The Birth of the Armryongdae
After Tang Cheonwi left the Tang Clan, Choeun immediately sought out Tang Jo and his group.
“A moment at the Poison Dragon Pavilion.”
She spoke the words as she brushed past them naturally, so that no one nearby would notice.
Tang Jo nodded. He sent a sound transmission to his companions, and they scattered in different directions.
A short while later, the main gate of the Poison Dragon Pavilion opened and Tang Jo stepped inside. His companions arrived after him—only the newly assigned maids. There was no sign of Choeun.
About a quarter of an hour passed before she appeared without warning.
“Everyone in the Tang Clan already knows that my friends and I visited the Poison Dragon Pavilion before. Did we really need to come so secretly?”
Choeun was an assassin—a highly trained expert. Assassination, intelligence gathering, analyzing her targets: she was a master of all of it. She had deliberately summoned them with such caution in order to observe how Tang Jo and his people behaved.
“I wanted to see how much faith you truly have in the Young Master.”
“And did you get a satisfactory result?”
“Even before becoming the Young Master’s people, you acted with considerable caution and made contact with no one.”
“We may belong to the outer hall and stand far from power, but we still have honor.”
“Some among the Tang Clan’s leadership do not want the Young Master building his own force—not even lower-ranked martial artists.”
Tang Jo nodded. Right after they had visited the Poison Dragon Pavilion, both Yuhongak and Hongseojae had reached out to them. They had not met with anyone, of course, but Choeun’s words were true.
“It was only a procedure to check whether anyone’s heart had changed, so please don’t take offense.”
On the way here, she had intended to exclude anyone who showed even the slightest suspicious behavior. But not a single one of them had strayed.
“What business do you have calling us when the Young Master isn’t even here?”
“He has received the Clan Head’s approval to establish the unit.”
“Is that true?”
They stirred and murmured among themselves. For the Young Master to found a unit required great merit. If he had received permission the moment he returned from his outing, did that mean he had already achieved something?
“Was the rumor true that the Young Master quelled the epidemic in Jamun Village?”
“Yes. He even brought the village chief’s grandson here.”
“Oh! Tang Mansong’s grandson.”
Among the side branches, Tang Mansong was a man of considerable influence—and an idol to the lower-ranked martial artists. He had been the first side-branch member ever to become master of Biwon Forest.
“Has Tang Mansong also sided with the Young Master, then?”
“According to Young Master Tang Saeng, the entire Jamun Village has taken the Young Master’s side.”
Tang Mansong and Jamun Village had never supported anyone. They were the very definition of neutrality. Hearing that such a man had chosen the Young Master only made him seem all the more remarkable.
“What an extraordinary story.”
“Is it really all right to tell us this?”
“Once this fact spreads, the checks against him will grow severe.”
“If I know it, everyone will know it soon enough. More importantly—take this secret manual.”
Choeun drew a single book from her robes and held it out.
“What kind of secret manual is this?”
“It is the mental cultivation method you will all be learning from now on.”
“A mental method!?”
The mere mention of a mental cultivation method left every one of them astonished. Side-branch members—especially lower-ranked warriors—learned only the Tang Clan’s basic mental methods. What they thirsted for most was something higher. Seeing how confidently she offered it, the method had to be rather good, didn’t it?
Just as Tang Jo was about to open the book, Choeun’s voice reached them.
“The moment you lay eyes on those formulas, you become members of the Armryongdae.”
“Armryongdae?”
“Is that our unit’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t Dokryongdae suit the Young Master better than Armryongdae?”
“It is the name the Young Master decided upon.”
“If the Young Master decided it, it isn’t for us to argue, but…”
Choeun continued.
“He also warned that if you betray him after receiving martial arts, he will personally annihilate your nine generations.”
They flinched. With the Young Master’s personality, he was more than capable of it. There was the recent Yuhongak incident as well—the attempt by a Yuhongak assassin to kill the Young Master. He had gone straight to the Yuhongak Lord and held him accountable. In the end the Yuhongak Lord himself had stepped forward to execute the traitor, and the lord’s prestige had plummeted to the ground. That alone was enough to show just how vicious the Young Master’s temper could be.
“As the Young Master has kept his promise, I too shall repay him with faith.”
What did it mean that this secret manual now rested in his hands? Hadn’t the Young Master received the Clan Head’s permission and taken it from the library himself—to give to the newly established unit? He had kept every promise he made them. Now it was their turn to offer him their faith in return.
“He said he will check your progress after the Sichuan Gathering, so you must all train hard. That mental method… is far more difficult than you think.”
Choeun’s voice trembled slightly. She, too, had seen the Six Poison Heart Formula. It was greater than anything she had imagined. No—the Young Master had thrown them something truly enormous and left.
Just thinking of those formulas makes my body tremble even now.
It was that tremendous a method.
Tang Jo steeled himself, opened the book, and looked at the contents within.
“……”
“Take a deep breath and read it slowly.”
Despite her advice, Tang Jo’s face flushed red. He was holding his breath as he read the formulas—that was how shocking the content was.
His hands began to shake violently.
“Th-this is—wh-what on earth—!”
Tang Jo could barely keep hold of the Six Poison Heart Formula with his trembling hands.
“Shocking, isn’t it?”
“E-every scrap of common sense I possessed is being destroyed by this content!”
“I thought I was going to faint when I saw it myself.”
In a fever of excitement, Tang Jo read every last page. Then—
Thud.
As if the strength had left his legs, he sank to the floor. His companions picked up the book that had fallen.
“What’s in it that has you looking like that?”
“Is the mental method really that amazing?”
“Is it something like the Ten Thousand Poison Ghost Origin Divine Art or the Heavenly Poison Heart Method that only the main line learns?”
Tang Jo muttered blankly,
“It’s not that…”
When his companions looked at the contents themselves—
“Oh my—holy shit!”
“G-good heavens.”
“What am I looking at right now…?”
Every face wore the same expression: pure, unfiltered shock. Choeun understood them perfectly. She had been exactly the same.
“Now you understand why the Young Master said he would kill you if you betrayed him, don’t you?”
Tang Jo confirmed what he had read with Choeun.
“W-we can really… use poison arts? Even if we aren’t poison people?”
“Yes. This Six Poison Heart Formula is a mental method that allows ordinary people to wield poison arts.”
“Hah!”
A mental method that did not even exist in the Tang Clan. No—the very method the Tang Clan so desperately wished to restore had been handed to them by Young Master Tang Cheonwi himself.
“I-it’s a fortuitous encounter!”
“To think the Young Master would bestow such a treasure upon insignificant people like us!”
“Sob…”
They even shed tears of joy. Their loyalty to the Young Master soared. It was a grace they could never repay even in a lifetime.
They prostrated themselves in the direction the Young Master had gone.
“This Tang Jo shall serve the Young Master with his life.”
It was the birth of the Danghonsa—who would one day be called the Reapers of the Tang Clan.
The Cheongang Clan was located south of Chengdu, in Naksan—where the Min River, the Dadu River, and the Qingyi River, three great waterways, converged into one.
“Cheon! We’re finally in Naksan. As befits a center of trade, it feels completely different from Chengdu, doesn’t it? Look over there—so many huge ships. Those people must all be merchants, right?”
Jegal Gwang’s mouth never stopped moving, his expression bright with excitement.
“You’re giving me a headache. Be quiet.”
“Cheon, that hurts my feelings. We’ve finally reunited after so long, and you’re going to look that uninterested?”
“‘After so long,’ my ass.”
In his previous life, Jegal Gwang had dropped by whenever he pleased. Passing through the area. Spotted some tasty-looking dumplings and brought them over. Checking in case Cheonwi might die of loneliness—and other equally ridiculous excuses. More than anything, looking at the boy as if nothing had happened left a sour taste in his mouth. Because of him, the Jegal Clan had been wiped out. And yet this was the same friend who had still looked after him. Dealing with him felt awkward, so the sharp words came out without thinking.
“Elder Brother, if you keep speaking so thornily to your friends, they’ll all leave you. You might end up alone, so be careful.”
Yuhyeon offered the advice with a perfectly serious face.
“This one’s fine.”
“I heard you’re supposed to treat your precious friends especially well.”
“Who told you that?”
“Mother said so.”
“Mother taught you all sorts of things, didn’t she.”
Jegal Rin watched Tang Cheonwi’s grumbling in silence. Their eyes met.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you can’t do a thing against your little brother.”
“Against this kid? Not true.”
“I can see it. Elder Brother Cheonwi’s energy is especially gentle whenever it turns toward Yuhyeon.”
Jegal Rin smiled softly. At her smile, Tang Cheonwi’s brow furrowed. That Heavenly Eye of hers—the eye that saw through all things under heaven—was thoroughly unpleasant. It felt as if the innermost feelings he kept so carefully hidden had been laid bare.
“It’s because of Mother’s request that he looks after me even more carefully.”
Yuhyeon answered in his place.
“Yuhyeon must feel quite secure, then.”
“Heheh, of course.”
The atmosphere was warm and lively. Tang Cheonwi found a situation like this awkward. Fortunately, the carriage came to a stop.
“Looks like we’ve arrived.”
He stepped out first. Jegal Rin leaned toward Yuhyeon and added one more remark.
“He gets embarrassed by praise, doesn’t he?”
“It seems that way.”
Yuhyeon agreed. The rest of them climbed down from the carriage as well.
“Welcome. We have been waiting for you.”
A boy of roughly the same age clasped his fists in greeting. The name rose in Tang Cheonwi’s mind at once.
Cheongunbi Gang Unso. Not quite one of the Six Dragons and Four Flowers, but a sly bastard with skill that comes close.
This Cheongang Clan, too, was a family entangled in Yuhyeon’s death. The reason he had bothered to come all this way was simple: to snatch away whatever the Cheongang Clan stood to gain through the Sichuan Gathering.
I won’t let the Map of Sealing Ten Thousand Weapons fall into your hands.
One of the Three Great Treasures of Wulin—the Map of Sealing Ten Thousand Weapons. A map that marked the resting places of weapons that still held their spirits. In the jianghu those weapons were known as the Ten Great Heavenly Arms. Because of that map, men had obtained divine weapons and demonic blades alike—and then they had set their sights on the greatest clan under heaven, the Tang Clan. More precisely, they had targeted Yuhyeon’s closest retainers. To kill the greatest martial artist under heaven safely and without cost, you first had to cut off his limbs. In the end the retainers died, his younger brother was left isolated, and fighting alone, he met his death.
His teeth ground together at the mere memory.
Cheongang Clan—you first. I’ll send you all to hell.