Mantid Maiden - 10
The official highway of Liaodong Province begins at the Yalu River, the border with Joseon.
Starting at Dandong—where the vital Joseon stronghold of Uiju can be glimpsed far across the water—the road passes the border gate through which Joseon and the Central Plains trade, and runs north to Shenyang: the provincial capital of Liaodong, and the seat of the Moyong Clan.
In other words, the route the Moyong Clan administers between the Central Plains and Joseon is a trade corridor that includes this highway linking Shenyang with Uiju.
Even the most important trade route in all of Liaodong was raided now and then by bandit gangs or Jurchen riders. Further east, the state of law and order was easy enough to guess.
Countless Jurchens and bandit bands. To the common folk who had barely managed to settle the little farmable land there was, these men had always been objects of pure terror.
"B-Bandits!"
"Get inside! Hide the children!"
The moment the heads of the bandit gang crested the ridge, the villagers hurriedly pounded their drums, sounding the alarm of the enemy's approach.
"'Bandits,' is it? There's nothing my Red Wind Band can't do."
Smirking at one corner of his mouth, the bandit chief swaggered at his leisure toward the village.
The Red Wind Band. The gang that ruled this region at present—thugs so vicious in their methods that they would kill even a child without hesitation if the mood took them.
"Ke-hahaha! Showing them a sight they can't stomach is all it takes, no? Though I'll say this—I don't see a single man about."
Everyone who had been out mere moments ago had vanished indoors. Only the village head and a handful of men stood waiting before the storehouse, and not one of them showed a trace of defiance.
The vice-chief laughed heartily at the village's air of resigned surrender.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. A few good tramples and they've given up altogether. Young folk these days have no spine."
"Wasn't it because every man who dared show spine in front of you, Boss, ended up with his skull caved in?"
"Kheheh. True enough. A shame, though. Cracking skulls is half the fun of coming out here."
The chief smacked his lips, madness glistening in his eyes.
"Wonder how much those beggar bastards have scraped together... I miss the old days, when one good haul fed us for a month."
The vice-chief muttered wistfully, reminiscing about a time only a few years gone.
"Goddamn Moyong Clan bastards..."
"They're the ones with no code at all, Boss. They clamp their whole fist around the trade route—what are the likes of us supposed to eat, scraping by on passage tolls the way we do?"
"Those bastards are the real thieves, I keep telling you."
That the bandits had drifted toward the impoverished east was, ironically, the Moyong Clan's doing. When Moyong Sang-ah seized control of the trade route to Joseon, countless gangs had lost their lives, and even the survivors had been forced to turn their eyes toward eastern Liaodong, where the watch was lax.
"You're feeling glum anyway, Boss—how about it? Leave the money to the boys and get yourself a taste of woman first?"
"What woman worth taking would a beggar village have... Huh?"
For an instant, the chief doubted his own eyes.
"What is it, Boss?"
"Hold position here. Half of you, with me."
"Boss?"
Whatever the vice-chief might say, the chief whipped his horse onward. A woman with skin white as snow, the like of which no backwater village could ever produce. A beauty so striking she could be picked out even from a distance.
"There she goes!"
A village whose people had all melted indoors. The bandits became hunting dogs. At their chief's command they scurried busily about, driving a lone woman before them.
"Where'd she disappear to?!"
"There! I see her!"
"Where might you be rushing off to in such a hurry?"
The heart of the village. The hounds had completed their drive. The bandit chief spread both arms wide and cut off the fleeing woman's path.
"..."
The woman just barely slipped past the man's lunge to swallow her into his arms—but in the chief's eyes, it looked like nothing more than a cute show of petulance.
"Good heavens. How on earth did I never know a beauty like this lived in this village?"
A fair-skinned beauty, in a village that could barely scrape a living from its fields. Was this what a lotus rising out of filthy mud looked like? No—a mere lotus fell short of describing this woman.
Every bandit ringing her in was so bewitched by her face that drool dripped from their parted lips.
"Bandits?"
From the woman's expressionless lips flowed a voice as beautiful as her face.
"My, my. Even your voice is lovely. Beautiful. You know why we've come, don't you? Let's not make trouble for each other. Kheheheh."
Did she not know who he was? Or had fear simply broken her? It made no difference either way. Only one ending awaited the woman. Lust rippled in the bandit chief's eyes.
'Days of coming up empty-handed, and now a treasure beyond price falls into our lap!'
Just as the chief stepped forward, ready to pull the woman into his arms that very instant—
"B-B-Boss."
One of the bandits cried out, his teeth chattering.
"What?"
"I-I've seen her somewhere before, I swear it."
He had seen her.
If his eyes did not deceive him, he had. There was no forgetting that face. It was her, beyond any doubt. The bandit could not stop his jaw from trembling.
"What? You looking to lap the cream before your chief does— urk!"
Across the hulk's neck, an arc of impossible beauty was drawn.
The chief's head went flying.
The man's body toppled, and the head that had glistened with lust mere moments before rolled limply to a stop before the bandits.
The gang could not bring itself to believe what had happened in the space of a breath.
"Wh-What in the world—?!"
"I-It's her, I told you! It's the Moyong Clan's Female Mantis!!!"
The bandit's horrified shriek rang out across the square—long, long after it could do him any good.
"The Moyong Clan?!"
The center of the ring. Any soul might have been forgiven for trembling before a host of armed warriors, yet the woman's expression remained cold and level.
"Changbong Corps."
A pack of tigers had already closed around the hounds. Moyong Sang-ah called upon the Changbong Corps, which had waited in perfect silence for this very moment.
"Yes, my lord!"
"Wh-What is the meaning of this?!"
Only then did the bandits notice the Changbong Corps encircling them in turn. And then, they understood.
They had ridden far too deep into the village. In their chase of the woman through the alleys, they had long since dismounted.
It was far too late to run.
"Leave not a single one of them alive."
The men who had been hounds only moments ago had, without ever realizing it, become the quarry.
"Damn it all! It's the Moyong Clan!"
"Fuck! What the hell are those bastards doing there?!"
The Moyong Clan's sudden appearance came as a shock even to the bandits waiting outside the village.
"What are you idiots doing?! Mount up, now!"
Shrieking at his panic-stricken men, the vice-chief swung himself onto his own horse.
"Vice-Chief! Are we going back for the Boss?!"
"From today, I'm the Boss! Got that, Vice-Chief?"
"Y-Yes, Boss! Understood, Boss!"
Bandits banded together for profit, nothing more. Loyalty never entered into it.
"Rear! The Moyong bastards are charging!"
One bandit howled, pointing back at the Changbong Corps sweeping out of the village.
"Goddamn it!"
"Our horses are still fresh! In for a penny—why don't we stand and give them a real fight?!"
"You morons! The Moyong Clan are the ones who go around smashing the skulls of Jurchen riders who've been in the saddle since they were weaned! Move, move!"
The instant the vice-chief confirmed that every last man was mounted, he lashed his horse's rump.
"Front! Moyong Clan on the right!"
"Those sons of bitches! They came out here loaded for bear, didn't they?!"
They had dug this trap and lain in wait, scheming to annihilate us to the last man. The man ground his teeth as the realization sank in.
"Boss! What do we do?!"
The newly minted Boss watched the Moyong warriors bearing down on them, terror stark across his face.
"Vice-Chief!"
"Yes, Boss!"
"I shall remember you!"
"...What?"
"Your sacrifice, Vice-Chief—I shall remember it well! Hyah!"
"Ne-e-e-eigh!"
The man's whip cracked against the rump of the horse his vice-chief had just mounted. Stung far worse than usual, the horse bolted straight for the enemy line.
"You son of a bitch! Don't you whip my horse! Hey!!! You goddamn basta-a-a-ard!"
A swift promotion, and an even swifter dismissal.
"We'll remember you too!"
As though each man knew the whip would be his lot next if he didn't act, the bandits lashed their comrades' horses forward. A conveniently expendable number of them went charging at the Moyong warriors to buy time.
"Hey! You lunatics!"
"You bastards! I'll remember every last one of you even in hel-l-l-l!"
"What a worthless last testament! Breaking left!"
Fortunately, they had bought their time.
The man quirked one corner of his mouth and hauled the reins around. He had lost half the gang. No matter.
He was the Boss now. Get back alive, and there would be plenty more veins to bleed to make up for today's losses.
Just as the man allowed himself a smile of satisfaction—
"Th-There! Past the ridge!"
Beyond the ridge dead ahead, a host of cavalry appeared, the sun blazing at their backs.
"Now, listen well."
Changbong Corps Commander Moyong Pyeong paid no mind to the bandits thundering toward them, his gaze fixed instead on his green recruits, whose tension was plain to see.
"Th-The Moyong Clan, dead ahead!!!"
"What?!"
"You are all chicks newly fledged from the nest."
Warriors handpicked and painstakingly raised in the Chuseondang over the past two years. The talents their lord had cultivated for one purpose: to defeat the Demonic Cult and the Blue Dragon Pavilion, and reclaim the Moyong Clan.
The corps commander addressed the recruits in a calm, unhurried voice.
"Yes, sir!"
"No chick may enter the Changbong Corps."
"Yes, sir!"
"Any man who falls from his saddle will not be entering Changbong Hall. He will begin his training over from the very beginning, in the Chuseondang."
"Yes, sir!"
"Prove that you are no chicks."
"Yes, sir!"
No briefing was necessary. He had not raised them so green that the plan needed repeating.
"FUUUUCK!!!! There's no turning back now!!!"
"NoooOoOo!"
Terror-stricken screams rose from those who had dared practice banditry inside the Moyong Clan's domain.
It was the perfect stage for a live exercise.
"All units. Charge."
"GODDAMN MOYONG CLAAAN!!!"
The bandits' final scream rolled out across the grassland.
"Kheheheh. That's it. I knew it—the Female Mantis has been missing the taste of a man."
The situation was being settled from the village's outskirts inward. The bandits surrounding Moyong Sang-ah had no intention of loosening their encirclement.
Let her be the infamous Female Mantis—she was still only one woman. The moment they gave up their hostage, nothing would remain but a merciless hunt. She must not be allowed to slip away.
"..."
"How dare you speak so of our lord!"
"Stand down."
Moyong Sang-ah spoke in a calm voice to her deputy commander, whose composure was visibly fraying.
"My lord!"
"That's right. One wrong move, and your lord grows herself a second mouth."
"Fine, we'll leave—but only after we put that bitch down!"
Perhaps they knew their fate was already sealed, for the bandits showed no thought of backing down.
'This must not end with the mere capture of a bandit gang.'
Blade held in careful readiness, Moyong Sang-ah quietly watched the bandits closing in on her.
It was not a mere bandit gang that had put such tension into her body.
— Now that the Changbong Corps has swelled in size, its substance has become the problem.
Moyong Sang-ah remembered her own officers—drenched in a sense of inferiority, unable to say a word, standing before Cheongun as he reached out his hand for those in need.
Surviving the crossroads where the clan's very existence hung in the balance had meant that swelling the organization came first. Her elder brother, hand in glove with the Demonic Cult, was a power of exactly that magnitude.
She had recruited countless warriors to form the Changbong Corps, expanded her business ventures one by one, and piled up justification upon justification for seizing control of the clan.
Master of Changbong Hall, Moyong Sang-ah.
The Changbong Corps, devoted to her—an organization so formidable it was hard to believe it had been built in a mere two years. And yet something vital had been lost along the way.
Moyong Sang-ah recalled the last words her unforgettable love had ever spoken to her.
So her lord husband had said. Retake the Moyong Clan.
Power, met with another kind of power. Was driving out her brother and his Demonic Cult allies truly all it meant to reclaim the Moyong Clan?
No. She had to become, in herself, the point toward which all others set their course.
"Mama. The fairy lady is in danger."
"Stay still."
She carried a star within her.
The notorious Demonic Cult. The hero who had walked with open eyes into that death-ground to save the one he loved. Her lord husband—who had known that to step beyond that door was to die, and who had smiled at her all the same, to the very last.
In her chest, a star that would never be extinguished was shining.
Moyong Sang-ah gazed upon the Changbong Corps, tension straining every face.
They, too, had to know: that they were not the warriors of a fading martial house, but the Changbong Corps that stood against the Demonic Cult—a pillar of Liaodong's orthodox sects, and members of the Moyong Clan.
She had to become a star for them.
Just as her lord husband had once been her star, so must she now become theirs.
As the North Star shows the way, across the vast Manchurian plains, to those who lose their road beneath the night sky.
'Even if one day, her purpose fulfilled, she must fall from that sky...'
...she would show them that the Moyong Clan, keeper of a thousand years, still held fast the pride of the orthodox path. Moyong Sang-ah resolved to demonstrate it before the whole of her Changbong Corps.
In Moyong Sang-ah's hand, the sword of the thousand-year Moyong Clan blazed alight.