Ankang (2)
Thud.
Struck by Cheonhwa’s final blow, the Master of the Six Sword Gate collapsed senseless to the floor.
Cheonhwa exhaled and sheathed Okgyeong.
Then it came.
What is this…?
Something ominous stirred within the fallen master’s body. The demonic qi that had been packed inside him only moments before was surging out of control, thrashing violently.
Sensing danger, Cheonhwa reflexively unfurled his Long Heaven Single Armor—and an uncontrolled wave of force erupted from the Six Sword Gate Master’s frame.
In an instant the scattered energy bled away into empty air, and all that remained was the master himself, blood pouring from the seven apertures of his face, already dead.
He let emotion drive him and forced demonic qi far past its limit. This is the result.
Knocked unconscious by Cheonhwa’s strike in that state, his inner energy had knotted, and the demonic qi had run wild.
The dead man’s expression looked bitterly wronged. The complaint written across his face was plain enough: we were both born with ordinary talent—how did our ends become so different?
But Cheonhwa felt not even a flicker of pity.
In the Six Sword Gate Master’s martial arts there had been no trace of genuine struggle, no mark of hard-won training. Only envy of others, and the choice of whatever path felt easiest for himself.
“Th-the Master lost…?”
“How the hell are we supposed to beat a monster like that?!”
With their leader down, the subordinates reeled; their morale plummeted to the dirt. Some tried to abandon the fight and flee—but Cheonhwa and his sect brothers and sisters were not so soft as to let them go lightly.
Before long every martial artist of the Six Sword Gate was rolling on the ground. Once they confirmed no enemies remained, they each set down their weapons and steadied their breath.
“I’ll check inside the buildings. There might be captives—or offerings the bastards left behind.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Please do. We’ll handle the cleanup here.”
As soon as the fighting ended, Myeonghwa and Jeokhwa moved to search the interior, while Cheonhwa stayed behind with Yeonhwa and Yeobhwa to clear the grounds.
In the middle of that work, Yeonhwa spoke up.
“Cheonhwa.”
“Yes, Senior Sister Yeonhwa.”
“I couldn’t watch properly while I was fighting. What was that thing you used against the Gate Master?”
She was thinking of the Intent Qi Manifestation that had burned like pure white flame. With senses as sharp as hers, she had known at once it was no ordinary technique of that kind.
Cheonhwa answered without concealment.
“It is the twenty-sixth form of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven—Sunrise Under Heaven.”
If White Sun Under Heaven was the form that compressed Intent Qi Manifestation to its densest extreme, then Sunrise Under Heaven was its natural extension. Using sword qi raised to the highest possible density, it sheared away an opponent’s force and absorbed it—and that reclaimed energy lessened the drain of the Intent Qi Manifestation itself.
“Even though it was demonic qi?”
“Demonic qi is still true energy at its root, so I managed to refine it somehow. The absorption efficiency isn’t very high, though.”
“That form is for drawn-out fights. How did it shatter his energy wave by itself?”
The black wind the Six Sword Gate Master had unleashed had been a desperate killing art, staked on his own life. With so much demonic qi condensed into it, its density had not lagged behind Cheonhwa’s in the least—and yet Cheonhwa had torn the black wind apart with ease. He must have layered another form on top of Sunrise Under Heaven.
“As sharp as ever, Senior Sister. I used it together with Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain.”
Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain was an applied form that wrapped the blade in many branching streams of force and then worked an inner-weight water method through them, dismantling the structure of an opponent’s true energy. With it Cheonhwa had broken the energy that composed the black wind; with Sunrise Under Heaven he had then drawn in the shattered fragments. The result had been an Intent Qi Manifestation that only burned more brilliantly the more of the sword-wind it cut.
“He’d forced the sword-wind into compression, so the structure was more fragile than it looked. That’s why the method worked.”
It was much like the time Cheonhwa had once witnessed Muwol’s Seongna Sword Method. Across fundamentals and nearly every other measure he had been behind Muwol then—and that gap had made dismantling the Six Sword Gate Master’s desperate form surprisingly easy.
“Everyone, over here!”
While Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa talked through the cleanup, Myeonghwa—who had gone to inspect the buildings—called the group over.
Wondering what he had found, they went in and saw ledgers of every kind piled on a table.
“Senior Brother Myeonghwa, Senior Sister Jeokhwa—what are these…?”
“Debt papers the Six Sword Gate was holding. Looking at how crude they are, the Gate probably just threw them together themselves.”
“It seems they used these worthless debt documents to bleed the people of Yeongseom County dry.”
As the two explained it, the Six Sword Gate had forced ordinary folk into debt and then used that debt as a pretext to extort them. In ordinary times such a grievance would have gone to the yamen—but the yamen had been in league with the Gate, and so the crime had been silently allowed.
“Luckily we also found the transaction ledgers between the magistrate and the Six Sword Gate. They really lined their pockets, didn’t they?”
Myeonghwa picked up one of the books and shook his head at the sheer depth of official corruption.
“We also found a huge stock of grain in the warehouse. Compared against the ledgers, it looks like what they seized from the commoners in place of coin.”
The plan, Jeokhwa said—her eyes trembling with anger—had been to sell that grain back at inflated prices to people who no longer had enough to eat.
“What should we do with all of this, Junior Brother Cheonhwa?”
As senior disciple and leader of the party, the question came to him. Cheonhwa thought a moment, then answered.
“We’ll need the Hao Clan’s help. With their information, returning the grain to its rightful owners will be simple. And we burn the debt papers with it.”
Jeokhwa nodded.
“Then we should hand the magistrate’s ledgers over to the Hao Clan as well. If those high officials are going to answer for their crimes, that route will serve better than we can.”
“Agreed.”
Cheonhwa shared the thought. The Hao Clan would already have tight connections into the government as well.
With the course set, the party set about the busy work of cleaning up after the destroyed Six Sword Gate.
“Thank you! Truly, thank you!”
They burned the debt papers the people of Yeongseom County had been unjustly forced to carry, and they returned the grain. The townsfolk bowed again and again with tears on their faces—not only because the Six Sword Gate that had tormented them was broken, but because the food stolen from them had come back as well. They could scarcely believe it.
“I’ll leave the rest to you.”
“Don’t worry, Great Hero Flash Sword Dragon. We’ll see it done properly.”
Afterward Cheonhwa delivered the gathered evidence to a Hao Clan agent, who nodded with a face full of zeal. Being a resident of Yeongseom County himself, he clearly held no small grudge against the magistrate.
Cleanup finished, the party took to the road again.
On the way to Ankang they passed through counties such as Shiquan and Hanyin, and in every place they came to they tore down the name-boards of heretical and black-path factions. At last they reached their destination: Ankang.
“The atmosphere here feels quite different from everywhere else so far.”
Cheonhwa swept his gaze across the streets of Ankang as he spoke. From the many villages they had passed through, he had learned that regions under heretical influence usually lay under a heavy, subdued air—yet here he felt little of that.
“You’re right. There’s a strange liveliness. If a heretical faction still held this place, it wouldn’t be like this… We should visit the Hao Clan branch said to be in Ankang.”
What they heard from the Hao Clan was unexpected.
“The Red Dragon Hall fled?”
“Yes. Once they heard that the Taoists of the Zhongnan Sect had toppled multiple heretical factions on their way here, they bolted at once.”
Despite every effort to control the information, it had leaked somewhere, and the enemy had run with startling speed. The Ankang branch chief gave a hollow laugh.
“I was told tracking teams had been prepared in case of flight.”
“If they had fled by ordinary means we would have put a tail on them. This time we could not.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Red Dragon Hall took to boats and escaped along the waterways.”
In truth, the name Red Dragon Hall was one they had adopted only after settling in Ankang. Their original name had been the Red Dragon Stronghold.
“Wait—then that means…?”
“Yes. The Red Dragon Hall began as water bandits. Subordinates of the Yangtze Waterway Sect, no less.”
“They were under the Six Tyrant Coalition, yet they betrayed the Yangtze Waterway Sect and set up on their own?”
“Exactly so.”
“For what possible reason?”
In the heretical martial world, the name of the Six Tyrant Coalition was never taken lightly. Some heretical factions even made it their goal to grow strong enough to enter that coalition’s fold—and yet these people had left it. Why?
“They say they didn’t want to pay the tribute.”
Where the great orthodox sects often sustained themselves on donations, the great heretical houses funded their operations with tribute from subordinate factions. The Red Dragon Stronghold had judged that tribute far too heavy, and had walked away from the Yangtze Waterway Sect.
“Of course the tribute is half an excuse. Their true aim was to grow their power through demonic arts until they could found a new great faction to rival the Six Tyrant Coalition itself.”
“I still don’t understand. They even changed their name for that—and the moment they heard we were coming, they turned back into water bandits and ran…”
A thief by trade, when cornered, takes to the water. The method had proven highly effective. Even the Hao Clan, with informants in every corner of the land, could not easily pin down the position of a ship drifting on the rivers. Though they had left the Yangtze Waterway Sect’s banner, they had once been its water bandits, and their skill at vanishing was first-rate. All the Hao Clan had managed was a rough idea of their general location.
“At present the Red Dragon Hall is roaming the nearby waterways, plundering as they go and watching for the moment they can return to Ankang.”
“So the instant we leave Ankang, they mean to slip back in and retake it.”
“And when they do, they’ll be even harsher to make up their losses. That’s certain.”
Not a clean escape, then, but a strategy of hiding nearby and waiting to reclaim their ground. Cheonhwa had not expected that kind of response.
I’d like nothing better than to meet them head-on on the water—but they know they can’t win a fair fight, so they’ll just keep running.
That would mean an endless game of tag. To break it they needed skilled boatmen who could actually catch the enemy’s trail—and such men were hardly found just by wishing for them. A headache indeed.
“In fact, regarding this matter, a guest has come seeking Daoist Cheonhwa.”
“Who?”
“That is…”
The Ankang branch chief hesitated over how to put it. Even through the mask, his discomfort was plain.
“…Someone from the Yangtze Waterway Sect. To be precise—the chief of the Yangtze Waterway Sect himself. The Dragon King.”
“The Great Bandit of the Yangtze—the one said to appear and vanish without a trace—is here now?”
Cheonhwa’s eyes went wide.
The Dragon King.
Leader of the Yangtze Waterway Sect, one of the Six Tyrant Coalition. A water bandit so elusive that even the empire’s armies tore their hair trying to pin him down. A man who almost never showed himself on dry land—and he was here? What could he be thinking?
“The Dragon King says he wants your strength to deal with the water bandits who left the Yangtze Waterway Sect without leave—including the Red Dragon Hall. He doesn’t come empty-handed, of course. He offers a reward…”
The branch chief continued in a tone of pure disbelief.
“The reward he offers is himself—the Dragon King, already under a government wanted notice.”
“…”
One of the heads of the Six Tyrant Coalition, offering his own person as the price of a bargain. For a moment Cheonhwa found himself without words.