Chapter 429: Five Hundred Years of Waiting (4)
Hong Mun-gi had changed.
He no longer hid behind morality as an excuse to avoid fear.
He no longer used righteousness as a pretext to look away from conflict.
When Gye Cheol-yeong had been rough with Taeul Sect’s children, he realized he’d wanted to berate the man.
When Taeul Sect had been humiliated by the Iron Sword Sect, he discovered the truth that he’d wanted revenge.
Through the grueling training under the Sword Demon — no, Baek Hae-gwang — he reflected upon himself and confronted the shame buried in his past.
And within that shame, he understood.
That all of it had sprung from his own powerlessness and complacency.
Baek Hae-gwang — a man who’d never once followed rules or propriety — could completely protect his own family.
But he, who had spent a lifetime reading others’ moods, upholding the righteous path and observing propriety —
Had driven his own disciples into mortal danger.
He had practiced the Dao as an Orthodox Path martial artist and strived to live the life of a gentleman, yet he realized all of it had been nothing more than a weak man’s excuses.
That morality kept by the powerless is merely self-deception, while morality kept by the powerful is true goodness.
And simultaneously —
He realized that one who can lay down his life for his beliefs at any moment can become strong in any situation.
[For my disciples. For Taeul Sect.]
He would gladly give his life and go down in glory.
From the instant he steeled that resolve, Hong Mun-gi realized he could become strong.
And from that point forward.
He vowed to live as a man of strength before any opponent, any enemy — and he had upheld that vow.
He truly had.
“……”
Until this very moment arrived.
“Shabby.”
“……Ah, yes. It’s very lacking.”
That was the first word out of Murong Gang’s mouth upon entering the newly rebuilt Taeul Hall.
One of the Ten Supremes.
Sword-Breaker.
Clan Head of the Murong Clan.
Each title extraordinary on its own.
While Hong Mun-gi was still reeling from this unexpected remark —
Murong Gang moved to claim the seat of honor as though it were the most natural thing in the world, only to be stopped by Namgung Tae-ha, who’d followed him in.
“Honestly, I am the senior among us in the murim.”
“Please act your age! How does it make any sense for an outsider to take the seat of honor at a gate-opening ceremony?”
“Hmph! What does a Namgung brat like you know about anything?! We’ve already forged a close relationship, and before long we’ll practically be family.”
This was the first Hong Mun-gi had heard of any of this. He had no idea how to respond.
“What kind of threat did you make this time?”
“Threat?! At the invitation of Jin So-un, who’s practically my future son-in-la— ahem! Anyway, I went to the Murim Academy and, you know, gave lectures and such!”
“The story of how you went there to beat your grandson and accidentally ended up lecturing is already well known.”
“Which bastard is spreading that utter rubbish!! Damn it!! It was that old crank, wasn’t it!”
Watching the agitated Murong Gang, Namgung Tae-ha snorted dismissively.
“Besides, by that logic, I’m closer. I personally performed Marrow-Cleansing and Hair-Shedding for the Sect Leader’s daughter.”
This was a story Hong Mun-gi knew well.
How deeply moved he’d been to learn that the Azure Emperor Divine Sword had bestowed such a grace upon his daughter.
But.
“Is that so? Then you don’t have any particular connection to Jin So-un. Best of luck deepening your bond with the Sect Leader’s daughter instead.”
……There was no opportunity to convey that gratitude.
Hong Mun-gi’s head was spinning from the conversation unfolding before him.
Legendary, mythical figures of the murim were bickering like village elders.
Namgung Tae-ha’s face — flushed crimson from the teasing that didn’t quite feel like teasing — betrayed that his composure(?) had raised a notch.
“Oh dear, I forgot to mention! So-un saved our granddaughter’s life. Twice, no less. Having crossed the line between life and death together on two occasions, it’s a bond that can never be severed.”
It seemed to work — Murong Gang’s face cycled between red and purple.
“T-twice? Ahem! That sounds rather burdensome. A husband and wife should help each other equally……”
“Hmm, but didn’t you insist on a Matrilocal Son-in-Law arrangement? In that case, a boy who holds the position of Chief Disciple wouldn’t work.”
“This old codger, I swear — the more I listen, the more—!”
Burdensome? Husband and wife? Matrilocal Son-in-Law?
These esteemed — no, these honored gentlemen — what on earth were they talking about?
Completely unable to follow the conversation, Hong Mun-gi felt a dizzying vertigo, as though the newly built Taeul Hall were shaking from the raised voices.
Then —
CRASH—
The door flew open and a new combatant entered the fray.
“Would you keep it down! Why are you causing a scene at someone else’s celebration? Where on earth did you leave your manners? Tsk tsk.”
The Murim Alliance’s Grand Strategist.
The Greatest Mind under Heaven.
Jegal So-myeong…… Jegal So-myeong??!
Before Hong Mun-gi could even react, Jegal So-myeong didn’t spare him a glance and took a seat opposite Murong Gang.
“You never stop talking about how busy you are — won’t even visit your own family — yet here you are. What brings you?”
Murong Gang shot him a sidelong glare, and Jegal So-myeong squared his shoulders broadly.
“My grandson’s sworn brother and future successor to the Mantongbu is holding a gate-opening ceremony at his home sect. Of course I’d attend.”
To that, Murong Gang and Namgung Tae-ha reacted simultaneously.
“Bullshit……”
“What utter nonsense.”
……At this point, Hong Mun-gi was beginning to wonder if he was dreaming.
Where am I, and who am I?
And what in the world were these great personages discussing?
For some reason, he felt that if this continued, someone was going to be split into thirds — and just as he tried to get a word in —
“Hah! This is why they say old men should just drop dead. The Grand Strategist of the Murim Alliance gets called ‘bullshit’ and ‘nonsense’? Maybe a stay in the Inspection Office eating prison food will convince you to spit out the rags stuffed in your mouths?”
“Try it if you can. Just know there won’t be an Inspection Office in the Murim Alliance afterward.”
“Hmph! The Mantongbu lost its bite ages ago, and you’re still living in delusion. Tsk tsk.”
When even Namgung Tae-ha, who’d seemed the most composed, drew battle lines, Hong Mun-gi wanted nothing more than to bolt out of Taeul Hall.
[For my disciples. For Taeul Sect.]
He had been prepared to stake his life for those precious to him.
“……”
But right now, if he was being honest, he wanted to drag in the person(?) these gentlemen kept invoking and then flee.
“If the Alliance Leader was going to attend, that should’ve been enough. Why is a Grand Strategist tagging along?”
“‘A Grand Strategist’?”
“Ah, my apologies — I meant to say ‘a hanger-on.’ Slipped out wrong.”
TREMBLE TREMBLE TREMBLE TREMBLE.
Three elderly men were merely conversing — and yet the entire newly built Taeul Hall was shaking. Why?
CREAK CREAK CREAK.
Watching the roof joints rattle, Hong Mun-gi thought:
‘Am I…… going to make it out of here in one piece?’
The people before him would surely emerge from the complete collapse of Taeul Hall without a single scratch.
As he weighed the very practical question of how much it would cost to rebuild and where he’d stay in the interim —
His savior finally appeared.
“Ho ho, everyone seems delighted to see each other after so long.”
One of the Ten Supremes.
The Murim Alliance Leader.
Hyeok Mu-gang.
The arrival of the one person who could end this battle brought a brief ceasefire.
But.
“If I may add — should Sect Leader Hong permit it, I would very much like to offer So-un my guidance.”
Trust gets betrayed by the most trusted — his words became the signal arrow heralding the resumption of war.
“What a load of horseshit!”
“Mu-gang, have you considered for one second what chaos would ensue if you designated a successor now? Think before you flap that mou— that is, your lips!”
“It’s because you kept spouting drivel that even the Alliance Leader’s gone off the rails!”
A four-way war(?) broke out with Jin So-un at its center.
Hong Mun-gi squeezed his trembling eyelids shut and conjured the image of Jin So-un in his mind.
‘Save me, you brat!’
***
Hwangbong, Jiangxi Province.
Accessible by crossing Poyang Lake from Nanchang, it was a city every traveler heading to Zhejiang or Fujian Province passed through.
Where people and goods gathered, cities naturally grew, and within growing cities, powerful sects naturally took root.
Such was the case with the Fourfold Sect of Hwangbong.
Standing tall amid the countless sects vying for dominance, the Fourfold Sect held the sixty-seventh seat among the One Hundred Eight Peaks, commanding formidable strength and influence.
With two hundred years of tradition and steady expansion behind it, the Fourfold Sect boasted five hundred disciples, of which nearly a hundred could be called true experts.
The undisputed hegemon of Hwangbong.
Walking toward that very Fourfold Sect, Hwa Jeong-san folded a letter and spoke.
“Remarkable. To think the Fourfold Sect acquired Blood Cult martial arts.”
Il-myeong shook his head with a grim expression.
“Excessive greed invites disaster.”
“Every single person who went out to Sichuan must have glimpsed at least a scrap of Blood Cult martial arts. How did acquiring Blood Cult techniques…… Isn’t the response a bit excessive this time?”
Those who had witnessed the horrors perpetrated at the Blood Cult’s main base — the unspeakable experiments and atrocities — must have been seized with terror at the cult’s savagery and boundless greed.
At the same time, they would have been forced to acknowledge that these were beings with whom coexistence was impossible.
“Because they went one step further.”
But as was always the case with worldly affairs, there were inevitably those who saw the same thing and harbored different thoughts.
The desire to possess that overwhelming, dominant power.
The hunger to climb to even greater heights.
The arrogance of believing they would be different.
All of it had culminated in this incident.
“If not for the Black Path demonstration in Nanchang, we might never have thought to investigate the Fourfold Sect.”
A dead Black Path practitioner’s corpse rotting to black had aroused suspicion in an Inspection Office operative, who’d dug into the Fourfold Sect and exposed their crimes to the Murim Alliance.
“Truly absurd. The Murim Alliance’s chief enemy inadvertently revealed an internal threat.”
Wasn’t the world always like that?
Wear new clothes and it rains. Bring an umbrella and the sun comes out. And sometimes you discover a Forbidden Art because a Black Path practitioner died in an unusual way.
Il-myeong continued.
“This is a warning. A warning showing the Murim Alliance a line it must never cross.”
“But the timing couldn’t be worse, could it? Right next door in Anhui Province, Taeul Sect’s name is thundering everywhere.”
“That’s precisely why this is good timing.”
“……They’re sending a message of vigilance.”
The higher one climbed, the more one realized that the forces moving the world were never limited to martial strength.
Even the seemingly obvious subjugation of the Fourfold Sect was tangled in multiple political considerations.
“Anyway, will just our group be enough?”
He didn’t think it impossible, of course.
Wudang’s Yong So-ah.
Shaolin’s Il-myeong.
Zhongnan’s Jang Tae-ha.
Hwangbo Yeon of the Hwangbo Clan.
And himself.
Formidable as the Fourfold Sect was, no force could contend against such asymmetric firepower.
Still, the prospect of injuries and hardship during the subjugation weighed on him.
“The Alliance should be handling this sort of thing.”
“The Inspection Office has operatives embedded across the area. They’ll root out completely and leave no future trouble.”
“That’s exactly the hard part.”
From the moment he’d first drawn his sword, he’d overcome the guilt and fear of taking human lives — but that didn’t mean slaughtering large numbers sat easily with him.
Yet whenever the Murim Alliance designated a Forbidden Art and it surfaced in the murim, the consequences that followed left no room for looking away.
Weren’t the stories depressingly common?
A boy who watched his clan’s extermination from beneath the kitchen stove survives, armed with martial arts, and wreaks vengeance upon the entire murim.
In novels, that martial art is an Orthodox Path secret technique, but in reality, it’s a Forbidden Art.
In novels, the protagonist achieves enlightenment and eventually becomes the Murim Alliance Leader, but in reality, he becomes a mad demon, a killing fiend, or a lust demon — claiming countless innocent victims before finally being put down.
Hwa Jeong-san shook his head. The more he thought about it, the dizzier it got.
“Sigh…… By the way, did you hear? Taeul Sect says they’ll hold an open Martial Duel Tournament.”
Changing the subject, Hwa Jeong-san brought up the topic currently setting the murim abuzz.
“A truly bold and admirable response, I believe. Amitabha.”
Unlike Il-myeong’s composed answer, Hwa Jeong-san clicked his tongue.
“Tch, reckless bravado. How many people in Taeul Sect can even be called experts? And considering they can’t kill anyone, it’s actually harder than us wiping out the Fourfold Sect.”
“It’s likely meant to demonstrate their resolve. Those who back down in the murim have always been the ones who suffer.”
“Tch, you think so?”
While exchanging words about Taeul Sect, the two arrived at the Fourfold Sect.
Jang Tae-ha and Hwangbo Yeon were already there.
But —
“What’s this? Yong So-ah hasn’t arrived yet?”
Yong So-ah, who had never once been late to an appointed time.
Yet there was no sign of him.
Hwa Jeong-san tilted his head.
“……”
“……”
But Jang Tae-ha and Hwangbo Yeon, who had arrived first, kept their mouths firmly shut.
“Come on, what happened? We said we’d move together.”
“……He did arrive.”
Jang Tae-ha barely managed to move his lips, as though even answering was a struggle.
“And he went in first.”
“What?”
What was this about? Going in first?
It wasn’t as though they were here as invited guests.
And now that he noticed — the surroundings were eerily, unnaturally silent.
Along with the Fourfold Sect’s main gate, cracked slightly ajar.
“……”
Hwa Jeong-san slowly pushed the gate open.
And then —
“……!”
A thick scent of blood flooded his nostrils.
“What is this?!”
From the entrance through the entire main courtyard — corpses lay strewn everywhere.
Inside the buildings, across the verandas and rooftops — wherever his eyes turned, bodies upon bodies.
The ground ran with rivulets of red, and those who’d tried to escape over the walls hung dead in mid-motion, draped across the ramparts.
A mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
No other words existed to describe it.
No term yet coined in this world could capture such a hellish tableau.
And at its center.
“You’re late.”
Clad in a pristine white robe without a speck of dust, Yong So-ah stood bathed in the pale-white moonlight, still as a painting.
“……”
The hair-raising, grotesque dissonance of it all made Hwa Jeong-san shudder involuntarily.
Yet the very being who had created this monstrous incongruity —
“Jin So-un is doing what, exactly?”
— asked in his usual emotionless tone.
“……”
And Hwa Jeong-san felt a fear whose origin he could not name.