The Heaven-Slaying Sword - Chapter 18

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Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ The Heaven-Slaying Sword ◈

Chapter 18: Chapter Three - Companions, Ghost Valley (3)

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The battle did not last long.

No, it ended so quickly that it would be fair to call it instantaneous.

Swish.

The Human-Faced Spider lay dead, split cleanly in two.

Its carapace had melted away in several places, while its head had been crushed as though struck by something.

The melted portions were the result of its failure to withstand Dang Hwa-seo's Poisonous Qi despite being a spirit creature. The bisection, naturally, had been Mok Ri-won's work.

Dang Hwa-seo took a deep breath and absorbed the Human-Faced Spider's lingering poison from the air.

'Excellent.'

Since fleeing, this was one of the first times she had tasted poison this rich.

It had taken time to adapt, but in the end, it had allowed her to increase her Inner power.

That was not all.

The Human-Faced Spider was clearly a spirit creature with a poison gland.

If she extracted and refined that gland, it could become quite a fine medicinal elixir.

As she continued that train of thought, Dang Hwa-seo let out a soft laugh.

'For someone who resents them so much, I certainly make good use of their martial arts.'

She had poured out her resentment toward the Tang Clan, yet she was still taking full advantage of their martial arts. The contradiction struck her as oddly amusing.

Still, Dang Hwa-seo did not feel any self-loathing over it.

More than anyone, she knew they were not people she could afford to face with pointless pride.

'I must use everything I can.'

Having sorted through her thoughts, Dang Hwa-seo looked at Mok Ri-won.

"Mmph!"

Mok Ri-won had already sheathed his sword and was staring at her with sparkling eyes.

The poison-repelling bead was firmly clamped between his teeth, but Dang Hwa-seo somehow felt she knew exactly what he was trying to say.

'He is going to start going on about prestigious Noble Clan martial arts again.'

What had he done after learning she belonged to the Tang Clan?

For three full hours, he had bombarded her with questions until she thought she would lose her mind.

This would surely be more of the same.

'That poison-repelling bead is working very hard.'

Dang Hwa-seo smiled.

Mok Ri-won swung his arms around before raising a thumbs-up.

There was only one reason.

Just as Dang Hwa-seo had expected, he was once again awestruck by her martial arts.

"I understand that you want to make a fuss, but save it for now. Isn't there something we need to collect?"

"Mmph!"

"I'll extract the inner core and poison gland. Go wait far over there."

Mok Ri-won hurried toward the cave entrance.

How could someone reveal every emotion so clearly just through the way they ran? Dang Hwa-seo shook her head at his retreating back and began her work.

* * *

When they left the cave, the damp, foul-smelling air greeted them once again.

As they rested near the entrance, Dang Hwa-seo showed Mok Ri-won the inner core she had taken from the cave.

It was exactly the same size as the candied fruit Mok Ri-won had eaten before they entered the valley.

"I'll give this to you, Young Hero Mok."

"Mmph?!"

Mok Ri-won jolted in surprise.

Then he waved his arms around as if his conscience would not allow him to accept it.

Even in a situation like this, he worried about fairness. It was very like him.

Dang Hwa-seo chuckled and forced the inner core into his hand.

"The poison gland is enough for me. In truth, medicine made by refining that gland will help my body more than an inner core like this. Besides, we would never have found this spirit creature without you, Young Hero Mok."

He was far too innocent.

A martial artist should at least know how to claim a fair share, yet he was so softhearted that she worried he would be cheated wherever he went.

"Understood? In situations like this, you need to settle the account properly."

"Mmph...!"

Mok Ri-won's face looked as though he had been deeply moved.

Seeing his eyes grow wet, Dang Hwa-seo inadvertently thought of something.

'...A little mutt.'

He was like a little mutt that would brighten up and wag its tail the moment someone tossed him a snack.

It was a rude thought.

Having decided as much, Dang Hwa-seo quickly pushed it from her mind.

Then Mok Ri-won, whose eyes had been gleaming the whole time, spat out the poison-repelling bead and spoke.

"Thank you, Miss! I could never repay this kindness, even if I lived a lifetime! With a grateful heart, I'll..."

"With a grateful heart?"

Blink, blink.

Mok Ri-won considered what to say next, then gave his answer.

"I'll become a splendid chivalrous hero!"

Surely there was nothing better than returning another's goodwill with even greater goodwill.

Dang Hwa-seo burst out laughing at his absurd answer.

"That's enough. Let's get up. From here on, we need to move quickly."

"Mmph!"

Mok Ri-won had already put the poison-repelling bead back in his mouth.

The two began walking through the Valley of Meager Blood again.

* * *

They were in high spirits after their unexpected gain.

Dang Hwa-seo was delighted by the poison gland stored inside her robes, while Mok Ri-won was thrilled by an experience straight out of a story.

All they had to do was leave the Valley of Meager Blood, and it would be over.

Focused only on that happy future, the two failed to consider something.

This was the Valley of Meager Blood.

A place where countless commoners had died in the Bloody Affair over twenty years ago.

A place no group had entered since the Bloody Affair.

The village they reached still held the horrors of that time exactly as they had been.

"..."

Mok Ri-won's cheerful expression darkened.

Dang Hwa-seo felt the same.

The traces were so horrific that one could tell what had happened here with only a quick look. Her expression suddenly contorted.

'How terrible.'

This was completely different from the corpses of martial artists she had seen until now.

Ruins.

That was the best way to describe the rotting shantytown, soaked everywhere in blackened, hardened blood.

And that was not all.

Every corpse had become bare bones with its back turned toward the center of the village, as though each person had tried and failed to flee. Some skeletons lay scattered about while clutching each other or facing away from one another.

It was right to call this the site of a one-sided massacre.

Dang Hwa-seo frowned deeply as she surveyed the place, then looked at Mok Ri-won.

"...Young Hero?"

She called to him, wondering if the sight had shocked him, but he did not answer.

Mok Ri-won only stood there with a somber face, taking it all in.

Step.

He moved forward.

For some reason, Dang Hwa-seo felt she should not stop him and quietly followed behind.

'What is he doing?'

Mok Ri-won studied the bones, then examined the area around them.

He inspected the village, taking in every strange mark, every broken shack, and even the rusted farming tools scattered here and there.

That was it.

Mok Ri-won was now imagining what had happened here.

He recalled what Mok Seon-o had told him about the Valley of Meager Blood when he turned thirteen.

"Did you save the commoners there?"

"...I saved as many as I could. But I could not save everyone."

"Then..."

Mok Seon-o had smiled bitterly that day.

Mok Ri-won knew when the always-proud chivalrous hero wore such an expression.

It was when he mourned things he could not change through his own strength.

"Do you know, Won? There are people in this world who have been driven so close to the edge that they have nowhere left to run. There are people who run and run, yet see no way to survive, until they want to give up."

"Were those commoners like that?"

"Yes. They were people who fled into the mountains because they could not even hold enough crops in their hands to pay their taxes. They had nowhere else to go."

"Could you not evacuate them...?"

"I could not evacuate them. No, they did not want it. They had nowhere left to run."

He had been young.

That was why he had asked a question.

"Could they not fight back...?"

"I should teach you this as well."

"Yes?"

Mok Ri-won recalled what Mok Seon-o had said that day while looking at the fallen leaves in the front yard.

"Not everyone in this world can resist the hardships that come upon them."

"Why not?"

"Because they are weak. Even resisting takes strength, so all they can do is cry out. But..."

"But?"

"...Even when they are so pitiful, the world does not listen to the voices of the weak."

* * *

Mok Ri-won wandered through the village, examining its traces one by one.

'This was a fabric shop.'

Was it right to call it that?

There was nothing but rags that scarcely deserved to be called scraps of leather or cloth, but the fact that they had been laid out and left to rot suggested it was.

When he turned his head, he saw a table that looked like a counter.

Beneath it lay a black, dried substance that could no longer be identified.

Perhaps it had been grass or medicinal herbs.

It might even have been the village's currency.

At the center of the fabric shop was a skeleton with its neck bone missing.

It had probably tried to protect this shabby store.

Mok Ri-won stared at it for a long time before moving on to the butcher's shop beside it.

There was not a scrap of meat remaining, yet he was certain it had been a butcher's shop because of the skeleton lying there.

A butcher's knife was gripped in the sprawled skeleton's hand, while hooks that had likely held meat hung along the wall. There was no other conclusion to draw.

'This commoner must have tried to protect their shop as well.'

Mok Ri-won continued onward.

Past several shacks that appeared to have served as shops, then through homes, and finally toward the outskirts.

Dang Hwa-seo watched him with concern.

The man's steps did not stop as he pictured the tragedy in his mind, and the woman watching him finally spoke.

"Young Hero Mok, enough..."

They needed to leave now.

She knew the devastation here pained him, but if they let those feelings delay them, all their plans would be ruined.

Just as she was about to say so,

Step.

A sound came from the distance.

It was so blatantly artificial that it could only have been footsteps.

The two martial artists, both with keen Qi Sense, looked toward its source.

Then they saw it.

"A girl?"

A young girl.

It made no sense, but before them was a young girl peeking her head out from behind a building.

Tap!

The girl ran away.

It happened too quickly for them to make out her features.

But what did that matter?

Mok Ri-won turned toward where she had gone.

Dang Hwa-seo stopped him.

"Wait. Something is suspicious."

She stared straight at Mok Ri-won.

"There cannot be a girl here. The Valley of Meager Blood was destroyed twenty years ago, and as you can feel yourself, it is filled with deathly energy and Poisonous Qi. Commoners cannot enter a place like this. There must be something else at work."

Mok Ri-won looked silently at Dang Hwa-seo, then spat out the poison-repelling bead.

"But it was definitely a girl."

"More precisely, it might have been a girl."

Mok Ri-won's brow furrowed slightly.

"What do you mean...?"

"What did we see before entering this place?"

"...A spirit creature."

"That's right. A spirit creature that should not have existed here."

Dang Hwa-seo told him the deduction that had come to her from the strange chain of events she had only now noticed.

"It has only been twenty years. That is nowhere near enough time for a spirit creature to be born and grow that large. Before seeing that girl, I thought the spirit creature had moved here from elsewhere, but..."

The girl they had just seen.

That indicated one clear possibility.

"...Someone may have placed that spirit creature there. To guard this place."

"Then that means..."

"It might not be a girl. No, it might not even be human, just like the spirit creature."

Dang Hwa-seo thought there was a secret here, one someone wanted to hide.

And it was probably a secret that would bring them no benefit to uncover.

"If it isn't human, then what is it?"

"There is one possibility."

Dang Hwa-seo looked toward the building behind which the girl had vanished.

"This land is saturated with deathly energy and Poisonous Qi. There are only human corpses here. And there is something in a human shape."

Mok Ri-won understood what Dang Hwa-seo was trying to say.

"...A jiangshi."

She was saying that the girl might be a jiangshi created by the peculiar nature of this Ghost Valley.

* * *

Their standoff lasted a long time.

Dang Hwa-seo prayed that, just this once, he would not let his strange curiosity take hold. Mok Ri-won sank into deep thought and could not meet her eyes.

It was a tense moment.

Dang Hwa-seo even squeezed her eyes shut as she continued to pray, but in the end, her wish was not granted.

"...I still have to go."

"Young Hero Mok, please!"

"What if she really is a girl? What if she wandered in here by mistake?"

"Then she would have asked us for help!"

"Perhaps she took us for villains."

"...Enough!"

Dang Hwa-seo shouted and thought,

'I need to be firm.'

It was not impossible, but it was only a possibility in the loosest sense.

If she gave in to this man's stubbornness, they could be walking into needless danger.

"We must leave this place. We have already killed the Human-Faced Spider. If we remain here, we may encounter the person who brought that spirit creature here! No, the thing wearing that girl's shape may have appeared as bait!"

Of course, there was an absurd difference in difficulty between killing a spirit creature and transporting one alive.

They could not rule out the possibility that whoever had done this was at the very end of the transcendent peak realm, or even a martial artist of the Transcendent Realm.

"Young Hero Mok, chivalric idealism is all well and good, but you must always remember this. In the Martial World, the people one must be most wary of are the elderly, women, and children."

"..."

"Answer me!"

Mok Ri-won's lips remained tightly sealed.

A vein throbbed at the back of Dang Hwa-seo's neck.

Dang Hwa-seo had usually indulged his stubbornness, but she could not give in this time. Just as she was about to speak again,

"Miss, what you say is morally right."

Mok Ri-won said that.

"But from a chivalrous hero's standpoint, it is wrong."

Thud.

Dang Hwa-seo froze.

She was so dumbfounded that she almost laughed.

"What..."

"Miss, there is something I have always wondered about."

Mok Ri-won passed Dang Hwa-seo and slowly walked toward where the girl had disappeared.

"I know what you are saying. What could be more frightening than villains disguised as the weak? What could be more vicious than they are? You are completely right that we must be wary of them."

"Young Hero Mok..."

"But then, does that not make things strange?"

Mok Ri-won stopped walking.

"A chivalrous hero protects the weak. A chivalrous hero serves as a shield for the weak. If that is what a chivalrous hero is, then following your words means that such a hero must be wary of the weak."

Mok Ri-won spoke the thoughts that had come to him.

It was not a question he had held for only a short time.

This concern had stayed with him ever since he resolved to become a chivalrous hero and heard the Beggar King's many sayings about the Martial World.

"A chivalrous hero protects the weak. Yet the weak are the people a chivalrous hero must be cautious of. If so, then..."

It was a question he had never been able to answer.

"If we are wary of those to whom we should show Chivalry, then for whom is that Chivalry meant?"

Mok Ri-won looked at Dang Hwa-seo.

His smile was bitter.

Dang Hwa-seo stood frozen.

She had countless things to say.

That this was a special situation where his words did not apply. That what he said could end up defending villains. That such idealism would not keep him alive.

But Dang Hwa-seo could only swallow every argument that came to mind.

Because what he had said was right.

Because she, too, had been saved by such righteousness.

Since none of the countless words in her mind could come out, Dang Hwa-seo moved her lips before sighing and asking another question.

"...There is at least a ninety percent chance it is not human."

"Then there is still a ten percent chance."

"You would be walking into danger with a ninety percent chance of dying."

Dang Hwa-seo clenched her fists.

Even she knew it was not a rational question, but she still asked.

"...What will you do if it is a trap?"

Mok Ri-won's eyes widened.

Then they curved into crescents again.