If Caught, I'll Cut You Down
“If I catch you, I will cut you down immediately.”
At Chang-hae’s words, Yoo Eunhyeon’s eyes narrowed by degrees. He was under no illusion about the smile Chang-hae wore, or what the man was hoping for.
Sure enough, Chang-hae’s gaze swept over the laborers and stopped on one of them. He pointed at once and spoke.
“Hey, boy. Hold out your hand.”
The one he singled out was none other than Yoo Eunhyeon. Chang-hae crooked a finger at him with a thin, oily smile, the force of the gesture making clear that refusal was never an option. Eunhyeon quietly furrowed his brow.
He means to take my pulse and check whether internal energy runs through my body.
The meridians were the channels through which internal energy flowed; any man who had trained in martial arts would always carry a faint current within them. Chang-hae clearly meant to confirm that current. Faced with the order, Eunhyeon had no choice but to extend his hand.
Chang-hae clamped down hard on Eunhyeon’s wrist, a vicious smile twisting his lips.
“It’ll tingle a little. Heh.”
At the same moment Eunhyeon felt Chang-hae’s internal energy begin to seep in. A heartbeat later his eyes flew open.
This bastard—is he serious?!
When one checked for the presence of internal energy through the meridians, the usual practice was to send the finest, gentlest thread of power possible—enough to detect even the faintest energy without harming the subject.
Chang-hae ignored that common sense completely. He drove an unusually sharp, piercing force straight into Eunhyeon’s meridians. Had Eunhyeon been an ordinary man with no training, every vessel in his body would already have burst under the assault.
I see what he’s trying to pull.
Chang-hae had looked one step ahead. Anyone who possessed internal energy would, the moment such a sudden and vicious force invaded, find that energy rising of its own accord to defend the body. Even if the person deliberately concealed it, the threat would force it out.
Realizing this, Eunhyeon at once gathered every scrap of his power and sank it deep into his dantian. Until now he had merely hidden his energy; now he sealed it so thoroughly that not even a whisper of presence could escape. A simple sweep of the meridians would never be enough to detect it.
Byeon-ak, noticing the odd look on Chang-hae’s face, spoke carefully.
“Lord Chang-hae? What do you find?”
Chang-hae, who had been silent, finally lifted his eyes to Byeon-ak. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then quietly shook his head.
“He does not appear to have trained in martial arts. There is no response at all.”
“Ah—that is a relief.”
“However… there is one peculiar point.”
“What might that be?”
Chang-hae looked down at his own hand, then shifted his gaze back to Eunhyeon.
“His meridians are unusual. They do not feel like those of an ordinary man.”
He muttered the words while staring at Eunhyeon. When internal energy was poured into the vessels of a trained martial artist, instinctive resistance would always rise to protect the body. From Eunhyeon, however, not the slightest rebound force returned. That was why Chang-hae had concluded the man was untrained—yet he could not deny that something about him still felt out of the ordinary.
The flow of energy is far too natural. One almost never sees that in ordinary people…
Two possibilities came to mind.
First, the man might have been born with innately broad and thick meridians—a physique prized as ideal for martial training.
Second, he might have anticipated the test and prepared for it.
That would mean he had protected his meridians while guiding the invading energy out of his body so smoothly that no rebound ever occurred. To manage such a feat required both immense internal power and the skill to command that power at will. Yet the young man standing before him looked no different from any other farmer.
Truly an absurd thought.
Chang-hae let out a short, incredulous laugh.
Even if Eunhyeon were a master of the Yeonhwagyeong, those who reached that realm were already renowned names throughout the martial world. The Demonic Cult would certainly know of their movements. Moreover, most were aged veterans; young men who attained that height could be counted on one hand across all of Wulin.
Having finished his reasoning, Chang-hae released Eunhyeon’s wrist and ordered,
“Step back. The misunderstanding seems cleared for the most part.”
Eunhyeon widened his eyes in a show of surprise. Chang-hae spun on his heel without another glance, as though there was nothing more worth seeing.
At that moment Won Il-chu, who had been watching the entire exchange, burst out in panic.
“Th-that’s impossible! That bastard is lying!”
Won Il-chu shouted at the top of his lungs. Now that matters had reached this point, he was the one thrown into confusion. If things continued, he alone would bear the blame for having made a false report. With no other path left, he had no choice but to double down.
“Lying? Are you saying I made a mistake?”
The instant Chang-hae’s low voice rolled out, a chill pressure crushed the air on every side.
After all, claiming that Eunhyeon was lying amounted to saying that Chang-hae himself had failed to judge a man correctly—a direct insult to both his eye and his authority.
“N-no, never! How could I dare… I only meant that if you looked a little more carefully—”
Won Il-chu bowed and scraped, offering frantic excuses, yet they fell far short of soothing Chang-hae’s twisted mood. Chang-hae gave a low laugh. Anyone could tell the sound held no goodwill.
“Byeon-ak. How should one who dares utter falsehoods in the very courtyard of our cult, thereby mocking the cult itself, be dealt with?”
“Everything follows the laws established by the Cult Leader. One who makes a false report and fails to stand by his words to the end is subject to summary execution.”
Byeon-ak answered in a low voice. The moment he finished, Chang-hae’s gaze locked onto Won Il-chu like a blade.
“Then, as the proxy of our most exalted Cult Leader, I shall personally carry out the sentence.”
“Eeek!”
Survival instinct seized Won Il-chu; he spun and tried to flee. In that same instant Chang-hae’s finger flicked once.
“Aaaagh!”
A needle-thin blast of finger wind, too fast for the eye, lanced into Won Il-chu’s knee. The energy was almost invisible, yet Chang-hae struck the precise gap in the vital point that controlled the leg, as though he knew every detail of the human frame.
“Be grateful I have limited the punishment for mocking the cult to this. Byeon-ak, clean up afterward.”
“Yes. I shall carry out your will, Lord Chang-hae.”
By now it was easy to understand why Byeon-ak treated Chang-hae with such deference. If Chang-hae so much as wished it, he could drop every laborer present with a single strike.
At that level he looks like a First-class master, perhaps half a step beneath Cho-yeong, whom I fought before… and yet a man like this is stuck guarding a farm. What on earth is hidden here?
The question lingered, but there was no time to pursue it further.
“You there! Are you all right?”
Mo Cheol-dong came limping toward Eunhyeon. Since Eunhyeon had never been hurt in the first place, he simply nodded with deliberate boldness at the man looking him over.
“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. Though I was a little startled just now.”
“Glad to hear it. You were lucky. I once saw a fellow who got hit by that internal energy the martial artists use—his limbs were paralyzed for good.”
“…”
Had Eunhyeon not trained in martial arts, the same fate would certainly have been his. A cold shiver ran through him, and he quickly changed the subject.
“Still, I’m relieved the false charge was cleared. Me, a martial artist? Come on—that doesn’t even make sense.”
“True enough. That fellow must have been cornered pretty badly. Trying to fool a martial artist with martial talk… his own stupidity did him in.”
Mo Cheol-dong looked with a touch of pity at Won Il-chu, who was still thrashing on the ground, clutching his leg. From the look of it the man would not walk for months at least, and even after healing he would almost certainly limp for the rest of his days. Given everything that had happened, Mo Cheol-dong felt a flicker of satisfaction—yet seeing the man left completely alone still tugged oddly at his heart.
Then Byeon-ak addressed the laborers.
“Your squad leader is no longer able to manage the workers for the time being, so the leader of the neighboring squad will take charge here for a while. And Mo Cheol-dong.”
Byeon-ak’s smooth speech halted as he suddenly fixed his eyes on Mo Cheol-dong. The latter squeezed his eyes shut, as though he had known this moment was coming.
“Mo Cheol-dong. As of today you are removed from work. I trust you know the reason better than anyone.”
“…Yes.”
Farming was not especially dangerous work, yet injuries still happened. Mo Cheol-dong, who had labored here three seasons already, had watched more than once as men hurt badly enough to lose free movement were simply cast out. He had no words of protest left.
“Cheol-dong…”
The others felt the same regret. Whatever else, Mo Cheol-dong had stepped forward partly for their sake as well.
“It’s all right. Nothing to be done about it.”
There was nothing they could offer him, so they simply wore expressions of quiet sorrow.
“Well then, back to the matter at hand…”
Byeon-ak was just beginning to survey the laborers once more when Yoo Eunhyeon abruptly raised his hand high and spoke.
“Forgive the sudden interruption, but may I make a proposal?”