Caught Up In A Secret Scheme (2)

Seven days passed. Now the food Nam Yeong had stored away was almost all gone as well.

“Isn’t it about time for them to withdraw?”

At Cheong Yeon’s words, Ma-jil nodded.

“I will go take a look at the situation for a moment.”

Ma-jil entered the cave passage. It was when he had almost reached the entrance of the cave without making a sound. He heard someone speaking. Those tiresome bastards had still not withdrawn.

Ma-jil pricked up his ears to hear what they were talking about.

“How long are we supposed to stay here?”

“They said we have to stay for a month no matter what. Though I don’t know why we have to stay that long.”

“Really? But there is nothing here, so I don’t know why we have to be doing this. I heard the people who were here were from the Eastern Depot. Won’t it become a problem later?”

“The Eastern Depot? Where did you hear that rumor? I know a little something, and apparently the place that told us to come here was the Brocade Guard. They say it is because they hate seeing the Eastern Depot act so arrogantly, so they are trying to remove important people. Anyway, the ones who have power always make even more trouble.”

“Really? Then they are on the same side. Won’t our general get smashed up later for no reason?”

“What does it matter? We just received orders, so who would say anything? The general should be fine too.”

After listening to their conversation, Ma-jil turned around again and returned inside. He had heard everything he needed. He had learned how long those tiresome bastards intended to hold out, and he had also learned who the beings threatening them really were.

When Ma-jil returned, everyone was looking only at his face. Ma-jil told everyone everything he had heard.

“There is a high possibility that the Brocade Guard is behind this. They consider it shameful that the Brocade Guard fell below the Eastern Depot after the Eastern Depot was created. If you think about it, the Eastern Depot and the Brocade Guard are practically the same organization. It is just that the Brocade Guard was created first and the Eastern Depot later, but the problem is that the Eastern Depot became larger.”

Cheong Yeon explained the relationship between the Brocade Guard and the Eastern Depot in an easy way. In short, the Brocade Guard could not stand the Eastern Depot doing well and was picking a fight.

“My word, it looks like family members will be fighting each other.”

Ma-jil grumbled.

“But the people guarding this place are not the Brocade Guard, are they?”

“Why?”

“We have to get out. There is not much food left now, so are we going to keep staying here?”

“That is true. We have to get out. We have to get out and find out who in the Brocade Guard is doing this.”

Cheong Yeon showed motivation. Cheong Yeon rarely showed such interest in anything besides thinking about the sword.

That night, the first one to leave the cave was Gongsun Gyeong-in. His body was the quickest. Next was Cheong Yeon, and Ma-jil went out last.

They felt human presence in front of the buildings and inside the buildings. They did not know which direction the unit had come from, but once night fell, they were not even keeping much watch.

Well, since the place was blocked on all sides, what did they have to worry about? There would only be soldiers guarding the entrance.

When it came to moving silently, Gongsun Gyeong-in was better than anyone. He went around the buildings and collected various documents. If an order had come down from somewhere, a trace of it would remain.

People of the military could not easily detect the movements of martial masters. Gongsun Gyeong-in gathered every document that could be called a document, then found something he had seen often on a commander sleeping in Nam Yeong’s former house. He collected it and came outside.

“It is the Brocade Guard.”

“How do you know?”

“Please look at this.”

What Gongsun Gyeong-in held out was a map in the form of a booklet. It was a relatively accurate map that precisely recorded the terrain around Antang Mountain.

“Why this?”

“I have seen it in Beijing. It is a map used by the Brocade Guard. If you look at the back, there is a mark showing that it belongs to the Brocade Guard.”

When Gongsun Gyeong-in slightly flipped it over, the words Brocade Guard were indeed engraved there.

“They are the same military, so they could use a Brocade Guard map, couldn’t they?”

Ma-jil said.

“……Is that so?”

After thinking for quite a while, Gongsun Gyeong-in suddenly accepted Ma-jil’s words. Thinking about it, that was true. He himself had used Brocade Guard maps before, and there was no rule saying the military could not use them.

However, by coincidence, the map accurately marked the location of the hidden place on Antang Mountain. That told them there was a high possibility Gongsun Gyeong-in’s guess was correct.

“Let us examine it after we leave this place first.”

At Cheong Yeon’s words, they headed for the entrance. When it came to dealing with people, Cheong Yeon was fast.

Whoosh, whoosh.

After a brief movement, all the soldiers guarding the entrance collapsed. Cheong Yeon pressed all their acupoints to avoid seeing unnecessary blood.

After leaving the cave, they did not go down the mountain, but went up the mountain instead. Since there might be people guarding below, they decided to cross the mountain and escape in another direction.

“Where should we go?”

“How about my house?”

Je So-yeon said.

“No. If the place chasing us really is the Brocade Guard, it is better to assume they have already figured out every place we know. We must absolutely not go to any place we know.”

Cheong Yeon stopped her.

“What if something happened to my house?”

After hearing Cheong Yeon’s words, Je So-yeon looked like she was about to burst into tears at any moment. Cheong Yeon felt sorry, as if he had frightened her for no reason. But it was true that they had to be careful.

“Let us go to Geumhwa first. We can at least check whether something has happened or whether it is safe.”

Ma-jil gave his opinion. He meant they should go secretly and only take a look.

“I am sorry, but that will not do either. They will never touch So-yeon’s house. They will only watch it. They will be waiting for us to appear. Before we appear, they will not lay a hand on it, but if we appear there, it will no longer be useful, so they will erase it.”

Cheong Yeon said he was sorry, but he still said everything that had to be said. That was the way organizations like the Eastern Depot or the Brocade Guard worked. They extracted as much as they could obtain.

“There is no choice. Then where do we go?”

“Let us go to Beijing.”

“Beijing?”

“We do not need to worry about anything else right now. No matter how great the Brocade Guard is, they cannot touch the captain. We only have to worry about ourselves. Then where is the safest place when the captain is not here?”

“The Eastern Depot?”

“Exactly. If we are inside the Eastern Depot, even the Brocade Guard cannot carelessly touch us.”

They looked at each other and nodded. If they could just reach Beijing, it would be possible to hold out until the captain returned.

“If only I had mastered the Small-Hand Art, I could have swept them all away.”

Gongsun Gyeong-in regretted it. Cheong Yeon was the same.

He had stubbornly delayed receiving Neung Je-gang’s teachings for no reason. If he had learned when Neung Je-gang had offered to teach him earlier, by now he would have been able to break through the Brocade Guard’s threat even alone. The Empty Spirit Finger Saber was an extraordinary martial art with enough power to do so.

“Let’s go.”

Going was important, but hiding their identities was even more important. They first changed into different clothes, and the men secretly cut horsehair to make fake beards. To hide Ma-jil’s face, attaching a fake beard was the best way. After all, he looked so much like a bad man.

However, the Brocade Guard already knew their movements. Their eyes were everywhere on Antang Mountain.

If only martial artists like Cheong Yeon and Gongsun Gyeong-in had been part of the group, they might have escaped safely, but the group included Jo Su-won, who did not know martial arts, and Jo Ja-myeong, whose martial arts were still too much for him to use against people.

Before they had gone far, they had to suffer pursuit and surprise attacks from people whose identities they could not know. The fight they had tried to avoid had begun.