Chapter 43
After leaving the thatched cottage, Dang Hye simply walked with her eyes fixed ahead. The village lay under a heavy darkness, and not a single trace of life could be felt.
A little thought would have told her that something was wrong.
But Dang Hye couldn’t see it.
“Forget the sword.”
Baek Mugeuk’s words kept echoing through her head, again and again. The longer she walked, the faster her steps became. And with that, his voice seemed to grow louder and louder, pounding at her temples until it hurt.
“Annoying.”
Every word he had said, every expression he had made, felt like mockery. Like the people who had always condemned the Dang Family.
“Still… that sword of his…”
Her steps stopped all at once. She had remembered the swordsmanship Baek Mugeuk had shown in the Alliance Leader’s residence.
The sword he had used to cut down four men there had been a four-strike sequence.
And the one that had seized Dang Hye’s heart was among those four.
“It was beautiful.”
The first strike, the one that had cut down two men at once.
The moment she saw it, she understood what the righteous sects had always longed for in a sword.
That was why, when she saw that her escort was Baek Mugeuk, her heart had ached. Even while traveling, even while training, she had focused on him with all her might so she wouldn’t miss a single movement.
Whenever Dang Hye ran, her breathing wavered and she always reached a point where she felt she had hit her limit. Yet Baek Mugeuk, while using light-footed movement and swinging his sword, never once let his breath falter.
No, he hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Was it like this?”
Remembering the movements he had shown in the Alliance Leader’s residence, she moved her body. Without a sword in her hand, she still couldn’t copy the posture with any ease.
It felt as if her body refused to obey her will. No, Baek Mugeuk’s movements had not seemed human at all.
On the tenth repetition, her feet tangled and she crashed to the ground.
“Haa…”
Even if she repeated it a hundred times, she still wouldn’t be able to follow the movement Baek Mugeuk had displayed. The chill of the ground seeped into her body.
Dang Hye pressed a hand to the earth and pushed herself up.
Then she felt something strange in her palm.
“This is?”
Clinging to her hand was grass. This was a village in the mountains, so of course they would be cultivating crops and living by self-sufficiency.
She was about to brush it away, thinking it meant nothing, when she adjusted her stance and began to study the grass more closely.
“Aconite…”
The grass in her hand was a poisonous herb.
“Why is this here?”
Dang Hye immediately began scanning the surrounding fields.
“Red bean valley, Sichuan aconite, opium poppy, pepper grass…”
Everything growing in the fields was a crop used to produce poison or narcotics.
At this level, it wasn’t something an amateur could handle properly.
“Why in the world are they growing this in a mountain village?”
Plants used to make poison or drugs could sometimes be found in nature.
She had even heard of some villages cultivating them for medical use.
But growing them in such a specialized, commercial fashion was extremely rare.
In other words, handling poisonous herbs required extreme caution and specialized knowledge.
Dang Hye reflexively reached for the sword at her waist. But there was nothing there.
“I left my sword behind.”
She looked around again, and her eyes fell on a hoe lying in the field.
“First, I need to rendezvous with Baek Mugeuk.”
There was a way to escape alone, but looking at that high wall, she didn’t think she’d get out easily.
Dang Hye concealed her presence and hid herself in the darkness as much as possible.
It had taken roughly a quarter hour to walk from the cottage to this field. Sneaking back would take twice that much time.
Half an hour passed. And then Dang Hye felt puzzled again.
There should be some sign of people sleeping in a village where people live. Breathing. Snoring. Anything.
There was no snoring, no breathing, not even the faintest hint of human presence. That was true of every house she had passed.
Dang Hye quickened her pace even more.
And when another quarter hour had passed, she sensed it for the first time.
She stopped instinctively and drew in as little breath as she could.
When the cloud covering the moon drifted away, she saw them.
A group gathered together, all dressed in black stealth clothing.
Dang Hye’s eyes moved rapidly as she began counting them.
Nine. Ten.
There were ten in total. When the one at the front gave a hand signal, they each raised their hands in turn.
And when the last one lifted his hand, they began moving, starting from the leader.
That direction is clearly the cottage...
She didn’t know who they were. They might have been villagers, or they might have been outside attackers. But their purpose wasn’t hard to guess.
If anything had changed in this village, it was only the arrival of Baek Mugeuk and Dang Hye.
Dang Hye turned her body in the direction opposite the cottage.
What’s so good about a man like that?
It felt as though Baek Mugeuk’s voice, telling her to give up the sword, had returned again. The moment her foot stepped forward, a thought from earlier flashed through her mind.
“Using swordsmanship isn’t what matters. Using poison isn’t what matters either. What matters is who uses it, and how.”
For some reason, the words she had heard earlier surfaced in her mind.
She hadn’t answered Baek Mugeuk. No, she hadn’t been able to.
I think that too. But the world…
Her father, Dang Bo, the head of Sichuan, had always said that the world, that the righteous sects, were filling the world with justice and chivalry. So the Central Plains Dang Hye had dreamed of and looked forward to had been a world full of justice and righteousness.
That idea had all collapsed the moment she made her first journey into the martial world.
Just as she was turning those memories over in her head and trying to make excuses, another rebuke from Baek Mugeuk surfaced.
To you, is martial arts not a means but a way of showing yourself?
“What do you know!”
Dang Hye spun around. Then she shouted at the black-clad men running toward the cottage.
“What the hell are you lot doing, sneaking around like rats in the middle of the night!”
Her voice rang out across the village, which had been silent until then.
The shadowy figures who had been running suddenly stopped. The one in front turned his head and gave her a sidelong glance. At the same time, he made a light gesture, and the others began moving one by one.
Dang Hye felt it instantly.
If she was caught, she would definitely die.
Her gaze snapped away from the cottage and she planted her feet on the ground. The dirt beneath her kicked up violently as she pushed off and ran.
She hadn’t run very far, but she could feel the footsteps and breathing behind her growing closer by the second.
If I keep running like this, I’m definitely getting caught.
Whoosh!
Then she heard something slicing through the wind behind her. Dang Hye immediately twisted her body and cut into a side alley.
Whip, whip, whip!
The instant she veered into the alley, the sound of daggers striking the wall rang out one after another. Hearing it, gooseflesh rose along her back.
But before the chill could crawl from her back to her neck, one of them caught up to her and seized her wrist.
“Got you.”
The man’s voice was thick with amusement. But the moment Dang Hye’s eyes landed on his face, she drew the sickle at her waist, flooded it with internal energy, and swung hard for his neck.
The sickle, infused with her power, buried itself halfway into his throat, and Dang Hye followed through with a punch to his jaw, severing his neck cleanly.
“Damn it.”
She had killed one without much trouble, but the others charging from behind had closed the distance even more.
Whoosh!
Eight hidden weapons flew from the hands of the eight black-clad men and rained down on Dang Hye once more.
She gritted her teeth and twisted her body.
If I watch them and dodge, the distance will close. As long as they don’t hit my legs, I can still do something...
Dang Hye started running again.
Even now, the black-clad men were narrowing the gap.
For an instant, daggers skimmed past her side by a hair’s breadth.
She had been lucky.
She had been ready to take one or two hits.
And yet even so, she had no time to breathe a sigh of relief.
Dang Hye burst out of the narrow alley. Using the houses and walls, she changed direction quickly and widened the gap between herself and the men.
Huff. Huff.
She could feel her internal energy gradually running dry. At some point, the men had begun to maintain a fixed distance as they pursued her.
Like hunters chasing prey.
Her breathing came out rough, as if it would tear her lungs apart. And then, in that same breathless moment, her rapid footsteps came to a halt.
A barricade surrounded the entire village. It blocked the path she had been running along.
Bang!
Dang Hye slammed her fist into the barricade before her.
“Don’t screw with me!”
Her voice was almost a scream. Behind her, the eight men calmly stopped their steps.
“Done running?”
“You’re the ones crowding around me like this just to catch one person.”
“You’re a martial artist too. We should at least make you work for it.”
Dang Hye gripped the sickle harder. Then, each time the men stepped closer, she bared her killing intent.
“Do you really think you can kill all of us with that little sickle? Heh heh.”
The black-clad men sneered. Then they spread out wide and began to encircle her.
“I can’t kill all of you. But one man. The one who comes at me first will die for sure.”
Dang Hye was certain she would die here. But she wasn’t afraid of death. If anything, her ferocity sharpened and she lifted her sickle.
“Then try it, if you can.”
The moment the black-clad man’s hand dropped from above, the others kicked off the ground like arrows and launched themselves at Dang Hye.
“I wanted to see that sword one more time…”
Dang Hye muttered it almost without realizing. Then she thrust the sickle toward the black-clad men. Just before the blade could reach them, there was a sharp, heavy impact.
Thwack.
Thwack!
Something struck the heads of the airborne men in rapid succession.
Thud.
As the sound faded, their bodies began to collapse one after another, like puppets whose strings had been cut with scissors.
Dang Hye’s eyes moved to the objects that had pierced their heads.
“A pebble?”
It was a small stone. Even more astonishing was that, despite having smashed human skulls, the pebble bore no sign of damage at all.
“Was my sword that beautiful?”
A teasing voice drifted down from above the barricade. Dang Hye’s gaze shot upward reflexively.
At the top of the wall stood Baek Mugeuk, the corners of his mouth lifted as he held a pebble in one hand.
“How are you here?”
“You think I could sleep when you’re making such a racket?”
Dang Hye stared at him, dumbfounded. She had naturally assumed he would use the chaos to escape.
He was a swordsman without a sword, after all. But there he was, right in front of her, as if nothing had happened, looking far too relaxed for the situation.
“Why are you making that face?”
“Haah…”
Before she knew it, Dang Hye let out a sigh of relief. At the same time, her legs gave way, and she sank down where she stood.
“I’d like to tell you to rest since you’ve had a hard time, but...”
Baek Mugeuk’s gaze shifted forward. Following it, Dang Hye’s eyes also turned in the same direction.
And then she saw it.
The black-clad man who had been giving the signal was already racing away in the opposite direction.
“One got away.”
Baek Mugeuk watched the fleeing man. Then, slowly, a curved smile formed on his lips.
It was the expression of someone who had let the man escape on purpose.