The black-cloaked swordsman staggered back a step, confusion written across his face.
“Lion’s Roar? A disciple of Shaolin? But Lion’s Roar belongs to old high monks…”
As he withdrew, his eyes took in the hireblades and the tribe’s warriors. Their expressions were dazed from the shockwave—but their faces were still flushed and their pupils slightly unfocused.
He patted himself down, hurried, then fixed his gaze on Jang Geon and muttered,
“Not the real Lion’s Roar…! There’s no dispel-evil in it. A voice loud enough to stop the miasma’s effect would need that power—this is just big. Where did you pick up a hack like that…?”
Jang cleared his throat and thought: if it had been nothing but a big shout, every eardrum here would’ve burst.
Using inner energy, he had tuned the voice’s vibration so it didn’t rip ears but rang the body and bled off its arousal—a result of his own attempt to grasp what “dispel-evil” ought to mean. Later, learning the Shaolin Lion’s Roar really did carry a dispel-evil force had deflated him a bit.
He soothed his scratchy throat with another small cough and, unlike a moment ago, spoke in a level voice.
“Everyone, calm down. Don’t rush to cut each other.”
Only then did the hireblades and the tribe’s warriors realize how easily they’d been whipped up.
“Uh… wh-what is this? My body’s burning up.”
“This wasn’t worth getting this riled…”
“…That man’s voice is something else. He’s a master, no question.”
Red Wind drew a deep breath, then said low to the nearby warriors,
“Open the chest and regulate your breathing. Something foul is in the air.”
The warriors came to and began using the spirits’ power. The killing-gloss on their eyes faded as their true golden light returned and glittered. Even among the hireblades, a few sensed the wrongness in the air and began to settle themselves with inner energy.
“An excitant? Not even a proper poison, and you use this trash?”
“Sink it with inner energy!”
Of course, one idiot still hadn’t regained his senses.
“This! Didn’t those barbarians spread it? Knew those shitheads needed to be—”
A twang—an arrow punched through the knot of his topknot and stapled it to the tree beside him. His head yanked sideways; he gaped, then saw the shaft and realized he could be dead. His red face went chalk-white.
The surrounding hireblades didn’t look pleased either, but when they saw Sad Wolf nock another arrow, they shut up.
Either way, both sides were steadier than a moment ago. They could actually look at each other. The black swordsman saw it and knew the scene he wanted would be hard to achieve now. He frowned at Jang and asked quietly,
“What are you? Martial Alliance? One of the great houses? Or the Court?”
“I’m more curious what you are.”
He smirked at Jang’s return.
“A faux Lion’s Roar. Clever trick… You’re not the Court for sure. Those pride-drunk peacocks wouldn’t copy a temple art. Tch. This is a nuisance.”
He clicked his tongue and swept his cloak off his shoulders. Underneath, his body bristled with metal.
From tiny throwing daggers to longer knives, cross-shaped stars, palm-wide round blades, long steel needles, curved blades, straight blades—every kind of thrower hung in clusters over him, ready to fly by any method imaginable.
He bared his arsenal and said,
“What’s your name?”
“Jang Geon.”
The man nodded.
“I’m Dang Gyeonsang. You’ve made trouble for me.”
He turned and looked at the hireblades.
“You came for money to kill, human garbage. I’ll pay now. Do the job. Go kill those barbarians.”
The hireblades’ faces twisted at the naked, rude order.
“You what. Who the hell are you to bark orders, huh? Want to die?”
“They don’t look easy. Why should we—”
Dang Gyeonsang snorted.
“You knew the job when you came. Kill the savages and loot them—ring a bell? And now you want to play innocent?”
Their faces warped further. Those who’d steadied under Jang’s shout began to flush again. Then Dang Gyeonsang flicked a hand through empty air.
The loudmouth hireblade collapsed, froth bubbling at his lips.
“Wh-what? What the fuck?”
“D-don’t tell me—poison? Not an excitant? He can seed poison in open air…?”
The hireblades’ fever cooled fast. Dang Gyeonsang smiled thinly.
“Go. Do what you came to do—kill and take. Any gold and women in their village belong to whichever of you gets them. After that I’ll hand out antidote. Or die if you don’t like it.”
“…But that one looks like a master.”
One of them pointed at Jang’s set jaw. Dang Gyeonsang turned back.
“I’ll handle him. You handle the savages.”
The hireblades eyed the foaming man on the ground, read the room, traded looks, then slowly turned toward the tribe and drew their blades.
The air went wrong again. It was the same quiet as before, but this time not the quiet that erases heat—this was the hush before detonation. Jang stared at Dang Gyeonsang, then spoke to Red Wind at his side.
“Fall back. Do what we planned.”
“And you?”
He met the man’s black-violet eyes.
“I’ll put a beating on him.”
“…Be careful.”
With that, Red Wind and the warriors slipped away like shadows, vanishing into the trees as they’d appeared.
“They’re running!”
“After them!”
The hireblades gawked at the vanishing warriors, murmured among themselves, then yanked weapons and sprinted after them—skirting Jang as if an invisible wall stood there.
Even as they rushed past him with a roar, Jang only watched Dang Gyeonsang.
Only when the last hireblade disappeared into the woods did he speak, briefly.
“Quick hands.”
Dang Gyeonsang’s cool smile widened a hair.
“You saw that? Sharp eyes.”
Jang meant the man who’d dropped foaming. Unlike the excited hireblades who were easy to dupe, that man hadn’t fallen to miasma. A needle-like sliver had slid in at the hairline under his ear.
The excitant was just an excitant. With a single gesture, Dang Gyeonsang had dropped one man and used it to fool the rest.
“You knew, and you didn’t stop them?”
“If they came knowing and meaning to burn a village, let them bear the cost.”
Dang Gyeonsang chuckled, tongue against teeth.
“Cold. Do you think the barbarians can beat those hireblades?”
Jang didn’t answer. He only slid his right foot forward, turned his body off-line, and caught the scabbard in his left hand. Dang Gyeonsang eyed the posture.
“Right. We can learn each other’s identities after one of us is down. Let’s see how fast your blade is.”
His face set; he bent his knees and sank. Both hands pressed down the air at midline, slow and soft, then halted dead. It looked less like a thrower’s pre-cast than the opening guard of a fist art.
Jang’s shout had sent the nearby birds and beasts scattering; the insects had curled into silence. The forest path grew so still the far river’s murmur could be heard.
That stillness held the two fighters as well.
At five jang—far beyond a common single-exchange distance—they stared with heavy-sunk eyes. Even their breathing slowed until they seemed not to breathe at all, statues waiting to crack. They held, and held, hunting each other’s opening.
Inside, though, inner energy ran hot through tightened muscles, heating their bodies to explode at a blink.
A scream rose from the far woods.
Before thought could pin down whose it was, both men moved.
Dang Gyeonsang’s forearms blurred from the shoulders down. At the same time Jang rushed in, drawing. A clear tin-ringing sang as countless blades sparked away from Jang’s sword.
Dang Gyeonsang wasn’t a man but a device, spitting throwers like a mechanism. Jang knocked every last one aside with his blade, ghosting closer. Steel met steel and red sparks spat.
Before the ringing had even died, Jang’s blade hissed—cutting the space where Dang Gyeonsang had been. But he was already flipping backward through the air, skidding away.
“…”
A single instant, lightning-fast. Then both froze as if it hadn’t happened. Jang held the end of his cut; Dang Gyeonsang held the crouch he’d landed in from his flip.
From that crouch, Dang Gyeonsang said,
“…Most New Continent swords swing once. That’s it. Few know what it means to move the body and train it. Can’t be helped. The arts from the Central Plains came here as they were, drilled for entry into the Imperial Army.”
Their shapes looked the same as before—but there were differences. Sweat beaded and ran on Dang Gyeonsang’s face; his breath rasped. Jang looked as calm as before the draw.
Dang Gyeonsang flicked a glance at the throwers strewn across the ground. Not one had pushed through Jang’s sword to land a telling hit. The few that slipped past had punched nothing more than holes in cloth.
A smile touched his mouth again—not a sneer this time, but a smile tinged with anticipation.
“Those who only know the single swing can’t stop my throwers. My throwers are like slicing that single stroke dozens of times in one count… You’re a shade better than those dullards.”
Moments earlier, Jang hadn’t even swung wide. He had merely set his blade on each incoming path and angled it so the steel skittered harmlessly outward.
To see every projectile, stay cool, and make such minute placements—eyes, muscles, and inner power far beyond the norm.
Jang watched the sweat run from the man’s nose and said low,
“Your goal really wasn’t the gold. The merchant act is a cover.”
“Heh. Of course not. There’s coin anywhere. The New Continent is wider than the Central Plains and thin of men; resources lie unmined everywhere.”
For such a short span, he had spent a great deal. Sweat slicked his face. He ran a salty tongue over his lips and continued,
“You’re not the Court; I don’t feel that rancid stink, so not a house swordsman either… That leaves the Martial Alliance… but I’ve heard of no patrol or strike unit with something like you. So, what, a secret weapon? Did the Alliance read our organization’s moves?”
Jang kept his mouth shut. The man was volunteering; no reason to ruin it by talking.
But that silence only seemed to confirm something for Dang Gyeonsang. He grinned.
“…None of the above. Damn it. You’re really just a drifter from the prairie.”
Another scream climbed from the woods—then more, large and small, in a rolling run. Dang Gyeonsang listened, rose slowly, wiped his face, and said,
“It’ll end soon over there. Let’s finish here too. I’ve killed enough time.”
If “killed time” wasn’t a bluff, a pressure began to pour off him—dark and cold. Meeting his black-violet eyes made the body shrink, stiffen. Jang had seen something like it before: the Red Sand Brigade chief.
Jang snapped his blade once and came upright.
“Throwers, poison, and now demonic arts. What the hell are you?”
“Ha! Demonic arts? No! This is mystic art! Don’t lump it with the foul trash you see on the prairie! This is true Central Plains war-art, evolved outside the shadow of the Yu Empire!”
He shouted and drew two short blades from behind his waist. A hair longer than his forearms, their steel lost its gleam at once, turning dark—the telltale of inner energy pressed out as edge-aura.
Jang studied his eyes. A little excited, yes, but not mindless like the Brigade chief had been. If he could hurl that much power and keep his reason, this wouldn’t be simple.
So Jang ignored whatever else he meant to say and broke in with a rush. Before talk could pry out anything, he had to win.
Dang Gyeonsang, drunk on the fierce elevation that filled his body, had to snap his guard up to catch the sudden strike.
Jang’s sword and the two blackened blades crashed and slid in bursts. Jang’s sword moved so fast the advantage of twin blades meant nothing; Dang Gyeonsang did nothing but block, glance off, and deflect in a blur.
That, though, was mostly because he’d been rattled. After six or so fast exchanges, he caught his breath and drove the mystic art’s inner power. Then Jang’s blade, which he’d barely been matching, came into view—he could even counter.
He felt awe for his own art and bore down, battering Jang. Outmuscled in inner power, Jang yielded ground, forced back.
“Hahaha! A pity! If you truly had no faction, I’d have invited you into our organization to learn the mystic art!”
Growing bold enough to talk while fighting, he saw the opening appear as Jang’s sword was pressed wide. He didn’t miss it. He thrust straight with his right-hand blade.
Jang, in that instant, took a large step back out of the short blade’s reach and whipped his sword like lightning. Dang Gyeonsang yanked his thrust back to parry—and froze.
Jang’s single sword split into three faint blades, all angling for his neck.
What is that? Which one is real? How can a sword split in three? Is speed alone enough to cast that illusion?
Those four questions were all that fluttered through his head. His twin blades scraped up and caught two of the three—yet when steel met steel, those two phantoms dissolved like smoke.
The last blade came quiet and kissed his neck.
He didn’t even scream. His throat parted with a soft slide; his head fell and rolled. In the last instant, he kept looping those same thoughts.
Jang watched the body slump and blew out a long breath. After a few breaths he flicked his blade clean, sheathed, and turned.
He hadn’t learned anything, but he meant to help the tribe’s warriors. If he could grab one hireblade, he might pry something loose. Besides, the screaming from beyond the woods had gone quiet.
Then he saw it—the headless body trembling. Up close, even the muscles at the neck had knotted tight, pinching the blood.
The head lying over there had dull, empty eyes and no life in them—no sign of rising again. It was just some grotesque vitality spending its last scratch of will.
It was the look that fit the word demonic arts. If he hadn’t cut clean through in one stroke, the fight might have dragged on.
Jang snorted. Irrelevant. He’d won. Mystic vitality or not, Dang Gyeonsang was dead. As the body sagged and vomited a rush of blood, Jang slid his sword home and turned away.
The uproar in the valley was winding down.