The Ones Trapped with Me
The disguised escort convoy drew steadily closer.
Clomp…… clomp……
Clatter…… clatter……
At a glance, the men leading the horses looked worn down by a hard escort run. Shoulders slumped, heads hanging, boots nearly falling apart as they dragged their feet across the ground.
But…… something was off.
Gwak Yeon stepped forward, spreading his vampire senses ahead of them.
Clomp.
He took one step and called out.
“Hold a moment.”
The man at the front lifted his head without a word. Pale-faced, he simply stared at Gwak Yeon.
“Are you by chance an escort bound for Beijing?”
A nod.
“Are you the one in charge here?”
A nod.
“I only asked because I wondered if you might have taken a wrong turn.”
“……What of it.”
The man’s voice cracked and rasped as he finally spoke.
“This bamboo grove is larger than it looks. Even from that hilltop the end was nowhere in sight. Night travel through it won’t be easy.”
“……”
“And if you’ll forgive the presumption—this is where we’ve made camp. You seem to have quite a few people. If you mean to rest, it would be less trouble for both sides if you unpacked on the far side over there.”
“……Mm.”
“There’s heavy fog. Do you truly mean to push straight through the bamboo at this hour?”
“……Mind your own business.”
With that, the man led the column toward the forest.
A fog-shrouded bamboo grove.
It was called a forest, yet the stalks grew so thick and tall that even a man on horseback could not see the tops. Crossing it at night would be no small hardship.
Clomp…… clomp……
Clatter…… clatter……
Was it his imagination?
The lead man had seemed to head straight toward them, then subtly changed direction. The moment he stepped between the foremost bamboo stalks, Gwak Yeon’s voice struck him from behind.
“One more thing.”
“If you’re from the Yuandan Escort Agency, didn’t we pass each other at a post station a week ago?”
“……Seems we might have.”
Even though Gwak Yeon had deliberately lied, the man nodded. He glanced back and asked,
“……Do you need someone to talk to?”
His gaze flicked in an instant over Gwak Yeon’s hand resting on the sword at his waist and the fully armed men behind him.
Gwak Yeon caught it, shrugged, and answered,
“My apologies. Continue on your way.”
The lead man turned his head again, and the column slowly entered the bamboo forest.
Clomp…… clomp……
Clatter…… clatter……
How much time passed?
The sounds of their movement faded beyond the fog-choked grove, and silence settled over everything.
“……Are they gone?”
“What the hell were those people?”
“Whew.”
“Gonna have some restless dreams tonight.”
The merchant group’s drivers and porters let out long breaths. Gwak Yeon raised one hand for attention, looked them over, and spoke in a quiet voice.
“Everyone, listen carefully from this moment on.”
He glanced between Hwang Pil and Ju Hwa-jeong. Both nodded as if sharing the same thought. Confirmed, Gwak Yeon continued.
“Put out the campfires and lie down at once. Pretend to sleep.”
“Pretend to sleep?”
“They will come back.”
Ju Hwa-jeong answered the question that rose from someone.
What she said next was shocking.
“Right now they’re hiding beyond that bamboo grove, waiting for us to fall asleep.”
“………!!!”
“………!!!”
“………!!!”
A small stir rose at her words, but Hwang Pil quickly quieted it. After that, Gwak Yeon prepared for the fight to come alongside him.
“These are no ordinary bandits or thieves.”
“I thought the same.”
“Do you have any countermeasures ready for a rain of arrows?”
“We have a fair number of high-grade iron umbrellas. And every one of those wagons is reinforced with iron plating—sturdy construction. If we just pull the horses back and tie them, we can put them to use right now.”
“Good. Then—”
The preparations were set.
A nod.
Then the camp began to settle for the night with almost exaggerated bustle.
“Heoksijo.”
“Got it—! Preparing—!”
Heoksijo, the leather pouch of throwing knives from Ha Mu-won hanging around its neck, rose into the night sky somewhere. Campfires were extinguished, wagons and carts shifted into position, and the group exchanged silent signals with their eyes.
Thus the previous night’s campsite was recreated.
“………”
“………”
“………”
Anyone looking would have seen a party exhausted from a long journey, finally ending their day.
Snooore—
Whether real or feigned, Cheon Gang’s snoring rolled out across the quiet night sky.
Rustle—
Soft footsteps sounded from the fog-thick bamboo grove for only a moment.
“……Kill them!”
Someone’s shout revealed their true colors at last.
Whooosh—!
A rain of arrows poured from beyond the mist.
“Everyone, ready!”
It happened in an instant.
The merchant group’s martial artists climbed onto their respective carts and unfurled great iron umbrellas.
Clang-clang-clang!
They turned the iron umbrellas in the same direction at measured intervals, and the arrows that had been falling like rain bounced harmlessly away beneath them.
The porters and drivers had long since rolled behind the line of wagons and carts drawn up side by side.
“……Just as I thought!”
“Those bastards!”
“Stay calm! Stick to the plan we made earlier and there’s no problem!”
“Keep your wits about you, all of you!”
Whooosh—!
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
They perfectly blocked a second volley of arrows as well.
Then Cheon Gang, swinging his iron staff, and Gwak Ho-shin, greatsword drawn, took positions on either side of the linked wagons and waited for Gwak Yeon’s signal.
A nod.
Hwang Pil, Gwak Yeon, and Ju Hwa-jeong, each seated behind different wagons, nodded almost as one and spun around.
Through the gaps between the linked wagons, two throwing knives from Gwak Yeon and Ju Hwa-jeong, and a single arrow from Hwang Pil’s drawn bow, tore through the air with ferocious speed.
Thud, thwack-thwack!
Screams rang out, and the enemies who had been loosing arrows toppled.
Even from outside the bamboo forest the atmosphere of panic was palpable.
Cheon Gang, eager to charge the enemy, gripped his staff and looked to Gwak Yeon.
Wait!
Gwak Yeon raised a fist in a hold signal.
Focusing his hearing, he caught faint sounds.
The noise of the enemies switching weapons.
Heavy wooden bows and arrows clattering to the ground, replaced by the peculiar ring only steel blades could make.
They’ll come soon.
The moment their ranged attack was blocked, they had switched to close combat.
Gulp.
Taut tension spread through the fog-shrouded bamboo grove and beyond.
At some point—
“Jiangshi—!”
Jiangshi burst from the mist.
“Kill them!”
“Leave two or three alive!”
“Take them!”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh!”
“Kill!”
At the same time, sword-wielding enemies poured toward them with grotesque laughter.
Fwoosh!
The merchant group calmly responded by lighting torches all around with fire-starters.
“Change formation!”
Behind the four carts where the martial artists had stood, the wagons formed a semicircle.
In that state the drivers, porters, and Yeo Baek-rang were enclosed and protected by the wagons.
“Now! Meet them!”
“Uwaaaaah!”
“You cowardly bastards!”
The martial artists of the merchant group and the escort side drew their weapons without panic and hurled themselves at the onrushing enemies.
“Don’t panic at the jiangshi—attack the talismans on them first!”
“The talismans first!”
“There are more jiangshi than living enemies! Distinguish them clearly!”
Jiangshi with dead eyes leapt about like flying things from every direction, yet there was little real disturbance.
It was thanks to Gwak Yeon’s earlier warning.
He had sensed non-human presences and raised the possibility of a jiangshi pack.
I half-expected it…… damn it.
Gwak Yeon gritted his teeth and sprang forward.
Even so, a strange smile touched his lips as he flung throwing knives left and right from both hands.
Thwack!
Two enemies crumpled under the knives he threw.
These were people who meant to kill them.
The justification for battle was more than met, and he had no intention of showing mercy.
No need for vampire powers right now.
There are no experts among them anyway.
Gwak Yeon raced to the front in an instant.
Sword already drawn, he began to cut a path through the very heart of the enemy ranks.
Slash, block, thrust, dodge.
Every time moonlight flashed on his blade, enemies fell.
Those who died screaming without even managing a proper counter grew rapidly in number.
“Keuhk!”
“Kraaah!”
“Hwaak!”
The jiangshi fared no better.
Simple as they were, their strength far surpassed that of ordinary humans—yet
Slash! Slash-slash—!
Every time Gwak Yeon swung his sword, every time he snatched a fallen enemy’s blade and flung it through the air, the talismans stuck to the foreheads of the leaping jiangshi were sliced away in chunks.
Thud-thud-thud!
Whether they were mid-leap or mid-fall made no difference at all.
“What in the—!”
The merchant group’s martial artists following behind were left gaping at the display.
It was not Gwak Yeon alone who astonished them.
To his left and right, two others had already spread out and were rampaging like fish in water.
“Hahahaha! Eat staff!”
“Heuuk!”
“……You!”
“Keup!”
“Kuaaah!”
Cheon Gang swung his iron staff and smashed enemies charging with swords, while Gwak Ho-shin darted in and cut down two at a stroke.
Clang! Clang-clang-clang!
The martial artists swung their swords as well, but even if the living enemies were one thing, the jiangshi were not the sort of things that could be handled so easily—
“Everyone, careful!”
Ju Hwa-jeong joined them, and the number of jiangshi felled on the Cheonhae Merchant Group’s side began to climb under her twin blades.
Her arms danced. Enemies caught in the path of the long blades in both hands toppled like autumn leaves in a wind.
Of course, by then Gwak Yeon was also swinging both hands.
Sword and scabbard.
Wielding weapons whose toughness at least was unmatched, he had begun dual-wielding once more.
Whoosh—!
And in between, arrows flew from the rear.
They came from Hwang the head escort, who was guarding the wagons where the porters and drivers waited.
Every time Hwang Pil loosed an arrow, the talisman-stuck forehead of a jiangshi diving at the martial artists was blasted away along with the rotting flesh.
“Kraaaaaah!”
The battlefield grew chaotic at speed.
The clash of weapons, the eerie cries of the jiangshi, and the screams of the living enemies began to fill the air.
The enemies who had come expecting an easy fight grew more and more panicked.
“Th-these things are monsters!”
“We still don’t know!”
“We still outnumber them by far!”
“Kiiill!”
“You idiots, the situation is still—argh!”
One of the shouting enemies crumpled mid-sentence.
“It’s Heoksijo—! Heoksijo—!”
It was a throwing knife from Heoksijo.
Using the force of its dive, it snapped its head at just the right moment and launched the knife from its beak.
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
The practice had paid off; the speed of its successive shots was quite respectable.
And so, at the moment the enemy numbers were dropping rapidly—
“……Keuhk!”
One unexpected figure barged in and startled everyone.
“Y-Young Master?!”
“Hehehe.”
Yeo Baek-rang had somehow followed and was now flinging jingling golden coin darts at the enemies.
“What are you doing! Get back at once!”
“I-I’m strong too!”
“Young Master!!!”
“Look, one hit from these and they all go down!”
“I said get back!!!”
“Haaah!”
The boy stubbornly kept throwing his golden coin darts.
At longer range his claim of strength was not pure bluster; the darts he threw often found their mark.
They could not inflict fatal wounds, but they were enough to hinder.
Then it happened.
Leap!
A jiangshi suddenly burst from another part of the bamboo grove and charged at Yeo Baek-rang.
“Uwaaaaah!”
“Young Master!”
Hwang Pil loosed an arrow at once.
Whoosh.
With a solid thock, the talisman tore free along with rotting flesh, and the jiangshi collapsed rigid on the ground.
Beside it, Yeo Baek-rang’s face went pale as he fell screaming.
“That’s why I told you to hurry this way……!”
Hwang Pil, who had been standing on a wagon to protect him, was about to leap down when a splintering crash sounded.
The porters and drivers behind the wagons shouted.
“H-Head Escort!”
“Over here!”
One of the handcarts at the edge toppled, and a black shape was seen leaping away.
It seemed the thing had been waiting for Hwang Pil to leave his post, bursting from the bamboo forest slightly to the side of the frontal assault.
In its hand dangled a jingling pouch.
“Damn it!”
Hwang Pil nocked an arrow toward the figure, but—
Leap!
Another jiangshi sprang toward the drivers and laborers at that exact moment.
Whoosh, thock!
Forced to change targets, Hwang Pil blasted the talisman from the jiangshi’s forehead along with the flesh.
“I-I’ll go get it! I’ll find it!”
“What!”
“Just a moment! It’ll only take a moment!”
“You mustn’t—aaah!”
“That’s our property!”
Yeo Baek-rang, who had hastily gathered the golden coin darts he had dropped when he fell, was already running after the enemy vanishing into the mist.
Whoosh—!
The coin dart he threw while running vanished into the pale fog; whether it hit or not was unknown.
Just as Hwang Pil cursed and prepared to chase after the boy—
“Damn it all!”
“I’ll go!”
“Master Gwak!”
Gwak Yeon could be seen running from the other side.
He had already slipped out the rear of the nearly settled battlefield. Hwang Pil nodded with a look of relief.
“I’m counting on you!”
“Don’t worry!”
Gwak Yeon launched himself toward the side of the fog-shrouded bamboo grove.
.
.
.
Between the dense bamboo stalks choked with fog.
A woman ran through the bamboo where front, back, left, and right were impossible to tell apart because of the mist.
In her hand as she raced was the pouch she had stolen from the merchant group earlier.
“Huff! Huff!”
Even in crisis, a smile of relief bloomed on her face.
……Thank goodness.
He had already laid a formation throughout this fog-filled bamboo forest.
A directional array that scrambled bearings and directions so pursuit could be shaken off.
She realized it for one reason only.
The secret thatched hut that should have taken a long time to reach was now right before her eyes.
A thatched hut buried deep in the bamboo forest.
In front of it stood a man shouting at her.
“What the hell is that!”
It was the man who had led the disguised escort column earlier.
She raised the pouch toward him and shouted,
“I couldn’t come back empty-handed!”
“Ha!”
“The situation’s gone to hell—I had to grab something worth money! It’s from the famous Cheonhae Merchant Group, so it should be valuable!”
“You damn—!”
“What, you ran away too, so what are you going to do about it!”
But the man had nothing to say either.
The situation was already lost; planning for later was the right move now.
“Hey, aren’t there more jiangshi in the basement of the hut? If we release them now, couldn’t we do something?”
“Idiot! You think we can beat those monsters!”
“All together there are more than thirty, right?”
“They lack vital energy! Even if we move them right now, they’ll collapse before we can count to ten!”
“Tch.”
“Better to plan for next time. The ones we have now would fall before they even reached those monsters if we woke them.”
Anyway.
The man who had witnessed the incredible performance of Gwak Yeon and the others muttered with an incredulous look.
The woman opened her mouth in a mocking tone.
“That’s why I always said we should prepare for running into monsters like that.”
“What?”
“Jiangshi have ranks too, don’t they? We need stronger ones if things are going to go smoothly! What the hell are we supposed to do with this level of support!”
“That’s why you should have worked harder earlier! If we’d just met the quota last time, ‘that man’ was going to give us superior jiangshi talismans!”
“What?! You should have shared that sooner!”
“Hah. Get lost.”
The man muttered with a cold expression and turned toward the hut.
“……Wait.”
He stared into some part of the fog-filled bamboo forest.
“What’s wrong? Hurry up and get inside! You can’t maintain that formation for long outside the hut!”
“Shut up.”
Somewhere in the formation laid through the mist, a faint presence registered.
The man scattered a blood-soaked straw in his hand in a certain direction.
The formation’s bearings shifted faintly, and beyond the fog a small child could be seen running somewhere.
Thud-thud-thud!
After running a long way, the child suddenly found a man and woman appearing right in front of him and wore a startled expression.
“Huh.”
“Y-you bastards—?!”
“Come to think of it…… I heard kids haven’t been coming in well for the quotas lately.”
“D-do you know who I am!”
The man gave a short laugh.
Even if he had fled the earlier slaughterhouse of a fight, he was still a vagabond who had weathered countless storms and possessed enough martial power to throw himself into the cult.
Thud.
Knocking out one little brat in this fog-choked bamboo forest was no great difficulty.
“Fresher than I expected. At least we didn’t come away completely empty-handed.”
“Cold. How many of ours died this time?”
“That actually worked out well.”
The man slung the child over his shoulder and headed for the hut.
He spoke with a meaningful look to the woman following behind.
“They were always the ones who only sneered at orders anyway. Better to wait until those monsters pass and use the corpses to increase our jiangshi numbers.”
“Are you saying that for my benefit?”
“Who knows.”
Bang.
The moment they entered the hut, the man and woman went down into the basement.
A vast space filled with cold air greeted them.
Only then did the woman relax.
This hut was a place where the great figure the man had contracted with had personally laid a formation. Even those monster-like bastards would never find it.
Moreover—
……It was disgusting, but seeing them again is actually reassuring.
There were jiangshi laid out along every wall as well.
Even if they could not move long for lack of vital energy, it did not matter.
In this basement under the strange formation, the jiangshi’s power doubled, and if a fight broke out they would at least be able to escape this hut where the bearings had been scrambled.
“Huuuu, we made it. Anyway.”
“Don’t relax. If we fail to meet the quota, we might be the ones who become jiangshi for ‘that man.’”
“Ugh, how long do we have to work with that madman?”
“I don’t want to drag it out either. Once we get better talismans with the next quota, I’m clearing out somewhere else.”
“But do superior jiangshi talismans even really exist?”
“There are rumors that man has even handled blood jiangshi.”
“B-blood jiangshi? Those are real?”
“Who knows.”
Thud.
Muttering, the man laid Yeo Baek-rang on the floor, set a stone bowl beside him, and raised his knife.
Seeing it, the woman frowned slightly.
“……You’re going to cut him right away?”
“What’s the point of delaying? The whole quota’s gone.”
“Haa. I’m sick of this work too. How much longer do we have to keep doing this crap?”
“Then—”
At that moment.
A voice suddenly came from above, and the man and woman’s eyes flew wide.
“How long have you been at it?”
They turned their heads and saw him.
A man already walking down the basement stairs beneath the open floor hatch of the hut.
Clomp, clomp.
“How…… did you find this place?”
“Curious?”
“A-alone?”
“Why would I bring anyone else to a filthy place like this.”
“Keh, kehahahaha!”
The man suddenly burst out laughing.
This was their territory.
Even if only for a short time, more than thirty jiangshi that could move at once were here, and a special directional array was in effect.
The situation was completely different from earlier.
“You’ve walked into your own grave of your own free will!”
“What?”
“Hwaaaaaah!”
The man scattered his energy.
The talismans stuck to the foreheads of the jiangshi lining every wall of the basement began to flutter.
“Poor fool! To be trapped alone in a place like this!”
“You’re mistaken.”
Grin.
Only a mad laugh flowed from the corners of Gwak Yeon’s slowly moving mouth.
“……You’re the ones who are trapped with me.”