Chapter 62. Should We Bury Him?

“By the way, did you come alone?”

At Shin Yul’s question, Gyo-ha went, “Huh?” as if remembering something he had forgotten and turned his head.

He looked around this way and that, as if searching for something.

“I didn’t come alone…”

Unable to find what he wanted, he scratched his cheek, and the Shin siblings felt a twinge of unease.

“…Did you, by any chance, get lost?”

Without even looking troubled, Gyo-ha nodded.

“Seems like it.”

At his reply, the siblings looked at each other.

“We’re doomed.”

It was Shin Yul who said it, but this time even Shin Gi-yang could not deny it.

Even so, Gyo-ha’s arrival had not been entirely useless.

For one thing, they had gained another pair of hands.

A martial artist of considerable skill.

‘…His internal energy seems weak though.’

Shin Yul studied him curiously. He was someone she might not be able to beat even if she went all out.

On top of that, his joining them did more than just increase their fighting strength.

The three of them were chewing on roast meat.

“How in the world did you get this?”

Shin Yul asked in wonder. The siblings had tried hunting too, but they hadn’t been able to find any animals nearby.

“I helped out on the way and got it.”

“Helped who?”

Who?

At the unspoken question, Gyo-ha answered as if it were nothing.

“They were attacking a wolf earlier, so I saved it.”

“…That’s not exactly getting it…”

She meant it was wolf meat.

Shin Gi-yang started to speak, then shut his mouth. He had both hunted it and been given it.

Stolen it? No.

There was nothing wrong in what Gyo-ha had said.

While Shin Gi-yang was still tangled up in the logic, Shin Yul burst out laughing.

“So there are animals here after all.”

“They’re in a similar situation. It looks like those things attack anything that’s alive.”

“…We should ration this then.”

Shin Yul lowered her gaze to the meat.

In that case, it made sense that the siblings hadn’t been able to find any animals.

They weren’t the only ones being attacked.

They had no idea when they’d next get to eat meat like this.

They might simply starve to death.

As Shin Yul brooded, she suddenly jolted and slapped her own cheek.

Jjak!

“Get a grip, you idiot!”

At the sudden outburst, Gyo-ha’s eyes went round.

Shin Gi-yang, however, kept chewing his meat as if he was used to it. When his eyes met Gyo-ha’s, he waved nonchalantly.

“You don’t have to mind her.”

Before they knew it, Shin Gi-yang had dropped his honorific speech as well.

It would have been strange for him alone to keep speaking formally when Shin Yul and Gyo-ha were already on casual terms.

“More importantly, do you have any idea what those things are?”

“Yo…”

Gyo-ha had been about to say yokai, but he shook his head.

He’d been strictly warned not to throw that word around carelessly when he was with others.

Shin Gi-yang hadn’t really been expecting an answer anyway, so he let it slide.

“Let’s give it our all, heup!”

Apparently done with her self-reflection, Shin Yul sprang to her feet and swung her spear.

It seemed her brother’s advice to conserve her strength hadn’t stuck in her head.

But there was something Shin Gi-yang himself hadn’t considered either.

It wasn’t just Shin Yul who was strange.

Gyo-ha was no less odd.

After finishing his meat, he pressed his face to the ground and started sniffing.

“What in the… what are you even doing?”

“I’m looking for my companions.”

Back to her usual energy as if she’d never been down, Shin Yul came over and stuck her rear up, copying him.

“I don’t smell anything.”

“I can’t find everyone, but there’s one person… no, two I can track.”

“…Are you from Nanman, by any chance?”

Shin Gi-yang looked at him as he asked. He’d heard stories.

They said the warriors of the Nanman Beast Palace had martial arts that mimicked beasts.

He’d also heard that they trained their sense of smell and hearing like animals.

If that were the case, Gyo-ha’s strange behavior would make sense.

The Nanman Beast Palace’s martial arts were famed for being overbearing.

“Nope.”

But Gyo-ha shook his head.

Whether Shin Gi-yang found that odd or not, Gyo-ha kept sniffing.

“Oh. Found them.”

“For real? I don’t smell anything.”

Watching the two twitching backsides, Shin Gi-yang quietly closed his eyes.

It was not exactly a pleasant sight.

Especially not for an older brother.

After that, the group fended off two more attacks.

Because of the fog, they had no sense of how much time had passed.

Even so, they didn’t lose hope.

After the second attack, Gyo-ha’s pace quickened even more.

And the party finally found the one they had been searching for.

“…So it’s Young Hero Gyo after all.”

It was Tang Ho, exhaustion written all over him.

The moment they met Tang Ho, the Shin siblings realized what scent Gyo-ha had been tracking.

‘Medicinals? No, poisonous herbs.’

He smelled like something you’d expect from a physician.

Unlike Shin Yul, who was simply happy to see another person, Shin Gi-yang couldn’t bring himself to be glad.

“This is truly fortunate. I was having trouble because my poisons weren’t working at all.”

Tang Ho gathered up the scattered throwing knives.

Shin Gi-yang watched him closely.

Black martial robes, a pale face.

Long arms and fingers suited to throwing blades. And poison on top of that.

Yet he didn’t look like an assassin.

He brought a certain clan to mind. Tang Ho seemed to feel the same, as he was studying the two of them as well.

Spears were not exactly a common weapon among martial artists.

At that moment, Shin Yul made the first move.

“I’m Shin Yul. This is my brother, Shin Gi-yang. Nice to meet you.”

Tang Ho’s eyebrows twitched at their names.

Shin Gi-yang’s hand crept cautiously toward his spear.

“…I am Tang Ho.”

“That’s a distinctive surname.”

“Yours is the same.”

Tang Ho’s hand had also slipped into his coat before he realized it. At that point even Shin Yul had to notice something was off.

“Tang Clan of Sichuan.”

She almost growled it.

“Shin Clan of Guizhou.”

“We’re of the branch family! We’re the Shin Clan of Henan.”

But it was as good as admitting it.

The tension spiked in an instant. Even so, Shin Yul turned and spoke to Gyo-ha.

“So you tricked us!”

Shin Yul trembled with betrayal.

Gyo-ha tilted his head at her.

“Tricked you how?”

“You said you were from the Alliance!”

“I said it was something like that. I came here to look for people from the Murim Alliance.”

“You…”

When he said the Alliance, she had naturally assumed the Evil Heaven Alliance. But from the other side, to an orthodox martial artist it would sound like the Murim Alliance.

Realizing that, Shin Yul fidgeted a moment, then opened her mouth again.

“You heard our names!”

There was no way he wouldn’t know. The Shin surname and the spear.

There weren’t many clans that could raise martial artists of their level at such a young age.

But Gyo-ha only looked at her as if to say, ‘so what.’

As Shin Yul bristled, thinking he was making fun of her, Tang Ho stepped in.

“Young Hero Gyo wouldn’t have known.”

“So you mean riffraff like us unorthodox types are beneath his notice?”

“To be precise, he’s simply ignorant of the state of the Murim. Until recently, he didn’t even know all of the Nine Sects, One Union.”

“…I know them now though.”

Gyo-ha muttered that under his breath and scratched his head. His teacher Yun Heo had only cursed the Nine Sects, One Union. He’d never bothered to teach them one by one.

At that, Shin Yul could only feel deflated.

If an orthodox martial artist didn’t even know the Nine Sects, One Union, there was no way he’d know the Shin Clan, one of the Seven Great Families.

“On top of that, Young Hero Gyo isn’t an orthodox martial artist.”

Many martial artists still thought of the Kunlun Sect as orthodox, but the leadership of the Nine Sects, One Union and the Five Great Clans had heard Yun Heo’s declaration.

Gyo-ha didn’t deny it.

At that, confusion also came over the faces of the Shin siblings.

Just then, Gyo-ha, who had been watching them, spoke.

“Mm, if you’re going to fight, you should do it quickly.”

Then he jerked his chin toward a spot behind the siblings.

“Those things are about to attack again.”

Just as he said, shadows were wavering beyond the fog.

Gyo-ha looked back and forth between the siblings and Tang Ho.

His gaze was asking, ‘are you not going to fight?’

Tang Ho sighed and drew his hand back out of his coat.

Seeing that, the Shin siblings also turned the direction of their spears.

Toward the fog.

“We’re only working together this once.”

“Fine.”

At Shin Yul’s words, Tang Ho nodded.

Soon, shadows came pouring toward them.

The battle continued.

Spears moved in dazzling arcs, and throwing knives split the darkness.

Above all, there was one beast rampaging among the shadows.

The shadows dwindled rapidly.

When they had finally cut down all of them, Shin Yul collapsed onto the ground.

“Damn it! I can’t do this anymore! Not even if you beat me to death! I can taste sweetness in my mouth.”

The others didn’t say anything, but they were in much the same state.

Only Gyo-ha stood there blinking.

“…Why is he perfectly fine?”

“Are you all right?”

Shin Gi-yang, finding it strange as well, asked him.

Gyo-ha shook his head.

Was he tired too? But what came out of his mouth was shocking.

“No, it’s just boring now. The ones I fought before were better.”

Gyo-ha clicked his tongue in regret.

Seeing that, the Shin siblings were at a loss for words. Even Tang Ho, who had been traveling with him, let out a hollow laugh.

Leaving the dazed Shin Yul where she sat, Tang Ho spoke up.

“Young Hero Gyo, can you tell where the others are?”

The thick fog made it impossible to see anything. At Tang Ho’s question, Gyo-ha closed his eyes for a moment and sniffed, then scratched his cheek.

“I think I can find one person… He’s not far from here.”

At his words, Tang Ho’s face brightened. The Shin siblings, on the other hand, wore complicated expressions.

They should be glad to add one more person, but if it was an orthodox martial artist, he might reject the two of them.

Yet they couldn’t suggest splitting up in a situation like this either.

So the group moved together, following Gyo-ha’s lead.

They didn’t know how long they walked.

As they went, they found a corpse.

Tang Ho didn’t even need to check who he was.

“He’s from the Alliance… from the Evil Heaven Alliance.”

Shin Yul, who had been about to say just ‘Alliance,’ glanced at Gyo-ha and corrected herself.

At that, Tang Ho made a quiet, thoughtful sound.

A martial artist from a hostile faction.

Yet it was awkward to be pleased about that in front of the siblings.

“Were you close to him?”

“No. He’s the bastard who told me a woman should strum a zither instead of using a spear. Said it ruined the taste of his drink or something.”

“And then you beat him to a pulp.”

“He said something worth getting hit for.”

At their exchange, Tang Ho’s expression grew complicated.

He cleared his throat and examined the body.

“This wasn’t done by the shadows.”

They were sword wounds.

“Does the person you’re looking for use a sword by any chance?”

“No.”

Gyo-ha shook his head. Shin Yul let out a quiet breath of relief. They hadn’t been close, but he was still a comrade.

Unlike her, Gyo-ha stared fixedly at the corpse.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing. I just feel like I’ve seen him before.”

“He’s got a common face. Rough up the local Black Path punks and you’ll find a dozen who look like him.”

Just as Shin Yul said, he did look fierce, but his features were common enough.

But at those words, Shin Gi-yang pressed his fingers to his brow.

A headache seemed to be coming on. As an older brother, he was starting to worry whether his sister would ever marry properly.

‘Mother and Father seem to have given up already though.’

Still, Shin Gi-yang hadn’t abandoned hope yet.

He was the one who would inherit the clan anyway. Even aside from being the eldest son, Shin Yul simply didn’t have the temperament to lead.

Besides, she herself hated taking responsibility.

But he did not have the confidence to live with his sister for the rest of his life.

“Should we bury him?”

“No. He’s not worth such a thing.”

Shin Yul spoke firmly, and Shin Gi-yang didn’t contradict her.

The dead man was no better than a Black Path thug.

But as if he still couldn’t quite leave him as he was, Shin Gi-yang took his identity plaque.

Shin Yul looked at him in disapproval, but she didn’t go so far as to stop him.