Surrounded on All Sides
A young man whose bulk rivaled that of a giant.
Kong Dam-ung, the next successor of the Gong family, wrapped his massive arms around a hulking martial artist of the dark path.
It was an attack so crude it went past mere honesty into pure, unvarnished blunt force.
“You idiot!”
The black-path martial artist he had seized mocked him, holding his ground with his own weight and the Thousand-Catty Drop technique. His poison-coated dagger tore into Kong Dam-ung’s back, which had been left wide open by the embrace.
“…Huh?!”
Kong Dam-ung’s rear armor was shredded to rags—yet somehow not a single scratch marred the powerful muscles of his back.
“Uwooooooh!”
Golden light blazed from Kong Dam-ung’s eyes as he hoisted his opponent high into the air.
“Kh?!”
The man was no green novice; he had survived every hardship the back alleys of the dark path could throw at him. He drove a dagger loaded with every scrap of his internal energy straight down toward Kong Dam-ung’s crown while his free hand clawed for the young man’s eyes—
But before either strike could land, a sickening crack rang out. The dark-path martial artist went limp.
Kong Dam-ung had squeezed him like a bear, snapping his spine clean through.
“Uwoooooh!”
Before the still-warm corpse of the black-path martial artist even hit the ground, Kong Dam-ung was already charging the next one.
KWAANG!
The monstrous force of his charge blasted the dark-path underlings caught between them in every direction like rag dolls.
Shaolin’s Vajra Arhat Qigong. Iron Ox Plowing the Earth.
He no longer looked human. He looked like an ironclad fortress charging forward with a pair of mythical beasts at its head.
“Insane…!”
The black-path martial artist tried to evade the charge, launching himself into the air with his movement technique.
But someone else was already waiting for him.
Without so much as a shout of qi, a woman appeared before him with ghostly footwork. The sword of the Emei Sect’s supervisory nun flashed in every direction at once.
Emei. Secret Absolute Technique. Chaotic Wind Sword.
Leaving behind the black-path martial artist’s corpse as it tumbled from the sky in a rain of blood, limbs sheared away, the supervisory nun alighted lightly—right on the crown of a dark-path underling’s head.
“…Kill her!”
“Die!”
The underlings thronging on every side, eyes bloodshot from the wood-poppy haze, swung their weapons at her without mercy.
Just as before, the supervisory nun leapt skyward again without a sound.
“Gyaaah?!”
The underling she had been standing on was shredded by the weapons of his own allies pouring in from every direction, blood spraying everywhere.
Nearby—
“Good! Just hold the line! Keep your heads cool!”
Enemies who had gone far past bloodshot eyes into outright madness hurled themselves against the shield wall.
“Brace with your hips! Do not give ground!”
Like a real castle wall under siege, corpses piled thick beneath it—yet the enemy simply climbed over the bodies of their own dead and scrambled up the face of the shields.
“Gyaaaaah!”
Spears of the heavy-armored unit from the Hall of Compassion thrust without pause, skewering them mercilessly. Blood ran down the gaps between the shields in streams.
“Die! Die! Die!”
Even those already impaled still thrust hands through the gaps, trying to stab weapons back through.
More than twice their number. Even now, black-path martial artists kept pouring out of every alley mouth upstream. And yet Yeon So-hyeon’s front line held.
A chaotic free-for-all.
Was there any better way to describe the situation?
“Good! You’re doing well! Crush them!”
The boss of the Black River Gang clenched the railing with sweat-slick hands and bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“Since it’s come to this, throw in every man we’ve held in reserve! Push the center hard!”
Even as he roared himself hoarse, the Black River Gang boss never stopped calculating.
Among the First Young Master’s known forces, the ones that still haven’t shown themselves are…
“Their armored carriages won’t be able to do a damn thing in a melee like this!”
Once friend and foe were thoroughly mixed, the carriages’ charging power became meaningless. It also left no room for the low-morale, poorly trained government troops in the rear to join the fight.
“So push them even harder!”
He had poured so much internal energy into every shout that his dantian felt hollow.
If we just keep shoving them back from upstream…!
A look of glee stole across the Black River Gang boss’s face.
More troops than Yeon So-hyeon’s side. More martial artists than Yeon So-hyeon’s side. An enemy armored carriage that could no longer maneuver properly because of the free-for-all. Dark-path forces high on wood-poppy, charging without a thought for their own lives. Government troops who would be too busy fleeing to link up once the line buckled.
I can see the path to victory!
The numbers settled neatly in his head.
Far away, on a rooftop downstream in the valley, No-gunsa observed the battle and spoke.
“Bite and they bite back; press and they spring out. Simpler than a stray dog—the intelligence of a complete dullard.”
A scathing verdict on the enemy command.
“But, old master…”
The son-in-law of the Seo family, whose every prediction so far had gone spectacularly wrong, spoke with careful deference.
“It’s true that your side’s armored carriages have been rendered useless, is it not?”
“Old master,” “your side”—even his wording had grown markedly more cautious.
“Meanwhile the enemy’s momentum shows no sign of breaking. If anything, it’s swelling like a fire caught in the wind.”
His pride had taken more than a few blows, yet he was no simple fool. He had clearly grasped that the old man before him could not be measured by the standards of an ordinary military strategist.
“Do you have some clever method ready, old master?”
The Seo family’s son-in-law stole a glance at the First Young Master, but Yeon So-hyeon had barely spoken a word for some time. He merely stood with his arms folded, watching the battle upstream.
He acts as if this has nothing to do with him.
What on earth was going through his mind? The First Young Master’s thoughts were impossible to guess.
“A clever method to reverse the battle, you say? Some ingenious stratagem?”
When the old military advisor of unknown origin and rank did not even bother to raise his speech, the son-in-law nearly flared up—then remembered exactly where he stood in this place, cleared his throat, and fell silent.
“…Ahem.”
Without so much as glancing at him—more precisely, without ever taking his eyes off the battle—No-gunsa smiled.
“When things go poorly on the field, every last person demands that the strategist produce a single stratagem that can overturn the entire situation at once. However.”
As if speaking half to himself, No-gunsa lifted both hands for them to see.
“That sort of stratagem is only necessary when one is already losing, is it not?”
“You mean…?”
No-gunsa flicked his right hand. From the watchtower on the rooftop, the signalman who had been watching him raised a new flag and waved it.
Like beacon fires leaping from peak to peak, the flags of the signalmen stationed throughout the valley fluttered in sequence. Then a long horn blast rolled down from upstream.
Without even turning his head, No-gunsa said:
“If one is already controlling the battlefield, it is meaningless.”
“Right flank!”
A subordinate scanning every direction from the tower cried out as if screaming.
“Something’s wrong on the right under Three-Five Tongbang’s command…!”
The Black River Gang boss had barely turned his head when another voice rose—not merely “like” a scream, but a full-throated scream.
“I-It’s collapsing! The right battle line is collapsing!”
“What?!”
Even to his eyes, the forces of Three-Five Tongbang that had formed the right line were being driven backward as if in flight. When he sharpened his vision, he could make out the ones pressing them even harder.
“M-Martial artists?!”
He reeled in shock.
“The First Young Master still had that many martial artists left?!”
The right line was collapsing. With the black-path martial artists already committed to the center, the result was inevitable.
“What one must truly beware of on the battlefield is not the enemy’s powerful main force,” No-gunsa murmured toward the upstream as if offering advice, “but the enemy’s hidden strength.”
Spring of Luoyang.
Yeon So-hyeon, who had recognized them, sent a brief transmission.
The young gallants who never left Luoyang and stayed behind.
No-gunsa nodded freely.
“Precisely so, First Young Master.”
Lacking talent in internal energy, No-gunsa answered aloud with only the less sensitive details.
“They had no need to flee Luoyang because they were never wanted. Well rested, they have energy and true power to spare.”
The older gallants had barred the younger ones from entering the Yongbongjihoe Arena Construction Site—which had been as good as a death ground. Because of that, the young gallants had never taken part in the highway robbery in the first place. In the end, they remained in Luoyang as excellent forces for Yeon So-hyeon.
“Wanted? Who exactly are those people, First Young Master?”
One of the family heads of the newly allied houses asked Yeon So-hyeon—
“The signalmen’s flag signals… haven’t stopped yet…?”
The acting head of the Seo family murmured. She had been watching the shift in the battle upstream.
“The signals haven’t stopped?”
“Yes.”
She nodded at her son-in-law’s question.
“Just now, the moment the enemy’s right line collapsed, the signal changed, and then…”
Her hand followed the direction of the new signal chain.
“The left?”
“Right side! Divert every martial artist still not committed—all of them—to the right!”
At his order, those who had been on the verge of joining the frontal assault could be seen starting to run rightward. But given the terrain and distance, there was no telling whether the final right-hand defensive line would hold until they arrived.
“Absolutely! No matter what! Do not give them the alleyways in a single push! Hold them at the alleys somehow!”
His throat was so raw that his voice barely came, yet the Black River Gang boss still screamed until his neck veins stood out.
“If you let them into the alleys, it’s over!”
Instead of an answer to the order—
“Gyaaaaah!”
Screams rose from the floor below. Or rather, they seemed about to rise—then cut off almost at once.
“F-Find out what’s going on!”
At the Black River Gang boss’s words, one subordinate shoved his head through the doorway leading downstairs.
“Hey…! What’s going on down th—!”
The man shouting toward the lower floor said nothing more.
“…What? You bastard. Why aren’t you saying anything?”
The boss yanked the subordinate by the shoulder.
The headless body of the subordinate toppled backward.
In the instant blood droplets sprayed through the air, the boss drew up every last scrap of internal energy his body could produce and hurled himself off the rooftop.
But a black, serpentine form flew in without a whisper of presence and coiled tightly around his ankle.
“……?!”
Then it slammed home into his thigh with a wet thunk.
“Gyaaah?!”
Hung upside down, ankle bound and thigh pierced, he bounced and slammed against the walls before and behind him. Because he had kicked off with such force after drawing up his true power, the impacts against the walls were brutal. His vision went white, his head spun, and screams tore free of their own accord.
“Uuugh?!”
Even then he forced himself to stay calm and checked what was biting into his thigh.
It was—
“A-A chain sickle…?”
What bound his legs was a black chain; what had buried itself in his thigh was a black sickle.
Krrrrrk—!
When the owner of the chain sickle hauled on the chain, the boss could do nothing but thrash like a fish on a hook.
“Gyaaa, gyaaaaah!”
And the more he thrashed in pain, the tighter the chain inevitably drew, the deeper the sickle buried itself in his thigh.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
At last, hauled all the way back up to the rooftop while still hanging upside down, he found himself staring at a middle-aged man of bleak, barren features dressed in black.
At a glance, no ordinary figure.
But what seized the Black River Gang boss’s gaze even more was the head of another man tied at the stranger’s waist.
“The boss of Three-Five Tongbang…?”
The head’s original owner had been the boss of Three-Five Tongbang. He had thought the man was fleeing into the underground spaces to avoid the catapults—only to have been “harvested” like this, reduced to nothing but a head.
“H-How…?”
The Black River Gang boss muttered, his own blood running down his thigh and into his face.
“The Fourth Young Master’s elites should all still be tied down on the front against the Great Immortal Merchant Group…”
There was no answer.
Instead, the bleak-faced middle-aged man spoke in a voice even more devoid of emotion than his expression.
“Boss of the Black River Gang. Confirmed.”
The owner of the chain sickle.
The Tang family’s Blood Wind Emissary.
Head collector of the Tea Horse Road.
Tang Baek’s other sleeve fluttered; the boss heard a soft chara-rang.
That was the last thing the Black River Gang boss ever heard.
“They’ve successfully infiltrated through the enemy’s thinned left formation.”
Far away, on the rooftop of a building at the very head of the valley, Yeon So-hyeon confirmed the blue signal smoke Tang Baek had sent up and nodded.
“It’s over.”
Beside him, No-gunsa chuckled low in his throat.
“From the moment the Fourth Young Master’s elites returned, this was a fight those people never had a chance of winning.”
“Because the Central Investigation Department and the Inner Court are now handling the Great Immortal Merchant Group.”
In order to seize the vast black funds the Great Immortal Merchant Group had been siphoning off, the Central Investigation Department and the Inner Court had sunk their teeth into them. Because of that, the Fourth Young Master’s elites were no longer needed on the front against Hyeonwol Pavilion and the Great Immortal Merchant Group.
“The Great Immortal Merchant Group? That’s the Second Young Master’s—”
One of the family heads began to address Yeon So-hyeon, reacting to a name he recognized—
“Ah…!”
A voice of open admiration escaped the acting head of the Seo family.
Every gaze turned to the upstream stretch of the valley she was watching.
“The flanking breakthrough on the enemy’s right has also succeeded.”
Behind the dark-path forces that had been shoving the center with sheer numbers—having looped around through the enemy right line the young gallants of the Spring of Luoyang had torn open—something appeared. And the instant it appeared, it slammed straight into the enemy’s rear.
“The armored carriages…”
It was the armored carriage column of the First Young Master’s side.