Ghost Path
The Underground Great Waterway of Luoyang.
Mid-depth.
At a certain point.
Team Three. Team Three, respond!
No matter how hard he pushed the sound transmission, it was useless.
"…Damn this waterway!"
The structure of the Underground Great Waterway was far too complex—and it was, quite literally, underground. The long-range sound transmission techniques Tamrang had refined over generations found no purchase here at all.
…It's as if this underground is swallowing the transmissions whole.
At the sight of their team leader losing his temper, one of the subordinate hounds shook his head.
…If Team Three won't answer, our Team Two has no support.
The team leader ground his teeth under his breath.
And Team Three has no support from us either.
Tamrang's strength, which had carved its name through the history of the Murim Alliance, lay not only in their peculiar martial arts, but above all in their unique organization. Like the wolves their name evoked, that fierce pack cohesion was their sharpest fang.
Teams One and Four are almost certainly in the same situation.
What about Team Five, the one covering our rear?
We sent scouts to fix their position, but even the scouts haven't returned.
In this vast, bottomless Underground Great Waterway, their organization was coming apart in real time.
…Team Leader. Do you mean to keep pursuing like this?
The leader of Team Two furrowed his brow.
And what else do you propose?
For the sake of stealth they had not lit a single torch; the only light came from fingernail-sized night-luminescent pearls a few of them carried. One of the hounds swept the surrounding walls with a taut gaze and spoke.
I've heard that this Underground Great Waterway has long been called the Ghost Path by the common folk.
Another hound, who had been kneeling to examine the target's tracks, rose to his feet.
I've heard something similar.
Eyes turned toward him.
Even the Second Young Master's infamous smugglers refuse to use the Underground Great Waterway as a smuggling route.
He spoke with his gaze fixed on the deep dark, as if something had taken hold of him.
In the past, under the former dynasty, the number of slaves sacrificed to build this waterway is said to have reached a million.
A million.
The hounds swallowed dryly.
They were desperate to complete it—to set right a dynasty already sliding toward ruin.
Only then did the realization fully settle on them. The vast waterway that wound in endless complexity beneath the great city of Luoyang had been made by human hands.
First the slaves. When they were all dead, the destitute. Then the free commoners. In the end, even children were thrown into this place, or so I've heard.
In the rush of water through the channels and the rough wind howling through the passages, it almost seemed as if distant screams were rising. The merciless crack of overseers' whips. The death rattles of laborers as their breath cut short. The ring of chisels and hammers on stone. The scrape of pickaxes. The moans of those buried under collapsing earth and rock from the ceiling.
The hounds swallowed again.
Their souls became vengeful ghosts, trapped in this labyrinth of tunnels with nowhere to go, still wandering here even now—
The team leader snapped back to himself and poured internal energy hard into his sound transmission.
Enough of that nonsense!
The force of the qi-laden transmission jolted the babbling hound to his senses.
"…!"
Focus returned to his eyes.
S-sorry. I was talking rubbish…
The team leader shook his head.
Forget it. In any case—you've found the target's trail, haven't you?
The hound who had seemed possessed shook his head hard to clear it and answered.
…Yes. I have.
The team leader spoke to the others around him.
We track that trail at once.
…Yes.
The hounds calmly resumed their pursuit formation, but the team leader could tell. Their morale was still dropping by the moment.
And that is the safer path for us as well.
What do you mean?
The team leader allowed a smile onto his face.
Do you think our targets stumbled into this waterway without a plan? They know Luoyang inside and out—and they know its ghost stories better than anyone.
One of the hounds countered.
…It could still have been a choice made in desperation.
The team leader shook his head.
Before they entered this waterway, they almost certainly met the First Young Master. That was the last intelligence we received from the Grand Master's direct team.
…Then—!
You're saying the First Young Master laid out their escape route?!
Yes.
The team leader nodded.
Don't put your faith in our own skill, and don't try to guess what the targets are thinking.
A twisted smile hooked the corner of his mouth.
We have no choice but to trust the First Young Master—the one they call a master of divine strategy.
A man like that would surely have given his people the safest route he could find to get them out.
Which is why following the targets is the safest path for us as well.
His subordinates exchanged silent looks, nodded, and broke into a run again. No one said it aloud, but their morale was clearly far better than before.
…Having to trust the enemy more than your own allies.
It was a bitter situation.
Bringing up the rear, the team leader closed on one of the hounds and spoke to him alone.
You.
His private sound transmission went only to the one who had rambled about the past as if possessed.
Yes. Speak, sir.
Even as he answered by transmission, there was not the slightest flaw in his movement technique. He seemed fully himself again.
Where did you hear those strange historical tales earlier?
Sir? What do you mean…?
The team leader pressed, irritated.
Those stories about the former dynasty. The ones about a million dead.
…I said something like that?
The subordinate answered with a blank look.
I have no idea what you're talking about, Team Leader.
……
For some reason, he did not even remember the story he himself had told.
A momentary delusion?
Or…
Had something truly taken hold of him?
…This damn Underground Great Waterway!
The team leader's face twisted.
Suddenly he missed the back alleys of Kaifeng, once the seat of the Murim Alliance.
Luoyang.
This vast city.
Its darkness ran so deep that even they—Tamrang, born of darkness and working in darkness—could not adapt to it.
"Y-you bastard…!"
A martial artist of the Spring of Luoyang wrenched his hand-axe free with a desperate effort.
A Tamrang hound staggered, one hand clamped to a throat that was spraying blood.
"Kh—krrrk…!"
Even as froth of blood spilled from his mouth, the hound tried to slash at the martial artist with a short blade.
Crunch.
Only when the hand-axe buried itself in his skull again did the hound finally go still.
What a mess this is.
The martial artist with the hand-axe forced his ragged breathing under control and moved on.
…Maybe I shouldn't have volunteered for the rearmost route.
Out of sheer stubborn pride he had claimed the rearguard path himself—and now he was regretting it. He was bleeding from half a dozen places, but there was no time to bind the wounds properly. Every step that put more distance behind him was precious.
"Even if we're forced to flee Luoyang for now, our names are no less than theirs."
He wanted to punch his past self for the big talk he had given First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon. If not for the escape route through this cursed, impossibly tangled waterway that the First Young Master had prepared—if Tamrang had been free to bring their full pack cohesion to bear—ten necks would not have been enough.
…Enemy presence!
His senses, sharpened to their limit, caught the faint stirrings from the channel behind him.
Move…! Move, damn legs!
Fortunately the Tamrang hounds seemed worn down as well; the silent ambushes of the beginning no longer came.
The end is close…!
The end of the map the First Young Master had given him—the exit—was drawing near. He wrung out every last scrap of strength and poured it into his movement technique.
The hounds' presence grew steadily closer.
Damn it, damn it…!
His feet felt as if iron weights hung from them, and each breath threatened to burst his lungs. Still he ran, and ran again.
I can't die without even seeing my daughter's face…!
As his breath failed, his head swam, and the face of the wife he had already sent on ahead flickered before him. The hounds' breathing seemed to rasp right at his back.
The exit should be right about now…!
Perhaps his desperation reached the heavens.
Light!
Faint though it was in the night, light from outside spilled in at the far end of the straight passage.
Please—let my comrades be waiting for me at the exit…!
Then a whistle of parting air cut past his ear, and only pure luck kept him from taking the hidden weapon as his foot slipped.
"Hwaaaaaah!!"
He tumbled through filthy sewage, took an unwelcome bath, and ran on with his head covered. Projectiles rained down on his feet, his ears, everything. The light of the exit drew closer.
Get down.
An unknown sound transmission brushed his ear. There was no need to think twice.
"Uwaaaah!"
He flung himself forward and flattened against the floor—
and above his head, the air itself seemed to split into dozens of pieces.
There was no other way to put it. Scores—perhaps hundreds—of flashes of light flared, and every incoming hidden weapon shattered into fragments and scattered.
A—a master…!
Someone walked past the martial artist still pressed to the ground, footsteps unhurried. Four more swords floated in the air around him.
Qi-controlled swords…?!
Five blades in all, counting the one in his hand—and the art of driving them with qi. A face as fierce as a storm.
I've definitely heard of him somewhere—
"What are you?"
When the martial artist met the murderous glare of the middle-aged man who was clearly a master, his mind went blank.
"Pardon? Me, sir?"
Even as he spoke, he knew it was a stupid question.
"No. I don't care who you are."
"Th-then…?"
With his characteristic swaggering posture, the middle-aged man lifted his sword and pointed deeper into the passage. The four floating blades moved with it as if strung on invisible threads.
"Them."
There stood the Tamrang hounds, frozen mid-step under a killing intent sharp enough to flay flesh, forced into a wary stand-off.
Opponent is a master.
A master of that caliber should match someone on the roll of noted experts.
Analyzing.
The middle-aged man's features twisted into a savage scowl.
"Why only these?"
He looked back down at the martial artist still sprawled on the floor.
"Where did the rest of them go?"
"Sir? Sir?"
He thumped his own chest in frustration.
"Aigoo."
The floating swords chimed and keened.
"You were the rearmost. The last one. So why are there only this many hounds left?"
"I—I don't know."
The middle-aged master came over, crouched beside him, and let out a long sigh.
"Is it true, then—what they say? That ghosts really live in this waterway…?"
He was so at ease it was hard to believe the infamous hounds of Tamrang stood right in front of him.
"Ah, I finally got the lord's leave to swing a sword properly for the first time in ages. I was looking forward to it, too."
"Ah—yes."
He gave the martial artist's shoulder a rough, perfunctory pat as if to say well done, then rose again.
"No help for it."
His wild eyes fixed on the visibly tense hounds.
"If I hold you lot here…"
His killing intent was so violent that reverse waves rose on the surface of the rushing sewage.
"…the rest should be along soon enough, no?"
The hound still analyzing his features took an involuntary step back as he reported.
A—analysis complete. Th-the opponent is…
As if mirroring his shaken state of mind, his control of internal energy wavered, and the transmission turned unstable.
The Life-Taking Ghost Sword.
The gatekeeper of Wongak Pavilion, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom, lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile.
"That's right. I am the Life-Taking Ghost Sword."
Shock and confusion flooded the hounds' faces.
How is he intercepting our sound transmissions?!
Change the transmission method at once!
Whether they fretted over their techniques or not, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom simply grinned and took a step forward.
"Everyone thought I'd retired, or died. Nice to see a few still remember me."
All units!
The team leader leapt backward to open the distance and barked a hurried order.
Beware the qi-controlled swords! Switch to anti-master formation—!
Or rather—
he tried to.
He might have finished the order, if Tal-myeong-gwi-geom's flying sword had not been there.
"……!"
Still in the air of his leap, the team leader's upper and lower body came apart. The two halves of his corpse dropped with a heavy splash into the flowing sewage.
The remaining hounds' faces went white.
"Well then. Shall we play?"
Every one of Tal-myeong-gwi-geom's swords howled long and loud.