Then Prove It
The Two Lords of the Black Banner Alliance.
To put it simply, they were beings akin to the Alliance Lord's own direct subordinates. Divided into the Left Mysterious Lord and the Right Mysterious Lord, they held a fierce loyalty to the Alliance Lord, and together they were the two pillars upon which the Black Banner Alliance stood.
And one of them — the man who held the seat of Right Mysterious Lord — was the Dark Heaven Sword Lord. He was a swordsman whose martial power could stand beside even the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven.
"Juhong. Is the information certain?"
"Yes, sir. Word is that tonight, at the hour of the rat, the Right Mysterious Lord of the Black Banner Alliance will be staying on the border between Sichuan and Guizhou. The rumor has spread quite openly. I believe you may trust it."
The Black Banner Alliance's territory was split, broadly, between Guizhou and Chongqing. Sharing a border with Sichuan, they were bound to clash with the Dang Clan more often than with anyone else, and it was for that reason the Dark Heaven Sword Lord had stepped into Sichuan at all.
"He never meant to hide in the first place."
"In my own view, sir, the Black Banner Alliance seems to have spread the rumor on purpose."
"That could be."
A meeting between the Dark Heaven Sword Lord and the Dang Clan was set for tomorrow, in the daylight. No one could say what subject they meant to discuss, but his intention, at least, was easy enough to guess. Come, if you dare — if you think you can take the Dark Heaven Sword Lord's blade and live. The act itself was nothing but a display of confidence in his own martial power.
And that confidence had become, for me, a fine opportunity. No need to waste time hunting him down. Above all, not a soul would ever conceive of meeting the Dark Heaven Sword Lord and his elite head-on and cutting them down.
The full moon had risen.
From head to toe, Hwa Baek was wrapped in martial robes of pure white. He stood before the door with a white demon mask in his hand. The door slid open, and a medicinal smell that had claimed the room closed over him. It ought to have been harsh and unpleasant, and yet the scent drifting through her chamber was, strangely, clean and fresh.
"...Hwa Baek?"
Dang Seryeong was there, sweating, worn thin. She must have been training until only a moment ago. For a brief instant he was reminded that her true nature, in the end, was not a physician's, but a martial artist's.
"...What is it? If you've come for an answer, I'm not ready yet."
Her tone was a little sharper than it had been by day. Hwa Baek ignored it and spoke.
"I mean to step out for a while, and then return."
"...Do as you please. I'll clear you to come and go. Just be back by tomorrow."
"Then may I hear your answer tomorrow?"
"That..."
Trouble crossed Dang Seryeong's face. She still had not made up her mind. Hers was a yielding nature, and the moment a decision drew near, her eyes shook without the least restraint.
"It's all right. Even if the answer comes late."
At that, the trembling in her eyes settled. She asked, as if the words had caught her off guard.
"...Didn't you say it was urgent for you as well?"
"Dragging along someone who doesn't want to come won't help my work in the slightest."
He had not said it out of goodwill. It was efficiency, nothing more. However grand the task, the one who had to carry it out was a person, and if that person was not ready, the chance of success fell to almost nothing. All he meant to do was give her time enough to think.
"So take your time. I never expected to hear an answer quickly in the first place."
"......"
He turned his back and set his clothes in order, checked the Peerless Swords hung at either hip, and set his hand to the door with a firm grip. It was then that her voice came from behind him.
"Why are you... trying to kill my father? Why are you trying to help me?"
The question that should have been asked and answered from the very beginning. The most basic one of all. Now that he thought of it, he had never spoken of it.
Hwa Baek brought out the answer he had prepared.
"So that I can live."
"What did Father do to you? If it's something like that, then I can—"
"It isn't that."
He cut her off, hard, and then, with a measure of sincerity laid into the words, he went on.
"I was given a fate in which I can live only by killing certain people. A truly cursed fate."
"......"
"And among them is your father, Dang Mugi. That is why I mean to kill him."
"...So that you can live?"
"Yes. If it is so that I may live, I don't care who dies. Even if that someone is you."
That was what a blade-wielder was. He took up the sword in order to live. He took up the sword in order to be strong. There was no blade-wielder who held a sword for any other reason. One who drew a sword for conviction could not be called a blade-wielder. One who drew a sword for the Dao could not be called a blade-wielder either. Those who raised the sword for conviction and for the Dao — those people — were what the world commonly called swordsmen.
And so he would not spare a thought for her circumstances. Hwa Baek declared it flatly.
"......"
Dang Seryeong's head dropped. She seemed to be thinking something through, deep and slow. Was she shocked? Or disappointed?
A truth of that size shouldn't matter to me.
Only one thing mattered to Hwa Baek. What answer Dang Seryeong would give. Yes, or no. Hearing that alone should have been enough.
And yet, somehow, he felt he knew what she was thinking, and he was sorry for it. He knew what wound his words had opened in her. He knew what hardship and pain still lay ahead of her.
Time passed as though even sound had been sealed away. When Dang Seryeong spoke again, the expression had gone from her face — and it was only after the round spectacles had slipped from her nose.
"...To defeat Father, you need martial power of a very high order. Not merely strong. Strong enough to overcome even one of the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven."
"I know."
Dang Seryeong lifted her head. With the spectacles gone, the feeling had vanished from her green eyes.
"Father is a man whose name is truly set among the Ten Great Masters. He may not stand equal to the Three Absolutes and the Five Venerables, the apex of the present murim, but he is a master of the Six Kings, the tier immediately beneath them."
The Six Kings of this age, it was said, possessed martial power that would not have been strange to call the Five Great Masters Under Heaven, had they lived in another era.
"Can you say with certainty that you can kill a man like that?"
"Of course."
It was in the moment Hwa Baek answered, certainty set into his voice.
"Then prove it."
Dang Seryeong's form vanished. A beat later the floor cratered, and her fist came crashing in. Qi-laden knuckles struck Hwa Baek square in the face.
"......!!"
Dang Seryeong faltered. She had been certain he would dodge, and yet the blow had landed true — but that was not the whole of it. My hand hurts. She had driven her qi into that fist, and still it was her own hand that rang with the shock. In the realm of external arts, she was not at a level where she could claim anything at all.
But this won't be enough. Dang Mugi was an absolute master who fought less with qi than with pure hardened force. Worse, his weapons of choice were poison and throwing knives. Not a broad fist. His blades tore through the organs and breathed a cold killing edge.
Her hands moved like lightning and drew seven throwing knives. Calluses showed — the mark of training she had never neglected — and within that small space a host of silver trajectories were laid down.
Seven trajectories broke apart in a dizzying scatter. Throwing knives too swift for the eye drove in upon Hwa Baek's lethal acupoints.
Steel shrieked against his skin, and sparks leapt. Even Dang Seryeong's throwing knives, keen as their edge was, failed to break his hide. A qi-charged knife art had not so much as wounded him — enough to rattle anyone — and yet her face stayed calm. That had not been her aim.
The knives, heavy with killing intent, were coated in a virulent poison meant to seep in through the skin. Even without a wound, her poison should have twisted every channel in his body. But Hwa Baek already knew.
"It won't work."
He answered evenly, and went on in a low voice.
"You cannot draw out the whole of my strength."
From the start, he said, it had been a fight that could never have been made to stand. In truth, Dang Seryeong must have known it too. With her skill, with her strength, she could not draw out even half of what he truly was.
That was what it meant to lack power. To do anything — to make an ideal real — power was required. One tried to prepare with desperate thoroughness precisely because power was lacking, and yet even that preparation, in the end, demanded power of its own. In the murim, all things flowed by much the same principle.
"...I know."
She could not even weigh the odds of what Hwa Baek meant to do. She lacked the ability, and the power, to weigh them. That fact was shameful past what she could endure, and it was humiliating.
"The only thing you can do is decide whether you believe me, or you don't. That is all."
Hwa Baek set a period at the end of the conclusion she had reached. Dang Seryeong bit down hard on her lip. She had gone past shame and arrived at hating herself. He stepped closer and spoke.
"But this much, I will promise you."
He set his fingers lightly over Dang Seryeong's hand, thick with calluses. The trace of training without end, all of it to grow stronger, told him she had not given up on the Dang Clan.
"If you will believe in me, then I will believe in you."
He looked straight into her eyes.
"If you wish to save the Dang Clan, I will see it done."
He let her hand go.
"If what you want from me is proof of strength—"
He turned, and set the demon mask upon his face.
"I will prove it now. Wait for me."
And then he was gone.
The window stood open, as if it had been so for some time, and four shadows followed after him.