Chapter 826: A Moment to Savor (1)

Even as the inside kept collapsing over and over, the coal mine continued to spew choking smoke without end.

If there was any saving grace, it was that the fallen martial artists’ conditions weren’t severe—before long, they regained consciousness.

They complained of dizziness and nausea, at most.

“Seal the mine for now. This is coal meant to be sent to our countrymen. We can’t just let it all burn.”

And so the work of sealing the mine resumed.

Progress was slower because the smoke was mixed with poison and they had to be careful—but once they took precautions, no further poisoning symptoms appeared.

Of course, that was only because the effect of the poison powder Nanna had planted had already worn off.

But the Jeong Family Manor martial artists—who hadn’t even imagined that someone had attacked the coal mine—had no way to know that.

While the security captain of Jeong Family Manor supervised—(watched)—the mine entrance being sealed smoothly, a subordinate who had been assigned to search the miners’ lodging returned.

“Captain. The entire lodging is empty.”

“What?”

“They probably went in to put out the fire......”

The subordinate trailed off.

The security captain let out a long, regretful sigh.

If even a guard martial artist could foam at the mouth from just the smoke, how could “countrymen” who didn’t even know martial arts endure it?

A fire had risen from the corpse-poison workshop inside, and all the countrymen—unable to put their own safety first—had rushed in as a group to suppress it, only to meet a tragic end.

If Qing had heard that, she would’ve snorted.

Was he naïve beyond saving, or did he just massively overestimate “the collective”?

Isn’t it normal to think someone attacked, slaughtered them all, and set the coal mine on fire?

But this was the harm of a brainwashed society.

When you’re constantly fed propaganda that all countrymen must strive for the liberation of all countrymen—and that they are striving—eventually it takes root as “common sense.”

Still, the delusion didn’t last long.

When the Blood Cult martial artists returned to Jeong Family Manor at dusk after the grueling mine-sealing—

What greeted them was—

A silence so deep it made your skin crawl.

A corpse visible beyond the wide-open main gate.

Only then did the security captain face reality.

And at the same time, every hair on his body stood on end.

It was an attack. An attack!

The enemy had killed the mine’s countrymen, set it on fire, and while they were deployed to put out the blaze, they struck Jeong Family Manor.

And then—

A thought smashed into his mind like lightning.

“No—young master! Young master! Are you here?! It’s me—Dongjuk! I’m here, young masteeeer!!”

The security captain, Dongjuk, charged inward in a frenzy, feet pounding the ground.

The martial artists hurried after him.

“Young master!!”

No matter how desperately he called, no answer came back.

Dongjuk sprinted straight into the Sect Leader Hall office, whipping inside in one breath.

As he looked around wildly, his eyes caught a corpse in familiar silk clothes off to one corner.

For some reason, the face was crushed beneath a cushion, so he couldn’t be sure it was Jeong Ryujang—

But it was clothing Jeong Ryujang often wore.

Dongjuk’s heart dropped into his stomach.

But—

Looking closer, the chest of the torso visible beyond the cushion was moving—very carefully—up and down.

“Young master? Young master, it’s me—Dongjuk!”

“......”

“Young master?”

Was he asleep?

Dongjuk moved quietly closer and reached out with care—

And the instant his hand touched—

“HHHAAAGH!!! AAH! AAAH!! AAAH!!!”

A scream exploded out.

Not only was the volume brutal, the “pronunciation” was completely mangled—crushed into a howling shriek, like something a mute would produce.

“Young master?”

“AAH! AAAH!! NGH! HHHAA—AAH!!”

“Please calm down—it’s me, Dongjuk, young master, it’s Dongjuk.”

Dongjuk’s words cut off.

Because beneath the cushion—shaken loose by the unnatural thrashing—Jeong Ryujang’s appearance was revealed, too horrific to look at.

Two eyes ruined in a grotesque way.

Blood smeared thick in every direction around his mouth.

Dried, crusted blood clinging to the rims of his ears.

Eyes, ears, mouth—who—how—how could anyone do something this cruel......!

Dongjuk hurriedly checked Jeong Ryujang’s body and forced his dislocated shoulder back into place.

“AAAH!!”

“Young master, it’s me. Calm down—calm down.”

Dongjuk pulled him into a tight embrace.

Jeong Ryujang’s torso shook with fear.

Even with the shoulder set back, it only dulled the pain—his ligaments had already been torn to shreds, so his arms hung slack as he struggled desperately, writhing and trying to escape.

Because for Jeong Ryujang—who couldn’t see and couldn’t hear—every stimulus right now was pure terror.

That went on for quite a while.

Then, abruptly, his thrashing stopped.

Only then, it seemed, did he finally confirm his “safety.”

“I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

“Uhh... aa...”

“Young master—this— it’s me. You... you really can’t hear anything at all—khm. Excuse me.”

Dongjuk lifted Jeong Ryujang into his arms and left the office.

“Captain?”

“I’ll take the young master ahead first. You gather the martial artists, deal with the bodies, and burn everything with the manor—then follow.”

“You mean the Five Poison Sect.”

“Right. We don’t have time. I’m going first. I’m leaving the handling to you.”

“Uuuh—aaah!”

“Shh, young master—o-okay, it’s okay.”

Dongjuk immediately began to run.

A clean, efficient stepping method without wasted movement—skilled, and fairly outstanding Lightness Art.

In an instant, Dongjuk burst out through the manor’s front gate and sprinted down the road with everything he had......

*****

Someone dashed out through the main gate.

And far off, on the mountain’s edge—

Beyond the manor’s fields, from a midway point hidden in the brush on the forested slope, a figure watching there made the large eyes inside a face veil glint brightly.

As if trying to make out who that dot-like figure in the distance was.

Then—

One corner of the masked figure’s mouth curled up crookedly.

And then—

RUSTLE.

With a small sound of brush shifting, the masked figure vanished like mist.

*****

Between Jeong Family Manor and Gaegu County lay a small ridge, and the locals called the road that cut across it Black Dragon Pass.

It sounded grand, but in truth, “Black Dragon Pass” was °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° an extremely common name—there were easily hundreds of passes with that name across the Central Plains.

If a thin, long ridgeline blocked the road and the slope was steep enough that crossing it was a miserable ordeal, “Black Dragon” was the kind of name that naturally got slapped on it.

The slender ridgeline resembled a dragon, and among dragons, “black dragons” were synonymous with ill-tempered, nasty dragons in the Central Plains—so what better name for a pass that was hard to cross?

So even without experiencing it, you could tell: this was a harsh pass road where the slope was so steep it wrung cries out of you.

And running up that slope at speed was one person—no, two people—no, is it one?

If someone is running while carrying a person, do you say one person is running, or two?

Only one person is doing the running, but two people are moving... huh.

Qing briefly drifted into a useless thought, then confirmed the “one plus one” rushing past the midpoint, and quietly shifted about thirty paces inside the highest summit.

Then she stood in the center of the road, blocking it, drew Moonlit Night—a huge, awkward blade that was too big to be called a sword and too small to be called a greatsword—and planted it like a cane, standing with a cockeyed slant.

A position that wasn’t visible from below—

But the moment someone finished the climb and reached the top, it would slam right into their view.

And after some time—

At last, a Blood Cult martial artist carrying Jeong Ryujang completed the climb and sprang up to the summit.

Qing drew in a breath.

“HALT!!”

Qing still couldn’t understand the principle, but any martial artist could amplify their voice with internal energy.

If Qing were a science type, she might’ve wondered about vibration, amplitude, and the air as a medium—and whether that mysterious cosmic component called internal energy altered transmission in some way.

Unfortunately, Qing was a humanities type.

So when something worked, it worked—she simply didn’t have the higher-level thought process that insisted on digging into the mechanism.

Anyway.

The Blood Cult martial artist—Dongjuk—didn’t just stop.

He sprang backward and opened distance in a flash.

He hugged Jeong Ryujang close with one arm, tilting his body as if to hide him, and drew his sword with his remaining hand, aiming it at Qing.

Then, with a grim expression, he examined the face-veiled figure blocking the road.

“......Who are you?”

At that, the large eyes visible through the face veil curved into a pretty crescent.

“If you ask who I am! It is only human to answer! I am—A BANDIT!”

“What......?”

“People under heaven call me the ‘SUPREME THIEF OVERLORD’ and fear me. Or they fear even speaking my title, and call me ‘the rice-eater.’”

“Supreme Thief Overlord......?”

A bandit inventing a grand title to intimidate people wasn’t new.

It would land better than saying, I’m Bandit So-and-So—a “wicked title” sounded more dangerous.

But “Supreme Thief Overlord”?

If boasting went too far, it just looked ridiculous.

And “rice-eater” was what?

Were there people who didn’t eat rice?

While Dongjuk forgot the urgency and fell into confusion, Qing puffed out her chest and shouted.

“That’s right! I am the Supreme Thief Overlord—my name is, um. Name.”

Qing thought for a moment, then—

“Right! I am the Supreme Thief Overlord, Elder Bandit Lotus!”

SUPREME THIEF OVERLORD, ELDER BANDIT LOTUS! THE RICE-EATER!

Then Qing pointed her blade tip straight at him—

“Anyway, it’s a robbery! Hand over everything you’ve got!”

Dongjuk narrowed his eyes.

He could cut down some amateur highwaywoman with a single slash, sure—

But an opponent who openly announced a fake name was troublesome.

And right now, he had to escort the young master—Jeong Ryujang, who wasn’t just helpless, but couldn’t even recognize danger no matter what happened.

Dongjuk drove his sword into the ground with a hard—

THUNK.

A method often used when a swordsman had no spare hand to sheath his weapon.

Then he rummaged at his waist, pulled free his coin pouch, and flung it forward.

The coin pouch traced an arc and landed with a heavy—

CLINK-CLINK—

right at Qing’s feet.

Qing giggled shamelessly as she picked it up and peeked inside.

And then—

“What the hell is this? It’s all coins? Are you a beggar? Are you a broke-ass beggar, sir? You got no money?”

“......Take it and go.”

“No, you can’t do business like this. Hey, you—do you know how many customers I get in a day standing guard here? None. NONE. But I still held this spot even when it rained, snowed, storms howled—because I worked hard. And the first customer in forever tosses me a handful of coins? That’s not okay. That’s not okay. What happens to all my effort?”

Qing immersed herself completely in the role—SUPREME THIEF OVERLORD, ELDER BANDIT LOTUS.

If Cheon Yuhak heard her, he would’ve clutched his stomach laughing, saying she’d been born to be a bandit.

Listening to the usual bandit nonsense, Dongjuk’s eyes flicked left and right.

Bandits didn’t work alone—normally they set an ambush on both sides while one person started the argument.

“Ahem. I can hear your eyeballs rolling. Look, sir, let’s be nice about this. Your sincerity is seriously lacking. Either turn back, or—oh, wow, aren’t those clothes you’re wearing pretty high-end? And that outfit you dressed your son in—looks like silk. Damn. The sheen is insane.”

“Watch your mouth—”

“Ahem. You think I haven’t seen a guy with a blade once or twice? Here, look. See this? This is sword-energy. If you’re not a top master, you can’t even imitate it. Hey, I’ve got confidence in my skill—that’s why I’m running my mouth like this. Sir, can’t you read the room?”

Dongjuk flinched.

The sword-energy was already clearly visible, and threadlike sword-aura rose along its edge.

Proof of a peak martial artist.

Suspicion seeped into Dongjuk’s gaze.

Right when Jeong Family Manor had been attacked, a peak martial artist—so close, on a nearby pass road—doing bandit work? Could it be—

“Father and son are wearing nice clothes together, so I’ll do you a favor and spare the underwear. It’s not like a man taking his clothes off is some big deal, right? Heh. I’m about to treat my eyes for the first time in ages.”

Dongjuk erased the thought that had surfaced.

Whether she was related to the attack or not, this woman’s vulgar, low-class mouth made it obvious—she was a bandit bitch from birth.

Dongjuk hesitated.

Should he strip like this?

But the enemy in front of him—despite that vulgarity—was a peak martial artist, and likely quite seasoned. Worst case, late-stage peak—maybe even the same level as him.

And bandits this strong rarely traveled alone. If she had comrades lying in ambush nearby—

Dongjuk ground his teeth.

“So you call yourself Supreme Thief Overlord, Elder Bandit Lotus. Do you think you’ll get away with this? Do you even know who this man is? Aren’t you afraid of what comes after?”

“Aww, how scary. You think that’s the first time I’ve heard that? Anyway, this spot’s bad for my throat, so I was gonna close up and leave. At least I got to ‘serve’ a customer one last time—too bad you’re a broke-ass beggar, though. This spot sucks. They say business is half location—half location, my ass.”

Qing giggled—an unpleasant, grating sound.

“What comes after? If I close up and leave, what can a customer even do? So strip quietly and go. Acting all important like you’re something. Tsk, tsk.”

A vein jumped hard on Dongjuk’s forehead.

This was poison without form—the tongue that flips a person’s insides, the mouth of terror.

The instant you traded words, you were already poisoned!

Qing smiled brightly.

Mad? If you’re mad, then swing.