It is damn nice to see you. (2)
“W-Wait!”
Barely able to catch his breath, Hong Daekwang stretched out his hand.
“Y-You’re……too f-fast…!”
The beggars of the Beggars Sect were, as a rule, exceptionally skilled in lightness arts.
This was partly because the Beggars Sect’s movement techniques had certain advantages over those of other sects, but that was not the only reason.
Strictly speaking, it was because the members of the Beggars Sect believed that while they might lose to others in martial arts, they could never afford to fall behind anyone in lightness arts.
As a member of the Beggars Sect himself, Hong Daekwang was naturally confident in his lightness arts. But the people racing ahead of him now were moving at a speed that even he could not possibly keep up with.
Yet he could not possibly bring himself to ask them to slow down.
The expressions of those running at the front were far too grave. Even the sickly* Im Sobyeong was sprinting with all his might, his face set hard.
In the end, Hong Daekwang had only one choice.
“Uuugh!”
“Sect Leader?”
“G-Go on ahead!”
Hong Daekwang gritted his teeth. This was no time to stand on his pride.
“Go! I’ll catch up soon, so don’t look back and just keep going!”
There was no answer. It had already been decided from the very beginning that this was what they would do.
They clearly sensed Hong Daekwang’s legs give out as he slowed and went tumbling across the ground, but not one of them so much as glanced his way. It was not because they were heartless. It was because they knew that even the time it took to turn their heads once could mean another life being cut short.
And perhaps, even more than that.
Whoooosh!
Perhaps it was because merely keeping up with Chung Myung, who was racing at the very front, was so overwhelming that they had no room to think of anything else.
‘Damn it.’
Baek Cheon pressed a hand against his chest, which felt ready to burst.
After recovering from his injuries, and after undergoing the process he was almost too embarrassed to call a ‘complete transformation**,’ his body had become as close to perfection as anyone could hope to attain.
His body did not tire easily, and vitality welled up within it without end. So much so that he sometimes wondered whether this truly was his own body. Yet even this perfect physique was beginning to show its limits under a forced march that bordered on abuse.
“Haaah!”
His breath caught in his throat. His inner energy was gradually failing to circulate properly, its flow seeming to break apart strand by strand.
‘How in the world?’
Given the state he was in, he found it even harder to understand. That bastard running ahead of him.
Not a single drop of sweat ran down his face.
Though he had run all the way here from distant Shaanxi without resting even once, that bastard’s breathing had not even grown ragged. Even while pushing everyone else to their limits, he seemed to have plenty of strength left in reserve.
‘Just how much stronger has he become?’
Chung Myung had undoubtedly been strong in the past as well. So overwhelmingly strong that Baek Cheon could not even dare look up at him. Yet the Chung Myung of the present made even his former self seem insignificant.
‘That damned bastard!’
Baek Cheon, too, had undoubtedly grown incomparably stronger than he had been when they fought Saparyeon. That was why he had finally begun to feel as though he had closed that distance, if only a little.
“Sasuk.”
“Huh?”
As though he had read Baek Cheon’s thoughts, Chung Myung’s emotionless voice reached him.
“This won’t do. You’re too slow.”
“Y-You want us to go even faster than this?”
Impossible. Even Baek Cheon could not manage any more than this. There was no chance the others would be able to keep up.
But Chung Myung’s next words were completely different from what Baek Cheon had expected.
“Bring them along with you, Sasuk. I’m going ahead.”
“What?”
Whoosh!
Before Baek Cheon even had time to grab him, Chung Myung accelerated and shot ahead in an instant. The back that had been just ahead of them vanished into the distance in the blink of an eye.
“…”
Stunned by the bewildering speed, Baek Cheon could only stare with his mouth hanging open.
❀ ❀ ❀
“I told you not to stop!”
“….I can’t go any farther…..”
“Damn it, we don’t have time for this!”
Jwa Gohak grabbed the collapsed man and shoved him onto one of the carts carrying people as though he were tossing on another load of luggage.
“N-No…”
The man who had collapsed struggled desperately as he watched the his own cart being abandoned, but Jwa Gohak coldly slapped his hand away. No matter how valuable the supplies were, they were not worth more than a life.
“Go, hurry!”
“S-Sahyeong……”
The man pulling the cart packed with refugees looked at Jwa Gohak in despair. Jwa Gohak bit down hard on his lip.
This was the limit.
And understandably so. They had been pulling a cart carrying nearly a dozen refugees for two days straight without so much as a wink of sleep.
He had once walked a path not far removed from that of a martial artist, and even after entering the Imperial Court, he had continued training his internal energy. But even so, this was beyond what anyone could endure.
Yet instead of collapsing, Jwa Gohak ran forward and seized the cart.
“Stop whining! You idiot!”
Gritting his teeth, he began pulling the cart in the man’s place.
“It’s impossible. We can’t go on like this. Sahyeong. We should just… abandon this place and….”
“Shut your mouth!”
Jwa Gohak roared at him. He knew they had nearly reached their limits. But he could not abandon them.
Because he refused to lose even a single person? Of course not.
Without realizing it, Jwa Gohak looked back. The official road behind them, stained with blood and corpses, came into view.
His eyes were bloodshot.
They had already lost so many. More than he could count.
Hundreds of refugees had been killed at the hands of the demonic cultists, and the hundreds of beggars who had come to aid them by holding the enemy back now lay upon that road as cold corpses.
Some might say that, having already lost so many, losing a few more would hardly matter. But if Jwa Gohak were capable of thinking that way, he would never have been here in the first place.
‘No more. Not even one!’
So many people should never have died in the first place.
He should have anticipated it. That they might advance on the Imperial Capital much faster than expected. That they could bring down the Imperial Capital with only a few hundred men, rather than thousands or tens of thousands.
Had he done so, he could have saved them. He could have protected the lives that had been lost in vain on that road.
…It was because of his incompetence that they had lost people who might otherwise have lived!
“Sahyeong!”
“Did I not tell you to shut up!”
Jwa Gohak shouted furiously.
“If abandoning those at the rear were enough to shake them off, I would have done so myself! If leaving the exhausted and the sick behind could save everyone else, I would have done it even if it condemned me to hell! But you know as well as I do that it would not!”
At that, the man who had been pressing Jwa Gohak lowered his head.
This outcome was inevitable. With the enemy constantly at their heels, they had been unable to disperse the refugees properly.
Contrary to the original plan, more than half of the refugees were heading to Shijiazhuang. The enemy would therefore never abandon the pursuit. They knew that the most tempting prey was here.
“Then at least you should go, Sahyeong.”
“Do not spout such bullshit.”
“You must survive. Who else will handle what comes after this! How could men who care only for their own lives possibly take charge of this situation?”
“I told you to shut up!”
His Saje gritted his teeth and glared at Jwa Gohak.
But fortunately or unfortunately, any further argument was rendered meaningless.
“S-Sahyeong! They’re coming again!”
“Those….”
Jwa Gohak looked back. He saw the demonic cultists charging after them with the ferocity of wild beasts.
This was the worst possible situation.
Even the members of the Beggars Sect who had been holding them back had now been completely annihilated.
At this very moment, the beggars of Hebei were undoubtedly rushing to their aid. But for now, there was no one who could help them.
But someone had to stop them. No matter who it was.
“Go.”
“Sahyeong!”
“Don’t ever look back. Just keep running! I’ll hold them off.”
“Sahyeong, don’t say such ridiculous things! I’ll stay behind. You have to live!”
“Go!”
Instead of wasting any more words, Jwa Gohak kicked off from the cart and leapt into the air. Then he immediately sprinted towards the rear.
His fellow disciples were exhausted to the point that they could no longer hold back the demonic cultists. So…
A faint, involuntary chuckle escaped Jwa Gohak.
‘As if my situation is any different.’
He, too, was utterly spent. And his sword was no longer as sharp as it had once been. At best, all he could do was throw away his life to delay the enemy for a brief moment.
But that did not matter.
Because he knew. He knew how unbearable the life granted to someone who had failed to die where they were meant to die could be. He had not the slightest intention of following in the footsteps his predecessor had once walked.
The enemies were closing in.
They raced towards him with their bodies lowered, looking as though they might pitch forward at any moment. They resembled ravenous wolves driven savage by starvation.
“Come on, you sons of bitches!”
Unbefitting of a Confucian scholar who pursues benevolence and propriety, Jwa Gohak spat out harsh curses and drew dozens of sword shadows in the air.
The charging demonic cultists swung their hands, wreathed in demonic energy, without hesitation. Jwa Gohak’s sword shadows, standing like a wall before them, collided head-on with the palm force [장력(掌力)] unleashed by the cultists.
Booooom!
Jwa Gohak was sent flying backward, blood erupting from his mouth like a fountain. But the demonic cultists also faltered under the tremendous impact, their momentum broken as they staggered back a few steps.
‘What?’
Even as his insides churned from the blow, Jwa Gohak did not miss what he saw.
And in that instant, he realized.
‘That’s right… Even those Demonic Cult bastards are human too. They must be exhausted as well.’
No matter how much demonic arts twisted people into something less than human, there was no way those who had spent all this time fighting and running without food or water could still be in their normal condition.
Suddenly, something called hope blossomed in Jwa Gohak’s mind. Perhaps… Yes, perhaps he could hold them back and even he might…
But that hope withered even faster than it had bloomed.
“How unsightly.”
Crack!
With a sound of an axe splitting wood, the heads of the two demonic cultists standing directly before Jwa Gohak exploded. It was no mere figure of speech. They literally shattered into pieces, fragments scattering in every direction.
“Ah…….”
Jwa Gohak was struck speechless and could only stare blankly at the sight.
Before anything could occupy his mind, which had gone completely blank, someone slowly descended before him.
Tap.
The man who landed cast an indifferent glance at Jwa Gohak.
“An official?”
Someone had once said that a rabbit confronted by a tiger at point-blank range would freeze, unable to do anything.
Yet Jwa Gohak, now placed in a similar situation, felt somewhat differently. Perhaps it wasn’t that he had frozen. Perhaps he had simply… let go.
The moment he came face-to-face with a being utterly beyond his power to contend with, all the strength naturally drained from his body.
“So there are still a few who are worth something in the Central Plains. But that is all. Lament, unbeliever. Lament that you never encountered the teachings of the Faith. That you failed to accept His existence.”
The being before him slowly reached out a hand. But Jwa Gohak could not resist. One might pull their feet away when a wave rolled in, but when a colossal tsunami rises high enough to swallow the heavens themselves, all a person can do is collapse where they stand.
And so Jwa Gohak accepted his death. Though rather than ‘willingly,’ it would be more accurate to say he had ‘no other choice.’
It was then.
The outstretched hand suddenly stopped in midair. By the time Jwa Gohak realized it, even the enemy’s gaze had shifted away from him towards somewhere else.
‘What is it?’
Jwa Gohak saw it clearly. The sight of the Bishop’s lips twisting into a chilling grin as he gazed somewhere far away.
“Interesting.”
It did not take him long to understand what that meant. Before long, Jwa Gohak felt it as well.
An overwhelming presence hurtling straight towards them.
The Bishop’s hand drew away from Jwa Gohak’s head. Turning his back on him completely, the Bishop fixed his eyes on the west, an expression of anticipation spreading across his face.
At last, Jwa Gohak saw it too. A white afterimage shooting towards the Bishop like a beam of light.
Claaaaaaaaaaang!
A deafening roar that threatened to rupture his eardrums, followed by a shock wave even more powerful than the sound.
When Jwa Gohak came to his senses, the Bishop’s hand and someone’s sword were locked against each other in midair.
“Chu……”
Jwa Gohak’s mouth fell open on its own.
“Hey.”
But before he could properly get the words out, Chung Myung spoke, his gaze fixed on the Bishop, the Heavenly Executioner.
“I don’t know whether this is the right thing to say at a time like this, but honestly…”
Boooooom!
Another wave of energy erupted. At the same moment, the Bishop’s body was violently pushed backward.
As Jwa Gohak stared in disbelief at the impossible sight, Chung Myung’s voice reached his ears, seething as though it were boiling over.
“It is damn nice to see you. You son of a bitch.”
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*폐병쟁이(pye-byeong -jaeng-i) – literally means ‘lung disease’ + a suffix to characterize a person. Historical, colloquial, and often derogatory expression. It was used to describe someone suffering from a chronic lung disease, specifically pulmonary tuberculosis. No longer used in daily conversation and is found almost exclusively in historical contexts or literature.
**탈태(奪胎) – mentioned in bc gaining enlightenment chapters. 환골탈태 (換骨奪胎) – hwangol-taltae. I think he thinks it’s kinda embarrassing to say/think aloud cause 탈태 can be also translated as rebirth or metamorphosis.
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OMG CHEONSAL PLS SPILL THE TEA. CALL HIM GEOMJON.
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