Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Fck! Fck! F**uuuck!"

GULP!

Amid the streaming tears and the stench that burned his nostrils, Yul Ho swallowed dryly and squeezed even harder with both arms and legs.

WHOOSH—! THUD—! THUD, THUD, THUD—!

"Kh, khhhk!"

Shudder, shudder!

Another hall must have collapsed — the earth shook violently, and his arms and legs, already trembling uncontrollably, erupted into frantic spasms.

'N-no!'

SLAP—! SMACK—!

"Guh!"

No sooner had he splayed both hands wide against the walls to brace himself than a spray of revolting filth splattered across his face.

Choking back the surge of bile, Yul Ho continued his desperate prayer from within the privy's cesspit.

Please let this godforsaken chaos end.

Please don't let those maniacs outside find him.

'How the hell did things come to this...!'

If only he could turn back time and return to the past.......

It had been a full half-hour since he had crawled down into the reeking cesspit of his own accord.

A single moment from about two months ago flashed through Yul Ho's mind like a revolving lantern.

The rumor that the Sun and Moon Gate in distant Gangso was seeking out boys and girls afflicted with severed meridians.

The story that both the Martial Alliance and the Evil Path Alliance had raised their hackles and were watching that movement with keen attention.

That story — overheard by chance while drinking at a pleasure house — was the true culprit behind this entire deranged disaster.

'Th-this isn't what I wanted!'

Yul Ho felt so wronged he could lose his mind.

He had only wanted to get rid of him for good.

That half-brother who bore no resemblance to him whatsoever.

True, their father had kept the boy hidden deep within the inner compound and strictly forbidden any household member from speaking of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians or the second young master.

But Yul Ho had believed that a force as dominant as the Sun and Moon Gate — which towered above both the Martial Alliance and the Evil Path Alliance — would be more than capable of pressuring their father into handing the boy over.

But everything had been a delusion.

The Sun and Moon Gate was closer to the evil factions than the orthodox, and a small martial family like the Taewon Yul Family was the sort of thing they would erase from the world without a second thought, just to silence witnesses.

The result of that was the nightmare he now faced.

BOOOM—!

HISS—! CRUMBLE—!

"Hee, HEEEK!"

Another violent tremor, and the privy — its structural integrity already compromised — wobbled dangerously, showering him with wood dust and debris.

CREEEEAK! CREEEAK!

Judging by the way the ridge beam was listing and warping, staying any longer meant being buried alive and suffocating in a cesspit.

"N-no, NOOO!"

The family head, along with every martial artist in the family who could be called a fighter, was already dead.

With the Sun and Moon Gate having decided on the Taewon Yul Family's annihilation, a second-rate fighter like himself would obviously be killed on sight.

But he had absolutely no intention of meeting his end in a cesspit.

"D-damn! Damn it all!"

So, hauling his quaking arms and legs into motion, he barely managed to clamber out of the pit, then began dragging his spent legs in a stumbling run toward the estate's outer wall.

The reason he had chosen the cesspit over an outward escape in the first place was the terrifying perimeter the Sun and Moon Gate had set up outside.

'By now, that bastard illegitimate son should've been caught!'

His own calculation told him that the Sun and Moon Gate, having achieved its objective of securing the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, should be withdrawing by now.

"That one wretched bastard — the family is suffering this disaster because of him...!"

Facing the reality that the family he should have inherited had fallen to ruin, Yul Ho could not stop the tears that welled up unbidden.

And it was only then that Yul Hwi, who had happened upon the sorry spectacle and been watching from a distance, slowly parted his lips.

"The shit must be quite spicy, judging by the tears."

"Wh— HRGH!"

THUD—!

A voice emerging without warning from the shadows off to the side — and Yul Ho, already feeble in body and mind, collapsed onto his rear on the spot.

"Heh."

Having detected the presence in the cesspit during his own escape and paused to observe the show, Yul Hwi could only find it laughable.

"Was it you? The one who brought the Sun and Moon Gate all the way here?"

"H-how did you— hrk, HRGH! BLEGH! Ugh, UUURGH!"

In the midst of unwittingly blurting out the truth, Yul Ho belatedly clapped both hands over his own mouth in alarm — only to retch violently at the foulness that now coated his lips.

"One thing after another."

For Yul Hwi, having now learned the full story behind this night's mayhem, the sight was nothing but pathetic.

Had he not heard it clearly just moments ago?

That one wretched bastard — that the family was suffering this disaster because of him.

And the only person that halfwit could be referring to within the household was painfully obvious.

'I can't fathom why he's so desperate to devour someone who was just lying quietly in a room.'

Was the boy not fated to die before reaching twenty even if left alone?

And yet, consumed by some inexplicable hatred, Yul Ho had ultimately summoned a force far beyond his ability to handle — and brought about this catastrophe.

'It's been a long time since I've wanted to kill someone this badly.'

Ignorant of his own station, he had leaked word of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians to the Sun and Moon Gate and blown the family to pieces — and yet still tried to save his own skin by burrowing into a cesspit.

"Pathetic."

What little sense of debt Yul Hwi had held toward the Taewon Yul Family, already not much to begin with, grew thinner still.

Meanwhile, Yul Ho — who had until now only ever seen his half-brother cower and submit before every indignity — found his shame curdling into rage at the torrent of abuse.

"Wh-what did you say?! You illegitimate bastard, you want to d—"

"You're not exactly threatening, glaring like that while covered in shit."

"Grrr, GRRR! You son of a—"

"I don't need to waste any more words on you."

With the stench of the cesspit rolling in waves, it was entirely possible the Sun and Moon Gate's masters might come to investigate.

Now that he had learned the inside story of why the Sun and Moon Gate in Gangso had struck the Yul Family in Sanseo's Taewon, there was no need for further idle talk.

FWIP—!

THUNK—!

"Kh— khhhaaagh!"

Lurch. CRASH—!

The instant those blue eyes flashed, something shot from the shadows like a ray of light and pierced clean through the throat of Yul Ho, who had been bouncing on his feet in impotent fury.

The result was, of course, instant death.

Cause of death: a penetrating wound. The weapon: a chopstick picked up along the way.

***

After leaving the Yul estate, Yul Hwi slipped into a stretch of forest not far away.

His snow-white skin — so unlike a man of the Central Plains — combined with those vivid blue eyes made far too easy a marker for enemies hunting him.

So inns and taverns were out of the question, leaving him no choice but to rough it in the wild.

After hiding in a small, ownerless cave and subsisting on the dried meat he had brought, a full seven days and nights passed.

"I need to relocate after all."

Unable to gauge the Sun and Moon Gate's movements, Yul Hwi calculated every possible scenario before deciding to leave Sanseo for the time being.

Having already suffered one surprise invasion, there was no reason to believe it could not happen again.

And surely anywhere other than Sanseo — where no great sect or major family could rival the Sun and Moon Gate — would be a better choice?

Three options presented themselves.

Viewed from Sanseo as the center: Habuk to the east, Seomso to the west, and Hanam to the south.

And the final destination was Seomso.

Two of the Nine Great Sects — Mount Hua and Jongnam — were entrenched there, and their bases were quite close to each other besides.

'And there's a safe house there.'

Not a Phantom Slaughter Sect safe house, but one he had established on his own while roaming the martial world — right there in Seomso.

At Mt. Yeo on the outskirts of Seoan, the provincial capital of Seomso.

Better yet, Mt. Yeo sat precisely midway between Mount Hua and Jongnam, so the Sun and Moon Gate would have to be out of their minds to chase him there and cause trouble.

'I never thought I'd be using it again like this.'

When he had built the safe house, it had simply been out of the inconvenience of having no Phantom Slaughter Sect safe house near Seoan. But in the end, it had found its purpose once more.

Life, he mused, was a truly peculiar thing.

'I'll raise the Phantom Slaughter Demonic Art to at least the seventh stage before commencing the main operation.'

With the promissory notes and valuables he had taken from the Yul estate, surviving a few years in the mountains would be trivial.

"Hah."

After a brief exhale, he slipped carefully out of the pitch-dark cave.

***

The road from Taewon to his safe house at Mt. Yeo in Seomso.

Yul Hwi did not let the long journey of roughly thirteen hundred li go idly to waste.

To begin with, he had not yet fully cleared the outskirts of Taewon, which served as the starting point.

The reason was clear.

"What about the Sun and Moon Gate disciples?"

"They've occupied the Taewon Yul estate and appear to be searching for something."

"And the reply to our main family's message? What did they say?"

"They...... said to mind our own business......"

"The nerve of those insolent scoundrels! They annihilate a perfectly good family on Martial Alliance territory and have the gall to spit that out?!"

The men in pink martial arts uniforms, erupting with fiery fury right in the middle of the street.

That garish uniform, ill-suited to their burly frames, was the hallmark of the Jinju Eon Family of Habuk.

From the black thread embroidered on their chests, they were fist-fighters of the Black Net Unit, belonging to the Eon Family's vaunted Five Net Corps.

Given the distance from here in Sanseo to the Martial Alliance's seat in Muhan of Hobuk, it seemed the Jinju Eon Family — being the nearest — had dispatched their own martial artists.

And judging by the exchanges going back and forth, they were unable to confront the Sun and Moon Gate disciples occupying the estate on their own, leaving them wringing their hands in frustration.

'Martial Alliance territory.'

The name was Martial Alliance, but in truth its substance was nothing more than a coalition between the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Eight Great Families.

Sanseo, wedged between their own territories, had been presumed to be their domain — and now the Sun and Moon Gate had suddenly pushed its way in. A textbook case of scrambling after the fire had already reached their feet.

Under normal circumstances, he would have simply ignored it all and continued on his way.

'But if this is a conflict I'm going to provoke anyway, it wouldn't hurt to lay some groundwork in advance.'

In the end, those men were also kicking up a fuss purely for their own family's interests, so he felt neither guilty nor sympathetic.

From the start, such petty sentiments served an assassin no purpose whatsoever.

'Everything is for the sake of vengeance.'

As Yul Hwi recalled the severed heads of his family impaled on those poles, a sharp chill of cold qi coiled through his heart.

Before the Yul Family's annihilation, his initial plan had been to start assassinating key figures of the orthodox and evil factions once the Phantom Slaughter Demonic Art reached the seventh stage, leaving traces of the Phantom Slaughter Sect behind.

But now that the Sun and Moon Gate had entangled itself of its own accord, there was no reason not to exploit it aggressively.

"For now, fan out and keep a close watch on exactly what those bastards are doing! Reinforcements from Shaolin will arrive soon, so until then, avoid any clashes!"

"By your command!"

Despite his blazing indignation at being dismissed, the leader was calling for them to wait for Shaolin — clearly wary of taking casualties among the Black Net Unit in the extreme.

A natural reaction.

Even within the supposedly unified Martial Alliance, power dynamics shifted back and forth constantly depending on each faction's standing.

So who among them would willingly suffer one-sided losses alone on someone else's turf?

'Things won't go the way you hope.'

But that was strictly their problem.

"......"

Yul Hwi — squatting nearby in tattered clothes with his hair hanging in a greasy, disheveled mess — stealthily tailed the pairs of Black Net members as they scattered in every direction.

And at the same time, he predicted it.

That very soon, right here in the heart of Taewon — a backwater of the martial world — an utterly explosive battle would break out between the Sun and Moon Gate and the Martial Alliance.