Chapter 5: Chapter 5

A campfire lit by gathering dried twigs flickered with a small flame.

Breaking a long dried twig in half, Jang Geon tossed it into the campfire. Still, having little to burn, the campfire flickered small and unsteadily, its light not very bright. If he wanted it to keep burning through the night, it seemed he would need to find more firewood from somewhere.

Jang Geon himself didn’t mind. Though it was a dim light, within his senses that had awakened Qi Perception, it was light enough as if broad daylight. The reason he bothered to light a fire was to keep his horse Jojo hitched beside him from being anxious, and to boil tea for himself to drink.

Lifting a small iron cup, he took a sip of the somewhat astringent tea. Smacking his lips, he found the taste not very good.

“Tastes like shit.”

Lying on the ground chewing something, the horse Jojo heard that mutter and looked at Jang Geon. Feeling that gaze, Jang Geon looked back at Jojo.

“What. You want some too?”

Looking at Jang Geon sipping pitifully as if he were pathetic, Jojo snorted once and laid even his head flat on the ground. Jang Geon smacked his lips again.

“There probably isn’t another horse in the world that loves lying down as much as you.”

As if understanding his rebuke, Jojo snorted again and scraped the ground with his snout. Thanks to that, a cloud of dust blew toward Jang Geon.

“Ah, fuck.”

Jang Geon waved his hand to brush away the blowing dust. He sometimes wondered if Jojo might be the reincarnation of another human like himself. This was because the horse acted far too smart for a beast. And simultaneously, remembering the fact that he had sub-consciously recalled his own secret, his mood sank.

Reincarnation. As Buddhism called it, a deceased entity changing form to live once more.

It was the most unbelievable phenomenon he had experienced in this place of Martial World and Thousand-Year Empire, and something he ultimately had no choice but to believe. A young man who had lived in an age where airplanes broke the speed of sound and humans flew to the moon died in an accident and reincarnated in this land. To be exact, not in this New Continent, but in the Central Plains. As the son of a wealthy family.

“Dammit.”

Trying hard to erase his emotions, Jang Geon took a sip from the cup he held. Then, scowling, he spat out the tea he had held in his mouth. Glaring at the lying Jojo, he flicked the dust-mixed tea to the side. As if finding it funny like a real human, Jojo let out a snicker-like whinny.

Thinking he would sell that horse off someday and find a new mount, Jang Geon leaned back at an angle. Then, taking his eyes off the campfire, he raised his head to gaze at the distant sky.

Because it was a moonless night, while everything on earth looked like a single pitch-black mass, the sparkling stars and the Milky Way filled the entire sky with lights large and small as if asserting they were vividly alive. It was just like jewels sparkling in deep water, making Jang Geon want to stand up right then and leap into that sea of stars.

Yet the distance between those stars and Jang Geon was so vast that while he could grasp it in numbers in his head, he could not feel it in his heart. Even if he burned the rest of his life flying in a single direction toward the sky, he would never meet a single one of those lights.

Someone might feel sorrow over that fact, but at least Jang Geon harbored no lingering attachments for things completely beyond reach. Letting out a deep breath, he lay straight and pulled the thin blanket up to below his neck.

It was time to sleep now.

* * *

Waking up in the morning, Jang Geon warmed up by lightly swinging his sword. After that, he packed up the blanket and campfire, got the still-lying Jojo onto his feet, and buckled on the saddle he had removed. Jojo grumbled snorts as if wanting to avoid the saddle, but could not evade Jang Geon’s hands.

Having finished roughly tidying up, he pulled a small hardtack from his luggage bag, chewed on it, and mounted atop Jojo. He grew slightly worried whether he could find a town today. No matter how beautiful the night sky scenery was, it couldn’t beat a comfortable inn bed and a warm meal.

He hoped a large town would show up if possible. He needed to process the jade ring he had fleeced from Yang Goeng, and besides that, he had to find some work that would earn money.

“If I ever touch dominoes again, I’m not human, seriously.”

He muttered that for no reason as he slowly galloped Jojo forward. Having cultivated martial arts, he was confident in his hand agility and eyesight, but dominoes was a different story.

It wasn’t a matter of fleecing an opponent just because one had fast eyes and secretive hands. What mattered was whether everyone except one sucker had colluded or not. He realized that only after having all his money stripped away.

Riding his horse while harboring various stray thoughts, Jang Geon suddenly pulled on the reins. At the abrupt tug, Jojo shook his head irritably.

“Hold still, you bastard.”

Sharpened by cultivation and internal energy, a scream reached his ears. The scream was coming from over the hill on his right.

Jang Geon immediately pulled Jojo’s reins in that direction. Understanding his master’s intent, Jojo galloped unhesitatingly toward the hill. A cloud of thick dust followed behind.

Standing atop the hill, Jang Geon and Jojo could see a wagon halted in the middle of a field, fallen people, and bandits plundering the wagon as if smashing it to pieces.

Among the figures that did not look like bandits, the only intact person was kneeling down, bowing and begging someone. Standing in front of him, a bandit held a drawn sword and was snickering with an arrogant posture.

Desperate to live, the kneeling man begged while prostrating on the dirt ground, but in the next instant, what swept across the nape of his neck was the bandit’s sword blade. Pleased with the blood on his blade, the bandit still wore a snickering face even after killing a man.

When he killed the last man like that, all the rest of the bandits raised their weapons held in hand high and roared with joy. Looking down at that scene from atop the hill, Jang Geon crumpled his brow.

In the New Continent, the areas completely under the influence of the Empire were very few. Three or four cities at most. In other lands, a single sect maintained order in that region, or warriors were dispatched through Martial Alliance branches.

Naturally, bandits and villains ignoring laws and rules to run wild abounded everywhere. Smart ones preyed on commoners among other ordinary people, while foolish ones fleeced commonfolk in fields and wildernesses.

Yet even those guys were ultimately people who had lived under the solid moral code of the Thousand-Year Empire, so they harbored a revulsion toward murder. Guys who committed reckless massacres were not many. The fact that the Martial Alliance designated murder as a top-priority wanted crime also played a role.

However, just as there were always one or two crazy lunatics wherever one went, there were also guys who killed people without caring about bounties or morality. Those guys fell into one of two categories: someone truly insane for murder, or a demonic practitioner who cultivated demonic arts. And those two were often one and the same.

Just then, the snickering bandit abruptly snapped his head toward Jang Geon. A face caked in filthy grime and two eyes glittering like glass beads glared at Jang Geon.

Pointing his sword like a thrust, the guy pointed at Jang Geon and shouted something. At that, the other bandits plundering corpses quickly stood up and mounted their respective horses. Roaring weird screams like some grassland horse bandit gang, they began charging toward Jang Geon.

A cold smile formed at the corners of Jang Geon’s mouth.

“So you want to do this.”

Mounted on his horse, he drew the sword strapped to his waist. The long blade sparkled bluish cold. Soon, when he lightly tapped Jojo’s flank, the horse let out a rough breath and galloped down the hill at full speed.

About a dozen bandits and Jang Geon galloped toward each other.

Like the bandits they were, it seemed they hadn’t practiced making any formations. They simply charged in a single straight line. Thanks to that, only two faced Jang Geon head-on.

As those two and Jang Geon brushed past each other, two heads separated from their bodies flew floating in the air.

Jang Geon immediately pulled the reins to turn Jojo’s body around. A horse that usually acted like a wild foal showcased a rotation as smooth as a luxury carriage once in battle.

“What! That bastard killed Sangyeon and Gyuwen!”

“Fuck! Kill him! Slice off his head too!”

The rest of the bandits who had rushed past Jang Geon screamed among themselves and turned their horses around. Because each turned their horse at a different speed, they unintentionally ended up charging at Jang Geon sequentially.

And sequentially, their heads were severed by Jang Geon’s sword.

Having sliced about five of them, one guy held a sword in his mouth, kicked off his saddle, and pounced on Jang Geon. Grabbing him with his left hand, Jang Geon flipped him backward while roughly bringing his sword across. Ripped wide open from chest to groin, the guy spewed blood and rolled on the ground.

Seeing their comrades die so easily, the remaining fellas halted their horses in shock.

“We’re screwed! He’s a master!”

“What the fuck! Why does a guy like that show up here!”

One guy turned his head and shouted at the bandit standing alone near the wagon:

“Boss! Help us, Boss!”

However, if he really wanted to live, he shouldn’t have taken his eyes off Jang Geon. Approaching before anyone noticed, Jang Geon’s blade slashed the guy’s upper body diagonally.

“Fuck! Run!”

Terror-stricken, the bandits scrambled away. But that direction was toward where their boss stood. Seeing them not run aimlessly, it seemed they had faith in their boss’s skill.

Without bothering to chase, Jang Geon halted his horse briefly and watched them flee behind their leader. And the boss of the bandits glared at Jang Geon with eyes full of killing intent. The boss noticed that in Jang Geon slowly approaching, not a single drop of blood could be found spattered on him. Only a single drop of blood crouched and fell from the blade he held lowered to his side.

Gazing at the blade, the boss raised his head and met the eyes of Jang Geon visible beneath his bamboo hat. Unlike his indifferent-looking face, his two eyes were cold as chilling iron.

The boss grinned and spoke.

“Are you from the Martial Alliance?”

“Nope.”

Stopping Jojo, Jang Geon answered him. At that answer, the boss formed a deeper smile.

“Aha. Then you’re a passing chivalrous hero? Then why don’t you keep going on your passing way?”

At that somewhat mocking tone, Jang Geon formed a bitter, grimacing smile.

“Is this bastard crazy? You guys swung blades first, and now you say just leave?”

“Ah, that couldn’t be helped. This is our job, you see.”

“Killing people and picking up money is your job. What a splendid son of a bitch you are.”

Spread his arms wide, the boss answered,

“What’s wrong with that? It’s been over a hundred years since the New Continent was developed. During that time, who ultimately seized hegemony in this continent? Wasn’t it those with power? The Martial Alliance backed by the Empire, ancient noble families of old dynasties, merchant syndicates making money off money, and so on and so forth. Isn’t what they’ve been doing for a hundred years ultimately fleecing the people who settled in the New Continent and picking up money?”

The guy stuck out his tongue with that same smiling face and licked his teeth. His yellow, rotten teeth looked hideous.

“I merely contributed one step to that. So it’s worthy of being called work. Since they would call what they did work as well.”

Listening to his nonsense with a grimacing face, Jang Geon raised his head slightly to look at the corpses lying behind him. Among them was the corpse of a young woman leaning against the wagon. Holding a sword tightly as if she had been a warrior in life, her inner tunic was torn open, whether because the bandits had molested her or searched her bosom, revealing bare skin.

For some reason, it felt to Jang Geon as if those murky, unfocused, dry eyes of the corpse were looking straight at him.

Gazing at that, Jang Geon dismounted from his horse. Then he walked with steady strides and came to a stop at a distance of about two zhang from the boss guy.

“Looking at me, you asked about the Martial Alliance.”

Flicking his sword once, he re-sheathed it with slow movements. Seeing that, the boss guy’s mouth stretched from ear to ear as if excited for some reason.

“That means there’s a bounty on your head.”

“Correct, that’s right! There’s a bounty on my neck! If what I’ve done recently gets revealed, it’ll probably jump even higher!”

For some reason, the excited boss guy breathed roughly, grabbed his sword with both hands, pulled it to his waist level to form a horizontal line, spread both legs wide, and crouched into a posture. It looked just like gathering power before an explosion occurred.

Loosening his grip on his right hand holding the sword, Jang Geon thought to himself. What a ridiculous thing this was.

As the Imperial Army of the Han Empire became the strongest martial arts organization under heaven, the direction of martial arts development had evolved toward killing opponents quickly. Consequently, real-world martial arts were, unlike the martial arts he knew, even if those were just stories in novels, focused extremely heavily in one direction.

Light Body Skill, Thousand-Li Hearing Skill, Sound Transmission, or Air-Distance Object Manipulation, things that could at least be used in daily life from the fringes of martial arts, had only basic theories or didn’t exist at all. Martial arts were focused solely on killing the opponent standing directly in front of oneself right now. As fast as possible, as concise as possible.

As a result, the scene when masters above a certain level faced each other one-on-one was precisely right now.

The boss guy’s two eyes glistened with a dark red light. The thighs of his wide-spread legs bulged as if ready to burst, and from his body crouching lower and lower, power squirmed as if ready to explode at any second. From the blade heavily imbued with internal qi, dark red light sparkled dimly.

In contrast, Jang Geon facing him appeared calm. He merely stepped his right foot forward a pace and positioned his left foot perpendicular to his right. His left hand lightly held the scabbard, while his right hand lightly held the sword hilt. Due to his slightly tilted bamboo hat, only his bearded chin was faintly visible to the eyes of the boss guy and the bandits.

With seven or eight people and horses gathered, all four directions were silent. Not even the wind blew, nor were there barking beasts or insects anywhere. No, they too were keeping silent.

Just then, a bandit watching the two with tense eyes sniffled his nose.

Simultaneously, two streaks of light crossed past each other.

“…Fast.”

The boss guy muttered briefly. Both he and Jang Geon stood back-to-back in postures with their swords extended forward. Even upon hearing his murmur, Jang Geon did not answer. The front portion of his bamboo hat being slightly split vertically was the entirety of the damage he suffered.

However, the boss of the bandits soon collapsed and died as his waist split wide open. Through the split gap in his bamboo hat, Jang Geon saw the remaining bandits recoiling in horror.

The fellas tried to turn their horses to flee right away, but approaching faster than them, Jang Geon was quicker in slicing around their waists to spill their guts out.

Having finished off every single bandit, Jang Geon flicked his sword clean, gazed at the field of corpses he had created, and let out a short whistle. At that, Jojo, who had moved a short distance away, sauntered over to him. It was a contrast to how he had galloped like a warhorse moments ago.

Letting out a snort at the horse’s indifferent appearance, Jang Geon was about to grab the saddle and mount. Just then, a dying voice was heard. It was from the wagon side.