Impossible to Oppose
No answer was required.
Sun Wukong's iron staff. The overwhelming presence that poured from it. Sun Wukong had never been a being who could be measured by the realms of men.
But if someone insisted on putting a name to him, the first words that would surface would be Banbakgwijin — the Return to True Simplicity. It means that upon reaching the utmost extreme, one reverts to the ordinary. A plainness so complete that, no matter how closely one looks, not a shred of the extraordinary can be found.
That was how most people saw Sun Wukong at first glance.
But not now.
Sun Wukong unleashed his aura without the slightest restraint. His golden hair, which hung like a lion's mane, streamed out as if caught in a wind, whipped by his presence into a curtain of gold.
Overwhelm.
The mouths of the Haomen disciples, who had been scrutinizing him from the moment he walked in, fell open. An irresistible force pressed through their entire bodies.
This was the Anhui branch of Haomen. Though their martial arts ran shallower than those of the orthodox clans and sects, they were still a massive pillar of the jianghu — a branch of a nationwide organization. And in preparation for the Orthodox Alliance Gathering, the main headquarters had even dispatched a contingent of their finest.
The experts had no choice but to reveal themselves, crushed by the pressure. To remain hidden felt as though their bodies would shatter.
"The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — Sun Wukong!"
"The man behind the Hoga Manor!"
"Do you truly mean to make an enemy of Haomen?!"
True to their reputation as the masters of information, not a single one of them was ignorant of Sun Wukong's identity. And that was precisely why they could not understand him. Anyone with eyes could see that he had come here to fight, and he was not even trying to hide it.
"Nah. I came to the inn to eat."
Sun Wukong overturned their guts with perfect composure. A chorus of ringing steel filled the hall as the Haomen disciples drew their weapons. Sun Wukong gave a small nod.
"In this jianghu of ours..."
His quiet voice spread slowly, the way water soaks through cloth.
"I hear drawing a blade is your own responsibility. That right?"
"You came here and threatened us first!"
"Great Sage — you picked this fight with Haomen!"
"You started with the Hoga Manor, and now you want blood?!"
"Have you no fear of Haomen across the Central Plains?!"
"Ah, for crying out loud. You people sure talk a lot. Anyway — I said I came to eat, and you lot pulled your blades to greet me. Therefore..."
Sun Wukong grinned.
In that instant, it seemed as though Sun Wukong's iron staff stretched impossibly long.
A span of several zhang. The cramped interior of an inn — tables and chairs crowded everywhere, walls and partitions, pillars standing in the way. Every last one of those things favored the defenders. The Haomen disciples read the advantage clearly: numbers, terrain, everything.
Had they grown careless, then?
No. Absolutely not. The people of Haomen were, as a rule, the weaker party. And the weak have their own way of surviving. Carelessness was an arrogance they were rarely permitted. Not a single person in that hall had let their guard down.
And yet.
A tremendous crash shook the floor. The nearest disciple's breastbone caved inward as if punched through by a battering ram. The man beside him heard the scream, recognized it a heartbeat too late, and his eyes flew wide — just as the iron staff smashed his instep to splinters and pulverized the next man's thigh.
Even at a glance, the heavy iron staff boasted a monstrous weight. You could tell as much from the way the inn floor threatened to collapse beneath it if it were merely set down. And that staff of overwhelming mass now danced as lightly as a reed, cracking through the air like a whip. It was so fast it looked like nothing more than a streak of dull light stretching longer and longer.
The faces of the Haomen disciples went deathly pale at a spectacle that defied reality.
"F-form up!"
"Deploy the Combined Formation!"
"Use the obstacles!"
Urgent voices. Screams. Groans. A frantic scramble of bodies. And that, regrettably, was all.
Between the pillars, through flying tables and chairs, into the deepest corners, even among the partitions set up for guests who wanted quiet — no spatial obstacle in that hall could stop Sun Wukong.
A wet crunch.
A Haomen disciple who had slipped between the pillars to strike at Sun Wukong's flank lost consciousness before he knew what had happened. The certainty that he had found his opening was still written on his face when the iron staff shot out from behind Sun Wukong's armpit and caught him square in the face.
Sun Wukong clicked his tongue.
"Hey, why are you slamming your own face into the staff? Is that your martial art?"
"Y-you—!"
The rest of them saw red at the mockery. But rage could not change a thing.
It was a strange thing to witness. The iron staff in Sun Wukong's hands did not behave like a staff at all. It was as if the weapon lengthened and shrank of its own accord. Wielding a long weapon in a space this cramped should have been a crippling disadvantage — and yet.
They called him the savior of the Wudang Blood Tragedy — and the rumors don't even come close to the truth!
This is no mere Peak Realm expert. Transcendental Realm — or maybe even on par with the Ten Great Masters!
Disciples burst from every corner. The full strength of Haomen's Anhui branch poured out in a frenzy. In a cramped melee like this, they were the best there was — masters of chaos within chaos. Even a mutt has the home-ground advantage in its own yard. That was supposed to be the way of the world.
This was no ordinary inn. Traps and mechanisms had been installed throughout, and every disciple knew them perfectly. Their preparations against an intruder had been thorough.
And Sun Wukong, as though looking down on it all from the heavens, rendered every last measure meaningless. As if none of it could touch him in the slightest.
The moment half the Haomen disciples in the Anhui branch had fallen to the iron staff, a single thought surfaced in the minds of those still standing.
We cannot fight him!
A single proposition, sinking into every mind as if by some shared hallucination. Can we stop him? Can we fight him? Can we oppose him? Can we win?
No.
Can we even survive?
One word rose with terrible clarity.
Impossible!
Blood-red letters shimmered across their vision like a hallucination.
Hoga Jangju was, without question, a professional. Proving that his claim of having used this method more than once in the underworld was no idle boast, he set to work with startling agility. His hands were so deft that within a matter of days, rumors were running wild through the back alleys of the unorthodox path.
"I hear the Anhui Branch Leader's been taking bribes from the Hoga Manor?"
"The Branch Leader? I don't think so. Not him — it's the boys riding his coattails underneath. I saw it myself. He chewed them out and turned it down right in front of everyone, then they slipped around back and took the gold in secret."
"Huh. Then the Branch Leader can't be clean either, can he? He's probably taking his cut through a different hole."
"Well, that explains it. I was wondering how the Hoga Manor got so damn big so fast."
"Word is the Branch Leader's standing in Haomen has gotten so shaky he's planning to make one big score off this and run."
"Gotta hand it to the man. That's some nerve."
A rumor without substance burns fast and dies faster. Paradoxically, a rumor that grows fatter with every telling is a rumor that has something real underneath it. The gossip circulating through the back alleys found its way into Jo Hae's ear soon enough. And the moment it did, he understood exactly what kind of game was being played.
"These bastards... they're coming after me for real!"
Jo Hae pictured Sun Wukong's face. This was that man's design. That sly creature had orchestrated the whole thing. Jo Hae had refused the bribe and sent it back — but more than a few people had witnessed gold entering the Haomen branch. And then, as if on cue, the rumors began to flow. All of it was closing around him like a well-woven net.
On any ordinary day, Jo Hae would have torn through a scheme like this in a heartbeat. Haomen had the information network to overturn most rumors, and Jo Hae himself had the skill to match. But the timing could not have been worse.
"It seems the inspectors have already arrived at our branch."
Yang Jeok's face was stiff as he spoke. Jo Hae's hardened to match.
"Of course they have. They've been turning over every stone looking for a reason to replace the Branch Leader."
"This is..."
Yang Jeok swallowed the rest. He did not have the nerve to say there's no way out to the man's face. But in this world, you did not need the words spoken aloud to hear them. Jo Hae let out a long breath.
"The problem is I showed the Great Sage Sun far too much of an opening."
"An opening?"
"I should never have met him. I assumed he was just a martial artist and decided too quickly that a meeting would be fine. Just as he said himself — I showed him I was in a hurry."
Jo Hae felt the full weight of his mistake.
"From the single fact that I came to him in person, he read my entire situation. And from that, he painted this picture."
"What does painting this picture even get them? Even if they brand you a traitor and drive you out of Anhui, someone else just takes the Branch Leader's seat. Nothing actually changes. If anything, a new man coming in hard to reform the organization could make things more difficult for them — they'd be dealing with a stranger."
"No. They... they saw straight through my hunger for power."
Jo Hae exhaled. Confessing one's own lust for authority was never easy. But Yang Jeok and Gang Ok, who sat with him now, were bound to him by fate itself — not merely trusted aides, but men who would die together if one of them fell. So Jo Hae spoke plainly.
"He saw through it. He knew I would not surrender power and retreat to the back rooms so easily."
"...Then what do you intend to do?"
"You both understand what happens to you if I fall from this seat, I trust?"
"Of course we do."
"I have no intention of falling so easily."
Jo Hae bit down on his lip. His rush to settle the Hoga Manor matter before headquarters could make an issue of it had become a noose around his own neck.
"You've cleaned everything up, yes?"
"Yes. Everyone who took a bribe has been punished."
"Tsk. They were my people, in their way... and they still couldn't read a room."
With the heart of a man forced to execute his own, Jo Hae had punished every last person who had accepted a bribe. Whatever else, it would at least look as though he had discovered the corruption himself and taken preemptive action.
If only the inspectors see it that way...
The problem was that the bribes had not stopped coming. Not merely in the form of gold, but by every method imaginable.
"You sent it back through the escort agency, yes?"
Jo Hae confirmed it again. Gang Ok nodded.
"I used a reliable man and sent it through the escort agency."
"A reliable man?"
"Yes. A beggar, more or less — but he's got some nerve, and he has no real connections, so..."
"No connections means we can cut him loose the moment there's a problem."
Jo Hae's voice was cold. Gang Ok nodded. On paper, this was simply the work of receiving a bribe and returning it. If misunderstandings piled up and the inspectors decided to pick a fight, it could become a problem.
If we have someone to pin it on when the time comes.
Jo Hae judged the matter with ice in his veins. His own life hung in the balance now.
I've done everything I can.
But a creeping dread rose in him all the same, and Jo Hae squeezed his eyes shut.
The Great Sage was the key all along.
Everything he had known pointed to Sun Wukong as a martial artist. Namgung Jinbaek — a man born for the sword — served him as a sworn elder brother. He was master to both the Young Clan Head and the daughter of the previous patriarch, the Sword God. Those were ranks and positions no one but a martial artist could hold.
That's why I thought the Hoga Manor affair centered on Hoga Jangju, and on the Shandong Seven Shadows — Haomen men who took Manhyangru. But I was wrong.
The information had been wrong. His thinking had been wrong. His eye for people had been completely, utterly wrong.
The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven is at the center of everything.
He had underestimated the man. He had taken him for a typical martial leader — the kind who left the practical work to his subordinates. A martial artist of the jianghu, nothing more. He was not.
In that one short meeting, he looked straight through me.
Their goal was not simply to unseat Jo Hae. No — they had never thought in those terms to begin with.
Because they already knew I would not step down so easily.
If the reason had been just, perhaps. But this was a false charge, a fabricated plot. Even the most generous of men would not quietly surrender his seat. For Jo Hae, who possessed a healthy appetite for power, it was a certainty.
Then is the goal the process itself? The fight I will wage simply to keep my seat?
If Jo Hae refused to step down, he would be defying the will of headquarters. The Anhui branch of Haomen would be plunged into internal strife. That much was certain.
And in that window, they mean to seize Anhui Province in an iron grip?
Jo Hae felt something off about that.
They have that much confidence?
Even if he fell and someone else took the Anhui Branch Leader's seat, the full strength of Haomen was nothing to scoff at. They would counterattack in short order — unless, in that brief span of time, Sun Wukong and the Hoga Manor built a fortress no one could touch.
Jo Hae's keen instincts whispered to him.
There's something more.
Something he had not yet accounted for. They say there is nothing more foolish than a blind man feeling an elephant and pretending he knows the whole beast. Jo Hae was no blind man. If he had been the kind of idiot who glimpsed a single thread and swaggered as though he held the entire tapestry, he would never have risen to Branch Leader in the first place.
Jo Hae's eyes sank low and dark.
A tremendous crash. Then, faintly, screams, and the fierce ring of metal on metal. Jo Hae's face went cold.
"What is happening?"
"He's here. The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven! He picked a fight the moment he arrived — we're engaging him now!"
"The Great Sage!"
Jo Hae's cry was almost a scream. Confusion flooded his eyes. He thought he understood what Sun Wukong had been doing.
"Why a raid? Why now?"
He could not make sense of it. In the middle of a bribery campaign designed to brand him a traitor — why strike this hard, this directly?
"What is he playing at...?!"
"They drew weapons first — this is an opportunity! Even the inspection team won't be able to say a word in a situation like this! We should raise our martial artists and the Hoga Manor—"
"And do what to the Hoga Manor?"
"...!"
"I'm curious about the rest of that sentence. Do what to the Hoga Manor?"
"...!"
Jo Hae's face locked into stone. Before anyone could speak, Sun Wukong walked in.
That same playful sliver of a smile still hung at the corner of his mouth. But his pupils were settled and still, and the contradiction between the two pressed down on the room like a physical weight. A heavy shock rolled through the hall.
The sounds of fighting had reached them only moments ago. And yet Sun Wukong now stood before the Branch Leader as if he had every right to be there.
He smashed through this Anhui branch of Haomen alone? In that handful of breaths?
And look at him. Look at the state of him. He was calm. Not a labored breath, not a single bead of sweat on his face. Nothing about him suggested a man who had just fought a savage battle.
But Jo Hae was, after all, the Branch Leader of Anhui. He had not won that seat at a gambling table. He composed his expression at once and received his guest.
"What is the meaning of this? After setting me up the way you did. I did not expect you to come at Haomen so openly."
"Set you up? I was being sincere."
"Sincere? Teacher Sun, let's not mock each other."
"Mock you? I mean it. Come on — it's not like I can crack my chest open and show you."
"I would like to hear your business first."
Jo Hae's manner was ice-cold. Reasonable as he was, the present situation was one in which Sun Wukong had well and truly made a fool of him. Even a gentleman would have cursed.
Sun Wukong shrugged.
"Fine. I'd rather go straight than beat around the bush anyway."
He looked Jo Hae dead in the eye.
"There's a way this could work out for both of us."
"Work out? After you attacked Haomen?"
"Attack? Please. I just roughed them up a bit for treating a guest so poorly. I didn't kill anyone."
"What on earth — what are you after?"
Sun Wukong grinned.
"The Hoga Manor."
"What are you talking about?"
Jo Hae's eyes flew wide. He stared at Sun Wukong as though he had not understood a word. Sun Wukong was still smiling, as easy as ever.