Those Who Must Bleed
Upstream in the Valley of Sin.
The sight of corpses strewn everywhere was, for a constable who had built his career in the vast city of Luoyang, a familiar one if anything could be called familiar.
Yet even Bak Po-kwae had never seen so many bodies piled in a single place as he did today.
A corpse was only a corpse. Whether they had belonged to the Three-Five Alliance, the White Bone Faction, or the Black River Gang, they lay jumbled together, blanketing the valley floor. Blood that had poured from them gathered along the slope and ran in a stream down the gully.
“So in the end… the First Young Master didn’t even need help from our government troops.”
“Looks that way.”
Beside him, a junior constable exhaled a plume of tobacco smoke.
“We’re just the cleanup crew.”
Blood spattered his entire body. Bak Po-kwae looked no better.
“What a force. Luoyang was already buzzing with talk of the First Young Master—now there won’t be anything else on people’s lips.”
“Who could have imagined it? That the name of the Swordless One, once nothing more than a byword for disgrace, would change like this.”
“A terrifying man, the First Young Master.”
“I welcome it, actually.”
“You… welcome it?”
“Yes.”
The junior laughed under his breath and drove his spear down. With a wet sound the thrashing remnant of a dark-world survivor went still. The government troops had only been deployed after the fighting ended; their job was to finish off stragglers like this.
“Senior. Don’t you feel like things are finally starting to run the way they should?”
The junior took a long drag on his cigarette.
“Is that so.”
“It is.”
He planted his spear in the chest of another survivor who had been clawing at his boot.
“Hup.”
He yanked the deeply buried shaft free with an expression of pure indifference.
“The Dragon-Phoenix Gathering arena. The uprising of the destitute laborers. You’ve heard the rumors, Senior.”
“I have.”
Bak Po-kwae lit a fresh cigarette.
“They say the Third Young Master’s faction tried to crush the whole thing by force in secret—and instead got crushed by the Dark Heaven Venerable. Then the First Young Master took over the finishing work.”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Senior.”
The junior smiled as he continued his merciful executions.
“Whether it’s the Third Young Master’s side that tried to slaughter those innocent workers, or those dark-world bastards…”
The smile at the corner of his mouth looked almost refreshing.
“The ones who deserved to bleed are the ones bleeding, aren’t they?”
His voice rose; more force went into each thrust of the spear.
“And what about the merchant houses today?”
The junior shrugged.
“They chose to carry kindling into the fire themselves. Nothing to be done about that.”
He leaned on the spear still planted in a corpse and looked at Bak Po-kwae, a little weary.
“Do you see it differently, Senior?”
“I don’t know. But it’s true the First Young Master’s methods were excessive.”
“Excessive?”
The junior gave a short laugh and spat onto the ground.
“Senior. Suppose today had gone the way everyone first expected—suppose the First Young Master had thrown our government troops in first. What then?”
He pointed at the growing heap of enemy dead the constables were stacking. The men of the Central Office were soaked in blood and filth, yet among them there was not a single wounded man, let alone a corpse.
“At least one of the two of us would be lying under that pile with the rest of our boys.”
“…”
“In exchange, the First Young Master could have kept his own losses far lower.”
Compared with the near-annihilation of the enemy, his side’s casualties were light—but they were not nonexistent.
“But he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t.”
The junior smiled and drew on his cigarette, yet no smoke came. Blood from a dark-world fighter had already soaked the tip and put it out. He tossed the ruined cigarette away without regret.
“Senior. Lately I’ve been thinking it might be good if the First Young Master simply took over the Sword Family while he’s at it.”
“You’re not even an elder of the family.”
Bak Po-kwae snorted a laugh after a moment’s thought.
“What difference does it make what you think?”
The junior laughed with him.
“None at all, of course.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“Just a thought. That’s all it is—a thought.”
His gaze traveled toward the farthest upstream reach of the Valley of Sin. Bak Po-kwae looked the same way.
“Still,” Bak Po-kwae said, “whoever ends up sitting at the top, not much changes for small fry like us.”
There was the weight of long experience in his voice.
“Today it wasn’t our turn. But sooner or later our blood will run just like this.”
“Maybe so.”
“And for a First Young Master who was so far behind to become the next family head… a lot more blood will have to flow than for anyone else.”
“Like these days.”
“Worse than these days.”
“I suppose so.”
The junior nodded slowly, still leaning on his spear.
“Even so…”
It was rare for him to push back against his senior’s words; Bak Po-kwae listened.
“If that First Young Master becomes head of the Luoyang Sword Family…”
Under his senior’s gaze the junior offered a faint smile.
“Even if my turn comes someday and I spill blood and guts all over the ground… I feel like that blood will flow in the direction it was always meant to flow.”
The phrasing was vague, yet it carried a force that made a man chew on its meaning.
“In the direction it was meant to flow, eh.”
“Maybe so.”
Bak Po-kwae followed the junior’s gaze to the uppermost reach of the Valley of Sin. The gorge was still choked with corpses, yet somehow, to their eyes, it looked cleaner than it ever had before.
Luoyang, reception hall of the Ha Merchant Guild.
Two young girls sat in the seats of honor: the Third Young Mistress of the Luoyang Sword Family, Yeon Da-eun, and the Fourth Young Mistress, Yeon Da-hye—owners of the guild. They held themselves with perfect composure, yet their faces were unnaturally pale, and the hands they clasped together trembled ever so slightly.
“So what I’m saying, Elder Sisters,” the Fourth Young Master insisted, gesturing urgently, “is that Eldest Brother did not slaughter—did not deal with—those merchants simply to vent his anger or soothe his temper.”
He was defending his eldest brother with everything he had.
“Eldest Brother had no choice.”
Yeon Bi, Fourth Young Master of the Sword Family and one of its sharpest minds, knew perfectly well what Yeon So-hyeon feared most.
“Those merchants, at the Second Young Master’s instigation, insulted Eldest Brother with arrogance and shamelessness—and in so doing they also insulted you, Elder Sisters, Young Mistresses of the Sword Family.”
He nodded with conviction.
“For the sake of your safety as well, in the long run it was absolutely—”
Yeon Da-eun finished for him.
“Necessary killing. Is that it?”
The moment the Third and Fourth Young Mistresses had taken Yeon So-hyeon’s side, the merchant houses run by their supporters had come under attack. The affair had swiftly escalated into something close to a massacre that left all of Luoyang trembling with fear.
To some degree… it’s only natural they’re shocked.
Under their gazes Yeon Bi answered with a sigh in his voice.
“Yes. It was necessary killing.”
No matter how carefully he tried to explain Yeon So-hyeon’s position, the merchants had been caught in the Sword Family’s power struggle and had died screaming, and the order to kill them had come from Yeon So-hyeon himself.
“This is neither Eldest Brother’s fault nor yours, Elder Sisters. It is simply—”
“Bi-ah.”
At the childhood name, Yeon Bi lowered his head.
“Yes, Elder Sister.”
Yeon Da-eun asked quietly,
“Do you think we had no idea what would become of them?”
Yeon Da-hye spoke as well.
“When we told Eldest Brother the truth—that our guilds had been attacked—do you really believe we had no notion of what would follow?”
“What?”
Yeon Bi’s mind went blank for an instant. Yeon Da-eun smiled at him with a sad face.
“You still see us as children who never left our early years.”
“Well, you always were cleverer than the adults around you, even as a little boy.”
Yeon Da-hye’s gaze softened as if looking into the past.
“To eyes like yours, I suppose we must look like porcelain that cracks or chips at the lightest touch.”
“But,” Yeon Da-eun said with quiet force, “we are no longer children.”
“Born Young Mistresses of this family, we can no longer remain children.”
“And we must not.”
Yeon Bi let out a long breath.
“So you had already steeled yourselves.”
The two girls of only fourteen nodded.
“Yes. We prepared ourselves. Prepared to shed our own blood.”
“And prepared to wound others.”
Yeon Bi sank back deep into his chair and sealed his lips tight.
…This damned Sword Family.
Unlike him, his two elder sisters had been so pure, so kind as children. This cursed house had not been content with staining him; now it was staining even them with blood.
“We’re all right,” Yeon Da-eun said, her smile gentle yet firm. Yeon Da-hye wore the same smile.
“Today is harder for our enemies than for us.”
If the sisters felt the weight of the day in their hearts, the enemy felt chaos and death. The twin sisters, at least, had not narrowed their vision and drowned in their own feelings; they saw the larger picture and understood it.
“Yes.”
Yeon Bi was silent a moment, then nodded.
“If that is how you choose to take it, Elder Sisters… I’m glad.”
He kept nodding.
“Glad. Truly glad.”
Sooner or later, everyone had to become an adult. In this world the only children who never grew up were the ones who died before they could.
“This affair is a warning to every merchant house in Luoyang,” Yeon Da-hye said, tilting her head slightly. “But we also feel it may have been, at the same time, a lesson Eldest Brother meant for us.”
Yeon Bi asked,
“A lesson from Eldest Brother?”
Yeon Da-eun answered,
“Eldest Brother once told us we might do whatever we wished.”
“And he said he would allow no one to lay a hand on us.”
Hearing that much, Yeon Bi understood.
“Responsibility… and the price.”
The twin sisters nodded together.
“Yes.”
“The teaching that every freedom is followed by responsibility and a price.”
“That is how we understand it.”