Chapter 35 : The Last Words of the Dead (5)

Creak!

Dongbak pushed open the stable door and entered.

It was early in the morning, so the stable door had not yet been opened… but he pushed the door as if to tear it down.

He had killed Ah Sam, but he didn’t feel good at all.

It felt as if someone had dug a trap in the middle of the road and filled it with feces, and he had foolishly fallen into it.

He felt sluggish, as if his whole body was covered in filth.

At any other time, he would have immediately chased after the one called Ah Geol. Or he would have drunk while watching the dead Ah Sam. Because then he would come.

This time, he was thinking of investigating them himself. That was how unsettled his mind was.

“Wh-who are you?”

A servant who was sweeping the yard with a broom asked, looking at Dongbak with a startled face. His expression said, what’s with this trouble so early in the morning?

Dongbak was not a muscular man. His body was small, and his limbs were thin. His head was large, his forehead was full of wrinkles, and his eyes were hooded, so his eyelids were half closed.

It seemed that he would fall down with just one tap.

“Ah Sam, Ah Geol were here?”

Dongbak asked, narrowing his eyes.

In that instant, a strange tension and a strange curiosity flickered on the servant’s face.

Looking at Dongbak, he didn’t look like a martial artist at all. He had a blade at his side, but it seemed that it could be ignored. He didn’t give off a fierce or ferocious feeling at all.

Should he ignore this person, or not? He didn’t seem to be a martial artist, but who was he? Seeing that he was asking about Ah Sam and Ah Geol, it seemed that he had come on an errand from a martial family, so should he answer politely?

How he should treat Dongbak, whether it would be a loss to answer politely… the momentary hesitation that arose when meeting a stranger was fully visible on his face.

Dongbak, still with his eyes narrowed, said, “First, guide me to the room where Ah Sam stayed.”

“Gui…de…me?”

The servant repeated Dongbak’s words in a displeased tone, as if he had made up his mind.

“You don’t want to guide me?”

“You look like a young brat, and you’re being unlucky so early in the morning… Ak!”

The servant screamed before he could finish his words.

Pak! Pak! Paak!

The sound of bones breaking rang out belatedly.

Dongbak had struck the servant three times.

His leg was broken with one kick. Another blow had crushed his ribs, and the following kick had knocked out his teeth.

“Aak! Ak! Aak!”

The servant fell down, screaming like a pig being slaughtered.

Blood flowed from his mouth. But without even thinking of stopping the blood, he looked at Dongbak with a pale face. He curled up his body, afraid that he would be hit again.

“You talk too much. It’s annoying. Guide me.”

Dongbak said to another servant without even looking at the fallen one.

“What? Yes!”

The servant who had received his gaze moved quickly.

“You only listen when you’re hit. That’s why you’re called a dog and a pig. It would be so much better if you listened when I said it nicely.”

Dongbak smirked and followed the servant who was leading the way.

Clatter!

The door opened.

The room where Ah Sam had stayed was no different from the rooms where any other servants stayed.

It was a small room, just big enough for one person to lie down and stretch their legs.

The four walls were made of mud.

There were two wooden nails hammered into the wall. It seemed to be a place where clothes were hung.

A single blanket was placed in a corner of the room. Other than that, there was not a single straw on the floor.

You would believe it even if you were told that no one had lived in this room.

‘…Hmm?’

Dongbak narrowed his eyes.

This room… he seemed to have seen it somewhere. He couldn’t remember, but it was an atmosphere he had felt somewhere.

‘Where did I see it?’

Dongbak tilted his head.

“Let’s go to the place where Ah Geol stayed.”

“Uh… Ah Geol lived in the stable.”

“…”

Dongbak looked at the servant as if to say, what are you talking about?

“Ah Geol lived in the stable. He was cooped up in the stable and never came out. Eating, drinking, sleeping, shitting… he did everything in the stable.”

“Is that so? Let’s go and see.”

“Yes!”

The servant moved quickly.

Dongbak entered the stable.

All the horse tack came into view at once. It was a stable that was even more well organized than Ah Sam’s room.

“Huhuhu!”

Dongbak laughed.

He roughly knew why the stable was clean.

It wasn’t that Ah Geol’s personality was particularly neat, or that he liked cleanliness, so he had kept it clean.

His master’s breath was imbued in the stable.

His master had always said to keep the places he stayed in clean.

He was a person who believed that if the surroundings were clean, the body and mind would also be clean.

Such an aspect could be seen in the stable. The cleanest in the dirtiest place.

Ah Geol had honed his master’s breath, the mindset of a martial artist, here.

Dongbak walked to the bed where Ah Geol was said to have stayed.

The bed was gone. When he had escaped the stable, he had even torn out the bed. The bed had been transformed into a cart, and had become a protective shield that had hidden the assassin until they reached the ferry.

Dongbak sat down in a corner of the stable.

“Uh… is there anything else you want me to do…?”

The servant asked.

“This place is a forbidden area until I leave. Tell them that. Only those who want to die should enter.”

“Yes, yes. I understand!”

The servant rushed out.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

People were moving.

As soon as Dongbak had entered the stable, the Living Sword Sect disciples had rushed in and surrounded the stable.

It was not their intention to attack Dongbak. It was to protect him.

They had surrounded the entire stable and had forbidden anyone from entering or leaving.

“All entry is forbidden until further notice!”

* * *

Ah Geol had trained in the Single-Instant Blade in the stable.

It was said that the two had been in Dongseung for less than two years. That meant that they had wandered around other places for over ten years.

There was no way of knowing where they had been.

It was said that they had worked very well since they had come here. It was said that if you entrusted a job to Ah Sam and Ah Geol, it would never go wrong. As if they had been stable boys for decades.

In particular, it was said that Ah Geol had taken good care of the horses.

Dongbak looked at the horses in the stable.

They were horses that had been touched by Ah Geol’s hand.

‘They’re good horses.’

Dongbak was impressed.

If you raised a good horse well, the person who saw it would be happy. But if you disguised a bad horse as a good horse, it would be impressive.

Ah Geol was the latter. To a person like Dongbak, a bad horse was immediately visible, but to an ordinary person, it would seem that there were only good horses. It was a clever disguise that had even changed the nature and form of the horse.

A person from the Single-Instant Sect could accurately grasp the condition of a horse with just one glance.

A horse with strong endurance, a horse with good explosive power, a horse with a bad temper, a gentle horse… you could feel it just by looking.

Looking at the muscles, the length of the legs, the eyes… there were countless grounds for judgment.

Grasping the opponent was one of the training processes of the Single-Instant Sect.

This kind of training was very important in the Single-Instant Sect.

If a fight was where two fought and one had to win, then grasping the opponent well was also a part of the fight. If you could grasp what kind of person the opponent was at a glance, you were already starting with half the victory.

When you just talked about martial arts, the opponent was omitted.

You just had to train the forms and cultivate your true energy by yourself.

A duel was also focused on whether you could skillfully execute the changes in the forms. You didn’t necessarily have to win against the opponent, and you didn’t need to grasp what the opponent’s physical condition was.

A fight was different.

You absolutely had to grasp the opponent.

You had to know what condition they were in yesterday, and what condition they were in today. It would be even better if you could grasp what condition they would be in tomorrow. An accurate judgment would allow you to make a winning decision. If it seemed that tomorrow would be worse than today, you had to fight tomorrow.

You absolutely had to win a fight.

Thanks to the training of grasping the opponent, the martial artists of the Single-Instant Sect were good at reading people.

Even if it was an opponent they were seeing for the first time, they could grasp how agile they were, how much strength they had, how flexible they were… all the physical information about that person could be grasped at a glance.

Ah Geol had observed the horses here. He had observed the opponent.

Just by looking at the stable, you could tell that he had trained tirelessly to obtain the Single-Instant Blade.

Also, he had obtained an important clue.

There were always good horses and bad horses.

Among the horses in the stable, there were also horses that were close to being useless. Of course, they were disguised as good horses, so their brown fur was shiny. Their eyes were bright. But they couldn’t run well. Their five viscera and six bowels were already losing their function.

What was the reason for disguising such a horse as a good horse?

A bad horse would be culled. It would either be taken out as a breeding stallion or it would be slaughtered at a slaughterhouse and sold as meat.

Ah Geol had disguised the useless horse as a good horse to prevent that.

He was a compassionate person.

‘He’s still young. Kukuk.’

A laugh leaked out of Dongbak.

To obtain the Single-Instant Blade, you had to first kill the wriggling heart. It was something he had learned through his own experience. If you didn’t have a heart as cold as a blade, you couldn’t hear the secretly whispering voice of the blade.

The fact that he had compassion meant that he had not yet grasped the nature of the blade. He might have known the nature of the blade that was talked about in the central plains martial world, but he had not obtained the Single-Instant Blade.

Only killing intent flickered in the blade.

There was no such thing as compassion in the blade. It was impossible for a cold piece of metal to have something like a heart.

The blade’s energy was the killing intent.

‘Kukukuk… I don’t know who you are, but shall I find out what kind of blade you’ve trained in?’

Dongbak calmly examined the stable.

Ah Geol had done something to obtain the Single-Instant Blade. He wouldn’t have just looked at the horses. He would have either practiced a blade art, or honed his blade energy… there would be some trace left.

He examined the horses, and he examined the horse tack.

But he could not see any trace of having trained in the Single-Instant Blade.

-He didn’t train in any martial arts at all. He hated moving his body so much… I’ve never seen such a lazy person. How did such a person raise horses so well…

‘He hated moving… he didn’t move…’

Dongbak found a trace of the Single-Instant Blade in a corner of the stable.

A chopper was placed among the horse tack. Next to the chopper was a large whetstone used for sharpening the blade.

Ah Geol had used a chopper when he had cut down the Living Sword Sect disciples.

‘That’s it.’

Dongbak picked up the chopper blade.

‘Hmm…!’

He stroked the chopper blade with his hand.

He could feel Ah Geol’s breath. While sharpening the chopper blade on the whetstone… he had infused his soul into the piece of metal, into the whetstone. He had tried to put his soul into an inanimate object that was not alive.

‘Difficult. Difficult. Difficult.’

A tree as a tree, a stone as a stone, a blade as a blade.

The Single-Instant Blade was created when you faced an object as it was. If you transformed the object, the Single-Instant Blade would die.

It was often said that an outstanding sword master would breathe life into their sword.

But that was a ridiculous statement. There were cases where a piece of metal would take on a killing intent on its own and emit a sinister aura after drinking too much blood, but a sword with life breathed into it was absurd.

The one called Ah Geol could be ignored.

The Single-Instant Blade he had trained in was still incomplete. A Single-Instant Blade of this level… was almost no different from what he had guessed after seeing the blade mark engraved on the chest of the Living Sword Sect disciple.

“A junior brother is a junior brother. To think that he knows how to train in the Single-Instant Blade… that old man, when did he take a disciple?”

Dongbak sat down in a corner of the stable.

He thought of the old days after a long time.

-It’s still far. Obtain the blade.

-Do not imitate. Create a unique blade.

-How can wealth and glory compare to the joy of obtaining a blade? Cast aside your lingering attachments to the secular world. A true blade master must undergo a more solitary training than a Taoist or a monk.

His master had pushed his disciples very harshly.

It seemed that he had no intention of teaching his disciples martial arts. He had thrown the fighting demons into the mountains and had only controlled them thoroughly. So that they could not even glance at the world.

‘Master, how many disciples did you raise? Is this one the last? I was always by your side, but I still can’t believe it. Kukuk.’

Dongbak chuckled.

(End of Chapter)