I Wish They Would All Die. (1)

Yoon Jong looked around with an awkward expression.

“Seven?”

“For the moment.”

In other words, even now, more men were being dispatched here.

It was only natural. They had crossed an official in Beijing, so before long, the imperial troops and everyone else would come swarming like bees. If they got caught up in this, not even the grandfather of a Taoist could survive.

“Still, that means there are only seven of them for now!”

Jo Gul boldly drew his sword and charged toward the enemy.

“If you don’t want to die, then—Gack!”

But just as Jo Gul kicked off the ground, a scabbard flying from behind struck the crown of his head. Jo Gul rolled across the floor clutching his head, then sprang up and pointed accusingly at Yoon Jong.

“Why did you hit me? What was that for all of a sudden!”

“Get a grip, you lunatic! Do you even know who those men are?”

“Who else would they be? Eunuchs! You can tell at a glance.”

“You know that and still draw your sword?! Do you carry that head around just to hang a scarf on it, you bastard!”

“S-sahyung?”

Yoon Jong seized Jo Gul by the collar, fire blazing from his eyes.

“If they’re eunuchs, doesn’t that mean they’re from the imperial palace?! Do you think we’ll be safe after attacking people from the imperial palace? What the hell are you? A spy from the Southern Edge Sect?”

“I-I’m sorry…….”

“You bastard, are you trying to get the sect’s signboard taken down?! We held on to that signboard through that hell!”

“C-calm down, Yoon Jong.”

As Yoon Jong shook Jo Gul by the collar, Baek Cheon hurriedly tried to restrain him in horror.

Meanwhile, Yu Yiseol repeatedly poked Jo Gul in the ribs with her scabbard, as if strongly agreeing with Yoon Jong.

“N-no, then what are we supposed to do? They’re the ones picking a fight!”

“What do you mean, what do we do?”

Yoon Jong continued in an utterly resolute voice.

“We push them back somehow and run away again.”

“No, does that even make sense!”

“Right. They don’t look like pushovers either.”

“Let’s talk realistically.”

“Does it not make sense?”

At that moment, Yoon Jong casually tilted his neck to the side.

“Shall I show you what truly makes no sense?”

Yoon Jong glared at the Mount Hua disciples with narrowed, vicious eyes. Under the killing intent he radiated, even Jo Gul, Baek Cheon, and the great Chung Myung himself hunched their necks.

“I’m telling you in advance…… If anyone lays a finger on those palace officials, they’ll have to fight me to the death. I’m not joking. I really mean it.”

“……Yes.”

“We’re…… sorry.”

“I was wrong.”

Faced with Yoon Jong’s fierce determination that he would never allow Mount Hua’s signboard to be taken down, no matter what happened, the Mount Hua disciples shrank back and tucked their tails between their legs.

To be honest, the authorities were a little frightening. Actually, it wasn’t the authorities that scared them so much as Hyun Jong, who would turn into a demon the moment he heard that they had beaten an official.

“Then, uh…… let’s shake them off for now and run.”

“……Okay.”

Tang Soso and Yu Yiseol quickly nodded as well. Thus, the Mount Hua side reached an agreement, but naturally, the people in front of them could not understand it at all.

“What on earth are those vicious criminals babbling about?”

“They seem to have lost their minds.”

Who were they? They were the Eastern Depot, said to be capable of making even a crying child stop crying. At least beneath the skies of Beijing, wasn’t the name Eastern Depot treated as little different from that of the Grim Reaper?

And yet those men showed no fear at all despite standing before them.

‘Are they fearless? Or…….’

Bang Hwi, the Eastern Depot’s squad leader, did not miss the strange sense of incongruity.

“You lot aren’t from the imperial capital.”

“Oh?”

“That manner of speech…… Are you from around Shaanxi?”

Chung Myung looked at Bang Hwi in amazement.

“You can figure that out from just that little conversation?”

“Hey! That’s admitting it! You should have said no!”

“Oh.”

When Chung Myung scratched his head, the Mount Hua disciples all clutched their heads at once. Meanwhile, Chung Myung desperately averted his eyes from Yoon Jong, who was radiating a freezing chill, and tried to stammer out an excuse.

“I-I mean…… well…….”

“You can hide your speech and change your accent, but you cannot hide your awareness. If you were from this place, you wouldn’t dare hold your heads so stiffly in front of us.”

“……I suppose being an eunuch makes you sharp as a ghost.”

In an instant, Bang Hwi ground his teeth and spat out the words.

“I am not an eunuch.”

“You said you were with the Eastern Depot?”

“Do you think the Eastern Depot is made up entirely of palace eunuchs?”

“Yes.”

“That is incorrect…….”

“If they’re men who still have those things attached, why would they need to serve under eunuchs in the first place? It’s not as if they’re perverts.”

“We were drafted…….”

“Ugh. Just imagining it gives me chills. What a life, barking like a dog under men who sliced those things off with their own hands just for a taste of power. Urgh.”

“……”

Bang Hwi’s neck twisted creakily, as if it had malfunctioned. Baek Cheon watched the scene with satisfaction.

“Officials aren’t so different after all.”

“……If you’re human, there’s no way that bastard won’t punch a hole straight through your stomach.”

“But that…… doesn’t that sound like a somewhat strange thing to say?”

“Hm? Why? It’s true.”

“It is true, but for us to be the ones saying it is a little……”

“Hm?”

The Mount Hua disciples and Hae Yeon looked at one another.

“Ah…….”

“Well…….”

They all lowered their heads with solemn expressions.

Not only monks, but Taoists as well could commonly live and die as virgins, depending on the circumstances. Some had gotten rid of them because they had no need for them, while others had them but would never have any use for them in their entire lives. Who was in any position to criticize whom…….

“What are you people constantly babbling about?”

But there was no way the Eastern Depot officials could understand their feelings.

“It doesn’t matter. Whether you’re lunatics or men with more courage than sense, it makes no difference. Once we drag you away and tear your flesh apart, you’ll all end up the same anyway. I’ll make you pay for daring to poke around where the eunuch is.”

“No, sir, get your facts straight. We were poking around the merchant guild. Your leader came to us of his own accord!”

“……It makes no difference.”

“How does that make no difference? Good grief, how did someone with that brain ever become an official!”

“……Hey, idiot. It was a special eunuch quota.”

“Ah, right. I hadn’t thought of that. Sorry.”

“……”

Bang Hwi wondered whether smoke might be coming out of his ears. Never in his life had his stomach been turned this thoroughly.

And that was probably less because the other man’s mockery was particularly vicious than because, as an official of the Eastern Depot, no one had ever dared ridicule him to his face before.

“You…… lowborn bastards!”

“Come on, how can you tell that when we’re wearing masks? For all you know, we could be scions of incredibly prominent families.”

“Get rid of the stench of dirt coming off your bodies before you talk. Lowborn scum!”

At those words, the masked men whipped their heads around and pointed accusingly at one another.

“That is why I said we should wash before coming!”

“We didn’t have time, so what could we…….”

Bang Hwi could no longer stand it.

“How long do you intend to stand there watching those idiots carry on?! Beat them to a pulp!”

“Yes!”

At Bang Hwi’s command, the Eastern Depot members all drew their swords from their waistbands.

‘Flexible swords?’

The drawn swords bent like venomous snakes and let out a sharp ringing sound.

“Ah, I see. You can’t openly carry swords in the imperial palace.”

“Are you studying common sense now?! Is that important at a time like this!”

“They’re coming!”

The limber swords flew toward the Mount Hua disciples like venomous snakes swooping in from every direction.

The Mount Hua disciples’ faces went pale when they realized the swords were sharper than they had expected.

“Damn it!”

Clang!

A swung sword blocked an incoming flexible sword.

“Ow!”

In the midst of it, Jo Gul flinched and cried out. His wrist had been lightly cut.

“You idiot!”

“I-it’s because this isn’t the sword I usually use.”

The problem was that they had buried all their Plum Blossom Swords out of sight when entering Beijing. While pretending to be laborers inside Beijing, it had been difficult to acquire swords, and the ones they had managed to obtain were so poorly balanced or shoddy in quality that no swordsman could bear to use them.

Therefore, it was not entirely Jo Gul’s fault that his sword had been cleanly sliced apart when it met the Eastern Depot’s flexible sword head-on.

However.

“It happened because you’re an idiot.”

“A true craftsman doesn’t blame his tools.”

“Without a sword, you’d get beaten to death by bandits tho?”

“Go die!”

That did not lessen the criticism coming his way. Mount Hua was simply that kind of place.

Clang!

The Eastern Depot’s attacks continued all the while. Seeing the sharp sword thrust coming at him, Baek Cheon grinned.

“Just because the swords are poor doesn’t mean the sword techniques are! With nothing but this much…….”

“Sword techniques? In front of these people, sasuk?”

“……Ah, no. I misspoke.”

At the chilly voice beside him, Baek Cheon flinched and hunched his neck. He was going to die. If he used the Plum Blossom Sword Technique here, he would not be killed by the Eastern Depot—he would be beaten to death by his sajil.

“Then what if we use hand techniques…….”

“Will that work?”

“……No.”

Damn Mount Hua palm techniques.

Why had their upright ancestors gone so far as to faithfully shape even the force of their palms into individual plum blossoms for no good reason! What a bunch of ridiculously honorable old fogeys!

That left only a handful of martial arts they could use…….

‘The Three Forces Sword that anyone in the martial world knows…… and perhaps the Bamboo Leaf Hand, which has almost none of Mount Hua’s distinctive forms.’

They were supposed to face the Eastern Depot with these? This had to be a joke.

“Uh…… Yoon…… No, anyway. I don’t think this will work. We could die if something goes wrong. Right?”

“Then die.”

“……What?”

Yoon Jong’s eyes glinted through the small openings in his mask.

“Rather than live and become a burden, die and become fertilizer. Fortunately, there is nothing on our bodies that will reveal our identities, so it is fine if we die.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Does it sound like a joke?”

Baek Cheon had a fleeting thought.

Perhaps Yoon Jong was the one among them who had chosen the wrong career path most completely. If this man had not become a Taoist…….

“……No matter how I look at it, this seems more suited to you. Do you have any thoughts of changing careers even now?”

“What makes you say that?”

“……No. It suits you.”

“It sounds strange, but it really does suit you.”

“That is why I’ve always said that man was strange! And everyone gave me a hard time for being the only one to say it.”

Jo Gul shouted as if he had been wronged, but everyone ignored his cries. They had not yet given up on Yoon Jong enough to agree with Jo Gul.

“Then what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to fight those men with our basic cultivation and these shoddy weapons…….”

Bang.

Thud.

“Gaaaaah!”

At that moment, two Eastern Depot members were launched into the air as if on cue.

“……”

As Jo Gul blankly blinked, the two masked men who had each sent an Eastern Depot member flying—Chung Myung and Hae Yeon—looked back at him with bored expressions.

“It works, doesn’t it?”

“Ami…… No, ahem.”

When Jo Gul met their gazes, he soon gave a spotless, beaming smile.

“I wish all geniuses would die.”

“……I agree.”

The sorrowful sighs of ordinary men who had failed to become geniuses drifted over the eaves.