Silk Road 2
“Why did you do that?”
“I-I didn’t know it would end up like this. If I had, I would’ve gone to work...”
“You damn woman. You only ever think about yourself. This is all your fault. You’re the one who got us killed!!”
Her shattered face was swallowed by flames.
“It hurts. It hurts so muuuuch.”
“Don’t come near me! Stop it. I’m scared. Please...”
“So-yeon... my leg...”
“Uncle...”
It all got sucked down into the abyss below.
“...Hey.”
“Fath...er?”
“My child.”
“Father!”
“I’m here! I’m right here. Come to your senses! What on earth are you looking at....”
I couldn’t touch him. Not my father’s hand, the one I had longed for so desperately, nor even a single strand of his soft hair.
“Never set foot in the world of martial artists.”
“But if you ever do get mixed up with those bastards—”
“Father!!”
“Go to Chang'an. There are people there who will help you.”
Hah!
The apparition of my father vanished.
The unfamiliar ceiling above me felt cold and utterly unlovable.
-
“Haaah!!”
BOOM!
“A poor move. Soar on qi from the very tip of your blade.”
Whoosh—!
Crash!
“Even a child could have dodged that. The force is there, so...”
The training yard floor ground itself to pieces.
Behind the spray of shattered stone, the faint gasps of the onlookers drifted to me through the crack of impact.
“Lady So-yeon’s at it again today. There’s a reason Manor Lord-nim took her in as a disciple.”
“So it seems. Her temper and her hand are getting rougher by the day lately...”
“Rougher? Have you ever spoken to her? You have no idea how—”
BOOOOM—!!
Annoying. To them, this was probably just a sparring match.
But I was fighting with the determination to kill that Left Guardian bastard.
I dragged my numb, throbbing legs into position again.
Every time I threw myself forward using the inner force in my toes as a springboard, I could feel the tiny blood vessels in my body bursting.
I clenched my teeth. More precisely, I had no choice but to.
Because of that damn expressionless face.
The bastard had claimed he would teach me martial arts, but all he had given me was light-footwork.
Still, if I thought about it another way, that meant I had potential—potential to create an opening with light-footwork alone.
That was what I wanted to believe.
He took hold of the sword hilt. Was he finally going to draw it?
No. I had to make this more certain.
If he kept deflecting my attacks without even drawing his blade, as he always did, I’d feel sick to my stomach all day long.
I ran.
Running, in truth, is the act of separating the body from the ground beneath your feet. To put it another way, it means both feet leave the earth for a split second, shorter than a blink.
But no one is aware of even that brief moment of floating.
That is what light-footwork is.
The art of vastly lengthening the instant when both feet leave the ground—the technique of tapping empty space.
They said that masters who reached the pinnacle of light-footwork no longer even realized they were using it, just as others failed to notice the moment their feet left the earth.
So forget it. You had to cast aside even the awareness that you were using light-footwork.
Fix your gaze on the target and do not let it go for a single instant.
Shoot yourself forward like a hawk snatching a wild rabbit.
Sharper. Aim at one point only.
Whoosh!
The violent crosswind hit me full in the face, proof that my speed had increased again.
But it was too early to be satisfied.
We hadn’t even begun yet.
The Left Guardian’s shape swelled larger in my vision. He was close now, right in front of me.
He kept watching me all the way through. Still hadn’t drawn his sword.
This was it. This was the checkmate I had been waiting for.
Without slowing down, I stamped down on the ground with Cheol-wol and, at the same time, stepped on my own instep to vault upward.
“Tch!”
It hurt.
But Father, and the people of Go-chon...
This probably hurt a hundred times more.
“You’ve got some tricks. But good.”
Still hanging in the air, I twisted my body with all the strength I had.
My line of sight shifted from the sky to the crown of his head.
Tricks, huh? Yeah, that’s right.
I wouldn’t turn my nose up at pathetic little tricks.
So long as they could one day let me wring your neck.
Paang!
The air screamed.
“That’s—!”
“Isn’t that No-Wind Projectile Flight!”
I stepped on empty air.
Gained momentum.
Descending, I swung once.
It was an attack containing everything I had.
If I kept my course, the blade of the axe would cleanly sever his neck and pass on through.
But then, in an instant.
A strange light flashed beneath the Left Guardian’s thin smile.
It was the blade. Not the scabbard—the blade itself.
After half a year of attempts, the sword he revealed was bizarre.
A single-edged blade, thinner and longer than usual.
Red, and yet black.
The blade, gleaming with blood-colored light, darkened to black the farther it stretched toward the tip.
I remembered something someone had once told me.
The Left Guardian’s sword was said to be a rare blade from an island in the East, unlike anything commonly seen.
The instant I thought the axe blade had reached his throat, it was only an illusion.
He brushed aside my blade, wrapped in inner force.
Then, by all rights, a massive iron crescent blade should not have been able to be pushed aside—but its trajectory slipped and slid away to the wrong side.
“That is the principle of moving flowers and grafting trees. Burn it into your eyes.”
The axe blade slammed into the ground just a breath away.
Only now did the recoil from throwing my body forward without thinking about the aftermath come crashing down on me.
My waist was cut. I dropped as though I had been split in two.
Had he not used the back edge, that is exactly what would have happened.
“Ha... ha...”
Again. The sky again.
The sky I looked up at after collapsing on the training yard floor was, as always, the color of ash.
Summer, autumn, and now, even on a day of heavy snowfall.
I had succeeded in making him draw his sword, but I hadn’t so much as touched a single thread of the man’s robe.
And yet I didn’t feel terrible. The thought that I had taken one step forward made me feel a little better.
Rising after shaking the dust from my legs, I clasped my fists and offered the formal courtesy of a bow.
“Thank you for the instruction, Manor Lord.”
“You’ve improved.”
I had to act as the devoted disciple of the Red Lotus Manor Lord, that is, the Left Guardian.
At least in front of everyone else.
After a brief silence, the Left Guardian beckoned me over with a tilt of his chin.
“Come with me. There’s something to discuss.”
-
The place I followed him to was a formal office called Red Blade Hall.
It was definitely smaller and more worn than the Banghosa’s quarters.
If they called in a skilled carpenter and roof tiler, it looked like the whole thing could be rebuilt in a month or two, easy.
Even so, there was a certain understated grace to the dark-blue roof, with its paint peeling away in places.
I could praise that much. The building was innocent.
I glanced around. The Left Guardian bastard sat there with a table before him.
That was all. Just the two of us.
Changing my attitude, I started speaking with a sour edge.
“What now?”
Even when I spoke to him rudely, he didn’t care.
He didn’t bother with the annoying nonsense of forcing me to use honorifics and call him “Manor Lord” this and “Manor Lord” that.
Well, he’d murdered my father right in front of me. I supposed I had to accept a few things.
If it bothered me that much, I could always kill him for it.
“You’ve worked hard. At last, the name of the Banghosa has been heard. As expected of my only disciple.”
“Can you shut your mouth?”
“Tsk. What sort of manners are those toward your master?”
A rebuke.
And yet I felt nothing.
The Left Guardian always wore that unreadable face, impossible to gauge. It felt as though I were speaking to something that only pretended to be human.
“Anyway, there’s a matter we need to discuss. As for the details...”
The Left Guardian stopped speaking.
The reason soon became clear. Someone behind him was exuding unmistakable true qi.
The overwhelming force pressing down on my entire body made it difficult even to stand without buckling at the knees.
A master. No question—a master.
But until a moment ago, I’d thought we were alone.
To conceal her presence so completely despite reaching such a profound level... She was extraordinary in every sense.
Of course the Left Guardian was absurdly strong as well.
Still, right now—though I was only guessing—I had the feeling the newcomer was a monster on his level.
“My cherished disciple, Sohonmahu. Please refrain from such foul tastes.”
“That name was left behind long ago, Left Guardian.”
Air rushed back into my lungs. With that one line, the Left Guardian released me from the formless pressure bearing down on me.
When I managed to turn around, a young woman with sharp eyes was standing there, utterly still.
Her hair was tied high and dyed a brilliant red, and her eyes were even redder.
A long scar, running vertically down the left side of her face, caught and held my gaze.
Even the true qi she gave off was the color of fresh blood.
If the Left Guardian’s energy resembled dark shadows, hers was red and ferocious, so much so that it felt even closer to the Blood Cult.
A comrade from the Hyeolsadae?
Of course, I couldn’t jump to conclusions so easily.
The existence of the Hyeolsadae was supposed to be a complete secret, even within Red Lotus Manor, the Left Guardian’s own domain.
“Is the Honored One in good health?”
The Left Guardian opened the conversation again.
The woman called Sohonmahu wore a displeased expression.
Looking closer, it wasn’t merely displeasure; her face looked like she might pounce on the Left Guardian and devour him on the spot.
“Yes. She is well. Quite well, in fact. But there is one concern.”
The two of them continued speaking as if I weren’t even there.
Judging by the context, this “Honored One” they kept mentioning was probably the Demonic Cult Leader.
The leader of the Demonic Cult, huh. Was the world they lived in so close to heaven?
Even if it was, it was only a rotten heaven. No matter how powerless I was for now, I couldn’t afford to give up.
“A concern.”
The Left Guardian replied indifferently.
“Hmph. These days, she’s been irked by the rats. She says the rats that used to lick the bean crumbs beneath the table have started crawling up toward the ceiling, and it’s made her exceedingly displeased.”
The Left Guardian still showed no expression.
“Then you’ve come all this way to crush the rats?”
“As if. I know better than anyone just how loyal the esteemed Left Guardian is.”
“Empty words.”
“I’ve come as the execution envoy from the Cult Leader’s Palace because there’s business to settle. Hoho, as expected... your instincts really are astonishing, sir. I suppose that’s why you’ve survived so well until now. Am I wrong?”
“Jin-wol. There are limits, even to insolence.”
I flinched.
Because the Left Guardian, who had seemed as calm as a still lake, was now openly releasing black-red inner force and taking what could only be called a combat stance.
But the woman called Jin-wol wasn’t someone to be underestimated either.
“Left Guardian. The Honored One knows everything. Even the truth of that day...”
“Enough.”
Then the Left Guardian’s voice thundered out.
The mighty inner force carried in it rippled through Red Blade Hall and echoed back from the walls.
That was the first time I realized you could pour inner force into your voice.
“Ah, my apologies for being rude in front of your dear disciple, sir.”
Since Jin-wol’s momentum had been cut, the Left Guardian withdrew his force and spoke again.
For all the way she kept grinding at his nerves, the one who didn’t want a fight was Jin-wol.
From that, I could tell her position—the authority carried by the title of execution envoy—must be considerable.
And yet the fact that she had been the first to back down suggested she probably wasn’t the Left Guardian’s match in terms of brute force.
If I were to hazard a guess, the margin was likely razor-thin.
“Shall I send the disciple away?”
“It doesn’t matter if she hears. I’m only here today... to deliver a message. And this child should know it as well; it’s something you’ll have to announce throughout Red Lotus Manor, sir.”
Her palm came down on the top of my head with a thud.
She was a full head taller than me.
“Then go on and say it.”
Jin-wol cleared her throat with a cough and said,
“The war against the Demonic Army is going poorly.”
“Has the Cult Leader finally decided to act?”
“Yes. You’ll need to prepare for Delingha.”
“Delingha...”
Blood rushed to my head. The Left Guardian was leaving for the battlefield, far away.
“Does she wish to advance? I mean the secondary orders—things like reclaiming Heobaksan or taking back Xining.”
“Sir, I don’t know the details either.”
Jin-wol smiled lazily.
The letter she held out bore a seal that looked valuable at a glance, so it was clearly not something to be handled carelessly.
The Left Guardian glared at the letter with narrowed eyes and sighed. For a fleeting moment, I saw him look genuinely disgusted.
“Must we really do this? Between the two of us.”
“Hoho. It is a position you gave me, sir. Hurry and receive it, senior brother.”
“Ha...”
The Left Guardian stood and dropped to one knee before Jin-wol.
I, who had been awkwardly watching from the sidelines, caught on to the mood and knelt too.
“I, Left Guardian Ha Jeok-yeong, obey the exalted command of the Cult.”
“I, So-yeon...”
“You don’t need to. Just keep quiet.”
“Yes, sir.”
-
“We’ll depart in three days.”
“If we arrive within fifteen days, it shouldn’t be a problem. Then.”
“Ah, you there.”
“Do you have something else to say?”
“Tell the Cult Leader this for me. That I haven’t yet climbed to the ceiling.”