Chapter 51: Escape is in the Order of Intelligence (2)
Chapter 50 – Escape is in the Order of Intelligence (2)
‘For the rest of my life…?’
Yun Jong-seung’s eyes shook. He slowly turned to look at Song Won-gyo.
Song Won-gyo wore a wicked smile.
“Of course, if you are uncooperative, I promise the opposite will happen. You could say it is a choice between being a pushover for the rest of your life, or not.”
‘This bastard whom I wouldn’t even be satisfied chewing to death!’
But he did not have the confidence to voice that thought.
Even now, Song Won-gyo’s arm wrapped around his shoulder felt like a venomous snake, making his skin crawl.
Just then, Baekli Hyang added in a whisper-like tone.
“You surely didn’t think that being a pushover would end once our academy days are over, did you? When we work at the Martial Alliance in the future, our relationship will continue.”
“……!”
“Well, even if it isn’t that, if you want to live as a martial artist, interacting with prestigious clans and righteous sects is essential.”
At Baekli Hyang’s casual threat, Yun Jong-seung’s expression stiffened as if he had chewed on dirt.
He would have to be a pushover for the rest of his life.
Just thinking about it made him feel suffocated.
It was already hell right now, yet he could never escape this hell for the rest of his life.
How could they be so malicious?
Yun Jong-seung, who felt all the strength drain from his body, clenched his teeth and put force into his legs to avoid stumbling.
Was it said that what one needs to live is courage?
Namgung Cheon was right.
At this moment, thinking that such a hellish thing would continue for the rest of his life, he could not summon the courage to go on living. No, would it really end with his lifetime?
What if he got married and had children? Would they grow up receiving everyone’s contempt, just like Namgung Cheon?
Although Yun Jong-seung had envisioned a future too far ahead in that brief moment, his fear was just that deep.
He wanted to let go of everything and give up; death felt easier than life.
The faces of Song Won-gyo, Baekli Hyang, Dokgo Jin, and the other cadet who were smirking at him looked shudderingly malicious.
‘I feel like throwing up.’
Venomous snake-like bastards.
At that moment, Baekli Hyang whispered in an incomparably sweet voice.
“Of course, with this cooperation, you won’t be a pushover anymore.”
When Yun Jong-seung slightly raised his head, Song Won-gyo wore a fishy smile.
“A single instance of cooperation, and you are liberated from being a pushover for life.”
Yun Jong-seung swallowed dry saliva. He clenched his fists tightly and asked cautiously.
“What… do I have to do?”
Song Won-gyo and Baekli Hyang grinned as they looked at the cadets of the Righteous Chivalry Academy.
Dokgo Jin chuckled and picked up the liquor bottle.
“First, accept a cup of alcohol from me, Brother Yun.”
Yun Jong-seung raised his cup and drank the alcohol poured by Dokgo Jin.
Dokgo Jin grinned.
“There is not much for Brother Yun to do. You just have to do as you are doing now.”
“What do you mean, ‘as I am doing now’?”
When Yun Jong-seung furrowed his brow slightly, Dokgo Jin smirked and picked up the liquor bottle again.
As Yun Jong-seung accepted the cup in a daze, Dokgo Jin, while pouring the alcohol, covertly handed him a medicine vial the size of a thumb.
As Yun Jong-seung took it naturally while pretending not to notice, Dokgo Jin smiled and continued.
“The alcohol I just poured for you contained the same drug as that.”
“In the alcohol I drank!”
“That is correct.”
“What is it?”
Yun Jong-seung snapped and demanded. He had barely agreed to get in the same boat, only to be drugged.
However, Dokgo Jin waved his hand as if it was no big deal.
“Do not worry too much. It is not like a poison that requires an antidote. I am not that petty.”
Yun Jong-seung barely held back a hollow laugh. To think that after doing everything, including plotting such a conspiracy, he claimed not to be petty. Even a passing dog would laugh.
“So, I asked you what it was that I drank.”
“It is Gongjin Powder.”
“Gongjin Powder…?”
If it was Gongjin Powder, it meant a powdered medicine that made it impossible to use internal strength… For now, it was a relief that it was not poison. Since the effect of most Gongjin Powders would wear off over time.
Dokgo Jin shrugged his shoulders.
“I wanted to personally show you that this is how you should do it.”
“So, you are telling me to mix the Gongjin Powder in alcohol and feed it to Namgung Cheon?”
“You understood perfectly. Feed the Gongjin Powder to Namgung Cheon tonight. Well, you can also go over to that table right now and secretly mix it in. I will leave the means and methods to Brother Yun.”
“The effect?”
“It will be in incubation until tomorrow morning, and after that, the drug’s effect will last for a full day.”
A full day was not a very long time.
However, he would not be able to use any internal strength in the third trial tomorrow. The same went for himself, who had already consumed it.
“Since you drank it yourself, you should know that there are no symptoms during the incubation period, making it difficult to even realize that one has consumed the Gongjin Powder. How about it? Can you do it?”
When Yun Jong-seung failed to answer readily, Song Won-gyo chuckled and added.
“What are you hesitating for? It’s not like it’s your first time anyway, stabbing that pushover bastard in the back.”
“……!”
“The first time is always hard, but the second time is easy. Do a good job.”
Song Won-gyo patted him on the back.
Yun Jong-seung closed his eyes tightly.
Dokgo Jin watched that sight with amusement.
How long had he stood like that?
As his rapidly beating heart calmed down, Yun Jong-seung slowly opened his eyes.
“Right, the first time is always hard.”
At Yun Jong-seung’s words, Song Won-gyo, who was sitting in front of him, grinned widely.
“Good decision. Congratulations on escaping your status as a pushov—!”
However, Song Won-gyo could not finish his sentence.
This was because, in an instant, Yun Jong-seung suddenly reached out, grabbed Song Won-gyo by the hair, and yanked it back violently.
“……!”
“Who are you calling a pushover?”
Following that, before anyone could stop him, Yun Jong-seung shoved the medicine vial in his hand right into Song Won-gyo’s mouth and slammed his head onto the table.
Crash.
Song Won-gyo’s forehead cracked open, and blood burst out. At the same time, the vial in his mouth shattered, breaking his teeth, and a mixture of blood and saliva spilled out.
Because this entire process happened in the blink of an eye, no one could budge.
No, more than anything, they could not believe their eyes that Yun Jong-seung, whom they had regarded as a mere pushover, would do such a thing.
“Cough, gasp…! You… bash-tard…! Are… are you crazy…?”
Song Won-gyo, whose mouth had turned to rags, could not even speak properly as he clutched his neck and coughed.
Baekli Hyang, who finally snapped out of it, jumped to her feet.
“Are you crazy? What is wrong with you?”
Swoosh.
Baekli Hyang instantly thrust out a hand.
However, Yun Jong-seung’s body reacted first.
‘Slow…!’
Was it because sparring against Namgung Cheon alongside Paeng Su-hyeok for the past ten days had been effective?
Baekli Hyang’s hand movement, which had felt as agile and terrifying as a venomous snake in the past, appeared endlessly slow.
When Yun Jong-seung reflexively twisted his body, Baekli Hyang’s hand brushed past his collar and grabbed the empty air.
Swish.
In an instant, Yun Jong-seung quickly snatched Baekli Hyang’s wrist and deployed a joint-locking technique to twist it.
Crack.
“Aaack!”
When Baekli Hyang clutched her weirdly bent wrist and shrieked, all the surrounding cadets turned their attention.
“What is it? A fight broke out?”
“What happened?”
As attention focused on them, Dokgo Jin’s face turned beet red.
He stood up abruptly and scolded, pretending to be stern.
“Brother Yun! What is the meaning of this rudeness! We simply wanted to share a cup of alcohol, yet you commit such an impolite act!”
“The rudeness was already committed when you first called me a pushover.”
Yun Jong-seung spoke coldly and thought to himself.
‘For some reason, I seem to be mimicking Namgung Cheon’s tone of voice.’
At any rate, that single remark was enough to fluster Dokgo Jin. Dokgo Jin shouted with a flushed face.
“What slander is that! Did you not suddenly come over and attack us out of nowhere, claiming you would take revenge for what you suffered?”
“Ha!”
Yun Jong-seung was dumbfounded.
However, just as Song Won-gyo said, the first time is always the hardest. Having once struggled to escape from being a pushover, such plotting felt trivial now.
“Did you erase from your memory the fact that you gave me the Gongjin Powder and told me to feed it to Namgung Cheon?”
At this point, the cadets gathered around began to murmur.
This was a place where cadets from Wuhan’s three great academies were gathered together.
It was clear that one of the two was lying, but no one except the parties involved knew whose words were true.
Dokgo Jin laughed with an expression of disbelief.
“What reason would we have to keep you, who are called pushovers, in check? Make an excuse that makes sense.”
“Then please, leave us alone and play among yourselves. And if you babble about pushovers with that mouth of yours one more time, I won’t stand for it anymore.”
“……!”
Dokgo Jin glared intently with his eyes.
‘What? This guy. Is he really a pushover?’
Not only did he subdue Song Won-gyo and Baekli Hyang in an instant, but wasn’t his current gaze like that of a wild beast?
It was just when Yun Jong-seung clicked his tongue, spun around, and was about to walk away. Someone grabbed his shoulder.
As Yun Jong-seung hesitated and looked back, Song Won-gyo was thrusting a palm strike straight at him.
“You push-over bas-tard!”
But even this time, Song Won-gyo’s hand was too slow.
Yun Jong-seung naturally pulled his right foot back and met the palm strike with one of his own.
‘Channel strength into the fingers to form a clear lotus!’
Boom!
The palms of the two collided, and a loud sound rang out.
Crack.
“Aaargh!”
Along with the sound of bones snapping, Song Won-gyo’s scream echoed miserably.
Crash!
Song Won-gyo, who was thrown back just like that, collapsed, breaking a table in the process.
At this point, Dokgo Jin could no longer just stand by and watch, so he drew his sword.
Clang!
“What is the meaning of this!”
“That guy tried to backstab me first.”
“Even so, to inflict injuries before the competition! Wasn’t it you who first resorted to violence in the first place?!”
By this point, the surrounding cadets also began to grow restless.
In particular, the cadets of the Righteous Chivalry Academy exchanged looks, and one by one, they stood up and walked over.
The Righteous Chivalry Academy cadets, showing their fighting spirit, spoke to Yun Jong-seung.
“Regardless of the reason, since you used violence first, it seems you should apologize.”
“Are you perhaps disregarding our Righteous Chivalry Academy?”
When the Righteous Chivalry Academy cadets surrounded him in an instant, Yun Jong-seung, who had been marching forward boldly, felt a secret dread rise within him.
‘There are too many…’
“Apologize immediately!”
Dokgo Jin shouted loudly.
As Yun Jong-seung clenched his teeth, Dokgo Jin, backed by his peers, raised his sword.
“If you refuse to apologize to the end, you must pay the price for acting so violently!”
It was then.
Swoosh, thud.
A single sword flew in like a ray of light.
The Emerald Silk Sword, embedded between Yun Jong-seung and Dokgo Jin, trembled once.
As the cadets looked back in surprise, Namgung Cheon’s group strode over.
Namgung Cheon spoke with a calm, settled gaze.
“If anyone is to apologize, it should be you guys first.”
“W-what do you mean by that?”
“Because you messed with a pushover who was doing nothing.”
“What?”
“No matter how much of a pushover someone is, if you keep calling them a pushover over and over, it makes the pushover feel bad.”
As Namgung Cheon strode forward and pulled out the Emerald Silk Sword, the cadets quickly backed away, perhaps feeling threatened by that alone.
As Namgung Cheon’s group stood beside Yun Jong-seung, a confrontation naturally formed between the cadets of the Righteous Chivalry Academy and those of the Dragon Heaven Academy.
Dokgo Jin clenched his teeth and spat out his words.
“As I said before, I have never once brought up the word ‘pushover’ first.”
At the lie told without even blinking an eye, Yun Jong-seung was on the verge of letting out a hollow laugh.
Instead of getting angry, Namgung Cheon chuckled.
“In the end, there’s no way to know whose words are true. So, should we settle the right and wrong through a good old brawl like martial artists?”
Now, the atmosphere of the scene had grown so bloody that it wouldn’t be strange if a bloodbath erupted immediately.
As Namgung Cheon scanned the cadets, his gaze stopped on Baekli Hyang, who was crouching in fear on one side.
Namgung Cheon drew a cold smile.
“They say escaping is a matter of intelligence… Tsk.”