- Clash
So-un drew his sword and stepped in front of the Grand General.
He meant to shield him.
The armor weighed heavily on his shoulders, and the soil of the gravesite crumbled beneath his boots, yet So-un did not retreat a single inch.
His back was still that of a young warrior not fully grown, and yet upon that back clung a vow that needed no words.
It felt as if a duty he had never been formally taught had already been engraved into his body before he ever stepped onto the battlefield.
The General is mine to guard.
His face carried the certainty of one who required no explanation for such a resolve.
Jin Muwang read So-un’s intention and gave a faint smile.
It was brief, holding neither praise nor rebuke.
It was simply the expression of a man who accepted the resolve before him.
“You brat… you learned the Chongram.”
So-un lowered his blade into a ready stance.
The tip settled low, his wrist bent ever so slightly, and his toes measured the earth as an angle formed beneath him.
Jin Muwang drew his long sword in the opposite direction.
The blade he unsheathed was the sword bestowed upon him by the Emperor when he set out on campaign.
The sound of steel leaving its scabbard altered the air around them.
The resonance of iron cutting through space always recalled the battlefield, and this time it summoned the memory of the imperial court.
There was one who recognized that sword.
He was the one who had opposed the attack.
Through the haze of incense-thickened air, he swallowed as he saw the glint of that imperial steel.
Which was closer to truth—the sword bearing the Emperor’s decree, or the shadowed command to kill the man who held it?
The sword had been given openly; the assassination came cloaked.
The gift was public; the order was hidden.
Yet in the palace, public and hidden often emerged from the same hand.
There is no absolute right in the affairs of men.
There is only what stands closer.
The order that descends directly is closer, and those who survive by clinging to others have no choice but to obey what is nearest.
Those closest are often the cruelest.
Such is the way of the world, and those who strike in that proximity wield cruel methods, staking their lives because survival demands it.
Cruelty is dressed as courage.
Survival is wrapped in the language of loyalty.
“Huh… what is this… I can’t see clearly.”
The captain’s voice broke out roughly.
Before the words had fully faded, the smoke thickened once more.
The formation created by the incense Jin Muwang had placed at the four points was simple, yet it blurred clarity in a peculiar way.
It was structured so plainly that one might suspect the influence of Zhuge Liang’s stratagems.
Only a few sticks of incense had been arranged according to the principles of the Five Phases and the Nine Palaces, and yet the space turned mist-laden.
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Nothing was entirely hidden.
Instead, lingering afterimages formed, preventing a fixed determination of the target.
The drifting smoke clearly affected the formation.
Light diffused through smoke and array, scattering wide so that no precise mark could be chosen.
They knew the two stood at the center of the formation, yet their exact positions would not settle.
They were visible.
And yet as if veiled by fog, their shapes widened and blurred.
The smoke trembled like heat haze.
It created the difficulty of never allowing certainty.
The eye perceived, yet judgment failed to land.
The sword was drawn, but there was no definite place for its tip to pierce.
Hesitation profits no one.
Attack must come—from this side or that.
The captain thrust his narrow twin-edged blade into the smoke before him.
It was less an assault than a signal.
I begin. Now you follow.
Thus the thrust was shallow.
Its shallowness was cruel, for it was not meant to kill but to commence.
More than ten figures launched themselves at once.
It was a merciless strike aimed solely at the target.
A technique unconcerned with the preservation of one’s own life.
Block one blade, another would thrust.
Evade that, and a third would follow.
Within the square formation there was no avenue of escape.
Twelve blades filled one another’s gaps and descended like a single beast.
They were not warriors of open battle.
They were craftsmen of fatal openings.
So-un widened his mind.
To occupy space while parrying thrusts from every direction required more than two hands.
Thus he extended not his arms, but his awareness.
He inhaled deeply, viewing the world through a broadened perception.
Verses he had chanted and breathed through for days resurfaced unbidden.
From the center of his chest, power spread like a great sea.
That force filled the spaces between bone and joint and bound the air before him into a unified field.
With that force he drew the first form of ???? horizontally and slowly.
So-un’s blade moved with measured dignity, while the attackers’ swords were swift and vicious.
In the time he completed one sweep, dozens of thrusts could have pierced the vacant spaces.
They aimed precisely at throat, armpit, inner thigh, wrist.
It was not the fall of a man they sought, but the erasure of every path by which he might survive.
Yet the lines of their blades were strange.
So-un could see where each thrust would come.
Not merely know—see.
The movements differed, but the paths were the same.
It was the Chongram, the crude imperial art once mocked as incomplete.
What So-un had learned was not a finished sword, but the reading of structure and gap.
Thus he saw not many different attacks, but one repeated habit of the wrist.
Knowing the path, he could block it.
The enemy blades struck his as if drawn by magnet and were flung aside one by one.
Though they came from different angles, one form deflected twelve attacks born at different instants.
The formation aided him.
The blur revealed the shared pattern.
In obscurity, only the common line remained clear.
After So-un repelled the assault, Jin Muwang’s long blade swept in the same angle, widening the space So-un had secured.
Three who failed to retreat lost their heads.
Blood first arced like thread, then cascaded.
It poured upon the gravesite soil.
Incense yielded to iron scent.
“Attack. Now.”
The captain drove forward those who faltered at their comrades’ deaths.
So-un turned left, descending diagonally to cut through a shoulder.
Jin Muwang mirrored from the opposite side with the same form.
Their blades overlapped without collision.
Five lives vanished in an instant.
Soil darkened deeper.
Had they struck unseen and gone unnoticed, they might have prevailed.
But once revealed, the two could not be slain.
Still they advanced.
To halt meant death.
To press forward held the faintest hope of survival.
In a fleeting instant between exchanges, two blades pierced the vacant space.
There was no room to parry or retreat.
Jin Muwang deflected one with the sharp edge of his wrist guard and raised his sword to knock aside the other.
It was razor-thin timing.
He had fought like a lion amid tens of thousands.
These, however, were trained to kill men like him.
The chained assault allowed no breath.
Three more strikes came from behind, timed with mechanical precision.
One block invited two thrusts.
Two blocks invited three.
Exhaustion was the design.
So-un slid behind the General.
He angled one blade aside, caught another with his wrist shield.
The third—there was no way to stop it.
For a flash he recognized the similarity of their art.
The line of the narrow blade was visible.
This one could not be blocked.
“They are from the Imperial Palace.”
“Does the Emperor not welcome the General’s return?”
Time seemed suspended.
Helplessness tightened his eyes.
Death surfaced in imagination—the cold steel piercing flesh and muscle.
“I cannot stop it.”
Behind him the General severed another head.
He could not evade.
If he did, Jin Muwang would fall.
Then trust the armor.
Perhaps the needle-thin blade could not pierce it.
So-un offered his shoulder.
The blade grazed past.
“Why.”
It had been deliberate.
The line could have taken his throat.
Instead it shifted angle and slid by.
The attacker’s gaze flowed slowly.
Intentionally diverted.
Why?
The crack had formed.
So-un struck upward at the hands that held two directionless blades.
A wrist flew free.
Thought was many; motion was simple.
Five scouts charged from behind with polearms.
Two arrows flew from the left and felled assassins.
Hesitation meant death.
Four remained.
Blades flashed.
All fell.
Jin Muwang left one alive.
“Why?”
The man lifted his head.
“Why do you spare me?”
Jin Muwang stepped forward.
“You helped.
You warned us with the stone.
Without that, we would not have escaped the ambush.
Life for life.
I thank you.”
“How did you know?”
“Mud clings only to your toes from rolling the stone.
You could have killed the White Dragon’s heir, yet you turned your blade aside.
I knew it was you.
Did you come from the Palace?”