Chapter 63 - Going Into Hiding

Instead of giving a stock answer, Dong Bongsu simply took a step toward her. Tang Hwa instinctively backed away. She did not know why she had done so. No, she had not even realized she had moved.

She was just... afraid. The fact that Dong Bongsu had been an insignificant stablehand, and that he was the one who had just killed Tang Wu, had already vanished from her mind. Fear alone had taken their place. Those indifferent eyes fixed on her terrified her. She hated being under their gaze.

TAP, TAP.

Dong Bongsu took two more steps toward her. Tang Hwa retreated just as far.

SCRAPE.

He pulled the Beginner's Sword from where it stood embedded at an angle in the ground. The thing impaled on it, presumably Tang Wu's head, came up with it.

Dong Bongsu raised the sword over his head, then drove it diagonally into the ground. Tang Wu's head split in two, freeing the Beginner's Sword from his corpse completely. Blood and brain matter trickled out of the split head, fouling the ground.

What did he mean, it was all right...? Tang Hwa trembled at those brief, incomprehensible words. Dead or not, Tang Wu was her grandfather. She could not allow such an atrocity to go unpunished, yet she could not say a word.

Dong Bongsu quietly wiped the blood from the Beginner's Sword on Tang Wu's long brown robe. The robe was so filthy that it did little to clean the blade. Then, at some point, he raised his head and looked at Tang Hwa.

"This won't do."

What wouldn't...? Once again, Tang Hwa wondered what Dong Bongsu meant by his incomprehensible words. It was her last thought.

Dong Bongsu suddenly moved, sweeping past Tang Hwa. A moment later, she collapsed onto Tang Wu's corpse.

At that very instant—

VROOOM!

Brilliant golden radiance poured from Dong Bongsu's body. It was distinctly different from the light that accompanied leveling up.

[Quest complete.]

[You have advanced to the Vagabond class.]

[As a result of your class advancement...]

...

...

At last, he had advanced his class. Several holographic message windows appeared before his eyes, overlapping one another.

Dong Bongsu closed them all without reading them. He believed the pursuit might not be over yet. Do Heo-ok might send pursuers even here, just to make absolutely certain.

But he only thought this because he did not know the mountain's terrain in detail. The ground beneath his feet was not merely the foot of Seonjung Mountain. True to its nature as a steep gorge, both sides were choked with towering rocks and dense vegetation that had kept humans out for centuries. And to the front and rear stood sheer cliffs like the one he had just jumped from, making access even more difficult. Even if Do Heo-ok wanted to pursue him, it had been impossible from the start.

Still, remembering how Tang Wu had used his primal vital qi to save Tang Hwa at the last moment, Dong Bongsu busied himself eliminating even the slightest possibility.

First, he went around the area putting the corpses in order, making sure the scattered remains accounted for exactly as many bodies as had fallen. As he did so, he sorted through their belongings and took everything useful. Among his finds were Tang Wu's Dragon-Phoenix Golden Needles and several martial arts manuals. He did not take everything, however. Leaving enough behind to avoid suspicion was the most basic of precautions.

He found all the corpses and objects he had used during his descent and put them back into his Inventory. Next, he crushed the bodies of those whose heads his sword had pierced. He was particularly careful to pulverize the sword wounds. They had to look as though they had burst open from the impact of the fall.

Before long, the work was finished.

Dong Bongsu made one final check. He pictured every fragment scattered across the ground, then assembled them one by one in his mind. They formed exactly as many bodies as there had been people falling. Naturally, he was included among those bodies.

One of the corpses wore a pirate's uniform. That was his stand-in. It was already so thoroughly mangled that no one would ever be able to tell who it had originally been.

The perfect crime.

Certain of that, Dong Bongsu swiftly left the scene. His movements were more than twice as agile as they had been during his fall. He had yet to examine his new abilities, but he could already feel the dramatic improvement from his increased stats alone.

A broad grin spread across his face. Dong Bongsu was smiling.

Here was a murderer. He had survived.

At last, he had emerged into the world.

Murim began to stir. The waves originated in Anhui Province.

The annihilation of the Namgung Clan, Anhui's foremost clan, renowned throughout the land.

Who could possibly have brought down the Namgung Clan overnight—the undisputed leader of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains?

When the rumor first spread through Murim, no one was willing to believe it readily. Before long, however, the martial artists learned that this shocking event was real.

Murim Tablets, which had not circulated for decades, were delivered throughout the Central Plains. They bore a summons to a Murim Great Council over the annihilation of the Namgung Clan, stamped clearly with the Murim Alliance Leader's seal. Hard as it was to believe, the mighty tree that was the Namgung Clan had fallen. There was no doubt: it had not closed its gates. It had been annihilated.

Soon, representatives of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the four remaining Great Families gathered in Zhengzhou. No, strictly speaking, representatives of all Five Great Families had assembled. A survivor of the annihilated Namgung Clan had also attended the Murim Great Council.

The one person who had survived that terrible calamity was Namgung Hye, second daughter of the Namgung Clan's Patriarch, Namgung Byeok. She had fought her way through the perpetrators' raging onslaught and finally reached Zhengzhou. As the sole survivor and witness, she testified before the Murim Great Council about the full course of the disaster that had destroyed her clan.

The faction Namgung Hye identified as responsible was the Heavenly Demon Castle. She also stated that the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River had supported their flanks.

Every sect representative attending the Murim Great Council was appalled. The perpetrators really were the Heavenly Demon Castle, just as they had feared. Everyone present sensed that a century of peace had finally been shattered.

After Namgung Hye's testimony, the Murim Great Council began in earnest. A few urged caution, saying they could not understand why the Heavenly Demon Castle would suddenly do such a thing. Their argument was that there would still be time to act after a thorough investigation established the facts. But those who advocated that course were only a minority.

Though those assembled belonged to the orthodox path, that was only an outward mask. At heart, they were all martial artists—outlaws who lived by one absolute law: fist for fist, blade for blade, and above all, blood for blood!

The Tang Family in particular was beside itself with fury after losing Tang Wu and Tang Hwa. They looked ready to act alone if the Murim Alliance refused to move.

And quite apart from the Tang Family's belligerence, Sichuan Province bordered Tibet. To put it bluntly, Tibet was the Heavenly Demon Castle's front yard, and Sichuan was the house across from it. If this incident truly was the opening act of a plan to advance into the Central Plains, Sichuan Province would undoubtedly be among its first targets.

The Kunlun and Kongtong Sects felt the same sense of danger as the Tang Family. If Sichuan was the house opposite Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu Province were close enough to the Heavenly Demon Castle to be called Xinjiang's next-door neighbor and the house behind it.

Most of the other sects agreed with a hard-line response, even if they did not speak out in favor of it.

The destruction of the Namgung Clan was an enormously serious matter for the Murim Alliance. If the Alliance failed to intervene in an affair of such magnitude, its influence over all Murim would plainly diminish. If the Heavenly Demon Castle had indeed moved to seize the Central Plains, all Murim needed to unite around the Alliance. For that reason alone, the Murim Alliance had to take decisive action.

In the end, the council concluded without taking long.

The Murim Alliance Leader, the Taoist Sage of Heaven, immediately deployed the forces of the Demon-Subduing Hall and the Evil-Conquering Hall, two of the Three Halls, to Anhui Province. Mobilizing these two armed organizations naturally brought all the Four Directional Divine Squads under their command into action in Anhui as well. The Alliance Leader did not stop there. He sent missives to affiliated sects in every province surrounding Anhui—Hubei, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Henan—ordering them to support the Four Directional Divine Squads.

Furthermore, the Taoist Sage of Heaven dispatched hundreds of experts to Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan. He believed the Heavenly Demon Castle's main force might take advantage of the Murim Alliance's focus on Anhui Province to advance into the Central Plains.

Until then, however, the Heavenly Demon Castle had remained quiet. Only when the Murim Alliance's forces advanced deep into the borderlands of Gansu and Qinghai did it rush hundreds of experts to those regions to hold them in check. There were no actual clashes between the two sides, however. They merely kept each other contained.

Meanwhile, the bloody reprisal decided upon at the Murim Great Council began. The Heavenly Demon Castle's Anhui Branch was razed, and the pirates of the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River were slaughtered. The Murim Alliance's advance was quite swift, but because it had dispatched its forces only after convening the council, the actual punitive campaign took place a full fifteen days after the massacre of the Namgung Clan.

The campaign itself went extremely smoothly, but they failed to execute all the perpetrators. Many demonic soldiers and pirates evaded the Murim Alliance's experts and went into hiding. Given the nature of martial artists, once they shed their martial uniforms and hid among civilian households, they were exceedingly difficult to find. In the end, the Murim Alliance's campaign achieved only half its aim.

In particular, they never managed to capture the two men said to have orchestrated it all: the Anhui Branch Leader, Paga Hyeol the Naked Silver Demon, and the Supreme Stronghold Chief of the Yangtze Waterway Strongholds, Sa Saho the Yangtze Dragon Champion. According to intelligence obtained during the campaign, both had gone into hiding immediately after the Namgung Clan massacre.

Where on earth had the two of them disappeared to?