This Isn’t Exactly A Good Choice Either. (2)

“Drive them back!”

Hwang-Bo Ung’s adjutant, So Yeon-Shin, bit down hard on his lips.

‘So in the end, it means that only a handful of men are blocking the road.’

He understood perfectly well what Hwang-Bo Ung was worried about. It was probably a valid concern. Hwang-Bo Ung was cautious, not a coward who pointlessly tested every stone bridge before crossing it.

But even as Seo Yeon-Shin understood that fact with his head, an irrepressible dissatisfaction continued to well up in his chest.

‘Even so, does it make any sense for the mighty Red Banner Army to be frightened by a handful of martial artists playing cheap tricks!’

There was a limit to how far they could let their honor fall into the manure pit.

Grinding his teeth, Seo Yeon-Shin raised his spear and shouted loudly.

“Pick up the pace!”

“Yes, General!”

At his shout, those following him answered resolutely and increased their speed.

“G-General! The charge is too fast! You must remember the Great General’s order to proceed cautiously!”

“Silence!”

Seo Yeon-Shin roared furiously.

Even if the men here amounted to only a tiny fraction of the Red Banner Army, it was a disgrace to the entire army for more than a thousand soldiers to be frightened into inaction by fewer than ten men.

“General!”

“Don’t spout nonsense when you know one thing but not the other. If, as you say, those men came to lay a trap, then every one of their movements will be reported to the enemy! Are you saying we should let those bastards hear that the Red Banner Army was too frightened to move?”

The man flinched at those words. Seo Yeon-Shin’s attitude was excessively emotional, but his point certainly seemed to have merit.

“If that story spreads, none of our enemies will fear the Red Banner Army from now on. Are you saying you truly don’t understand what that means?”

The adjutant fell silent.

Right now, they were directly targeting the Imperial Capital with only a small force. Such an absurd thing was possible partly because there was currently a gap in the capital’s defenses, but it was also largely thanks to the fearsome reputation of the Red Banner Army.

A person could fight with nothing more than a bamboo spear in his hands. And there were surely hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men in the Imperial Capital who could fight.

If they resisted in perfect unison, then even the Red Banner Army could not easily cross the walls. If that happened, reinforcements would soon arrive, and the isolated Red Banner Army would be doomed to annihilation.

‘If you cannot overwhelm them, you will be overwhelmed in turn.’

To avoid such a situation, they had to make sure their enemies did not dare to fight. Before the fear inspired by the name Red Banner Army could cool, they had to descend upon the walls like demons.

“Do you understand?”

“……Yes. I understand. But……”

“I will take responsibility!”

Under Seo Yeon-Shin’s fierce gaze, the adjutant nodded.

Once a decision was made, there could be no hesitation. That was the nature of the military. Charging together in the wrong direction produced a better result than splitting apart into chaos.

Wasn’t that something everyone seasoned by the battlefield knew?

“We’ll follow you!”

“Support the rear!”

“Yes!”

Seo Yeon-Shin gripped his spear tightly.

‘They only need to accept whatever casualties may come.’

Seo Yeon-Shin was no fool. He already knew what the most devastating outcome would be in this situation.

‘Fire attack? No. A forest like this won’t catch fire.’

The forest was full of moisture, and even the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. A fire attack could not be carried out under these circumstances.

‘A trap? As long as we aren’t lured into dangerous terrain, we won’t suffer major losses.’

Falling rocks and the like could inflict significant damage, but this place did not have terrain suitable for that in the first place. At most, they could dig pits in the ground or fire pre-installed wooden spears, but the Red Banner Army was not one to fall for such tricks.

That left explosives, at most.

“Spread out farther! As long as we don’t bunch up, there will be no problem!”

“Yes, General!”

They had already prepared for that as well.

‘No matter how I think about it, there’s nothing beyond this.’

No matter how astonishing a stratagem might be, it was useless without the minimum number of soldiers needed to carry it out. Without soldiers to command, even Zhuge Wuhu would be nothing more than a deskbound scholar who could not properly swing a sword.

“Where are they!”

The enemy should have appeared by now—unless they had truly only made a show of things before fleeing.

That would not be so bad either, but if possible, he would rather pierce the neck of whoever had dared to play such tricks on them with his spear at once……

“Hm?”

At that moment, something caught Seo Yeon-Shin’s eye.

At the edge of the sparsely wooded forest, he saw a masked man sitting on a tree stump with his legs crossed, as though the approaching Red Banner Army did not concern him in the slightest.

“That……”

Seo Yeon-Shin ground his teeth.

It was an utterly obvious provocation. But just because it was obvious did not make it any less infuriating.

‘How dare that damned bastard take the Red Banner Army for fools!’

Judging by his build alone, he was clearly younger than Seo Yeon-Shin’s own child. Yet that brat—someone who looked as though he had never sacrificed anything for his country—was calmly provoking the Red Banner Army, which had spent its entire life fighting in the north.

If he endured such humiliation, he would never survive in the north.

“Kill him! Now!”

“General! Wait!”

“Shut up!”

Seo Yeon-Shin violently vented his rage.

But his anger did not mean that he had abandoned his reason. A man who did that would not survive in that harsh northern land either.

‘There’s no trap.’

All he could see around them were tall trees. That was all. It would be impossible to hide anything in those trees, which were not particularly dense, and there was no sign that traps had been dug into the ground ahead of them either.

Then what else was there to think about?

“Follow me! We’ll cut off his head in one stroke and head for the Imperial Capital!”

Seo Yeon-Shin shouted, fearsome momentum pouring freely from him.

It might seem excessive at first glance, but this was an entirely natural choice for Seo Yeon-Shin. He was not the only one witnessing that man’s outrage with his own eyes. The Red Banner Army’s elite troops following him were watching everything clearly as well.

But if they slowed their advance because of the tricks of one suspicious man, he could not even imagine how far their morale would plummet.

To exaggerate only a little, even if a pit of fire stood between that man and them, they had no choice but to charge ahead now.

Seo Yeon-Shin gripped his spear so tightly it seemed he might snap it and charged forward. Following behind him came the Red Banner Army, the northern region’s finest—or perhaps the finest of the finest in all the Central Plains.

Yet even after seeing that sight, the man sitting on the tree stump showed no fear. He simply rested his chin on one hand and waited for them.

At the same time, the masked man’s lips moved, as if he were opening his mouth wide for a yawn……

‘That bastard?’

Just as Seo Yeon-Shin, fire blazing from his eyes, was about to roar, it happened.

“Tsk. It would have been nice if you’d come on horseback.”

Seo Yeon-Shin’s shoulders trembled involuntarily. Was it because that voice had reached him with incredible clarity despite the great distance? Of course, that was part of it. But the reason Seo Yeon-Shin had flinched was not the voice itself, but the meaning contained in it.

‘On horseback?’

Why? Why was he saying it would have been better if they had come on horseback?

Before he could find the answer to that question, the man snapped his fingers.

“Oh. Now.”

Now? Seo Yeon-Shin instinctively swept his gaze from side to side. But nothing had changed. No matter how he looked at it, the forest remained exactly as it had been when he first charged in. It was absolutely not a place where a trap could have been set……

“T-That!”

“Get out of the wayyyyy!”

Unexpectedly, the screams had not come from ahead. Rather, they came from behind—from the place Seo Yeon-Shin had already passed—like desperate shrieks.

Seo Yeon-Shin instinctively turned his head.

‘What is this?’

The men he led were not ordinary soldiers. They were White Lightning veterans who had fought countless battles against the northern barbarians. For men like that to be screaming so desperately, what on earth was happening?

But there was no need to wonder. He knew the moment he turned his head. What Seo Yeon-Shin saw as he hurriedly looked back was a gigantic tree crashing down upon him.

Seo Yeon-Shin froze at the sight, something he had never even imagined possible. Even so, he was somehow able to kick off the ground before his body was crushed beneath the tree, likely thanks to the survival instincts he had honed through years on the battlefield.

Kuuuuuuung!

The massive tree, thick enough that it could not have been encircled by an ordinary grown man, grazed Seo Yeon-Shin’s feet before slamming into the ground.

Seo Yeon-Shin stared at the sight, his face drenched in cold sweat. If his reaction had been even a moment—truly, just a moment—slower, that tree would have fallen on his head.

Had that happened, even Seo Yeon-Shin could not have come out unscathed.

But that was not why Seo Yeon-Shin was stunned out of his wits.

“What on earth……”

Why had this tree suddenly fallen?

A trap? Ridiculous. No matter what anyone said, the first requirement of an outstanding general was keen observation. Seo Yeon-Shin had been thoroughly taught that under Hwang-Bo Ung. He had carefully examined not only the surrounding terrain but also every tree they had passed, checking for anything strange. If someone had prepared to bring down a tree, there was no way he would not have noticed.

Then how on earth……

“Oh, seriously!”

At that moment, the man who had been sitting leisurely the entire time sprang to his feet and pointed accusingly at somewhere.

“You couldn’t even cut that properly?!”

“……”

“You should have brought it down in one strike! If someone who’s spent his whole life swinging a blade can’t even do that properly, what are you going to do?”

“I-It’s my first time doing this. It might not go perfectly.”

Seo Yeon-Shin’s head whipped around.

At the spot where the massive tree trunk—the tree that had just fallen in front of Seo Yeon-Shin—had once stood, a man was now standing in an awkward posture.

“And this sword isn’t very sharp either! If I’d known this would happen, I would have brought a different one from the start!”

“Haa……”

The masked man sitting ahead rubbed his face through his mask. Shaking his head as though he had a headache, he soon fixed his gaze on Seo Yeon-Shin and shrugged.

“Well, whatever. Even if he is a general, he’s probably just a small fry.”

Rage surged up inside Seo Yeon-Shin.

But he did not act rashly. The important thing right now was not that he had been insulted.

“What…… What exactly did you do?”

“Hm?”

“How did you deceive my eyes and set a trap? There was clearly no sign of one.”

“Ah.”

The masked man, Chung Myung, grinned when he heard that.

“Honestly, your imagination is so impoverished. This is why staying in the military makes people stupid.”

“You damned bastard……”

“What preparation would be needed? It’s only cutting down a single tree.”

“……Hm?”

Seo Yeon-Shin’s eyes widened slightly.

“Oh, looks like you understand.”

The corners of Chung Myung’s mouth, hidden behind his mask, curled upward.

“But it’s already too late. Now, try your best to hold out.”

And at that moment.

Krrrrrrrack!

With a loud sound of something twisting, the trees surrounding them all began to fall toward the Red Banner Army at once. The slowly tilting trees cast enormous shadows over the bewildered Red Banner Army.