The Raid
Around the time Dang Baek-seon and Dang Tae-un faced each other in the family head's hall, two men stepped up onto the sparring stage.
Cheong-ha rested a hand on his sword hilt with an easy expression. The readiness to draw at any moment was the mark of a true swordsman.
Mangya, by contrast, kept his face blank and tucked both hands into the wide sleeves of his robe. For a swordsman who had no reason to be hiding throwing weapons, covering his hands like that could only mean one thing: he was that sure of himself.
Cheong-ha had no intention of losing cleanly. There was someone he wanted to meet in the finals.
I haven't seen him since the last Shaanxi Sword Gathering, but he'd grown a great deal in that time.
Cheong-ha was proud enough of his own remarkable progress. Yet the moment he faced Cheonhwa, he had been forced to accept the old truth: no matter how high you leap, there is always someone flying above you. And though they both practiced the same Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, Cheonhwa had shown a transformation so complete that Cheong-ha had almost doubted they were the same art at all.
Still, it wasn't all bad. Thanks to him, I gained an insight of my own.
Cheong-ha wanted to show Cheonhwa what he had learned. Part of it was personal gratitude for the insight he had been given. The rest was the competitive fire that rose toward a true rival — a declaration that he would rise from past defeat and beat him next time.
For that, first focus on the man in front of you.
Cheong-ha looked across at his opponent. Mangya of the Hwajeong Sect — a surviving remnant of the fallen Hengshan Sect, a swordsman who wielded the blazing, severing art known as the Zhurong Sword Technique. Facing such a rare style was interesting whether he liked it or not.
Severing sword arts specialize in breaking through forms. I wonder how he'll try to break mine?
Cheong-ha meant to use today's match as a whetstone. If a form could be broken, it had a weakness somewhere. Fix that weakness, and the technique would advance another step — which would only help him when he faced Cheonhwa again.
He watched Mangya with that expectation — and then the situation took a strange turn.
"Seize Mangya!"
In an instant, martial artists who had been sitting in the stands surged forward and ringed Mangya in.
"What on earth is going on?"
"Mangya is a spy for the Demonic forces. Forgive us for not informing you in advance, Disciple Cheong-ha, but for the sake of secrecy we had no choice. We ask for your understanding."
The one who answered was a Peak Expert of the Dang Family. He turned his gaze on Mangya and ordered his men to charge.
"I thought as much."
Mangya's mouth twisted in a cold smile as he drew something from his robes. Cheong-ha muttered without meaning to.
"A… stake?"
It was an iron stake covered in strange characters Cheong-ha did not recognize. The moment he registered what it was, an unnameable dread crawled up his spine.
Someone's voice rang out at the same time.
"Cut off his arm!"
A fierce blade wind tore toward Mangya before he could drive the stake into the ground, and the arm holding it was severed clean through. The stake slipped from his fingers, struck the floor, and bounced.
"Now! Grab him!"
"Too late!"
Mangya stamped down on the rebound with a ghostly laugh. No one had expected a motion so precise. With a heavy thud, the stake drove into the sparring stage.
Fog began to rise from the floor around it. The mist traced a vast circle and slowly spread outward. The martial artists rushing Mangya hesitated before that unknown vapor.
Exposed to the fog, Cheong-ha felt something like an invisible membrane pass through his entire body.
"What… was that just now?"
He scanned his surroundings in a hurry. The stage and the area around it looked unchanged — except for one thing. The clear blue sky had turned a dull gray. Through his enhanced sight, he realized at once that this was no ordinary shift in weather. The fog hung over the whole district like a colossal barrier, as if forbidding anyone from leaving.
Some of those present recognized it immediately.
A formation.
An art that used terrain and fixtures to exert influence over a wide area. The formation before them covered the entirety of Dang-ga-ta. Raising something on this scale required extensive preparation in advance — and the fact that no one had sensed so much as a warning sign until now was shocking.
"Protect the untrained civilians first!"
"Restrain Mangya! He's the one who activated the formation!"
"We don't know what sorcery he used. Advance carefully!"
In the chaos, the Sichuan Dang Family and the Nine Great Sects were the first to respond with any kind of order. As previously arranged, they split into two groups: one moved to shield those who were not martial artists, while the other slowly tightened a cordon around Mangya.
With one arm already gone, Mangya had little hope of escaping. Yet he showed no panic. He raked his eyes over the orthodox masters surrounding him, crooked a mocking smile, and spoke.
"It's already over."
Blood tears began to spill from his eyes. Not only his eyes — blood poured from all seven orifices of his face, nose, ears, and mouth included, and he collapsed across the stake.
"What in the world—?!"
"Poison. He took a lethal dose beforehand. He meant to die from the start!"
The masters realized too late that Mangya had come up onto the stage ready to die the moment he drove the stake home. That he would throw his life away like dust for the sake of a plan —
But there was no time to stand stunned by a suicide. Their upper dantians were already warning of an ominous future.
"Is this his doing?"
"No — the stake under his body is the cause!"
The stake was greedily drinking Mangya's blood. It took every drop from the severed arm and the seven orifices, then drank every trace of blood nearby in an instant. The characters carved into the iron began to glow with a wicked light.
"Stop it!"
The masters who grasped the situation lunged forward — too late.
When the light faded, the masters who had stood upon the sparring stage were gone. Some of the Sichuan Dang Family martial artists who had been evacuating people around the stage had vanished as well. In their place, a dark-crimson sphere revealed itself against the gray sky.
What on earth is going on?
From the stands, Cheonhwa had watched everything. He was shaken for a moment, then recovered his calm. Unexpected as the situation was, standing still was not an option.
First, assess the situation.
He sprang onto a nearby building and surveyed the whole of Dang-ga-ta. What met his eyes was the fog blanketing the town, and the pale figures of people moving faintly within it.
"We can't get out!"
"Even if we walk into the fog, we just come back to where we started!"
Civilians began crowding the fog's boundary around Dang-ga-ta. None of them could leave or enter. And in the middle of it all, no one was taking charge. Even the Dang Family's own martial artists looked visibly lost.
Far too disordered. Don't tell me the commanders are gone?
Cheonhwa lifted his gaze to the ominous sphere hanging in the air. Looking at the sequence of events that had brought it into being, the truth was clear.
They layered a formation inside a formation. That must be how the masters were isolated.
Easy to say — not easy to do. A formation itself was a technique that used terrain and implements to produce a phenomenon, and it always demanded countless conditions and preparations. Building one as a double structure was no simple feat even for a master of the art.
"W-what do we do now?"
"We have to run!"
"Run where? We're boxed in on every side!"
With the people who had been giving orders gone, the rest milled about in confusion. Not one or two, but every figure capable of leadership had vanished at once. An evacuation that had been proceeding in good order stalled under the chaos.
Dangerous.
Cheonhwa felt his survival instinct screaming at him. He had to leave this spot at once and prepare defenses.
But running alone won't solve anything.
Martial artists stunned by a crisis they had never faced before. Trained in orthodox arts, they would recover their wits soon enough — yet even that brief delay felt too dangerous to him.
And it isn't only martial artists here.
Dang-ga-ta was full of people who had come to watch the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering, and plenty of them were ordinary folk with no martial training. Martial artists could look after themselves. Ordinary civilians would struggle to cope with a crisis like this. Somehow, the people left behind had to get the situation under control.
"I'll be back shortly. Junior Sister Yeonhwa, please gather every Zhongnan disciple who can still move."
"And the message?"
Yeonhwa, standing beside him, did not ask why he was leaving. She could see he meant to bring order to the situation. So she asked only what she needed to do.
"Among those who remain, choose someone to take command, then join up with the other Nine Great Sects."
Originally the Nine Great Sects had been tasked with seizing the spy hidden among the Dang Family, and, if necessary, with blocking escape routes or guiding evacuations. With the masters who issued orders gone, they would be just as lost. Someone had to be appointed to lead, and quickly.
But the Nine Great Sects alone have clear limits.
Their renown was real, yet renown did not always carry weight — and this was Dang-ga-ta, where the Sichuan Dang Family's influence was absolute. The ones who could restore order fastest were the Dang Family themselves.
Find a direct-line member of the Sichuan Dang Family.
In an ordinary martial sect, rank lent force to a voice. In a great martial family, the words of the direct line carried that force even more.
Young Master Dang Pae-ho is in the medical hall with internal injuries from his match. So I need to find Lady Dang Sowol — she should be nearby.
Cheonhwa unfurled his lightfoot technique and pushed the Six Harmony Sensory Path to its peak. A bird's-eye awareness of heaven and earth flooded his mind with information from every direction. His head throbbed under the torrent, but he clenched his teeth and endured it.
…Found her!
Not far away, on a main street. Civilians who still did not understand the situation were murmuring at the sudden fog and the dark-crimson sphere. From within the crowd, Dang Sowol saw Cheonhwa approaching and her eyes went wide.
"Lady Dang!"
"Disciple Cheonhwa? What in the world is happening?"
"I'll explain later. We need to evacuate people right now!"
She was as shaken as anyone by the ominous sphere that had appeared without warning. But the urgency in Cheonhwa's face helped her gather her reason at once.
"So this has something to do with that thing. I'll hear the details later."
"Where will you send them?"
"With Dang-ga-ta sealed on every side, the only place that could still be called safe is the inner fortress of our Sichuan Dang Family."
Opening the family's inner fortress completely for an evacuation was no small decision. Dang Sowol made it without hesitation. No amount of disorder inside those walls could matter more than human lives.
"Then I'll join the martial artists of the Nine Great Sects and head for the Sichuan Dang Family."
Cheonhwa bowed his farewell and left at once. As he made for the place where the Nine Great Sects' fighters would be gathering, the fog blanketing Dang-ga-ta filled his sight. A chill kept crawling up his spine. What did the Demonic forces intend by raising this formation?
They used an extremely difficult double structure — and yet the effects are far too mild.
A formation that sealed Dang-ga-ta so no one could leave. Another that isolated masters above a certain level. Both only constrained movement. Neither induced hallucinations nor inflicted direct harm — as if there were no need.
Something is beyond that fog.
He did not know what, but it was clearly nothing good for their side.
Hurry.
Cheonhwa tore his gaze from the mist and pressed on toward his destination.
In the medical hall of the Sichuan Dang Family, Myeonghwa opened his eyes on a sickbed. The moment he woke, a dull headache clawed through his skull.
Hss… Why is my head suddenly ringing?
It was not only his head. Strength refused to gather properly in his limbs. Something was clearly wrong with his body. He started to call for a physician — then caught a strange sense of unease.
Why is it so quiet?
A medical hall was supposed to stay as quiet as possible for the patients' rest. Lately, with the number of patients rising, that had become difficult; even if the wounded kept still, physicians bustling about inevitably made noise. Yet right now, not a single human presence could be felt beyond the ward door.
What about the others…
Myeonghwa checked on his fellow disciples sharing the room. Yeobhwa and Jeokhwa both lay deeply asleep on their beds. Their even breathing said both were far under. His own ribs were not fully healed, and moving was hard, but somehow he forced himself off the bed and tried to wake them. No matter how hard he shook them or pinched their cheeks, neither showed any sign of rising. Even with injuries, this total lack of response was wrong.
It's as if they took a sleeping poison. They won't wake at all.
The thought sent an ominous inference flashing through his mind. Was the outside so quiet because everyone else was in the same state as these two?
But then why am I awake?
More than that — how had he fallen asleep in the first place? Myeonghwa traced his last memory.
I took the decoction the physician gave me, and drowsiness hit hard after that.
With no memory beyond that point, he must have dropped off on the spot. Only a guess, but perhaps the decoction he drank before sleeping had been laced with something like a sleeping poison. And if poison had been used, his waking alone made sense. The Blue Heaven Qi Art he cultivated granted resistance to disease and toxins. Over time, he would have detoxified the sleeping agent on his own.
If that guess is right, this whole situation is likely the work of the Demonic forces — and it means they have a collaborator inside the medical hall.
Of all places, a collaborator in a hall packed with the wounded. If the medical hall had been seized, every patient here was effectively a hostage. That would also explain why they had used a sleeping poison rather than a lethal one. As if to confirm the thought, no weapons were to be found anywhere in the room. To a martial artist a weapon was as precious as life itself; even physicians did not lightly touch them. The longswords carefully set beside each bed were simply gone.
My waking is an unexpected variable for them. I have to make use of this chance somehow.
To tell the time, Myeonghwa looked out the window at the sky. Thick fog hid the sun's position. The weather had been clear before he slept; for it to change so suddenly was strange. Still, the light outside suggested the sun had not yet set.
Using the Wind-Cloud Body Method, Myeonghwa moved as silently as he could. At its core the art was meant to flow like cloud on the wind and shed any impact, but applied properly it served just as well for stealth.
He checked the other wards. Everyone lay asleep on their beds, unable to rise. A few beds showed traces of someone who had been there moments ago and was now gone — not as if they had been carried off, but as if they had simply vanished where they lay. Among the empty beds was that of the Tyrant Blade Dragon, Paeng Mu-jin.
They went after Great Hero Paeng Mu-jin first?
A Peak Expert might find some way to detoxify, as Myeonghwa had. Removing him early was not strange.
Worry later. It won't be too late.
Myeonghwa forced down the fear rising in his gut and resumed his search. Then he sensed a human presence nearby and carefully identified it.
That's… Physician Dang Baek-seon?
Dang Baek-seon was speaking with martial artists from minor sects who had been eliminated on the first day of the main tournament. A physician and a handful of fighters, all perfectly awake in a medical hall where every patient slept — it was more than a little suspicious.
Myeonghwa held his breath and began to listen in on their conversation.