Blood Rain
Deepest within the encirclement.
An underground shelter.
There were those who meant to survive.
Hundreds of destitute laborers had taken refuge in a vast, labyrinthine subterranean space. Still under construction and intended to connect with the Underground Great Waterway, the place was ideally suited for hiding from the Third Young Master's beheading unit.
"The others—"
The gallant who had begun to speak to his companion guarding the passage with him swallowed his words. These underground tunnels carried sound with an eerie perfection. Though hundreds of people filled the space, not a single conversation could be heard. Only the faint, murmuring prayers of those deeper inside drifted thinly through the passages.
The others must have made it to safety as well, don't you think?
He resorted to sound transmission instead. The fellow gallant who received it nodded.
They should have. No one knew better than the laborers where the underground spaces under construction lay.
He glanced around and continued.
If only these waterways had been properly finished and linked to the Underground Great Waterway…
His companion shook his head.
No. If they had been, we would have had to collapse the tunnels with our own hands. The enemy would have used them as invasion routes.
He swallowed hard.
And have you heard the stories about Luoyang's Underground Great Waterway?
What stories?
A chill wind swept through the blacked-out passage, raising gooseflesh.
They say 'all manner of things' gather in Luoyang's Underground Great Waterway.
…I've heard such rumors, but aren't they just baseless talk?
Heh. Not at all.
The other waved a dismissive hand.
Just last month, three of our gallants…
He was about to launch into the tale when a shout cut through the dark.
"Clear the way!"
"A physician! Is there a physician here?!"
A group came running into the passage they guarded, carrying someone between them.
Comrades from the Spring of Luoyang…!
Weren't they the ones standing watch?!
They were the gallants who had been posted in hiding at the entrance connecting to the surface.
"Have the enemy discovered us?!"
He shoved his companion toward the search for a physician and demanded.
"No! This man merely fainted! But he cracked his head when he fell!"
"Fainted? What happened—?!"
"We don't know either!"
Don't know?
As they drew near, the man guarding the passage clamped a hand over his nose.
"…Ugh!"
A reeking stench of blood so thick it twisted the sinuses.
"W-what in the world…?"
"You've got a lantern, haven't you? Light it! We'll break our necks like this!"
He fumbled at his waist, unhooked the lantern hanging there, struck a flame, and joined them.
"……?!"
In the wavering light his pupils shrank to pinpricks.
"W-what is this?"
Every single one of the men he had just met by lantern-light was crimson from head to toe. They were painted in blood.
The gallant who took the lantern from him spoke, voice unsteady.
"Outside, right now…"
His blood-soaked gaze shook with uncontrollable confusion.
"A blood rain is falling."
Luoyang Sword Family.
Third Young Master's Military Strategy Department.
There were those who had only now grasped the situation.
At the entrance of the department, carriages stood waiting in a long line.
"What do you mean?! With the Supreme Operations Committee intervening, they formed a beheading unit and went in?!"
It was a thunderbolt of news.
"Y-yes, sir. The Northern Hyeongsan Sect formed the core and entered the encirclement…"
"We clearly ordered the Military Strategy Department to stand by!"
Under the senior strategist's scream-like grilling, the thoroughly soaked messenger of the department bowed, gasping for breath.
"I delivered the order exactly as given, but…"
"The Left and Right Grand Strategists were on their way there this very moment to deliver instructions in person…!"
The senior strategist stamped his feet.
"Just what in heaven's name is going on…"
A thought flashed through his mind.
"Who was it?!"
His sudden roar made the messenger look up in flustered surprise.
"There's no way the Northern Hyeongsan Sect, with nothing to lose, simply charged ahead for glory! Someone must have stirred the command by pinning responsibility on them!"
It was the judgment of a true senior strategist.
"That is…"
But the answer that came back failed to satisfy him.
"The command was in utter chaos… Someone did shout about responsibility at first, but no one knows who. After that, everyone simply piled the blame onto the Northern Hyeongsan Sect's master and…"
"Damn it! Those greedy, rotten old bastards…!"
The road leading into Luoyang's city streets.
There was one who had sowed confusion among his own allies and then fled.
…Whatever becomes of the rear is none of my concern.
The former sect master of the Diancang Sect brushed the hair plastered to his forehead and thought.
But why are the main family's troops here already…? Surely the forces dispatched by the Supreme Operations Committee couldn't have arrived so soon?
He watched the troops filing past him. They paid not the slightest attention to the Diancang martial artists retreating in the guise of a routed force; they simply marched on in silence through the rain.
He heightened his vision and rolled his eyes this way and that, yet in the rain and darkness it was no easy matter to pick out anyone who looked like a commander.
…Whatever this is, it is surely Yeon So-hyeon—that devil—and the Supreme Operations Committee's arrangement!
"Is that true?"
Behind the senior strategist and the messenger, surrounded by fully prepared personnel of the Military Strategy Department, the Left and Right Grand Strategists appeared.
"Y-you have arrived, my lords!"
Ignoring the senior strategist who hurriedly bowed in greeting, the Left Grand Strategist questioned the messenger.
"Is it certain that the Supreme Operations Committee issued a temporary ban on the use of force?"
"Yes. That is what I heard at the command post."
"And that the Supreme Operations Committee intends to intervene?"
"That part has not been clearly confirmed by the strategists of the field command, but—"
"So the Northern Hyeongsan Sect, who had responsibility forced upon them, and certain members of the lesser sects hungry for merit, entered the encirclement to settle the matter before the Supreme Operations Committee could intervene?"
"Yes. Precisely so."
"Has the Supreme Operations Committee made any official announcement?"
"No official announcement has been made yet, but…"
The senior strategist, still bowed, answered in the messenger's stead.
"According to intelligence that just arrived, the Administrative Pavilion of the Supreme Operations Committee has been extremely busy. And…"
"And?"
"There is information that the family's War Department has secretly dispatched a large force."
The Right Grand Strategist's brows knitted.
"So the Supreme Operations Committee has already moved its troops."
"Meaning they have secured a means to conclude this affair."
The Left Grand Strategist reached the conclusion. He did not know of the existence of the Luoyang Magistrate's order, yet once the remaining pieces fell into place he arrived at a judgment very close to the truth of the present situation.
"…We've been thoroughly played."
The Right Grand Strategist reached the same conclusion.
"The Zhuge brothers were right."
He awkwardly shrugged off the rain cloak he had been wearing and continued.
"This is a trap someone set for us."
The senior strategist's eyes went round.
"A-a trap, my lord?"
The Left Grand Strategist spoke with a bitter expression.
"Indeed. A trap. The Supreme Operations Committee had already moved, yet made no official announcement of intervention. Meanwhile our side violated the prior order and took action."
The Right Grand Strategist took up the thread with a sigh.
"Because we broke the order first, the troops the Supreme Operations Committee had already deployed now have justification to intervene in this matter immediately."
They had very nearly deduced Yeon So-hyeon's design—sending Elder Yu to the command post in advance to issue a warning and ignite the debate over responsibility.
"And by some means we still do not know, they will simply finish the affair."
The Left Grand Strategist tore off his own rain cloak and flung it roughly to the floor.
"Whoever it is, they know the nature of our command structure inside and out!"
He could no longer contain the boiling rage and shouted.
"From beginning to end we've been danced around! At this point there's nothing left we can touch! We've been completely outmaneuvered!"
Listening to the Left Grand Strategist's roar, the Right Grand Strategist asked the messenger:
"Who brought the Supreme Operations Committee's temporary order to cease the use of force?"
The messenger hastily bowed his head.
"From what I heard, an elderly woman smoking a pipe. There was also testimony that she was called an elder, but…"
That alone was not enough to identify her.
"…Now the only thing we can rely on is—"
The Left Grand Strategist, clutching his own head, finished the Right Grand Strategist's words.
"—though it will be difficult, we can only pray that the Northern Hyeongsan Sect's beheading unit succeeds."
"Indeed. Only then might we salvage something. But as the Zhuge brothers said, it will not be easy…"
They turned and headed back toward the stairs. Going to the field themselves now would clearly accomplish nothing; it would only be throwing themselves into the chaos. Better to prepare countermeasures to minimize damage in case of the worst.
"Difficult? The Northern Hyeongsan Sect are the ones who inherited the lineage of the former great sect of Hyeongsan, are they not?"
The senior strategist finally spoke out against the two grand strategists' pessimistic attitude.
"If they have stepped forward willing to bleed, won't they surely succeed?"
"We can only hope so. But…"
The Left Grand Strategist stopped and looked back at the senior strategist. His expression was extremely sour.
"Anyone capable of weaving a scheme of this caliber…"
The Right Grand Strategist gazed up at the ceiling and sighed.
"…will already be fully prepared to handle whoever comes charging in."
Checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the encirclement.
The road leading to the Third Young Master's encampment.
There was also one who sat astride his saddle, staring blankly up into empty air.
It was Elder Son, who had voluntarily come to assess the situation even while enduring the Second Young Master's faction's mockery.
"What is this…?"
He touched the liquid striking his face. That sticky texture and the reek of blood were nothing like ordinary rainwater.
"Blood!"
The martial artists of the outer checkpoint he had just passed raised a clamor.
"Blood is falling like rain!"
Elder Son watched them jostle to crowd under the narrow roof of the checkpoint, his expression dazed.
"…Blood?"
The instant he looked again at his own palm, lightning split the sky. In that brief flash that lit every direction, what ran across his hand appeared to be nothing but clear rainwater.
"……?!"
Yet the moment passed, and his palm once more looked covered in blood.
"What in the…"
It was not only his palm. In the light of the checkpoint's bonfire, his entire body—heaven and earth in every direction—was being soaked by the blood rain pouring from the sky.
Though a man without faith, Elder Son muttered without realizing it.
"…Primordial Heavenly Lord preserve us."
He had come merely to confirm. Merely to confirm whether the First Young Master was intervening in the unrest at the Yongbongjihoe Arena Construction Site.
Yet here something beyond anything he had imagined was unfolding.
"……"
With his mind gone completely blank, he stared up with a vacant face at the sky that was pouring down a rain of blood.
A fortune-teller reading lots in a tiny shop on a back-alley corner.
A certain Daoist wandering the rear streets.
The sorcerers who had sunk deep roots into Luoyang's darkness.
Beings who had slipped into the cracks of human society and vanished from sight.
Everyone who possessed even a shred of spiritual perception turned, as one, toward that same ominous direction, drawn by the inauspicious energy.
The blood rain was falling only locally, confined to the Yongbongjihoe construction site.
It was without question an abnormal phenomenon wrought by the magi of the Jeam Jincheon Scripture that had soared skyward as if to pierce heaven itself.
"……"
A faint groan escaped as a martial artist's final breath slipped away while his fingers clawed at the ground. The body that had been twitching weakly soon went still.
And the corpse receiving the pouring blood rain was far from alone.
Beyond the clenched fist lay a martial artist's legs, twisted at unnatural angles. Beyond the legs, past an arm, past a torso, past a head—corpses sprawled endlessly across the unfinished street, one after another.
Whether it had leaked from their bodies or fallen from the sky, streams of blood filled the ground of the street. Their swords all lay submerged in the blood, no longer visible.
And at the point where the procession of several dozen corpses ended, and where the blood-flow growing steadily more violent came to its end, stood an old man trembling violently from head to toe.
"Hrrgh… aah…"
The more he convulsed, the deeper the fingernails that had pierced his belly sank into him.
"Ghk—grrk—"
Even with bloody foam at his lips, the old man lifted both shaking hands toward the face of the one before him.
Was it to confirm the identity of the being that was taking his life? Or did he simply wish to leave something behind at the last?
Those blood-soaked hands finally seized the mask.
"Grrrk—"
Yet the mask did not so much as twitch, as though fused to the face itself.
In the end, the meaning of that final gesture would never be known. The old man's hands left long bloody handprints on the mask and then simply went limp, sliding down to the ground.
Splash.
The old man's corpse slipped free of Amcheonjonza's fingernails and tumbled carelessly onto the floor.
This old man—the sect master of the Northern Hyeongsan Sect—had been the last that Amcheonjonza needed to deal with.
Amcheonjonza raised his head toward the sky. Receiving the blood pouring from heaven, he spread both arms wide—as though savoring the result he had wrought, as though drinking in that landscape that could only be called a demonic realm.
Completely destroyed.