Chapter 40
Chapter 40: Third-rate Martial Family Becomes the Best Under Heaven
Working out why the Nameless Killing Valley kept watch over the Yu Estate was one problem.
Figuring out how to rescue Chudal cleanly once the truth came to light was another entirely.
Though he spent ten days racking his brains, no workable plan presented itself.
Driven to utter distraction, Yanghwi finally threw out an absurd notion.
“Brother Gu, this is going nowhere. I might as well slip into the Nameless Killing Valley myself.”
“Are you out of your mind, Little Brother?!”
“My mind is perfectly sound.”
“And once you sneak inside, what then? More importantly, how do you even expect to get in?”
“I’ll just wander around right under their noses until they snatch me. There’s no way they would overlook an unprecedented genius like me.”
“……”
Gu Ak went quiet. Preposterous as it sounded, an unsettling hunch told him it might actually work.
After all, if someone endowed with the boy’s astounding talent crossed his own path, he wouldn’t be able to resist taking the kid under his wing either.
Of course, such a scheme required complete subtlety to keep the Nameless Killing Valley from smelling a rat.
All the same, as the assigned escort responsible for bringing Yanghwi back in one piece to the Baek Estate, Gu Ak could never sanction something so reckless.
“Absolutely not. It’s far too dangerous.”
“Come on, pull it off cleanly and there won’t be any danger at all.”
“Enough of this. I will inform the Lord of the House.”
“……”
It was Gu Ak’s trump card, unearthed after constantly being dragged around by Yanghwi’s slick tongue.
The second Baek Muryang entered the conversation, the boy’s rising temper evaporated, leaving him completely subdued.
“If they kidnap you, you won’t be trained here in Jiujiang; they’ll stash you in some remote mountain den where you’ll never see the light of day. Drop it.”
“Fine, you make a fair point, so I’ll drop it. But don’t you dare think I’m backing down because of your threats, Brother Gu. That said, what else are we supposed to do? We are completely in the dark here.”
Yanghwi drove his heel into the wooden post of the corner bed.
“Curse it all! Intelligence gathering falls on your shoulders, Brother Gu! How have you dug up next to nothing?!”
“……Is that how you address your elders? I have more than two decades on you, Little Brother.”
“Master of Baekik Pavilion! The Eldest Young Lord of the Baek Estate is dressing you down, and your defense is your age?!”
A thick vein throbbed on Gu Ak’s brow, yet rather than retorting, he merely released a heavy breath and clamped his jaws shut.
I never should have let that slick steward sweet-talk me into guarding this brat.
Gu Ak felt profoundly aggrieved.
While Yanghwi had been playing the beggar to win over Ihu, Gu Ak had been frequenting drinking houses, tossing back liquor to harvest tavern gossip.
Through those efforts, he had at least discovered the master of the Yu Estate had a penchant for collecting curios.
It wasn’t as if he had been sitting on his hands.
This little terror will give me gray hairs before I hit forty.
“Little Brother, I will extract more details even if it means calling in markers from my days along the dark path. As fortune has it, I still share ties with the syndicate overseeing the Jiujiang black market.”
“You possessed those ties and sat on them all this time? Just as I suspected, you were purely loafing around and knocking back drinks. Wait until Sister Rang hears about this.”
“……”
Every rogue along the dark path brands me a turncoat ever since I joined the Baek Estate, you wretched brat!
The shout remained bottled up tight behind his teeth.
“Regardless, give it a few more days.”
“Tsk. It’s not like we have any other cards to play. Chudal is so high-strung that squeezing anything useful out of him is nearly impossible. Haah.”
“On that note, why do you persist in calling the kid Chudal? Didn’t you mention his name is Ihu?”
Yanghwi’s lips curled into a grin.
“Because Chudal is who he is.”
His given name or any moniker the martial world might bestow upon him later meant nothing.
In Yanghwi’s eyes, the boy was simply Chudal.
The lone sworn brother he had earned through two decades of wandering across the realm.
“In any case, I’m heading back out to survey the Yu Estate.”
“I’ll accompany you. My stomach could use a break after days of endless drinking.”
Since his venture into the black market wouldn’t begin until tomorrow, setting aside the wine bowl for a single day was harmless enough.
With that settled, Yanghwi and Gu Ak stepped out into the bustling streets together.
The pair soon neared the perimeter of the Yu Estate.
Hm?
Yanghwi’s refined qi perception caught a strange fluctuation.
Though Gu Ak seemed oblivious, the surrounding atmosphere felt fundamentally altered.
So that’s it. Qi ripples in the air.
Sharpening his senses, he traced the faint disturbance vibrating through the wind.
The truth emerged:
Assassins lay in wait.
Despite suppressing their presence and masking their breathing, assassins of the Nameless Killing Valley could never escape his trained perception.
Yanghwi promptly directed a thread of qi toward Gu Ak.
— Brother Gu. Speak of the devil, looks like they are making their move today.
Gu Ak’s eyes stretched wide in shock.
Until now, Old Man Yeo had been the only soul aware that Yanghwi could command qi transmission.
— Little Brother! Since when can you send voice transmissions through qi?
— Save the questions for later. It seems the killers intend to strike tonight.
Given that they had cordoned off the area and positioned their ambush, their intentions were unmistakable.
What are they after? Larceny? Murderous pillage?
Enclosing the grounds in a silent ring strongly suggested the latter.
Better yet, drawing from his long years across the martial world…
A complete slaughter to silence all witnesses.
They undoubtedly wanted to erase any trace of a particular relic’s theft.
Dammit. This is precisely why we needed that intel beforehand.
Left unchecked, every servant and kin within the Yu Estate would be butchered without mercy.
While Yanghwi weighed whether he ought to warn them without delay…
A pair of silhouettes walking along the distant mountain crest drew his gaze.
Chudal, accompanied by the proprietor of his boarding house.
— Brother Gu, we part ways here.
Having imparted the essential details and directives to Gu Ak via internal transmission, Yanghwi took off like an arrow.
They aren’t pressing into the Yu Estate, but climbing the ridge instead?
Their design quickly became obvious.
Shedding distance between himself and the two figures, he pulled his presence inward.
Concealment was second nature to him, just another trick gathered during his former wandering days.
Where are they heading?
Right as the question crossed his mind, Chudal and the innkeeper came to a sudden halt.
They had stopped at a high mountain pass directly overlooking the rear escape route of the Yu Estate.
Are they lying in wait for someone fleeing the grounds?
If his instincts were accurate, the plan was to herd the master of the Yu Estate straight into this very pass.
Which meant…
Chudal’s very first kill… Was it slated to happen today?
The innkeeper melted into the shadows of the surroundings.
Treading with utmost vigilance so as not to betray his position, Yanghwi edged closer still.
He kept himself poised to strike from behind or react instantly to whatever unfolded.
Fortunate for me that he belongs to the Nameless Killing Valley.
At present, his personal martial prowess hovered only marginally above the median of the third-rate realm.
Had the man hailed from a massive, realm-wide assassination syndicate like Salmak, Yanghwi’s stealth would have been pierced almost instantly.
The Nameless Killing Valley, by comparison, was a regional band restricted to the boundaries of Jiujiang.
Getting made by an assassin of that caliber would be an insult to the title of Greatest Sword Among Wanderers I bore in my past life.
The Greatest Sword Among Wanderers—the supreme swordsman among all rootless vagabonds.
By that token, it meant mastering every trick, scheme, and survival tactic required to roam the realm alive.
A wanderer lived and died by being a jack-of-all-trades.
Just then, the master of the Yu Estate came scrambling up the slope, his breath ragged and wild.
Just as I anticipated. They steered him right into the trap.
“Haaah! Haaah! Is someone there?! Anyone, have mercy, help me!”
Chudal stepped forward, cutting off the pleading master’s route.
The estate lord’s features instantly twisted into pure dread upon grasping his plight.
“Haaah! Haaah! Haaah!”
Yet just as Chudal leveled his short blade, his senses failed him, and he collapsed limp onto the dirt.
Simultaneously, the shadow of the innkeeper emerged.
“Tsk. I suspected something was off. A defective tool after all.”
A flicker of confusion crossed Yanghwi’s mind.
He remembered clearly being told that the boy’s first kill haunted him for the rest of his days. Was it not meant to happen today?
Or had his own presence shifted the path of events?
Pushing the thought aside, Yanghwi settled his hand onto his sword hilt.
“A shame to waste such talent, but dead weight must be pruned. How convenient, though. We will simply frame it so that this brat slaughtered you out of lust for your coin, Master Yu.”
Just as the assassin raised his dagger to execute the strike…
Yanghwi summoned every ounce of true qi residing in his lower dantian.
Infusing his legs with the power of Harmonious Heaven qi, he exploded into the steps of Vessel Thousand Steps.
“The only piece of trash getting pruned here is you!”
Schhk!
The steel blade drove cleanly through the center of the assassin’s spine.
“Guh!”
The killer tumbled downward, his gaze frozen wide in disbelief.
Yanghwi quickly verified the state of Chudal and the master of the Yu Estate.
Both still draw breath.
“Master Yu.”
“Haaah, haaah… Gr-gratitude, young hero! My life is owed entirely to you.”
Yanghwi shifted his focus to the grounded assassin.
With the spinal cord severed and his four limbs deadened, the man could only glare up with protruding, bloodshot eyes.
“No beating around the bush. What did your group come to pillage from the Yu Estate?”
“Guh… What kind of fiend are you?”
Tsk, this is why showing leniency is a waste of time.
Yanghwi flicked his blade, cleaving the tendon of the man’s arm until the severed muscle bunched into a knot.
“Gwaaaargh…!”
“Stripped of your human emotions or not, pain still registers, doesn’t it? Time is running short, so answer straight. What were you sent for? Tell me, and I grant you an instant release.”
He brought the edge across the opposing wrist, slicing through that tendon as well.
“Aaargh! Aaaaargh!”
“Are you bound by a suicide seal? If so, you’d better speak before it triggers. I am running out of patience, and my next move is severing your legs to leave you rotting out here in agony.”
A lingering, torturous death.
“The iron sphere… that Master Yu keeps on his person.”
Though the assassin’s conditioning under the Heartless Art kept his face outwardly deadpan, he had no stomach for enduring an excruciating, slow demise.
No suicide seal, then. That saves me the headache.
Yanghwi promptly ran his blade straight between the assassin’s brows, finishing him off, before addressing the estate lord.
“If that iron sphere is in your possession, hand it over. In return, I will ensure your family and retainers make it through this.”
Rescuing every last soul was impossible with the head start the raiders had, but he was bound to do everything within his power.
“I-I will yield it at once! I only kept it close because touching it seemed to foster my vitality… How could an innocent curio bring about such ruin…?”
Accepting the smooth sphere offered by the trembling lord, Yanghwi hoisted the unconscious Chudal onto his back.
A relief that he gave it up without a fuss.
Even if Master Yu had refused to part with it, Yanghwi would have rushed to save the innocents inside the estate anyway.
Walking away while assassin scum orchestrated a wholesale butchery was something he could never stomach.
That defied every tenet of chivalry.
“Conceal yourself nearby. This storm will pass before dawn breaks.”
Vaulting forward into the air, Yanghwi bit down hard on his lower lip.
Had I uncovered this earlier, this entire slaughter could have been prevented.
Yet he harbored no guilt.
His past life was not so delicate that he would waste time mourning water already spilled.
What demanded his attention now, in place of regret, was…
Righteousness.
Rescue as many as possible. But Brother Gu and I lack the raw numbers to crush them head-on.
He had to outthink them.
Total annihilation, or forcing them into a full retreat. He needed an angle.
Nothing comes to mind right now. I have to regroup with Brother Gu and play it by ear.
Pushing his true qi to the limit, he surged forth with Vessel Thousand Steps.
Within breaths, Yanghwi cleared the distance to the outer boundary of the Yu Estate.
The moment his feet touched the crest of the perimeter wall and his eyes swept the courtyard, he froze in disbelief.
What in the world? Why is he the one cornered?
Down in the center of the courtyard stood Gu Ak, ringed entirely by masked killers.
Nearby, before the threshold of the primary hall, the surviving kin and retainers of the Yu Estate were forced down on their knees.
Blast it all, Brother Gu! If you couldn’t turn the tide, the least you could do was keep yourself from getting trapped!
With matters pushed to the brink, it was do or die.
Yanghwi gently lowered Chudal into the shadows at the base of the wall before springing back to the top.
Drawing air into his lungs, he let out a thunderous bellow:
“LISTEN UP, YOU ASSASSIN BASTARDS!”
Every killer snapped their head upward in unison toward the sound.
Thrusting the arm bearing the iron sphere high into the night, his voice cracked across the courtyard like thunder:
“WHAT YOU’RE DIGGING FOR IS IN MY HAND! PULL BACK THIS INSTANT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE IT REDUCED TO POWDER!”
To prove the threat was no bluff, he drove a heavy swell of true qi into the core of the sphere, swelling its mass with inner force.
If the situation went south, he fully intended to smash it straight into the stone below.
Just at that critical moment—
Click!
“Huh?”
The sphere slid open.
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