Antlion Pit (3)

Jo Yang swallowed dryly without meaning to.

‘When?’

It was a forest he could see if he lowered his gaze from the marketplace just a little. This place was also elevated, and it was quite a good area for surveying the surroundings.

He might have lived a hot-blooded life without using things like tactics, but he had still learned the basics of strategy. Even if one did not read books, after wrestling with the Kangho for decades, one learned that much.

The terrain he had chosen was excellent. For an infiltrator, there was no better spot than this, where most of Ziyang County, as well as the surrounding brush, all came into view.

Naturally, that man should have been visible.

He had hidden inside the shadows, but he had not blended in that well. It was a position anyone should have been able to discover.

‘And I only saw him now?’

Jo Yang felt a thrill run down his spine.

Whether it was stealth or a master who could freely control his presence, the fact that he had deceived Jo Yang’s eyes for even a moment meant his skill was remarkable.

Jo Yang didn’t hold back any longer.

“Who are you?”

His low voice rode the wind and flowed into the forest. It was a rather advanced skill, creating a path with internal energy to transmit sound.

The question was clearly meant to seize the initiative. But the other man did not move an inch.

Jo Yang’s eyes narrowed.

He might be acting hot-tempered, but if he did not truly have such a nature, his sincerity would not come through. In fact, people often said that once he got angry, he could not even recognize his own parents’ faces.

But now, he had to endure. He needed to learn more about the other man.

“Where have you come from, to play ghost like this? The weather is cold, so stop standing in the shade and come out.”

At that moment, Jo Yang saw the man with the long saber give a small laugh.

‘That bastard!’

Whoosh!

Unable to hold back his anger, he emitted an intense wave of qi. The snow under his feet burst out in every direction.

If he gave in to his temper, he would have charged in at once and blown the man’s head off. But he decided to exercise caution one more time.

The missing subordinates were careless fools, but he was not one himself. It wouldn’t be too late to pour out this anger when he clashed with that man.

If Lee Hoe and Gong Juk saw him now, they would probably be greatly surprised. The moment he spotted an enemy, charging in and beating them down wouldn’t have been enough, so how many times had he held back already?

Jo Yang quietly glared at the middle-aged man, then slowly raised his chin.

It was his distinctive posture, full of arrogance.

“If you know the Way of a warrior, come out now. Surely I won’t eat you alive.”

Even at that final question, the middle-aged man remained silent.

Jo Yang’s face, which had been looking down on the other man, gradually twisted. Any further patience was impossible.

“…You son of a bitch! When an elder speaks politely, you should come running out at once, not stand there like that!”

That was when it happened.

‘Huh?!’

Feeling a strand of killing intent, Jo Yang immediately turned his body.

Tuk.

A thin needle that should have pierced the back of his neck embedded itself in the ground.

Jo Yang quickly looked up at the tree behind him.

No, he tried to.

“Hah!”

Jo Yang’s face turned pitifully pale as he sucked in a breath without meaning to.

‘Where?!’

Minus the two who had gone with Team Leader One, all the other pugilists who stayed behind had disappeared.

The distance between them had been fairly wide, but even so, it was only about nine to twelve meters. And yet they had disappeared without a trace of presence. It was literally as if they had been bewitched by a ghost.

Hwaaaak!

A strange haze spread from Jo Yang’s body. He was fully releasing his internal energy.

“Who are you!”

Even in this situation, suspecting that his subordinates had deserted on their own would be too stupid for the word idiot.

He could tell just by looking at the traces on the snow. In a place where there should have been only ten pairs of footprints aside from his own, there were close to twice that many footprints stamped all over.

‘Insane!’

Goosebumps ran down his spine.

‘Assassins?’

At that moment, a tapping sound rang out.

“Doing some exercise after so long has my back aching.”

It was a somewhat sharp voice, but one that carried strong force.

From the direction Team One of the Divine Fist Squad had taken, an old man was walking over. The way he held a pipe firmly between his lips and lit it with flint made him look like an old villager one might find in any village.

But Jo Yang couldn’t look down on him.

‘His presence…?!’

He could not feel even a trace of presence.

He was literally an utterly ordinary old man. From his appearance to his mundane presence and footsteps, everything about him was typical of an old man.

The problem was that the old man’s footprints were not being left on the snow.

Jo Yang was so shocked his eyes nearly popped out.

‘Snow-Treading Without Trace!!’

A realm where one left no traces even after stepping on snow.

It was one of the highest realms of lightness skill, on the same line as Water Skimming, running across water, and Grass Skimming, running on the tips of grass.

‘Impossible. How can that be?’

Snow-Treading Without Trace was a realm that made one doubt whether even the sect masters of the Nine Great Sects had reached it.

No, it was not doubt, but certainty. It was likely a divine skill impossible for anyone except the Ten Venerables Under Heaven, the top masters of the current Murim, whom even the sect masters of the Nine Sects called heavens beyond the heavens would yield several moves to.

Naturally, there was no way that old man was one of the Ten Venerables Under Heaven. There was no reason for such a giant figure to appear in Sichuan, where neither the Nine Sects and Five Clans nor even the Four Heroes Alliance held any power.

Leaving everything else aside, if the other party was one of the Ten Venerables Under Heaven, playing ghost like this would be unnecessary.

‘Then who in the world?!’

Huk.

After he puffed on the pipe a few times, white smoke rose as the fire caught.

“Mm, this is a good one. Seems worth recommending to the Patriarch once. What do you think?”

Patriarch? What Patriarch?

At that moment, an unfamiliar voice came from behind Jo Yang.

“The Patriarch did say he enjoys smoking from time to time.”

Pabak!

Jo Yang left that spot and retreated about fifteen meters.

Thump, thump.

His heart beat like mad.

The middle-aged man who had been hiding in the forest shadows had somehow come within about six meters.

If he had attacked in earnest, could Jo Yang have stopped him?

‘Th-this is!’

Jo Yang’s face was soaked with cold sweat in an instant.

The middle-aged man, Han Cheol-sang, scratched his head.

“By the way, Old Master Oh’s Shadow Killing Formation is truly incredible. That one looks like he can throw a proper fist, so if I had fought him head-on, I would have had to swing my saber a few times.”

“Stop whining. With your skill, Steward Han, that man would take you ten moves at most. If you even release the Heat-Yang Art you showed at Divine Iron back then, you could take his head within three.”

“Well, with fights, you only know once you clash.”

“That is true too. Now that I think about it, the Patriarch is one thing, but you are remarkable as well, Steward Han. It is difficult to master the Way of battle at an age just over thirty.”

“It isn’t so grand that we need to speak of the Way. Fights have many variables by nature, don’t they?”

“That is precisely the true Way of battle.”

“In any case, if the Patriarch learns of this, he’ll grumble quite a bit. He couldn’t even sleep today because he had to handle ten men alone before daybreak. To think you could catch them this easily. As expected, your reputation hasn’t gone anywhere, sir.”

“Heh heh, let’s stop gilding my face here. If you keep going, that one’s eyes will fall out.”

Seeing the two calmly converse with him right in front of them, Jo Yang’s confidence had fallen to the floor.

“Who in the world are you people?!”

Oh Gyeong rolled his right shoulder around.

“Take care of him and come. I will take the men and go to the Patriarch.”

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“Once this is over, treat me to one of those table-leg-breaking feasts. Good grief, I only came to share a drink with the Patriarch, but I got far too involved.”

“You truly went through a lot.”

After that conversation whose meaning Jo Yang could not understand, Oh Gyeong disappeared.

As Jo Yang stared in bewilderment at the direction where Oh Gyeong had vanished, he suddenly flinched and looked at Han Cheol-sang.

Srrrng.

Han Cheol-sang lightly drew his saber and asked calmly.

“You seem to have some name in the Cheongyang Association.”

“…Who are you?”

“And you, do you know what you’re doing, coming all the way here and making trouble?”

“What?!”

Han Cheol-sang pointed at Jo Yang’s left foot with his chin.

“You’re stepping on a shadow.”

No matter how flustered he was, Jo Yang was not stupid enough to turn his head to check with an enemy in front of him. No, to begin with, what was so important about stepping on a shadow?

“I asked who you are! What is your identity!”

“Stepping on a shadow means you are inside the domain of the Shadow Killing Formation.”

Whoosh!

In that instant, Jo Yang’s eyes widened. The other man had reached right before his nose without a trace of presence and swung his saber.

He instinctively swung his fist. It was the Cheongyang Association’s secret technique, Jade Wave Divine Fist.

Wooooong!!

Powerful force was loaded into the fist that shot out. It was a fierce and swift fist strike that had never betrayed him even once until now.

Whoosh! Kwaang!

The surging fist wind blew away the snow piled on the ground once more.

But Jo Yang had no leisure to see that remarkable trace. The other man had already disappeared.

‘Where is he?!’

He couldn’t sense any qi. Even his five senses somehow seemed to have grown dull all at once.

He looked behind him and up at the sky, but could not see the other man anywhere. He had literally vanished like a phantom.

Jo Yang roared without meaning to.

“Where did you run off to!”

“Here.”

“Heuk!”

Seogeok!

The moment a burning pain rose beneath both his knees, his body collapsed to the ground.

Koong!

“Kraaaagh!”

Jo Yang’s legs were drenched in blood as he screamed like mad. Everything below his knees had been cleanly cut off.

Before he knew it, Han Cheol-sang had appeared in front of Jo Yang.

Forgetting even pain and loss, Jo Yang shouted urgently.

“W-wait!”

“I’m not letting you live.”

Flash!

Under the clean saber strike, Jo Yang’s head flew off.

Since he had entered shadows filled only with death, there was no need for unnecessary acting.

After killing Jo Yang with almost disappointing ease, Han Cheol-sang sheathed his saber and shouldered his head, torso, and legs.

“No need to wipe the blood… But do I have to bury this too? I don’t have to, right? Well, we do need the head.”

Another half day passed.

As the sun was setting in the west, Fourth Elder Ha Gye-gun of the Cheongyang Association reached a hill overlooking Ziyang County with one hundred men of the Divine Palm Squad. He had sent Vice Leader Lee Hoe and the rest of the Divine Fist Squad to the place where Divine Fist Squad Leader Jo Yang had died, while he and his men had circled around to a somewhat lower hill on the opposite side.

They had even divided their forces to the left and right, just in case. It showed how seriously Ha Gye-gun viewed the current situation.

“Is it there?”

“Yes.”

A terrifying killing intent settled on Ha Gye-gun’s face as he looked at the distant hill.

It was already outrageous enough that his older brother Ha Suk-heon and the secret forces belonging to the Second-Class Ghost Gate had vanished, but now even the Blue Fist Unit’s pugilists and the Divine Fist Squad Leader had gone missing.

If he followed his heart, he wanted to inform the Association Leader, his eldest brother, of this situation directly. Then he wanted to pour every remaining force of the Cheongyang Association into this place.

Truly, if he were not in a secret place completing the final stage of his martial art, Ha Gye-gun would certainly have done so.

“…There is definitely something here.”

Divine Palm Squad Leader Ju Byeong asked cautiously.

“What about going openly?”

“No matter how violent the Divine Fist Squad Leader’s temperament was, he was no fool. He would have sent people ahead to at least scout. The fact that he still did not return means an unknown master or organization was brought in… or there is even the possibility of betrayal.”

Ju Byeong despised Jo Yang, but that was absurd.

In Ju Byeong’s eyes, Ha Gye-gun was anxious right now. That was likely why he was thinking that way.

“Then what should we do?”

“Squad Leader Ju, select five capable men and send them to that hill. If no signal comes within half an hour…”

Ha Gye-gun’s eyes glared at the crowd moving through the marketplace.

If he followed his heart, he wanted to torture every last one of those ordinary people and find out whether they were connected to this incident or not.

“We will mobilize all of the Association’s forces and seal off Ziyang County.”