40 — Tempest Aboard (3)

Neung Je-gang sprang across and landed on the pirates’ boat. In that instant, the real incident broke loose.

Pah-pah-pah-pak—

Shu-shu-shuuk—

The seven swordsmen—who had been broadcasting a faint killing aura yet doing nothing—suddenly struck at Neung Je-gang’s back the moment he changed boats.

“I figured you would.”

More startling still, Neung Je-gang handled their attack as if he had been waiting for it.

After a flurry of exchanges, they spread into a ring around him—eerily similar to how the pirates he had felled earlier had encircled him, though the pressure now felt entirely different.

“You knew we would attack?”

“Of course. You were bleeding killing intent everywhere—how could I not?”

“Lies! We hid our killing intent perfectly.”

“Tsk, more fools. You reduced it; you didn’t hide it. Why am I wasting breath on dead men walking… Enough talk. Come on. I knew you’d hit the moment I hopped over.”

“Form the array!”

At that cue, the seven took up uncanny bearings around Neung Je-gang.

“Seven men… a Seven Stars Sword Formation? That’s a Wudang absolute art.”

So he thought, but the formation differed from the Seven Stars pattern he knew.

“Rotating strike!”

The seven slashed as they moved, swapping positions—an attack pattern designed to avoid counters. Four pressed from the ring while three stood ready behind them, then they cycled offense and rest like a turning wheel—a Rolling-Wheel Sword Array.

It was the Seven-Slaying Sword Formation, Blood Sword Pavilion’s anti–grandmaster array—one of the Ten Great contract-killer orders’ specialty formations.

Yet Neung Je-gang, who had scoffed at it, was already caught inside.

“If you can fend off four blades at once forever, you might live. Keh-keh-keh!”

Mockery drifted toward the man trapped in the net.

Against formations meant for top experts, the best plan was not to be drawn in. Lacking experience against such arrays was the root of Neung Je-gang’s misstep.

“I’ll just kill you all. But answer one thing—why are you trying to kill me?”

His presence yielded to no one. He wondered if whoever had sent them tied back to his clan’s blood calamity.

“You think a killer will tell you that?”

“A killer?”

Hwi-hwi-hwi-hwik—

Cha-jang-jang-jang—

Neung Je-gang unleashed the Heaven-Piercing Great Sword Technique. Against this sort of rotating pressure, orthodox techniques proved more effective.

Steel rang as the formation turned and his parries met their blades, and the conversation with the assassins deepened.

“If you’re killers… Blood Sword Pavilion?”

He dredged up a long-sleeping shard of memory. He hadn’t placed them sooner because their matching uniforms made him doubt they were contract killers at all.

“Keh-keh! Only figuring it out now?”

“Damn it—you’re the ones who took the contract from the Assassin Pavilion.”

The exchange between the Assassin Pavilion’s chief and steward still rang in his ears; he hadn’t forgotten that someone wanted him dead.

“H-How do you…?”

The fall of the Assassin Pavilion wasn’t public yet; people merely thought they had botched a job and gone to ground. Without the lord’s corpse, the Pavilion would live on as a nameless contractor.

“The price—fifty thousand in gold, with twenty thousand up front, right?”

“…We were told twenty thousand total, five thousand down.”

“Idiots. Swindled by the very man you serve.”

With that, Neung Je-gang primed his hidden trump—One-Finger Piercing.

While trading blows, he had noticed a repeating instant when the three in reserve and one attacker lined up—four on a straight.

One-Finger Piercing!

An invincible finger-thrust qi that punched through anything.

Such a gambit worked best in one decisive shot.

He raised his left index finger straight toward the sky. The Mindless Sword gleamed brighter; the killers had no idea what that lone finger meant.

Woooong—

Inner power surged into the finger, staining the hand yellow, a lump of yellow qi condensing at the tip—like a thimble used for sewing, coalesced and solid.

“Watch it! He’s doing something weird!”

One assassin barked a warning, but the formation bound their movements; no one could break pattern.

Fyoong—

The qi thimble fired at one man.

Puh-puh-puk-puk—

Screee—

“Aaagh! The mast is going down!”

One-Finger Piercing ripped four assassins into headless ghosts—and, not done, punched a gaping hole through the pirate ship’s mast.

“I—impossible…!”

A survivor muttered, stunned. Former slaves and pirates alike stampeded out of the mast’s fall line, shoving aside even the killers in panic.

“My control’s off. I’ll need reps to get a feel for it.”

Even he hadn’t expected that kind of force; it didn’t feel any weaker than the famed “Forbidden Arts.“

‘If I unleash Thunderclap Heaven-Rending at full force, it might top this… Which means Shaolin’s orthodox Forbidden Arts, One-Finger Zen, is surely stronger still. Tch—better mind my manners if I run into those Shaolin monks.’

Lately he had been mulling what truly separated “Forbidden Arts” from ordinary techniques.

“Shall we continue—or are you leaving?”

“You’d let us go? Didn’t you say you never spare anyone who tries to kill you?”

“Funny—your ears work when the Blood Sword Pavilion Lord cheats you. Tell me where he is and I’ll let you walk. You won’t leave a swindler of a lord alone, will you?”

“Y-you mean to kill him?”

“I told you—I don’t forgive those who try to kill me. Flunkies like you don’t count. That pirate—Geum Bak-eo?—I killed because he was the boss. Otherwise, would I have spared the rest of those lads?”

He pointed the Mindless Sword toward the surviving Danpung bandits.

At the weapon’s tilt, the pirates flattened themselves to the deck.

“But he’s our master—the teacher of us Seven Killers of Blood Sword…”

The man wavered.

Right—rumor had it Blood Sword Pavilion began as a proper sword sect, not a killer outfit. Their ways differ from common assassins; calling their lord “master” fits.

When someone hesitated, a wedge closed the gap.

“Oh? So you lot are fairly high up.”

It meant: push me and I’ll cut you down too. The hint snapped the survivors into urgency.

“V-very well! The Blood Sword Pavilion is right here.”

“Po Gong Shrine, Hefei, Anhui.”

The directions reached only Neung Je-gang by sound transmission.

The killers withdrew to their own ship. People scrambled out of their path. Until they disembarked, no one would rest easy.

Hooks were cast off; the passenger boat hurried away.

“Hmph… of all places, these killers are holed up at Magistrate Bao’s shrine—Po Gong Shrine of the Song great Bao Zheng. That’s rich.”

Hefei’s Po Gong Shrine drew countless petitioners to lament their injustices; Blood Sword Pavilion hid there, feeding on the crowd’s simmering resentments.

“Uh… what about us…?”

One pirate—apparently the senior among the survivors—asked from a cautious distance, hardly reassuring.

“Hm? Can you handle the boat?”

“Of course. We row.”

“Then head for the nearest village. But first—water and food to those people.”

Neung Je-gang pointed at the freed slaves.

“R-right away. We—we’ll row.”

“Good. Move. If you want out from under my hand, hurry.”

Taking that as near-pardon, the pirates scrambled. In less than one shichen, they reached a small fishing village’s dock.

The mast was broken, but a pirate ship was still a pirate ship; the whole village poured out—not to fight, but to bring up the “dues” they had always prepared.

None of the Danpung men dared accept tribute under Neung Je-gang’s eye.

He had the rescued folk bathe in the river, seized all jewels and cash stored aboard, and distributed them to those who wished to part ways.

Some would likely suffer misfortune again—but those who wanted to find their hometowns should be allowed to try.

To the rest, he offered a place to live at Kuaiji Mountain.

Kuaiji Mountain!

No one failed to know it as the domain of the martial world’s great—Nam Yeong.

He purchased every horse and cart in the village, even tossing in extra—so his funds thinned fast.

“When did I burn through another ten taels of gold? I’m starting to think I have a spending problem.”

He resolved to be tighter with money and to cash the large banknote at the next big city’s money house.

The wagon train rolled on and soon crossed from Anhui into Hubei.

“Shall I head to Hefei first and finish that Blood Sword Pavilion Lord?”

First, he drove the train to Anqing, sold off all horses and carts—

From Anqing he would need to cross the Yangtze by boat. Ships that could take that many animals and carts were rare—and he was low on coin.

He rented a detached annex behind a larger inn; the proceeds from the sale went straight to that.

He told the people to wait about half a month—then shot off toward Hefei.