten paces. The distance closed. Victory felt certain.
Until a single quiet order rolled across the field.
“All units. Fire.”
The Pavilion Master’s low command arrived a heartbeat too late for them.
“Ghk!”
“Kraaagh!”
A garden of steel bloomed. Black flowerpots suddenly bristled with countless deadly blossoms; those who became the arrangement’s centerpieces managed only a few stumbling steps before they collapsed.
The black-robed men had assumed the Medical Pavilion simply had nothing left to throw. In truth, the Pavilion Master had waited until the enemy entered lethal range precisely because the stock was low.
“Kh! Punch through!”
“Left flank’s thin!”
The survivors of the first rank dove for the Medical Pavilion’s left side, where the curtain of projectiles was thinnest.
The Pavilion Master watched several of his own go down under blades, yet he trusted the men he had stationed for close work and kept his eyes on the black-robed second rank already closing in.
“Scatter the Poison Caltrops! Finish the first rank before the second arrives!”
“Sir!”
Medical Pavilion warriors who had held back the poisoned caltrops during the earlier chaotic fight with bandits now flung them in glittering arcs.
“Urgh! My feet!”
The second rank slammed to a halt amid the sudden carpet of toxin-laced iron stars. In that pause the Pavilion mopped up every first-rank infiltrator.
“We can’t let the entire first rank die like this. I’m releasing the poison!”
A black-robed figure whose purple hair had slipped free of his hood called urgently from the rear to Dang Geoho.
“Do as you please.”
“Second rank, fall back! Wind’s blowing toward the Medical Pavilion—spread the Poison Mist!”
Purple-haired traitors of the Dang Clan surged forward and began releasing sinister smoke.
“We have to seize those Dang Clan bastards before the mist reaches us!”
The Pavilion Master shouted as the haze began to crawl.
“Breaking through the poison fog to hit their line is too dangerous!”
To cut down the traitors who were generating the cloud, Pavilion warriors would have to risk both enemy blades and lethal intoxication.
“Kh…!”
They were on the defensive. Ordering an assault on the traitors was little better than a suicide command. The Pavilion Master swallowed a frustrated growl and glared at the betrayers.
Then—
“Ghk!”
A single hidden weapon punched clean through the throat of a careless purple-haired man.
“W-what the hell? How is anyone moving inside the poison fog?”
Even a true Dang should have been writhing on the ground. The black-robed fighters stared at the silhouette strolling unharmed through the deadly haze.
“Poison doesn’t work on me.”
Dang Hwarin stepped out of the mist.
“It’s the Poison Human! The Dokin’s come out of the fog!”
“Dang Hwarin! Seize that girl!”
“None of us here are pure Dang blood! How the hell are we supposed to catch her when she just ducks back into the mist?”
“Help me!”
Hwarin paid their panic no mind. She weaved through the poison fog, methodically cutting down every Dang Clan traitor she found, then returned to her own lines.
“I’m back.”
“Hwarin. Are you all right?”
“Heh-heh. Were you worried about me?”
The Pavilion Master stared at the two troublemakers’ sickeningly affectionate exchange for one long, incredulous second, then snapped his gaze back to the enemy.
Fortunately the Poison Mist had stopped spreading and now lay between the two forces like a toxic river. Hidden weapons were nearly gone. To make full use of what remained would mean accepting a free-for-all.
“Prepare yourselves!”
How much Dang blood would soak the ground today? The Pavilion Master drew a weapon suited for chaotic melee and prayed the answer would not be too many.
“Kh…!”
To think they would thrash this hard. Dang Geoho watched the Medical Pavilion with genuine shock. After a brief standoff the mist finally thinned.
Through the clearing haze he spotted empty projectile cases on the Pavilion warriors’ belts.
“Now! Charge!”
With every obstacle gone, the black-robed ranks crashed toward the Medical Pavilion like a black tide.
Just as the Pavilion Master had feared, it became a chaotic brawl.
The moment the black-robed fighters punched into the formation, casualties began to mount on every side.
Dang Clan martial artists were hardly helpless in close combat, yet the Medical Pavilion was a medical division first; many of its members had never prioritized melee arts. Of course, the reverse was also true—some of them were monsters up close.
“I will face you all myself!”
A golden whip cracked from the Pavilion Master’s hand; black-robed men flew like broken dolls.
“The Golden Dragon Whip? Why is a Dang Clan heirloom here?”
The weapon he wielded had been crafted from the hide of a rare spiritual beast; scales of living flesh studded its length like a dragon’s armor. Only those who had mastered the Golden Dragon Whip Technique could use it properly—and it was devastating in a free-for-all.
“Kraaagh!”
Every lash of the whip tore chunks of flesh from the black-robed ranks.
“The Golden Dragon Whip Technique?! No one ever said the Pavilion Master knew that!”
“Stand aside! I will deal with the Golden Dragon Whip myself!”
Dang Geoho shoved the reeling fighters aside and planted himself before the Pavilion Master.
“You dog! I will take your head and present your crimes to the entire clan!”
The Golden Dragon Whip snaked toward Dang Geoho on an utterly unpredictable arc.
“Hahaha! Just die here. I will live forever in the annals of the Dang Clan as the man who created the perfect Dokin.”
Dang Geoho casually slapped the incoming whip aside with his bare hand.
“You blocked the Golden Dragon Whip? Those black-stained hands… You bastard! How did you learn the lost Nine Absolute Myriad Jade Hands?”
Dang Geoho’s hands were mottled with the same dark blotches that marked Hwarin’s skin.
Nine Absolute Myriad Jade Hands—a poison-hand art that infected a victim with one of fifteen lethal toxins at the lightest graze. The technique had vanished twenty years earlier when the Dang Clan purged the faction that created Dokin.
“I resurrected the lost Dokin arts themselves. You think I couldn’t manage this much?”
“So you didn’t only experiment on your own bastards!”
“Hahahaha! Whether the whole body becomes a poison sack or just the hands—same difference, isn’t it? I was curious, so I settled the question while I was at it!”
“You absolute monster!”
“Time for you to die!”
The instant Dang Geoho realized the Golden Dragon Whip was no obstacle, he lunged at the Pavilion Master.
At point-blank range he unleashed the Nine Absolute Myriad Jade Hands. The Pavilion Master thrust out a palm to block—an idiot’s choice. One graze and even the greatest physician in the world would be finished.
Dang Geoho smiled the smile of a man who had already won and aimed for that outstretched hand. Yet no wound appeared. Instead, extreme Yang internal energy bored straight into Dang Geoho’s own palm.
“Th-the Three Yang Divine Palm?”
Dang Geoho staggered back, clutching a hand that felt as though it were being cooked from the inside.
“Good eyes.”
“How does a mere Pavilion Master know a direct-line absolute art of the Dang Clan…?”
Yang energy that burned poison to ash. The very technique the main bloodline cultivated in order to reign over a poison-specialist clan. Why would the Pavilion Master possess it?
“The Clan Leader does not care about bloodline or status.”
“Kh…!”
Dang Geoho’s body lurched.
Extreme Yang qi invaded every meridian. Taking a hit from the Three Yang Divine Palm alone was enough to wreck a man; against someone who had cultivated the Nine Absolute Myriad Jade Hands, the poison-scorching energy was pure death.
This is bad.
For the first time Dang Geoho understood that the plan might not end the way he had written it.
Are we winning?
I watched from a textbook CBRN-trained Korean conscript’s safe position, antidote pill clenched between my teeth, surveying the battlefield like a proper bystander.
Victory looked close.
The Dang Clan’s little Dokin club had been cleaned up by Hwarin, and most of the black-robed grunts who had come to force a brawl were being mopped up as well.
The Medical Pavilion’s own losses weren’t light—people were dying—but barring some new variable, this fight belonged to them.
As long as those bastards stay out of it, that is.
Even in the middle of the chaos I kept one eye on the half-dozen black-robed figures still standing off at a distance, arms crossed.
If the ones currently getting mulched were tokusatsu extras, those six radiated the final-three-minute giant-monster energy.
I would have loved it if they had just bought VIP tickets, watched the show, and gone home. But of course they wouldn’t.
“Guh!”
Even while I was thinking that, another strip of Dang Geoho’s flesh went flying under the Pavilion Master’s whip. After all that flashy martial-art name-dropping like kids trading limited-edition business cards, looks like the Pavilion Master ranked higher.
I wondered if the Pavilion Master just ate every good medicinal herb that came through the door. For a guy whose job description was “healer,” he never seemed to get tired. Reassuring.
Dang Geoho had been driven so far into a corner that he was probably screaming inside about how Three Yang Divine Palm burned Nine Absolute Myriad Jade Hands.
“I can’t watch this any longer!”
And there they go.
One of the distant black-robed men blurred forward, caught the Pavilion Master’s whip mid-swing, and began pouring a sinister energy into the weapon.
The Pavilion Master recoiled as if burned and dropped the whip, leaping backward.
“This is demonic qi?! Dang Geoho, you son of a bitch! You joined hands with the Demonic Cult!”
So they were Demonic Cultists. No wonder the situation had started smelling bad.
“……”
Dang Geoho looked like he couldn’t decide which was more humiliating: getting beaten by the Pavilion Master he thought he would crush, or having the Demonic Cult connection outed in one sentence. He refused to meet the Pavilion Master’s eyes.
“You became a running dog of the Demonic Cult and still dared to speak the name of the greatest clan under heaven!”
“Looks like you’ve done everything you can. I’ll take it from here.”
The black-robed man ignored the Pavilion Master entirely and spoke to Dang Geoho.
“……Leave half of them alive.”
We’re fucked.
The moment the spectators from the rear joined in, a slaughter began. In the blink of an eye the Pavilion Master and his remaining warriors were neutralized.
The black-robed men herded us into a tight cluster and dragged Hwarin out in front.
“Let go!”
They forced her to her knees and released her wrists.
Dang Geoho looked down at her in silence, then produced a small casket from his robes and opened it.
“This is the poison core of the Thousand-Year Centipede.”
A millennia-old centipede’s poison core. The stench alone was enough to kill appetite.
“And what exactly am I supposed to do with that?”
“Swallow it. Form a poison core inside your body.”
“Fuck off. I know that thing kills me. Why the hell would I do you any favors?”
That’s my girl. They could force the poison into her mouth, but only Hwarin herself could complete the Dokin transformation. Without her will, the experiment stayed unfinished.
“You refuse? Very well.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Dang Geoho raised a sword and beheaded one of the dying Medical Pavilion warriors on the spot.
“Are you insane?”
“If you do not swallow it, I will kill one Dang Clan member at a time. Eat.”
He held the core out to her.
Hwarin’s eyes trembled. She bit her lip hard, looking at the rest of us as if weighing something.
Hwarin. Don’t.
“Hmph. Since when do I risk my life for people I barely know? No thanks.”
Good call. She snorted as if the very idea were ridiculous and rejected Dang Geoho’s offer.
Hwarin, your acting’s gotten sharp. Real graduate of the Kang Yunho Storytelling Academy. Just stop the tiny lip-tremble and you’ll look like you genuinely don’t give a single damn.
“Fair enough. Then how about this?”
Dang Geoho gestured behind him. One of the black-robed men dragged in a bound middle-aged woman.
“Let go! Let me the fuck go, you bastards!”
The woman screamed.
She had a full figure and the faded remains of what must once have been considerable beauty, but years had carved spiteful lines into her face that made her look permanently sour.
She looked familiar. Who…?
Then I saw Hwarin’s expression freeze in pure shock. Ah… the resemblance was unmistakable.
“W-what the hell is that crazy bitch doing here?”
The middle-aged woman’s identity was Dang Hwarin’s mother.