I wish they would all just die. (1)
Yoon Jong looked around with a sour expression.
“Seven?”
“For now.”
In other words, even at this very moment, more people were being sent here as reinforcements.
It was only natural. Since they had provoked an official in Beijing, Imperial Troops and everyone else would soon come swarming like bees. If they got caught up in this, forget a Taoist master – even a Taoist master’s great grandfather wouldn’t survive.
“Well, even so, that means there are only seven for now, doesn’t it!”
Jo Geol boldly drew his sword and quickly charged towards the enemies.
“If you don’t want to die, scream!”
But the instant Jo Geol kicked off the ground, the scabbard that came flying from behind struck the crown of his head. Clutching his head, Jo Geol rolled across the ground, then sprang to his feet and jabbed a finger at Yoon Jong.
“Why did you hit me?! Why all of a sudden?!”
“Get a grip, you lunatic! Do you even know who those people are!”
“Who are they! Eunuch bastards! You can tell at a glance.”
“You know that and still drew your sword?! Do you carry that head around just to use it as a hat rack, you bastard!”
“S-Sahyeong?”
Yoon Jong grabbed Jo Geol by the collar, fire blazing in his eyes.
“If they’re eunuchs, aren’t they people from the Imperial Palace! Do you think we’ll be safe after swinging our swords at people from the Imperial Palace? You bastard, what are you? Are you a spy from Jongnam?”
“I-I’m sorry….”
“You bastard, are you trying to get our sect’s signboard taken down! It’s the signboard we managed to protect all the way through that living hell!”
“J-Just calm down, Yoon Jong-ah.”
As Yoon Jong kept his grip on Jo Geol’s collar and shook him violently, Baek Cheon recoiled in horror and hurried to restrain him.
Meanwhile, Yu Iseol seemed to agree wholeheartedly with Yoon Jong’s words, repeatedly poking Jo Geol in the side with her scabbard.
“N-No. Then what are we supposed to do? They’re saying they want to fight!!”
“What do you think we should do?”
Yoon Jong continued in a voice of unwavering determination.
“Somehow, we’ll shake them off and make a run for it again.”
“No, does that even make sense!”
“Exactly. They don’t look like pushovers, either.”
“Let’s be realistic here.”
“Doesn’t it make sense?”
At that moment, Yoon Jong casually tilted his head to the side.
“Want me to show you what truly doesn’t make sense?”
Yoon Jong glared daggers at Hwasan’s disciples. The killing intent he radiated made Jo Geol and Baek Cheon, and even Chung Myung himself, hunch their necks.
“I’m warning you in advance… If anyone lays so much as a finger on those eunuchs, you’ll have to fight me to the death. I’m not joking. I really mean it.”
“……Yes.”
“S-Sorry….”
“I was wrong.”
Faced with Yoon Jong’s fierce resolve that he would never, no matter what happened, allow Hwasan’s signboard to be taken down, the disciples of Hwasan shrank back and tucked their tails between their legs.
Honestly, the authorities were a little frightening. But in truth, rather than the authorities themselves, what was truly terrifying was Hyun Jong turning into a wrathful fiend the moment he heard they’d beaten up government officials.
“Then, uh… for now, we’ll just shake them off without going too far and run.”
“….Yeah.”
Tang Soso and Yu Iseol also quickly nodded. Thus, Hwasan’s side reached an agreement, but naturally, there were people before them who couldn’t understand this agreement at all.
“What the hell are those vicious brutes babbling about?”
“They seem to have lost their minds.”
Who were they? They were the Eastern Depot, whose very name was said to make even a crying child fall silent. At least beneath the skies of Beijing, wasn’t the name ‘Eastern Depot’ treated as little different from the Grim Reaper?
And yet, those men showed no fear at all, even with the Eastern Depot standing before them.
‘Are they simply fearless? Or….’
Bang Hwi [방휘(房揮)], a squad leader [영반(領班)] of the Eastern Depot, did not miss the subtle sense that something was amiss.
“You lot aren’t from the Imperial Capital.”
“Oh?”
“That accent…. Is it Shaanxi?”
Chung Myung looked at Bang Hwi with fascination.
“You can tell from such a brief exchange?”
“Hey! That’s admitting it! You should’ve denied it!”
“Ah.”
When Chung Myung scratched his head, the disciples of Hwasan all clutched their heads at once. Meanwhile, Chung Myung desperately averted his gaze from Yoon Jong, who was radiating an icy chill, and tried to come up with an excuse.
“W-Well, I mean. That…”
“You can disguise your manner of speech and change your intonation, but you can’t hide your attitude. If you were from here, you wouldn’t dare hold your heads so high before us.”
“…Maybe it’s because you’re a eunuch, but you’re eerily perceptive.”
At that moment, Bang Hwi ground his teeth and spat out his words.
“I am not a eunuch.”
“But you’re with the Eastern Depot, aren’t you?”
“Do you think the Eastern Depot is made up entirely of eunuchs?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s incorrect…..”
“If you’ve still got those things attached, there’s no reason you’d willingly go serve under a bunch of eunuchs in the first place. Unless you’re some kind of pervert.”
“We were drafted……”
“Ugh. Just imagining it gives me the creeps. Living like a dog, barking on command beneath a bunch of men who went snip-snip with their own hands just to get a taste of power. Ughhh.”
“…”
Bang Hwi’s neck creaked while he titled it sideways as though it had broken. Baek Cheon watched the sight with satisfaction.
“So even officials aren’t any different, after all.”
“…..I suppose as long as you’re human, there’s no way you can deal with that bastard without ending up with a hole in your stomach.”
“But that… Doesn’t that sound a little strange?”
“Huh? Why? It’s true.”
“It is true, but the fact that we’re the ones saying it is a little…”
“Huh?”
The disciples of Hwasan and Hye Yeon looked at one another.
“Ah…..”
“Heh…”
Everyone lowered their heads with solemn expressions.
Buddhist monks, of course, and Taoists as well, were often people who, depending on the circumstances, lived their entire lives as virgins and died that way. Some had gotten rid of it because they had no need for it, while others had it but would never have any use for it in their lifetimes. Who was in any position to criticize whom…
“What the hell do you keep going on about?”
But there was no way the Eastern Depot officials could understand their feelings.
“I don’t care. Whether you’re lunatics or simply have a death wish, it makes no difference. Once we take you away and tear your flesh to shreds, you’ll all end up the same anyway. I’ll make you pay for daring to snoop around where a Grand Eunuch is present.”
“No, listen here. Get your facts straight. We were snooping around the merchant guild. Your boss was the one who came there on his own two feet!”
“……There’s no difference.”
“How can there be no difference? Good grief, you’re so dense! How did you ever become an official with a head like that!”
“…Hey, you idiot. He got in through the eunuch special admissions track.”
“Ah, right. I didn’t think of that. Sorry.”
“…”
Bang Hwi had to wonder whether smoke was coming out of his ears. Never in his life had anyone managed to infuriate him quite this much.
And that was probably less because the mockery coming from his opponents was particularly vicious, and more because, as an official belonging to the Eastern Depot, no one had ever dared mock him to his face before.
“You… lowborn bastards!”
“Come on, how could you know that just from seeing us in masks? For all you know, we might be the young masters of some incredibly prestigious families.”
“Wash the stench of dirt off your bodies before you run your mouths, you lowborn scum!”
At those words, the masked men whipped their heads around and began pointing fingers at one another.
“That’s why I said we should wash before coming!”
“We didn’t have time – what were we supposed to do…”
Bang Hwi could no longer tolerate it.
“How long do you intend to make me watch this idiocy! Seize them and beat them into submission!”
“Yes, Sir!”
At Bang Hwi’s command, the Eastern Depot agents simultaneously drew their swords from their waist belts.
‘Flexible swords [연검(軟劍)]?’
The drawn blades bent like venomous snakes and gave off a sharp, metallic hum.
“Ah, I see. They can’t openly carry swords around in the Imperial Palace.”
“Are you studying basic common sense now?! Is that what matters right now?!”
“Here they come!”
The supple flexible swords flew towards the disciples of Hwasan like venomous snakes striking from every direction.
All of them went pale when they realized the blades were far sharper than they had expected.
“Damn it!”
Clang!
A sword swung upwards knocked aside the flexible blade flying at them.
“Ow!”
In the midst of it all, Jo Geol flinched and cried out. There was a shallow cut near his wrist.
“Hey, you idiot!”
“I-It’s because it’s not the sword I usually use.”
The problem was that, when entering Beijing, they had buried all their Plum Blossom Swords where no one would notice. While posing as laborers inside Beijing, it had been difficult to acquire swords, and the ones they had barely managed to obtain were so poorly balanced or questionable in quality that no swordsman could bear to use them.
Therefore, it couldn’t be said that it was entirely Jo Geol’s fault that his sword, meeting the flexible sword head-on, had been cleanly chopped in two.
However.
“It’s because you’re an idiot.”
“A true craftsman never blames his tools.”
“Without your sword, even bandits could beat you to death, huh?”
“Go die!”
That did not mean there would be any less criticism coming his way. Hwasan was that kind of place to begin with.
Clang!
Even so, the Eastern Depot squad’s attacks continued. Watching the sharp sword strike thrusting towards him, Baek Cheon grinned.
“Just because the sword is inferior doesn’t mean the swordsmanship is! With only this much…”
“Swordsmanship? In front of these people, Sasuk?”
“…N-No. I misspoke.”
Baek Cheon flinched at the chilling voice from beside him and shrank his neck. He would die. If he used the Plum Blossom Sword Technique here, he wouldn’t die at the hands of the Eastern Depot – his own Sajil would beat him to death.
“Then if I use palm techniques…”
“You think that’ll work?”
“……No, it wouldn’t.”
Damn Hwasan’s palm techniques.
Why had their unnecessarily diligent ancestors gone and made even their palm force [장력(掌力)] form plum blossoms! Damn those upright and honorable ancestors!
At this rate, the only martial arts they could use were….
‘The common Three Talents Sword* found all over Gangho, and… perhaps the Bamboo Leaf Hand, which has almost none of the formal characteristics of Hwasan’s martial arts.’
They were supposed to fight the Eastern Depot with those? This had to be a joke!
“That… Yoon… No. I don’t think this will be enough. We could die if things go wrong. Right?”
“Then die.”
“….What?”
Yoon Jong’s eyes, visible through the small holes cut into his mask, gleamed ominously.
“Rather than living and becoming a burden, die and become fertilizer. Fortunately, there’s nothing on your body that could reveal your identity, so it’s fine if you die, isn’t it?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Does it sound like a joke?”
For a moment, Baek Cheon had a thought.
Perhaps, of all of them, the one who had chosen the wrong path in life was Yoon Jong. If this bastard hadn’t become a Taoist…
“…No matter how I look at it, you seem much better suited to that side. Ever thought about changing careers, even now?”
“What makes you say that?”
“……No. It suits you.”
“It sounds strange, but it really does suit him.”
“See! I’ve been telling you all along that there’s something wrong with that man! And all you ever did was pick on me.”
Jo Geol cried out as though deeply wronged, but everyone ignored his anguished protest. They had not yet given up on Yoon Jong that much as to take Jo Geol’s side.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to deal with those bastards using nothing but basic techniques and these lousy weapons……”
Bang.
Thud.
“Gaaaaaaaah!”
At that moment, two Eastern Depot agents were launched into the air as though they had planned it beforehand.
“…”
As Jo Geol blinked blankly, the two masked figures who had each sent an Eastern Depot agent flying – Chung Myung and Hye Yeon – turned to look at him with unimpressed eyes.
“It works.”
“Amita… no, ahem.”
When Jo Geol’s eyes met theirs, he soon put on an innocent smile.
“I wish all geniuses would just die.”
“…I agree.”
The miserable sighs of ordinary talents who had failed to become geniuses drifted over the eaves.
Special Spinoff Chapter 67 >>>
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*삼재검(三才劍) – the sword of the three talents 三才(three powers), which are sky (天), earth (地) and people (人) (one who knows all three well would be an all-rounded person).
The title of the chapter. Yes, the title doesn’t include geniuses, but the structure of the sentence is the same with what Jo Geol said. The title just doesn’t include the word ‘geniuses.’
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