Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 207 - Flooding (1)

Chapter 207 – Flooding (1)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“Is the Zhoushan Archipelago always this foggy?”

“I wouldn’t know. It’s not somewhere one would ever come in the first place.”

“That is true.”

Namgung Ik and Peng Su-yeol exchanged words. Both of them were visiting the Zhoushan Archipelago for the first time, so neither knew any better.

“Would Thousand-Poison Scholar know?”

Namgung Ik asked Thousand-Poison Scholar Tang Se-ui. Tang Se-ui let out a laugh as if the question were absurd.

“Are you asking a man from Sichuan about Zhejiang’s climate?”

“Fair point.”

Amid the idle talk, the boat moved forward slowly. Martial artists were human too, and when people met again after a long time, they naturally had much to say. The sound of water parting beneath their conversation was tranquil.

Then, with a flash, something leaped from the water and flew over the gunwale. Namgung Ik’s sword and Peng Su-yeol’s saber instantly cut down what had flown at them.

Flap. Flap.

A fish cut into three pieces thrashed on the deck, spraying blood everywhere.

“It looks quite peculiar.”

The fish that had flown at them had an upper jaw sharpened like a needle.

“I knew saltwater fish and freshwater fish were different, but still.”

“It’s a sailfish. You see them now and then near Hainan too.”

Tang Se-ui told them the fish’s name. If not for him, who at least knew a great deal about animals and plants, they would never have known it was a sailfish.

“Chae-hyang, are you all right?”

Since the sailfish had flown up beside Peng Chae-hyang, who had been rowing, Peng Su-yeol asked after her. Seemingly startled, she had a hand on her chest.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“That’s a relief.”

Because of the still-flopping fish, the deck was a bloody mess. Namgung Hwi stopped rowing for a moment and kicked the fish pieces back into the sea. In the water, the blood spread like smoke.

Watching the sailfish carcass sink, Namgung Ik murmured quietly.

“But doesn’t something feel strange?”

“What do you mean?”

“There ought to be inhabited islands even in the Zhoushan Archipelago, so how is it that we haven’t seen a single plume of smoke and it’s this quiet?”

The suspicion Namgung Ik had cast spread through the whole boat as anxiety.

It was not a baseless suspicion, either. These were not ordinary commoners but martial artists whose sight and hearing were all exceptional.

It was strange that they could be passing among these islands and yet sense nothing at all.

With a vague unease hanging over them, the boat kept moving. The people no longer chatted, too busy remaining alert and on edge.

“Wait.”

At that moment, Tang Se-ui, standing by the gunwale, noticed something. He pointed at the path ahead of the boat.

Ahead of them, the water was faintly reddened with blood. With grim faces, the people headed toward the bloodstained patch. Leaning out over the side, Tang Se-ui smelled the scent of blood.

“I don’t think it’s human blood. It’s too diluted in the water to be certain, but still.”

“Then whose blood is it?”

“Fish blood.”

At those words, the same thought flashed through everyone’s mind. The sailfish carcass they had killed earlier.

If that hypothesis was correct, then it meant they had been circling around the same place all along.

The only thing capable of producing such a phenomenon was, after all, a formation.

And if it was a formation, there was only one clan that came to mind.

“…The Zhuge Clan.”

Peng Su-yeol growled. The only people capable of laying a formation that could deceive masters like them so completely were the Zhuge Clan.

“Could information have leaked?”

Namgung Ik’s expression darkened.

For some reason, the Zhuge Clan had been entangled with the Martial Alliance Leader.

And the Namgung Clan was trying to depose the Martial Alliance Leader. If the Zhuge Clan and the Martial Alliance Leader were on the same side, it was not hard to understand.

“I didn’t expect them to respond this quickly.”

The Namgung Clan had naturally assumed the method of removal would be to gather public support. That might lead to verbal clashes, but not to drawn blades.

Yet the Zhuge Clan had immediately pointed swords at them. Their formation was that threatening.

“We’ll have to look for the life gate.”

Namgung Ik spoke coolly for the moment.

Every formation had a life gate. Find that, and one could escape the formation.

The Zhuge Clan would naturally have hidden it with great cunning, but if they kept searching, it was not impossible to find.

The boat turned. Now their objective had changed. No longer finding Longyuan, but escaping the formation.

“At times like this, let’s go slowly. Slowly.”

Namgung Ik said it. Everyone nodded. If it was the Zhuge Clan’s formation, there was no knowing what might happen.

Formations worked by twisting and distorting the energies of nature. Their strength depended on how severely those energies were twisted.

But not all natural energies could be distorted, and because energy had the property of flowing, a formation could not be made completely closed. That was why a life gate, which supplied natural energy, had to exist.

In other words, if one found the place where the energy was purest and least twisted, the life gate would be there.

Namgung Ik, Peng Su-yeol, Tang Se-ui, and the other masters focused on sensing the flow of qi, while the others rowed.

There was grim resolve and tension on everyone’s faces at once. The fog was spread out in every direction, and the enemy could appear from it at any moment.

But in the end, that vigilance turned out to be unnecessary. No one came rushing out of the fog after all.

Instead, a single small boat was waiting for them in front of the life gate.

“Heh. You found the life gate quickly enough.”

The man greeting them with a smile from the prow was a face they all knew well. His identity was almost obvious.

“Alliance Leader.”

Tang Se-ui spoke in a low voice. What they faced was Boat Number One, carrying people from the Martial Alliance, the Mount Hua Sect, and the Zhuge Clan.

“That was a strange little trick you played.”

Namgung Ik said in a displeased tone. Su Je-heon answered with a broad smile.

“Your side was the one trying to cast me down first.”

“…And if not? The Alliance Leader is making a very grave mistake right now.”

“Do not take me for a fool. Do I look like an idiot who would try to run the Martial Alliance without planting even a single spy in a place like the Namgung Clan?”

At Su Je-heon’s words, Namgung Ik shut his mouth. They had swollen their numbers in order to dominate public opinion, but once numbers grew, the chances of information leaking naturally rose with them.

‘We should have handled it sooner.’

Namgung Ik swallowed his curses inwardly and smiled back.

“So you were hurt enough over that to set up a formation and trap us? At a time this important?”

“It is indeed an important time. It is the moment a new martial world begins.”

Without warning, Su Je-heon drew his sword. A sharp sword wind flew out with enough force to split the boat in two. Namgung Ik immediately drew his own sword and intercepted it.

“What is this…?”

Everyone aboard the boat, Namgung Ik included, was flustered.

No matter what, they had not expected him to react to this extent.

The sects and clans, the Namgung Clan included, had expected that at most Su Je-heon would ask for compromise or beg forgiveness.

Because whatever happened, they were all still of the same orthodox path.

“Have you gone mad, Alliance Leader?”

“I have not gone mad, Elder. The thing that is mad is this world.”

Su Je-heon ran his palm across the flat of his sword. Looking closely, the blade was coated with ash. It was clearly there to conceal the sword’s gleam.

Which meant Su Je-heon really had come to kill them.

“Are all the people on that boat also taking part in this madness?”

Peng Su-yeol barked at the people from the Zhuge Clan and the Mount Hua Sect riding with Su Je-heon.

But they merely sat there in silence and did not answer.

“These mad bastards!”

Enraged, Peng Su-yeol brought forward the huge saber strapped to his back. It was so large that even drawing it stirred enough wind to rock the boat.

“Pointing blades at your fellow orthodox martial artists! How can someone called the Martial Alliance Leader do something so preposterous!”

“If you had meant to talk, would you have left me sitting in the Martial Alliance Leader’s seat?”

Su Je-heon said it. No one had an answer to those pointed words.

“No, you would not have. And admit it. The martial world needs change. It has stagnated for far too long.”

“What change could possibly be needed in so peaceful an age as this?”

“You people were born already possessing everything, so of course you don’t feel the need for change. Instead of cackling up in the heavens, look at the earth. See how many are clawing their way upward with venom in their hearts, coveting the seats above them.”

“Those are words beyond understanding.”

“I never asked you to understand.”

At Su Je-heon’s matter-of-fact tone, everyone realized there was no turning back. He had already made up his mind.

Tang Se-ui slipped throwing darts between his fingers, Peng Su-yeol raised his saber, and Namgung Ik tightened his grip around the sword he had already drawn and took up a guarded stance.

The first to leap forward was Peng Su-yeol. Hot-tempered by nature, he had exhausted the last of his patience simply by listening to Su Je-heon speak.

“Elder Peng!”

Namgung Ik and Tang Se-ui cried out in shock to stop him, but Peng Su-yeol had already left the boat and was running over the surface of the water. Even then, his use of treading on duckweed and crossing water was very clean.

“Die, you bastard!”

Leaping up from the sea, Peng Su-yeol brought his great saber down toward Su Je-heon.

But Peng Su-yeol’s saber only smashed apart the empty deck. The prow where Su Je-heon had been standing shattered, and the boat tilted. Even for a small boat, being half-destroyed by a single saber stroke showed its tremendous power.

“The Hebei Peng Clan’s weakness lies in its clumsy lightness skill. Their saber techniques are simple by nature, so they should at least have improved their footwork, yet instead they busied themselves currying favor with the imperial palace. And still you say change is unnecessary?”

Su Je-heon’s cold voice came from behind Peng Su-yeol. Right afterward, blood burst simultaneously from all over Peng Su-yeol’s body.

“Kgh!”

Peng Su-yeol collapsed from the sinking boat and fell straight into the sea.

Peng Chae-hyang clapped a hand over her mouth. Seeing a senior of her clan die so helplessly was an enormous shock.

Namgung Ik and Tang Se-ui shuddered at the sight of Su Je-heon’s move.

‘So this is one of the Five Great Sword Masters Under Heaven…’

No matter how prominent they themselves were within the martial world, the five swordsmen who looked down upon all under heaven existed on an entirely different level.

Namgung Ik tried to speak as calmly as possible, but his voice trembled despite himself.

“…The Hebei Peng Clan is a clan favored by the imperial palace. Do you truly think this can still be overlooked?”

“Ha ha. Does favoring a plant mean one never prunes its branches?”

Su Je-heon laughed heartily, then stopped.

“This operation began, in fact, within the imperial palace itself.”

At Su Je-heon’s words, Namgung Ik’s and Tang Se-ui’s faces turned pale.

* * *

After sending all the boats away, I entered the cabin. Baek Yu-gyeom had invited me to join him inside for a drink once I had watched enough.

And naturally, drinking was the best time to win someone over, so it was a moment I too had been waiting for.

When I entered the cabin, Baek Yu-gyeom was already pleasantly drunk.

“You came quickly.”

“My apologies. The sea is beautiful. It would have been nice if the Northern Pacification Commissioner had seen it too.”

“To be honest, I’m a little nervous. To think I’m now sailing upon the sea the imperial palace kept forbidden all this time.”

“You’re more timid than I expected.”

“Heh. Perhaps I am. Here, have a drink.”

“Thank you.”

Baek Yu-gyeom poured me a drink. Taking the bottle from him, I poured one in return.

“Well? Have you been doing well?”

“More or less. Various things happened.”

“Heh. I heard. They say you were the censor who dug up the Yunchang Merchant Company. You even had an audience with His Majesty.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“To be honest, I’d been wary of you because you’re entangled with the martial world. Whenever I look at martial artists, it often feels as though they care more about protecting their own little space called the martial world than they do about the imperial palace.”

I gave a short laugh. Baek Yu-gyeom’s words were not especially wrong. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the famous orthodox sects and clans always centered their values on the martial world, not the imperial palace.

“I’ve always disliked that. The martial world is a space without substance. The whole Central Plains belongs to the Empire. The so-called martial world exists only as a concept within the Empire, and yet they speak as though it were land of its own.”

“Strictly speaking, that is true.”

“That is why I like this plan.”

“This plan?”

I frowned. Calling the trading expedition a plan sounded jarring.

“It’s about time you knew. Not that you can turn back now that you’ve come this far.”

“…?”

It was an ominous feeling. A qi barrier spread out. Baek Yu-gyeom opened and closed his eyes. The looseness of drunkenness vanished from his gaze at once. He had likely circulated his internal energy to dispel the effects of the liquor.

Baek Yu-gyeom sprang to his feet and took out a sheet of paper glowing gold.

“Investigating Censor Muk Hui-yeong of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, receive the Emperor’s edict!”

I was dumbfounded, but I immediately prostrated myself. An imperial edict was the Emperor’s will itself.

Baek Yu-gyeom began reading the edict in a majestic voice. No matter how loud he was, he had cast the qi barrier strongly enough that no sound would leak outside.

“Investigating Censor Muk Hui-yeong of the Embroidered Uniform Guard shall assist Baek Yu-gyeom, Northern Pacification Commissioner of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and participate in the Flooding Operation.”

“…Flooding?”

“Yes.”

Baek Yu-gyeom’s lips curled upward. What he said next was shocking.

“Did you think the imperial palace would fail to notice? That all those people in disguise were martial artists?”

At that instant, I froze.