The Warriors' Wrath
Luoyang Sword Family.
Agency Headquarters.
Rumble—
Even now, the distant, muffled boom of artillery rolled on without pause.
…Artillery fire? In the heart of Luoyang?
The Agency's commanding warrior cast a brief glance toward the city streets.
I hope the First Young Master is all right…
He was none other than Myeong—the Agency commanding warrior who had sent Yeon So-hyeon the report on the Agency's corruption.
Then again…
He let out a dry, wheezing laugh, like air leaking from a bellows.
This is hardly the time for me to be fretting over the First Young Master.
Clang!
He deflected the enemy blade that had closed to within a hair's breadth of his face, turning it aside with his heavy armor.
And then—
Agency-Style Variant — Returning Sword Stance
Using the very shock of the opponent's strike, he spun once and drove his sword forward.
It was an ideal counterstroke—one that would have drawn admiration from any onlooker.
But—
Clang!
In almost the exact same fashion, his opponent bounced the commanding warrior's blade off the shoulder of his heavy armor.
The same technique. It could only look the same.
Because—
"You turn your swords on brothers of the same Agency?! Have you forgotten your oaths?!"
He raised his voice from beneath the Agency mask and faceplate.
"You are betraying the Supreme Operations Committee you ought to protect with everything you have! You are betraying the main family!"
The men before him were Agency warriors, just as he was.
"…"
"…"
Only the quiet sound of measured breathing answered him. No reply came from the other side.
It was a sight all too familiar to Commanding Warrior Myeong. That silence was the Agency's rule of engagement.
"There are too many of them!"
The handful of men who stood with him formed an Agency-style circular formation around Myeong.
"…"
And the enemy closed them in with a still larger circle of their own.
"These mad bastards…!"
Shoulder plate met shoulder plate; a brother's back covered his own. In ordinary times it would have been a moment of absolute reliability, of swelling pride in the chest. But the men they faced were brothers as well.
"The exit is right in front of us…"
"Escape looks impossible."
The enemy had all but sealed the entrance to the Agency Headquarters.
"Brothers!"
One of the warriors following Myeong cried out as if coughing blood.
"True courage is the will to defy a wrongful order! You know that as well as we do!"
But the Agency warriors leveling their swords at him remained silent.
"…They have no intention of listening. Those men are already beyond saving."
Commanding Warrior Myeong kept his gaze fixed on the enemies multiplying on every side and shook his head.
"They aren't obeying because it's an order from above. They've lined up with a corrupted leadership for their own gain."
"That…?!"
It was something the few Agency warriors with Myeong already sensed—yet a truth too bitter to accept lightly.
"…Too many of the commanding warriors withdrew their men, claiming neutrality."
In the chaos of civil war, countless members of the Agency chose to step back rather than intervene.
"Damn it. If only they had stood with us—!"
"Oh dear."
An exaggerated voice pulled every eye from Myeong and his men.
"Looks like this side still hasn't been cleaned up."
The figure who stepped into view was a Command Officer of the Agency—far senior to Myeong, and a generation above him.
"My apologies. Their resistance has been fiercer than expected…"
The Command Officer waved it off.
"It's fine, it's fine. No need to rush."
A leisurely tone.
"It's almost over anyway."
The man already seemed certain of victory.
"…How many of our brothers have you killed?"
Myeong's eyes went to the sword in the man's hand. Fresh scarlet still dripped from the Command Officer's blade.
"Brothers?"
He played dumb, as if he didn't understand the word.
"Fools who know nothing of the greater cause, who don't even know what truly serves this Agency—those were never my brothers."
"The greater cause?!"
Not only from Myeong's mouth but from the warriors behind him came the grind of gritted teeth.
"Turning the Agency into a private power bloc—what kind of greater cause is that?!"
"Another idiot over here."
At one warrior's cry, the Command Officer clicked his tongue as if pitying a simpleton.
"Don't you know the saying? A true martial artist must be able to wield the power he possesses."
He flicked his sword, spattering blood across the ground.
"Our Agency has possessed tremendous power—yet never once wielded it properly."
"What are you—?!"
To take a golden maxim of the Sword Family regarding martial power and twist it into a justification for personal ambition left the warriors speechless.
"Even so, was a cowardly ambush necessary?"
"A cowardly ambush?"
The Command Officer shrugged at Myeong's words.
"Who was it that requested aid from the Supreme Operations Committee and prepared a cowardly ambush first?"
"……!"
Myeong's face hardened. Hidden behind the mask, his expression went unread—but the man pressed on.
"Yes. You moved first."
A veteran who had spent his life in the Agency smirked as if he could see straight through Myeong's mask.
"And your late brother was just as stupid."
He giggled, baiting him, but Myeong did not take the hook. His cultivation was not so shallow that a mere taunt could shake him.
"I shared the plan only with those I was certain I could trust… How did it leak…?"
As Myeong said, he had been carefully gathering comrades who shared his resolve to aid the First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon and the Supreme Operations Committee. Yet word had somehow reached the enemy.
"The Agency is more rotten than I imagined. But I have one question."
Myeong clicked his tongue and asked,
"Suppose you crush us completely. How do you intend to clean this mess up?"
He led the man on while issuing orders to his subordinates.
Hold your assigned sectors without fail. The moment they find a gap, they will crash through in a sudden assault.
The circular formation of elite heavy-armored Agency warriors was a burden even for fellow Agency fighters to break. Had it not been, the enemy would long since have abandoned the taunting and simply overrun them.
I will buy as much time as I can. If fighting begins, you hold out as long as possible. Relief will come…!
"How do we clean it up?"
The Command Officer laughed.
"Simple enough."
"Simple?"
"When this is over, the report that goes up to the Supreme Operations Committee will say this."
He pointed at Myeong and the warriors with him.
"That we, upholding the noble will of Commanding Warrior Myeong and his late brother, the former Agency Head, fought the corrupt elements within the Agency—and won."
"……!"
"But Commanding Warrior Myeong, unfortunately, fell in that honorable battle!"
He laughed as if he couldn't help himself.
"You who die here today will go down as the Agency's corrupt ones."
He turned his raised finger toward himself and his men.
"And we will become the heroes who fought you traitors and saved the Agency!"
Using the Agency's closed nature to swap the corrupt faction with the reform faction—that was the scheme.
"You think a plan full of holes slapped together on the spot will actually work?!"
Myeong shouted himself hoarse.
"I already submitted the list of names! No matter how you cover it up and distort it, people who dig for the truth will appear!"
"No need for you to worry that far…"
Because once the Second Young Master shattered the First Young Master's entire faction—once the reform movement gathering around the First Young Master inside the Luoyang Sword Family collapsed—holes or not, slapdash or not, the plan would work.
"By now,"
The Agency Command Officer smirked and shrugged,
"you must have realized that no matter how long you stall, no reinforcements are coming?"
"……!"
At those words, the faces of the Agency warriors around Myeong went ashen.
"Time to finish this."
For as long as Myeong had bought time, the Command Officer had done the same.
"Command Officer, sir. As ordered, I've gathered every available man."
The front courtyard of the Agency Headquarters was now packed with an overwhelming number of enemies.
"Good. Kill them all."
When the Command Officer raised his sword, the Agency warriors surrounding Myeong and his men began tightening the net as one.
"Honestly, it's almost funny."
The Command Officer snickered.
"The Supreme Operations Committee has already had its eyes and ears put out and its hands and feet cut off. What troops are they supposed to send, and how?"
"How?"
The answer came from behind him.
"Like this."
"……?!"
The Command Officer spun around. On top of the Agency Headquarters' main gate stood a single figure.
"Who are you?!"
"…This is what happens when you rest too long."
The man sighed and stepped into the light of the bonfires illuminating the courtyard.
"Neither this lot nor that lot can even recognize a face."
Close-cropped hair. A middle-aged man who looked to be in his fifties, with a face so savage it was chilling. He wore a uniform that wrapped a solid frame.
There was no way an Agency Command Officer would fail to recognize that distinctive uniform.
"…The Senate Special Task Force?"
The middle-aged man in the Special Task Force uniform sighed.
"So it's the uniform they recognize, not me."
Before the words had fully left his mouth, swords slid free from both his flanks and his back.
Five blades, each trailing its sword-cry, roamed freely through the air.
Even watching those five swords—
"Sword-Riding Qi Control?!"
—there was not a soul in the Sword Family who would fail to know who he was.
"It's the Life-Taking Ghost Sword…!"
"The most ferocious blade in the Sword Family…!"
Gasps erupted from the Agency warriors forming the encirclement.
"That's the Life-Taking Ghost Sword they called the Blood-God Malice Demon?!"
"The Nightmare of Jiangnan…!"
"I heard he was dead!"
Agency warriors who kept absolute silence during combat operations were forced to cry out—such was the legend of the name Life-Taking Ghost Sword within the Sword Family.
"Yes. Now you know me."
With a satisfied smile, Tal-myeong-gwi-geom lightly stepped down into the courtyard.
"…So it is Senior Life-Taking Ghost Sword."
The Agency Command Officer raised his sword and asked,
"But what business does the Senate Special Task Force have with the Agency? By the Sword Family Code, the Senate is forbidden from intervening in the main family's affairs—"
"Don't know. That complicated crap. Why would I care?"
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom cut him off.
"A warrior of the Sword Family does as he's told…"
A smile thick with killing intent and madness spread across his face.
"And kills who he's told to kill."
A truly tyrannical presence. Even the many Agency warriors holding the encirclement flinched and trembled as one.
"…Hah. The Five-Sword Madman, indeed. A presence that lives up to the name."
Yet the Command Officer did not yield before that aura.
"Even if Senior once made his name resound across the Four Seas, what can a lone man accomplish inside the Agency Headquarters?"
The words were true. The Command Officer himself was a master who had broken past the wall, and the Agency Headquarters—home to the Sword Family's finest active elite—held many such experts.
"A lone man?"
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom sent the Command Officer a mocking smile.
"Do I look alone to your eyes?"
At his words, figures began appearing one after another along the walls of the Agency Headquarters.
"I'll tell you something."
Every one of them wore the same uniform as Tal-myeong-gwi-geom.
"Trash like you is what I hate most in this world."
And every one of them burned with the same fury in their eyes.
"While we were out there losing eyes, fingers—hell, even hands and feet…"
Some had lost both eyes. Some were missing a right hand. Some had an empty left ankle.
"While we threw ourselves against the enemy to raise the Sword Family's name—"
Every one of them, like Tal-myeong-gwi-geom, had given everything for the Sword Family.
"Trash like you sat inside and treated that name like it was yours to wave around."
The Senate Special Task Force. A company of warriors who had devoted everything to the Sword Family—and who still wished to be of use to it until the end.
"You who even failed the single most important duty of all—protecting the Family Head…"
Their wrath had come for the Agency.