Colorless and Odorless
"The enemy is retreating!"
The heavy armored unit of Ja Ae-won that had been holding the alleys like an iron wall began to pull out like a tide going out.
An underworld cadre of the Five Dragons Branch flushed his shaved head a deep, furious red and raised his voice.
"Everyone—chase the enemy down at once—!"
"Wait!"
A hand seized his shoulder.
"What?!"
It was a fellow cadre of the same Five Dragons Branch.
"We drove them off! If we don't pursue now—!"
The one-eyed cadre panted with exhaustion even as he shouted.
"Have you already forgotten the guerrilla fighting they kept up until a moment ago?!"
He lifted a hand and pointed straight ahead.
Where the alley they occupied came to an end, every twisting lane converged on a mid-stream plaza.
"I heard the Eldest Young Master's forward base was set up in that square."
"So? What of it?"
The bald cadre snapped, yet still forced himself to hear his one-eyed colleague out.
That colleague was a veteran of the northern war; he had lost an eye on the battlefield. In exchange he knew, at least in outline, something of the tactics of real war.
"Picture crossbows posted on every rooftop of the buildings around that plaza…"
Violet signal fireworks stitched the sky and painted the underworld cadre's ashen face with purple light.
"If we push into that square…!"
"Those heavy infantry from a moment ago will cut off our line of retreat."
And then every last one of them would be pinned, without a scrap of cover, by dozens or hundreds of arrows in the open plaza.
"…Damn it!"
The moment the men of the Five Dragons Branch halted in the alley, other underworld fighters who had been waiting for their chance behind them came surging up in a rush.
Their movement was anything but ordinary; every one of them was clearly a black-path martial artist.
"Looks like you're all worn out!"
At the openly mocking voice the bald cadre of the Five Dragons Branch twisted his face.
"Ma Family's Great Forest!"
"You did fine holding those heavy infantry at bay up front!"
A cadre of the Ma Family's Great Forest clapped them on the shoulders as he pushed past, waving a hand.
"So leave the rest to the elites of the Ma Family's Great Forest!"
They watched his snickering back—and the backs of the black-path martial artists of the Ma Family's Great Forest—exchange a meaningful glance, and simply let them go.
And yet.
They waited a long while, but the crossfire of arrows they had expected never came. Neither did the enemy heavy infantry appear to seal the retreat.
"The honor of seizing the central plaza belongs to the Ma Family's Great Forest!"
Instead there was only the triumphant shout of the Ma Family cadre and the answering cheers of his men.
"…Did the enemy truly all pull back?"
The one-eyed cadre of the Five Dragons Branch who had stopped the advance wore a doubtful look.
"Does that mean they abandoned the mid-stream? That they've decided to make their stand upstream?"
His remaining eye was full of confusion he could not resolve.
"No—no. It's still too soon to say they've given up the mid-stream—!"
"Ah, fuck it!"
The short-tempered bald cadre bellowed at his subordinates.
"Boys! We go straight through the plaza and charge the enemy catapult positions!"
The enemy catapults in the mid-stream were still raining wide-area fire across the entire valley. With the enemy troops withdrawn, those positions were nothing but ripe prey.
"Run! Run!"
The two cadres poured internal qi into their sprint; their men wrung out every last scrap of strength and pounded after them.
"No—fuck…!"
Even so.
The mouth of the alley near the catapult positions was already thronged with fighters from other organizations who had arrived first.
"Fuck, these bastards are fast as hell."
It looked as though they had already finished the occupation. The great catapults visible between the alleys had gone still.
For all that, there were no cheers. An eerie silence hung over everything—yet the bald cadre, who had run until his brain was starved of air, had no room left to notice the strangeness.
"Hey!"
He slapped the shoulder of a man from another outfit at the very rear.
"You lot—which faction—"
Even as he tried to steady his ragged breathing and snap the question, his voice dwindled toward the end.
"Guh—, guh—."
The other fighter whose shoulder he had struck staggered, making a strange sound.
"Uh…?"
When the bald cadre saw the man's face he recoiled without thinking.
"Uh? Uh?"
"…What's wro—?"
His subordinates, who had been gasping as if their lungs would burst from chasing cadres who ran on internal energy, fixed their eyes on the stranger's face.
"Wh-what the hell is that?!"
"I-I don't know! How would I know?!"
The man's face was so thickly covered in unrecognizable blisters that it was hard to tell who he had been.
"Guh—, guh—."
As though every breath hurt, he clawed at his own throat with his nails. The swollen white blisters burst one after another, spilling yellow pus and fluid.
"Kgh, kuh—!"
He had gouged his neck so savagely that when he lifted both hands—smeared with his own blood and flesh—and staggered toward the men of the Five Dragons Branch, he croaked,
"C-can't… breathe…!"
"H-help—!"
"F-fuck?!"
The bald cadre kicked the man square in the chest on pure reflex. The other fighter tumbled backward, then thrashed and twisted in convulsions—
"Guh, guh—."
"Ghk, ghk."
—until at last his breathing stopped.
"Couldn't breathe? What the hell?! Fuck!"
His shaking gaze turned deeper into the alley.
"What in the world—?!"
He realized that every fighter from the other organizations who had seemed to be standing stupidly in the alley was already dead on his feet.
…
From a distance they had looked as if they had climbed the catapults to boast of their exploits to the surroundings. Now they looked entirely different.
Every one of them had been clinging desperately to the tall machines, clawing their way upward—exactly the way drowning men thrash higher and higher for air.
"Th-those guys… are they all dead—?"
One of the subordinates sidled up to the bald cadre, who stood frozen like ice, and asked quietly.
"…Yeah. Fuck."
He scratched his shaved head roughly as he answered.
"Don't know what it is, but these bastards are all dead—"
When he turned to look at his subordinate, his eyes flew wide as if they would tear.
Even in the alley dark, the eyesight of a man who possessed internal qi could see that the subordinate's face had flushed a deep, raw red—
"Y-you…?"
—and that tiny blisters were already beginning to swell, one after another, across the skin, with terrible clarity.
"What's wrong, sir…?"
The subordinate asked with a blank expression, then suddenly coughed.
"Huh? Why's my throat suddenly…?"
At once the other men around them began coughing in ragged bursts as well.
"I—breathing… hard to breathe—"
"Kelk, kelk—!"
The one-eyed cadre who had been examining the already-dead bodies of the other fighters turned at the sound of coughing, looked at his men, and ground his teeth.
"This is…!"
Had he realized something?
[Run. Right now!]
Leaving only that brief sound transmission, the one-eyed cadre spun and sprinted with everything he had, never once looking back.
"Where do you think you're going alone?!"
There was no answer.
"H-help…"
A subordinate clutched the collar of the bald cadre who had been left behind.
"C-can't breathe—, guh—."
That distinctive gurgling sound. There was no way he could already have forgotten hearing it from the other organization's man only moments before.
"Fuck!"
He shook the hand off on pure reflex and looked around.
"Guh, guh."
Without exception his men were staggering and gurgling, and without exception every patch of exposed skin was covered in blisters.
"Fuck, fuck!"
He backed away from them, then spun and ran with everything he had.
Catapult position, underground shelter.
The men of First Battery who had hidden themselves in the underground shelter were unharmed.
"…The scratching on the door, the voices begging us to open it from above—they've stopped."
At the report of the subordinate who had been watching the firmly sealed hatch at the top of the ladder, the battery captain gave a heavy nod.
"Understood."
The subordinate rolled his eyes uneasily, staring again and again at the sealed door as he asked,
"…Are the enemies all dead?"
"At least everyone near here is certainly dead."
Each battery had drawn the enemy as deep as possible, buying time until the very last possible moment. Then they had withdrawn into the underground shelters prepared in advance.
"…"
"This door is safe, right?"
At the subordinate who could not stop asking questions out of fear, the battery captain sighed and waved a hand.
"I'll keep watch here. You go inside and rest."
"Y-yes. Thank you…!"
The battery captain, axe in hand, sat with a heavy expression on a supply crate near the ladder. His gaze rose to the firmly sealed hatch above him.
Surely hell itself was unfolding up there.
They had lured the enemy deep and won a great victory of spectacular merit. Yet no cheers rose in the underground shelter—only a silence thick with anxiety and dread.
If anyone so much as coughed from the dust piled underground, everyone started as if in a fit.
The battery captain gripped his axe more tightly as sweat made the haft keep slipping in his palm, and he repeated the name of the poison that had turned the surface into a living hell.
…Faceless Lifeless.
"Faceless Lifeless, you said?"
The bald cadre of the Five Dragons Branch, sprinting full-out beside the one-eyed cadre, demanded again.
[Use sound transmission! Conserve your breath!]
The bald cadre's sound-transmission skill was too crude to use while employing movement techniques; he failed several times before finally managing to send a message.
[What in the hell is Faceless Lifeless?]
[A poison. A mass-killing weapon of the Sichuan Tang Family.]
At those words the bald cadre shook his head as if he could not believe it.
[What kind of poison has no color and no smell—]
[Only once.]
His one-eyed colleague's transmission cut him off.
[I saw it used on a northern tribes' encampment during the northern war.]
What lived in his colleague's one remaining eye was unmistakably the color of vivid terror.
[Blisters cover the whole body so that even a parent cannot recognize the face—hence Faceless. And like a fish hauled onto land, the victim always dies of suffocation—hence Lifeless.]
The bald cadre's face went deathly pale.
The one-eyed cadre shuddered. The blisters swelling on his subordinates' faces and that gurgling sound overlaid themselves on the scene he had witnessed on that battlefield, and gooseflesh rose on his skin.
[C-can we live? Can we survive this?]
Every alley and side path they raced down was packed with corpses.
[…Don't draw too deep a breath. As long as internal qi still flows through the body, you can hold out.]
At that the bald cadre's face twisted in sheer disbelief.
[Internal qi has to keep circulating, yet you tell me to reduce my breathing…?]
For true qi to flow without pause through the body, steady breathing was essential. Telling someone to circulate internal energy while cutting their breath was no different from telling them to breathe underwater.
[…That's all the countermeasure I know.]
"Fuck…!"
From where, and how far, had they sown the poison?
As he ran, the bald cadre swept every direction with eyes drowned in fear—but they had no way to detect a poison that was colorless and odorless.
Was the itch he felt only the cold sweat drying on his skin? Or were blisters rising from the poison?
Was the difficulty of breathing only because he was conserving air? Or was it the onset of the toxin?
Everywhere lay the unrecognizable corpses of underworld fighters—and nothing else.
"Fuck!"
The wind blowing down from the upper valley felt as if it were closing around his throat.
[There! The mid-stream plaza!]
The place the one-eyed cadre pointed to was the mid-stream plaza they had already passed through once. Without looking back he plunged into it first.
[The Ma Family's Great Forest boys…?!]
The bald cadre who followed him into the plaza lost his words.
Corpses littered every corner of the square. The chaos that had been the heart of the battlefield only moments earlier was now filled with a silence that wore the face of death.
The Ma Family's Great Forest, who had been cheering over their capture of the enemy forward base, had already been wiped out to the last man.
"N-no. That's impossible. These were the elites of the Ma Family's Great Forest! Every one of them was a martial artist…!"
The bald cadre clutched his head and cried out in a raw voice.
"We're still alive—how could the martial artists of the Ma Family's Great Forest all fall to poison at once…?!"
The one-eyed cadre, examining the traces on the bodies, shook his head.
[They were poisoned by Faceless Lifeless—but the poison did not kill them.]
"What…?"
The bald cadre asked again.
"What do you mean by—?"
His words never finished.
Charrreung.
Charr-rr-rr-reung.
The sound of iron chains scraping across the ground from the far side shattered the silence of the plaza.
[…Every one of them died to hidden weapons.]
The instant his one-eyed colleague's transmission ended, figures in pitch-black clothing emerged from every corner of the plaza.
Shhhik—, shhhik—.
There was no way to make out their faces. Every last one of them wore a black poison-filter mask pulled over their features.
Shhhik—, shhhik—.
The sound of their breathing through the masks, and the way they stood as still as statues, was enough to freeze the blood.
And then.
Charrreung.
Charr-rr-reung.
Dragging the long chains of a pair of sickles across the ground, the last figure stepped into view.
"The head collector of the Tea Horse Road…!"
He wore a poison-filter mask as well—yet no one needed to see his face to know him.
The poison of the Sichuan Tang Family.
The hidden weapons that had annihilated the black-path martial artists of the Ma Family's Great Forest.
And the twin chain-sickles.
Even a cadre of Luoyang's black-path factions could not fail to recognize the name.
Tang Baek.
The Reaper.