The bandits, still dazed, jumped at Gam Sangcheong’s shout and tore after Jang Geon. Gam Sangcheong vaulted back onto his horse and gave chase from the rear.
“Stop right there, you bastard!”
“Like I’d stop.”
Jang Geon smirked and touched the cut on his brow. Just the skin—shallow, but the blood ran into his eyes. He wiped it away with his hand and flicked it aside. Thirty riders behind him—no time to fuss over a scratch.
“Stop! Stop, you son of a—!”
“Stop!”
After a hard sprint and a quick glance back, he saw the bandits strung out according to their horses and riding skill—ragged, uneven. Typical half-taught thieves.
Jojo’s breathing rasped in Jang Geon’s ears. The flat-out run from the hill was catching up with him. Jang Geon eased the reins. Jojo understood and bled speed.
“Got him! The bastard’s horse is spent!”
“Kill him! Drag him down!”
The lead rider closed to Jang Geon’s back and raised his sword high. The teeth-like notches along the edge were made to tear, not slice.
Jang Geon suddenly shoved off the saddle with both hands and spun around to sit facing backward. The bandit’s eyes went round.
“The hell—?”
A flash leapt from Jang Geon’s waist, and the bandit’s raised right forearm and head parted from his body and floated up into the air.
“Ayong! He killed Ayong!”
The riders behind flinched, startled. But a few bold ones only spurred harder to close.
“Just catch his legs! Captain will finish him!”
“Grab him!”
A pair of bandits with a mid-length spear and a long-hafted axe came up on his flanks, keeping just outside sword range. The spear jabbed—fast and cold, the weapon’s strength.
Jang Geon lifted his blade and brushed the spear aside. Steel rasped along wood. The spearman tried to yank it back—but Jang Geon’s left hand seized the shaft faster than the weapon could withdraw.
The bandit grinned. He was one of the outfit’s top five for raw strength. He hauled hard, ready to yank Jang Geon under the hooves. On the ground, mounted men ruled.
“Huh?”
The shaft didn’t budge. Worse, something stung through the wood into his palm, a biting buzz that made his hand spasm. He let go involuntarily—and the wooden shaft burst with a dull crack at the middle.
Clutching a torn, bleeding palm and a screaming arm, the bandit fell away. The axeman, startled by the exploding spear, took his eyes off Jang Geon—
—and when he looked back, Jang Geon’s blade was already cutting his throat.
“What is he? Some kind of sorcery?”
The injured bandit edged back, mumbling, fear in his voice.
“Coward!”
Gam Sangcheong’s bare hand came down from behind and crushed the man’s skull. Blood and pale clots splattered. The nearby bandits stared, aghast, and he roared,
“Chase him! If you can’t cut him, cut his horse! Get him on the ground! Anyone who doesn’t put a mark on him dies by my hand! Anyone falling behind me dies by my hand! And he dies—by my—hand!”
They spurred on in a panic, shouting to drown their fear. Sitting backward, Jang Geon muttered at the sight,
“What a lunatic. He’s not right in the head.”
Gam Sangcheong’s eyes flashed a dark, bloody gleam. Jang Geon nodded to himself.
“So all three banner captains trained in demonic arts. Mad dogs.”
Demonic arts: at first they only sharpened one’s temper; taken far, they drove men to drink blood and chew flesh.
Since the Hegemon of Devils, Xiang Yu, countless others had turned to them for faster power and deeper inner energy. Compared to standard inner cultivation, demonic arts gathered inner energy several times to dozens of times faster—temptation many couldn’t resist.
But like Xiang Yu himself, most who took that path lost to the frenzy—warped by violent, uncanny power, becoming inhuman, demonic practitioners. What good is strength to split mountains and cleave seas if you become a beast who can’t recognize your own kin?
And once exposed, it wasn’t only the Martial Alliance or old clans that came hunting. The Empire moved. The Imperial Army moved. On the New Continent the Empire’s reach was thin, so demonic practitioners surfaced more often—that had been a core worry of imperial scholars from the start.
Even so, most demons killed a handful, then got run down by the Martial Alliance. Like Gam Sangcheong crushing his own man’s skull just now—demonic arts weren’t something you hid in the hills for years to polish like other martial arts.
While that thought flickered by, the enraged bandits were already upon him, screaming. Jang Geon tapped Jojo’s flank with a leg. The signal asked for a little less speed.
The hard-charging riders reached him one by one. At this pace, they couldn’t swarm him all at once—two or three at most.
And unless thirty men closed on him from all sides, Jang Geon hadn’t trained this long to lose to rabble like these.
Attacks thrown off-balance by bad posture, he parried and returned with gouging cuts. Anything heavy like an axe that needed weight, he preempted and struck first. One who tried to launch off his saddle got a left fist sunk into his solar plexus. No restraint—inner energy rode the blow. The man’s insides burst; he coughed a sheet of blood and tumbled under the hooves.
“Shit!”
“Die! Please!”
Fear of their chief twisted their faces. Pitiful expressions—but Jang Geon showed no mercy. These were butchers of common folk, piling wealth on slaughter. No reason to spare them.
So they came in their turn and dropped in their turn—each leaving a deep cut in neck or trunk before falling from the saddle.
From the rear, Gam Sangcheong saw groups of two and three rush in, hear steel ring, and then watch bodies thud to the ground. Jang Geon’s clothes picked up small nicks from their committed lunges, but in the end, they were just ground away.
He bellowed, “You idiots! All at once! All at once!”
At the shout, the riders finally thought to slow and bunch up into something like a formation. Still perched backward on Jojo, Jang Geon flicked his blade clean, set a hand to the saddle, and drew his legs up—squatting atop the seat.
Before they could react, he jumped.
“Uh—?”
“What the—!”
He landed on a riderless horse that was simply running with the pack after its master died. A dozen horses had been left loose, pounding along with the bandits.
He didn’t stop. He kicked off again and swung. A slack-jawed bandit lost his head; Jang Geon booted the falling body away and leapt to the far side.
This time a grim-faced bandit took a sword across the chest and pitched off—his foot caught in the stirrup, and he dragged, bouncing. Jang Geon spring-boarded from that saddle to another empty mount.
To the bandits, it was nightmare spectacle—a man hopping horse to horse across a sprinting herd, cutting as he flew. The sort of feat they’d only heard whispered of in the imperial capital.
Shaken, they kept glancing back. Their nerves screamed to run, but their monster of a leader burned after them with fire in his eyes.
Gam Sangcheong saw their faces and roared, “You fools! Gather and hit him the moment he’s in the air!”
A look of dawning showed on them. They raised their weapons and crowded together. Let him jump—then they’d skewer him.
Jang Geon didn’t give them the satisfaction. He drew his current mount’s reins, sliding along the outer edge of their knot.
“He’s not jumping?”
One stared, dumb, as Jang Geon slid alongside. Jang Geon smiled at him and sank a blade into his ribs. The man grunted once and fell. The horse behind stepped on him and went down. Its rider pitched forward headfirst with a crack.
With that light two-man cut, Jang Geon pushed ahead. The tightly packed riders lunged to pursue, tangling each other’s legs—three or four went over in a heap.
“You idiots!”
Jang Geon chuckled at yet another of Gam Sangcheong’s curses. The man’s horsemanship was poor; since falling to the rear, he still hadn’t clawed forward. All he did was bawl at his men—pure petty commander.
Back at the point, Jang Geon glanced behind. The ones left were the braver sort, faces set on carving him themselves—Gam Sangcheong be damned.
He shook his blade clean and drew his legs up to crouch on the saddle again—but this time he faced forward. He spoke softly to his horse.
“Sorry.”
He drew a breath, moved inner energy from his dantian down both legs, and blasted it through the saddle as he leapt.
Jojo screamed.
Jang Geon soared, and the horse beneath him buckled, legs giving under the sudden weight, collapsing to its knees.
“Ah—shit!”
“Argh!”
The riders behind piled over the fallen horse. Some vaulted clear; the rest went down with their mounts. A broken neck was mercy. Out here, a snapped leg meant starving alone—or being eaten slow by beasts.
Jang Geon landed lightly back on Jojo’s saddle and took up the reins as if he’d never left. Jojo whinnied long, as if to say, “About time.” Jang Geon smiled and twitched the reins. Jojo burst forward, then, when the distance was right, flowed into a broad, curving turn.
In an instant, Jang Geon and the remaining bandits were charging head-on at each other. They saw his face and reflexively lifted weapons—but he had already drawn up his inner energy. Gripping his sword with both hands, he knocked every sloppy swing aside.
A heartbeat later, those men wore great gashes somewhere on their bodies and tumbled from their saddles. That was the natural order of things.
“You bastard—!”
Gam Sangcheong, last in line, howled, features twisted. Jang Geon didn’t go straight for him. He’d just dropped a horse and carved through a string of men—his inner energy was surging. Grappling a demonic practitioner in that state wasn’t wise.
Jojo understood and arced wide around Gam Sangcheong. The man, face flushed and eyes blazing, yanked his reins, but he couldn’t catch up.
“Get back here, bastard!”
Jang Geon steadied his breathing and looked back. The thirty-odd riders were gone; only Gam Sangcheong still chased. Thirty to one, and he’d won. A satisfied smile crept over his face.
Once his breath settled, Jang Geon drew Jojo up. Gam Sangcheong, chasing, reflexively stopped as well, and growled,
“You filthy wretch... my men...”
Jang Geon looked genuinely puzzled.
“Who was it that smashed his own man’s head again?”
“If not for you, that would never have happened! Those men were like brothers to me!”
“Oh, spare me.”
At the scoff, Gam Sangcheong’s temper spiked. He kicked his horse hard—nothing. The beast, spent from the run, snorted and refused to move.
“You piece of shit! Even a foal disobeys me now!”
He smashed the crown of the horse’s skull with his fist. Bone crunched. The animal collapsed without a scream. Jang Geon’s expression slid from disbelief to contempt. Kill the horse—then how did he plan to give chase?
Lightness skill had never developed past marching utility. A man could be faster than a horse for a heartbeat, but once the horse ran, no human caught it. If Jang Geon simply rode Jojo away, Gam Sangcheong could only watch.
“You! Get down here! If you’re a martial man, face me!”
Only after killing his mount did he seem to realize the situation. He yanked the sword from his saddle laces and shouted. The funniest part: when he crushed the horse’s head, the head of Gam Soon-deok—so carefully cradled till now—tumbled and rolled away in the dust, and his feverish eyes didn’t even flick that way.
“I wasn’t planning to spare you anyway.”
Jang Geon slipped down from Jojo. In the brief pause, his roiling inner energy had settled. Time to finish the band.