Silk Road 6
Fifteen years ago.
Those words had been a warning.
A warning to choose my side carefully.
Looking back now, this might have been the moment I had to choose.
The executioner was after the Left Guardian. The Left Guardian was trying to revive the Blood Heavenly Demonic Cult.
How much did that woman know?
Assume she knew everything about me. Think and judge that way.
It would be the safest choice.
Yes. I had done it.
Once I assumed the executioner already knew who I was, any clumsy excuse would only turn poisonous.
I looked at the old bloodstains crusted over the pebbles and spoke with forced calm.
“Yeah. That’s right. I did it. With this axe that was in the bastard’s room.”
I tightened my grip on Iron Moon. Jin-wol’s eyes flicked, just for a moment, toward the massive axe with one blade knocked off.
They said that even a rat cornered by a cat would bite. If her words were right, then I was the rat.
And a rat with nowhere left to go had only one way to survive.
It had to sink its teeth into the cat with everything it had. Just to create one opening.
So I had to be strong. Stronger. Push harder, and keep pushing, without ever letting her crush me with her momentum.
“You’re getting above your station with that weapon.”
Jin-wol’s mouth curled into a cold sneer.
I met those eyes head-on and smiled back. It was bluffing, plain and simple.
“I killed everyone here with my own hands. The Left Guardian didn’t save me. I. With these hands. I killed them all and came out. Then I was taken in.”
I poured strength into my eyes and hands.
With my other fist, the one not holding the axe, I clenched hard enough to ache. I wasn’t speaking only with words anymore—I was shouting with my whole body.
I had to throw every card I had on the table.
But the moment I saw Jin-wol’s reaction, I regretted the decision.
Her entire bearing changed in an instant, turning sharply oppressive.
“So when you were fawning over how the Left Guardian saved you, now you’re trying to humiliate me?”
Swoosh!
I stumbled back. The spearhead she had lifted pointed straight at the center of my forehead.
“Then prove it. Prove you can use that axe, and that you’re really the Left Gua—”
Whoosh—
Bang!
“rdian’s personal disciple!”
A thrust. I endured the first exchange. The storm built from her qi surged at once.
It gathered around the strange starting stance she’d taken, the spear’s tip set diagonally against the dirt.
Even my body was being drawn, inch by inch, toward her as she unleashed that terrifying force.
If I was being honest, I wasn’t confident.
I couldn’t even imagine how I was supposed to deal with this.
Then I’d stop thinking.
I’d cut loose even the last thread of reason and rush for that woman’s throat.
No more calculating.
There comes a time in a person’s life when they have to throw everything away.
And that time—
It had to be now if it was ever going to be.
I planted both feet in the ground. I kept forcing my inner energy down through my toes, again and again.
The wind rose savage and hard, yet I held on with everything I had.
My dantian felt ready to burst. I heard the brittle crack of bones threatening to snap. Muscle fibers tore with a series of dry, ragged pops.
Not enough. Not yet. Still not enough.
Her presence deepened. It had reached its peak.
If I hesitated any longer, it would no longer be me who struck first.
I kicked off.
I tore my supporting foot from the ground and launched myself into the air ahead of me.
The earth boomed once. The small echoes of the mountain rang outward in reply.
My body was being drawn toward her, yes—but at a brutal, murderous speed.
I was aiming for one blow.
Now. Face me.
Would she block it? Dodge into my blind spot?
Or would she meet me head-on and knock me out of the sky with a fiercer assault than mine?
“Hah! That brat Jeok-yeong! You were hiding an interesting girl!!”
A hearty laugh rang out.
The voice was hard to catch, scattered apart by the wind’s howl.
Then the whirlwind stopped dead.
Jin-wol’s posture was slowly, almost deliberately, taking shape.
In truth it must have all happened in the blink of an eye, but to me it felt like eternity.
One swing, wrung from all my strength. The axe blade was clearly aimed at her neck.
This wasn’t like before with the Left Guardian. He had blocked me without showing his intent, but the executioner was already fully braced for attack.
This was a race to see who would land first.
And I definitely landed.
The axe blade carved in beneath her ear. It split. It was over.
I couldn’t believe it.
I had, with these hands, cut the executioner’s throat.
Huh?
Was her spear always...
that red?
“Sohonmahu.”
Wait.
“Pierce.”
She died.
-
How strange.
I couldn’t hear anything.
I couldn’t even tell whether this was a dream or reality, whether I was dead or alive.
All I knew was that a streak of scarlet light had burst from the spear tip, and that my ears were still ringing with a shrill, piercing whistle.
I didn’t know whether I had succeeded, only that I had twisted my body with all my strength to dodge it.
I groped at myself, using what might still have been my hand.
Arm, legs, torso, face. Everything was there.
Somehow, miraculously, I was still alive.
Only after I confirmed that I was breathing did I open my eyes.
The flash of red had blinded me for a moment, and I’d lost my sight.
“Cough!”
The instant I opened my eyes, a dark red clot surged back up my throat. The back of my neck had gone cold too.
When I touched it, a lock of hair had been neatly sheared away and crumbled helplessly between my fingers.
One cheon.
That was all the difference there had been.
-
Jin-wol was sitting nearby.
Her spear had returned to silver.
Behind her, a scorched hole had been punched through the lush green forest, its naked wound laid bare.
Seeing that I was awake, she came over first and spoke.
“You’re still alive. Impressive.”
“Cough. That’s a funny thing to say from someone who was trying to kill me.”
I answered bluntly.
“Hmm. If you’d died from that, you wouldn’t have been worthy of his disciple status.”
At that, her eyes narrowed.
Aren’t you seeing the hole in the trees over there?
“Anyway, you’ve proved yourself. I saw your skill. I did you a discourtesy by doubting you without cause, so I’ll apologize here and now.”
Jin-wol gave a small bow.
Behind her, I could see the five soldiers still rummaging through the house.
I pressed my lips together.
Reading my expression, Jin-wol set a hand on top of my head again, just as she had before, and said, “If you’ve got questions, ask me only two. I’ll answer both properly. It wouldn’t do to let things turn sour between me and a disciple I’ve finally met after fifteen years.”
“How do you know about me?”
That was my first question.
How had she known about the massacre I’d carried out here? Was it purely because of the Cult Leader’s Palace and its intelligence network?
“An educated guess.”
She’d said she’d answer properly.
“I’m not lying. It was only a conviction. I came here to investigate while the Left Guardian was away from his post. I found out around thirty people had been killed, too. And then, lo and behold, there you were, little rat girl.”
Jin-wol explained with her intentions laid bare.
“This place was already being kept under wraps by our oh-so-noble lord, and then you showed up too, so I knew something was off. The fact that he suddenly took on a disciple was suspicious enough by itself.”
Fifteen years ago, when the Left Guardian had killed his disciples, the executioner had served as Chief Inspector.
That was a chilling line of reasoning. Her instincts from those days hadn’t rusted at all.
I had walked straight into her trap.
Because she didn’t present her suspicions as suspicions, but instead pressed me as though she already knew everything, she drove me into a corner.
I had tried to hide my unease with bravado and seize control of the conversation.
But it was the executioner who’d been bluffing all along.
I’d admitted it once with my own mouth, and then confessed it twice more in the outcome of our clash.
That I was the one responsible for the massacre here.
Put plainly, I was done for.
Even at the meeting with the Daimyo, I’d been full of fire, but now I wasn’t confident at all.
The executioner had completely played me. In one brief encounter, she’d reduced me to this.
I had to admit what had to be admitted. I lacked experience. I lacked instinct.
If I was already like this now, what would happen if she started hunting the Hyeolsadae?
I couldn’t shake the thought. It was probably obvious. Without the Left Guardian cleaning up after me, my tail would surely be caught.
The only mercy was that the executioner seemed more obsessed with the Left Guardian’s weakness than with the Hyeolsadae itself.
I asked my second question.
It wasn’t even really a question, just a probe to get a definite answer.
“What brought you here in the first place—”
“Questioning the Cult Leader’s blade is punishable by death, girl.”
“Eh?”
She’d said I could ask. She’d said she’d answer two.
But arguing now felt awkward. The executioner was, quite literally, the Cult Leader’s blade.
To challenge her was to challenge the Cult Leader himself.
At a loss, I felt her tap the crown of my head lightly, as if I were a child.
“Pfft. Look at you, all serious. I’m here because I’m looking for the Left Guardian’s weakness. If you’ve got any sense at all, you should have guessed that much.”
I had my answer. The executioner was indeed hunting the Left Guardian as an individual, not the Hyeolsadae.
So it really was me who had hidden the Banghosa’s mansion.
The Cult Leader’s Palace was laying the groundwork to purge the Left Guardian after sending the thorn in his side off to Delingha.
Just like fifteen years ago.
“That’s enough. If you understand, go on your way. If you keep hanging around after this, I’ll handle you according to the law.”
In other words, ask any more and I’ll kill you.
One thing was clear. If I stayed on this path, I would die somehow. I didn’t know her full plan, but the chances were high that I’d die along with the Left Guardian.
Even if I couldn’t stand entirely on her side, I had to leave myself one way out.
“If I know the weakness?”
The mission from the Hyeolsadae came next.
“What?”
Jin-wol turned her head.
If that was how it was, I’d use the same method right back.
The one you taught me, executioner.
“Gong Tae-o bought his post as Banghosa. He paid for office.”
Of course, it was only a guess. Even so, I stated it as fact.
“The Left Guardian was hiding the house of a Banghosa who secured his position through corruption? That certainly sounds…”
“Sleazy, huh? Rat girl. Not bad.”
Good. It took.
“But how do you expect me to believe that? Those are the words of a disciple, after all. Aren’t they?”
“You scared me into it.”
“Hmm. Did I ever do that?”
“The reason you told me about fifteen years ago, I thought about it from that day on. It sounded to me like this: prepare to betray him, because you never know when you might be killed by your master’s hand.”
“Rat girl. That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Your master would be furious if he heard that.”
“Maybe it wasn’t telling me to betray him, but to never trust him too much. That part’s true, isn’t it?”
Damn it. My old habit of speaking too clearly, no matter who I was talking to, had come back to bite me.
But fortunately, her attention was focused elsewhere.
Jin-wol shrugged. Unexpectedly, her tone carried a strange sort of frank agreement.
“I can’t say you’re wrong.”
“I’d just like one path to stay alive. Of course it’s horrible, but if anything should happen to my master—if some kind of ‘accident’ were to occur—”
“Oh, look at this brat.”
“The living should keep living, shouldn’t they?”
If this hadn’t been the Demonic Cult, I would have been expelled for the crime of deceiving master and destroying ancestry.
It was that blatant an outrage.
I was selling out my master’s enemy’s weakness and begging for my life, saying that even if my master died, I should be allowed to live.
“Hah, hahaha... hahahahaha!!”
At my words, Jin-wol burst out laughing as if I were insane.
“I like you. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for someone named Kang Doo-ho.”