The Anti-Dragon King Faction (2)
The accord between the Yangtze Waterway Sect and the righteous sects of Shaanxi Province was sealed without incident.
Yongwang would have his inner energy sealed and remain a hostage until the suppression campaign that would clear southern Shaanxi was complete. In return, the Yangtze Waterway Sect agreed to cooperate with the province’s righteous factions and lend its strength to the purge.
With river transport now at their disposal, everyone expected the campaign to proceed smoothly. Instead, it ran into unexpected trouble—resistance from those who refused to set foot on the Waterway Sect’s ships.
“How in the world are we supposed to trust the Yangtze Waterway Sect enough to board their boats?”
“They flip their palms overnight and claim they’re turning from the unorthodox path. Shameless dogs. If the situation shifts, another betrayal wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
Every reason the dissenters raised was, on its face, perfectly sound. The root of that distrust was the infamous reputation the Yangtze Waterway Sect had built as a member of the Six Tyrant Coalition.
“They have a point, honestly.”
“What were the sect leaders and elders thinking, allying with those people?”
“We can handle this perfectly well without the likes of them!”
Their arguments spread like contagion, and soon others hesitated to board as well. The Waterway Sect’s own reaction to those prejudiced stares was hardly warm.
“We go out of our way to cooperate, and this is the attitude we get? Righteous sects putting on airs—ptui!”
“If the Chief hadn’t stepped up himself, we wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help!”
Righteous and unorthodox had always been natural enemies; there was no reason for the unorthodox side to bow and scrape to people who met them with open hostility. By the customs of the unorthodox martial world, a fight could have broken out on the spot and no one would have been surprised.
That it did not was solely because of an order from Yongwang, Chief of the Yangtze Waterway Sect. The two camps faced each other across a careful distance, the atmosphere growing uglier by the minute until the entire scene teetered on the edge of a single drawn blade—and a full-scale clash.
Then, just as one side or the other seemed about to draw steel and ignite a mass free-for-all—
Footsteps. Steady, unhurried.
A young Taoist walked through the taut silence as if nothing were amiss. He crossed from the righteous camp toward the Yangtze Waterway Sect’s vessels, stopped near the boats, and showed a letter drawn from his robes to a waiting sailor.
“Which ship is bound for this destination?”
“Ah—me? You’re asking me?”
“Yes. If it’s no trouble, would you point it out?”
Faced with the young man’s courteous request, the sailor scanned the letter with a bewildered look and answered.
“Third ship from the far end—that’s the one heading there.”
“I see. Thank you for your help.”
The young Taoist bowed politely and started toward the indicated vessel. At that moment a voice rang out from the righteous side.
“Flash Sword Dragon! What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?!”
Hearing his epithet, the young Taoist—Cheonhwa—turned and answered calmly.
“As you can see, I intend to board a ship and proceed to my destination.”
“That’s exactly the problem! How can you trust those people enough to set foot on their decks?!”
Cheonhwa was silent a moment, then spoke.
“There are two main reasons.”
“Two?”
“Yes. The first is my trust in the great elders of the righteous path—the Zhongnan Sect among them—who decided on this cooperation.”
Could those elders truly have failed to foresee this friction? Cheonhwa did not believe it for a moment. They were old veterans who had survived decades in the mountain-and-forest world of the martial arts, men who had felt the grudge and distrust between righteous and unorthodox with their own skins. And still they had chosen to ally with the Yangtze Waterway Sect.
“The great elders of the righteous path must have judged that something more important than this discord was at stake. I trust that judgment.”
Once he invoked the elders of their own sects, even the discontented had no choice but to fall silent. For all their grievances, Cheonhwa’s words were no less true.
“……I’ll grant you that. And the second?”
“Because I choose to place my faith in those who wish to change.”
People tilted their heads. Trusting someone and wishing to trust them were similar phrases, yet plainly different. The first was genuine confidence in another person; the second was closer to a hope—a desire to believe.
“I am not ignorant of the Yangtze Waterway Sect’s past crimes,” Cheonhwa continued.
Whatever else they might claim, they were river pirates, with a long record of plunder along the waterways.
“That blood debt will follow them even if they become a sect that walks the line between righteous and unorthodox.”
Unless a man washed his hands of the martial world entirely, even the greatest sects could never fully escape the chain of grudges so long as they lived in the jianghu. The Yangtze Waterway Sect was no exception. If several of those men died tomorrow under the weight of their own karma, no one in the martial world would find it the least bit strange.
“But that does not mean the act of trying to change is wrong.”
To admit fault and move toward atonement was a noble thing—far better, at least, than the thick-skinned shamelessness of insisting one had never been wrong at all.
“That is why I believe it is right to give them a chance. If only to confirm whether they truly mean to change.”
“And if they betray that trust?”
“Then they are beasts wearing human skin, and I will personally wipe them out root and branch.”
A faint killing intent drifted from Cheonhwa as he spoke. The river pirates of the Yangtze Waterway Sect flinched inwardly. They had taken him for an ally simply because he had spoken in their favor—yet look closer, and he was a powder keg that would explode the moment anything went wrong.
Is that really all right?
He’s not blowing up right now, so we leave him alone. The man isn’t even of age yet, and he’s already a Peak Expert—one of the rising talents of the next generation!
He’ll trust us as long as we don’t betray him. That’s better than being shoved away without a chance, isn’t it?
Whatever else we do, we do not rile Flash Sword Dragon. If he loses his temper, the rest of them will come pouring after him!
The pirates exchanged glances without a word and reached a silent consensus: keep Flash Sword Dragon’s temper unprovoked at all costs.
“If Flash Sword Dragon puts it that way… shall we follow his lead?”
“As righteous martial artists, we can hardly ignore people who are trying to repent.”
“And if anything goes wrong, it seems Flash Sword Dragon will take the lead in settling it.”
Even the righteous warriors who had been protesting nodded at Cheonhwa’s answer. When the foremost rising talent of the righteous path spoke like that, they could hardly brush him aside—and the atmosphere around him suggested that if trouble came, he would stand at the front and overturn the whole table. Above all, the quiet killing intent he had let slip cooled the boiling resentment in their chests as if someone had poured cold water over it.
With Cheonhwa first, the other righteous martial artists began boarding the Yangtze Waterway Sect’s ships one by one. The joint campaign to clear southern Shaanxi with the Waterway Sect’s cooperation had begun.
Wherever the waterways ran, the ships of the Yangtze Waterway Sect could go. Their reach vastly expanded the operational range of Shaanxi’s righteous forces. No longer could rivers shelter the unorthodox bands—and the Anti-Dragon King Faction, which had dug in along the Han River, began to fall one stronghold after another. It was like giving wings to a tiger.
“Damn it—run!”
“The waterways are blocked! Where are we supposed to run?!”
“To the mountains! Flee into the mountain strongholds!”
“No—north! Head north, where the righteous sects’ reach doesn’t extend!”
With the rivers cut off, the unorthodox forces split into two streams of flight. One fled toward mountain strongholds under Green Forest influence; the other ran for northern Shaanxi, where Paegummun’s power was strong and the righteous hand could not easily reach.
Those who chose the north sometimes ran into ambushes along the way, yet a few still punched through the cordon and made it. Those who chose the mountains found the Green Forest bandits waiting with open hostility.
“Leave none of the ones who practice demonic arts alive!”
“Because of you dogs, we’ve been suffering too!”
The Green Forest flung every incoming stone right back out—and the reason was a stern decree from their chief, the Green Forest King.
“Anyone who cultivates demonic arts and blackens the name of the Green Forest—I will smash them myself!”
Ever since demonic arts had spread through the unorthodox world, men drunk on power had begun to break Green Forest discipline. Im Maengho, the Green Forest King, who had always been hostile toward the mysterious forces, went so far as to declare every practitioner of demonic arts a public enemy of the Green Forest.
The unorthodox remnants now fleeing the eyes of Shaanxi’s righteous sects were either especially vicious or steeped in demonic arts. The Green Forest bandits crushed them without a shred of hesitation. One of the Six Tyrant Coalition’s own pillars had, without meaning to, become an ally of the righteous purge.
“What do we do? Mountain roads and waterways—everything’s blocked!”
“Bolting north is the only real option, but the righteous dogs know that as well as we do.”
“Word is they’re thickening the encirclement day by day.”
The unorthodox remnants were truly surrounded on all sides. Stay put, and they would only wither and die inside a tightening ring—cornered rats in every sense. Yet a cornered rat will bite a cat with everything it has, and the unorthodox bands were no different.
That gathering of desperate strength did not escape the eyes of the Hao Sect. In Hanzhong, at Suwolru—the Hao Sect’s local branch—Cheonhwa listened as the Master of Suwolru relayed the intelligence.
“Just as expected, the unorthodox remnants have begun to gather.”
“So it has come to that.”
Cheonhwa nodded. The leadership of Shaanxi’s righteous sects had already mapped out how the suppression would unfold, and among the possibilities they had considered was precisely this: that the cornered would band together.
“Where are they concentrating?”
“Around the Anti-Dragon King Faction. It has taken the least damage and remains the largest force.”
The drive against the Anti-Dragon King Faction, which controlled stretches of the waterways, had only begun after the Yangtze Waterway Sect’s aid arrived—so their losses were relatively light.
“I heard the Anti-Dragon King Faction had no central figure like Yongwang. How did that change?”
“A Peak Expert named Yeo Yongmyeong seems to have become their rallying point.”
The faction had only recently broken away, and now a core had suddenly appeared? Even allowing for desperation, the smell of something off was hard to miss.
“Could the mysterious forces be involved?”
“Our side considers that highly likely.”
“Even if they aren’t, piecemeal strikes are reaching their limit.”
“Still, because we poured everything we had into the early stages, the force they’ve assembled doesn’t appear to reach the scale of a great sect.”
“That is welcome news.”
The righteous forces of Shaanxi had pushed a blitz for two reasons: the ever-present danger of upheaval in the north, and the need to cut the unorthodox numbers before they could gather in one place. Thanks to those results, the host now massing under the Anti-Dragon King Faction was not as large as it might have been.
“For them, this is a final thrash of desperation.”
“And for us, the mission that will crown the clearing of southern Shaanxi.”
“Forces that have been scattered until now—Zhongnan, Huashan, and the rest—will all converge in one place.”
“It would have been reassuring if the Super Experts could join the operation.”
Cheonhwa let out a quiet breath. The Master of Suwolru offered a wry smile.
“The Super Experts of the great sects must guard their own gates and stand ready for any upheaval in the north. There is no helping it.”
The troops sent to the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace had not yet returned. There was no surplus of Super Experts to station both on the northern watch and in the southern purge. The final battle of the southern Shaanxi campaign would therefore fall mainly to third-generation disciples like Cheonhwa, and to the second generation.
Large-scale battles always produced large-scale casualties, like it or not. Cheonhwa had learned that with his own body in the war against the jiangshi.
“Where is the final battlefield?”
“Near Yeonggang County, at the source of the Hanshui.”
“I went there once before over the Yeonggang Mountain Stronghold kidnappings. An ill-fated region in more ways than one.”
Autumn was already drawing to its close. Winter would come soon enough—cold enough to freeze even the rivers. Once it did, reaching the enemy’s base would become far harder. The operation had to be finished before true winter set in.
A light of resolve kindled in Cheonhwa’s eyes.