Give the Shoulder, Take the Arm
The instant something that could loosely be called agreement left Dang Giyeong's lips, I threw myself straight at the man.
"Drop dead!"
The moment I pulled my strength up to full, that familiar ominous aura came blooming to life in both my hands.
I charged him with both palms brimming with poison qi, and the man frantically wrenched his sword free of the scabbard he'd had dangling at his waist.
Whoosh—
He slashed his blade diagonally down at me as I barreled in like a boar charging a beacon fire, and the air tore apart with a shriek of wind.
I jammed to a desperate halt and snapped my upper body backward, barely slipping out of the blade's arc.
"Khh... you cursed mongrel!"
The man spat out curses in outrage at how nimbly I'd slipped free of his sword's path, while I waited for his swing to finish and raked my right hand toward his face like a cat unsheathing its claws.
Stunned by the poison qi dripping from my incoming hand, he stumbled backward and kicked his own chair up at me.
CRACK—
When I swatted the flying chair aside with my bare hand, it splintered like wood left out to rot for a decade, tumbling across the floor split clean in half...
"Oooh..."
Doing my best to ignore Dang Giyeong's admiring noises behind me, I bent my knees and sprang at the man again.
"Hyaah!"
He answered with a ringing battle cry, bringing the sword he'd hoisted overhead crashing down toward me.
I rolled sideways to duck beneath the descending blade and came back up on my feet.
"Have you no dignity?!"
The man bellowed at the sight of me escaping certain death with a Lazy Donkey Roll, and I flashed him my middle finger and shouted right back.
"Bite me!"
Inwardly, I kept circling one thought — one graze is all it takes, just one touch and I win — as I hunted for my opening.
Up on the inn's second floor, the fight was well and truly underway: one chair already smashed to splinters and rolling across the boards, several tables flipped outright...
All that remained in the room were two men glaring at each other with murder in their eyes, a young man and woman fretting helplessly at the edge of it, and one slit-eyed fellow spectating the whole thing like it was excellent entertainment.
"Today I'll teach you some manners!"
The man drew his right foot back, sank into a crouch, dragged his sword hand down to his hip — then thrust the blade at me with a roar.
First Form: Chasing Wind, Piercing the Heavens
Watching a man actually announce his own technique out loud, I thought for all of a heartbeat, Huh. So there really are idiots out there who pull that kind of dumb shit.
Fwish—
A prickle of dread shot down my spine and I yanked my left shoulder back just in time — a razor-sharp crack split the air, and everything standing in a straight line from the man's swordpoint was punched clean through.
Ah, dammit... shit.
One heartbeat slower, and one of my shoulders would have sprouted a nice breezy hole. Swearing under my breath, I heaved the table beside me at the man and scrambled back to open up the distance.
Somewhere along the way, Dang Giyeong, who'd been standing behind me, had drifted far out of range to enjoy the show, while the two Qingcheng Taoists stamped their feet in mounting panic as the situation spiraled...
"Senior brother! Surely that's enough—"
"Silence!"
Enraged out of his mind that a brat who looked barely fifteen or sixteen kept dancing neatly out of his blade's reach, his face flushed redder than a boiled sweet potato, the man took up his stance once more.
I was still recalling that earlier strike, half-decided I'd roll again if it came to it, when—
I let out a long sigh inside and thought, Ugh... screw it. Let's just eat one hit on the shoulder.
Outside of that first swipe, I'd done nothing but run and dodge, and it was starting to grate on my nerves. So I made up my mind: give him the shoulder, and get my hand into that damn bastard's body one way or another.
It only needs to land once, anyway...
The instant that thought settled, the man's shout rang out and the sword strike came screaming in again.
And at that very moment, I did the opposite of what he expected: I shoved my left shoulder straight into the line of his thrust and launched myself forward.
"!!!!!"
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. I felt his blade bite in below my collarbone and drove myself even deeper onto it — and through that haze I caught sight of the man's face going slack with panic as he watched me charge in, flashed a wide grin, and shot my hand straight for his sword-gripping right one.
"Khh..."
Seeing me barrel toward him with no care for my own body, he panicked and hastily released his grip on the sword — but by then the poison qi coiling in my hand had already opened a shallow gash along his arm...
"Senior brother!!!"
The man clutched his wounded forearm with his free hand, trembling as the venom spread through him in the space of a breath, and crumpled to one knee. At the sight of him collapsing, the Qingcheng warriors rushed over screaming.
"Haagh... hnn... gkk"
The vicious poison had flooded him far too fast; the man sank to the floor and began to convulse, choking on his own throat.
"Hrk..."
Pwah—
He frantically spun up his breathing art to drive the poison out, but the venom gnawing through him was far beyond any hope of expulsion — and the blood kept coming up with every cough, again and again.
"Senior brother!!! Stay with me!!!"
The poison had swallowed him whole in the space of a moment — burst capillaries reddening his eyes, blood spilling from his lips, mottled bruises crawling up across his skin. The female Taoist of Qingcheng screamed her heart out at the sight of her senior brother...
Thud—
Her desperation came to nothing. The man pitched forward.
"J-Junior sister..."
With that final word, his breath simply stopped. He died eyes bulging wide and face contorted by an agony that had not relented until the very last instant, and crumpled where he stood.
"Y-You monster!"
Furious at the death of the senior brother he had shared nearly half a lifetime of hardship with, the young male Taoist of Qingcheng let out a roar and ripped his sword from its sheath—
"I believe we'll stop here."
Dang Giyeong, who had spent the entire affair as a spectator, was already shuffling over, planting himself between Dang Muyeong and the Qingcheng Taoist and cutting off his path.
I'd wrenched the blade out from under my collarbone and was pressing on the wound to staunch the bleeding, breath coming ragged. Watching Dang Giyeong only now get around to damage control, I muttered:
"That's some lightning-fast intervention..."
Dang Giyeong glanced back at me with an easy grin.
"Your battle was simply too fierce, Young Master — I couldn't find so much as a gap to slip into."
"You son of a bitch..."
Brushing off the insult without a flicker, Dang Giyeong addressed the Taoist still trembling with his sword in hand.
"Well... that man was merely reaping the karma of a tongue that wagged where it should not have. If you take this any further, matters will grow far too large to contain — could you truly bear the consequences?"
The answer tore out of the Taoist, choked with grief and rage.
"You murder my senior brother, and now you tell me it ends here?"
Tears streamed down his face as he screamed. Dang Giyeong's smile never so much as shifted.
"If this grows any larger, I'm afraid no one will be able to sweep up the pieces. And if you truly must have your revenge... then it would have to be against me, rather than a Young Master with a hole in his shoulder—"
Dang Giyeong let the words trail off, side-eyeing the man, then continued with a sickly sweet smile.
"And odds are, you'd be meeting a dog's death yourself, no?"
The young Taoist of Qingcheng dropped his head, sheathed his sword, and stood there shaking with both fists clenched tight, sobbing between breaths.
"Junior sister... we must settle senior brother's remains and return to Qingcheng. Go and send word by pigeon. I will stay here and watch over his body..."
As he consoled his wailing junior sister in a hollow voice, Dang Giyeong slipped in a remark:
"There is still poison qi lingering in the remains — touch them carelessly and you'll be holding a second funeral right on the heels of the first. Just send your pigeon and return to Qingcheng. We will see to the body for now."
Dang Giyeong delivered that cruel message — best not to lay so much as a finger on their own senior brother's corpse — with a warm, pleasant smile. The Qingcheng Taoists choked on it, but there was nothing to be done; they swallowed their grief and left the inn.
"Well, that seems to be more or less wrapped up. How does the injured shoulder fare, Young Master?"
Answering that permanently smiling face with a vague "it's fine," I thought to myself: Yep. He's a villain, all right. Even if he isn't some hired assassin, this guy is definitely going to do something someday. Just from the way he talks — his empathy is straight-up shattered. A piece of work like that would've been running wild in the Demon Cult. Why is he even in the Dang Clan...
Whether he sensed any of that or not—
Dang Giyeong told me he'd "bring people over from the clan estate as quickly as possible," and then he was gone, vanished like the wind.
And there I was, left stranded in the wrecked inn with the corpse of a Qingcheng Taoist whose name I didn't even know.
"Ha... what a mess."
With a short groan, I dragged myself up, shuffled over to one of the inn's pillars, and slid down to sit against it.
Only now did the tension begin to bleed out of me. Letting the cool breeze drift in through the doorway, I murmured:
"It's been a while since I felt like this. Since the last time something sharp got stuck in me..."
The innkeeper had told Jeomsoi to go up and take a look, now that things upstairs seemed mostly settled — so up she'd come trembling like a leaf, only to find Dang Muyeong painted head to toe in blood, propped against a pillar and snickering to himself. Petrified, she turned around and bolted straight back down the stairs.
I was savoring the breeze with my eyes closed when I sensed someone approaching. Opening them, I found a face I knew all too well standing before me, scowling darkly, a handful of warriors at his back.
"Ah... long time no see, Hall Master."
The Medicine Hall Master answered by knocking me upside the head.
"You little wretch! Do thorns sprout in that mouth of yours the moment you're not busy stirring up trouble?!"
Smacked out of nowhere, I put on my best aggrieved face.
"Hey... this whole thing had its reasons, alright."
"A death duel with a Qingcheng swordsman in broad daylight — if you had no reason for it, that would be the bigger outrage!"
I opened my mouth to protest at the tongue-clicking Hall Master—
"Offer up that shoulder. They tell me you planted yourself on his blade all by yourself, Muyeong?"
Another smack to the head, and I grumbled my shoulder out toward him.
"This shoulder doesn't get used for a while. None at all."
Snippy as the words were, worry leaked through them anyway. I snorted a laugh.
"Yeah... I'll be careful."
"Something funny?"
"I wasn't laughing?"
While the Hall Master and I bickered, Dang Giyeong came back up to the inn's second floor.
"And what in blazes were you doing that took this long?!"
The sight of that grinning face set off the Hall Master's bellows, but Dang Giyeong answered without letting the smile slip for an instant.
"Apologies for the delay — I was settling compensation for everything we broke."
No one is ever fooled by that face, and the Medicine Hall Master was no exception. He eyed Dang Giyeong with open displeasure.
"The poison's all been drawn out of that corpse now. Salt it down and send it off to Qingcheng."
"Understood."
Salt-preserve the corpse. That settled it — common sense around here was, without question, a few degrees off. And right then, the Hall Master's muttering reached my ears.
"Still... when the Clan Head hears word of this, he's going to turn the whole house over. What am I to do with that boy..."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
At my question, the Hall Master scratched vigorously at his head.
"I heard from that Giyeong scamp what the Qingcheng bastard said to you. The man deserved to die, no question about it — that's not the problem. The problem is that once the Clan Head hears those words, I fear he'll smash down the very gates of the Qingcheng Sect and charge right in..."
"Aw, come on. Father wouldn't actually go that far..."
In that moment, I had no way of knowing just how hard those words had stomped on the Clan Head's reverse scale.