I Think I Know Who That Is
The silence did not last. A burst of laughter shattered it like glass.
"Haha — well, I'll be damned. Has our Gunei Nosa truly lost his mind?"
"......"
"What, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven has arrived?"
The other man laughed so hard he clutched his belly and rolled across the floor.
Gunei Nosa regarded him with deeply sunken eyes and spoke, each word measured.
"Baek-an-magun. Do I strike you as a man who spins lies?"
Baek-an-magun stopped laughing and grew serious.
"No. You're no liar. But you don't always tell the truth either, do you?"
"......"
"The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven? Honestly, I find it hard to believe. His Majesty always mentioned that name, and he'd actually show emotion when he did — a man who was otherwise iron and blood."
Baek-an-magun closed his eyes, as if sifting through an old memory.
"But think about it. Claiming that Sun Wukong — the golden monkey who wields the Ruyi Jingu Bang and rides the Somersault Cloud, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven himself — might show up and smash your skull in... does that sound like a man in his right mind?"
Gunei Nosa's voice rose.
"Are you questioning His Majesty?!"
"No. No, of course not. No one is more terrifying or more magnificent than His Majesty. He's given us so much. But you have to admit — His Majesty sometimes shows a paranoid streak that's downright frightening. A man who's spent so long mastering those dreadful demonic arts..."
"So he's gone mad?"
At that, even Baek-an-magun — who'd been talking so glibly — went deathly pale.
"Hey now! When did I ever say that? What I mean is, he grew so absorbed in the demonic arts that a heart-demon took hold of him."
"A heart-demon?"
"You know as well as I do, Nosa. Heart-demons come in many forms."
"And this heart-demon manufactured a hallucination of the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven?"
"His Majesty has no equal. He's so powerful that the heart-demon appears as something he cannot possibly defeat. He sees a figure out of myth — the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — as his destined rival."
It was a plausible enough story. But dressing it up as a heart-demon didn't change the blunt truth: he was saying His Majesty had gone insane. Deep down, Gunei Nosa agreed.
He remembered the obsessive way His Majesty would scream at them to hide themselves and hold their breath if Sun Wukong, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, ever appeared.
Baek-an-magun gave a dry chuckle.
"Then tell me. Has a heart-demon visited you as well, Nosa? Why are you claiming the Great Sage has appeared?"
"......"
Gunei Nosa found himself at a loss for words.
Someone standing in the middle of the street, claiming to be Sun Wukong, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven...
Ordinarily he would have sneered and dismissed the man as a raving lunatic. Not now. Had he not trembled at the overwhelming martial power that had crushed Honamdo? A warrior of such strength calling himself the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven... the coincidence sat badly with him.
"It's obvious. You're cooking up a scheme to pin this failure on someone else, aren't you?"
"A scheme? What do you take me for?"
"The Nosa whose nine brains are the stuff of legend, fabricating a rumor about the Great Sage so he can figure out how to bury his own crimes?"
Gunei Nosa shut his mouth, looking emptied out. This operation had failed. It was his responsibility. And hadn't he been turning it over in his mind, looking for any way to shift even a fraction of the blame? Even if it meant using a fake Great Sage, or whatever else came to hand.
Shame prickled through him, and he glared at Baek-an-magun.
Baek-an-magun snorted.
"Hmph. While you lot were crawling all over creation hunting for a single sword fragment, we established ourselves in Shandong Province — the Hao Clan, the Hwangbo Clan, the works. What business is it of yours if we expand into Anhui? Anhui was a region nobody was managing anyway."
"That's because the Namgung Clan was there!"
Gunei Nosa snapped the words out raw. Baek-an-magun smirked.
"And the ones who poked the Namgung Clan first were your people. Once you've poked them, it's already too late. You have to deal with it. They've already picked up a few traces of us. We need to erase the Namgung before that goes any further."
"......You think wiping out the Namgung will be easy? We already tried using the Sama Order, and they were completely smashed!"
"That was during the Namgung Clan's golden age. There's no Sword God now, and they've withered. They're not the Namgung of those days. Besides, even the righteous faction treats them like outcasts. What's the problem?"
Gunei Nosa fell silent.
He'd seen through Baek-an-magun's real intent. While he was busy hunting fragments of the Seven Star Sword, Baek-an-magun meant to claim everything from Shandong all the way into Anhui as his own territory. If that happened, the gap between them would become absurd.
But it would not come so easily.
"Hmph. The Namgung Clan is still the Namgung Clan. You think a few tricks from the Shandong Seven Shadows will be enough?"
"Ah, I have no intention of striking them directly. That would get our side killed for certain. I'm not that insane. I'll open cracks among the Five Great Clans and slowly wring them dry."
"Don't underestimate the Namgung Clan's hidden strength. Before you manage that, they'll track you and the Dosan Sect down and drive a blade into your back."
Baek-an-magun laughed loudly.
"Don't worry about that. I've been operating in the shadows of Shandong Province for decades. You think anyone's going to pick up my trail?"
His voice brimmed with confidence.
It did not last. That magnificent self-assurance shattered at the sound of the next words.
"Magun! We're in trouble! The Shandong Seven Shadows are in danger!"
A man burst in, soaked through with sweat. Baek-an-magun's face went rigid.
This was the watcher and liaison for the Shandong Seven Shadows — and a plant who had infiltrated both the Hao Clan and the Hwangbo Clan.
From behind, Gunei Nosa spoke with a mocking edge.
"Sounds like someone picked up your trail in a single day, Baek-an-magun."
Baek-an-magun demanded roughly,
"What happened? Who's threatening the Shandong Seven Shadows?"
"That's... ghk!"
The man never finished. A sharp sword tip punched through his Adam's apple without warning, cutting the words off in his throat. Blood sprayed across Baek-an-magun's face.
As the man crumpled, Muhwa stood behind him, her expression ice-cold, sword leveled. Blood ran in a dark rivulet down the blade.
Baek-an-magun bit his lip as he took in her martial robes.
"The Namgung Clan."
"I'm also the Grim Reaper who'll take your heads."
"Hmph. You think the Namgung without their Sword God is still the Namgung of old?"
Baek-an-magun snorted, but inwardly he was rattled.
I figured a few people in the Namgung Clan might notice the Shandong Seven Shadows' Mind-Seizing Art.
Even that, he had planned to dress up as a Hwangbo Clan scheme. The two clans had never been particularly close, and they were rivals competing for the leading seat among the Five Great Clans. If anyone were to suspect the Shandong Seven Shadows, the Hwangbo Clan would be the first name on the list.
Baek-an-magun was by no means a fool. He had not launched this plot on a whim. He understood the Namgung Clan's danger well enough to have studied their circumstances with painstaking thoroughness — which made this all the more suspicious as a Namgung operation.
Someone intervened.
The moment that thought struck him, Gunei Nosa's words from earlier flashed through his mind.
He mentioned a house guest.
Why was it? The name he had been clutching his belly laughing at just moments ago — the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — suddenly settled over him with a terrible weight.
Gunei Nosa sent a sound transmission.
Gunei Nosa was a shrewd man. He was right. Now that the Namgung Clan had come this close, there were two choices: pull out completely and hide with absolute thoroughness — or wipe the Namgung Clan off the map.
No. There's one more option.
Baek-an-magun gestured. Six martial artists materialized from the shadows around them like a drawn curtain.
"If she came alone, we just kill her."
His voice rang out, cruel and cold. If the Namgung Clan had come here with real certainty, they never would have sent only one person. Given the clan's temperament, the elders would have drawn steel and gone on a rampage like barbarians.
Gunei Nosa clicked his tongue.
He meant to extract himself first.
Baek-an-magun sneered inwardly. For all the talk of a strategist wise enough to have nine brains, in his eyes the man was nothing but a coward — the type who thought and calculated and nitpicked until he accomplished nothing at all. Which was why he was still wasting his years hunting for a mere sword fragment.
Sensing Gunei Nosa's presence vanish behind him, Baek-an-magun spoke coldly to Muhwa.
"If I kill just you, the Namgung Clan will never know our faces."
Even if they pulled out and went into hiding, the witness had to die. The Shandong Seven Shadows were bound by a restriction, so even if they were taken prisoner it would not be a problem. Losing tools of that caliber was a shame, but it could not be helped. This woman had seen the faces of both Baek-an-magun and Gunei Nosa. She had to die.
Shing. Shing. Shing.
All six drew their swords at once. Muhwa bit her lip.
To think scum like this have been operating right on the Namgung Clan's doorstep.
Her gaze swept rapidly over the martial artists.
The Hwangbo Clan's escort personnel... has the Hwangbo family truly gone mad?
Gunei Nosa had fled moments ago, but she could not pursue him. The six surrounding her radiated an extraordinary presence. Muhwa steadied her breathing and raised her sword.
"Don't leave her alive."
The instant Baek-an-magun's merciless order fell, the nearest martial artist swung. The strike targeted her right flank, packed with considerable force — enough to make even an ordinary First-class martial artist click his tongue.
Muhwa shifted her left foot a half-step and twisted her waist to the left, slipping past the blow. She immediately unwound the twist, driving the centrifugal force straight into the man's face. The blade punched clean through. He collapsed without even a scream.
Before the sword had even finished entering his skull, another martial artist rushed her from behind — targeting someone's back while they were engaged, a thoroughly despicable tactic, and an effective one. What he had not anticipated was that Muhwa was far faster than expected. The sword that had pierced the first man's face was already withdrawn, and her waist folded forward at a right angle. The thrust from behind carved empty air.
Still in that posture, she drove her heel into the man's instep. Laden with internal energy, the bone shattered with a sickening crunch. At the same time she straightened, slashing upward through the one charging from the front. A crimson thread was drawn from groin to forehead.
Reflexively, the martial artist beside her let out a scream-like shout and swept his sword horizontally. A clean cut. But that was all. Panic had stripped the technique of any martial principle — it was thoroughly ordinary.
Steel screamed against steel. Muhwa casually parried, then slid along her opponent's blade and spun. His wrist was severed with a wet slice, and a fountain of blood erupted.
Four down in a single breath. The remaining two stumbled backward, terror blooming across their faces.
Muhwa regarded them with a frigid stare.
"Did you really think you could slaughter the Namgung Clan to the last child?"
"Aren't you going to help her?"
"Why? Watching a fight is fun."
Myodu-eung watched Sun Wukong, who was cackling in its direction. He had sprinted here like a madman — and now he was just lying back in a tree, watching the fight unfold. If he'd had any snacks on him, he probably would have laid out a whole drinking spread.
Spending time at Muhwa's side on Sun Wukong's orders, Myodu-eung had grown fond of her without quite realizing it. Naturally. She shared her snacks every time.
"You've put on some weight, but you still fly well enough."
"Of course I do! I'm no Great Peng, but once I take wing I can cover thousands of li!"
"Then get going. That lump next to the nose — chase that one down."
"And you, Great Sage?"
"I'm gonna watch the fight a bit longer."
"Aren't you going to help? Wouldn't it be better if you helped that woman, finished them off quick, and then tracked that one down?"
Sun Wukong cackled. Myodu-eung was saying that because it was worried about Muhwa, most likely.
Muhwa was completely dominating all six. The problem was the man behind them with the bulging eyes. Even Myodu-eung, as an Earth Deity, possessed an instinctive eye for identifying powerful humans.
Sun Wukong gently stroked Myodu-eung.
"Don't worry. I'll step in if it becomes a problem."
"But if I lose the one who ran... once he leaves my territory, I can't chase him any farther."
"Don't worry about that either."
Myodu-eung cocked its head halfway to one side, then took flight and began the pursuit.
Sun Wukong turned his gaze back to Muhwa's fight. He hadn't originally planned to sit here spectating. But watching her movements, over and over...