“What the hell kind of grudge did the Gu Yang Family’s bastards have to go this far?”
“Have we had any bad blood with the Gu Yang Family recently?”
“Nothing major.”
“So there was something.”
“We once turned down a commission from their chief steward.”
“When?”
“About two months ago.”
“What kind of commission?”
“He asked us to kill every member of a certain woman’s family and bring the woman to him.”
“And what did he want the woman for?”
“A one-night plaything.”
“How do you know that?”
“He asked us to kill the woman as well after that one night.”
“So he was a mutt in heat.”
“The commission was too low-grade, so we refused it.”
“Good. What the hell did he think we were?”
That conversation alone was enough to piss them off.
“From now on, don’t accept commissions from the Gu Yang Family.”
“Understood.”
“Anyway, how are we supposed to fix this situation? How much damage have we taken?”
“We’ve lost thirty of our special-grade assassins. Twenty-seven of them are dead. Roughly speaking, that’s a loss of about three million taels in gold.”
“Three million taels in gold...”
“We’ll have to tighten our belts for a while, obviously, and it’ll take a very long time to retrain that many special-grade assassins. For the time being, we’ll have to drastically cut down on special-grade commissions.”
“Ha...”
That was enough to make anyone irritable.
If he could, he wanted to drag in the bastard who made the commission and rip him to pieces.
He was rubbing his forehead and sighing when—
DING-DING-DING—.
The bell started clanging loudly.
“What the hell?”
A subordinate burst in, shouting in a panic.
“S-Sir, enemy attack!”
“How many?”
“J-Just one!”
“What? You’re ringing the alarm bell like this over one person?”
“That one person is casually taking every attack from all of Nameless Hall’s assassins and walking straight into the gorge!”
He shot to his feet.
“What? Has the Heavenly Martial Emperor come in person?”
“No! It’s a young lord. He says he’s here to see you.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
*****
“So this is the place?”
Following the scent led me to a sect gate.
I looked up at the plaque for Hundred-Martial Sect and walked toward it.
A martial artist stepped out in front of me and asked,
“What brings you here?”
“I’m here to see your Lord.”
“Haha. Our Lord? I think you’ve come to the wrong place. This is Hundred-Martial Sect.”
“No, this is the right place. I can smell it from back there.”
“Smell?”
SNIFF, SNIFF—.
The martial artist sniffed the air but couldn’t smell anything.
“I don’t smell a thing.”
“I’m the only one who can. Move.”
“I can’t let you through.”
“Fine. I’ll just go in.”
SHIIING—.
“Stop! Take another step and I’ll cut you down where you stand.”
“Go ahead and try.”
I ignored the man’s warning and walked straight toward Hundred-Martial Sect’s main gate.
Not just the one who’d warned me, but other martial artists rushed over, drew their swords, and surrounded me.
“Stop right there!”
“I really will cut you down!”
“Move.”
“Damn it! You’re not someone we can talk to!”
“We did warn you!”
All of them swung their swords at me at once.
SLASH-SLASH-SLASH—.
Their blades cut into my body—only it didn’t feel like cutting flesh.
It felt like cutting nothing but cloth.
They glanced down in confusion and saw exactly that: my clothes sliced open, and me, still walking forward without a scratch.
For a moment, they were completely thrown.
One of them even checked his blade with his fingertip to see if the edge had dulled.
The bead of blood that welled up told him the edge was fine, and he shouted.
“He’s a master! Stop him!”
“Damn it! Use sword energy!”
They started flooding their swords with energy and attacking in earnest.
SLASH-SLASH-SLASH—.
No matter how much sword energy they poured into their strikes, I just calmly walked on, ignoring them.
When they barred the main gate, I simply drew back my fist and punched.
KABOOOOM—.
It was like the gate had never existed. There wasn’t a splinter left.
Everyone around me froze.
It wasn’t some grand martial art on display.
I’d just thrown a simple punch, and the gate was gone.
“E-emergency! It’s an emergency!”
At that shout, the alarm bell started ringing like mad.
People poured out from all directions and began attacking me to try to stop me.
Arrows rained down, every kind of weapon flew at me.
I just kept walking forward, expression flat.
“G-Grab him!”
When weapons didn’t work, they decided to dogpile me instead.
Dozens of men clung to me at once, trying to hold me down.
Even with that many bodies hanging off me, they couldn’t stop my stride.
“Wh-what the hell is this monster?”
Their attacks didn’t work.
Trying to block me by sheer strength was pointless too.
They’d thought they’d seen a lot in their lives, but this was a first.
I was strolling into the gorge with dozens of people dangling off me like I was taking a walk.
The grotesque spectacle had every eye locked on me.
Among those stares was the Lord of Nameless Hall.
“What the hell is that?”
Even the Lord of Nameless Hall couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bizarre sight.
Dozens of assassins were attacking from the front, while others in the back were using chains and ropes to keep me from moving.
The problem was that even so, I was moving just fine.
“They are... actually attacking him, right?”
“I-I think so?”
“Then why is he fine? His clothes are ripping, so he’s clearly getting hit.”
“I-I don’t know.”
It was so unreal that the sheer urgency of the situation wasn’t really sinking in for them.
Standing in the center of the gorge, I glanced around and shouted,
“This is Nameless Hall, right?”
The assassins who’d been attacking and pulling at # Nоvеlight # me were now worn out and staring at me with exhausted, shell-shocked faces.
The Lord of Nameless Hall kicked off the ground, leapt into the air, and landed lightly in front of me.
“Who are you?”
“One of the people you tried to kill.”
“I see.”
“I came to give you a chance.”
“What kind of chance?”
“A chance to repent.”
“Repent?”
“Yeah. If you promise that from today on you’ll stop doing assassin work, I’ll spare your lives. Honestly, before I came here, I was going to wipe you all out. But once I got here, your natures didn’t seem quite as horribly evil as I expected. And since I already gave a chance to a bunch of bastards more vicious than you, it felt unfair not to give you one too.”
He had no idea what I was talking about.
“Bastards more vicious than us?” was written all over his face.
“The other assassin group repented?”
“Yeah. They promised they’d switch over to guard work and the like.”
“Which group is that?”
“Ghost-Slaying Corps.”
At that, everyone around us, the Lord included, went white with shock.
If there was a group more vicious than them, Ghost-Slaying Corps was it.
They were stronger, too.
“Ghost-Slaying Corps? You’re saying Ghost-Slaying Corps agreed to do as you said?”
“Yeah. The Lord himself promised. He’ll keep it. I told him that if he didn’t, I’d chase him to the edge of the Central Plains and not leave him alone.”
The Lord of Nameless Hall looked at me—then at everything around me.
A man who’d walked in while hundreds of his people attacked and clung to him, and they still couldn’t stop him.
Since the founding of Nameless Hall, had they ever let an enemy walk all the way into the heart of the gorge this helplessly?
TWANG-TWANG— SNAP-SNAP-SNAP—.
The Flood-Dragon Ropes wrapped tight around me snapped far too easily.
Flood-Dragon Rope was made by braiding together the hide of a flood dragon that lived in the water. It was tougher than iron chains, and the cord itself was sharp enough to serve as a weapon.
They’d thrown not just one or two, but dozens of those ropes around me—and they’d all snapped like rotten twine.
THUD-THUD-THUD—.
As I broke the ropes and dusted off my clothes, clouds of glittering powder scattered in all directions.
“Ghk!”
The assassins recoiled in horror, clapping hands over their mouths and noses as they stumbled back.
That shimmering powder was nothing but poison—every variety they had.
They’d dumped it out to stop me, but the one actually in danger of being poisoned to death now was them, not me.
“So? What are you going to do?”
The Lord of Nameless Hall was thinking hard.
What could he possibly do to subdue the monster in front of him?
There was still one thing he hadn’t used.
A weapon they’d prepared for the day Nameless Hall faced a crisis so dire they were on the brink of annihilation, one they could only use once.
Blood-Lotus Shatter-Flower.
A bomb with enough destructive power to blow away this entire gorge.
Its one flaw was obvious: mutual destruction.
You had to make sure the enemy couldn’t escape before detonating it.
Literally blowing away the entire gorge meant Nameless Hall itself would cease to exist.
Looking at me now, though, even if he detonated Blood-Lotus Shatter-Flower, he figured I might still walk out alive.
“What’s wrong? You’ve got something left, don’t you? Don’t leave regrets—use it.”
Regrets, huh.
What he really felt was reluctance.
He’d gone through hell to get that thing.
“I don’t know if it’ll help you decide, but I’ll show you. My strength.”
He already felt like he’d seen more than enough.
This place was full of people whose job was killing, and yet there I was, standing unscathed after taking all their attacks.
He didn’t even know if it was possible to kill me, and I was saying I’d “show more”?
Show what, exactly?
“It’s a little dark down here. Let’s brighten it up first and then talk.”
Brighten it up?
Was I saying I was going to blow away the whole gorge or something?
Even the Blood-Lotus Shatter-Flower, the most powerful thunder bomb in the Central Plains, couldn’t do that.
That’s what he was thinking when he saw me draw back my fist.
At the same time, a massive shockwave blasted out, and a deafening roar hit.
KABOOOOM—.
With the roar, sunlight poured in where it had been dark.
He looked up—
And saw something that should never be visible from here: a clear blue sky.
The assassins around us had gone slack-faced, dropping where they stood, staring blankly up at the sky.
Half of the massive gorge that had perfectly concealed Nameless Hall’s location had been blown away and erased.
Cleanly.
“How’s that? Did that help with your decision at all?”
Help?
If someone could watch that insane scene and still resist, that would be the real madman.
For a second, he wondered if he was dreaming.
But once he came to, it wasn’t a dream. It was reality.
Could even the Heavenly Martial Emperor, lauded as the strongest in the Central Plains, pull off something like that?
Not a chance.
Given that, what could he do now?
Only one thing.
Opposing the man in front of him was meaningless.
They didn’t even know how they were supposed to kill him, while on his side, he had enough power in a single punch to kill everyone here.
They needed to bow their heads.
They wanted to live.
“If we surrender, will you spare us?”
“You’re going to quit the assassin business, right?”
“T-that...”
The Lord of Nameless Hall looked at his men.
They were all nodding so hard their heads might fall off.
“W-we’ll quit.”
“You’d better switch lines of work.”
“Our people are quick and agile. We’ll change to working as escorts.”
“If anyone’s against it, speak up now. I’ll deal with them and be on my way.”
As if anyone would oppose it.
Everyone was too busy bowing their heads.
The Lord pulled the ring off his finger and held it out to me.
“This is the seal that represents the Lord of Nameless Hall. I offer it to you.”
“I’ll take it.”
I gave a faint chuckle and patted his shoulder.
At the same time, I didn’t forget to use a mantra to leave a Heavenly-Weather Seal behind on him.
Just like that, two of the three great assassin organizations in the Central Plains ended up in my hands.
“The one that’s left was Black-Blood Sect, right?”
“Are you going to clean them up too?”
“If I don’t drop in, they’re just going to be a pain later. Do you know where they are?”
“We don’t know their location either.”
“Figures. No one knew where you were until I followed your guys here. If I’d come relying only on second-hand information, I probably would’ve thought I’d come to the wrong place and gone home.”