Chapter 92 - All of a Sudden

Lee Jasong and his adjutants followed them inside and witnessed the scene, but paid it no mind. Dong Bongsu deserved such treatment from the soldiers. There was no reason even to feel jealous.

Regardless of what the soldiers were doing, Dong Bongsu silently lowered his head to look down at Timur Khan. His shadow fell across Timur Khan's eyes, hiding them. Now the khan could no longer see the sky he had loved. Though he was already dead, it was surely a pity for Timur Khan.

"Did you say the sky was blue because it was a river on the way to the afterlife?"

The dead said nothing. Naturally.

Dong Bongsu continued.

"That's not why the sky is blue. Not that nonsense. Light from the sun collides with the gas molecules that make up Earth's atmosphere and scatters into different colors. The shorter wavelengths, blue and violet, scatter much more. That's why the sky looks blue. When you die, you just die. There's no river. If you were expecting that sort of thing after death, give up on it now."

"And did you ask me what I saw when I looked up there?"

"That isn't the sky. You're mistaken. It's just up. The sky? That's just a division weak humans made for convenience. Above that is only somewhere higher still. There's no sky of the sort you're hoping for."

Having finished speaking, Dong Bongsu raised the Vagabond Sword high and drove it straight into Timur Khan's right ear.

Timur Khan's ear was severed, and the brief but intense ear hunt finally came to an end.

"Wooooo!"

The soldiers' frenzied cheers shook all of Guishui Fortress. His sword had clearly killed not only nomad soldiers but also several men of the northern expeditionary army, yet no one cared. In their eyes, Dong Bongsu was a peerless hero whose deeds could not be canceled out by the deaths of a few comrades.

Ignoring the soldiers, Dong Bongsu walked over to a corner. There, Kaiji was alone, tearing into a plump sheep. This was probably another part of its artificial intelligence: a way to restore its own Vitality.

With Kaiji's stat window open, he could watch its Vitality recover in real time. It wasn't an actual Item, but either way, this mutton was effectively a raw recovery item.

Larger, better-nourished livestock would restore even more. Of course, there was no experience—!

"...!"

No one knows when a moment of enlightenment will come. Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha... so it had been for many sages.

Dong Bongsu was a monster far removed from such sages, but a moment of enlightenment came to him as well.

'Plump, well-fed livestock restores Vitality.'

Livestock grew plump. People raised livestock. In other words, raise them well, and they could become excellent recovery items.

Dong Bongsu looked away from Kaiji, who was greedily devouring the mutton, and turned his gaze toward the soldiers cheering for him.

They were exhausted by the rampant plague and the unending battles, but they were all elite soldiers. They hadn't been born that way. Training had made them so.

Therefore,

if he trained them well,

they would make fine...

One corner of Dong Bongsu's mouth rises.

He raises a hand high, and the soldiers roar like mad.

Kill enough people, and you are treated as a hero, with multitudes following you. Here, it is a law as self-evident as the workings of nature.

Now the other corner of Dong Bongsu's mouth rises. For the first time since coming here, he wears a full smile. Perhaps for the first time in his life...

Dong Bongsu mounted Kaiji, who had recovered a reasonable amount of Vitality, and rode through the soldiers toward the gate.

Naturally, Timur Khan's ear lay abandoned on the ground. Ears no longer mattered to Dong Bongsu; they were nothing more than trash. Whether one belonged to the emperor of Northern Yuan made no difference at all.

Scattered skirmishes still continued, but most of the soldiers were simply watching Dong Bongsu's retreating back. So was Lee Jasong. He slowly rode over and dismounted beside Timur Khan's corpse.

He picked up Timur Khan's ear from the ground.

"The Ear Ghost has discarded his ears..."

That told him all he needed to know of Dong Bongsu's intentions.

THUD.

Lee Jasong cut off Timur Khan's head and carried it up onto the wall. Raising it high so that every soldier who had entered the fortress could see it, he shouted,

"Timur Khan is dead! Meaningless resistance will no longer be tolerated! Lay down your weapons and surrender, and I will spare your lives!"

With that, the war ended.

Lee Jasong now turned to look outside the fortress. Dong Bongsu was still moving slowly away from Guishui Fortress along the path the soldiers had made for him.

Lee Jasong called out loudly after him.

"Where are you going?"

Dong Bongsu pulled the reins, bringing Kaiji to a halt. He did not turn his head.

"Central Plains."

He had always spoken rudely, but now he was openly dispensing with even the barest courtesy. Still, Lee Jasong smiled.

Something left his hand and flew toward Dong Bongsu's back.

SMACK.

Without even turning his head, Dong Bongsu reached behind him and caught it. It was an ear adorned with an ornate hoop earring.

"Take it with you. I'll keep the other one. If I return to court and secure a position, perhaps I can be of some small help to you."

Without answering, Dong Bongsu put Timur Khan's ear into his Inventory.

That satisfied Lee Jasong.

"Farewell."

Kaiji began moving again. Soon it broke into a run, cutting across the blood-soaked earth and disappearing far to the southeast.

"Is it wise to let him leave like that, sir?"

At some point, Adjutant Dang had come to stand behind Lee Jasong.

"He hunted Northern Yuan's ears single-handedly. Do you have any way to stop him?"

Adjutant Dang could offer no answer. He already knew it himself: this was a man they could not possibly hold, and must not try to.

Lee Jasong gazed in the direction Dong Bongsu had vanished, smacking his lips regretfully for a moment before speaking.

"A bloody wind will blow through the Central Plains."

A bitter northern wind swept in, the sharp scent of blood stinging the noses of Lee Jasong and Adjutant Dang.

This world is New Murim Online—inside a game, yet not inside a game.

Here, too, enlightenment comes suddenly. And it fell upon Dong Bongsu's head, just as an apple suddenly fell upon Newton's—regardless of whether that really happened or was invented by later generations.

- New Murim Online, Ninth Law: The system recognizes only suitable subjects (further research required) as Divine Beasts. To tame a subject as a Divine Beast, the player must meet certain conditions specified by the system.

Tamed Divine Beasts have their own stat windows, equipment windows, and so forth, and 60% of the experience they earn goes to the player.

Divine Beasts can restore Vitality by eating food.

※Nothing in this law is fixed or certain.

When a madman goes east, his pursuer goes east as well. Their direction is the same, but their purposes are quite different.

- Han Fei, political thinker of the late Warring States period of China

Rumors travel fast.

They travel all the faster for having so many feet. Sometimes horses, sometimes people, and sometimes birds become the feet of a rumor.

A rumor originating in the north swept across the country.

Timur Khan of Northern Yuan was dead. Guishui Fortress had fallen.

That was the heart of the rumor.

Timur Khan was a great hero of Northern Yuan and a supremely powerful martial artist. His death delivered no small shock, not only to the authorities and the common people, but also to the warriors of Murim.

A story about one man traveled alongside that rumor.

A man riding a wolf that flew through the sky. A man who slit his enemies' throats like a demon. A man who wielded dozens of swords as though they were his own limbs. A brilliant strategist, too.

All these rumors pointed to a single man. But they were soon buried among the others.

They made no sense.

How could a wolf fly through the sky? How could a man with only two hands wield dozens of swords at will?

It was all dismissed as a tale invented by soldiers to glorify Lee Jasong, commander of the northern expeditionary army and governor of the Datong General Administration.

The rumors...

In the end, they remained merely rumors, and public attention soon shifted away from the north.

A rumor's lifespan lasts only until the next one starts circulating. As a fresh, sensational rumor began spreading through Murim, the news from the north quietly faded away.

[A sparring tournament will be held at the Murim Alliance!]

[The Murim Alliance Leader intends to select young experts aged thirty and under to form a new martial force!]

Ordinarily, the Murim Alliance was little more than a symbolic organization of the Orthodox Faction.

But when outside forces invaded the Central Plains, it became the Orthodox Faction's true rallying point.

That time had come. The Heavenly Demon Castle was constantly encroaching on the fringes of the Central Plains, while the Hall of Gathered Evil was extending its reach throughout the region.

Thus the current Murim Alliance Leader, the Taoist Sage of Heaven, was in some respects the lord of Murim. His holding a sparring tournament and gathering young experts was an important event that would determine Murim's future course.

Murim was abuzz over the matter, and the Taoist Sage of Heaven's right-hand man, the Heaven-Splitting Tyrant Saber Eulji Tae, was returning to Zhengzhou after completing a special mission related to it.

Accompanied by one rather concerning individual...

Sanmen Gorge.

A gorge where Yu, the founder of the ancient Xia dynasty, was said to have split a mountain with an axe, dividing the river's flow into three with Ghost Rock and Divine Rock.

Since ancient times, this place had been famous for having the fiercest currents on the Yellow River. Sheer, rugged cliffs lined both banks of the forty-zhang-wide river. Renmen, a peninsula jutting out from the northern bank, and the two islands in midstream, Shenmen Island and Guimen Island, divided the water into three channels, creating tremendous rapids.

For that reason, people had long joked that once you made it past this place, you had traveled half the Yellow River.

Yet however treacherous it was, traveling from Xi'an to Zhengzhou without passing through it was difficult, so a great many boats always plied these waters.