Answer with Stratagems (1)
At Gal Sa-Ryang’s suggestion that they should go to the Alliance, Jong Cheon-Rak asked,
“Why?”
Before answering, Gal Sa-Ryang looked around at the martial artists nearby. It was an action that carried the meaning of asking whether it was all right to speak in front of them.
Then Jong Cheon-Rak said to his subordinates,
“Do you trust me?”
His subordinates answered thunderously. Even the subordinates lying wounded expressed their will with strength in their eyes.
“We trust you! Moreover, our lives belong to you, Corps Leader!”
The thirty elite members of the Heavenly Palace Corps he had brought with him this time were the loyal subordinates he trusted most. They were the ones he cherished most even among the commanders and squad leaders.
“Thank you. I also trust you.”
Jong Cheon-Rak looked at Gal Sa-Ryang again and said,
“These men are like my own blood. So please speak comfortably to them as you would to me.”
Only after emphasizing that this matter was extremely important did Gal Sa-Ryang open his mouth.
“If the Corps Leader leaves the Alliance like this, the Alliance Lord will attach all sorts of reasons and brand you as a traitor.”
I agreed with Gal Sa-Ryang’s opinion. On the other side, there was a strategist like Gal Sa-Ryang. He would certainly use that strategy. Jong Cheon-Rak might endure everything else, but he would not be able to endure his honor being tarnished. If that happened, Jong Cheon-Rak would collapse on his own.
“If you return this time, they will not be able to touch you immediately. Rather, they will be more cautious. At the same time, they will investigate how you managed to return alive. Corps Leader, act as you usually do, but beware of assassination attempts.”
He said the last words while looking at the subordinate martial artists. Everyone understood that he meant they should protect him, and they all nodded.
The problem would be the next attack. It would become much stronger and more brutal.
Gal Sa-Ryang stared at Jong Cheon-Rak and asked,
“Will you trust me?”
Jong Cheon-Rak did not think for long. Gal Sa-Ryang had been the Chief Strategist when Cheon Ha-Jin was the Alliance Lord. If he could not trust him in this situation, then whom could he trust?
“I will trust you.”
“Then let us return together. Before they move, I will definitely find a way.”
The moment he heard those words, Jong Cheon-Rak’s heart became much more at ease. Come to think of it, even aside from Gal Sa-Ryang, there was a reason he had to return.
The Heavenly Palace Corps martial artists he had brought this time numbered only thirty. Even if he left the Alliance, he had to bring all of his remaining subordinates with him.
“Sigh.”
But a sigh escaped him on its own. Even if he managed to withdraw somewhere, maintaining a force of a thousand people would never be easy. He also did not want to put his subordinates in danger.
Now, the only one he could trust was Gal Sa-Ryang.
We left the Life-and-Death Tower and set out for Wuhan, where the main headquarters of the Grand Martial Alliance was located. Because there were injured people, we could not move as quickly as when we had come.
But now everyone seemed at ease. Their enemy had become clear, and they had comrades they could trust and rely on. The path they had to take had been decided.
Most decisively, Gal Sa-Ryang telling them to leave what came next to him seemed to have given them great strength. Through my actions this time, they seemed convinced that Gal Sa-Ryang had not remained in the Hall of Justice without any thought.
In any case, becoming closer to the Heavenly Palace Corps was a very good thing. If one of the three important corps became our ally, that would mean we had gained tremendous military strength.
For two days, there were no ambushes.
Late at night, while the campfire burned, Gal Sa-Ryang tossed and turned in his bedding.
I was sitting beside him, throwing twigs into the campfire.
“Can you not sleep?”
Then Gal Sa-Ryang slowly raised himself.
“My body is tired, but my mind is wide awake.”
“It seemed like you could not sleep yesterday either.”
I poured hot water from the kettle hanging over the campfire and handed it to him.
“If you drink this, it will help you sleep.”
“Thank you.”
After leaving the Life-and-Death Tower, Gal Sa-Ryang had seemed lost in many thoughts. It was only natural. It had become clearly revealed that those bastards were trying to eliminate both him and Jong Cheon-Rak, so the war had now begun.
At the same time, the light in Gal Sa-Ryang’s eyes was gradually coming alive. Yes, those were Sa-Ryang’s eyes. The eyes he had on the battlefield, where they shone brighter the deeper the difficulty became.
“You left quite an impression from your very first mission.”
“I was lucky.”
“As you know, the Alliance is trying to eliminate me.”
“Yes.”
“If you stay with me, you will be in danger too. As soon as we return, I will have you assigned somewhere else.”
Half of it was sincere, and half of it was to test my reaction. He had brought me along, a newcomer, because he was interested in me, and I knew that his favorable impression of me had grown much stronger during this journey. He needed me.
“Strategist.”
“What is it?”
“I am someone who enjoys danger. I will remain by your side, Strategist.”
“This is not a joke.”
“It is the same for me.”
“May I ask why you want to remain?”
“The greater the danger, the greater the things to be gained.”
Gal Sa-Ryang’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he was thinking, Where did such a thing come from?
“Can you truly trust me?”
“I think that is a question I should be asking you. Can you trust me?”
“You saved my life. You saved everyone here. Not just once, but several times. If I cannot trust someone like that, then whom in the world can I trust?”
Gal Sa-Ryang held out his hand. I clasped that hand.
I felt that my relationship with him had progressed again.
The final hurdle would probably be that. In the end, he would learn that I had intentionally approached him in order to win him over, and the question would be whether or not we could form a bond strong enough to overcome that sense of betrayal.
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The next morning, while we were eating in the forest, I felt something strange.
I could sense an unknown energy. I checked whether anyone else felt it, but no one else sensed that energy.
I could tell. Someone was calling me, or perhaps calling an expert among us who could sense this faint energy.
After finishing my meal, I walked in the direction from which the energy was flowing.
A Heavenly Palace Corps martial artist who was standing guard in that direction bowed politely and asked,
“Where are you going?”
His attitude toward me was extremely respectful and friendly.
“I will go take care of something for a moment.”
“We will be leaving soon, so please return quickly.”
“I will.”
Once I was out of his sight, I moved quickly.
The energy was growing stronger and stronger.
After walking for quite some time, a small clearing appeared, and the person who had sent out the energy was standing there. He was an old man who looked fairly aged.
“In the desert, there is quicksand. Once you step into it, you can never escape. It sucks in everything. Like a monster that devours everything. That monster was you.”
A tremendous confidence could be felt from the old man. I knew that it came from confidence in his own Martial Arts.
With such a presence, I should have recognized his face, yet he was someone I had never seen before in my life. Once again, I felt that the Jianghu truly had as many strange and extraordinary people as grains of sand on a beach.
“There is a way to avoid falling into quicksand. Walk along the safe path where people walk. Even in the desert, there are paths made for people.”
“I have a strong sense of adventure, so I do not want to walk a path others have walked.”
“Is it not because you are greedy? Because you want to go faster. Because you want to take all the things others cannot have for yourself alone.”
The old man did not deny it. Instead, he revealed deep curiosity.
“The quicksand I have met this time is truly tempting.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“What is unfortunate?”
“You have already stepped into that quicksand. Did you not say it yourself? Once you sink in, you can never get out. The more you struggle, the faster you will probably sink.”
The old man’s eyes sharpened.
“Who are you? I have never heard that someone like you was in the Grand Martial Alliance.”
“I am a newly appointed strategist.”
“What?”
After staring blankly for a moment, he laughed loudly.
“Hahahaha. If not a newcomer but an experienced strategist had entered, the Jianghu would have been turned upside down.”
“And who are you?”
“I am someone who will change your superior to someone else.”
“The reason?”
“I have never even met Gal Sa-Ryang, so what grudge or reason could there be between us? It is simply that different interests become tangled and entwined, and people kill and are killed. Just like when one prunes branches, the insects clinging to them die.”
“Suppose you are the shears pruning the branches. Then who exactly is the one trying to act as the owner of the tree?”
As if telling me I did not need to know, the old man drew his sword.
“Enough arrogance. Who is behind you? Tell me, and I will kill you cleanly.”
“You will soon find out who is behind me.”
I drew the Asura King Sword and raised my senses. There was no one around.
I had no intention of dragging this fight out.
I released the internal energy I had sealed. My internal energy, which had been half a gapja, became two gapja in an instant.
At the same time, I released my original presence without concealing it. The presence that burst out from me took control of the space where the old man and I stood.
“Huh!”
The old man was shocked. More than the fact that my presence was tremendous, he was more surprised that I had been hiding it so perfectly. Come to think of it, that was the more difficult method. Just the fact that he recognized that meant the old man was certainly an extraordinary expert.
I must not give him a chance.
The moment the old man sensed danger and tried to unleash his own ultimate technique, the Asura King Sword let out the sound of wind.
Whoooooosh!
For an instant, the old man flinched in surprise.
“Could that wind sound be…?”
The moment his eyes widened as if they would pop out.
Wooooooong!
A whirlwind raged around the old man.
The Fifth Form, Revolving Wheel Calamity, had exploded. I poured all of my two gapja of internal energy into that single Revolving Wheel Calamity.
“Huuup!”
The old man raised his protective qi barrier while resisting the whirlwind coiling around his body. As expected, he was an expert capable of using a protective qi barrier.
The old man urgently shouted,
“You! Are you Cheon Ha-Jin’s disciple?”
But he could no longer ask questions. His protective qi barrier had begun tearing apart. With his internal energy, he could not block the Revolving Wheel Calamity.
Riiiip!
His protective qi barrier was torn apart, and soon after, his flesh began to be ripped away.
“Uuuugh… Even if Cheon Ha-Jin returns alive… he will not be able to stop us. Uaaaaaagh!”
The moment his final words ended, along with a terrible scream, his flesh and bones were torn into pieces and vanished into the air.
The raging whirlwind disappeared.
The old man had disappeared from the world.
He was an expert capable of raising a protective qi barrier, and he knew my Martial Arts accurately.
But I had never seen him before. It was a moment that made me feel once again just how large and tremendous the opposing organization was.
There were no more attacks.
When we entered Hubei, we obtained two carriages.
The injured were placed in one carriage, and Gal Sa-Ryang and I rode in the other.
When we were almost at Wuhan, I asked Gal Sa-Ryang,
“There is something I am curious about.”
“What is it?”
“What exactly was the Divine Dragon Operation you mentioned before?”
“You were curious about that?”
“Yes.”
“It was an operation from when I was a newly appointed strategist, just like you.”
Gal Sa-Ryang recalled the past and became immersed in emotion. His expression became excited, almost like that of a child.
“It was the operation to make Cheon Ha-Jin, the Strongest Under Heaven, into the Murim Alliance Lord.”
At those unexpected words, I was truly shocked.
“At the time, the former Alliance Lord was being called the Strongest Under Heaven. We spent months forming a plan to make him the Alliance Lord. We investigated the Alliance Lord. What Martial Arts he used, where he had defeated whom, whom he liked, whom he disliked. What sort of women he liked, what kind of wine he drank, what kind of food he liked. We even found out what his favorite color was. On the day we first went to meet the Alliance Lord, the martial artists wore martial robes of that color.”
Ah, was that so? Had they really put in that much effort?
It was something I did not even remember.
“Watching the youngest Alliance Lord in history, I had a dream. I wanted to change this Jianghu together with that young Alliance Lord.”
At that time, the Chief Strategist had not been Gal Sa-Ryang. Gal Sa-Ryang was a strategist who rose rapidly and climbed upward after I ascended to the position of Alliance Lord. This was the first time I learned the reason for that success.
And another confession followed.
“I truly liked the Alliance Lord.”
They were words I had never heard from him in my previous life.
“What did you like about him?”
I was tense, while at the same time looking forward to what kind of answer would come.
“Because he was awkward.”
“Yes?”
“He was a very awkward person. He possessed truly powerful Martial Arts, and even in front of the terrifying experts of the Unorthodox Faction and the Demonic Cult, he would not blink an eye, yet he was very awkward.”
“In what way?”
Gal Sa-Ryang only smiled.
I could not tell what he was talking about. But since I, too, had many regrets when I looked back on my previous life, it was probably one aspect among them.
He was saying that he liked that.
“In any case, that was the greatest operation of my life, and it was the operation that made me happiest when it succeeded.”
As I turned my head toward the window on the opposite side, a smile formed on my lips.
This is why I cannot give up on you.
Clatter, clatter.
The carriage slowed down.
In the distance, the buildings of the Grand Martial Alliance headquarters came into view.
Now we had to fight the masters of that place.
What choice would Gal Sa-Ryang make?
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