Silk Road 10
The center of the old man’s finger—the exact place he had stabbed at my chest—was perfectly fine.
Maybe I still hadn’t learned how to use the method. I couldn’t feel any real power yet, either.
And yet, it had definitely not been a dream.
The gravel and grass where he had stood for a moment had blackened and changed color.
I settled into the posture for cultivating and regulating my breath, a good distance away from that spot.
I needed to know what had changed in my body.
Falling inward, I silently recited the essentials of Jeongma Heart Formula.
Maybe because I’d been battered by the winter wind for hours, I shivered as though I’d caught a chill.
Cold. Still—
Get a grip.
To regulate breath and circulate one’s qi—that was the meaning of regulating and breathing in unison.
I couldn’t possibly explain, in all its tedious detail, the principles of gathering inner strength in the dantian, starting from the methods of ingestion and exhalation.
It was the indispensable act by which a martial artist accumulated the inner force that became the source of martial skill, then circulated that power through the body to examine oneself.
Animals had meals. Plants had sunlight.
And martial artists had regulating breath.
I poured my will into the circulation of qi.
Like a Jipsa determined to root out an enemy’s weakness, I concentrated on the inner energy moving through every meridian in my body, searching for the demonic energy the old man had planted.
Dantian. Waist. Chest.
Found it.
The demonic energy that had once spread as though it meant to devour my entire body had taken the shape of a tiny seed, settled deep in the lower reaches of my heart.
I sent inner energy into the seed in my chest through the Jeongma Heart Formula Jin-wol had taught me.
Sssshhhk!
“Kh—cough!”
Blood tasted bitter in my throat. Thankfully, nothing came up, but I would have been right on the edge of it.
With pain like my throat was being torn open, the price of touching that condensed mass of wicked energy was a faint scattering of black aura, enough to remind me of that Josa bastard.
I clenched my fist. Could the old man really have been telling the truth? I could feel a power unlike before.
Exaggerating a little, it felt like I’d grown twice as strong.
Was this innate true energy?
Fwoosh!
“T-this is... innate true energy?”
I couldn’t hide my shock.
I’d barely even struck the air.
Yet the bodhi tree trunks more than two jang away had been stripped from their branches by the fist wind my blow had unleashed.
I picked up Cheolwol, which I’d propped against a rock.
If that much happened from a single punch thrown into empty air, then if I truly swung Cheolwol with this body vomiting black vapor from every pore...
The thought flashed through me that I might be able to slice an entire cross-section of the forest clean through, just as Jin-wol had done.
Of course, my lifespan would burn away with it.
I was about to try it, then abandoned the idea and drew my qi back in.
As I withdrew the inner energy I’d been letting flow, the emission of demonic energy stopped.
At least controlling it was easy.
But no matter what, demonic energy was still demonic energy.
Beyond eating away at my lifespan, there might be other side effects I didn’t know about.
So I had to be careful. Especially in front of a Jiphaengsaja.
-
“A strange odor, you say.”
Jin-wol spoke.
“Yes. The masked swordsman looked like any ordinary assassin, but there was a familiar stench about him.”
She and the acting leader were discussing the assassins.
Listening in quietly, I found that her claim that we’d been attacked while staying at the inn did not seem to be a lie after all. It had been far too detailed to be invented on the spot.
“A familiar stench, hm. What a fine bit of wordplay.”
“For a merchant like me, it is simply so. A Persian man’s body odor is unusual enough to be difficult to forget.”
“Oh? Then you’re saying the Persians sent the assassins?”
“That is what I find strange as well. They have no diplomatic ties even with the imperial court of the Central Plains, and merely exchange trade goods with us...”
“There are no Persians in our sect, of course, and none among the assassin organizations of the righteous scum or the Dark Shadow Gate, either. They said there were some back when the Blood Cult was riding high in the old days, but...”
“Could they be moving about the Ten Thousand Great Mountains again? I think the odds are low, but it would be hard to say it was impossible.”
Jin-wol’s eyes twitched.
By my guess, she likely suspected that the one behind it all was Josa.
But the truth, no one knew. Not me, not the acting leader, not even that dead Gong Tae-o bastard.
The key lay with Kang Du-ho. He was the one holding it.
Those Persians from nowhere, those assassins—it was entirely possible Kang Du-ho had hired them too.
Before long, we had reached Garyeong Gorge.
The winding path leading into the valley was familiar. I’d traveled it more than a few times while preparing the raid on Cheongeunru.
Still, of course, I couldn’t act like I knew the place.
I had to hide the demonic energy inside me, and the fact that I knew this terrain, from the Jiphaengsaja completely.
“You said you’d asked the Hao Clan for a search, and that the assassins thought to be Persian showed up after that.”
“That is correct.”
“Then the Hao Clan’s vermin weren’t spared either.”
“I couldn’t say that much...”
“Take them!”
Shrk. Clang!
The city near Cheongeunru. Kang Du-ho’s house was still far off.
And yet, they had launched an ambush here.
The masked assassins concealed in every corner and recess around the buildings flashed with low, murderous eyes.
Whoosh!
Some came charging with swords drawn; others flung hidden weapons from afar.
Every time we turned another corner, the number of shadows flooding in seemed to grow.
“You little minnows—where do you think you’re going?”
Jin-wol cut a path through them.
Even while gripping the acting leader by the hand, she was swinging her spear with ferocious force and hacking the assassins down.
I flew above Jin-wol as she carved through the black tide.
Stepping on the stone wall and using Wumyeong Bulgong to leap across the air, I could see quite clearly the movements of the swarming assassins below, buzzing like a cloud of insects.
So many of them. From where had we been tracked?
No—we hadn’t been tracked. Information had leaked.
Judging by their numbers, they had known we were coming and lain in wait.
But there was no time to think about that now!
After descending, I sprinted along the wall. My heavy Cheolwol scraped along the stone, tearing up the battlements with a shriek of metal.
With Cheolwol flinging sparks, I raised it and split in half the waist of the man throwing flying daggers at Jin-wol.
I leapt again. This time, it was the one on the roof loosing poisoned arrows.
I closed the distance in an instant with Flying Heavenly Demonic Shadow and killed him in a single blow.
It was a one-sided slaughter. No one could stand against Jin-wol, against this body, or against me now that I had gained this strength.
The assassins had been pushed onto the defensive.
They were ringed around the grand gate of the mansion that seemed to be Kang Du-ho’s house, trying to block our way.
Silence fell. The front-line assassins tightened their grips on their long swords. They shifted their daos in their hands.
Then Jin-wol shot me a sidelong glance and jerked her chin.
It was a signal to wipe out the mass of assassins in front of us on my own, as though that number were a mere trifle.
Whoosh!
At once, Jin-wol surged upward, still holding the acting leader by the neck.
Then she stepped on the air once, twice, changed direction, and leapt straight toward the upstairs window.
“...”
Come on then.
How long had I waited for this moment?
The bastards standing before me now were all people who deserved to die.
They obstructed our path and dared to try to kill us first. The justification for judgment was more than enough.
If I slaughtered every one of them, I’d sleep just fine tonight.
I didn’t feel like I was about to lose, not even a little.
It might have been possible to pick them off one by one, as I had in Gong Tae-o’s house.
But since there was no Jiphaengsaja around, I wanted to test my newly gained power.
...Though it would shave away a bit more of my lifespan.
“How do you expect to handle all of us alone, wench?!”
One masked assassin shouted in outrage.
I knew what that was—just a pathetic stalling tactic.
Several men in the rear were already crossing the threshold and heading into the house.
So I couldn’t delay any longer.
Fine. I didn’t know whether I could do it, but I’d finish this in one strike.
-
In my mind, I formed the image of the black seed.
I imagined the thing planted in my chest and let the qi drawn up from my dantian flow through it.
“Strike—!!”
Focus. Focus. Focus again.
I widened my stance a little beyond horse stance. I lifted Cheolwol over my shoulder and drew the crackling demonic energy up through my fingertips.
Fwoosh!
The force rose black and red, boiling upward. Thinking of slaughtering the bastards, I ended up imagining the feel of it in my hand.
How shameless. With my head bowed low, a grin crept onto my lips.
“Heh...”
One of the assassins standing within arm’s reach of me saw that smile and stumbled backward.
But by then, it was already too late.
Whoooosh—
KRAAAAAAASH!
A black gale plunged downward with the crack of thunder.
He was late. Far too late.
-
I caught sight of one bastard fleeing as if being chased into the building.
“Kya-ha! Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry?”
BOOM!
The sound of creation splitting open. Blood flashed in scattered sparks. Such a beautiful sight.
The blood of martial artists. Revenge. The inevitable fate of the weak! Ah, how could I possibly despise it?
“...Ah, right. This is no time for this.”
I nearly lost myself completely. I needed to finish the situation quickly and join the investigation.
-
Kang Du-ho was dead.
The Kang Du-ho we had pursued so earnestly had already been reduced to bones.
Then all the questions came down to a single point.
Who, exactly, had brought so many assassins here?
What kind of arrangement had they had with the dead Kang Du-ho to protect him this far?
And...
“The joints have been broken in several places. This is...”
The acting leader murmured as she stroked the bones.
Remarkably, Jin-wol could not conceal the tremor in her eyes.
“This is a sword style that doesn’t exist in our sect. How...”
“Jiphaengsaja, may I offer a word?”
“Is this a matter of urgency?”
“There’s something that occurred to me regarding the Persian assassins.”
“Speak.”
“When I went out to Silk Road, I once encountered a man called the Red-Eyed Swordsman. His face was wrapped, so it was hard to make out, but his atmosphere felt exactly like that of a Persian—”
Crkkhh!
He could not finish.
A straight blade burst out from his chest.
Red eyes shining through a mask.
A sword with foreign, elegant curves.
A forearm-length blade engraved with unknown script, piercing straight through the acting leader’s chest.
The man who had struck like lightning kicked the now-corpse aside and sent it crashing to the ground.