Chapter 121 — So This Is My Grave
"So this is my grave…."
Yeah….
He had crossed the line of death many times.
Each time, he had thought he survived because he was good enough, because he dodged well, because he stayed alive through his own skill.
He had never believed that there were beings, unseen, who believed in him, supported him, and protected him.
If such beings truly existed, then why had they not let him live in comfort under better conditions.
Why had they sent a child like him to the battlefield.
The reality he had been made to live in was suffocating.
The streak of luck that had helped him until now, the lucky break that had favored him despite all his arrogance, was absent here.
Every one of the armed men before him was a commander of the kind Goryeo would proudly put forward.
This could not be compared to the assassins who had come for him a few days before.
If this were elsewhere, it would have helped if he could make the matter large, turn it into a public uproar, throw the court into noise.
But this place was full of armed men.
Not one of them looked easy.
There was not even anyone who could at least carry word out.
Brother Park Geun-su….
Yeong-u turned to look, but he was not there.
Was he one of them.
Or had they kept him away.
Even if he was about to be crushed here, he told himself not to let distrust of a comrade take root.
That made his heart easier.
From the moment he had entered, he had searched for someone who could act as an ally.
There had been no one.
Not a single one.
Yeong-u muttered.
"I fought the enemy as a warrior of Goryeo.
The enemy was not frightening.
The allies behind me were more frightening.
Because they attacked when I could not see, when I had not prepared.
And even that they did for their own petty profit.
You are no different.
If you need money, go into trade.
Do not ruin the country while working in the army that is supposed to defend it.
The wealth you enjoy was taken from the food of soldiers at the front.
There is not enough grain, and even arrows are scarce.
Arrows run out after a single battle.
I used to think that was because the country was poor.
Then I saw worthless bastards rise upward, do every kind of worthless thing, get promoted, and go to Gaegyeong.
So that was what they had brought everything for….
I am telling you plainly.
If you need money, stop doing this and go into business.
A merchant at least makes the country wealthier.
You bastards who are beneath even merchants!"
As he went on spitting out what he had been saying all along, the old Banju pointed with the tip of his finger.
"That bastard. Kill him!"
That was the moment.
Men who looked anything but ordinary in martial force began to approach.
They merely walked forward, yet every route of escape to east, west, south, and north was sealed.
And the great doors slowly closed.
Yeong-u looked up and then down.
Three more men sat calmly on the rafters above.
The one good thing was that the banner-spear was still assembled in his hand.
He could not win.
At the very least, he would take a few of them with him to the other world.
He had never asked for anything grand.
He had only hoped that the country he lived in might be a country ruled by a little common sense.
Bastards.
And yet, if he took any down, it would be better if they were among those Supreme Generals or Great Generals.
Instead, only blameless lesser lackeys would die.
They only did what the men above told them.
Because they had no minds of their own, they fought without right or wrong.
Reduced to the private soldiers of those men, they still spent their lives prattling on that they had served the nation.
Yeong-u shouted.
"You dogs, whose private soldiers were you?
Were you not soldiers who were meant to defend the nation?"
One man slowly leveled his sword.
"I have long heard of this lieutenant commander's martial reputation.
Grant me the honor of witnessing it today."
"Who are you?"
That was one piece of luck.
If they all rushed him at once, there would be no answer.
Only one came out.
He would be skilled, certainly, but….
"I am Jang Sang-geun of the Gyeonryong Guard."
"Ah, even the Gyeonryong Guard."
"Hearing your report gave me much to think about."
Bastards.
Even while speaking like that, he was trying to console himself for the rottenness of his own thinking.
He seemed to believe that because he had felt something while keeping his feet planted in an unjust world, his guilt was therefore a little lighter.
"You felt something, and this is what you do?"
"I ask your understanding.
I am in a position where I must carry out orders…."
Perhaps this happened because the common moral standard was low.
Because there was confidence that even a crooked order would be obeyed, they gave commands without restraint.
If only there were some fear that their men might resist, perhaps those bastards would not swing so freely.
It was only a thought.
Hope, worry, sorrow, and a bleak regret.
The youth of a man in his twenties would end here.
Elsewhere, perhaps not.
But not here.
He had devoted himself to the study of martial arts, so why did he always end up alone inside the midst of the many.
Still, he had done his best.
In every such situation he had always thought first of doing the best he could, and had tried to make it so.
If he had not run his mouth, perhaps none of this would have happened.
But the sight of those bastards walking around whole and untouched had driven him mad.
How could traitors and betrayers still be alive and well.
Was there no right and wrong in this country.
By their logic, perhaps someone like him had been better off not existing here at all.
By their way of thinking, he was a man unfit for the organization.
Fine then, let him die for them.
Let him spill his blood for their filthy world….
Yeong-u drew in his breath and raised the banner-spear.
A long weapon was bad in an enclosed room.
The ceiling was high, but if he swung too wide it looked as though it would catch.
"Please, one exchange."
Jang Sang-geun reversed his sword in his hand and spoke.
"It is an honor."
Frrrraaaak—
When the banner unfurled, it swept across the whole front.
It was a technique meant to blot out Jang Sang-geun's vision.
Before the banner had fully streamed out, Jang Sang-geun swung his hwando.
The cloth did not split against the blade.
Instead, it wrapped itself around the sword.
Yeong-u wound it one more turn and yanked.
The sword and the man attached to it were both dragged toward him.
As the man was pulled in, Yeong-u drove the spearhead upward into his lower belly.
The man released the sword and slipped back in a blur.
A swordsman lets go of his sword.
Yeong-u whipped the banner and fired the wrapped blade back at him.
The flag streamed long with a whip-like hiss and then curled back in.
The man's own sword shot back toward him.
Damn.
He had nearly been cut by his own weapon.
It was the first time he had faced such a technique with such a weapon.
Who would ever have thought to use a banner with military streamers hanging from it as a weapon.
"A remarkable technique."
"Technique? It is nothing but a bit of battlefield cunning picked up while acting up at the front."
"There was force in the banner."
"How do you inject force into cloth?"
"Could it be that you do not know.
This lieutenant commander's banner is of a different order."
"Are you going to keep talking?"
Another man would have tried to draw out the words and stall for time, but this fellow seemed eager to die quickly.
Jang Sang-geun picked up the hwando that had fallen to the floor.
"From now on, I am serious."
The words of a bastard who had come here to kill someone were absurd.
Had he been anything but serious before.
"Oh, and before this you were not serious?"
Jang Sang-geun held the sword straight.
The tip of the hwando trembled briefly and gave out a sound.
Because true energy had been poured into the sword, the blade cried.
That was the so-called sword cry, geommyeong.
Today would not be easy.
How was he supposed to defeat a man who could draw a sword cry.
Swearing and grumbling changed nothing.
Yeong-u lightly raised the banner and twisted his body as he swung it.
The banner, having made a full circle, tore through the air with a violent burst and aimed at Jang Sang-geun's middle gate.
If he blocked, he would be driven back by the force.
If he evaded, the next move would become difficult.
No, he could have evaded, but instead Jang Sang-geun reversed the sword upright and put his strength into a block.
Kka-gang—
The sword and Jang Sang-geun both slid backward under the force of the banner.
He had been pushed back overall, but he had still blocked it head-on with strength.
Then he narrowed the distance and thrust his sword.
Yeong-u twisted his shoulders and upper body and slipped aside.
At the same moment, the banner swept at the man's lower body.
It happened simultaneously.
This was the principle of simultaneity his master had taught him.
Because he attacked while evading, Jang Sang-geun could not extend the sword to its full end.
He withdrew it and sprang upward.
Since they could not die together, the softer-hearted man was the first to yield space.
That was the opening.
Before the man could land, while he still hung in that helpless air, Yeong-u swept left and right in quick succession.
He swept the lower middle and lower low lines like a broom, so that one way or another the man would be caught.
As Jang Sang-geun dropped toward the floor, he struck the ground with his sword to block and brace himself.
Jang Sang-geun's body, caught up in Yeong-u's counter, was carried by that force, spun through the air, and withdrew backward.
Yeong-u thrust the spearpoint into the place where he would land, but the man planted the sword, used that rebound, and flipped backward.
A formidable movement art.
This was the moment to use the principle of simultaneous attack that his master had taught him.
Again the banner rushed in, covered his sight, swept low, and stabbed at the middle, and Jang Sang-geun found his movement becoming difficult.
He rapidly knocked aside the upper and lower strikes and pressed inward, closing the distance.
He struck two times in a single motion, no, three, trying to overcome the weight of the long weapon.
Because he struck with a heavy sword that rang with sword cry, the hand with which Yeong-u gripped the banner shivered faintly.
When a master strikes, the hand hurts.
He felt he might lose his grip at any moment.
In a single breath, attack and defense changed places three or four times.
Jang Sang-geun closed the distance.
Yeong-u changed direction front, back, left, and right, giving half-steps backward while defending and attacking at the same time.
He was more aggressive now than before.
That law of simultaneity made things difficult for the attacker.
If he carried his attack all the way through, it felt certain that he himself would be hit, and so he had to stop the attack midway.