Deeper in the mountains.
The moment Middle-Aged left the corpse of the Moyong Family martial artist behind, he headed even farther into the mountains.
The deeper they went, the more questions piled up inside Ja Cheon-gwang’s head.
‘Why do we keep going? A Moyong Family bastard suddenly turned up dead in the middle of the mountains. Weren’t we supposed to be investigating people like him?’
The question would not leave him.
Shouldn’t they at least investigate?
This was not simply a matter of continuing deeper into the mountains.
Especially not with footsteps that almost seemed to be fleeing.
“Wait.”
Ja Cheon-gwang finally stopped walking.
Middle-Aged and Big Guy ahead of him stopped at the same time, as did Millet following behind.
“What? We’re in a hurry.”
“The corpse is what’s urgent. Shouldn’t we at least examine it and find out what happened?”
“Tch. I was wondering what nonsense you were going to say.”
Big Guy was the first to turn away.
Tap, tap.
From behind, Millet tapped Ja Cheon-gwang on the shoulder.
His eyes told him to hurry and follow.
Even so.
Ja Cheon-gwang remained rooted to the spot.
When he showed no sign of following, the two ahead stopped again.
“Instructor Ja Cheon-gwang. We are carrying out a mission. We do not have the leisure to investigate that corpse right now.”
Middle-Aged answered.
“Then why don’t you tell me what that mission is?”
He had yet to receive a proper explanation.
He had merely followed them because Jang Woo-geun told him to.
Their affiliation.
Their names.
Whether they belonged to the White Dragon Corps or Black Dragon Corps.
He knew nothing.
“You think a bastard like you would understand even if we explained it? You’re just Golden Dragon Corps. If you’re told to follow, then follow. Stop whining and move.”
“Big Guy. Tell me who that dead man was.”
Big Guy’s face flushed red.
“You… bastard….”
While Big Guy trembled with anger, Middle-Aged stepped in.
“You asked about the mission? The Orthodox Allied Forces. We came to investigate them. At present, are they not the only ones we need to concern ourselves with? So let us move.”
That confirmed it.
These bastards were not here for reconnaissance.
“You aren’t Black Dragon Corps. White Dragon Corps, then?”
“We have no obligation to tell you that.”
“At least you’re not Black Dragon Corps. There’s no way men responsible for reconnaissance wouldn’t recognize who that corpse belonged to.”
“You sound as though you know.”
“You’re supposedly scouting the Orthodox Allied Forces, yet you don’t even know that bastard belonged to the Moyong Family?”
“…….”
Middle-Aged and Big Guy fell silent at the same time.
Then….
Middle-Aged’s mask shifted slightly.
As though the corner of his mouth had risen beneath it.
“As expected of a Golden Dragon Corps member. Standing at the front and receiving their blades all these years, you seem to know them quite well. Truly… regrettable.”
SQUELCH.
In that instant.
Something pierced through Ja Cheon-gwang’s abdomen.
A sword.
Its keen blade gleamed with starlight.
Along with the blood coating it.
***
‘What in the world is happening? To think an urgent message would suddenly arrive from the main family like this.’
An elderly martial artist with a white beard streaming behind him.
Moyong Yang, Head of the Moyong Family.
“Hyah! Faster! Every moment matters!”
He drove his horse at full speed along the paths of Scattered Gorge Mountain.
As expected of one with Xianbei blood in his veins.
His horsemanship was exceptional.
He had wanted to prolong the standoff a little longer.
It was not as though he possessed some particular means of attacking.
Still, he had wanted to.
Perhaps….
That had been excessive greed.
He had been watching the Hegemon Fortress Alliance from the Orthodox Allied Forces’ command post on the plain halfway up Scattered Gorge Mountain when the message arrived.
His face immediately went deathly pale.
And so, beneath a moonless night, he was now riding desperately toward his family estate.
His eldest son, Moyong Jeong-cheon, rode close behind him.
Their horses displayed remarkable stamina.
They raced across the mountain as though it were flat ground and soon arrived at the estate.
“Family Head!”
“The Family Head has returned!”
The estate immediately erupted into activity.
People poured out to greet Moyong Yang and Moyong Jeong-cheon.
“What happened? Was the message truly accurate?”
Moyong Yang demanded loudly, but the retainers merely lowered their heads.
That alone was answer enough.
It was true.
And yet he wanted to ask again.
“Tell me everything exactly as it happened. No matter how many of our martial artists are at Scattered Gorge Mountain, my second and third sons were still here. How could the family estate possibly have been attacked?”
Had it merely been an attack, he would not have been this shaken.
They were at war with the Hegemon Fortress Alliance.
Surprise attacks like this had occurred several times in the past.
But the message had contained one word.
Massacre.
That single word had sent Moyong Yang racing back here.
GRIND.
The sound of him grinding his teeth made the household members flinch.
“Where is everyone?”
Moyong Yang asked in a calmer voice.
“In the rear garden of the annex.”
Red blood trickled between his tightly clenched lips.
It soaked into his white beard.
He dismounted and began trudging forward.
His legs seemed to have lost their strength.
The rear garden of the annex….
The person there.
His wife.
It was an elegant residence.
Delicate trees blended together harmoniously, while carefully tended bonsai stood throughout the grounds, adding to its beauty.
Yeon Byeok-hwa.
Moyong Yang’s wife.
She had been the eldest daughter of the Yeon Family before marrying into the Moyong Family.
Then, several years later, Hegemon Fortress appeared.
Because of them, the man who was supposed to be her husband spent nearly every day on the battlefield.
Even their sons were sent to the front.
Martial artists from the Martial Alliance who volunteered for the war also flooded into the estate, leaving the place in constant turmoil.
Yet there was a reason Moyong Yang had never needed to worry greatly about his family.
Yeon Byeok-hwa’s ability.
He had personally built this detached residence with her.
He had even selected and planted each of the trees decorating its rear garden.
And yet.
The woman who should have been enjoying it….
“My wife.”
Moyong Yang staggered toward one of the corpses and sank to his knees.
It was covered with white cloth.
More than a hundred corpses lay across the ground.
But how could he fail to recognize the silhouette of his own wife?
He slowly pulled back the white cloth.
An elderly woman’s face appeared.
There was not a trace of color in it.
“My wife.”
Moyong Yang broke down.
He grasped her face and pressed his own against her bloodless cheek.
“How did this happen? Why are you lying here?”
Moyong Jeong-cheon, who had followed him, collapsed as well.
His father’s wife?
She was his mother.
“Mother….”
His sobs joined his father’s.
The detached residence wept beneath the grief of the two men.
Limp, limp.
From the far end of the estate, a man approached Moyong Yang while being supported by another.
His second son.
Moyong Jeong-hyeon.
“Father…. You’ve returned.”
Bandages were wrapped beneath his martial arts uniform, which had been reduced to rags.
More importantly….
His right arm and left leg had already parted from their owner.
Moyong Jeong-cheon hurried toward his blood-soaked younger brother.
“Jeong-hyeon. What in the world happened?”
“I have no excuse, Brother. I should have protected the family….”
“The messenger gave us no details. I know nothing of what happened. Tell me quickly.”
“What I sent through the messenger was everything. Men I had never seen before, dressed in black and wearing masks….”
“Hegemon Fortress?”
Moyong Jeong-hyeon shook his head.
“It was not them. Their martial arts were unlike anything used by the Hegemon Fortress Alliance we have fought all these years.”
There was no one other than Hegemon Fortress who should have had reason to attack the Moyong Family now.
They had no other enemy with such a grudge against them.
“What did they want?”
Moyong Jeong-hyeon hesitated.
“I do not know exactly. But the Sacred Relic….”
Grab.
Moyong Jeong-cheon hurriedly covered his brother’s mouth.
“You must tell us the truth. And quietly. This is important. What happened to it?”
“I entrusted it to Jeong-gi. But Jeong-gi was badly wounded as well….”
“Jeong-gi? Then it was taken outside?”
“We had no choice. They came for it….”
No one had been told.
Aside from Moyong Yang and the direct bloodline, no one should even have known where it was kept.
How could anyone have come searching for it?
No.
Why would anyone suddenly want it in the first place?
For more than a thousand years, no one had sought it.
Why now?
“Where did he go?”
Moyong Yang asked.
He carefully lowered Yeon Byeok-hwa’s head from his arms.
“Where is Jeong-gi?”
His father’s voice was low.
Moyong Jeong-hyeon answered.
“I told him to head toward Scattered Gorge Mountain. Did you not encounter him?”
The place where the battle had taken place.
“I told him to find you and ask for help, Father. Did you truly not see him?”
Moyong Yang clenched his teeth.
After receiving the message, he had taken the shortest route from the battlefield to the family estate.
He had not seen Moyong Jeong-gi anywhere along the way.
No matter how dark the mountain paths were, he could not possibly have missed another person’s presence.
There was no time.
They had to pursue him immediately.
“We leave again.”
“Yes, Father.”
His wife was dead.
His household had been massacred.
Moyong Jeong-hyeon had lost an arm and a leg.
He could not pour out his grief over those things yet.
There was something he had to do first.
The Sacred Relic.
He had to find it.
The founding of Later Yan.
The Moyong Family had begun there.
The one remaining object left behind by that fallen kingdom.
The Sacred Relic.
It was the identity of the Moyong Family and the spirit they were meant to pass down to their descendants.
“My wife. Forgive me for leaving you here. Even now, I am doing nothing but what I must. Forgive me for that as well. But I swear I will bring our son Jeong-gi back. Please do not resent me too much.”
Moyong Yang tightly clasped Yeon Byeok-hwa’s hand.
***
The sensation of sharp metal.
Cold.
‘What…?’
Ja Cheon-gwang looked down at the object protruding through his abdomen.
Metal gleaming silver.
It shone wetly beneath the red blood coating it.
“Ugh….”
The instant he realized what it was, overwhelming pain crashed into him.
His knees buckled with a sickening crack.
“Millet. You bastard…?”
Millet?
When Ja Cheon-gwang turned, Millet tilted his head as though wondering what that was supposed to mean.
“Wh-What the hell are you doing?”
Even the slightest movement sent agony through him.
Ja Cheon-gwang tightly gripped the sword running through his abdomen.
To keep it from moving.
The blade cut into his hand, and blood slowly seeped out.
“Haah. I hadn’t planned to do this here, but you brought it upon yourself.”
Middle-Aged spoke.
His mask was still slightly raised, undoubtedly from the grin beneath it.
“You could’ve lived a few hours longer, but you went and cut your own life short. You should’ve just listened and followed us. Still, thanks to that insolent attitude of yours, the ending was entertaining enough. I’ll make the pain as brief as possible.”
SHING.
Big Guy drew the slender sword at his waist.
Then swung it straight toward Ja Cheon-gwang’s neck.
Grab.
Ja Cheon-gwang caught Big Guy’s sword with his free right hand.
The agony in his abdomen left him no room to properly draw up his inner arts.
As a result, fresh blood flowed from his right hand as well.
“You… worthless vermin….”
WHUMMMMM….
Ja Cheon-gwang poured his inner arts into Big Guy’s sword.
The blade trembled violently, crying out as though in pain.
“What… the sword?”
Big Guy froze in shock.
He too had learned the Ascending Dragon Sect’s martial arts.
He had risen to a position reserved for experts selected from among even the Golden Dragon Corps, and his martial prowess placed him among the strongest in the entire Ascending Dragon Sect.
And yet.
‘What the hell…? Can a human being truly possess this much inner arts?’
Ja Cheon-gwang’s energy poured through the blade.
It was so vast that it far surpassed anything Big Guy had imagined.
BOOM.
Fragments of the sword exploded in every direction.
The thin blade had been unable to endure Ja Cheon-gwang’s inner arts and burst apart.
“Ugh.”
Startled, Big Guy stumbled several steps backward.
Ja Cheon-gwang did not miss the opening.
He seized the sword protruding through his abdomen and dragged it farther through his own body.
“Ugh.”
An unpleasant sound like meat being sliced tore through his insides.
The agony of the blade cutting deeper through his flesh made him clamp his lips shut.
“W-Wait….”
Still gripping the sword from behind, Millet was dragged helplessly toward Ja Cheon-gwang.
THUD.
The instant the distance closed,Ja Cheon-gwang drove an elbow packed with inner arts into Millet’s head.
CRUNCH.
A sickening sound rang out.
His jawbone shattered.
That single blow sent Millet’s entire body collapsing to the ground.
“Huff… huff….”
Ja Cheon-gwang gasped heavily.
Drawing up his inner arts so violently while a sword was running through his body was no easy feat.
SHING.
Ja Cheon-gwang pulled the sword out of his body.
It was not the massive weapon he normally wielded, but a long, slender sword.
This thing was supposed to be a sword…?
Tch.
It was hardly a weapon capable of bearing the full weight of his inner arts.
It would only explode like the last one.
SQUELCH.
Ja Cheon-gwang drove the sword deep into the throat of the unconscious Millet, whose jaw had been shattered.
There was not the slightest hesitation in the movement.
Like a machine.
Without even a flicker of emotion.
“Good heavens….”
Middle-Aged inhaled in disbelief as he watched.
‘How can he drive a sword into a man’s throat so calmly, without the slightest hesitation? Just as I heard. He really is an interesting bastard.’
The Golden Dragon Corps always stood at the very front of the battlefield.
A defensive wall?
Hardly.
Defense might have been their main duty, but how long could anyone remain nothing but a wall?
They swung their great sabers.
They cut down enemies.
They showed not a shred of mercy to the Orthodox Allied Forces who broke through the formation.
Death and killing.
Those things were their everyday lives.
Their profession.
That was the Golden Dragon Corps.
And Ja Cheon-gwang.
‘Damn it. I never imagined someone would stab me from behind.’
It had never even crossed his mind.
The Ascending Dragon Sect might have been filled with pieces of shit, but no one attacked another from behind.
‘They say you should always watch your back in the murim. And still….’
A self-mocking thought crossed his mind.
He had understood it intellectually.
Never trust anyone on the battlefield.
That was supposed to be an absolute truth.
But the Ascending Dragon Sect was different.
Their method of fighting placed the Golden Dragon Corps in the front, while the Silver Dragon Corps and Iron Dragon Corps supported them from behind.
They always fought with their lives entrusted to the rear ranks.
To preserve that system,They had been told endlessly that they must never harm the life of the person standing in front of them.
It was powerful indoctrination that began in the Non-Dragon Corps.
Not once.
Not a single corps member had ever imagined that someone behind him might target the man in front.
They had been conditioned so that they could not.
That was why.
Not once had Ja Cheon-gwang ever doubted what stood behind him.
And that carelessness had brought him to this.
Middle-Aged stood before Ja Cheon-gwang’s heaving form.
A faint sneer seemed to linger beneath his mask.
Ja Cheon-gwang pointed his sword at him.
“You. Come at me.”