Silken Road 11
Executioner.
The foremost blade, armed with the cult leader’s trust and favor.
And indeed she was. The name was no empty boast. It was a calamity-fire, as though I were facing the apparition of a phoenix itself.
The Samadhi True Fire Jin-wol had unleashed was burning the entire house to the ground with merciless ferocity.
Even so.
Like a pine tree that wouldn’t budge even under a fierce wind, the Red-Eyed Swordsman stood steady within the flames.
I couldn’t have put into words the difference in their skill, the push and pull of their momentum, the flow of their internal energy.
Their fight, having reached a consummate level, had long since gone beyond the kind of battle that could be described with ordinary embellishment or flowery phrases.
All that remained was the atmosphere.
A current carried on the hush of stillness.
The clash of wills—the thing called war, the thing called struggle—rode plainly upon the blaze.
Then their shapes vanished.
The assassin moved first, but all I caught with my own eyes was the blade coming at me.
It was a silent strike. A soundless move delivered at appalling speed.
At a distance so close I could almost see the very tip of the sword, I twisted my body and slipped past by the narrowest margin.
Huff!
Then I counterattacked with a kicking technique. I drove Cheolwol into the floor and used it as an axis, snapping out with my leg—but the man’s form blurred. In the instant I failed even to register it, a blade cut into my arm.
A shallow slash at the elbow. Fortunately, it wasn’t deep.
But I had no way to withstand the attack that followed.
Clang!
The metallic ring rang out.
“Guard your body. You are no match for her!”
With fierce eyes, Jin-wol flared like a living flame and flew in.
The Red-Eyed Swordsman’s blade screamed in a flash of light. A cold light. Then, crossing the curved blade in his right hand with the sword he gripped in reverse, he carved straight through the house as though slicing meat from a chopping block.
Was this truly a master from another realm?
And yet the Samadhi True Fire did not abate for a moment, continuing to sear the landscape black.
“Charge.”
A thrust I’d seen before. It was the same form as then, only the power behind it had multiplied by nearly tenfold.
Her resolve was astonishing.
The cult leader’s blade, boiling and fiercely heated to a vicious red, shot toward the foreign shadow.
Sparks, a gale of ash, the smell of burning wood.
The building, unable to withstand the aftershock of Jin-wol’s leap, came down with a rumbling groan. A faint emptiness settled over me. Kang Doo-ho, who had been running around like a dog chasing its own tail, had already been reduced to powder and scattered away.
The Red-Eyed Swordsman and the Executioner vanished far beyond the sky.
Now there was nothing left but the sound of things burning.
Damn it. Are the only ones I can deal with just idiots?
No. I’m not weak. I can’t be weak.
They’re the monsters.
And yet I had thrown myself into the world of monsters.
This wasn’t the time to be sitting around with silver-spoon young masters, studying under the same masters and spouting nonsense about becoming the greatest demonic adept or wandering the world.
I had to survive, right here and now, and I had to take my revenge.
Everything else was irrelevant.
If I wanted to kill a monster, I had to become stronger. I had to cast off the human heart.
The naïve girl I used to be was dead. She had crumbled to pieces in the blaze that day.
And toward that version of me, two assassins were approaching over the ruins.
I got to my feet with Cheolwol in hand and set my stance for a one-against-a-thousand fight.
Two were coming. One in black, one in red.
The black one wore a hood; the red one wore a bamboo hat.
What an odd combination. But I knew them well enough.
They were the worst of the hidden killers from the demonic Shadow Gate.
They were infamous—exceptional and grotesque in equal measure.
They said those bastards tanned the faces of the people they killed on commission and made ledgers out of the hides.
My fighting spirit boiled up. Filthy trash. They deserved to die, even if I had to drag them to hell myself.
I didn’t particularly want to go around peeling their faces off in return, but a kind of reckless urge rose inside me all the same.
It was probably just me taking out the frustration from moments ago.
Come on. Move. Drag this body forward and butcher them as though they were those Southern Leftist bastards.
Come at me.
The two were walking closer, grinning and sneering all the while.
Unlike the usual image of assassins, neither wore a mask; their faces were bare.
The red one—so vulgar in the way he laughed—showed yellowed teeth stained with grime.
He must have seen my injuries and decided I was an easy mark.
The grinning pair drew their weapons. The red one carried a sword; the black one, a hand axe and a dagger.
I gathered my inner energy and concealed it. I let a little of the demonic energy entwined with my innate qi seep into my wrist.
It had the trivial flaw of eating away at one’s lifespan, but apart from that it was a supremely useful power.
“Ghh!”
Blood burst from my wounded arm in a sudden gush. A sharp pain lanced through me, and the injury flared hot.
If they took me lightly, that was to my advantage—I’d make them look down on me even more. So-called flesh-cutting, bone-breaking strategy.
Be death wearing the mask of a pitiful girl.
“Ngh... d-don’t come any closer!”
Thrashing wildly, I swung the Cheolwol I could barely keep up.
It was a ridiculous sort of flailing. My steps staggered, and every time I swung, my whole body got dragged around after the huge blade of the axe.
Of course, all of it was an act. A little wound like this was nothing.
The two assassins were closing in. One step, two steps closer.
They intended to take me out in a single blow, just as I had annihilated the rabble a moment ago.
More. Come a little closer.
But then—
“Red Demon, stop. It could be a trap.”
The black-clad man with the hand axe barked at the red one.
“Sure. It could be a trap. So what changes?”
But the red man called Red Demon only sneered and refused to listen.
“That damned woman who was fighting that bastard Pasain was the problem. There’s nothing else here now, is there? If they were really at our level, they’d have already figured out—”
That damned Pasain bastard. At last, the pieces clicked into place.
The Red-Eyed Swordsman had taken down the Shadow Gate by himself and made them his subordinates.
Fine. That was enough.
I tore through the air. Even the ground that met my blade shattered and broke apart.
How generous of him—to take a careless step despite his companion’s warning.
Red Demon’s sword fell limply to the ground, severed at the wrist.
But that wasn’t enough. The wound on my wrist had been more troublesome than I’d expected.
The bastard’s reaction had been no ordinary one, but if I’d had a whole arm, I could have inflicted a fatal wound.
“Red Demon!”
“Kraaagh!! You little—!”
The two of them lunged in panic.
Red Demon immediately snatched up his sword, while the black-clad assassin sent throwing blades flying to cover him as he did.
With no choice, I stepped back.
If possible, I wanted to ask what it felt like to be separated from the right hand that had likely peeled the faces from countless people for the rest of my life.
But it had failed. I’d driven in with the intent to kill and still missed.
As expected, nothing in this world ever went exactly as planned.
Of course, it was my own fault for not being fully refined yet. When I got back, I’d have to train twice as hard.
Clang!
“You little bitch!”
...if I can even go back.
The one who had lost a hand was no ordinary man either.
As befitting an assassin from the demonic Shadow Gate, one whose name had spread as far as the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, he still didn’t lose his swordsmanship even after switching to his left hand.
The real problem was the one called Black Ghost. A chain trailed from his hand axe, letting him hurl the axe from beyond the reach of my Cheolwol. And when he got even farther away, he pulled out throwing blades from his sleeves to keep me under pressure.
It was infuriating beyond measure.
If I focused on leg power and used my footwork, I could probably reach him.
Then I’d have to finish him before he adapted to my speed.
The one who’d lost a hand would be next.
“Black Ghost, this won’t do! Damn it, I don’t want to admit it, but... that bitch is strong!”
Blood dribbling from the severed stump, Red Demon shouted it like a command for a joint attack or coordinated assault.
The sharp, honed gaze of the two of them locked onto me and drew a line through the air. Their icy killing intent bled darkness.
“Come on!! You cut off this body’s hand with some petty trickery, and I’ll make sure you see—”
Slash!
A scream. It happened in the blink of an eye. The two of them charged with their bodies crossing over each other, me caught between them.
That was their linked attack.
The reason I could break through it was that I had been hiding my speed all along.
After dealing with Red Demon, I pulled free my Cheolwol. The axe blade had gone deep from the shoulder to the chest.
Then came a rattling sound. It was the sound of the daggers pinned into my back falling out and clattering to the ground.
The world swayed. An illusion of sky and earth mixing together crashed over me. The daggers had been poisoned.
Maybe it was some terrible toxin that would kill me in an hour.
With a hacking cough, I spat out blood.
But Black Ghost, having lost his partner, gave me no time to catch my breath and launched himself across the ground like a sliding shadow.
“How dare you do that to Red Demon! I’ll skin you alive, you bitch!”
I steadied myself and faced the situation head-on. All I could see was the chain.
At its end, a small but more than threatening axe blade.
Should I use my innate qi?
No. If I relied only on that sinister power, I wouldn’t be able to move forward.
I dismissed the thought that had slipped in unbidden, like the whisper of some demonic old man, and shook my head.
Look straight ahead, turn one full circle in the air, and run across the chain stretched like a bridge.
The man hauled the chain back.
I surrendered my body to that force and rushed forward. Faster still.
Immediately after, I struck with a single exchange. A broad horizontal sweep.
The bastard left behind an uncanny blur of his shape and slithered away.
A technique similar to the Red-Eyed Swordsman’s. But the depth of it was worlds apart.
However similar it might look, it was nothing compared to the Red-Eyed Swordsman’s level.
I did not kill the momentum of my rebound. Using the centrifugal force, I hurled the axe blade backward. The air split apart with the sound of things shattering and scattering.
Clang!
“Heh, your instincts are good.”
It hit. He’d barely blocked it, but the force had shoved his body back with a heavy recoil.
I sprang forward at once.
“It’s insight.”
I shoved with Cheolwol in one hand.
This time, so he couldn’t slip away, I seized his throat tightly with the other hand.
“W-what kind of strength—”
At last, he was making that ugly face.
The two of us rolled through the ash-choked debris, the world sunken into blackened cinders.
I was there to kill him, and he was there to survive.
The nausea worsened. I felt sick. If I lost my grip on my senses right now, it felt like I’d die on the spot.
Using poison and all that nonsense. I needed to kill him quickly and catch my breath—catch my breath again.
I shoved the axe haft behind his neck. Then I crossed my hands and gripped the shaft.
The crossed grip formed a triangle with the axe haft. His throat sat right in the center.
And in that position, I tightened my arms.
He gagged and coughed, and then his breathing stopped. The trembling in his limbs ceased.
The twitching rigidity of the dead, lingering now and then, was almost like regret.
It was over.
“Bweh!”
Only after vomiting up a handful of blood did I lose consciousness and collapse.
---