Your Fault Is Your Fault, and Mine Is Yours Too
The plain truth was that Dang Giyeong remained a suspicious, dangerous bastard.
Setting aside the fact that if Dang Mulin and I both died, he would be the leading candidate for Young Clan Head...
It's strange how nothing but trouble follows whenever this man is around...
I stared at him as he stood there grinning, having just triggered yet another trap.
Even if what happened at Cheongseong was a coincidence, there's still far too much about the hermitage incident that doesn't add up.
"Young Master, why are you looking at me like that?"
But if he'd orchestrated all of it, that doesn't quite fit either...
"Young Master...? You're not seriously thinking of abandoning me here, are you?"
Is he simply an innocent man with catastrophically bad luck and a face that looks guilty as sin?
"Young Master? I... if you really leave me behind, I'm going to bawl right here...? Young Master?"
The more I turned it over, the more hopelessly tangled it became. With no conclusion in sight, I made up my mind.
Right... this should work.
"Young Master?"
"I'm going to scout around on my own for a bit. Wait here for me, would you?"
"Huh?"
Dang Giyeong asked, his beady little eyes stretched as wide as they would go.
"Y-you're not actually going to abandon me, are you?"
His voice rang out and echoed through the empty air. I rested my hands on my hips and answered.
"It's not that. You're still a patient, so rest here. I'll go find a safe zone and come back for you, so just stand there counting sheep in your head. Can you manage that?"
"No, I can't!"
"Then I'm off! Move so much as one step from that spot and I really will bolt and leave you."
"Young Master!!!!!"
Leaving him behind — arms outstretched toward me, shouting like a man desperately calling after someone marching off to war — I went on my way.
"Huh... there's no door at all?"
After walking the wall alone for a long, long while, I had arrived at a simple conclusion: there was no door. Whether or not the two entrances had ever been genuine, the only ground I could cover inside the square-shaped tomb traced three of its four sides, like a squared-off U.
"So there's definitely a door on that side... which leaves the question of how we're supposed to get in."
With no solution presenting itself, I sat leaning against the wall, racking my brain. Then—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
After rapping on the wall several times—
Fwoooosh- tik... tik-tik-tik-
I batted aside the incoming crossbow bolt and muttered.
"I wonder if it'd break if I hit it hard? Dang Yun would be perfect for this sort of thing..."
With that, I checked and rechecked the spot I intended to strike.
"Hyaap!!!!!"
WHAM-
I drove my fist into the wall. The impact rolled out in every direction like a clap of thunder...
"Tsk... it cracked, but it didn't break. Am I going to have to pound this thing into pieces?"
Even as I muttered, a strange sound began behind my back.
Skreeeech... skreech-
It was as if a dozen-odd people were raking their fingernails down a school chalkboard. I turned around.
"What is that noise..."
The moment the words left my mouth—
Fwooooooooooosh-
Tens? Hundreds? No... a rain of what looked like a good several thousand crossbow bolts came pouring down on me.
"Aaagh! Fuck!"
The deluge seemed to carry the designer's vicious heart straight through it: anyone who dares break through this wall will be turned into a honeycomb. Wide-eyed with horror, I thrust my right hand out in front of me.
αἱματεκχυσία, ας, ἡ μεσότοιχον, ου, τό
The moment sounds utterly alien to the Central Plains spilled from my mouth, dark-crimson blood gushed from my hand and spread over me in a hemispherical dome.
Ratatatatatat-
How much time had passed...
Long after the rain of arrows had stopped, I stood there with my hand still outstretched. When no further sound came—
"Hahh... you scared me. That was fucked up. Genuinely fucked up."
Only then did I lower the barrier, gather the spilled blood into a marble, pop it into my mouth, and mutter.
"Don't tell me there are still crossbows left in there...?"
To settle the question, I gave the wall another light tap—
Fweee-
Another bolt came flying at me, and I groaned.
"The arrows are infinite? Then breaking through the wall is out of the question..."
Having concluded that there was no punching through a wall while deflecting an endless stream of bolts, I scratched my head for a moment—
"Huh?"
A thought struck me out of nowhere, and I sprinted back the way I had come. The road back was carpeted with bolts, bristling from the walls or lying scattered across the floor...
He'd better not have been turned into a pincushion.
Half worried about the fool I'd left behind, I ran until the soles of my feet burned. Then, after a good long stretch—
"Young Master! This one wasn't me, I swear!"
Far ahead, Dang Giyeong came into view, waving at me and protesting his innocence. At the sight of him, I let out a deep breath of relief.
"What on earth did you touch this time to make arrows come pouring down like that!"
I shouted it, then watched him spend a long while spitting out grievances about how none of it had been his doing.
"Look, I'll believe you. Let's just go together."
"I'm telling you, it really wasn't me!"
"I said I believe you. Just walk with me toward the other side."
They say a person's true nature comes out when they're cornered. Watching his slit-eyed mastermind persona crack at the seams, I shook my head and started walking.
"It really wasn't me..."
"Can you quit whining already and just follow me?"
Dragging along the man still grumbling at my back, we walked a long way in the direction opposite to the one I'd explored. Then—
Shaaaaaaa-
A waterfall appeared.
"A water...fall?"
"A waterfall of mercury. They said Qin Shi Huang's might reached every corner of the world — I suppose that was no exaggeration."
The mercury fell from so high that even with my head bent all the way back, I couldn't make out where it began. I laughed in sheer disbelief.
"Even for a game, this is too much... they built a perpetual motion machine?"
"Pardon? What on earth does that mean?"
"I'm saying it makes no sense for that waterfall to have been falling all on its own for all these centuries."
"Well... if you build it well enough, isn't that exactly what happens?"
Facepalming at Giyeong's total incomprehension, I said,
"No... ha... whatever... never mind. I shouldn't have brought it up."
"Why are you looking at me like that!"
In any case, the stream of mercury pouring off the waterfall flowed on like a river and slipped beneath the wall. Watching it—
"There's no way in over there at all. Should we just dive under and follow it instead?"
Giyeong went white as a sheet and cried out.
"What kind of lunacy is that? Maybe not you, Young Master, but I would absolutely die!"
"You're a Dang too. Poison like that is something you overcome with grit and stubbornness."
"If grit solved everything, I'd have reached the Transcendent Realm long ago, wouldn't I?"
"Fine. Then do you have another way in?"
The young man was being awfully precious about his body. I asked him with the expression of a man deeply unimpressed—
"Hmm... how about breaking through the wall instead?"
"And get another rain of arrows for our trouble?"
"Couldn't we smash through and then sprint behind the wall before the arrows arrive?"
"And you're confident you can break it in a single blow?"
"How would I possibly do that? Naturally, you would be the one breaking it, Young Master."
"I tried. Didn't work."
"What?"
Giyeong stared back at me with a perfectly blank face, so I kindly explained it again.
"I took a swing at it earlier. All it did was wet itself a little. That wall is a great deal tougher than it looks."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm saying the wall is too tough to break."
"Not that. The thing you said before that."
"The part where I said I took a swing at it?"
"Yes... which means the crossbow barrage earlier was your fault, Young Master?"
"Ah....."
Having pinned it all on Giyeong so neatly earlier, only to incriminate myself with my own mouth, I slowly averted my gaze.
"....."
His silence coaxed me into sneaking another glance at him. He was staring at me with the face of a mastermind one hair's breadth from going on a rampage.
"A-anyway, the question right now is how we get inside. Let's focus on that first."
"........."
"What are you looking at! Stop looking!"
I shouted at him, shameless to the last. Giyeong heaved a sigh deep enough to cave in the ground and spoke.
"Very well... then how about throwing me over the wall? Launch me high enough that I never touch it, and then you dive in through the mercury, Young Master. Wouldn't that work?"
"And what if there's something waiting on the other side of that wall?"
"There's no other way to speak of, so you may as well take the gamble."
"What a brainless, half-witted plan."
My memory was quite clear that the truly dangerous things began from inside the outer wall onward. And yet—
"Let's do it right now!"
The truth was that there was no other option, so before the words had even finished leaving my mouth, I seized Giyeong by the scruff of the neck and hurled him skyward.
"Hnngh!!!!!"
"Wait, Young Master, I haven't steeled myself ye—!!!!!"
I watched him shoot upward, his scream cut off halfway, on his way to becoming a star in the heavens. Then—
THUD-
Only after something struck the ground did I dive into the silver river beside me.
SPLASH-
"Pwah... whoa, the mercury's colder than I expected."
I passed beneath the wall, surfaced for air, and looked around. There stood Dang Giyeong in a textbook superhero landing.
The problem was his left leg — planted on the ground, knee bent, holding the pose with perfect composure.
"Hey! Your... your ankle—"
His left ankle was bent at a right angle, and he was still standing there, ramrod straight. I rushed over to him.
"I can't walk on this?"
It must have hurt far more than he let on — a tear was glistening at the corner of his eye. I had no choice but to press a hand to my forehead.
"You are unbelievable... you trip every trap in existence, demand to be thrown with total confidence, and then shatter your ankle. What's next, taking a sword for me?"
"Oh, come now. If I ever do take a sword, I'm sure it will be in the course of saving your life, Young Master."
"Drop dead. But seriously — you really can't walk?"
"I'll limp a little, but it's not as though I can't walk at all."
"Good. Then quit the theatrics and let's move. Something about this place feels wrong."
I was urging him along, a bad premonition crawling up my spine, when—
Thud. Thud.
Footsteps drifted in from somewhere...
"Young Master, I believe we've run into Dang Jihyeon's group?"
Thud thud thud thud thud-
"Hey... since when do they—"
Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud-
"There were dozens of them... fuck, RUN!"
"What? I can't run, I—"
As the owners of those footsteps came into view in the distance, I looked at Giyeong — clutching his own ankle, gazing up at me with the most pitiful expression imaginable—
Ha... unbelievable.
I deliberated for all of a second, then tucked him under my arm once more and bolted for our lives. This time he rode head-first, facing backward, and the moment I hoisted him into place he looked behind us and screamed in horror.
"Young Master! What... what is that!"
But I had no attention to spare for an answer—
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-
The things that had been walking began to run.