Chapter 46

“You’ve gotten quite a bit of money, but if you have a long tail, you’ll get stepped on, so let’s run away.”
“Uh-huh, Yeki, you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The water’s finally coming in, and it’s not easy.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Don’t you realize how weird this place is getting?”
“Just a few more people and we’ll be on our way.”
Standing next to the two chuckling men, the bandit sighed heavily.
What are we doing here.
He would never have done this if the man who sent him here hadn’t been the owner of the mountain. A bandit is a bandit is a bandit.
Ever since all the menials had been sent to the South Palace, there had been no one left to do the menial work.
Damn it.
“Enough, you bastards.”
“……?”
“No, I mean…….”
The weight of my bulging pockets.
The bandit sighed heavily at the two men in front of me, lost in concept and blinded by greed.
“You seem to have forgotten that you’re in the middle of a racket.”
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
The two men’s faces paled at the sound of the murderous joint. They realized that their lives came before their greed.
“We’ve gotten what we wanted, so we should go. There’s nothing to stay for.”
One of the men, looking at the heavily built bandit, glanced up and rubbed his hands together.
“Come on, why don’t you stay here a little longer, hehehe.”
“It doesn’t look like I have much to do…….”
“No, that’s not it, there’s a new girl over there, just turned sixteen, and she’s got a beautiful color. I’m going to capture her by the end of the day, so why don’t you rest a little longer?”
When the bandit paused and looked troubled by the man’s words, the other man spoke up.
“A man is a man,” said the other man, ”and a woman is a woman, and a heroine is a heroine, so how can we not give her a treat when we see her?”
The bandit’s mouth twitched at the words.
“Well, it’s getting late, and I’m afraid I’ll have to stay another day.”
The sun was still in the middle of the sky.
“Very well, where shall we go?”
The bandit’s response made the two men happy, and they immediately turned and headed for the guest house called Huayanglu. They stepped through the door, and all that remained was the bandit with the fair-haired girl in his arms and the two drunken men.
And a shadow watching them.
“……Nice.”
“Why don’t you kill her?”
I shook my head at Black Lake’s words.
“Wait.”
You have to be patient to get what you want. Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
“By the way, where did you send Dai Myung-yi?”
“……He lived in Shandong before us. Some people recognized him, so I let him move around to see if he could tell us anything about the story.”
And one more thing.
I didn’t think it was necessary to spell it out.
“I’ll meet you in two o’clock, I think that’ll be enough.”
I could see the bandit in my sights getting more and more excited.
* * *
I searched the mountains. It’s me and my uncle, who have been roaming the mountains for five years. It was already clear where we were. And the samurai of the Southern Palace following behind.
When they realized that Yumimi and the Southern Palace name had disappeared, a hundred and fifty of them quickly dug into the mountain. With the twenty-two greenhouses gone, only three remained. Red, White, and Green.
“We should have fought them long ago!”
It was obvious that it was the work of the mangoes, so I rushed in with my uncle without delay.
However.
There were countless cuts.
“……Where have you gone, and why can’t I feel your body?”
The frail-looking Sanchae stood out from the others. It was clear that they were called the masters of the mountain.
It was just that there were no masters.
There were no masters, only bandits who were nothing more than a bunch of dirtbags. I strode up to the bandit and put the tip of my sword to its hood.
“……kkhhh, The ghost stories have begun. Let’s make them pay for messing with us……!”
Clang!
The bandit’s head flew off with a single blow. Leaving the limp corpse behind, he approached the other bandit.
But.
“……A woman? Pooh-pooh. If it’s a woman, she’s already humiliated hundreds of bandits…….”
Clang!
Another head floated into thin air. I moved, not wanting to waste any time.
“Now, wait! Don’t kill him like that, wait a moment. We must try to talk to them!”
I could hear the uneasy voice of my aunt. There were only three or four bandits left, and I had just blown their heads off, which only increased her anxiety.
“I found it!”
It was then.
The head of the hostess snapped around at the word shouted by a member of the Southern Palace. In response to his head turning, the warriors of the Southern Palace shouted from everywhere.
“There they are, the people!”
“……!”
As soon as the eunuch flew into the air, he saw a room full of people who had been captured from private homes. The women were naked, and the men were all covered in bruises and cuts.
They were all starved, their bones pale, the shadows on their faces unrelenting, and instead of being reassured by the markings of the Southern Palace, they stared uneasily at the point of their swords.
“……Ah, ahhhh.”
“Aaah, aaahhhh.”
“Aaah, aaahhh.”
One by one, when they opened their mouths to speak, they couldn’t pronounce the words correctly.
Seeing this, Namgungseok opened his mouth with a horrified expression.
“Did you …… cut out all their tongues so they couldn’t speak?”
“They’re crazy. They must be crazy.”
“My bastards.”
A spark ignited in the hearts of the warriors of the Southern Palace.
For those who crossed a line that should never have been crossed.
A fire burned in the hearts of those who looked upon sin with good intentions.
But I shook my head.
“It will be futile.”
In response, all the men of the Southern Palace turned to look at me, but only one hadn’t stopped to search the mountain.
It was the elderly man. He was searching for someone, weaving his way through the men of the Southern Palace who were giving their robes to the naked, looking for someone.
To him I said.
“……Eunuch.”
To make sure he couldn’t hear me, he kept looking inside the fence, at the faces of the hostages.
He kept looking around to see if Yumimi was there.
Moreover, there was another person moving like him, and it was Namgunghan.
I opened my mouth once more.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
At that, the old man stopped and looked back at me. At the same time, Namgung Han did too.
“What, do you know something?”
“I do know something, Grand Duke.”
I read the desperation in their eyes.
“Aldamada.”
And then.
Jab, jab, jab.
The sound of light footsteps.
Soon, the sound of footsteps began to fill the mountainside.
A pulsating momentum.
Vibrating energy.
Suddenly, Eldest Brother and Nan Gonghan and the other martial artists of the Southern Palace could feel it. Something was wrong.
“We have fallen into their trap.”
The entire mountain range began to be surrounded by people full of malice and enmity.
“……We have truly fallen into a trap.”
I wondered where those who had left their homes in the mountains had gone.
The members of the One Hundred and Fifty Southern Palaces gathered at the top of Shandong.
Those who had stayed elsewhere surrounded Shandong at once.
The so-called Tianraji network.
It was tight.
No one could escape.
We were trapped in the net of the heavenly sphere.
The three great spirits ascending over the living.
The one with the two fists that glowed like flames stepped forward, towering over us.
One with fists of frozen white frost was dragging a woman’s throat.
A man with a fist that looked as if it had been melted with mountain energy surrounded the young man.
Smiles of triumph.
The smiles of victors who have already won the battle.
The look of someone who knows they have an absolute advantage, even with two hostages in each hand.
They are cunning beyond their size, greedy beyond their means, and willing to give up what’s theirs for what’s mine.
Such a man has appeared before my eyes.
“I am the Grand Duke, and my name is Ho Shan, the Red Dragon.”
It was Ho Shan, the Red Tiger Master of Shandong.
“I am the Great Tiger. This is my land that you have trespassed upon.”
The White Tiger Lord of Shandong, the Iron Tower Lord, spoke next.
“Kahahahaha, you bastards. They acted like it was my world, and now they’re all dying, right, right!”
The Green Tiger Clan of Shandong’s Black Tiger Clan, Honkang Kuan, burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry to have disappointed you so far. I didn’t live up to my expectations when I said it was a mountainous mountain.”
Hu Shan’s words made Guang Bai and Leopard shake their heads.
“That won’t happen anymore, because we’re all going to die here.”
Everyone froze.
The auras of the three men were all huge and powerful, and as they said, they were unlike anything they had ever seen in the mountains.
At the same time, the number of bandits slowly approaching the mountain behind the three masters, encircling the mountain in several layers, made them feel desperate.
When had there ever been such a large number of bandits?
Even if he had managed to clear out so many bandits before, where were there so many?
But.
“Come.”
It was as if they had come to my house,
“You must have had a hard time coming up with a strategy like this.”
The voice sounded soothing, like a homeowner talking to an uninvited guest.
“But I’m afraid I’m in a bad mood. You shouldn’t be so excited already.”
With a single word, the overwhelming mood in the room eased.
The three chaeju frowned in unison at my words. Then, the leopard armored man stood up and burst into laughter.
“Hahaha, it’s you, the Grand Duke of the Southern Palace.”
The panther’s aura rose steadily. It was directed at one person in the entire mountain range, the Grand Duke.
The Grand Duke flinched and stopped dead in his tracks.
Feng Fei grinned wryly at the sight.
So it is, then.
You little bastard.
He threw the young man to the ground and clenched his fists together. I’ll smash the Grand Duke’s face in right now, and I’ll annihilate all of the Southern Palace’s minions.
With that, he strode toward the Grand Duke.
“But.”
The Grand Duke’s mouth opened easily. He was surprised that he spoke so quickly after all the energy he’d put into it.
Peking’s pride was wounded, and he tried to speak.
“This is all you can do, isn’t it?”
He chuckles and smiles.
The smile felt unnerving for some reason, and the panther’s senses were heightened by a tingling sensation on the back of his neck.
And then.
“…… What the hell.”
“Leopard.”
“It can’t be.”
The bandits, who’d been berserk, began to stir. It was.
“What, Guan Gun……?”
A new group of bandits began to surround the hundreds.
It was Guan Kun.
“……I am the monkfish leader, Huang Tianhou.”
It was a welcome sight to hear a familiar voice from far below.