The First Collision
It happened so suddenly that no one could react.
The ward chief’s body, struck clean on the jaw by Yeon So-hyeon, spun a full circle through the air before tumbling across the ground. Those nearby watched the teeth torn from his mouth glitter in the noon sun, bright with fresh blood.
“……!”
They still did not fully grasp the situation, yet the three escort martial artists standing near the ward chief drew their blades as one, exactly as they had been trained.
“Ambush—!”
“Protect the Chief—!”
The words never finished leaving their lips.
From the abdomen of the escort on the far right came a sound like an ancient tree snapping and toppling. It was the sound of his armor shattering into fragments beneath Yeon So-hyeon’s fist. With no time even to raise his internal energy, the man was driven backward as if struck by a siege ram and slammed into the wall.
“…Urgh!”
“Hup!”
The second and third escorts managed to launch a technique each before the first man’s body finished burying itself in the wall. Their strikes cut only empty air. Before they could even register the miss, Yeon So-hyeon’s open palms had already reached their chests.
A sound like bursting drums rang out. Both men shot across the street like arrows and crashed into separate buildings. Whatever vital supports they destroyed, the shabby slum houses collapsed all at once.
“How dare you…”
Yeon So-hyeon lowered his hands and flicked his sleeves clean. At that moment a stone wall crumbled with a roar, burying the first escort who still lay where he had been thrown. Dust billowed thickly. Every gaze gathered on Yeon So-hyeon as he spoke.
“To raise blades against this First Young Master… be grateful I showed even this much mercy.”
One of the ward chief’s aides, hands trembling violently, pointed at him.
“N-no matter that you are the First Young Master of the Sword Family, s-such lawless—”
The sentence died. Yeon So-hyeon’s fist sent the aide spinning through the air exactly as the ward chief had, to sprawl on the ground.
“……!”
Every eye stretched wide again. The officials stood open-mouthed, dust drifting unnoticed into their throats, unable to believe the scene before them.
In broad daylight, before every watching eye, he was assaulting officials!
Yeon So-hyeon paid the stunned crowd no attention. His gaze locked precisely on the security captain.
“You there. Are you the one responsible for these government troops?”
The security captain flinched under that stare, dropped his hexagonal club, and gripped his sword hilt. Yet after witnessing everything that had just occurred, he lacked the courage to draw.
Yeon So-hyeon regarded the hesitant man as though issuing a command.
“Withdraw every last soldier.”
Should he obey the First Young Master’s order?
“Th-the First Young Master has no authority to command this official!”
If a military officer bowed to the First Young Master’s order in front of everyone, his career would be finished. Cold sweat ran down his face even as he shook his head.
“Assaulting the ward chief and ambushing government martial artists—this matter will never be settled lightly…!”
He watched the First Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family approach with a sigh, and began retreating. Those standing between them parted left and right as though fleeing plague victims.
“To obstruct by force the official duties of a bureaucrat appointed by His Majesty the Emperor is defined as a grave crime under the solemn laws of the Central Kingdom…!”
The closer Yeon So-hyeon came, the faster the captain’s backward steps grew, and the faster his lips and tongue worked.
“F-First Young Master! This official is a member of the Yi Family, and we have always maintained good relations with the Luoyang Sword Family…!”
“The Yi Family?”
“Y-yes, exactly! Our Yi Family—”
Yeon So-hyeon cut him off.
“That ward chief sprawled behind us is a direct descendant of the Yi Family, is he not? I hear the Yi Family has been stuffing its people into every government post in Luoyang. So you were one of them.”
“Th-that…?!”
Yeon So-hyeon’s footsteps halted—not because the captain’s babble had any effect, but because the man’s back had struck the wall. There was nowhere left to retreat.
“Final warning. Withdraw your forces.”
The security captain’s trembling eyes swept the surroundings. Not one official opened his mouth. Not one offered help. And yet he still could not obey Yeon So-hyeon’s command. Later, when the capital investigated how an officer without office had ordered government troops withdrawn, every one of these men would pour out hostile testimony.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“…I cannot.”
“Is that so?”
Yeon So-hyeon answered as though it were of no consequence and turned his gaze outward. Officials flinched and recoiled wherever his eyes threatened to fall, but they were never what he was looking at.
“Aigoo, Mother, open your eyes…!”
“Father! Father!”
A wife clutching her husband whose skull had been cracked open, weeping. Families wailing over a father who could not rise. Children standing helpless beside a mother who twitched where she had fallen. In the wake of the government troops’ rampage remained only cries of grief, lamentation, and despair.
“…….”
Yeon So-hyeon’s eyes moved to the bound members of the House of Mercy. All of them were there—everyone except the armed contingent that had withdrawn to avoid direct clash with the government. The old physician, blood streaming from his head and collarbone sunken, still clung to consciousness. His gaze met Yeon So-hyeon’s.
I told them to pull back the moment anything unexpected happened…
They had protected the poor to the very end, been beaten savagely for it, and been taken captive.
“First Young Master! First Young Master! Please…!”
Yeon So-hyeon looked at the security captain—still clinging to his office, still without a scrap of remorse for the wrongful enforcement. The man’s shallow hope that he could simply take one blow like the other officers and faint his way out of the affair was almost transparent.
“The warning is finished.”
Yeon So-hyeon tapped the captain’s shoulder once and turned away.
“Urgh…?!”
Behind the departing First Young Master the security captain dropped to his knees. Dark blood poured from his mouth; his body convulsed uncontrollably. A terrible dark energy had shattered his dantian in an instant and ripped every meridian throughout his body.
Yang Family secret technique—modified beyond all recognition of its original form.
Yeon So-hyeon’s control kept the man from dying on the spot, yet he would live out the rest of his days little better than a cripple.
“…….”
Yeon So-hyeon turned his gaze upon the government troops. They stood frozen, neither advancing nor fleeing, every one of them gripping a hexagonal club still wet with blood. Their numbers easily exceeded a hundred.
Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth opened.
“Subdue them all and drive them out!”
The shout, laden with internal energy, served as a signal flare. The armed forces of the House of Mercy that had withdrawn and hidden themselves poured back into the street.
“Wh-what—?!”
One soldier tried a clumsy response and crumpled beneath an iron-reinforced staff. The government troops struggled to fight back, yet they were not an army—merely security forces. Their numbers were roughly equal, but the House of Mercy’s armed contingent outclassed them in equipment from the start and began thrashing them one-sidedly.
“Y-you madmen…?! Attacking government troops is no different from rebellion!”
One of the mid-level officers roared in a shaking voice. As he said, attacking government troops was a capital crime that branded one a rebel; yet the House of Mercy’s fighters, following their leader’s command, showed not a hair’s breadth of hesitation. The mid-level officer was swallowed by the press of bodies and could only curl up under the rain of clubs, unable even to scream.
“Gather in the corners!”
“Form ranks!”
Some troops tried to form defensive lines as they had been trained, but two figures smashed into those formations before they could solidify and crushed them flat.
“You bastards! Did you think you could beat honest folk and simply walk away?!”
“Hey! Stop yelling and hit one more while you’re at it!”
Su-ran and Cheong Ho-wi. Wherever the two of them charged in high spirits, government troops flew through the air or rolled across the dirt. Mid-level officers in the rear ranks shrieked like men already defeated.
“R-retreat!”
“U-uaaah…?!”
The ward chief of Blue Crane Ward—Yi Family man—regained consciousness when filthy water mixed with refuse was dumped over his head. Yet somehow his body was bound so tightly he could not even lift his head properly.
W-what in the world—?
Before he could make sense of anything, Yeon So-hyeon’s voice reached his ears.
“What are you waiting for? The man has woken. Continue the sentence.”
At the sound of that voice the ward chief finally understood his predicament. The security forces had abandoned him where he lay; he was now strapped to the very flogging frame they had brought. And then—
“Five!”
A wet crack of wood on flesh. The ward chief’s eyes bulged as though they would pop free; his bound body twisted in convulsion.
“Six!”
The sixth stroke slammed into his buttocks.
“Mmmph…!”
Had it not been for the filthy gag forced between his teeth, every remaining tooth would already have shattered.
“Seven!”
Watching from a distance, the old physician who served as House of Mercy’s Hodu Village branch head let a soft chuckle escape his lips.
“What’s so funny that a half-dead old man has to laugh like that?”
An elderly shamaness scowled while applying emergency treatment. She was the other branch head of the Hodu Village post, returned after guiding the first group of the poor to their new settlement.
“Tsk. You’re a physician yourself, yet here you are receiving treatment…”
Whether the shamaness clucked her tongue in annoyance or not, the old physician kept smiling. Around them medical support staff summoned by Yeon So-hyeon’s order tended the wounded. Those of the poor who had escaped injury were being moved according to the original resettlement plan.
“Eight!”
The captured government troops fled toward the Yi Family compound, carrying the half-dead ward chief and security captain on their backs. Su-ran and Cheong Ho-wi waved them off, yet neither felt entirely at ease. They approached Yeon So-hyeon, who was issuing orders left and right across the site.
“First Young Master.”
Yeon So-hyeon turned; the familiar smile sat on his lips.
“Have the two of you worked the stiffness out of your limbs?”
“Yes, thanks to… n-no, that isn’t it.”
They had nodded reflexively before hastily shaking their heads.
“Is it all right to simply let them go like that?”
Su-ran’s question drew a look of mild surprise from Yeon So-hyeon.
“Wouldn’t killing them make everything far too complicated?”
Both of them nearly jumped out of their skins.
“Killing high officials?!”
“That’s not what we meant!”
Yeon So-hyeon burst out laughing. He had only been joking; of course he understood the intent behind their words.
“I know your concerns well.”
The officials had all held themselves so stiffly precisely because touching the machinery of state power invited catastrophic retaliation.
“Not merely driving them off, but reducing them to that half-dead state…”
“And both the security captain and the ward chief belong to that Yi Family, don’t they?”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded at their worries.
“Correct. If I simply sit idle after handing our enemies such a splendid pretext, they will tear into us one-sidedly.”
Something in his tone made Su-ran ask again.
“Does that mean… you already have a method…?”
The smile on Yeon So-hyeon’s lips deepened.
“I intend to march straight into the Yi Family and tear out every last foundation stone they have left.”
A chilling killing intent rolled out; both of them reflexively took a step back. Su-ran’s face went blank with shock.
“…You’re going to destroy the entire Yi Family?”
“Not only the ward chief. The whole Yi Family has thrown in with that Young Master Yi bastard.”
His eyes flashed.
“This is a war between me and that Young Master Yi.”
Yeon So-hyeon turned his gaze toward the long line of the poor moving away into the distance.
“And in a war, thrashing one ward chief’s backside is nothing more than the opening move.”