Aftermath (2)
Even when a battle is short, putting everything back in order afterward takes a great deal of time.
The assault by this jiangshi horde was no different in that regard.
The preparations themselves had been thrown together in a frantic rush—like roasting beans over a flash of lightning—but that did not mean the cleanup could be handled the same way.
The dead had to be recovered. The disabled jiangshi had to be hauled away. The unconscious sorcerers had to be moved. The one small mercy was that the major fighting had taken place on open plains, so there was comparatively little left to sort through.
"Looking at them again, they're still terrifying. How did we even manage to fight these things?"
"You're telling me. It's a miracle we won."
As the martial artists cleared the battlefield, they studied the wrecked jiangshi. Most had been neutralized by having their heads cut off, but a number of them had been disabled by methods far from ordinary. Among those, the most striking by far was the Mungnyeong-gangsi that Cheonhwa had split in two.
"Did you see that Dark Spirit Jiangshi earlier?"
"I did. He somehow managed to cut through that iron-hard body."
"Cut through? He cleaved the thing clean in half, vertically."
"Even Intent Qi Manifestation couldn't leave a mark on it. Peak Experts were struggling just to hold their ground. How is something like that even possible?"
From the shattered remains of the Mungnyeong-gangsi, the martial artists felt the imprint of a refined, lofty art, and every one of them could only marvel. Conversation drifted, almost inevitably, toward Cheonhwa.
"If Daoist Cheonhwa hadn't been here, I get chills just thinking about what would have happened."
"Now I understand why they trusted the rising talents with command."
The battle against the jiangshi horde had left no shortage of wounds. Among the fallen were several who had crossed a river from which no one returns. Yet those who remained could still lift their spirits despite the sacrifice—because they had faced the enemy without shame and, in the end, had prevailed. It was an experience none of them would forget.
"Do we really have to haul all these jiangshi back to Wuhan?"
"Didn't you hear what the Jin Clan and the Zhuge Family said earlier? They need them to research methods of countering jiangshi."
"Still, we only have to take the relatively intact ones. Let's be grateful we don't need every last corpse."
"What were they trying to accomplish, desecrating the dead like this?"
"We captured the ringleaders. We'll find out soon enough, won't we?"
The martial artists kept talking as they worked, and before long the cleanup was finished. They returned to Wuhan.
When they arrived, Chief Administrator Byeok Seonggun came out to receive the party. He approached Cheonhwa, who stood at the head of the column, and offered a formal salute.
"You have worked hard, Daoist Cheonhwa."
"How could this be my achievement alone? It was only possible because everyone here stood with me."
"You must be exhausted. Please come inside. The moment word of victory arrived, we prepared places for you all to rest."
"I am grateful for your consideration, Chief Administrator Byeok."
Under Byeok Seonggun's guidance, Cheonhwa was able to rest in a guest chamber within the Martial Alliance Headquarters. The same was true for everyone who had taken part in the fight against the jiangshi. Those the headquarters could not house were given rooms borrowed from lodgings outside. To prepare quarters for so many people in so short a time—it was exactly the kind of competence that had earned Byeok Seonggun the post of chief administrator.
Cheonhwa and the martial artists who had faced the jiangshi set aside their worries for a while and let their fatigue ease. But even while they rested, something else was already in motion: word of the Martial Alliance's success, spreading through the whole of Wuhan.
"The Martial Alliance stopped the jiangshi horde that came pouring out of Jiangsu!"
"Thank heaven. I thought we would have no choice but to run for our lives…"
People who had been preparing to evacuate under the Martial Alliance's guidance let out long breaths of relief and pressed a hand to their chests. The knowledge that they no longer had to fear for their lives brought a measure of ease to their hearts, and with it came a natural curiosity about how the Alliance had dealt with the jiangshi.
Anyone with even a modest grasp of the martial world's state of affairs knew that the Martial Alliance in Wuhan was not a proper fighting force—only a network of communication for the orthodox sects. Even the troops gathered for the campaign against the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace had been Martial Alliance in name alone; in truth they were elite contingents from the great righteous sects, merely borrowing the Alliance's banner. Most people had therefore resigned themselves to the worst: that Wuhan would fall to the jiangshi, and that the Martial Alliance Headquarters itself would be completely overrun.
The result, however, defied every expectation. The Martial Alliance had not merely held—they had driven the jiangshi back and even captured the ringleaders.
"I heard the Martial Alliance Headquarters in Wuhan was nothing special. Maybe the jiangshi threat was overblown to begin with?"
"Come now. By that logic, are you saying the Namgung Family's armed force that failed to stop the jiangshi were scarecrows? Talk sense."
"But doesn't it strike you as strange? How did a mere communication network stop a jiangshi horde that even the Namgung Family's troops couldn't hold back?"
"Here's the thing. Apparently the rising talents who distinguished themselves at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering stepped forward in force."
"The rising talents from the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering—you mean the Flash Sword Dragon?"
Flash Sword Dragon Cheonhwa. The young talent who had made his name at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering held in Sichuan. Word that this young Taoist had played a major role in the present crisis as well left people unable to hide their astonishment. Once might have been coincidence. When the same pattern repeated itself, no one could dismiss it as mere chance. Interest in the young Taoist's deeds took root of its own accord.
"Lately there has been no end of incidents and disasters across the rivers and lakes."
"The martial world has never been a place of quiet days."
"Even allowing for that, the disasters are far too large and far too frequent. The attack on the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, this jiangshi assault…"
Not having trained in martial arts did not make them ignorant. At times they grasped the shape of events not by logic but by instinct, and people were beginning to feel an unnameable foreboding prickling against their skin. The signs of an age of chaos—blood and death that had long been held down under the names of peace and good governance—were rising again. And in such an age, heroes always appear to set things right. People found themselves hoping that this young Taoist might become such a hero.
Rumors of Cheonhwa began to spread outward with Wuhan as their center. Wuhan was the hub of transport in Hubei Province. Riding the currents of the Han and the Yangtze, and the winds that moved with them, the rumors stretched in every direction—until at last they reached even Yunnan Province, at the far edge of the Central Plains.
The Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, famous among the outer martial forces, was walking the path of ruin.
Through guerrilla warfare that made use of the jungle, formations, and spirit beasts, they had slowed the Martial Alliance's advance with real effectiveness. But slowing was all they had managed; they could not stop the advance completely. The moment the Martial Alliance reached the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace's main stronghold, they occupied it with an ease that made the long, grinding stalemate feel like a lie.
The reason was simple. A vast fire had broken out inside the palace's main base. Driven by the flames, the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace could not continue the fight and declared their intention to surrender. The Martial Alliance accepted at once and joined the palace's people in fighting the blaze.
At first everyone assumed they had surrendered because of the damage from the fire. The truth was not so simple.
"The Palace Lord has fled?"
Gakhyeon doubted his own ears. The Southern Barbarian Beast Palace had waged a grinding war of delay and shown every sign of fighting to the death. That they would run with the decisive battle at hand was beyond absurd. If it had been a strategic withdrawal, he might have understood…
"Yes. After gathering up every last scrap of treasure stored in the palace, he fled together with an outside force."
"He used the fire as cover to escape?"
"As it turns out, the one who set the fire was the Palace Lord himself."
"What in the world are you saying?"
The more he heard, the more the situation made his head throb. A sigh slipped from Gakhyeon's lips. His temples pounded and the back of his neck drew tight; he took a slow breath, but his mind did not stop working.
So the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace was a discarded piece from the start.
Gakhyeon pieced it together only now. The urgent report that had arrived not long ago of a jiangshi horde appearing in Jiangsu. The Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, dragging out the campaign for a suspiciously long time. Seen together, the two events revealed a classic feint—a strategy of making a show in the east while striking in the west.
The distance from Yunnan to Jiangsu is not something even a master can close in a single breath.
Without throwing the body into days and nights of continuous light-body movement, covering that span in so short a time was impossible. Naturally, those who had set out to subjugate the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace had no clever means of bridging the gap either. All they could do was finish the campaign as quickly as possible and return.
But with the fire and the Palace Lord's absence stacking on top of each other, the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace has taken damage on the level of near annihilation.
The confrontation with the palace was over—yet, paradoxically, the Martial Alliance could not leave Yunnan. The moment they withdrew, every unorthodox sect and black-path bandit would swarm into the vacuum left by the fallen palace. That much was inevitable. The shock waves would crash straight into Yunnan's martial world. The Diancang Sect alone would struggle to bear the collapse of a great palace of that scale.
We did send half our forces north the instant the campaign ended, but whether they will arrive in time is another question entirely.
In the end, the crisis in Jiangsu would have to be left to the nearby sects. The sensation of dancing on an enemy's palm drew a deep sigh from Gakhyeon. He had known the hidden force's foundations were not to be taken lightly—but he had never imagined they would lay strategy with the entire Central Plains as their board.
This is not a problem one or two great sects can solve by stepping forward.
He had already intended to transform the Martial Alliance from a mere communication network of the orthodox path into a true coalition and a proper military force. This affair only hardened that resolve.
I am surely not the only one thinking this.
To face the hidden force, everyone would have to gather their strength. This experience would have driven that truth into their bones.
While Gakhyeon was lost in thought, Muwol came racing toward him in obvious haste. Judging by his manner, news related to the jiangshi horde had arrived.
"Martial Uncle Gakhyeon! The jiangshi horde left Jiangsu and attacked Wuhan!"
"So they finally broke free into the open. What is the scale of the damage?"
"The Namgung Family's armed force suffered a defeat in the first clash, but the Martial Alliance side in Wuhan gathered troops and stopped them. The losses are said to be on the lighter side."
"Hah… an outcome I never expected."
Unlike this place, where elites had been gathered for the subjugation of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, the Martial Alliance in Wuhan was still nothing more than the old communication network. Gakhyeon had expected them either to fail entirely or to pay a heavy price even if they held. The result had broken his prediction—in the best possible way.
"And at the center of it all, they say, was Junior Brother Cheonhwa."
"What? Why is that name coming up here?"
Never expecting to hear Cheonhwa's name in that context, Gakhyeon shouted before he could stop himself, caught between disbelief and shock.