Why One Must Become A Killer (2)

Ssssss.

Assassins seeped into the inn.

Go So-jeong swept her cold gaze around. She drew two daggers, split them between her hands, and gave them a light scrape.

Ggggggrrk.

“Hoho, the so-called Assassin Pavilion dares… Are we playing hide-and-seek now?”

Thuk.

“Aaaargh!”

Shraaash.

Bang.

“Ggeo-eok!”

“Are these really… the Assassin Pavilion? Why are assassins screaming and making a fuss? Even our operatives don’t scream.”

Go So-jeong braced herself beside Gal Hwi-jeong, hurling her two daggers in turn and recalling them. Each time, with a wretched scream, red blood streamed down the inn wall together with a corpse.

The pair of daggers seemed tied to invisible threads—launch and recall entirely at her command. It showed plainly how carefully the Martial Alliance’s Investigation Unit chief had raised her.

Kwojik!

Kwaa-aang!

At last the assassins smashed through the inn walls and began a full assault. A milky smoke rolled in with them.

“Hold your breath!”

Go So-jeong shouted to Gal Hwi-jeong and loosed both daggers from her hands.

Spat!

Shiiiik, shugag!

“Keuk!”

“Kraak!”

“Aaah!”

The daggers flared for an instant. Wherever that light brushed, relentless screams followed.

“They’re scattering poison? Hohoho, I played with that when I was three. Come on, all of you! Hohohohoho!”

Go So-jeong bared her true nature so fiercely the assassins themselves recoiled.

Meanwhile, Neung Je-gang picked up a sword dropped by a dead assassin.

Ttok

Piiit

“Ugh!”

He clipped off a bit of the tip and flicked it.

“If you withdraw even now, I won’t bother chasing you down to kill you.”

Ttok

Paait

“Kek!”

“Even if you’re assassins, beating you to a pulp doesn’t exactly feel good.”

Ttuk

Papapapak

“Kkeo-eok!”

“Heo-eok!”

“Kuk!”

This time a slightly larger shard burst apart, taking down at once three assassins hiding behind the wall.

“So then, all dead already. And you—Go So-jeong, was it? Impressive. Truly impressive. The Martial Alliance raised a formidable woman.”

While dealing with the assassins, Neung Je-gang kept tabs on what was happening inside the inn. Thanks to that, he heard everything Go So-jeong said.

“A K-killing Star! Curse…!”

No assassins remained. It was the last thing their leader—unable to die only because Neung Je-gang had sealed a life point—spat out as he swallowed poison.

Neung Je-gang had deliberately left no mute-point pressed. From experience he knew it was impossible to get anything from an assassin’s mouth anyway.

“Killing Star? You lot come to kill me, and I’m the problem?”

Neung Je-gang felt a twinge of injustice.

“If one bears a desperate purpose in life that admits no surrender of life, one can kill as much as needed. If that’s why they call it Killing Star, then I suppose I truly am a Killing Star—the kind born because of scum like you.”

Clang

Neung Je-gang tossed aside the sword, now less than half a blade, and stepped into the wrecked inn.

“You’re back?”

A coy grin.

Seeing Go So-jeong smile at him, gooseflesh raced over Neung Je-gang for a heartbeat. The peal of laughter she’d loosed while smashing assassins still rang in his ears.

“Ahem… Where is Xiangzhu Gal?”

“Oh my, my head—forgot to detox him.”

Had Neung Je-gang entered the inn even a little later, Gal Hwi-jeong might have bade the world farewell unawares.

“There’s likely another assassin waiting.”

Said Go So-jeong, who had just purged Gal Hwi-jeong’s poison. Since she’d been exposed anyway, she decided to lean in completely.

“Right. Today’s assassins couldn’t even be called first-rate.”

Gal Hwi-jeong bowed his head. To say assassins he hadn’t even dared imagine facing weren’t first-rate—though not from a great orthodox sect, he’d climbed to Patrol Branch Leader of the Martial Alliance’s Investigation Unit with a single iron whip. It carved a deep wound in his pride.

“At any rate, to avoid further attacks we must reach Hanzhong as fast as possible. Those who commissioned the Assassin Pavilion likely mean to keep us from seeing where the Special Assault Corps members were killed.”

“Oh my, did you say ‘we’ just now? Hohoho, yes. Let’s go together. This girl will surely guide darling safely to the scene.”

At last, Neung Je-gang became Go So-jeong’s darling. Without even realizing it, she had become the person closest to him.

Neung Je-gang could not very well object. He had a bad feeling that if he did, he might end up acknowledging an awkward relationship.

The Assassin Pavilion’s strikes continued. Not a massive raid like in the village, but one- and two-man cells kept ambushing them so relentlessly that until they reached Hanzhong, Neung Je-gang’s party had no time to even shut their eyes.

Part of it was Neung Je-gang’s stubborn choice to travel only through unpeopled mountains, worried about harm to commoners.

Fortunately no one was injured. Perhaps realizing poison was useless, the assassins stopped using it, so Gal Hwi-jeong remained safe.

And then, the moment the Hanzhong city gate came into view, the attacks cut off as if by magic. As the thought—we finally broke through their cordon—relieved them, their tension slackened.

“Let’s go. It’s not safe here yet.”

Not knowing where the Martial Alliance had preserved the crime scene, Neung Je-gang hurried the exhausted Gal Hwi-jeong along.

But once his tension broke, Gal Hwi-jeong went limp. Even for a martial artist, going nearly ten days with little sleep and scant food was brutal.

Only Gal Hwi-jeong knew the location. Even Go So-jeong didn’t know exactly where the bodies had been found.

“Let’s at least get near the gate.”

Neung Je-gang shook Gal Hwi-jeong awake and half-dragged him toward the gate. Night hadn’t fully settled yet, so the gate was shut tight.

People who’d missed the hour and couldn’t enter the city were clustered here and there around a great bonfire and small campfires, preparing to pass the night—an everyday sight in Central Plains cities after dark.

“They won’t open until the Insi (approximately 03:00–05:00).”

After finding a spot, Neung Je-gang took embers from the bonfire and made a small fire.

“Darling, can’t we just go over the wall?”

Sseuk

Go So-jeong rested her head on Neung Je-gang’s shoulder.

He promptly stood and shifted seats. She grumbled, but he ignored it. However stunning she might be, Neung Je-gang wasn’t the type to enjoy a woman coming on so bluntly.

Still, he felt good not having to worry about assassins for once. A tired body, the darkening sky… and through the gentle starlight, a rain of arrows fell like a meteor shower, enriching the hush of night.

“Rain of arrows?”

Neung Je-gang sprang up.

“Get down!”

Shushushushuuk

With a warning torn from Neung Je-gang’s throat, arrows poured toward the people before the gate like rain. Even for him, there was nothing he could do about this.

He slung Gal Hwi-jeong over his back and sprinted for the gate.

“Aaagh!”

“Save us—somebody help!”

“Kreuk!”

He couldn’t tell how many were firing. The arrow-storm kept coming. Arrows driven by inner force punched through bodies and bit deep into the earth.

They weren’t even aiming at Neung Je-gang. It was a random slaughter meant to kill anything living before the gate.

Hwiririk

Neung Je-gang vaulted up to the gate tower. In the next instant Go So-jeong landed beside him.

“Don’t move!”

The soldiers on the gate, panicked by the sudden attack and the screams, wavered, then leveled spears and swords at Neung Je-gang.

Hwiririk

In a flash Neung Je-gang struck their acupoints and moved them to a safe spot out of the arrow-fire. Then he wedged the spent Gal Hwi-jeong among them.

“Lady Go, guard this place.”

Neung Je-gang hurled himself toward where the arrows were being loosed. He was angry. He bit his lip hard.

Jureureuk

Blood trickled from his tightly shut lips. He barely felt the pain.

He knew well what assassins were. As an Eastern Depot man he’d seen many corpses slain by assassins, and claiming the legacy of Secret Shadow, he had learned assassin arts himself.

But he had never seen such merciless assassin work. He hadn’t seen the dead villagers himself last time, so it hadn’t struck him as dire. But now…!

His reason went numb.

Ttuk!

Neung Je-gang snapped a pine branch.

“You should never have done this before me. I swear this: I will wipe out the seed of all who bear the name assassin.”

His master Nam Yeong had devoted his life to suppressing Japanese pirates. Now he swore there could be no coexistence with assassins. Even revenge bound to his own life was a burden enough, yet Neung Je-gang chose the harder road.

“At this rate everyone will die…”

Go So-jeong watched anxiously where Neung Je-gang had charged. Judging by the arrow-storm, it seemed every surviving Assassin Pavilion killer had poured out.

No one before the gate still moved. Yet arrows kept flying. Go So-jeong turned her head from the ghastly scene—bodies bristling with arrows like porcupines lay strewn everywhere.

“S-save me! Some—one save…”

Then it came: a living person’s desperate cry. Instinctively, Go So-jeong flashed toward the sound.

From a carriage whose horses lay dead and toppled—ornate with aristocratic patterns—she heard human breathing inside.

Ududuk

Go So-jeong tore off the carriage door. A person—alive—was visible, trapped and writhing beneath corpses.

Go So-jeong moved to lift the bodies away.

“Aaagh!”

A scream burst out. Startled, she realized why.

An arrow had pierced a corpse and lodged in the back of the woman pinned underneath. It seemed the dead had shielded the living woman and taken the arrow.

“Damn it—of all places…”

Go So-jeong drew a dagger and cut the fletching, then lifted the corpse free of the shaft.

“Hrnnng!”

The woman’s pained moans continued. Once Go So-jeong removed the upper body, blood streamed from the wound in the woman’s back where the arrow stuck.

Go So-jeong gripped the shaft and pulled to draw the arrow.

“Heo-eok!”

The woman’s scream rose, but Go So-jeong ignored it.

Ssuuk

“Aaagh!”

The woman shrieked and fainted.

Go So-jeong took wound-sealing powder from her bosom and sprinkled it on the hole the arrow left.

“Out of all these people… only one survived?”

The arrow-rain had ceased at some point. Even so, no one was moving.

Go So-jeong lifted the woman and climbed to the gate tower, meaning to lay her among the soldiers who lay unconscious. When Neung Je-gang returned, they could find a physician—or not.

Then, all at once, her body trembled.

“Th-those bastards…!”

A filthy curse slipped from her lips.

“What am I supposed to tell darling…?”

Before her eyes lay Gal Hwi-jeong—who had shared life and death with them till now—dead, his neck half-severed.