Chapter 61: War Is the Way of Deception (2)

Two days later.

The Night-Heaven Hall Lord, Byeoksa Gok, was able to read the reply from the caretaker in Anhui City.

He’d entrusted the letter to a Night-Heaven Guest with outstanding Lightness Arts as a hand-carried dispatch, so the speed was only natural.

「We have the girl well in hand.

From time to time she refuses food and drink, but if we threaten to slip in a letter telling her to kill her older brother, she listens.

As you instructed, we will carefully prepare the transfer.」

An order to move Seol Yehwa from Anhui to Henan.

These safe houses existed for Night-Heaven Hall’s activities.

Which meant that the responsibility and authority for all use and management rested with the Night-Heaven Hall Lord.

“Good. So they’re saying they’ll transfer her this way?”

“Why go as far as transferring her? Couldn’t it be dangerous?”

The Night-Heaven Guest in his late thirties—the one who had proposed the stratagem—asked.

What he’d come up with was simply to threaten Seol Yegang by letter.

But the Night-Heaven Hall Lord went one step further and even moved to summon Seol Yehwa here.

“If I threaten him by letter, what would you do, if it were you?”

“If it were me... ah.”

There was nothing he could do.

Because he’d already been caught, and he was in a situation where he could no longer kill the target.

But Byeoksa Gok’s purpose was Cheon Soyak’s death.

“Number Seventeen isn’t needed anymore. What use is a captured piece to the enemy? All we have to do is kill him.”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“Watch. Watch what I do. And learn it.”

The middle-aged man lowered his head just like that.

*****

Two days after the day they’d gone to the Beggar Union.

Monks gathered in Shaolin’s guest quarters—its reception hall for visitors, the Guest-Receiving Hall.

It was to devise countermeasures for what was to come.

“We must seize them immediately!”

A murder plot inside Mount Song—what outrageous lawlessness!”

“We must send them all to Buddhahood. Namo Amitabha....”

Some of the monks were saying things that were outright grim.

Even Shaolin monks do not always refrain from opening the Killing Precept.

Toward those they designate as the martial world’s Public Enemies, they open it without mercy.

Because they judge that showing mercy to such people only spreads the suffering of living beings further.

And the Assassin Organization was a Public Enemy.

Meaning: a target for Shaolin’s extermination.

There was no reason for them not to open the Killing Precept against it.

“Quiet.”

Shaolin’s Abbot, Abbot Gwanggyeong, lowered his voice and calmed the hall.

A voice carrying the subtle, profound lineage of the Buddhist Law.

A lion’s roar tempered to be warm and gentle.

“Following the words of the Greatly Compassionate World-Honored One, we must always live holding a compassionate heart... but the opponent is the Assassin Organization. And this abbot already rendered the decree of Public Enemy against the Assassin Organization long ago.”

You could hear people swallowing dryly.

Abbot Gwanggyeong’s face was expressionless, but he was furious.

He was an old man who always wore a faint smile.

If he spoke this coldly without even a trace of expression, then fear was the correct response.

“This abbot intends to respond to this matter firmly and decisively.”

At that moment, someone raised a hand.

It was the Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae.

“May I ask what you intend to do, Abbot?”

“We must open the Killing Precept. Namo Amitabha....”

“That is not what I asked. I am asking how you plan to root out these remnants of the Assassin Organization, who are surely hiding.”

“That answer has been found by Benefactor Soyak.”

“...That child?”

Then two people entered the Guest-Receiving Hall.

One was Cheon Soyak.

The other was Seol Yegang.

“That bastard dares to plot murder on Mount Song...!”

“How impudent—how impudent!”

“Isn’t that one also a remnant of the Assassin Organization?”

Condemnation poured down from monks who didn’t know the circumstances.

But Abbot Gwanggyeong had already heard everything [N O V E L I G H T] from Gong-eop.

When he struck the floor with the monk’s staff he held, a clear, ringing tone spread out.

CLANG—!

“All of you, be quiet. This is something Benefactor Soyak experienced, so I will have her explain it directly.”

“...Thank you for your consideration.”

Since the Assassin Organization was targeting her personally, Abbot Gwanggyeong knew that no matter how much he explained, it could not compare to the person involved.

It was a wise measure.

“The inheritors of the Assassin Organization, for reasons I do not know, are aiming for my life.”

As soon as Soyak opened her mouth, the monks began murmuring again.

It was the same reason as the Beggar Union Branch Hall Chief.

The inheritors of the Assassin Organization were shocking information, yes.

But what surprised them even more was Soyak—who had survived three attacks from them.

“That’s not all.”

“That isn’t the end?”

“Yes, Abbot. Their leader is also the one who held this man’s younger sister hostage and pressured him to kill me.”

Only then did the monks’ eyes soften.

Karmic killing is a grave sin.

But if it was unavoidable under threat, then responsibility and guilt belonged to the one who had coerced it.

Because hardly anyone can discard human feeling.

“And just now, an arrow came flying in with this letter tied to it.”

Soyak drew a single sheet of paper from her robes.

Then she stepped forward quietly and handed it to Abbot Gwanggyeong.

The Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae, also looked at it from the side.

“This—shameless!”

“Namo Amitabha....”

It was the kind of content that made curses and a Buddhist invocation slip out on their own.

Even Gong-eop and Cheongak reacted so violently that they tilted their heads in confusion.

“Abbot, what on earth does it say...?”

“It says they want to exchange this man’s younger sister for Benefactor Soyak.”

The faces of everyone gathered went pale.

And then, at that moment, someone flung the door open and rushed in.

As though he’d heard everything, his face was just as drained of color.

“...Absolutely not. Absolutely not.”

It was Cheonjeong.

*****

Henan city, a small inn.

A middle-aged martial man was washing down dumplings with cheap white liquor.

His clothes were strange enough to draw people’s eyes.

They were clearly fine garments.

White silk with blue-gray embroidery.

Clothes so luxurious you couldn’t buy them even if you saved up three months’ worth of earnings from this inn.

And yet every edge was frayed.

The cuffs were torn, and there were holes here and there.

As if he’d stolen them somewhere and then failed to care for them.

In a word, he looked like a thief.

But his presence didn’t match that at all.

The longsword leaning against the table was fitted in clean white poplar wood.

Not expensive, but the bits of silver fittings and workmanship you could spot here and there were refined in their own way.

And what about that slender, immortal-like bearing?

This mismatched harmony made people keep looking.

Yet no one dared speak to him recklessly.

“A letter from Yeon....”

He opened the letter while chewing with his mouth full of dumpling.

It bore the seal of the Jegal Clan’s Inner Pavilion Lord.

But when he unfolded the paper, nothing was written there.

A blank page.

And yet he began to murmur as if reading an important message.

“...Is he crazy?”

“Shh. Watch your mouth.”

“But....”

The surrounding murmurs were none of his concern.

Because the contents were both interesting—and grave.

The letter was written in a special method used only by the Heaven-Toppling Society.

A special compound, blended by the Medicine Immortal, that could only be seen when you focused your inner power into your eyes.

It had been used in place of ink.

「The Namgung Clan’s young clan lord has been defeated.

The victor is a young girl named Cheon Soyak of Mount Hua.

She is still young, but her core is straight, and her learning runs deep.

However, Namgung will remember this matter.

If the young clan lord has been defeated, it means the next era is not Namgung’s.

There is no way they do not understand that.

We anticipate Night-Heaven Hall’s movements.

Our Jegal Clan is also mobilizing our own intelligence group, but...

In the end, they will try to kill that child, no matter what it takes.

She is the child Eunsong chose.

If nothing else, his eye for talent is exceptional.

Perhaps, within a few years...

She may be able to topple the Sword Sovereign.

Protect her.」

The middle-aged martial man clenched the letter and crushed it in his hand.

Then he muttered bitterly.

“Topple the Sword Sovereign....”

His voice was so quiet that no one in the noisy inn could hear it.

He swallowed the bitterness with a mouthful of cheap white liquor, then stood up.

The innkeeper glared, thinking he meant to leave without paying.

“Money!”

“I left it on the table.”

A couple silver pieces were sitting beside the plate that had held the dumplings.

In an instant, the innkeeper’s face brightened.

“Then I’ll be going.”

He walked out just like that.

The northern edge of Henan.

East of Mount Song.

Toward a place so obscure that no one would even suspect it existed.

“So Namgung wants to eliminate that child.”

He snorted.

If the Sword Sovereign himself came, that would be one thing.

But even Namgung Hyeong, the clan lord who was called the Sword King, was several moves below him.

“I have a great debt to the Medicine Immortal and the Jegal Clan.”

A request to protect a child from Night-Heaven Hall.

Anyone who knew what Night-Heaven Hall was would never accept it.

But he agreed without hesitation.

First, because he knew Night-Heaven Hall’s lord had not reached the Transformation Realm.

Second, because when his martial arts had been crippled, he’d received enormous help from the Medicine Immortal and the Jegal Clan’s formations.

Third... because there were few people in the world who hated Namgung more than he did.

Green-blue samadhi true fire rose from the hand gripping the letter.

CRACKLE— the paper began to burn.

There was only one line written in colored ink at all.

A sentence on the back, to mark the recipient.

Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger.

The sobriquet the Heaven-Toppling Society used for him.