The world is not a game.
But the conditions and tools I've been given right now are close to one.
Let's not overcomplicate it. Let's simplify.
First, sort out what I can and can't do.
As it happens, it felt like each of those was being revealed little by little right now.
They call it the Heavenly Martial Body, a talent for martial arts bestowed by heaven, but it's acquired after birth, after all.
If I'd wielded something like this from birth, how would I have seen the world and lived?
Even without handling it freely, I could at least do someone else's qi circulation for them.
Then what about once I handle it properly?
Even as I harbored that hope, I had to keep up the bluff.
Screams came rushing toward us.
The Blood Heaven Unit's vanguard weren't masters who had reached the Peak.
Rather, they weren't even human.
Beasts with streaming red fur ferociously attacked the front line of military officers gripping their sword hilts.
I saw Namgung Ran racing off as if flying.
I watched the shape of the qi bursting from her running form. Was it a Namgung movement technique?
I engraved the knack bit by bit. I might have to imitate it if need be.
“Licentiate……. Senior? What should I do?”
It was Namgung Ho-won who asked that. With a serious expression, he looked to where his sister had run.
They were wolves. Honestly, I wondered what the heck those things were, but I let out a dignified sigh.
“In my current state, I would have trouble handling even one of those, so stay by my side and guard me.”
“I will do so.”
It was obvious that he'd stayed behind for that from the start.
Namgung Ho-won, unlike how he looks, is the type to weigh this and that. I can feel even from our short acquaintance that his very nature is cautious.
So he hadn't completely dropped his doubts about me, but at the same time, he understood he had to stick close to a variable like me somehow if he didn't want to die.
“I too once had cultivated power.”
I added flesh to the lie. It doesn't matter at all that I don't know very precisely what martial arts are.
As long as there are actual goods I can provide through the book, it'll stop at suspicion.
“I dispersed it for the infiltration. So now I am no different from the common folk. However hastily I accumulate qi again, I will fall short of you two.”
I deliberately spoke down to him and acted seasoned.
Then there would be some kind of reaction.
Sure enough, Namgung Ho-won nodded gravely.
It felt less like he was dropping his doubts than like he was following along because a rationally understandable explanation had been presented.
“As you already know, I too am a body without cultivated power.”
He brought it up first and drew his sword.
Turning toward those fighting up front, he spoke in a somewhat suppressed voice.
“So I will not be able to stop anything beyond blood wolves or blood ghouls. The true blood men of the Blood Heaven Unit are beyond my ability.”
“That is why I asked you to stay by me.”
“I will do my best.”
Blood wolves?
So they're called blood wolves.
At a glance, they were big brutes that looked to weigh as much as a grown man.
The thought of one of those pouncing on me made my hair stand on end. Namgung Ho-won standing beside me with his sword was reassuring all over again.
Good. First, I've prevented a meaningless death in the chaos.
Whatever happens, Namgung Ho-won will buy me at least the minimum time to respond.
While the military officers somehow held back the red wolves' assault, I watched the Peak Master make her dazzling entrance.
In truth, I didn't know specifically how much I'd given that girl either.
It was like having only a manual and never having actually done it.
If I take in the results with my own eyes, I can grasp it more clearly.
I need to know how strong the tools I've been given are.
I measured the line of bluff I could pull off, a bluff others could accept even if they found it suspicious.
On that note, Namgung Ran's performance was tremendous at a glance.
Even more so than I'd thought.
Every time a red flash glinted, a wolf fell, one after another.
And it seemed that while I was charming the Namgung siblings, the Governor had been watching this way closely.
“You there, what on earth are you doing?”
I quickly turned my head.
I'm not yet at the point of standing up to the government too.
When dealing with the government, it's easier to remain Licentiate Heo.
“Though I have not yet taken office, as a scholar who has set his heart on the examinations, how could I recklessly pull back?”
“Hm? What help could you possibly be?”
“It is not as if I have never learned the sword at all. Besides, would I survive if I ran back down? Born a man, if I give myself for the country here, that too would be a righteous thing.”
“Hmm……. It does not seem to be a lie. Good. Do as you see fit. I have no choice but to flee.”
It truly seemed so.
If the Governor died, then even if reinforcements came, there would be no official to sort things out here.
Namgung Ho-won tactfully kept his mouth shut. He was probably thinking I was trying to hide my identity.
The Centurion, who had been cutting down blood wolves, somehow extricated himself and came to the Governor's side.
His expression was stiff.
The remaining military officers must be his subordinates, and they were staying behind to die.
It seemed the Governor had actually been thinking of trying to take me with him when he fled. When I said this, he nodded once, then ran toward the Centurion.
The Centurion hoisted the Governor onto his back and began going down the mountain.
A question suddenly occurred to me.
Why are the military officers and soldiers left on the pass throwing their lives away like that?
If an unprecedented calamity has struck, it'd be better for them too to scatter and seek to live.
Can that sacrifice even save more of the people?
They can't even know that, yet they won't let go of the spears they're gripping and keep swinging them.
I don't understand.
But right now I have to play along.
“We will join them too.”
“Join……. them?”
“We cannot leave your sister to fight like that alone, can we? Help the government troops without straying far from my side.”
Just watching from behind would be strange too. It's better to take part in the battle a little.
It had only been a very short time, but some soldiers were already dead. Blood flowed and corpses lay sprawled.
Should I call it fortunate that at least I'm used to corpses?
When I first landed in Lizhou, I'd have frozen and turned my eyes away.
I picked up a sword.
I thought about picking up a spear, but what was in my head was a sword art, after all.
The feel of the hilt was unfamiliar.
I recalled the hands of the Namgung siblings, which I'd held a few times.
I remembered the calluses on them, hard as old wood.
The character 功 in martial arts is the same 功 as in pouring in effort.
So martial arts are years and effort built up for the sake of martial power.
So I can't catch up to that right away.
The Emperor Sword Formula and the Azure Vault Boundless Sword are already dancing in my head, but I lack the ability to wield them freely.
I've been trying qi circulation bit by bit too, but it doesn't mean much. My acupoints are too narrow and turbid. Having tried it on Namgung Ran, it'd almost be better to buy and swallow spirit pills and build up cultivated power hastily.
I walked instead of running.
Namgung Ho-won did the same in front of me.
The aftereffects of circulating qi for someone else hadn't worn off yet.
Expending mental strength ultimately means wearing down the body too.
Doing anything directly right now was still impossible, so I took in the fight with my eyes instead.
Before I knew it, the last blood wolf was falling.
Namgung Ran shook the blood from her sword with a somehow refreshed expression.
And she looked ahead again.
Now it begins. Are those what they call blood ghouls?
Among those called the First Squad of the Blood Heaven Unit, there were some that gave off a feeling similar to the Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit in the sky.
They weren't at the front, still walking up calmly.
In front of them were gaunt, humanoid monsters running alongside the wolves.
It was almost surprising that I could stay calm looking at those.
Anyone could see they weren't human.
Instead, the thought did occur to me that they were something that had once been human.
Only a wicked true qi that should be called blood qi circled partly within their bodies; it was hard to regard them as being in a living state at all.
I piled up data methodically. Data for deciding my course of action.
Death is at hand?
Strangely, I wasn't afraid.
Probably because I now had the minimum strength to respond.
I called Namgung Ran first.
With some time left before the blood ghouls reached us, the Peak Master turned her head at once even though I hadn't raised my voice much, and appeared beside me.
A gust of wind brushed past.
This must be what they call martial prowess rising.
***
The Centurion had guarded the Governor's side as his guard officer for a long time.
He had been with him since the Governor took office, so it was quite a long time.
The Centurion thought the Governor's expression had hardened because of the subordinates left behind on the pass.
When the Governor, riding on his back as he ran, suddenly spoke, he was a little flustered.
“Say, that scholar has not learned any martial arts at all, has he?”
“……That is right.”
For a moment, he was even confused about whom he meant.
He had served the Governor long, but the man had an odd streak like this at times.
And usually, that was when he was somehow showing his wits in a crisis.
The Governor he served, regardless of his attitude of finding everything a bother, was a man who was almost never wrong.
“Not a pinch of inner arts, and he does not have the bearing of someone who has held a sword, right?”
“That is right.”
The Centurion saw it that way too.
A pure scholar. He even looked short on exercise.
“He was a vagrant. Considering how long it took him to pass the Youth Examination, it is almost uncanny. He seemed like a bright young man, but with that background.”
In truth, the Governor had been closely watching the Namgung siblings and the scholar from the start.
Because the Divine Sword, who had suspected Jeong Manor, had been right.
It was a band of rebels that had arisen in his jurisdiction, a band of rebels he had left unchecked, so he could not help but pay attention.
But all that aside, the young man was someone who greatly bothered him.
He had been a consistently striking young man.
From the time he came to sit the examination, the Governor had wondered what on earth he was, and being a runner-up who so deftly avoided making a name for himself made it more so.
It could be called coincidental, but what he had just seen was another matter.
“Unless my eyes deceived me, he seemed to be teaching the Namgung miss something.”
“Pardon?”
The Governor knew what qi circulation was too.
He also knew how it was done.
If she swallowed a pill, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply, there was no mistaking it.
The Governor quickly explained what he had seen.
The Centurion answered at once.
“I have never even heard of qi circulation done that way.”
“And yet that is how it went.”
A thought crossed the Centurion's mind as well.
To be honest, he had meant to deal with the blood wolves just enough and scatter all his subordinates.
No, he had already told them to.
But Namgung Ran had been too strong.
One blood wolf per sword stroke.
It was not the first time he had seen a Peak Master.
So he had the skill to see through an opponent's ability, at least.
All the more so when she was unfurling a Qi Field, the symbol of having reached the Peak.
Namgung Ran had not been that strong as a martial artist. As befitted an orthodox martial artist, she had been displaying her presence fully as a Qi Field, so he knew.
It was more accurate to say she had suddenly swelled just before the battle.
But at the same time, something nagged at him.
“But her killing intent was too thick.”
Given the situation, no one had pointed it out, but it had been bewildering.
He had witnessed the Heavenly Wind Sword Art as a military officer.
The Namgung were especially close to the government, so of course he had come to know it.
It was a sword art that called to mind a clearer, bluer sky.
But it had taken time to even notice it was the same sword art. Hadn't it been so extreme that it should be called a Blood Wind Sword Art?
There were even military officers who had pointed their swords at her in alarm.
He thought it would actually go better with the blood qi the Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit was scattering from the sky.
“She was like that too? Anyway, something is clearly badly tangled. It seems Lizhou has come to stand at the center of a great conspiracy.”
The Governor sighed.
“Otherwise, why on earth would this happen not at the Sword Pavilion, the front line, but in this halfway sort of place?”
“That is true as well.”
The Centurion and the Governor went back a long way.
Even before he was Governor, the Centurion had been his guard. Above a certain rank, one was assigned a guard officer.
The Governor's hunches like this were usually right.
“Still, that is fine. Somehow, that scholar does not seem to be an enemy.”
“Why is that?”
“He feels like someone with one foot in. He will be connected somehow, but he is not one of the rebels. If he were, would he not have taken my life first?”
There was also the fact that he had become a benefactor of the Namgung.
That name was heavy. So anyone who was to receive a Namgung Token could be trusted.
“I have good instincts. He will not be an enemy, but he does not seem much of an ally either. I feel that young man has some secret of his own and simply had the bad luck to get caught up.”
Even by the Governor's own reckoning, his eye for people was almost always right.
He was not someone in whom hostility or scheming would dwell. And if he were, there would be much more he had to do.
He was doing nothing, so at least he was not a figure of the orthodox, the demonic, or the government.
Or else he had to hide that fact.
A secret that could not be revealed even with this much care might as well not exist.
There would be no good in knowing it.
Then…….
“He could be someone from the Rakshasa Immortal's side.”
“How does that follow?”
“Process of elimination. Process of elimination. If not that legendary master, who would want this chaos? Even the Demonic Cult would strike the Sword Pavilion first, not Lizhou.”
Every point was sound.
It was a situation where nothing made sense.
Then at least it was not a conspiracy of those caught up in it.
And besides, why had the Sword Star died here?
The one who could do such a thing was the age-old darkness that had lurked beside Lizhou for a very long time.
The Centurion came to agree completely with the Governor's words.
With the Sword Star dead, it would be hard for someone accompanying his children to be a rebel.
“Anyway, we should just think about somehow surviving, passing the responsibility to those higher up, and being posted somewhere else.”
The Governor turned his head. Amid the red sky, he could see the top of the pass, already far behind.
“May as many as possible survive…….”
The Centurion kept silent as well.
Most of the troops there would probably not survive.
They had to get out before the main force of the Blood Heaven Unit arrived at the latest, but even that would be hard.
But they had all stayed in that place knowing that.
That was the chivalry of martial men who lived on the nation's stipend.
“So many people getting caught up in murim affairs like this, it is truly an ugly sight.”
However, the Centurion could not help flinching a little at the Governor's remark.
The Governor, though he did not say so, was an official who inwardly did not agree with His Majesty's will.
He had simply been promoted to this position by his own competence.
“Perhaps His Majesty's will is right. Perhaps the murim ought to disappear quickly, as quickly as possible.”
The Centurion remained silent.
It was right to keep one's mouth shut about the Imperial Court's affairs. All the more so here, in the middle of the murim.
The Governor fell silent too.
It was partly to honor the dead, and partly out of fear of the war that was about to begin.
Because what was happening in Lizhou now was a murim affair, but at the same time, a rebellion by rebels.