“You are.......”
When Moyong U furrowed his brow, Wi So-baek tilted his head.
“Is who I am more important, or is finding your Alliance Leader?”
At Wi So-baek's answer, Moyong U pressed his lips shut.
At the very least, it was true that the man had saved them from certain death.
“You understood me the first time, so for someone calling himself a Captain, you are the best of the lot.”
After offering that praise, Wi So-baek fixed his gaze on the riverbank in the distance.
RUSTLE—!
The reeds bent beneath the wind, and gentle rings spread across the surface of the water.
Wi So-baek took one step toward the silent riverbank, where not even an ordinary birdcall could be heard.
At that moment, the world slowed.
No. To be precise.......
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that within the time flowing equally for everyone, a single person alone moved with impossible freedom?
What followed was a completely one-sided slaughter.
The noonday sun hung high, looking down upon the world, yet the reed field alone rolled crimson as though sunset had already fallen.
Wi So-baek gazed without emotion upon the carnage he had created.
“Y-you demon!”
The reeds behind Wi So-baek, who stood with his hands clasped behind him as if out for a stroll, rustled. A man burst through them.
The man raised his sword high in both hands and tried to slash diagonally down at Wi So-baek—but could not!
As if he had been waiting, Wi So-baek cut off the sword's path, slipped aside, circled behind the man, and counterattacked instead.
THUD—!
Kicked in the back by Wi So-baek, the man pitched forward and drove his nose into the ground.
“Cough!”
As blood from his broken nose and a fit of coughing made his limbs convulse, Wi So-baek planted a foot between his shoulder blades.
CRUNCH—!
At the sound of bones being crushed, Moyong U could no longer restrain himself and approached.
“Do not kill him! Do we not need information from that bastard?”
But Wi So-baek did not ease the force beneath his foot.
“Listen to me!”
Moyong U raised his voice, but the answer came from elsewhere.
The man, flattened like a crushed frog, turned his head to one side and spat venom between short, wheezing breaths.
“Kihihi! You think I will tell you? Even with a blade at my throat, I will never say what you want to hear......! Gasp!”
CRUNCH—! CRUNCH—!
Wi So-baek flexed his toes, pressing down and easing off again.
It would have been better if he had simply killed the man at once.
As the pressure on his windpipe tightened and released with every movement of that foot, the man trembled in fear and rolled his eyes wildly.
“I-I... will never.......”
Wi So-baek did not listen to the end.
“Do not.”
Who told you to?
“You cannot even launch a proper ambush, nor can you obey an assassin's iron rule to kill yourself the moment you are captured. What use could I have for information known by such an incompetent fool? Even the time spent verifying whether it was true or false would be a waste.”
The man twisted his head until it looked ready to snap and stared upward.
He wanted to confirm with his own eyes whether the noble young master was merely bluffing.
But.......
It was unmistakably sincere, filled with loathing and contempt.
The frozen man muttered without realizing it.
“The Martial Alliance Leader will... die without fail. Because he is who he is, he will meet a death befitting him... It is already... too late to find him!”
If he was going to die anyway, the man wanted to leave even the finest crack in that perfect noble young master.
He wanted to drag the noble who looked upon him like vermin down from godlike perfection into the abyss of humanity and force out his true nature!
However.......
Even after hearing everything, Wi So-baek showed no particular reaction.
“Did you not come to save the Alliance Leader? Do you not care if he dies?”
Only when the man pressed him again did Wi So-baek answer.
“I told you there was no need to speak, yet you insisted on wagging your tongue. Then you started again, so I let you babble to see what you might say, but every word was useless. I expected nothing from a mere assassin, but since you came from the Earth Killing Sect, I wondered whether there might be something different about you.”
The Earth Killing Sect was the least-known assassin organization, existing for those who sought not the strongest assassin, but the finest.
They did not accept every commission, but once they took one, they completed it by any means necessary. They were a true assassin sect.......
A poisonous weed raised in the deepest shade, even among assassin sects said to dwell in darkness.
Among assassins, they were the worst possible enemy.
And Wi So-baek had named the Earth Killing Sect.
The man's eyes bulged as though they might split as he shouted.
“H-how did you know that......?”
The Earth Killing Sect followed no rules in its assassinations.
Nor did it leave traces.
This operation was especially vast, the largest assassination in its history, so they had even staged things to make others mistake them for Dark Grotto, currently acclaimed as the greatest under heaven among assassin sects.
And yet?
“I have eyes to see and ears to hear. Only a moron would fail to know.”
As Wi So-baek answered, he looked back at Moyong U and several members of the personal guard.
As though telling them that they were those very morons.
Of course, at first Wi So-baek had only been guessing.
If Se-jin, more than worthy of being second greatest under heaven even if not the greatest, had been cornered this far, could it have been done through strength?
Then it had to be a genuine assassin sect skilled at prying into weaknesses and willing to accept a commission targeting the Martial Alliance Leader. Only the Earth Killing Sect fit every condition.
But a guess was not the same as fact, was it?
That was why Wi So-baek had captured the last man and tested him.
He froze and thawed the man with fear and contempt, then struck unexpectedly to make him spit out the truth.
The information also depended on knowledge available only because Wi So-baek had once been the successor to the Divine Cult, sovereign of the demonic and unorthodox traditions, and now ruled the new demonic path. His very presence made the deduction unfair.
Wi So-baek, however, was not one to concern himself with another person's circumstances.
He lost interest in the great fools and little fools who had come this far without realizing what the Earth Killing Sect was or what Wi So-baek had done, and who could only stamp their feet.
Then he moved his foot to the head of the man staring up at him.
The man tried to speak again, but there was no longer any reason to waste time.
CRUNCH—!
With a sound like a large, hard watermelon bursting apart, the ground beneath his foot grew wet.
Wi So-baek hopped backward and turned away.
“Where are you going?”
The fools tried to follow, but Wi So-baek swept out a hand and pushed them back.
They were fools, but useful ones as fools went, so he did not injure them.
At the very least, it was true that they had chosen Hanchuan, caught the Earth Killing Sect's trail, and helped Wi So-baek reach his conclusion.
“Let us go with you!”
What if they continued getting in his way despite that?
“Se-jin, your elder brother is being so broad-minded.”
BANG—!
Wi So-baek intimidated the fools until they collapsed, then moved off leisurely on his own.
He had not killed them or drawn blood, so Se-jin would not be too upset.
As he traveled, he drew a picture in his mind.
The route taken by the Earth Killing Sect, which cornered people by seizing their weaknesses, and by Se-jin, who would be fleeing to prevent others from suffering because his weakness had been seized.
It was not that Wi So-baek could not do such things.
He had simply never felt the need to do them himself.
Without the slightest delay, he plunged into the completed picture.
***
“There he is!”
SHRIEEEEK—!
The piercing whistle stretched through the air.
Se-jin had left Hanchuan behind and entered the tallest, most rugged mountain in sight. Panting, he clutched his chest.
He was weary and exhausted.
Honestly, in the past he might have briefly wondered whether he should simply stop here.
But not anymore.
There had certainly been moments when the burdens placed upon him felt too heavy to bear any longer, but.......
From a certain day onward, Jang Se-jin had been able to dream a new dream.
‘Still, perhaps a dumpling shop is a bit much?’
He might manage it himself, but he doubted whether his lofty elder brother could perform such arduous work.
...Even so, surely.
That too would be enjoyable.
Attending his overbearing elder brother, who nevertheless possessed a peculiar magnetism, would bring all manner of strange events. To Se-jin, every one of them would surely be delightful.
That was why he could not give up here.
Just as he gathered his strength to move again, a voice that should never have been heard here reached his ears.
“W-waaaah!”
“Where... are we?”
Se-jin hid behind a tree and moved only his eyes, watching the activity in the distance.
They were tiny children who looked no more than ten years old.
The children walked toward Se-jin as though someone had shoved them forward.
Se-jin's face twisted in anguish.
Several people in the villages he had passed on the way had also suffered harm.
He had tried his utmost to save them and had eventually come this far.
The harder the ordeal became for him, the fewer enemies remained. If, just this once, he pretended not to notice and passed them by.
That would be enough.
“I should be allowed to do as I wish once. I want to live, so I am allowed to live.”
Muttering, Se-jin pushed himself away from the tree he had been leaning against.
He drew up his inner arts to put the children behind him and move farther away.
If he leaped away in a single bound and opened the distance, those children would not be able to follow.
No matter how vile the enemies were, surely they would not bother killing children they had meant to use as bait and discard once he was gone?
Se-jin gathered strength in the tips of his feet.
But.......
WHIZZ-WHIZZ—!
Daggers flew in and buried themselves in the ground. The children screamed as wounds opened on their bodies.
“Please save us!”
“Please... please help us!”
Ah.
Once.
Jang Se-jin could not look away, not even that once.
“If I could do that, would I still be Jang Se-jin?”
He was Jang Se-jin because he could not. That was why his elder brother had clicked his tongue at him in frustration, yet ultimately embraced him as a hopeless fool.
Instead of leaving the tree and moving away, Jang Se-jin turned toward the children.
‘Little one, you will not live long.’
He seemed to hear the voice of the old woman with whom he had shared the dumplings he begged for as a child.
She had called him a fool, but faint warmth had colored her bitter tone.
But Grandmother.
Have I not survived quite a long time nevertheless?
Unlike my back-alley friends, who fell ill and starved to death long ago.......
I have grown into an adult who can buy all the dumplings I want and need never go hungry.
I was fortunate.
So I hope those children will be as well.
“Come here.”
Jang Se-jin ran to the children and swept them into his arms.
What a relief.
Had there been even one more child, he would not have known what to do.
Daggers continued to rain down even then.
With a child in each arm, Jang Se-jin found it difficult to swing his sword, so he wrapped himself and the children in intangible energy.
WHIZZ—! WHIZZ—!
The daggers struck the invisible barrier and bounced away or skidded off, clattering to the ground.
Still holding that state, Se-jin tried once more to flee while leaving the enemies behind.
It was not easy.
“Where do you think you are going?!”
“Now that it has come to this, you must die, Martial Alliance Leader!”
The enemies had rushed him directly and suffered immense losses, then waited for another opportunity. Now that the children they had driven forward bound Se-jin's hands and slowed him, they leaped in.
He was blocked on every side, but Se-jin did not give up.
The personal guards he had left behind must have sent someone to Wuchang somehow.......
If he waited, Elder Brother would come to save him.
Yes. He no longer had to accomplish everything alone.......
Even if he fell behind or was left behind, he now had family who would come to save him!
“The spending money Elder Brother gave me was wonderful too.”
For the first time, he had spent money freely all the way to Xiaogan County, neither hoarding it nor worrying miserably over every coin.
“I should ask him for more next time.”
Se-jin muttered and tightened his arms around the children.
Then he poured in the last of his remaining strength.
And ran straight ahead.
BOOM—! BANG—! BANG—!
WHIZZ-WHIZZ—!
The onslaught poured down upon the fleeing man all at once. The energy protecting them shuddered, and the barrier was on the verge of tearing apart!
“Good grief.”
A low voice rang from the sky.
At first it sounded cold and indifferent, but when it drove into their ears, it shook their minds like a sharpened blade.
“Urgh.......”
“W-what is this?”
The assassins of the Earth Killing Sect clutched their heads or collapsed, not because they were weak.
It was simply because Wi So-baek was far too strong.
Wi So-baek slowly descended from the air and began clearing the surroundings.
No more loud noises rang through the space.
But that was precisely what made the sight even more terrifying.
Once he finished cleaning up, Wi So-baek headed toward his younger brother.
This time, he truly intended to give him a scolding.
Knowing that this was simply the sort of man Se-jin was did not mean Wi So-baek was not angry.
Se-jin seemed to know it too, for he lowered his eyes dejectedly.
And so he did not see.
‘No, no......!’
He did not see the words Wi So-baek opened his mouth to shout as he approached.
It happened in an instant.