WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈
Chapter 43: Clinging to State Power (1)
──────
I snapped back at that absurd remark.
“Has your brain rotted? If you wanted to act like an assassin, you shouldn't have chosen such a stupid alias!”
He did not answer. Still smiling, he merely gripped a throwing knife and charged.
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner moved swiftly. He was clearly a level above me. But.
“You fucking bastard!”
Jaksu's Blazing Sun Palm flared to life once more. I had not dragged out the conversation for no reason. The plan had been to buy Jaksu enough time to gather internal energy.
A line of fire scorched across the dark mountain road. From the side, it must have resembled a fire dragon swimming through the air.
“Ha ha, now that’s hot!”
He lightly kicked off the ground and somersaulted through the air, brushing past the dragon's scales as he slipped out of the Blazing Sun Palm's path. His sleeve was slightly singed, but he was unhurt.
Still, his charge had been stopped.
“White Sword Squad! Everyone, get up! Gather around the transport carriage and form up! The enemy is the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner!”
The situation was urgent enough that most White Sword Squad members were already awake, though some still did not know exactly what was happening.
Jaksu shouted only what was necessary. The wandering martial artists rushed over and drew their swords.
“Ha-ha! Do you rabble, barely Second-rate, think you can face me?”
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner slowly moved his throwing knife from left to right.
Jaksu stood at the far left, and I stood at the far right.
“You two are about the only ones who can give me a proper fight. Still, even if both of you come at me, you have little hope of catching me.”
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner shrugged, as if we already knew that.
It was true. Jaksu's Blazing Sun Palm from moments ago had been the best strike the two of us could prepare, in both power and speed.
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner had laughed as he avoided it, even joking that it would have been bad if it had hit him.
At the very least, he was in the Transcendent Peak realm.
“I went through the list, and five people here will survive. They're quite lucky.”
Calling the White Sword Squad members by name one after another, the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner told them they could leave. He would not pursue or kill them, so they should simply return alive.
“Are you mocking us?”
Jaksu spoke with flames coiling around both hands. The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner smiled and shook his head.
“Of course not. They did not extinguish any lamps, so killing them would violate the rule I set. How could a martial artist stain his own martial arts?”
“Even though your rule has been completely exposed, you're still going to kill us?”
I wanted to sigh. Judging by the Life-and-Death Gambler, some lunatics became so obsessed with their own “aesthetics” that their obsession went beyond the bounds of ordinary common sense.
I had thought exposing his rule so openly might make him say, “What a shame. We'll meet again another time!” and retreat.
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner's relaxed expression darkened slightly. He looked like an office worker worn down by the hardships of working life.
“Ah, regrettably. I'd like to do that! If this were something I did for fun, I would have pulled out long ago. But this isn't a hobby. It's work, and the people who need killing must be killed.”
Several clues came together in my mind.
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner had come under contract to kill someone among us.
That person was one of those who had stood night watch.
And the contract was controlled by someone stronger than the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner, whether in authority or ability.
I decided to take a gamble. Though it was not much of one.
“A high official of the Black Lotus Society must have taken great offense at our Captain’s progress.”
The Martial Alliance and the Black Lotus Society were the two great powers dividing the current martial world. If an assassination mission could mobilize an expert like that, there was an eighty percent chance it had been commissioned by either the Martial Alliance or the Black Lotus Society.
Usually, the Black Lotus Society alone accounted for eighty percent. The remaining twenty percent consisted of private contracts born from deep grudges.
Those statistics came from the mission records of the Black and White Martial Heroes Chronicle's Age of Chaos. The Chaotic World and the Age of Chaos were not identical, but from what I had seen with my own eyes so far, the Martial Alliance was more likely to challenge someone to a life-and-death duel head-on than attempt an assassination.
Still, Jaksu had once said that his master had been killed by the Martial Alliance.
‘So maybe a fifteen percent chance for the Martial Alliance and sixty-five percent for the Black Lotus Society?’
“It’s hard to discuss my client when that isn’t my story to tell!”
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner smiled and flicked his sleeve, scattering something pale through the air. Poison?
The flames Jaksu scattered burned away the fine, mist-like powder, shielding the White Sword Squad members. Yet the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner kept smiling.
“People have two arms!”
He brought his right hand near his left sleeve and called out as if taunting us.
Tch...
Honestly, I had a feeling ordinary poison would not work on me. My altered constitution could even absorb Demonic Qi, so I did not think normal poison could affect me.
The problem was that martial artists who practiced poison arts were not satisfied with ordinary poisons.
If it were something readily available, like snake venom or spider venom, that would be one thing. But they used the poisonous energy accumulated inside their bodies to refine poison to an entirely higher level.
I knew because I had tried it several times in the Black and White Martial Heroes Chronicle. Why would masters capable of chewing up biological or mineral poisons fear sects focused on poison arts, such as the Sichuan Tang Clan or the Five Poisons Sect?
Even if one was immune to ten thousand poisons, they still needed to fear those who could make a ten-thousand-and-first poison.
“Doesn't using poison arts go against your aesthetics? If you scatter it indiscriminately, people qualified to live might die too.”
“That's why I gave them a chance to run!”
Hah. That was not going to work.
Every prediction I had made had gone wrong. Yet I smiled. I had bought enough time.
“Then I'll give you a chance too.”
“Huh. What chance? Before you speak, remember one thing. Only an expert can speak of granting something to an inferior.”
“A chance to run.”
I deliberately stepped forward with a proud, dignified air.
“Do you know what might be hidden in my left sleeve, yet still dare approach?”
“Poison.”
“Are you planning to burst a poison pouch and poison me? So you're prepared to die together! What a shame. I have plenty of poison-repelling pearls.”
At that moment, a voice transmission reached me.
[Is that the bastard?]
I nodded.
“Yooou bastard!”
A majestic force shook the mountains. A single stamping technique swept through the surroundings like an earthquake, and an ominous sound rang from the mountainside, as if a landslide might begin at any moment.
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner was startled for the first time. The stamping technique was one thing, but at the same time, a jet-black spear shot toward him.
He avoided the direct hit with that strange, spinning footwork of his, but the spot where the spear struck was gouged out as though it had been hit by a cannonball.
An elderly man clad in gold-trimmed armor strode out of the forest.
“A hooligan who couldn't even pass the military examination dares oppress decent citizens?”
* * *
Whew. Fortunately, he was not too late.
Jaksu saw the sudden appearance of the expert, then noticed my sigh of relief and sent me a voice transmission.
[Who is that?!]
[An Embroidered Uniform Guard Commissioner.]
[What?]
A high-ranking official who had no reason to be here. Jaksu seemed confused. I turned my attention back to the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner.
“Huh. Old man, don't you know Noninterference Between Officials and Martial Artists? Has age made you senile?”
“You're the one who doesn't know that this realm belongs to His Majesty. You dare defile His Majesty's grounds with such vile poison?”
The reason Commissioner Baek had come here was simple.
On the day Daebok died, I immediately wrote a message in blood in the Records Officer's booklet, formally known as the Heart-Succession Secret Book.
It said that some lunatic seemed to be hunting people down and killing them.
A Martial Alliance member had been assassinated. Naturally, I considered the possibility that the Black Lotus Society stood behind it, then faithfully carried out the new employee training's instruction to prioritize my own life.
To protect my life, I needed to focus on defense, and as the sages of old said, the best defense was a preemptive attack.
I did not think I could handle the killer with my own abilities, so I had been about to call in a senior so we could beat the bastard up together.
That was why I had judged that I had a way to respond, even on the off chance he really was a highly skilled lunatic.
『But there aren't any Records Officers dispatched around Cheongang Mountain....
Wait a moment. The special physician said there is someone nearby whom you know.』
It was Commissioner Baek.
He was still pursuing Muun. Because her trail had scattered midway, Commissioner Baek's subordinates had split up to continue the pursuit. Whether by coincidence or not, Commissioner Baek himself had been near Iron-Steel Mountain.
The special physician contacted Commissioner Baek through a secret channel shared by those who had been granted an audience with the Emperor. When Commissioner Baek heard that I was being threatened by an unidentified assassin, he readily set out, saying he would repay the favor he owed me.
“Didn't I say I would give you a chance to run?”
I returned the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner's smile.
“Huh, would you look at that. Since when has the Formation Array Research Department been associating with the imperial dogs?”
The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner's provocation was casual. He seemed to have given up now.
“When you study formation arrays, you're bound to become acquainted with Daoists, and Daoists of high virtue naturally become connected to the imperial court. You should've lived a little more decently, hm?”
I returned his provocation with one of my own. The Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner looked around once, then sighed.
“Best not to associate with blood-crazed dogs. I'll leave it at this for today.”
“Do you truly think you can flee from the Embroidered Uniform Guard?”
“Oh, I can flee from the Embroidered Uniform Guard. The one I truly can’t flee from is the Emperor.”
You should know that better than anyone, old man.
With that chilling remark, the Lamp-Extinguishing Executioner swept his left sleeve. Unlike before, a pitch-black fog burst forth and covered the area.
“Hup!”
A spear flew. It pierced the black fog and punched through a tree as thick as a person’s full arm span. Blood stained the spear, but no person was impaled upon it.
Author's Note
On the off chance he really was a highly skilled lunatic who only killed people according to rules he had set for himself...
“I still have a way to deal with that.” - Chapter 41, Among Us (1)
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried