Chapter 1950 - Return of The Mount Hua Sect

Chapter 1950. So It Was Still There. Within Me. (5)

“Hurry! Quickly!”

“N-No, we have to load this too!”

“Is your wealth worth more than your life?”

“It’s not wealth, it’s food! Are you telling us to flee without a thing and starve to death on the road?”

At those words, Jwa Gohak bit down on his lip. He couldn’t deny it.

Fleeing wasn’t as simple as merely abandoning one’s home. If they failed to secure provisions for the journey, all that awaited them was death on the road instead of death at home.

The road before them stretched for a thousand li. An ordinary person would need no less than half a month to travel a thousand li. Without enough food to last those fifteen days, they would eventually exhaust themselves and collapse.

Yet even knowing all this, Jwa Gohak couldn’t help but feel pressed for time.

“There’ll be supplies. Just get out of here first!”

“Supplies? What damned supplies? Everyone here saw with their own eyes the Emperor leave the Imperial Capital without a word! If you’re going to speak, at least say something that makes sense!”

Of course, they didn’t trust Jwa Gohak.

The Emperor had abandoned his people and left. In such a situation, how could they possibly trust the officials? It was only natural that they regarded the officials, who had kept silent while the Emperor prepared for his long journey, as no different from him.

Jwa Gohak scrubbed his face so roughly it looked as though he meant to tear it apart.

‘Damn it.’

This was why he had begged for at least a minimal Imperial decree. It would’ve given him some measure of authority over these people.

In the past, Jwa Gohak might’ve cursed the Emperor and shared in their anger. But now, he chose a different path.

“What else needs loading?”

“What?”

“This?”

Jwa Gohak lifted the large sack of grain the middle-aged man had been trying to load and set it atop the cart.

“Quickly, tell me what else! What still has to be loaded?”

“J-Just the drinking water over there...”

“Move!”

As though there wasn’t even time to hear the rest, Jwa Gohak sprinted toward where the man had pointed.

‘Instead of complaining, move, Jwa Gohak.’

There was certainly value in arguing over right and wrong. But that alone wouldn’t change the world before him. If he hadn’t been able to change it, then he had to accept that fact without delay and do what he could right now.

That was what Jwa Gohak had learned.

“Anything else?”

“No! This is enough!”

“Then don’t waste another moment. Go. If you want to live!”

“A-Alright!”

At that very moment—

KWAAANG!

The deafening explosion made Jwa Gohak’s gaze snap toward it. His wide-open eyes darted across the distance. A thick cloud of dust was rising from the direction of the city gate. Jwa Gohak bit down on his lip until it bled.

“...Move.”

Looking toward the people frozen in panic, Jwa Gohak roared at the top of his lungs.

“Don’t just stand there staring! Run for the South Gate right now! If you don’t want to die!”

Realizing from his voice alone that something was terribly wrong, the people abandoned whatever they had still been loading and began frantically pushing and pulling their carts toward the South Gate.

Carts became entangled with one another, and people crashed into one another as chaos erupted. But Jwa Gohak’s sajes had remained here precisely for a moment like this.

“Move back!”

Shouting, yelling, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling. To those who would listen, they used words. To those who submitted only to authority, they wielded their official rank. To those who understood nothing but violence, they answered without hesitation in kind. In that way, the young officials somehow managed to keep the panic-stricken crowd under control.

Along the way, their official robes were torn, and every shred of dignity was dragged through the dirt. Yet not a single one of them cared.

“Head for the South Gate! Hurry!”

Right now, what mattered to them was saving these people. That, and that alone.

“...No.”

The soul seemed to leave the Commander-in-Chief’s eyes. Those demon-like bastards were after the civilians. Even though countless soldiers of the Imperial Army still stood atop these walls, they didn’t spare them so much as a glance.

Should he turn the cannons and bombard them right now?

No, that won’t do. It wasn’t because of some absurd reason like not wanting to reduce the Imperial Capital to a sea of flames.

If they bombarded them now, the civilians would inevitably be caught in the attack. That would be putting the cart before the horse.

There was only one option left.

“Get down! Down from the walls at once! We have to stop those bastards!”

“Commander-in-Chief! We don’t know when the enemy’s main force will arrive. We have no intelligence. To abandon the walls in a situation like this...”

“You fool! Have you forgotten what it is we’re protecting?”

“...Yes?”

“Once the civilians are gone, this place is nothing but empty ground. Are you saying you’d defend these walls for the sake of an empty Imperial Palace and an empty city?”

At those words, the adjutant fell silent.

An empty city, or civilians risking their lives to escape. There wasn’t even any point in considering which of the two deserved protecting.

The Commander-in-Chief had struck at the heart of the matter. Even in a situation like this, he was by no means an incompetent man.

“Move immediately! Leave five thousand elite troops to hold the city gate against any unforeseen developments. Everyone else, pursue those demons. Do not let them reach the civilians!”

“Yes, Commander-in-Chief!”

As the resounding reply rang out, the Commander-in-Chief bit down on his lip.

Crunch. His teeth dug into his flesh, and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth.

‘Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.’

There had been nothing wrong with his decisions. Holding the walls and fighting a defensive battle was the foundation of military strategy.

And yet every one of his decisions had been wrong. His enemy was neither an army nor cavalry. They were humans, yet not human.

History had already given the answer to how an Imperial Army, untrained in true martial arts, should confront the martial artists of the jianghu. Yet he had failed to give that answer the consideration it deserved.

He had been seduced, intoxicated by the false sense of security offered by the height and strength of these walls.

The lives about to be extinguished from this moment onward would be the consequence of that failing.

The Commander-in-Chief was willing to do anything to make up for his mistake. Even if it meant selling his soul to the devil.

But the world was never so accommodating. Those who had truly lived long enough came to understand something. Human determination could sometimes be terrifying. Yet at other times, it meant absolutely nothing.

The Commander-in-Chief’s misfortune was that the one he faced wasn’t merely a powerful fool.

“What is it? Why? Why aren’t you moving? Carry out the order! Now!”

“I-It’s impossible, Commander-in-Chief! They’ve blocked the stairways!”

“What?”

“We can’t get down from the walls!”

The Commander-in-Chief didn’t know how soldiers ought to fight martial artists.

By contrast, the Heavenly Executioner, now commanding the Demonic Cultists, was a martial artist thoroughly accustomed to fighting soldiers. The first principle of using a small number of martial artists against an army was to shrink the battlefield.

The narrow stairways atop the city walls, scarcely wide enough for thirty men to stand shoulder to shoulder, were perfectly suited to that principle.

People believed the Demonic Cult was a congregation of fanatics, and that the Heavenly Demon was a being beyond the standards by which the mortal world understood anything. Naturally, they assumed the Bishops existed somewhere between those two extremes.

But that perception was completely mistaken.

Precisely because those above them and those below them did not think like ordinary humans, the Bishops of the Demonic Cult had to be colder than anyone, and more rational than anyone.

Otherwise, no matter how powerful they were, it would’ve been impossible for so few members of the Demonic Cult to wage war against the entire world. At that very moment, the Heavenly Executioner was proving it beyond doubt.

A handful of cultists, acting on the Heavenly Executioner’s orders, completely sealed off the stairways leading down from the walls.

Nor was it only the places visible at a glance.

Using less than half of his forces, the Heavenly Executioner blocked most of the stairways descending from the northern wall. Then he pointed somewhere. At the end of his finger were the civilians fleeing in desperate panic.

Which was the greater threat? Which should take priority? Such calculations held no meaning.

To the Heavenly Executioner’s eyes, there was no real difference between the Imperial Army and the common people. They were all simply beings to be crushed beneath his feet and killed.

But unlike the Imperial Army, rats trapped inside a jar, those people were escaping. If he allowed them to flee, he’d later have to waste the effort of chasing each one down and killing them individually.

The rats atop the walls could wait. For now, it was the ones trying to escape that needed to be trampled.

“Kill every last one. Leave not a single soul alive. This city shall be dyed with the blood of these filthy unbelievers.”

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“Move! Faster!”

A fortress is an impregnable stronghold. Even if reality doesn’t always bear that out, when a fortress is built, that alone is its purpose.

But that gave rise to another problem. The only way for this countless multitude to leave the city was through the pitifully narrow city gate.

The countless civilians living within Beijing surged toward the gate all at once. It looked like a swarm of ants descending upon a single scrap of food lying against a wall.

“Move!”

The officials urging the civilians onward realized their mistake.

‘We shouldn’t have let them bring carts.’

Of course, it had been an unavoidable choice. Had they told people to flee empty-handed from an enemy whose very existence remained uncertain, at least half of them would’ve refused to evacuate.

But that didn’t make their present predicament any less urgent.

The already narrow gate was on the verge of bursting apart beneath the flood of carts. Locked together in a hopeless tangle, they slowed the evacuation that had already been crawling along.

“Your carts aren’t what matter! Do you all want to die here?”

The civilians paid no heed to the desperate cries. Instead, they gripped their carts even tighter, fierce resolve blazing in their eyes.

How far was the nearest city from Beijing? And even if they reached it, would that city be able to withstand this attack? Even Beijing, which they had believed to be the strongest fortress, hadn’t managed to hold out for even half a day.

The carts they clung to so desperately weren’t born of greed. If they abandoned even their carts here, they would have no choice but to watch their children and elderly parents starve to death by the roadside. If it came to that, they would rather die here. That much resolve was clenched within those hands.

The young officials understood this as well. So they could no longer press them. But simply because something was right didn’t mean it would lead to a good outcome.

“They’re coming! The Demonic Cultists!”

In the distance, the Demonic Cultists came charging toward them.

Was this what the fiends of slaughter looked like? Their breath caught, and their entire bodies began to tremble. An instinctive fear, no. Perhaps something beyond even that tightened around their throats. They were beings no one could dare judge by human measure.

[tl/n: fiends of slaughter. 흉신악살(凶神惡煞). A term describing terrifying, murderous beings]

“Sahyung!”

Chaeng!

The instant the cry escaped them, Jwa Gohak drew the sword at his waist without the slightest hesitation and stepped forward. It was an answer more decisive than words. Seeing him, the other officials also ground their teeth and unsheathed their swords.

Could they stop them?

There wasn’t the slightest chance.

And yet, despite the situation, bitter laughter leaked from them. After entering the Imperial Palace, they had all laid aside their swords. A civil official practicing the sword within the Imperial Capital, where the Emperor resided? That alone was tantamount to evidence of plotting an assassination.

To face Demonic Cultists with swords they hadn’t touched in years. They would’ve been better off simply baring their necks and asking to be killed.

They knew. Every one of them knew. And yet, they still drew their swords.

‘Don’t think about what is right.’

There was no need to ask what would’ve been the better course. What mattered was that they were alive now. And so long as they were alive, they had something they had to do. That was all.

“So? Have you suddenly grown attached to your lives?”

“Not a chance, sahyung.”

The men standing on either side of Jwa Gohak grinned.

They hadn’t fulfilled their resolve to make the world a better place. No. Perhaps they had upheld it. But they certainly hadn’t changed the world enough to satisfy themselves.

But what did it matter? As long as they were still alive, they could struggle until the very end.

“They’re coming! Drag down as many of them as you can with you! One more of us dies, one more person lives!”

“Yes!”

Jwa Gohak swung his sword fiercely at the charging Demonic Cultist. A dazzling myriad of sword strikes bloomed, every bit the equal of one of Yurim’s signature techniques, yet the blade, dulled by years of neglect, couldn’t withstand the cultist’s demonic qi.

[tl/n: Yurim. 유림(儒林). Literally “the Confucian forest”; the community of Confucian scholars and officials, serving as the civil counterpart to Murim (武林), the martial world.]

The instant sword met claw, Jwa Gohak’s body helplessly skidded backward.

“You damned bastards...!”

Cursing in a manner utterly unbecoming of a Confucian scholar, Jwa Gohak threw himself forward again as though casting away his life.

It was then.

“My, my. A high-ranking official throwing away his dignity like this.”

“Huh?”

Jwa Gohak instinctively turned his head.

What entered his sight was a soot-blackened face and yellowed teeth. Ordinarily, he would've never had anything to do with a vagrant like this. The man grinned broadly.

“The Hebei Branch of the Beggar Union has arrived. Alright then, beggars! Let’s go die!”

With those words, the rag-clad beggars leapt over Jwa Gohak and shot straight toward the Demonic Cultists.

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