Chapter 397: Chapter 397
The Yuk Clan Spear Form.
The martial art of the Grand General’s Bureau—a secret transmission passed down alongside centuries of imperial military history.
Its twelve forms possessed a duality that was at once simple and complex, refined and improved countless times until now it was no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of imperial military martial arts originated from this very spear form.
A martial art that served as the root and pillar of the military, much as the Dharma Tendon-Changing Classic did for Shaolin, Taiji Fist for Wudang, and the Heavenly Demon Scripture for the Demonic Cult.
Jwa Dae-gi, a slave of the Beijing Yuk family, had stolen that martial art and fled to the Murim Alliance.
Even Du Cheon-gang, a grave robber by origin, had been left speechless by the man’s sheer audacity.
Yet Jwa Dae-gi had been utterly unapologetic.
“Fuuuuck! It’s not like I asked to be born a slave! After watching my mother get violated and my father hang himself, you’d either want to kill yourself or give those bastards a giant ‘fuck you’—right? Am I wrong?”
His choice of the Murim Alliance hadn’t been about survival.
He’d picked the place best suited to stick it to the military, and that place happened to be the Murim Alliance.
‘Wait…… then in this life…… don’t tell me that bastard is going to join the Black Thought Alliance??’
In the previous life, the Murim Alliance had been the only option, so he’d come here—but given his perverse temperament, the Black Thought Alliance seemed a far better fit. The thought sent an uneasy prickle through me.
‘Fuck, that can’t happen……’
It wasn’t that I missed the bastard or felt some kind of camaraderie……
I wouldn’t be able to haze him!!! I still owed him double payback, for fuck’s sake.
In any case, as befitting the man’s temperament, the Yuk Clan Spear Form as he’d altered it was an unrelenting one-note symphony of attack and destruction.
WHOOSH— WHOOSH— WHOOSH—
The pursuers emerged one by one, tearing through the trees as they ran.
Every one of them had a hand on their hilts, eyeing me warily atop the carriage.
I concentrated inner arts into my hands.
WHIRRRR—
The laughably named Savage Tiger Spear that bastard Jwa Dae-gi had christened began to seethe within my grip.
DRRRRR—
The spear, set spinning by the force of qi, predictably shredded the tender skin of my palms.
A spear art built on the premise that a round shaft can be spun—its design spared no thought for the enemy’s safety, nor for the wielder’s own.
And that very recklessness inflicted all the greater damage on the opponent.
Savage Tiger Spear.
Savage Tiger Claw.
A form inspired by watching the young lords of the Beijing Yuk family get killed while trying to finish off a wounded tiger.
Spear qi spiraled out from the form, slamming into a pursuer’s chest with savage rotation.
The pursuer swung sword qi to block, but couldn’t withstand the crushing rotational pressure and was flung backward like an arrow.
CRACK—
Devastating destructive power that wounded even the wielder—and with that added recklessness, an enormous wound the size of a human head was seared into the pursuer’s chest.
“!”
“!”
“!”
A flash of shock registered in the pursuers’ eyes.
Military martial arts, built purely for offense, moved along a fundamentally different track from the murim’s techniques.
People whose training had begun with ‘the Way and enlightenment’ were thrown into confusion, unsure how to counter it.
Savage Tiger Spear.
Savage Tiger Fang.
The pursuer who had barely dodged the first spiraling blast of spear qi hid himself, only to spot another blast screaming toward him—and his eyes went wide.
He twisted desperately and slammed sword qi against it, but the spinning spear qi already contained the principles of the Absorbing Formula, devouring its prey with ravenous greed before ripping it to shreds.
“GAAARGH!”
His right arm reduced to tatters, the pursuer hit the ground. I gave him not an instant’s respite, pouring more spear qi down on him.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—
As the spear qi hammered straight down, another pursuer rushed to rescue his fallen comrade.
‘Gotcha.’
I curled my lips into a grin and unleashed the third form of the Savage Tiger Spear.
Savage Tiger Spear.
Savage Tiger Embrace.
A massive surge of spear qi—as if Savage Tiger Claw had been magnified five or sixfold—engulfed both pursuers at once.
The harder they struggled not to be pulled into the vortex, the more catastrophic the damage became.
“GKKH!”
“N-no!”
Two blood-soaked bodies crumpled to the ground.
Alarm flickered in the remaining pursuers’ eyes.
They must have been horrified that someone could unleash such brutal attacks without a moment’s hesitation.
Even if the ultimate purpose of martial arts amounted to ‘killing,’ the starting point was fundamentally different.
The martial Way, born from training in ‘the Way and enlightenment,’ and the military’s martial arts, designed for ‘efficiently disposing of human beings,’ followed entirely separate tracks.
And the Savage Tiger Spear, drenched in Jwa Dae-gi’s ‘malice’ toward the world, may not have radiated demonic qi—but it could hardly be called an Orthodox Path technique either.
The greatness of the Yuk Clan Spear Form struck me anew.
If Jwa Dae-gi had stolen all twelve forms instead of just six, would he have survived a little longer?
Probably not. Not long after his death, the imperial military had come looking for him.
He’d stolen another family’s martial art—the Beijing Yuk family’s at that—and died at the hands of the Demonic Cult. From his perspective, it was a decent way to go.
WHIRRRR—
The shaft spun at blistering speed, and with it the spear tip rotated at terrifying velocity.
A flashy barrage of variant sword forms came crashing toward me. I answered with a dead-simple thrust.
SCREEEEECH——
The spear tip, locked against the flat of the blade, bored in as if it would pierce the sword itself.
The force transmitted through it stunned the pursuer, who tried to wrench his blade aside and escape the spear’s range.
But why was a spear a spear?
Because it was long.
I drew the shaft far back, then drove it straight into the man’s qi center.
SQUELCH——
The pursuer’s eyes bulged, as if this were something he’d never imagined.
“Don’t give me that look. If you didn’t have at least this much resolve, you had no business coming on an assassination run.”
“……Gkkh.”
A Righteous Path Association foot soldier who’d thought himself the protagonist of the world.
But now that he’d had the painful realization of his true place, I kicked him off the carriage.
His body tumbled beneath the wheels and rolled across the ground.
The remaining pursuers wavered between chasing their target and tending to the wounded—then made their decision and ran to the injured.
Their undisguised hostility bored into me like a drill.
Glare all you want. What are you going to do about it?
I readied myself again.
The old sages truly never said a wrong word.
For people who couldn’t even recognize their own mistakes, the rod was the only answer.
Savage Tiger Spear.
Savage Tiger Emerging from Water.
Murderous spear qi, spinning at extreme velocity, tore through the air and crashed down on them.
The panicked pursuers swung their swords to shield their wounded, but—
Gkk—
GYAAGH—
Screams rang out, and both men’s arms were reduced to rags.
I offered a quiet word to the bleeding wretches.
“If you’d abandoned him and run, I’d have killed all of you.”
“……”
“……”
They stared up at the carriage with vacant, hollow eyes.
I turned from them without a shred of hesitation.
Then I launched a signal flare.
There. The military’s spear art has made its appearance. What will you do now, Clear Water True Man?
Imagining the expression on Clear Water True Man’s face as he received the report—like a man who’d bitten into a mouthful of shit—brought a small smile to my lips.
***
BANG—!
Though the morning sun had begun to peek above the horizon, the surroundings were still dim.
Thanks to that, the sound and blue color of the signal flare launched from the distant east were unmistakable.
Eun-ho felt a wave of relief at the sight.
If a red flare had gone up, their next destination would have been the Black Thought Alliance.
He quickly set aside any lingering regret over the Captain’s rank he might have gotten.
Geum-pyo and Dong-ryong unwrapped the scarves from their faces and tucked them away.
But the silly grin plastered across Geum-pyo’s face soured Eun-ho’s mood.
“How can you be smiling right now?”
“After visiting our parents recently, something hit me…… Haven’t we changed a lot?”
“……”
Why bring that up now, of all times?
“Think about it. We were the most ordinary of ordinary kids, figured we’d spend our lives helping out at the mill…… and now here we are, tracking exactly how many people are pursuing us.”
When he thought about it, it really was earth-shattering.
Go anywhere in their hometown and you’d find people just as ordinary—no, below average—by the dozen.
Yet those three brothers had graduated from the Murim Academy and were now running special operations against the Righteous Path Association.
The Righteous Path Association warriors they’d once been too awed to even look up at now seemed like nothing more than opponents to be dealt with.
“Even so, let’s stay alert, Brother. This is an incredibly dangerous operation. One wrong move and all three of us might be holding hands on the walk to the Black Path……”
“So what? We’d be going with Eldest Senior Brother. He’d take care of us like he always does.”
“……”
That level of trust seemed excessive, but it wasn’t entirely wrong either.
Just as Eldest Senior Brother’s strength had brought them this far, his strength would shape whatever came next.
“And every time something special like this happened, we always came out bigger on the other side. I’m honestly more excited to see what changes after this one’s over.”
As Geum-pyo said, Jin So-un was a man at the center of the storm.
He himself was perfectly at ease, but everywhere he passed, the world turned upside down.
While reflecting on their extraordinary Eldest Senior Brother—
“Brothers…… they’re coming.”
A voice that sounded half-asleep reached them.
Dong-ryong, who’d been sitting quietly atop the carriage—apparently asleep, given his eye-rubbing—straightened up.
“Our role is strictly to let them know Taeul Sect is here. So don’t overdo it.”
Eun-ho reaffirmed the operation one more time, and Geum-pyo and Dong-ryong nodded silently and drew their swords.
***
“What did you just say?”
Jegal So-myeong’s brow furrowed deeply at the Heavenly Eye Pavilion operative’s report.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand what the operative had said.
He was demanding to know why this was only being reported now.
Even the Alliance Leader’s aide, who normally received Heavenly Eye Pavilion reports and relayed them upward, had been so dumbfounded by the situation that he’d dragged the operative to stand before Jegal So-myeong in person.
“I asked you. What did you just say?”
“Th-the outer compound’s security was breach……”
CRASH—!
Jegal So-myeong slammed his palm down on the desk.
“And you’re…… reporting this now…… when the sun is already high in the sky?”
The operative, who reflexively wanted to point out that ‘it’s not quite high yet,’ barely managed to clamp his mouth shut.
One careless word here and he’d be on the receiving end of a beating instead of the Pavilion Master.
“Where is the Pavilion Master?! Why isn’t the Pavilion Master delivering this?!”
“The P-Pavilion Master is currently investigating what happened in the outer compoun……”
CRASH—! CRACK.
The Mantongbu desk finally split in two.
The man who had never once lost his composure through countless political battles was, for the first time, displaying his fury openly.
“The outer compound’s security was breached, and you’re only telling me now—while the Pavilion Master doesn’t even show his face?”
So intense was his rage that Jegal So-myeong’s body began to tremble.
Even the operative, who had steeled himself for the worst, nearly wet himself from sheer terror.
A frigid gaze froze the air in an instant.
“When did the Heavenly Eye Pavilion learn of this?”
“……”
“When?!”
“At the end of the H-Hour of the Rabbit, through the night-shift handover report……”
“And you’re reporting it only now?! Unless every last one of you has collectively lost your minds, how is this even possible?!”
“I-it was determined to be an incident caused by an accide…… urk.”
The operative couldn’t finish. A writing stone from Jegal So-myeong’s desk had already flown across the room and struck his head.
“Ngh……”
Jegal So-myeong was well aware that most departments, aside from the Mantongbu and a few others, each served the interests of their respective factions.
But this had crossed every conceivable line.
A severed flow of information meant something was being hidden, and in the current crisis, the only thing important enough to hide was—obvious.
“Summon the Red Dragon Pavilion to the Hall of Repose.”
“Yes, sir!”
The Alliance Leader’s aide, reading the room, shot out like an arrow. Jegal So-myeong himself rose and stormed out.
The operative tried to block his path but froze in place, petrified by his murderous aura.
Jegal So-myeong could not contain the fury boiling up inside him.
He’d harbored suspicions.
The investigation report on his own quarters had arrived quickly, but the report on the Hall of Repose area had been delayed far too long.
Yet he’d restrained himself, because the Mantongbu involving itself in every department’s business would be an overreach of authority.
But every principle he’d upheld had only served the politicians’ interests.
“G-Grand Strategist!”
Upon reaching the Hall of Repose, the Heavenly Eye Pavilion Master—who was supposedly conducting an investigation—and the Execution Pavilion’s unit leaders all rushed to block his way.
“Wh-what brings you here?”
“Move.”
“Parts of the Hall of Repose building are damaged and could collapse at any moment. Please leave such dangerous work to us subordinat……”
“I said move.”
He nearly struck them on the spot, but Jegal So-myeong barely swallowed his erupting rage.
A brief standoff ensued.
Finally, the Heavenly Eye Pavilion Master and Execution Pavilion unit leaders, sweating profusely, stepped aside one by one.
If they blocked him any further, things would spiral beyond anything they could manage.
“……”
As Jegal So-myeong entered the Hall of Repose, the wreckage of the damaged building filled his vision.
He lacked specialized knowledge in investigation and forensics, but he could tell well enough what those traces of destruction pointed to.
And he immediately understood why the investigation had been so sluggish and inconclusive.
“You sent for me, Grand Strategist.”
The Red Dragon Pavilion Master arrived with his unit leaders and captains in tow.
Without turning to face him, Jegal So-myeong gave his order.
“From now on, stand where I direct you.”
“……”
The Red Dragon Pavilion Master had been about to ask why, but quickly read the gravity of the situation around him and signaled his subordinates with a nod.
Red Dragon Pavilion personnel then ringed the Mystic Gate Formation surrounding the side building, exactly as Jegal So-myeong directed.
“Begin!”
Jegal So-myeong’s instructions were concise to the extreme, but the Red Dragon Pavilion’s unit leaders and captains were no ordinary men.
They moved like extensions of Jegal So-myeong’s own hands and feet, channeling precisely calibrated palm force into the exact points he indicated.
DRRRRRR.
The side building—formation and all—began to shake.
The black fog wreathing the area contracted and expanded in cycles, dizzying the eye.
“More! Harder!”
At Jegal So-myeong’s signal, the Red Dragon Pavilion operatives poured in greater force. The trembling intensified.
At last, the black fog could hold no longer and erupted, blasting formidable energy in every direction.
RUMBLE.
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH-CRASH.
The Mystic Gate Formation shrouding the side building was dissolved.
“……!”
Where the building had stood was a crater, as though it had been bombed—the structure shattered to pieces and driven into the earth.
If anyone had been inside, they would have been crushed beyond recognition.
“Investigate.”
At Jegal So-myeong’s command, the Heavenly Eye Pavilion operatives and Execution Pavilion unit leaders who’d been watching from the perimeter moved to comply, but—
“Not one of you moves a finger.”
“……”
Bypassing them, the Red Dragon Pavilion Master approached Jegal So-myeong and bowed his head.
“What should we look for?”
Jegal So-myeong gazed down at the crushed earth, cold fury smoldering in his eyes, and murmured.
“The body of Black Thought Alliance Strategist Dam Ak.”
Without a word of question, the Red Dragon Pavilion Master glanced sideways at his men, and they lit torches to search the crushed site for remains.
Perhaps a quarter-hour passed.
“Found something! But it’s not a member of the envoy delegation.”
“Another body here as well! Also not Black Thought Alliance.”
Four corpses in total were recovered.
One was presumed to be Dam Ak’s guard warrior.
The other three were bodies of unknown affiliation.
Nowhere was Dam Ak’s body, nor that of any other envoy delegation member, to be found.
“……”
Jegal So-myeong was at a loss for words.
No—to be precise, he was seething with the utmost fury at this scene, which laid bare the rot of the Murim Alliance as though someone had given it visual form.
He let out a cold, sardonic laugh and turned away.
The outlines of the culprits were already taking shape in his mind.
The ashen-faced Heavenly Eye Pavilion Master hastily bowed his head as Jegal So-myeong approached.
Jegal So-myeong stopped directly before him and spoke, ice in his voice.
“Look forward to it. I will make you pay the full price for what you have done.”