Geongonmun (3)
The ones who smashed through Geongonmun’s main gate were martial artists steeped in a murderous air.
“We’re under attack!”
“The black-path dogs have invaded!”
“Do these bastards even know where they are?!”
At the sound of the shattering gates, Geongonmun’s warriors poured out. With the ruined doors between them, the two forces locked eyes and sized each other up.
Wijiun stepped forward a pace and demanded,
“Who are you to smash Geongonmun’s gate and try to walk in here with your muddy boots?!”
The man at the head of the invaders settled the axe on his shoulder and bellowed back,
“We are the Golden Axe Gang! We’ve come for the peerless martial arts of the Black Guard Gang’s master—the ones Geongonmun is hiding!”
“Why the hell would you come looking for the Black Guard master’s arts at Geongonmun?!”
“Don’t play dumb! You’re the ones who crushed the Black Guard Gang. So it wouldn’t be strange at all if you were holding their master’s secret manuals!”
The Golden Axe Gang’s leader—the Golden Axe Master—shouted without a shred of shame. They had attacked another school not for revenge, but to hunt for manuals that might not even exist. It was recklessness taken to the extreme.
Every last one of them is drunk on bloodlust.
Cheonhwa swept the Golden Axe fighters with the Six Harmony Sensory Path. Bloodshot eyes, ragged breathing, the stench of slaughter rolling off their bodies—they had lost all rational judgment in the black-path blood feuds.
I knew unorthodox arts lack the mental cultivation of orthodox martial arts, but I never imagined it would be this bad.
From the moment they destroyed the gate, talk had already become useless. Cheonhwa gauged their strength.
About thirty of them. Most are third-class to second-class. First-class fighters… three, including the Golden Axe Master.
For a Geongonmun still reeling from its war with the Black Guard Gang, they would have been a hard opponent to overcome. That was true only if Geongonmun stood alone, however. Right now the third-generation disciples of the Zhongnan Sect were here as well.
They struck first. There’s no reason we can’t answer in kind.
Cheonhwa glanced at Yeonhwa. Reading the meaning in his eyes, she quietly drew up her internal energy. Cheonhwa likewise circulated the power of Hyeoncheon True Qi through his body and watched the situation unfold.
It did not take long for the Golden Axe side to move.
“Looks like you don’t understand words. Then we’ll have to do this the hard way. Boys—charge!”
The moment the Golden Axe Gang surged through the shattered gate, Cheonhwa scattered the wave of extreme yin-cold energy he had raised to its peak. The freezing chill raced outward and blanketed every Golden Axe fighter.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s midsummer—why is it so cold?”
“It doesn’t hurt, so it’s not sword wind…”
The Golden Axe martial artists felt only confusion at the cold settled around them. What Cheonhwa had done was not an attack; it was preparation for what came next.
Right on cue, Yeonhwa swung her Soft Current Sword, Hyeoncheon True Qi condensed along its edge. Riding the energy field Cheonhwa had laid down, a cutting winter gale—like the bitterest north wind—swept through the Golden Axe ranks.
“C-cold?!”
“This feeling of freezing to the bone—what is it…?!”
Exposed to the killing wind, the Golden Axe fighters’ faces turned blue and they began to shudder. Yin-cold energy had burrowed into their bodies, freezing flesh and meridians alike. Yeonhwa’s Myoman Sword Art could layer the principles of the Internal Heavy Water Method onto every strike. She had deliberately lowered the power to its limit so the technique could reach as many of them as possible. Caught by that cold-laden Internal Heavy Water Method, the Golden Axe fighters could no longer move properly.
Two figures seized the opening at once.
Icy chill met scorching heat and pure white steam billowed upward. Wrapped in that steam and racing through the cold were Jeokhwa and Wijiun. The swift blades of the One Fire Sword Art, accelerated by the heat of Yeomcheon True Qi, left vivid trails through the vapor as they reaped the lives of Golden Axe fighters.
Yeomcheon True Qi was normally specialized for short, decisive battles, yet the surrounding cold suppressed the overheating that came with its heat, letting them run wild without burden.
“Damn it, who the hell are those two?! They’re too fast!”
“I want to block, but my body won’t listen!”
Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa had pinned the Golden Axe fighters in place. Jeokhwa and Wijiun tore across the field, drawing every eye. Meanwhile Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa circled the edges, steadily thinning their numbers.
It was a coordinated assault that looked rehearsed. The combination techniques of the Zhongnan Sect’s Hwa-generation martial siblings left the Golden Axe Gang reeling. When Geongonmun’s own warriors finally joined the fray, the invaders were beaten without a chance to resist.
“Ignore the others! Take out the acting sect master and those brats first!”
The Golden Axe Master and the gang’s other first-class fighters tried desperately to reverse the tide, but the battle had already tilted past the point of recovery.
“You rotten little pups!”
“Spare me, Master…!”
And so the Golden Axe Gang, which had attacked Geongonmun without knowing its place, became guests of the underworld—every one of them except the Golden Axe Master himself.
“I was sure we were at a disadvantage. Next thing I know, we’d won.”
“Just four people seized control of the entire fight.”
“Even if they haven’t passed twenty yet, now I see why the main mountain sent them as reinforcements!”
“More than that—has the acting sect master always been this strong? He felt sharper than usual.”
Geongonmun’s martial artists were still half-dazed by their victory. They had barely begun to recover from the damage of the Black Guard war, yet the moment the three from the main mountain stepped in, everything had been resolved in an instant. Even Acting Sect Master Wijiun had fought like a fish returned to water. It was a moment that made them feel the true depth of the Zhongnan Sect’s strength.
Blissfully unaware of those murmurs, Cheonhwa and Wijiun were speaking.
“Your combination techniques haven’t rusted at all, Senior Brother.”
“You’re telling me. It’s been years and my body still remembers.”
Wijiun smiled, saying he could still vividly recall matching blades with them during the joint training sessions. He would have liked to sink into old memories right then, but unfortunately there was still work left to do: extracting information from the Golden Axe Gang’s sole survivor, the Golden Axe Master.
Cheonhwa looked down at the man who knelt bound on the ground.
“Where did you hear that Geongonmun holds the Black Guard master’s secret manuals?”
“Pah!”
The Golden Axe Master answered by spitting. Cheonhwa sidestepped the flying spit and drove Okgyeong into the man’s knee.
“Guh—! You think that’ll make me talk?!”
“Looks like you still don’t understand your situation.”
Cheonhwa crouched so that their eyes met.
“Your choices are simple: confess quickly and die easy, or thrash in agony until you confess and then die. One or the other.”
A faint killing intent shimmered in Cheonhwa’s gaze—the look of a predator deciding how to dispose of its catch. The Golden Axe Master instinctively knew the young Taoist meant every word. He chewed his lip, struggling, then finally cracked under the pressure of that stare.
“…I heard it from the White Rainbow Sect, after we wiped them out. They said Geongonmun brought down the Black Guard master and took the peerless arts he used to command blazing yang energy.”
“Do you know where the White Rainbow Sect got that information?”
“They only said they’d heard the rumor. Didn’t seem to know the exact source.”
“So you attacked Geongonmun with nothing but a rumor and no real investigation?”
“….”
The Golden Axe Master shut his mouth. Convinced there was nothing more to dig out, Cheonhwa cleanly beheaded him as promised. With that, the Golden Axe assault came to an end.
“We didn’t even get proper information, and all we have to show for it is a smashed gate.”
Wijiun stared at the ruined doors and let out a long sigh. Ending the fight with almost no casualties was good, but the cleanup was another matter entirely.
“I’ll be stepping out for a while.”
“Where to?”
“Something about the information the Golden Axe Master mentioned is bothering me. I want to track down the source of the rumor.”
Cheonhwa spoke while thinking of the Haomen favor token he kept in his robes.
At the Xiuhua Tower, a wine house in Baoji, Cheonhwa showed the favor token to the waiter. The man promptly led him to a private chamber. Waiting inside was a middle-aged man wearing a mask.
“Welcome. I am the branch master of Haomen’s Baoji branch and the proprietor of Xiuhua Tower. Feel free to call me simply the Tower Master.”
At the introduction Cheonhwa felt a sharp sense of déjà vu—because the man was identical to the Tower Master he had met at Suwol Tower.
Same style of mask, same voice, same build, same introduction. How can they be this identical?
Catching the puzzled look, the Xiuhua Tower Master spoke with a smile in his voice.
“You must be quite startled that I look exactly like the Suwol Tower Master of the Hanzhong branch.”
“Yes. For a moment I thought you were the same person I met at Suwol Tower.”
“It’s a natural mistake. In Haomen, those who hold the same post in the same region are required by regulation to present an identical appearance.”
To that end, he added, they practiced everything from bone-shrinking arts to various other miscellaneous skills.
“I assume you sought us out today for information on the recent unrest in Baoji?”
“Exactly as you say. Just now the Golden Axe Gang attacked Geongonmun. They claimed they came because of a rumor that Geongonmun holds the Black Guard master’s peerless martial arts.”
“So you want the precise source of that information.”
“Yes. Have you received anything?”
“Of course. That information is a rumor someone deliberately spread.”
Cheonhwa’s brow furrowed. Who would spread such a thing, and for what purpose? The Xiuhua Tower Master answered the unspoken question.
“The one who spread the rumor is Lihuo Gate—the first black-path school to arrive and try to claim the Black Guard Gang’s vacant place.”
“What was Lihuo Gate’s purpose in spreading that rumor?”
“We cannot know their exact goal, but it appears the chaos currently sweeping Baoji’s murim is itself what Lihuo Gate wants. There would be no other reason to circulate false rumors about Geongonmun.”
Geongonmun was an orthodox school that upheld the stability of Baoji’s martial world. Though it was presently reeling from its life-and-death struggle with the Black Guard Gang, its mere existence was enough to restrain the chaos. Conversely, the moment Geongonmun vanished, Baoji’s murim would plunge straight into hellish disorder.
“What’s more, Lihuo Gate appears to already possess the peerless martial arts mentioned in the rumor. We have obtained eyewitness accounts that the Lihuo Gate Master used the same techniques the Black Guard master employed during the war.”
“Then the rumor about the peerless arts—could it be…?”
“Yes. We believe it was a rumor leaked by the Lihuo Gate Master himself.”
Why would someone who already held the arts the Black Guard master had used deliberately fan the flames of chaos? Claiming it was simply to seize all of Baoji’s interests felt insufficient—the black-path factions were already turning the region into a wasteland through their own wars.
What in the world is their goal?
He still could not grasp why Lihuo Gate had stirred up this storm. Even so, the first step toward resolving the situation was to eliminate Lihuo Gate.
Cheonhwa reached for his money pouch to pay, but the Xiuhua Tower Master raised a hand and stopped him.
“No payment is necessary. Instead, I would like to ask a favor.”
His voice grew solemn.
“I would like Taoist Cheonhwa to calm the turmoil raging through Baoji.”
Haomen avoided direct involvement in murim affairs whenever possible. Yet the chaos in Baoji’s martial world could spill over onto ordinary people at any moment. Entrusting the cleanup to a trustworthy martial artist who already held a Haomen favor token was their compromise.
Cheonhwa nodded at the Tower Master’s words.
“I intend to do exactly that. It’s the reason I came to Baoji in the first place.”