Chapter 267
Chapter 267
Iron Emperor — Chapter 267
Bearing a faint flush, Giyul brought Jeylia over to Dupyo and Ryu-hwa as they played with the children. His face was slightly reddened, likely because so many people had offered congratulations and poured him drinks.
"Keuh, take my cup!"
"Gladly!"
In high spirits, Dupyo filled Giyul's large bowl with wine. Only Jeylia fidgeted anxiously at Giyul's heavy drinking.
"Puhaa, this is good!"
"Hey, take a cup from me too!"
As Giyul drained the bowl in one go, Ryu-hwa latched onto him and poured yet another bowlful. Watching them, Jeylia wore an expression of worry, but at the same time, a gentle smile touched her lips.
"Mom, Mom, I want a little sibling too!"
"What?"
At Jenny's clinging demand for a younger sibling, Jeylia's face flushed crimson, yet she could not help but laugh. The other children also bounced around, cheering that it was wonderful for Jeylia to marry Giyul.
In truth, these children were not Jeylia's own.
She came from South Roselin. Her father had been a northern mercenary, but he was killed in battle, leaving her to drift among the columns of refugees. Eventually, she settled in Gauri.
The Roselin War had dragged on, and in its course, countless orphans were produced. Their faces had seemed to mirror her own. So she had taken them in, one by one, to live with her.
Jenny's mother had died giving birth to her. Because of that, Jeylia had raised her since infancy, and Jenny called Jeylia her mother. Giyul and Jeylia's meeting had come about precisely because of these children.
At first, she had assumed Giyul was some pervert who was only after young girls. But as she came to know him little by little, she realized that her assumption had been wrong. In the way he treated the children, she discovered a genuine purity — a simple love for children themselves.
"There now, our pretty Jenny."
"Oppa!"
"......."
The moment Jenny called Giyul "oppa," everything stopped. The people who had been laughing at the children's antics all froze. Feeling awkward, Giyul slowly turned his head, sensing the pointed gazes boring into the back of his skull.
"Hmm. So I'm 'Mom,' but someone else is 'oppa'...."
She did not look terribly angry.
Her lips simply jutted out a little in a rather endearing pout.
In fact, Jeylia was not particularly young, but Giyul was thirty-eight.
Though he was a year or two younger than Dupyo or Ryu-hwa, he was still a full ten years older than Jeylia. Her dissatisfaction was perhaps only natural. Truth be told, among the girls living in the Gauri capital, there was no one who did not know Giyul.
"So why do you always have them call you 'oppa'? I've always found that strange. You did it when we first met too...."
Jeylia, naturally, had also been one of the girls who followed Giyul.
"Keuh. But now you're my wife."
"That's right. There should be no secrets between a married couple."
"What do you mean by that?"
Jeylia was asking him to explain why he made them call him "oppa," but Dupyo and Ryu-hwa's reactions were a little strange.
Even stranger was Giyul's attitude. After with a faintly bitter smile for a moment, Giyul turned his head toward Dupyo and Ryu-hwa. They gave a slight nod, then herded the children away into the distance.
"Hmm. It's a very long story."
Stroking Jeylia's hair, Giyul slowly drifted back to that day in the past.
The year 660. The 20th year of King Uija of Baekje. Hwangsanbeol.
The world was ablaze.
The suicide squad, who had won four great victories against the Silla army, now lay upon the earth along with the collapsing fortress walls. After snapping off the shafts of the arrows embedded in his arms and legs, Buyeo Gi-yul ran on in a daze.
Of the three defensive positions Gyebaek had constructed at Hwangsanbeol, the final main camp was where he had to go.
Of course, that place was not safe either. After all, the stone fortifications had been built at three locations precisely to divide the enemy's assault into three fronts.
"Wh-what!"
Coming down the slope, Giyul stared with despairing eyes. Even the wall that supported the final main camp had collapsed.
"There's one over there!"
Silla soldiers, their fury festering from the day's defeats, rushed at him like maddened dogs the moment they spotted Giyul. He gripped the axe in his hand once more and charged.
"Die!"
"Yiaaaa!"
Sprinting down the slope, Giyul launched his body over the head of a Silla soldier thrusting a spear at him. He did not simply leap; he flew fast enough to skim just above their heads. The pain he had felt in his thighs was gone now.
Giyul cut down the three Silla soldiers blocking his path in an instant and entered the collapsed position. He had to find Gyebaek. He had to report that both of the other defensive positions had ultimately fallen.
"Dalsol! Where are you!"
Giyul dashed onward, leaping over the corpses of fallen soldiers. Inside, the suicide troops were still resisting, taking on groups of three or four Silla soldiers at a time.
"Kaaaa!"
"D-danger!"
One of his arms was nowhere to be seen — blown off completely. A half-broken arrow was embedded in his eye. Yet even so, he roared, spitting blood, and continued to cut down the Silla troops.
It was a man who had always followed at Gyebaek's side.
BOOM!
"Aaaagh!"
Amid the thunderous noise, Silla soldiers' bodies were hurled out from inside the position in pieces. Then came the Lion's Roar that followed.
"If you are not yet dead, rise, I said!"
"G-General!"
Bursting forth with eyes blazing blue, the man Giyul had been searching for was Gyebaek himself.
"Euyaaa!"
Giyul's axe flashed as he struck the rear of the Silla troops encircling Gyebaek, severing arms and legs. Their formation collapsed in an instant. Having finally reached Gyebaek, Giyul cried out with a devastated expression.
"Both defensive positions have fallen."
"Giyul, you're still alive! Hahaha!"
Even in the face of Giyul's grief, Gyebaek burst into hearty laughter as if overjoyed to see him. Then, stepping forward, he held a small axe in one hand and a great blade in the other.
"This is how it ends, fighting like this! Is it not?"
"Uncle...."
Watching Gyebaek's hearty bearing, Giyul unconsciously uttered the word he had used as a child. Though they were distant relatives, Giyul, too, was unmistakably of the Buyeo clan, the royal surname.
"Let's make a wager on who can kill the most!"
"Waaaa!"
Gyebaek charged out, and the few remaining blood-soaked warriors followed behind him. That was the final scene Giyul witnessed.
Giyul had miraculously survived among the corpses.
He had tumbled down the mountainside while fighting across the walls. When he regained consciousness a day later, he left behind the cold bodies of the Five Thousand Death-Defying Warriors and raced toward Sabi Castle.
To protect the reason he had thrown himself into this war.
There was a reason Giyul treated young girls with particular kindness. Apart from himself, his household consisted of seven younger sisters.
Sisters with bright, round eyes would be waiting for him to return.
Waiting for him to protect them.
Repeating this endlessly in his mind, he arrived at Sabi Castle, which was engulfed in flames. He no longer felt whether his legs or his arms were rotting away.
He simply ran — toward his home, only toward his home.
"Kyaaak!"
A woman came fleeing from an alley, clutching her half-torn clothes closed. Behind her, a Tang soldier followed, fumbling with his waist ties.
"You dog!"
Had their figures overlapped with his sisters? Giyul hurled his axe without hesitation. The flying axe struck the soldier in the head, sending him toppling backward, his hands still at his waist.
Instant death.
Weeping, the woman bowed her head slightly toward Giyul, then ran off somewhere again. As if he never even saw her, Giyul kept running.
FWOOSH!
"Wha-what is this!"
Flames billowed where his house should have stood.
Fires were burning all across Sabi Castle, but Giyul's house was different. Staring at the great conflagration, his mouth fell open, and all thought drained from him.
"How...."
The roof was already half collapsed.
Thud.
His knees struck the ground. Every ounce of strength that had sustained him until now drained completely away.
In front of the house consumed by fire, he found the charred remains of a large cart someone had dragged against the door. There was only one answer: they had barricaded the occupants inside and set the place ablaze.
An ordinary commoner would not have suffered such a gruesome fate, but his surname — Buyeo, the royal surname of Baekje — was the source of his ruin. He was not even politically significant; a collateral descendant of a collateral line. No more than a convenient target to make an example of. As the house collapsed, swallowed by the fire demon, Giyul collapsed as well.
What saved him in that utter ruin was the woman he had rescued.
Though saved by that woman, he remained blank like a hollow doll, incapable of doing anything, until eventually he followed the refugees and drifted into Gauri.
He also first met Gye Ung-sam then. Among the Ssaulabi escorting the refugees at the time, one was Gye Ung-sam.
When he came to his senses, Go Jin-cheon's unit stood before his eyes. For a village of barely over seventy households, the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry had stood, with a mere seven hundred troops, against three thousand Tang soldiers. And from then on, he had lived alongside them, coming all the way to this place. That was his life.
In Giyul's memories, his chattering sisters always existed. That was why he never hesitated when he saw young girls. Instead of remembering the sisters who had died horribly in the fire, he chose the countless sisters who needed his strength.
This was the reason he fought.
When Giyul finished speaking calmly, Jeylia could only stare blankly, not even thinking to wipe the tears streaming down her face.
She had witnessed it.
The tears that flowed beneath Giyul's bright smile....
The reason he fought....
* * *
Samdopyo and Mong Ryu-hwa played energetically with the children, a picture of utter peace, a far cry from their battlefield appearance as death gods. Of course, there were also those who watched Dupyo and Ryu-hwa with uneasy eyes.
One such person was none other than Go Jin-cheon.
"See to it that they are all married off before the year ends."
"They'll go on their own when the time's right."
At Jin-cheon's words, Eulji Buru snorted and tipped a liquor jar into his mouth.
But Jin-cheon furrowed his brow and said one more thing.
"This time it was only the hill behind the training ground. Next time, it might not be a hill — it might be a whole mountain they smash to pieces."
"Kkeueung."
"They live lives that keep sending them back to the battlefield. For men who come home from war smelling of blood, shouldn't there be at least one warm, human family member waiting for them?"
In the end, Jin-cheon cherished them.
Lives lived fighting, fighting, and fighting yet again.
And yet they were men who knew how to enjoy themselves like this. You might think they would taste power when they had it, but at most, they simply enjoyed themselves alongside the common soldiers. Jin-cheon, too, had not really understood — not before he had Eulji and Yunias.
In war, after cutting down tens or hundreds of enemies, they returned with their bodies steeped in the smell of blood—only to be greeted by an empty room.
That was why his subordinates sought out women who sold their bodies instead of returning to their own homes.
Not merely to relieve desire, but to feel some human warmth.
Now Jin-cheon understood that feeling.
"I'll make sure to find 'em a match."
Buru knew full well what Jin-cheon's words meant.
"Those bastards are already way behind. Better get 'em married quick if we ever want to see any little ones, eh?"
Buru smiled, showing his white teeth.
"Children, you say...."
Jin-cheon gazed out at the children running about.
"Those children are Gauri's future."