If It’s To Survive, Then… (4)

Yeon Heung did not find any living people in the mountain fortress and went straight down toward the encampment.

“There is a corpse here.”

A subordinate who had gone down ahead to scout the surroundings shouted.

The place he pointed to was right in front of the First Division Lord’s tent, where a corpse lay with its skull shattered so badly that it was impossible to tell who it had been.

“It looks like some incident happened here as well.”

“Search the area. Since we do not see any other bodies of the First Division Lord or his men, it seems they must have gone after the culprit.”

At times like this, Yeon Heung especially missed the dead Gam Chaek. Whenever there was something that required brains, he could just leave it to Gam Chaek, but trying to do even that alone was overwhelming.

In that sense, the First Division Lord had truly been an impressive man. He was someone who handled even the thinking part entirely on his own.

“Chief!”

A short while later, at a subordinate’s cry, Yeon Heung ran over.

There, all the members of the First Division—including the very First Division Lord Jang Gon, whom he had so deeply envied, and the arrogant Wi Tam—greeted him as corpses.

“How can this be…? This was not something Nam Yeong did. Then who was it? What kind of expert could kill all of these men at once?”

“Could Secret Shadow have come?”

One of his subordinates cautiously opened his mouth.

“What? Well, that is possible. If it was not Secret Shadow, they would never have charged him all together like this. Then are you saying it was not Nam Yeong but Secret Shadow who killed my men?”

Yeon Heung decided that the deaths of the subordinates who had died near him were also the work of Secret Shadow.

“But then why did he leave me alone? No, no. That is not the issue right now. If Secret Shadow has returned, we are the ones who have to dispose of him now, but can we really do that with our abilities?”

Yeon Heung felt, down to his bones, that he should have faced Secret Shadow together with the First Division Lord, just as the man had suggested. His pointless insistence that Nam Yeong had to be eliminated first had split their forces in two, and in the end led to the failure of their mission.

He knew that failure in a mission meant death, yet all of this had happened because he had envied the First Division Lord Jang Gon.

“Everyone, gather.”

At Yeon Heung’s command, his subordinates crowded around him.

“As you know, if we fail to kill Secret Shadow, we cannot return to the Mountain. But as you can see, even when the First Division Lord and all his men charged together, they still could not defeat him.”

After Yeon Heung checked the face of each subordinate one by one, he took something out from his breast and handed it out to them, one each. His men’s eyes trembled violently, as if they knew exactly what it was.

“In any case, our task is to kill Secret Shadow. Until then, we cannot leave this mountain. But it is possible that we might be captured by him. The secrets of the Mountain must be kept no matter what. That is why I am giving you this. Remember that everything of ours has been left up there.”

“Understood.”

They tossed what they had received from Yeon Heung into their mouths. It was none other than the very secret clan poison that Yeon Heung smeared on his weapon, the Jeoksa Fist-Rings.

If he wounded someone using the Jeoksa Fist-Rings, they would die quickly from acute poisoning, but even when taken like this, the poison would slowly lead to death. The only difference was when one died; the fact of dying remained the same.

“We will return to the encampment and wait for Secret Shadow.”

Yeon Heung turned around again and headed back to the encampment.

The tents of the encampment were still there as they had been. Come to think of it, he had no idea where all the cult followers had gone. If they had withdrawn, there was no reason to just leave this many tents behind.

Nor did it seem as if they had all been killed. There had been corpses of cult followers in the mountain fortress, but no bodies of ordinary followers were visible in the encampment.

“Well, in any case, there is no reason to worry about that right now.”

Yeon Heung returned to his own tent and lay down on the simple cot. All that time he had been scrambling around the mountain to catch Nam Yeong, he had rarely had the chance to lie down comfortably.

“A warrior should not grow accustomed to comfort… and yet somehow I have reached an age when a bed feels this pleasant.”

Facing his death, Yeon Heung grew a little sentimental.

Just then.

“If you have already resigned yourself to death, you could stand to show a little flexibility, could you not?”

Fwish.

Yeon Heung shot up from the cot. He had not even realized someone else was inside the tent.

In his gaze, he saw the figure of a man dressed entirely in black from head to toe.

“Wh-who are you?”

“How stupid. Do you not already know who I am?”

“S-Secret Shadow?”

Clang.

From the backs of the Jeoksa Fist-Rings on both his hands, sharp blades sprang out. A reddish, oily sheen glistened on the blades, as if they were coated in poison.

“Did you really have to drive even your subordinates to their deaths like that?”

“What nonsense is that?”

“There is no need to shout on purpose. It already looks like all your men have gathered outside the tent. But as I watched, something struck me as funny. Your men all swallowed the poison you gave them, so why did you not take it yourself? Planning to be the only one who survives?”

“If you have time to babble nonsense, use it to try to keep your life.”

Whoosh.

A blast of fist wind surged from Yeon Heung’s fist toward Neung Je-gang.

Neung Je-gang lightly twisted his body and dodged the fist wind. For an opening move, it was far too weak. Yeon Heung’s true intent was revealed at once.

Riiip.

He tore open the tent and flung himself outside. He had absolutely no intention of fighting alone.

“If you are confident, will you come outside and fight all of us together?”

After leaping toward where his men were visible, Yeon Heung shouted.

He could not forget how Neung Je-gang had slipped in like a ghost on that dark night and cut his men’s lives short. If he lost this opportunity now, there was no telling when he would ever see Neung Je-gang again.

Neung Je-gang knew that Yeon Heung was using a tactic to lure the enemy into the killing ground, but he allowed himself to be drawn in. There was no longer any reason to avoid them, nor to drag things out and simply watch. Since he had clearly fed his men something poisonous, Yeon Heung was likely prepared to die himself.

Neung Je-gang walked slowly out of the tent.

Yeon Heung and his men stood in a wide clearing in front of the tent, having taken their positions and waiting for him.

“My men have mastered a certain formation. Are you confident you can withstand their attack?”

Yeon Heung was trying, in any way he could, to needle Neung Je-gang and provoke him into a straight-up confrontation.

Smirk.

His ploy was so transparent it might as well have been see-through.

“As much as you like.”

The one thing Neung Je-gang was weakest against was formation arrays. He only knew the absolute basics.

However, the enemies’ numbers had already been reduced. And though he was weak to formations, he had already experienced the arrays deployed by the killers of the Blood Sword Pavilion. He might suffer a bit of hardship, but if he thought of it as something to gain experience from for the future, it was something worth going through at least once.

“Good! Begin.”

With Yeon Heung’s order, the attack began.

Fwhoosh!

“Huh!”

Neung Je-gang was startled.

The formation the enemies deployed was nothing special. All they did was stand with the wind at their backs, wait for Neung Je-gang to step forward, then pull powdered lime from their pouches and scatter it.

Neung Je-gang hurriedly closed his eyes. He shut his mouth as well. He had not imagined that what they called a formation would be something this petty.

“Hahahahaha! Got him.”

As soon as Neung Je-gang closed his eyes, Yeon Heung and his subordinates launched a killing blow. For this kind of assault, they had long since prepared long polearms like spears instead of their usual weapons.

However, even if they blinded him with lime powder and attacked with long weapons, that posed little threat to a master like Neung Je-gang, who could sense his opponent’s energy.

The proof showed itself at once.

Slash.

“Aaargh!”

“Ugh!”

Each time Neung Je-gang’s hand moved, Yeon Heung’s men, who had trusted in the lime powder, were helplessly smashed into bloody lumps and sent flying.

Instead, Neung Je-gang moved into a full counterattack. He flung his body forward, closing the distance to Yeon Heung’s men.

From that moment on, Neung Je-gang’s movements became so fast that even Yeon Heung could no longer follow his actual form.

It was a sight that made it obvious why Neung Je-gang’s epithet as Secret Shadow was so fitting.

Even as he watched his subordinates fall and roll away one after another, Yeon Heung still did not move.

No, he was moving. With the wind still at his back, he kept working his hands busily a short distance away from his men.

“Khak!”

“Grgh!”

Before even half the time of a single incense stick had passed, the only ones left standing were Neung Je-gang and Yeon Heung.

From the beginning, it had never been a fight they could win. Because they had resorted to such despicable tricks, Neung Je-gang had gone too far, and not a single one of Yeon Heung’s subordinates was left with breath in his body.

One strike, one kill—those words fit perfectly.

“Good, splendid. Your dazzling movement was truly worthy of the epithet Secret Shadow.”

Yeon Heung walked toward Neung Je-gang.

“But that ends now. It is time for you to die.”

Yeon Heung treated Neung Je-gang as if he were already a fish caught in his net.

“Heh. So you are that confident just because you trust in the poison you secretly dispersed, whether your men die or not?”

“Ah, so you noticed?”

Yeon Heung was flustered. Up to now, when he scattered poison while sprinkling lime powder, no one had ever noticed. They would simply be thrown into confusion by the lime and then collapse from the poison, by his men’s hands or by his own.

It was a method that could not show much effect in a forest, but in a standoff like this, with the wind at his back, it was an almost perfect, lethal trick. Dirty or not, in a fight, winning was what mattered most.

Yeon Heung was convinced that Neung Je-gang had been poisoned. As far as he knew, there was no one truly free from poison. Even if the opponent was a master of poisons, unless it was his own secret clan poison, he would absolutely have to take an antidote.

The pill he had given his men was both a poison and the antidote to the very toxin he had just scattered. His subordinates had swallowed it without hesitation because they knew that.

So it was only natural that Neung Je-gang had been poisoned. It was just that his resistance to poisons was so extremely high that he did not feel it yet.

Sooner or later, the damage from that poison would reveal itself in Neung Je-gang. Yeon Heung only had to stall for time and wait for that moment.

Shiiiing.

The dark-red Jeoksa Fist-Rings began to whirl.

Yeon Heung put everything he had into this, intending to finish Neung Je-gang off in one go. He had no idea when the poison would activate. If he forced his opponent to burn up his inner energy, the poison would manifest its power all the faster.

Neung Je-gang’s form moved in a loose, flowing way as he dodged the fist winds thrown by the Jeoksa Fist-Rings. By the slimmest of margins, the Jeoksa Fist-Rings kept passing by, just grazing the afterimage of his body.

Shshshshk.

A hazy mist-like vapor gathered around the blades that had sprung from the Jeoksa Fist-Rings.

“There is nothing the Jeoksa Fist-Rings cannot kill.”

Shouting that, Yeon Heung shot his hands forward like lightning.

There was no sound. The faint killing energy riding on the blades attached to the Jeoksa Fist-Rings shot toward Neung Je-gang’s heart at a speed like falling rain of arrows.

Fwip.

As Neung Je-gang reached for the hilt of the Heartless Sword, the blade leapt out from the Jeoksa Fist-Rings about a foot in front of him, as if even the weapon itself wanted nothing to do with him. The blades of the Jeoksa Fist-Rings were not mere blades—they also served as hidden weapons coated in poison.

Whoosh.

Neung Je-gang’s hand sliced through empty air.

Thud.

Thump.

The Heartless Sword did not even leave its scabbard. Even so, in that state, it blocked the poisoned blade of the Jeoksa Fist-Rings that had been filled with killing energy. The blade that had shot out from the Jeoksa Fist-Rings could advance no further, held back by the Heartless Sword, which was likewise brimming with energy.

The tip of Neung Je-gang’s left middle finger was buried right in the center of Yeon Heung’s forehead, making blood seep out in thin trickles.

Yeon Heung’s movements stopped dead.

Neung Je-gang released his right hand from the hilt of the Heartless Sword and lightly pushed Yeon Heung’s forehead.

Crack.

Blood gushed out.

As the middle finger that had been lodged in his forehead pulled free, Yeon Heung’s body suddenly collapsed to the ground. From the hole in his forehead, whitish brain matter, now stained red, welled up in clumps along with the blood.

Neung Je-gang stared at the sight for a moment, then turned away. The fight in which every dirty trick had been used ended just like that.