Novel Bin Chapter 133. Trying to Row a Boat On Land (4)
Chapter 133. Trying to Row a Boat On Land (4)
“Wind Sword Battalion Leader, why are you just loitering around and not going inside?”
As it so happened, the next person to arrive was the Rear Guard Battalion Leader, Lee Chung himself.
“It seemed as though we had pushed too far ahead by ourselves, so we took a moment to regroup and wait for the troops. There seems to be a lot of the Black Bull Gang members inside, but you can go in first if you’re in a hurry,” Woo-Moon said, stopping himself from continuing any further.
‘If you want to go and die first, I won’t stop you,’ he thought.
However, Lee Chung was able to focus and calm himself down at Woo-Moon’s words, judging the situation objectively.
“Hmm. No, there’s no need. Your words make sense, Wind Sword Battalion Leader. We’ll wait here with you for the others.”
‘Oho?’
Seeing Lee Chung agree and follow along to what he said for a change, Woo-Moon looked at him in surprise. Although Lee Chung could feel Woo-Moon’s gaze, he showed no change in his expression.
Woo-Moon smiled to himself.
‘Looks like the stiff geezer developed a brain.’
Not long after, the main forces of the Justice Coalition arrived, led by the Shaolin Temple’s Divine Monk. The Divine Monk’s kasaya was stained bright red with the blood of the Black Bull Gang’s Transcendent Class experts. Like that, he walked in front of the main gate of Black Castle.
Then, he struck the ground before the gate with his monk’s spade.[1]
Rumble!!! Crack!!!!
A huge explosion and a massive roar that sounded like an earthquake ran out, and soon, the main gate of Black Castle shattered and fell down.
“Let’s go in.”
The Divine Monk seemed to be in his early forties, with particularly thick eyebrows as impressive as his martial skills.
‘For some reason, he seems similar to the Fist Emperor. I wonder if it’s because their martial arts are from the same Nine Sects and One Gang...’
The Divine Monk was the first to storm into Black Castle, with the remaining troops of the Justice Coalition following swiftly behind.
Although the Black Bull Gang’s remnant gang members tried to stop them, with the main gate desperately was already obliterated and the Divine Monk, an Absolute Master, leading the way, there was nothing that they could do about it.
Dozens of people died in a matter of moments as the Divine Monk radiated Shaolin True Qi. He moved around the battlefield using incredible techniques like the Hundred Paces Divine Fist, the Vajra Immovable Steps, and the Copper Sand Palm.
“Well, we can’t just sit around then, can we? Let’s get started, too!”
Woo-Moon and the Wind Sword Battalion also joined the all-out battle.
Woosh!
Squelch!
As Woo-Moon’s sword flew forward, it pierced through the neck of a gang member, blood splattering everywhere.
“So you’re that bastard Song Woo-Moon!”[2]
Night Saber, a Transcendent Class expert of the Black Bull Gang, cut off the head of one of the Emei Sect disciples and rushed toward Woo-Moon.
“Did you just call me a bastard? And you’re by yourself? You sure have guts, I gotta say...”
Woo-Moon cleverly used the Divine Phantasm Steps in response to Night Saber’s charge, quickly shifting behind him.
“Huh?”
The Night Saber didn’t completely lose sight of Woo-Moon. However, he also wasn’t able to thoroughly keep track of him, either. He found himself struggling to keep up with Woo-Moon’s movement and was forced to roll forward, startled, when he realized that Woo-Moon was behind him.
Indeed, the legendary Donkey Roll was precisely for these situations.
“That’s why you should have known your place.”
Woo-Moon used the Northern Wind Steps, obviously faster than Night Saber’s Donkey Roll, catching up with him in an instant and stabbing down with his sword.
Squelch!
“Agk!!”
Night Saber had thrown all caution to the wind, furious because of the deaths of his comrades and the growing disadvantage the Black Bull Gang was facing due to Woo-Moon alone. However, he had forgotten one crucial thing: that Woo-Moon was able to cause such damage meant his martial skills were far superior to Night Saber’s own.
Although he had realized it now, it was already too late, and he closed his eyes for a final time with regret.
“Now, let’s keep going forward! We’re going to tear the Black Bull Gang apart!”
‘Because that way, my family will be safe, too! All of these Black Hand bastards need to be eliminated.’
Woo-Moon was determined to rip out the Black Bull Gang by its roots.
He cut once, twice, a third—again and again, cutting down one, two, three, four, ten, twenty, forty...
Woo-Moon’s sword suddenly froze.
In front of his blade was a sixteen-year-old boy, trembling so much that Woo-Moon could hear it. Woo-Moon stopped himself and took off his outer robe, wrapping it around the boy.
“Leave, you can stop now. You haven’t committed any unforgivable sins yet.”
Woo-Moon wasn’t sparing the boy because he was young. If the boy had an evil aura and bloodlust, or if he gave off the scent of a wanton murderer, Woo-Moon would have cut him down regardless of his age.
Although Woo-Moon had always had good instincts when it came to people, his ability to sense and read other people’s aura developed even further after reaching the next stage of cultivation.
In his perspective, although the boy had grown up among the Black Hand and developed an evil aura, he hadn’t yet reached the point of killing people and wasn’t exuding the scent of blood.
“Don’t look down on me, you dirty Righteous Faction bastard!” the boy shouted as he threw the outer robe that Woo-Moon had covered him with on the ground before rushing forward sword first.
Thump.
Woo-Moon gently pushed away the boy’s sword and steadied his wrist.
“Life is precious. Do you really want to die here?”
As he glared at the boy, a palpable bloodlust began to radiate from his body, causing the boy’s scalp to tingle.
“Gulp...!”
All he wanted to do was yell at Woo-Moon to kill him if he dared... until he realized that this might, in fact, actually lead to his immediate death.
Woo-Moon then picked up the blood-stained outer robe that had fallen on the ground and wrapped it back around the boy’s shoulders before taking his sword.
“Even if you say you want to die, I still won’t kill you. But if you commit any evil acts worthy of death or harbor any such thoughts in front of me in the future, I’ll cut you down where you stand. Right now, you’re not at that level. I’ll see you later, maybe.”
When Woo-Moon pushed the boy away; the latter no longer fought back and pushed through the ranks of the Justice Coalition army, fleeing the battlefield. As the boy held no weapon and was even wearing an outer robe embroidered with the symbol of the Iron Sword Baek Family, no one stopped or attacked him. Rather, they opened up a path, letting him pass and even giving him some words of encouragement.
“Ugh....”
The boy sobbed as he ran. He couldn’t understand what was going on with him or around him; all he could do was cry and run away.
He didn’t know how he was going to survive in the future, but at least it would be a better life than what he was living now.
“Now! Now that our short break is over, shall we begin again?”
“Yes!”
Woo-Moon once again drove back the Black Bull Gang, with the members of the Wind Sword Battalion following him.
It seemed as though everything was almost over by now. As the coalition warriors surrounded the massive pavilion at the center of Black Castle, some even let out shouts of victory.
At that moment, Woo-Moon felt the slightest of tremors beneath his feet.
“Underneath us!” he shouted urgently.
As if his shout was the signal to attack, those who had been hiding underneath them thrust their spears upward all at once.
Squelch, squelch!
“Agh!!!!!”
Countless members of the Justice Coalition lost their lives without even knowing how or why.
Suddenly, the Black Castle, which was drenched in the blood of its owners, was now flooded by the coalition warriors’ blood. A thick stench of blood filled everybody’s nostrils.
And that was not the end.
Clank, clank!
Small holes appeared from the walls of Black Castle and its pavilions, and poisoned needles shot out toward the invading coalition.
“My eyes, my eyes!”
“Junior Sister!!”
The disciples called out to each other as they died.
The elder of a sect cried out as he couldn’t stop the death of his beloved youngest disciple.
The situation in the hall was chaos itself.
‘Damn it! I thought that it was suspicious!’
The Black Bull Gang had used the majority of its members as bait to lure them into the Black Castle, trapping the Justice Coalition within its walls.
Woo-Moon couldn’t help but congratulate himself for having the commander send the forces of the Baek Family back to the main defensive force before this final push.
“You vicious devils!”
The Divine Monk, enraged by the deaths of his fellow coalition members, floated into the sky and shot the Hundred Paces Divine Fist in all directions.
BANGBANGBANGBANG!
A massive white fist aura flew toward the walls and pavilions, exploding and demolishing the walls while simultaneously crushing the hidden spaces behind them and the gang members hidden within them.
Woo-Moon stretched out the Impenetrable Golden Wall as much as he could, protecting Ma-Ra and the others.
“Ma-Ra!”
“I know.”
Immediately understanding his intentions, Ma-Ra melded into the darkness. Like a ghost, she flitted through the compound and found a secret door connected to the hidden basement of Black Castle and entered.
The hidden basement.
“Die, die, die!”
A gang member was continuously thrusting his spear up through the ceiling, soaked with the blood that flowed down from the copious holes he had made previously. Suddenly, he felt a cold touch on his neck.
‘What?’
Swish!
Soundlessly, the Formless Silk that Ma-Ra had somehow wrapped around his neck sliced through flesh and bone.
The gang member did not even know how he had died.
After secretly killing four of the gang members at once, Ma-Ra threw six darts at the same time, taking the lives of six more.
Even as ten of their fellow gang members were instantly slaughtered, the other gang members were so preoccupied with killing the coalition warriors above them that they were completely unaware of Ma-Ra’s existence or the deaths of their comrades.
Swish.
Ma-Ra appeared behind another target like a ghost and stabbed him through the back into the lungs.
A death god had infiltrated the Black Bull Gang, unbeknownst to a single one of their members.
“Huh? Huh?? I-it’s an enemy!!”
It was only after nearly a hundred of the thousand gang members gathered in the basement had died that the others finally realized they were being slaughtered.
“Agh!!” W-where are they?!”
“You cowardly bastards, show yourselves!”
The gang members closest to where Ma-Ra was slaughtering the enemy fell into a state of panic. Their comrades died one by one, while they couldn’t even spot the enemy. That fear soon changed into mass hysteria as the nearly nine hundred gang members grew utterly terrified of just one single Ma-Ra.
“W-we have to get out if we want to live!”
“We have to get out of the dark!”
From the point of view of the gang members, none of them could even tell how many enemies there were because of the darkness. They fled one by one to get out of this enclosed place where the enemy was and go up to the ground.
Sadly for them, Woo-Moon was waiting outside with his sword, playing a very easy and very bloody game of whack-a-mole.
There was only a single door that connected the hidden basement to the ground above. Naturally, it was well hidden, but as Woo-Moon followed Ma-Ra’s movements through the passageway with his qi, he had immediately discovered it.
“T-they’re above us, too! There’s a ghost bastard up there, too!”
The people who escaped the basement died either split in half or beheaded. Moreover, all of that carnage was perpetrated by a single person.
At first, they had been happy to stab the coalition warriors to death with their spears from underneath them, but now they were trapped between a rock and a hard place, facing death from both directions.
“Agh! AGH!!!!”
The weak-hearted among them even lost their reason and went insane. The sense of fear given by Ma-Ra behind them and Woo-Moon above them was just that terrifyingly great.
Woo-Moon steadily killed those escaping above ground. Sword aura went everywhere as he swung his sword with one hand and shot out Raging Wind Palms with the other, destroying hidden alcoves and passageways along with the structural walls of Black Castle.
The number of people who had died by his hands had already exceeded four hundred.
At that very moment, the Divine Monk, who had made the most significant contribution on the battlefield apart from Woo-Moon, shouted, “Wind Sword Battalion Leader! I’m starting to get worried about the Fist Emperor. Go and help him!”
Even at this very moment, the coalition warriors were losing their lives due to the extraordinary surprise attack from the cleverly hidden Black Bull Gang members.
1. A monk’s spade, also known as a Shaolin spade, is a kind of polearm with a spade-like blade on one end and a crescent moon blade on the other, neither of which is designed to be sharpened. Originally, it was designed as a self-defense item as well as a tool—the spade blade could be used for various agricultural purposes as well as to bury corpses if need arose, and the crescent moon blade could be used to keep wild animals at bay without injuring them. It looks something like this: /shops/184325/files/356800351/enso-martial-arts-shop-shaolin-monk-spade.jpg ☜
2. Unlike the general insult “bastard” that Koreans like to throw around, this is the literal “person with an unidentified father” bastard. ☜