Things Going Awry (1)

The Martial Alliance’s Intelligence Pavilion.

Chief Strategist Zhuge Jigang slammed his desk with a furious face.

Thud!

“What did you say?! That Nine Abyssal Yun Demon Gi Eum said something like that?!”

The Intelligence Pavilion Master, kneeling before him, bowed his head again as he answered.

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Graaah!”

What the pavilion master reported was that Gi Eum, the “Nine Abyssal Yun Demon” who had gone to the Righteous Chivalry Guild to dispose of Sa Won-yang, had spoken Zhuge Jigang’s name in front of Qingcheng and the Tang Clan.

Zhuge Jigang realized he had been had.

Originally, he had planned to dig up the Righteous Chivalry Guild’s secrets and use them to pressure the Blood Demon for breaking their pact, but the man had moved faster and personally cleaned up Sa Won-yang with his own hands.

Up to that point, Zhuge could still understand it.

Not only would that prove to the martial world that they had known nothing beforehand, it would also serve to flaunt that they were faithfully honoring the agreement.

But to bring up Zhuge Jigang’s very own name there…

Zhuge Jigang ground his teeth and muttered.

“That snake of a bastard…”

On the surface, them bringing up his name would look like they were trying to prove their own innocence.

But in Zhuge Jigang’s eyes, that was far from the only reason.

Because of that statement, martial artists would now think that he, the Martial Alliance’s strategist—and by extension the Martial Alliance itself—had been in constant communication with the Blood Cult all this time.

And that would lower their hostility toward the Blood Cult while scattering that hostility, redirecting part of it away from the Cult and toward the Martial Alliance instead.

From now on, whenever martial artists recalled the atrocities committed by the Blood Cult, they would recall the Martial Alliance alongside them.

On top of that, it felt very much like a warning from the Blood Demon to Zhuge Jigang.

‘So they’re saying they don’t care even if everything gets exposed. That I should think very carefully about who loses more if the truth comes out before I act.’

This was, most likely, the Blood Demon’s answer to Zhuge Jigang’s attempt to pressure them over this incident.

Zhuge Jigang had to struggle mightily to quell his rage.

But what enraged him was not only the report about the Righteous Chivalry Guild.

“This… is a letter from the Sword Saint?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

Previously, to get rid of the Sword Saint, Zhuge Jigang had sent him a request to come to the Righteous Chivalry Guild, and at the same time had asked the Blood Cult to take care of him.

But as Zhuge Jigang read the Sword Saint’s reply, he had to clench his teeth to keep from crumpling it in front of his subordinates.

The Sword Saint’s reply said this:

Right now he was overwhelmed with matters at the front line, and anything north of the front should be handled by the Alliance on its own.

In other words, he was flatly stating that, regardless of the Alliance’s orders, he would not leave the front.

‘Sword Saint… so if he never moved from the front…’

Grinding his teeth, Zhuge Jigang had hurried back to his office in the Military Bureau, and there he had indeed confirmed the secret letter from the Blood Demon.

And it contained exactly what he had expected.

[Because that man never appeared at the Righteous Chivalry Guild, I could not kill him. To think you made us swing our blades in vain after we prepared everything so thoroughly—one wonders if Strategist Zhuge’s wits are not what they used to be, and I find myself concerned. Still, I trust you are not foolish enough to ask us to kill him at the front line. As for the price for making us waste our efforts this time, we shall collect it later.]

“Grrrk!”

Zhuge Jigang ground his teeth and crumpled the letter in his fist.

The Blood Demon was right.

They could not kill the Sword Saint at the front.

If the Sword Saint—idol of the martial world—were to be killed by Blood Cultists on the front line, then no matter how powerful Zhuge Jigang might be within the Martial Alliance, he would never be able to stop a second Great Righteous–Blood War from breaking out.

So instead of clearing away the Sword Saint, Zhuge Jigang had ended up in debt to the Blood Demon, and been openly ridiculed on top of it.

His anger surged all the way to the top of his skull.

It was all because of the Sword Saint—because of that man.

Alone in his office, Zhuge Jigang shouted his name, laden with fury.

“Hae Unbaek!”

But a moment later, once he had barely cooled his head, Zhuge Jigang could not shake the sense that something was wrong.

Demonic warlords of the Blood Cult had appeared north of the front, and had even mentioned a second Great Righteous–Blood War, yet the Sword Saint ignored that and refused to move?

No matter how great the shock of losing his daughter was, this behavior was far too alien compared to the Sword Saint Zhuge knew.

And every single one of those steps just happened to put him, Zhuge Jigang, in a bind.

He stroked his beard and sank into thought.

“Strange. Very strange.”

If he brushed all this off as coincidence, then he had no right to call himself a strategist.

There had to be someone behind the scenes, someone who was making the Sword Saint move.

Suddenly, the most suspicious group sprang to mind.

“Don’t tell me… has the Sima Clan begun to move?”

The Sima Clan were the men who had once served as personal advisors and bag-men to the previous Alliance Leader, Heroic Monarch Cheon Gi-seong.

They were also the ones who had pushed the Zhuge Clan aside and held the position of “world’s foremost strategists” for nearly a hundred years.

After seizing power as strategist to the current Alliance Leader, Moyong Geom, Zhuge Jigang had thoroughly driven them out of the political center.

So thoroughly that they would never crawl back out again.

Ever since then, he had never once taken his eyes off them, and he had never received a report of any suspicious movement on their part—but in terms of shrewdness, in terms of the ability to toy with him like this, the Sima Clan were still the first to come to mind.

Zhuge Jigang shot to his feet and began heading back toward the Intelligence Pavilion.

He felt he needed detailed reports on the movements of the Sima Clan, the Sword Saint, and on this entire affair.

Ju Won-seo, deputy captain of the Shadow Unit, was inspecting a secluded manor deep in the forest together with his direct subordinates.

It was the very manor where the Giant Demon Jeo Ung-won had stayed with his men.

One subordinate approached and spoke to him.

“Deputy Captain, we have found four Shadow Unit corpses in total. Their bodies appear to have been shattered by overwhelming internal force, and because so much time has passed, the damage and decay make it impossible to identify them accurately.”

Frowning at his men’s report, Ju Won-seo looked down at the corpse before him and asked again.

“Not even Eighth Squad Leader Hyu Ja-seung’s body can be distinguished?”

“No, it seems that would be difficult.”

“Hmm…”

Hyu Ja-seung, the Shadow Unit’s Eighth Squad Leader who had tracked the Giant Demon Jeo Ung-won and uncovered his connection to the Righteous Chivalry Guild, had failed to respond at all to the summons sent immediately after that report.

It was as if he had either gone to ground completely… or had been wiped out so thoroughly he could not even send a report.

So, faced with the fact that Hyu Ja-seung had neither come to the Martial Alliance nor sent back so much as a reply, Deputy Captain Ju Won-seo had been forced to come here and look for him personally.

But all he had been able to find were the corpses of Blood Cultists, and the bodies of Shadow Unit operatives who seemed to have fought them to mutual destruction.

Even those had rotted in the summer forest until they were nothing but bones and scraps of clothing impossible to identify, and he could not even confirm whether Hyu Ja-seung was among them.

Ju Won-seo frowned and muttered.

“But that’s strange. If they clashed with the Giant Demon’s lot here, how were they able to send in a report? And how did they rescue the captive women?”

The subordinate beside him cautiously ventured a suggestion.

“Could he perhaps have sent the report while gravely wounded? Used the last of his strength to report and then… breathed his last…?”

“Hmph. Hyu Ja-seung? That fellow?”

Of course, a warrior with a strong sense of duty might have done such a thing.

But the Hyu Ja-seung Ju Won-seo remembered had never struck him as particularly dutiful or sincere.

On the contrary, there had been something about him that made Ju’s brow crease, as if he quietly enjoyed killing.

After a moment’s thought, Ju Won-seo gave his men new orders.

“For now, suspend the investigation and have everyone assemble. We’ll return and report to the Strategist, then await further orders. You three, however, will stay and make discreet inquiries among the women who were rescued here. Secure testimony from them about the people who saved them.”

“Yes, understood!”

With that, Ju Won-seo and his men all went their separate ways.

And then, once everyone had left the manor—

From the shade of a tree beside the now-empty manor, a black-clad figure rose up like a ghost.

It was Sag Muhun, formerly Fifth Squad Leader of the Shadow Unit, now aiding Hae Cheong-yeon.

He frowned and muttered.

“Just as Junior Sister Cheong-yeon said, they came out to investigate in person. And of course they had to go and question the kidnapped women. Pretty sharp, aren’t they?”

Hae Cheong-yeon had long since anticipated such a situation and had Sag Muhun leave traces that made it look as though the Giant Demon’s band and the Shadow Unit had annihilated one another.

With that in place and so much time having passed, it was only natural that the investigation team found nothing odd.

But they had not been able to lay any groundwork regarding the kidnapped women.

Managing all of them was simply more than Sag Muhun could handle alone.

So he had hoped their suspicions would not extend that far…

“Things just got a bit more complicated.”

Sag Muhun wrote a short note and tied it to a special carrier pigeon.

It was a letter to Cheong-yeon.

After confirming that the dove had flown safely up into the sky, Sag Muhun immediately began tailing the men who had gone to question the women.

If they happened to discover anything significant, he might have to deal with them.

The Mountain Sword Sect, driven all the way to the cliff’s edge, had ultimately survived.

Despite having won two crushing victories in a row, almost everyone had predicted that this time would finally be the end for the Mountain Sword Sect.

After all, the Righteous Chivalry Guild’s main forces had massed at the border of Guizhou to crush them—on the face of it, that was the only reasonable prediction.

No one could have imagined that the Righteous Chivalry Guild would collapse of its own accord.

When it suddenly came to light that the Guild Master in the main hall was in truth the Blood Cult’s demonic warlord, the Masked Demon Lord Sa Won-yang, and that the main hall had been taken over by Qingcheng and the Tang Clan, the Righteous Chivalry Guild troops assembled at the Guizhou border to subjugate the Mountain Sword Sect could only fall into chaos.

That was because the vast majority of them were not Blood Cultists, but upright orthodox warriors who took pride in the name “Righteous Chivalry.”

In fact, when they first heard the news, everyone had scoffed.

“Our lord is the Blood Cult’s demonic warlord, the Masked Demon Lord Sa Won-yang?! Hah! What a joke!”

“Looks like the Mountain Sword Sect bastards are pulling tricks to get out of trouble!”

“Typical demonic riffraff and their pathetic ploys!”

But as time passed, the rumors grew more concrete, and the high command—who had looked ready to march on the Mountain Sword Sect at any moment—did nothing but huddle together in grim-faced meetings, so the Guild’s warriors ultimately had to admit this was no mere nonsense.

The warriors sank into despair.

“How could this be…”

“So everything we’ve done until now… all of it was at the Blood Cult’s instigation?”

They no longer knew what to do, or whose words they could trust.

Some warriors, disgusted, simply broke away from the host and left.

But most of them still remained gathered near the Guizhou border, not knowing what to do and mired in confusion.

That was when someone came to them.

To their shock, it was none other than Heo Gyeong, Sect Leader of the Mountain Sword Sect they had been about to fight.

Leading only a small group, he had instead come into the Righteous Chivalry Guild’s own encampment.

Then he filled his voice with internal energy and shouted in a booming tone.

– I am Heo Gyeong, Sect Leader of the Mountain Sword Sect! Though I have lost my beloved younger brother and deputy sect leader, the Branch Swordsman Heo Jung, to the Righteous Chivalry Guild’s invasion, I absolutely refuse to believe that was the true will of the orthodox heroes within the Guild! I choose to believe, as the recent revelations say, that it was the Blood Cult’s scheme—that we were ensnared in a plot meant to set us upon one another! For that reason, I seek to propose a conference! If you are not puppets of the Blood Cult sent to make us slaughter each other, then answer my call for dialogue even now, at once!

He was saying that he was, first and foremost, a victim of the Guild’s invasion, yet despite that he would not hold a grudge against them—so if they were not the Blood Cult’s lackeys, they should answer his call.

The Righteous Chivalry Guild could not refuse.

Though more of their people had died, it was still true they had been the ones to attack first, and the Guild’s warriors themselves were now regarding their own leadership with eyes full of suspicion.

And so, almost shoved into it by circumstance, the Righteous Chivalry Guild’s top experts accepted the conference—and there they heard something from Heo Gyeong that they could never have imagined.

“The ones who have come with me today are the Eagle Five Siblings, who saved our Mountain Sword Sect this time.”

The name of the Eagle Five Siblings was already well-known even among the Righteous Chivalry Guild.

In some ways, precisely because they were enemies, they might have been even more famous among the Guild than within the Mountain Sword Sect.

While everyone was marveling at the famed Eagle Five Siblings—especially at the beauty of the fourth sibling, Heavenly Beauty Yeon-hae—Heo Gyeong continued.

All of it was exactly as Hae Cheong-yeon’s script had prepared.

“In truth, these people are no wanderers. They were sent by a benefactor with whom I once had ties, in order to help me. In particular, Lady Yeon-hae here has inherited the true legacy of the Hangsan Sect.”