Chapter 248: You Can Avoid a Passing Shower, But Not a Storm (2)

“Bleargh!”

An old Taoist in his late sixties sank to the ground, vomiting blood. Red stains spread across the front of his robes and onto the ground beneath him, mingling with bits of ruined organs.

He looked around with despairing eyes, the specter of death already settled on his face.

Countless Taoists lay dead or wounded across the ground. Mount Qingcheng had been full of spiritual energy that morning, but now only the stench of death filled it.

The old Taoist’s name was Sage Gwang-Mu. He was the Sect Leader of the Qingcheng Sect, one of the Nine Great Sects.

Nam Cheon-Myeong stood before him with his hands clasped behind his back. Sage Gwang-Mu was covered in blood, but he didn’t have a scratch on him.

Barely a few hours had passed since he and the Hell Demon Squad attacked the Qingcheng Sect. Sensing the attack, Sage Gwang-Mu had evacuated the second- and third-generation disciples to safety and prepared for a fight to the death.

Although the Qingcheng Sect was considered the weakest of the Nine Great Sects, it was still a powerful force. Sage Gwang-Mu believed that he could buy time by sacrificing himself, so he planned to send carrier pigeons to the nearby Emei Sect and Tang Clan for help.

Unfortunately, the Hell Demon Squad shattered his hopes. The pigeon the sect released was shot down with an arrow before it could leave the mountain.

Thus, Sage Gwang-Mu and his sect members fought his decisive battle in isolation and at great cost. Many of the sect’s first-generation disciples lost their lives, and he himself suffered a severe internal injury.

Sage Gwang-Mu glared at Nam Cheon-Myeong with bloodshot eyes. “Do you think you can walk away unscathed after slaughtering everyone in the Qingcheng Sect?”

“And if I don’t?” Nam Cheon-Myeong asked back mischievously.

“The Sichuan murim is one big family. The Emei Sect and the Tang Clan will never let you go. They may be leading a pursuit even now.”

“Ooh! How frightening.”

“You laugh now. But don’t be so sure you’ll still be laughing later, demon of the Silent Night. I endure this humiliation because I am weak and incompetent. The Emei Sect and the Tang Clan will avenge me without fail.”

“Are the Emei Sect and the Tang Clan really so impressive? Well, it hardly matters. They won’t get the chance.”

“What?”

“Did you think we would only target the Qingcheng Sect? Would I be satisfied with so little?”

Sage Gwang-Mu shivered as a chill wind of dread washed over him. Instinct told him these words were not a lie.

He had lived his whole life mad for martial arts. He had never left Sichuan Province, and he had never thought his own skill fell behind anyone’s in the jianghu. Nam Cheon-Myeong had torn that pride up by the roots and trampled it.

Nam Cheon-Myeong was strong. Not just strong, but overwhelmingly so. Sage Gwang-Mu had never imagined that a martial artist like this existed anywhere in the world.

After barely fifty exchanges, he was coughing blood and had suffered crippling internal injuries. Even that was only because Nam Cheon-Myeong was toying with him like a cat with a mouse. Otherwise, his life would have ended long ago.

“W-Who are you?”

Nam Cheon-Myeong clicked his tongue. “You certainly took your time asking.”

The shadow of death lay thick on Sage Gwang-Mu’s face. Not even the deities could save the man now.

He lifted his head to the night sky. The sea of stars across the dark caught in his eyes, and the dignity of an absolute being poured off his whole body.

“My name is Nam Cheon-Myeong. People call me the black shadow hidden in the blue wind.”

“T-The Shadow of Blue Wind?”

“That is my alias.”

“Merciful heavens! One of the Four Great Demon Generals!”

Sage Gwang-Mu felt the despair of a man standing on the edge of a bottomless cliff. The Four Great Demon Generals were, quite literally, living calamities. In every war against the Silent Night thus far, countless martial artists had been sacrificed at their hands.

Heaven’s Summit had tried every imaginable method to rid themselves of the generals. They assembled elite martial artists for human-wave assaults and lured the four into killing formations. Yet, no method removed a single one of them. The losses only snowballed. After that, the Four Great Demon Generals became objects of pure terror.

They were called the Black-Winged Divine Spear, the Mountain-Splitting Devil Axe, the Witch of the White Night, and the Shadow of Blue Wind.

Of the four, the Shadow of Blue Wind was hidden entirely behind a curtain of darkness. Their name, face, and gender were all unknown.

“T-Then are the other three also...”

“Who can say? I doubt they are sitting around idle.”

The color drained from Sage Gwang-Mu’s face, until it matched the shade of clay. Nam Cheon-Myeong’s words meant that the Four Great Demon Generals had begun to take action.

They were absolute masters who could single-handedly decide the outcome of a battle. The fact that all four were moving at once meant that a great crisis had befallen the Central Plains.

“Ah! Taishang Laojun, please look down upon the Central Plains and save us all!” Sage Gwang-Mu cried toward the sky.

He collapsed vomiting blood and did not move again, a futile end for the man who had led the prestigious Qingcheng Sect.

Nam Cheon-Myeong shook his head. “Tsk! That damned Taishang Laojun.”

With Sage Gwang-Mu gone, the morale of the Qingcheng Sect martial artists plummeted. They had already been outmatched, and now they had lost the will to fight. The Hell Demon Squad slaughtered them wherever they found them.

By daybreak, the halls of the Qingcheng Sect were filled with corpses. Crows arrived on the scent of blood.

The Qingcheng Sect had lost its vitality. Only a few dozen elders and first-generation disciples survived and fled. Including the second- and third-generation disciples who had been evacuated beforehand, the total came to barely two hundred.

Rebuilding the sect would take a decade or more. That was more than enough time to achieve their goal.

“Mission complete, Shadow Demon.” Gu Gwang-Mun, Commander of the Hell Demon Squad, reported.

His whole body was drenched in blood. It was impossible to know how many he had killed, but the smell of blood was ingrained in him. His eyes still gleamed with killing intent, as though he had not had his fill.

Nam Cheon-Myeong clicked his tongue at the sight. Then again, they were raised for exactly this. I suppose it is only natural.

The Hell Demon Squad were not ordinary martial artists. They had been raised to fight the Qingcheng Sect, the Emei Sect, and the Tang Clan of the Sichuan murim. They had analyzed the forms and techniques of all three to the bone and learned how to dismantle them. In a way, they were the perfect counter to those three sects.

By now the others should be moving too.

Each of the other Four Great Demon Generals had units like the Hell Demon Squad assigned to them. They were carrying out their own missions at that very moment, just as he was.

Until now, the front lines had been concentrated in northern Central Plains provinces, such as Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu. Provinces such as Hubei, Hunan, and Anhui remained free from the threat, allowing Heaven’s Summit and the Central Plains sects to dedicate all their resources to the northern front.

“With this, they will finally understand. There is no safe place left in the Central Plains. They too can be pulled into the vortex of war at any moment.”

To a man who felt no sense of crisis, war was somebody else’s story. The story changes once he understands that he could become a victim of war at any time.

Fear begets terror, and terror propagates at a frightening speed. Men infected with terror cowered without fail.

“Is the Tang Clan next?”

His gaze fixed on his next destination.

As the sun came up, Jin Mu-Won set out from the Northern Army Fortress alone.

He marched steadily without resting. He could have used his movement arts, but chose not to. Instead, he ambled along, taking in the scenery.

A cold wind gently caressed his body.

Jin Mu-Won half-closed his eyes to savor the sensation. He was in no hurry. He enjoyed the wind and took in the surrounding countryside. Before he knew it, he had crossed three peaks.

A desolate landscape opened up before him.

Jin Mu-Won didn’t glance at any of it and looked straight ahead. “Han-Seol,” he called out.

The space around him rippled, and an entirely new landscape appeared. There was a small pond surrounded by grass and trees, and a little thatched hut woven out of branches. It was like a scene out of a painting, no, not even a scene out of a painting could hold his gaze.

His gaze was fixed on the beautiful woman standing near the pond—Eun Han-Seol.

Her bluish-black hair streamed in the wind as she strode gracefully toward him.

“Han-Seol.”

“Mu-Won.”

The two of them said each other’s names. Their eyes beheld nothing but each other, as if no other scenery existed at all.

“You’re back, Mu-Won.” Eun Han-Seol greeted affectionately.

Jin Mu-Won smiled at the warmth in her eyes. “I’m back, Han-Seol.”

“Hmm!” Eun Han-Seol stopped right in front of him, close enough that they could feel each other’s breath, and looked him over from where she stood. A gentle smile touched her lips. “You look healthy.”

“Yeah!”

“It seems the trip went well?”

“Yeah!”

“You worked hard.”

Jin Mu-Won turned his head toward the hut. “That smells good. Is that lamb stew?”

“Mhm. I thought you’d be here around now. I can’t promise it tastes good, though.”

A master like Eun Han-Seol had a sixth sense that was sometimes accurate enough to pass for foresight. No one had told her that Jin Mu-Won was coming, but she had intuitively known anyway.

“I’m starving. Let’s go in.” Jin Mu-Won rubbed his stomach exaggeratedly and tugged on her hand.

Inside the hut, there was no proper furniture, only a crude bed and a small table. On the table was a freshly made stew, rice, and an assortment of side dishes.

“I can’t guarantee the flavor.”

“Haha! It looks delicious.”

Jin Mu-Won sat down and rubbed his hands together. Without hesitation, he spooned some stew into a bowl and took a bite. After one mouthful, his eyes went wide.

“Wow! This is good! Your cooking has come a long way.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“It’s true!”

“Your lamb stew tastes much better, Mu-Won.”

“That’s that, and this is this. To me, this is far better.”

Jin Mu-Won buried his face in the bowl again and devoured its contents.

Eun Han-Seol smiled at the sight. “Want more?”

“Yeah!”

She served him another helping, which he finished just as fast. The stew and all the side dishes were gone in moments.

“Tea?” she asked.

“I’d love some.”

“Wait a moment.”

Eun Han-Seol brewed the tea right in front of him.

“That smells lovely.”

“It’s made from wildflowers. I picked the flowers while you were away and tried making the tea.”

Cooking food and brewing tea. Once, this would have been unimaginable. Eun Han-Seol had changed a great deal in three years.

Jin Mu-Won noticed a twitch at the corner of her eye as he watched her. He knew all too well that not all of her changes were for the better.

Finally, she set the well-steeped wildflower tea in front of him.

“Hmm!”

The tea was very fragrant. Jin Mu-Won drank it in small sips, rolling it in his mouth, savoring the taste and enjoying the scent.

Eun Han-Seol rested her chin on her hands and watched him. “How is it?”

“It’s great!”

“Really? I wasn’t confident, since it was my first time.”

“It’s great! Really!”

He closed his eyes and savored it for a long while. Eun Han-Seol watched him in silence.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Finally, Jin Mu-Won broke the silence. “The outside world has descended into chaos.”

“......”

“Many innocent people are dying because of the war between the Silent Night and Heaven’s Summit.”

Eun Han-Seol closed her eyes. Until now, Jin Mu-Won had never said the words ‘Silent Night’ in front of her out of consideration for the woman who had chosen seclusion after So Geum-Hyang wounded her.

“I may have to go out into the world again soon.”

“Mu-Won.”

“When I do, many of the Silent Night members will be hurt or killed.”

Eun Han-Seol’s eyebrows trembled. She was not a woman who could fail to understand what he was telling her. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mu-Won. The Silent Night is my home. I can’t kill the people who live there with my own hands.”

“I know. I didn’t come to ask for your help. I just thought you should know what I might be forced to do beforehand, Han-Seol.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jin Mu-Won’s bitter voice echoed through the small hut.