Chapter 238: Chapter 238

After receiving the report of Gal Mun-jeong’s death, Cha Seok-du spoke weakly.

“The explosive has been lit.”

It had already been decided that it would explode.

The only question left was whether the time of explosion would be brought forward, or whether they could buy a little more time.

“Is this as far as we go?”

A Black Path alliance.

It had been a long-held wish.

People who held the same beliefs would gather, build a force, and advance for the sake of their interests.

For the past five hundred years, the Murim Alliance had driven its roots deep and firmly established itself, pushing the Black Path away.

Because the Black Path had many free-spirited people, there were also frequent cases where they were lumped together with criminals and painted as evil.

When viewed under the “justice” of the great and mighty Murim Alliance, the Black Path were beings that deserved to disappear.

The Black Path people had also grown tired of the role of “villain,” which they had never wanted but had been forced to take on.

And just when they had thought the moment had come to place a period at the end of that tiresome role.

‘But it seems that too ends here.’

Thanks to meeting a strange fellow from the Orthodox Path, they had somehow made it this far, but now even that seemed to be over.

The bastards who had been acting from the shadows since before the Black Thought Alliance was formed had struck at their weakness with exquisite timing, as though they had been waiting only for this moment, and the Black Thought Alliance had now suffered a wound from which it could not recover.

“……I will conduct an inspection and have the inside brought under control. Since your order has already been given, Alliance Leader, there should be no one who moves recklessly.”

Cha Seok-du stared blankly at Dam Ak, who was comforting him.

“……”

A clever man like him surely already knew that a fire that had already been lit could not be put out.

Even so, Cha Seok-du was grateful that he tried to offer comfort.

Even though Dam Ak’s calculations must have already produced the conclusion that Cha Seok-du and the Black Thought Alliance had no hope.

“……I am sorry.”

“What are you saying? The fault is largely mine for failing to properly assist you.”

Cha Seok-du shook his head.

“No, that is not what I mean.”

At Cha Seok-du’s sudden words, Dam Ak bit his lip.

Cha Seok-du lowered his head as though he had no face to show.

“In the end, I failed to keep my promise to find the culprit for you.”

The culprit.

Both Cha Seok-du and Dam Ak knew that the culprit he spoke of now did not refer to the being moving in secret within the Black Thought Alliance and driving the Envoy Delegation into a corner.

“……”

Dam Ak worked hard to manage his expression.

Cha Seok-du could only smile bitterly as he looked at him.

The greatest prodigy of the academy, who had been expected to enter the Imperial Court and occupy a high office.

In the first place, Dam Ak was someone who should have had no reason to be active in the Black Thought Alliance, much less Jianghu.

If not for the blood calamity that swept through Cheongwa Academy while Dam Ak had gone to the capital to take the metropolitan examination, would Dam Ak ever have entered Jianghu, and to make matters worse, the Black Thought Alliance full of barbarians?

If not for the negligence of the Murim Alliance, which had failed to protect the academy, and Cha Seok-du’s promise, Dam Ak would have been sitting not beside Cha Seok-du, but beside the Emperor.

[Find the one who killed my master and friends. Then whatever it is you want, I will accomplish it.]

Dam Ak had spoken while shedding tears of blood, and Cha Seok-du had tried to stop him.

He had already passed the provincial and metropolitan examinations, so his path to success was guaranteed. Cha Seok-du told him he would be able to take revenge himself.

However.

Dam Ak tore apart his passing edict with his own hands.

[Until I gain power, those bastards will be living and breathing comfortably in this world. I cannot stand by and watch that.]

Because he could not ignore the deep resentment and resolve in Dam Ak’s eyes, Cha Seok-du had made a promise in his own name.

As soon as the Black Thought Alliance took root, he would use its power to search all under heaven if he had to, and catch the culprit who had burned Cheongwa Academy.

He had clearly done so……

And yet it had ended up like this.

“……You should stand at the very front of those who will drive me out.”

Having failed to keep his promise, Cha Seok-du decided to do the last thing he could for Dam Ak.

“You have shown plenty of yourself as a member of the pro-war faction, so those who know your ability will not easily cast you aside, Strategist Dam. Even more so if you show yourself personally cutting me down.”

“……”

Dam Ak still remained silent.

For some reason, Cha Seok-du felt that Dam Ak’s appearance resembled the way he had looked on the day he tore apart his edict.

Cha Seok-du forced a smile.

“I know what you are thinking. But it is not your fault, so do not worry. Even if I am driven from the position of Alliance Leader, I am still Cha Seok-du, Peak Lord of Four Emperors Peak.”

Then he promised,

“It may be difficult to call it compensation, but I will go out and find the culprit who attacked the academy.”

“……”

“So please continue the dream of mine that has crumbled away.”

Cha Seok-du lowered his head.

“I ask this of you.”

Silence settled over the Alliance Leader’s office.

Cha Seok-du still had his head lowered.

Watching that sight, Dam Ak bit his lip with a stiff expression.

“I cannot…… lose another teacher.”

Only then did Cha Seok-du raise his head.

“Teacher……. Teacher, you say……. Am I your teacher?”

When Dam Ak nodded, Cha Seok-du gave a small laugh.

“How could I be your teacher when I barely learned the Thousand Character Classic?”

“Did you not tell me?”

Dam Ak clenched both fists tightly.

“That as long as one lives, one must keep moving forward.”

“……”

Had he ever said such a thing?

Cha Seok-du became ashamed of his past arrogant self.

“This matter will certainly be resolved. No, I will make it so.”

Cha Seok-du was unbearably curious about how Dam Ak intended to resolve it when they still did not know the culprit’s identity or the cooperating force.

But in the end, he did not ask.

Because he felt that if he opened his mouth now, even the small hope that remained would shatter.

Once the fierce clashes of the early war ended, the tedious Wheel Battle began.

The Murim Alliance did not send enough troops to overwhelm the enemy, but it also did not abandon the units to the point that they had to retreat.

When that happened, the days continued endlessly, with them pushing the enemy back one day and being pushed back by the enemy the next.

After the time passed when they went to the battlefield carrying rage from witnessing their comrades die, and once they repeatedly saw friendly-looking low-ranking warriors who had been dispatched there die after a single week.

Even the emotions that humans should naturally feel began to be shaved away, and one’s mind began turning into a sandpit.

And when the daily routine of habitually fighting, eating, and sleeping with a desertified mind continued.

Those damned bastards were deployed onto the battlefield.

The Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade.

Jegal So-myeong evaluated them like this.

[They are a unit created as though that cunning bastard Demon Brain drew his own temperament exactly.]

The Murim Alliance possessed absolute command authority over its affiliated sects, but it was not a single force like the Demonic Cult.

In the end, it was a political coalition, and that meant the distance between its members could widen and narrow as much as they liked according to profit and loss.

And the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade did not miss those gaps. They dug into them sharply.

They did not merely carry out assassination operations. They disguised themselves as members of the Orthodox Path, slipped into those gaps, and made everyone suspect one another.

They imitated the martial arts of Orthodox Path sects and left identical traces, further stoking suspicion with them.

Rationality had already been shaved away by being driven into war, and one’s head had turned into a desert.

In the midst of major and minor conflicts arising between sects because of the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade’s schemes, if traces of another sect’s martial art were found on the body of an assassinated comrade……

The Demonic Cult no longer felt like the main enemy.

In reality, not many people were killed directly by the hands of the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade.

But there were countless units that disappeared after falling into their traps, turning against one another, and cutting each other down.

The reason these bastards were especially hateful was that they slipped not only among higher-ranking martial artists, but even among insignificant low-ranking martial artists like our Sojeong Squad, and made us swing blades at each other.

In this life, I would not just suffer helplessly.

On the way to the Blood Sword Sect’s residence.

I asked Gun Yu-hyeon, who was walking beside me,

“What kind of relationship did Blood Sword Sect Leader Do Bong-su have with his sworn brothers?”

As expected of Gun Yu-hyeon, who was well-versed in information, the answer came immediately.

“Sect Leader Do Bong-su was originally one of those called the Five Dogs of Xiping. In his forties, he built a friendship with the previous Sect Leader and entered the Blood Sword Sect.”

How had a bastard who was not even originally a Blood Sword Sect disciple become the Blood Sword Sect Leader?

I knew the answer without even asking.

“Did those sworn brothers overturn the sect together?”

If this had been the Orthodox Path Murim, it would have been something worthy of criticism, but Gun Yu-hyeon nodded as though it was nothing.

“The Five Dogs of Xiping were people who had shared hardships and worked together since their twenties. Although the previous Blood Sword Sect Leader’s level of martial arts was said to be impressive, he could not withstand their joint attack.”

If they had roamed together from their twenties to their fifties while maintaining their epithet, most of the time, their martial arts were exceptional or they had sharp instincts.

Or both were moderately true.

“In any case, they must know everything there is to know and not know about one another.”

“……That is right.”

Hostile gazes flew in and stabbed at us from all directions, but Gun Yu-hyeon’s face was filled more with curiosity than fear.

“But can this kind of information help find the culprit?”

“Who do you think is the culprit, Young Master Yu-hyeon?”

“……Can we identify the culprit in the current situation?”

For a moment, I felt as though the word “Envoy……” came out and went back in……

It must have been my imagination.

I asked again.

“If you had to identify someone.”

After thinking for a moment, Gun Yu-hyeon answered.

“……If it were me, I would investigate the sworn brothers first.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because this is truly a good opportunity.”

It was as Gun Yu-hyeon said.

Right now was truly an excellent time to carry out a borrowed-knife murder scheme.

Thanks to the atmosphere created by the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade, no matter who died, as long as a small trace was left behind, everything could be blamed on the Orthodox Path.

I nodded.

“I think so too.”

“However, suspicion alone cannot identify them as the culprit, can it?”

“That is true. Moreover, even if we can investigate, we cannot interrogate them.”

Of course, unlike Gun Yu-hyeon, I was not suspecting them based on suspicion alone.

In any case, the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade could not be found through simple investigation and interrogation.

In the first place, the time when those bastards infiltrated was after they had gathered all information on the group into which they would seep.

Moreover, even though they had cultivated Demonic Art, they did not emit Demonic Qi.

They disguised themselves more realistically than reality itself through the Bone-Shrinking Art and Human-Skin Masks, so even if one tried to find them, they could not be found.

‘But the bastards of the Sojeong Squad pulled off that difficult task.’

Our Sojeong Squad was the first among the Murim Alliance units to find a way to distinguish the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade.

Of course, the method was somewhat vulgar……

We spread that method to the higher-ranking units and other units.

But they could not find the Twin-Shadow Vicious Demon Brigade as easily as we did.

There was no way those highborn gentlemen, for whom honor was more important than life, would use the same method we had used.

Well, since honor was more important than life and they died that way, they probably did not feel too wronged either.

While I organized my thoughts, we arrived before the Blood Sword Sect’s residence.

As we entered, rough voices began flying from everywhere.

“Black Flame Dragon?”

“How dare you come here!”

“Get lost if you do not want to die right now!”

“Do you think your life will remain attached forever just because Elder Blood Battle is here?”

The words I heard were not all that different from what I had heard so far.

Do they think that, if I, an elite of the Orthodox Path Murim, hear curses like that, I will be hurt?

But what to do?

In my previous life, I had shared life-and-death hardships with Sojeong Squad bastards even lower than you lot.

And even among those Sojeong Squad bastards.

“Shut your traps and go call your boss. Unless you all want your mouths torn wide open to your ears.”

I had the foulest mouth.

The burning atmosphere dropped sharply.

Their expressions looked like they were wondering what kind of bastard this was.

As expected, for bastards like this, acting at their level was the answer.

“Mad bastard……”

Blood Battle, who stood beside me, stared at me with his mouth hanging open.

Gun Yu-hyeon’s reaction was not much different.

Well, I suppose I did not look like an ordinary Orthodox Path man.

Srrrng.

Clang.

Thud.

Bastards drew weapons everywhere.

I was already busy enough to die, and this was annoyingly troublesome.

I raised the Taeul True Scripture and emitted killing intent.

I did not come here to wrestle around with the likes of you bastards.

“Keuk!”

“What kind of killing intent is this?”

“Hup!”

A moment later, I saw bastards opening their eyes wide and hesitatingly stepping back.

Among them, there were also bastards who tried hard to raise their killing intent as though they would not lose.

The atmosphere instantly changed into a hair-trigger situation.

At that moment.

“Stop!!!”

With a voice that rang thunderously through the interior, four middle-aged men appeared on the second floor.

The ones who swept the room with sharp gazes were……

Do Bong-su’s sworn brothers.

“It has been a long time since I last greeted you.”

The man who seemed to be the eldest brother bowed to Blood Battle as their representative, and his brothers behind him gave shallow nods.

Even in the Black Path, there was courtesy between seniors and juniors, yet they finished their greeting with that.

The representative man glared at me, then spoke to Blood Battle.

“Please forgive our lack of courtesy, Elder.”

As expected, it was an action that seemed conscious of me.

Blood Battle shook his hand as though he did not care much.

The man shot me a blazing gaze.

“May I ask…… what kind of relationship this friend has with you, Elder?”

Blood Battle answered without the slightest hesitation.

“No relationship at all.”

Honestly, that is a little hurtful.

We did travel together to the Black Thought Alliance and shared hardships for several days.

At the concise answer, the man nodded as though he understood.

“Then I need not be mindful of you in dealing with this friend, correct?”

As expected, Blood Battle answered immediately.

“Do as you like. However, unless it is an agreed-upon Martial Duel, I will not permit you to kill him.”

“……Understood.”

The man slowly turned his head and stared at me.

His younger brothers all bared their teeth as well, not hiding their hostility.

“You said you were looking for me?”

“That is right.”

“For what reason?”

“Because I found the culprit who killed your sect’s leader and eldest brother.”

“……”

The man stared steadily at me.

“We also know the culprit.”

“Surely you are not going to say it is the Tang Clan’s daughter?”

The man let out a hollow laugh.

“Would it not be stranger to say otherwise?”

“Then you are being played by the culprit. Do you intend to catch someone who is not the real culprit and satisfy yourselves by saying you have taken revenge?”

“Brother……! There is no need to listen to this bullshit……!”

“Quiet.”

After calming his protesting younger brothers, the man asked me,

“……Who do you think the culprit is?”

I lightly shrugged.

“Of course, they are among you.”

“……”

A silent Qi Wave slowly began targeting my Vital Acupoints.

It was an expression of their will to strike at any time.

The man growled lowly.

“If you came to start a pointless quarrel, you would be wise to stop. We have just lost our Sect Leader and our brother at the same time, so we have no leisure to entertain jokes.”

“And what if it is not a joke?”

“Are you…… prepared?”

“Of course.”

“Even to stake your life?”

My life, huh……

In this life, there were so few moments when I had not staked my life that I could count them on one hand.

I immediately nodded.

After staring at me for a while, the man stepped back.

“Good. If you speak nonsense, I will request a Martial Duel. You will have to receive the anger of all us brothers at once.”

Perhaps conscious of what Blood Battle had said earlier, the man shamelessly declared that they would attack together.

“Very well.”

When I readily answered, the man looked surprised.

Then, as if confirming it, he asked Blood Battle,

“Elder, this is an agreed situation.”

Blood Battle replied bluntly, as though it was none of his business.

“Do as you please.”

Now, the stage was set.

I clapped my hands and drew everyone’s attention.

“If that is roughly settled, may I begin?”

“Begin.”

I looked over the Five Dogs of Xiping in a row.

“Now, I will ask questions from this point on, so please answer immediately.”

“……”

I had tried to joke a little to loosen the mood, but they did not laugh at all.

Honestly, what stiff people.

“Now, first question. Where did the five of you become sworn brothers?”

“At Saepacheon.”

“Saepacheon of Xiping.”

“Xiping’s Saepacheon.”

“It was Saepacheon.”

Their attitude said, why are you asking something so obvious? I continued the questions.

“Second question. When is the birthday of the second brother here?”

The three men answered at the same time, excluding the man who had been pointed out.

“The Day of Gyeongo in the Month of Giyu.”

“The Day of Gyeongo in the Month of Giyu.”

“The Day of Gyeongo in the Month of Giyu. The Hour of the Rat.”

As expected, if people had been together for about thirty years, they seemed to know each other well.

“Third question. What is the final secret technique used by the third brother?”

“……”

Perhaps because the question concerned martial arts, none of them answered easily.

“Please answer. What is the final secret technique?”

“That cannot be answered.”

“Is it more important than the Sect Leader’s death?”

As I was locked in a staring contest with the man, the third brother shot me a glare with his bulging eyes and said,

“Brothers, just tell him. After this is over, I will split this bastard’s skull in half.”

At the third brother’s murderous words, those who had hesitated eventually opened their mouths.

“……Lu Da Uproots the Willow.”

“Lu Da Uproots the Willow.”

“Lu Da Uproots the Willow.”

There had been hesitation, but no one had faltered in answering the questions so far.

“Then, the fourth question……”

“How long must we keep doing this foolishness?!”

The man who had been speaking with me until now cut me off, but I continued the question.

Now it was time to ask the question the Sojeong Squad had used to distinguish those bastards.

“Fourth question. What kind of woman did the dead Sect Leader go wild over?”

At my vulgar question, the man’s eyes blazed.

“You bastard……!”

“Answer. It is the last question.”

The second brother, filled with rage, tightly gripped the handle of his saber and spoke.

“He liked women so voluptuous that one could say they were layered with fat.”

“He liked fat women.”

“He liked fat women, so it was hard to go to brothels with him.”

They all gave the same answer, as though it had been prearranged.

However.

“……F-fat women. He liked fat women.”

Only one person.

There was one whose answer was late.

“……”

“……”

“……”

The three members of the Five Dogs of Xiping looked at the fourth brother as though dumbfounded.

The fourth brother waved both hands, flustered.

“W-what are you thinking, brothers! I, I!”

The fourth brother looked truly flustered, as though he were innocent.

As I looked at him, a triumphant smile naturally formed on my lips.

“Got you!”

Peekaboo, you bastard!