WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
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◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 9: Escape
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Less than a hundred paces from the valley, the gravel gave way beneath my feet.
I rolled once down the slope.
Just as I tried to get up, the world before me flared bright.
Torches.
The pursuers had circled below the slope and cut me off first, standing with the valley at their backs.
They knew how to hunt.
There were five of them.
A middle-aged man stood in the center with a battered ring-pommel saber hanging at his side.
Only three fingers remained on his left hand.
To the right stood a youngster holding a bamboo spear with a piece of iron fixed to its tip.
To the left, someone holding a torch in one hand gripped a sickle spear with a long shaft.
An archer stood on a high rock behind them, bowstring half drawn as they aimed at me.
Beside the archer, a hunting dog snarled with bloodshot eyes.
There was one more person holding a torch.
They were all dressed in rags.
Their worn clothes hung in tatters, their straw sandals were completely worn out, and their weapons were chipped.
They looked like wandering martial vagabonds hired by the Orthodox Faction for a few silver taels.
The dirty work always fell to people at the bottom.
"Found him."
The middle-aged man with three fingers pointed the tip of his saber at my throat.
"You damn Demonic Cult bastard. What happened to your red sash? Took it off and hid it, huh? You're a crafty one."
"Brother Jae-bok! He killed the dog too! Make this bastard pay for it!"
The sickle-spear wielder spat on the ground.
"This sickle has brought down a hundred wild boars. People and pigs aren't much different."
"Brother Deok-bo. I've never killed a person before."
The youngster's spear tip trembled faintly.
"Mal-su. They said two taels for one head, right?"
"Two taels."
The three-fingered man replied flatly.
"They'll pay half if we just bring back an ear. Heads are heavy, so let's take one ear."
I let my bloodstained sword hang at my side and spoke.
"Couldn't you just let me go?"
"What?"
"Even if you catch me, it's only two taels. If one of you gets hurt here, the medicine will cost more than that."
The wandering martial vagabonds hesitated at my words.
"When you put it that way, he's right."
Mal-su cautiously lowered the spear.
I looked at Jae-bok's damaged left hand and continued.
"Who took those fingers from you?"
"A Martial Alliance warrior."
Jae-bok answered indifferently.
"At the start of the war. They said they hadn't realized I was on their side."
"And you still take their money?"
"They paid enough. Forget it. Money has no eyes."
Jae-bok's sleepy gaze vanished as he readjusted his grip on the saber.
"That's enough listening to a dead man's whining. Get him!"
At those words, Mal-su's spear rose toward my heart again.
* * *
Mal-su's spear came first.
The frightened youngster's thrust was so crude that it went straight as an arrow.
I had clashed with spearmen in the mud of Blue Stone Valley.
I could see what would come after that thrust.
I turned my body half a step and used the flat of my sword to guide the spear shaft aside.
It was the deflection Jang Pal had taught me.
The spearhead grazed past my side.
The chest of the off-balance opponent was exposed.
All I had to do was thrust.
My eyes had found the opening, but my abused body could not keep up.
My sword only cut Mal-su's shoulder shallowly before missing.
"Argh!"
Mal-su screamed, dropped the spear, and fell backward.
After seeing blood, Mal-su snatched up the spear again with a terrified face and stabbed wildly three times in a row.
That was harder to deal with.
There had to be a pattern to a trajectory for me to read what came next.
Wild attacks made without reason had no next move to read.
I took three steps back.
The sickle spear thrust into the spot I had retreated to.
The sickle blade whipped toward my throat from the side.
I could see its path.
I lowered my upper body, and several severed strands of hair scattered through the air.
"You bastard! Even a wild boar doesn't get away the second time!"
Deok-bo twisted his wrist and swung the sickle back around.
But the second strike looked slower and duller than the first.
Was it because I had already followed that trajectory once with my eyes?
Rather than retreating, I stepped half a pace into Deok-bo's reach.
After a sickle spear made a broad swing, the area near its shaft was exposed.
I stepped into that opening and stomped down on the shaft.
Deok-bo shifted his weight backward as though trying not to lose the weapon.
I shoved the shaft hard in the direction he was pulling.
Dragged down by his own strength, Deok-bo toppled to the ground.
I was about to drive my sword down into the fallen Deok-bo.
Whoosh!
My body rolled across the ground before I could even think.
An arrow embedded itself in the dirt where my back had been moments earlier.
The archer.
The one holding the field of view from the high rock was the most dangerous.
"Move! Don't overlap with him!"
The archer shouted and set another arrow to the string.
One shoulder turned about half an inch to the left.
It was a habit of correcting their aim just before firing.
At the sound of the bowstring, I moved half a step to the right.
The arrow pierced my left sleeve and buried itself in the dirt behind me.
If I had moved half a step less, it would have hit my forearm.
"What the hell is this bastard?"
"Why can't we hit him?"
Fear entered the wandering martial vagabonds' voices for the first time.
"Damn it! He's not a Demonic Cult grunt! He's a demonic warrior! A demonic warrior disguised as a grunt!"
"He's not worth two taels?"
"This isn't the time to worry about that! Shut up and surround him!"
Jae-bok bared his teeth and shouted.
In an instant, three of them surrounded me and closed in.
Jae-bok, Deok-bo, and Mal-su.
Behind me was a steep slope.
Above me, the archer's arrows pinned down my feet.
* * *
Jae-bok's saber was different from the others'.
Its trajectory stayed low like a snake as it aimed for my knee joint.
It was a blade that had become part of Jae-bok's body after decades of fighting.
Jae-bok was at least second-rate.
I could see the path of the blade.
But my exhausted feet could not follow.
A burning sting.
The saber grazed my shin and peeled away a layer of skin.
Jae-bok turned his wrist and used that momentum to slash upward at my jaw.
It was a continuous attack that flowed from below to above like water.
A common bread-and-butter form used by second-rate wandering martial vagabonds.
And it was the same as with the sickle spear.
The second upward slash looked distinctly slower than the first.
Once I had seen a blade, it slowed from the second strike onward.
I bent my upper body back, and the saber tip passed within an inch beneath my chin.
"You bastard!"
Jae-bok's eyes widened.
"Take his legs! We don't need him alive!"
At the same time, the sickle spear came down toward my shoulder.
I raised my sword diagonally and blocked it.
Clang!
My palm went numb as if it had been torn open.
It was the fifth of the six movements in Demonic Cult grunt training.
The only defense I had was one I had swung at empty air a hundred times.
I did not have the strength to repel that power twice.
I was outmatched in both strength and numbers.
If I could not win in an honest fight, I needed another card.
I felt around inside my clothes and found flint and an oil bottle.
I had packed them intending to start a counterfire in Blue Stone Valley, but I had never used them.
There was only one bottle of oil.
There would be only one chance.
I guided aside the sickle spear's momentum and deliberately retreated half a step.
In that gap, I pulled out the oil bottle with my left hand.
"What's that?"
"Liquor? Is he drinking at a time like this?"
There was only one target.
The head of the torch in Deok-bo's left hand.
I flicked my wrist and threw the whole bottle.
The oil bottle spun through the air and struck the torch head squarely.
Crash.
Fwoosh!
The oil-soaked flame swelled to twice its size and covered Deok-bo's arm and shoulder.
"Aaaagh!"
Deok-bo flailed both arms while on fire and stumbled between his companions.
The smell of burning flesh drifted through the night air.
It was the smell I had breathed in all night at Blue Stone Valley.
This time, I was the one making it.
"Get away! Get away from me!"
Mal-su stumbled backward in terror and fell.
Even the hunting dog tucked its tail and fled into the darkness, startled by the flames.
"Calm down! There's only one of him!"
Jae-bok kicked the struggling Deok-bo down and shoveled dirt over the flames with bare hands.
"Roll! Roll, you idiot!"
Amid that chaos, the remaining torch fell and was trampled out.
Darkness came for them.
Eyes accustomed to torchlight became blind before sudden darkness.
Mine did not.
From the beginning, I had kept my eyes only on the darkness, avoiding the torches.
Taking advantage of the confusion, I silently rolled past them.
"Where did he go? Where is he?"
"The torches! Light the torches again!"
"Who has the flint?"
"I don't know! It's in the pack! I can't see where the pack is!"
With trembling hands, they would not be able to light a fire even if they held flint.
Only the archer on the rock seemed to hold their breath and listen.
I picked up a stone at my feet and threw it into the bushes on the opposite side.
Rustle.
Whoosh!
The instant the sound came, the archer released the string.
"Argh!"
The arrow buried itself in Mal-su's thigh, where Mal-su had fallen near the escape route.
"You lunatic! It's me! Me!"
"Don't move! Anything moving is him!"
Mal-su swung the spear toward the darkness at the way out.
I could have cut Mal-su's throat.
I did not.
A frightened person would not chase me.
If I caused one more disturbance, even my chance to escape would vanish.
I brushed past Mal-su and slipped into the darkness.
One final choke point remained.
Jae-bok.
That old fox did not scream even in the darkness.
It seemed Jae-bok had guessed the only escape route was toward the sound of water and lay in ambush there.
Without a sound, the saber shot low from the darkness toward my knees.
It was the same trajectory I had encountered for the third time tonight.
I could see the third blade even with my eyes closed.
I guided the blade aside with the flat of my sword and drove my shoulder into Jae-bok's exposed chest.
Jae-bok toppled over with a groan.
Before Jae-bok could recover, I vanished into the darkness beyond the rushing sound of water.
Behind me, I heard Jae-bok laugh from where he had fallen into the mud.
It was laughter that seemed to mingle fear with the hollow disappointment of losing prey that had been practically caught.
The stream was a little over twenty steps wide.
The late autumn water was only knee-deep, yet it chilled me to the bone.
I jumped into the water and walked downstream.
My soaked straw sandals became as heavy as a thousand catties, so I took them off and hung them around my neck.
Gravel dug into my bare soles.
My scent and tracks ended here.
Jae-bok's shout echoed off the night sky from the slope behind me.
"Black Hilt! I, Son Jae-bok, will remember that sword well! The next day we meet, I'll collect your neck and that sword together!"
I did not answer.
I walked silently with the current.
Only after walking for an hour did I leave the water and cling to the mountainside.
My legs shook so badly that I collapsed three times along the way.
Each time, the thing inside my chest seemed to push at my back, telling me not to fall.
* * *
At dawn, I crouched beneath a large rock and examined my wounds.
Two rows of hunting dog bite marks had sunk deeply into my left forearm, tearing the flesh.
A layer of skin had been peeled from my shin by Son Jae-bok's saber.
My ribs, bruised from rolling down the slope, ached every time I breathed.
I tore a long strip from the hemp clothes beneath my outer garment with my sword and wrapped it around my forearm.
When the cloth was not enough, I tore off the end of my arrow-pierced sleeve and added it on.
I washed the wounds with cold water, then bit the knot and pulled it tight.
It hurt, and it was miserable.
Still, I had survived.
The day before yesterday, I had escaped Blue Stone Valley's fiery hell without a single serious injury.
Yet after one night, not a single part of my body was whole.
The Book of the Martial God had protected me from flames and smoke.
Teeth and blades were different.
The Book showed me the next move and opened up gaps.
But my exhausted body could not keep up with that insight.
The blood I had shed last night was the price of that gap.
The answer was clear.
I needed a body capable of handling what my eyes saw.
For that, I needed martial arts.
I needed a cultivation method for inner qi to gather in my sinews.
I needed forms so my blade knew where to go.
The Ghost Sword Art sleeping three hundred li to the northwest had become even more urgent than it had been yesterday.
There was one more thing to consider.
A strange sensation had lingered throughout last night's fight.
The youngster's spear had felt far too familiar.
The instant it came thrusting in, I had felt certain that I knew that flow.
Unlike with the Plum Blossom Sword, not a single name of a form had surfaced last night.
What was different?
The warriors in white martial robes blocking the entrance had all used swords from the same root.
Those movements had unfolded together, revealing that sword's entire framework.
The wandering martial vagabonds from last night, on the other hand, had used whatever suited them, without any lineage.
There was no framework, so there were no names.
There was only one conclusion.
The artifact inside me did not read the person using martial arts. It read the principles of martial arts.
And it seemed to do so only when the martial arts had a framework and system.
Holding my sword, I stood and slowly imitated Son Jae-bok's continuous attack from the afterimage in my mind: crouching low to cut at the knee, then turning the wrist to slash upward at the jaw.
It was clumsy.
Yet even in that clumsy movement, I could picture the path the sword should take.
My hand was faintly following along, sensing where to apply force and at what angle to turn my wrist.
‘How could there be a way to steal and learn someone else's martial arts just by watching?’
It was the thought I had when I erased the Plum Blossom Sword between the rocks yesterday.
Impossible things kept becoming reality.
I still did not know what this was.
But one thing was certain.
The artifact was recording every bit of the martial knowledge I saw from others.
Suddenly, I regretted not being able to search the wandering martial vagabonds' packs last night.
In my flight, I had not even managed to take a piece of jerky.
It felt strange to count loose change and food in this living hell.
Only six days ago, I had been a modern person worrying about the expiration dates on triangular rice balls.
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