Diverging Currents – 1
Murim Alliance, Mancheong Pavilion.
Grand Strategist Jegal Jigang slammed his desk with a furious face.
Bang!
"What?! You're telling me that Guiyu Eumma Jigi-eum actually said that?!"
The pavilion master of Mancheong, kneeling before him, lowered his head even further and answered.
"Yes, sir."
"Ghhhhh!"
The report was that Guiyu Eumma Jigi-eum, after hunting down Sa Won-yang of the Jeonghyeop Sect, had actually mentioned Jegal Jigang's name in front of Cheongseong and the Tang Clan.
Jegal Jigang realized he had been outmaneuvered.
His original plan had been to use the Jeonghyeop Sect scandal to pressure the Blood Demon for breaking their pact. But before he could act, the man himself had moved swiftly and eliminated Sa Won-yang.
That part, at least, was understandable.
It would prove to the martial world that the Blood Sect had acted without Jegal's knowledge, while showing off how faithfully they upheld the pact.
But to invoke his name…?
Jegal Jigang clenched his teeth and muttered,
"That snake of a man…."
On the surface, mentioning his name could be interpreted as the Blood Sect showing their own innocence.
But Jegal knew it wasn't just that.
With that statement, the martial world would now believe not only that he, the Grand Strategist of the Murim Alliance, but the Alliance itself was in constant communication with the Blood Sect.
That alone would serve to dilute hatred against the Blood Sect—spreading some of it onto the Murim Alliance instead.
From now on, whenever people recalled the Blood Sect's atrocities, they would also recall the Alliance.
What's more, the words felt like a warning from the Blood Demon himself.
"Even if everything is exposed, it doesn't matter to us. Think carefully about who will suffer more if the truth comes out, and act accordingly."
So this was the Blood Demon's answer to Jegal Jigang's attempt to pressure them through this incident.
Jegal struggled to suppress his rage.
But the report of the Jeonghyeop incident was not the only thing fueling his fury.
"This… is from Sword Saint himself?"
"Yes, sir."
Not long ago, Jegal Jigang had summoned the Sword Saint to the Jeonghyeop Sect in order to deal with him, while secretly asking the Blood Sect to eliminate him.
But the reply he had just received from the Sword Saint nearly made him crush the letter in front of his subordinates. He restrained himself, jaw clenched tight.
The Sword Saint's letter said this:
"I am too occupied with the warfront. Matters north of the battlefield must be handled by the Alliance."
In short, despite Jegal's order, he refused to leave the front.
Sword Saint… if that man refused to move from the frontlines….
Grinding his teeth, Jegal hurried back to his war office, where he found the secret letter from the Blood Demon waiting.
It read exactly as he feared:
[Since that man did not appear at the Jeonghyeop Sect, I could not kill him. I had prepared thoroughly, yet thanks to this, I wasted my efforts. Perhaps Grand Strategist Jegal's brilliance is not what it used to be? Still, I trust you wouldn't be so foolish as to ask us to kill him on the frontlines. As for the cost of wasting our efforts, I shall collect it another time.]
"Ghhhhh!"
Jegal crushed the letter in his fist.
The Blood Demon was right.
The Sword Saint could not be killed on the battlefield.
If the idol of the martial world were slain there by the Blood Sect, then no matter how much power Jegal wielded within the Alliance, nothing could prevent another Great Blood War from erupting.
So instead of disposing of the Sword Saint, Jegal had ended up in the Blood Demon's debt—mocked to his face.
Rage shot to the very top of his head.
All of this was because of that man, the Sword Saint.
In his empty office, Jegal roared the man's name with fury:
"Hae Un-Baek!"
But after some time, as his anger cooled, Jegal found he could not shake off a strange unease.
The Blood Sect's demonic leaders had appeared north of the front, even mentioning the possibility of another Great Blood War—yet the Sword Saint ignored it and refused to move.
Even accounting for the grief of losing his daughter, this was too unlike the Sword Saint he knew.
And worse, every move he made seemed deliberately designed to make Jegal suffer.
Stroking his beard, Jegal muttered,
"Strange. Very strange indeed."
If he dismissed this as coincidence, he had no right to call himself a strategist.
Clearly, someone was moving the Sword Saint from behind the scenes.
And suddenly, the most suspicious faction came to mind.
"Could it be… the Sama Clan has begun to move?"
The Sama Clan had once served as the hidden hand behind Chun Giseong, the old Alliance Lord known as the Hero King.
For nearly a century, they had pushed the Jegal Clan aside, reigning as the supreme family of strategy in the martial world.
But once Jegal Jigang rose to power as strategist to the current Alliance Lord, Mo Yonggeom, he had ruthlessly toppled them.
So thoroughly that they could never rise again.
He had never lifted his watchful eye from them, and no report of activity had reached him since.
But if anyone still had the cunning to torment him this way, it was them.
Jegal leapt from his seat and strode back toward Mancheong Pavilion.
He needed a full report on the Sama Clan, on the Sword Saint, and on this entire affair.
***
Deputy Commander Juwon-seo of the Shadow Division was inspecting a secluded manor in the forest with his direct subordinates.
It was the very manor where Demon General Jeo Ung-won had stayed with his men.
One of his subordinates approached and reported:
"Deputy Commander, four corpses of Shadow Division members have been found. The remains were badly damaged, as if shattered by overwhelming internal energy, and they are too decomposed to confirm their identities."
Frowning at the report, Juwon-seo turned his gaze to the body laid out before him and asked again—
Deputy Commander Juwon-seo frowned at his subordinates' report, then turned his eyes to the corpse before him and asked again.
"Can't you at least identify the body of Eighth Squad Leader Hyu Jasung?"
"No, sir. I'm afraid it's impossible."
"Hm…"
Hyu Jasung, the eighth squad leader of the Shadow Division, had tracked Demon General Jeo Ung-won and uncovered his ties to the Jeonghyeop Sect. But after submitting that report, he had never responded to the summons Juwon-seo sent.
It seemed as though he had either disappeared entirely, or been annihilated before he could even make another report.
His utter silence—sending no reply, let alone appearing before the Murim Alliance—had forced Juwon-seo to come here himself to investigate.
But what he found were only corpses—Blood Sect cultists' bodies, and the mangled remains of Shadow Division men who appeared to have fought them.
And even those were nothing more than bones and rags, rotted beyond recognition in the sweltering forest heat. There was no way to tell if Hyu Jasung was among them.
Juwon-seo scowled and muttered to himself.
"But something doesn't add up. If they fought to the death with those Demon Generals here, how could the report have been delivered? And what of the captive women? Who freed them?"
At that, one of his men spoke hesitantly.
"Perhaps he managed to send the report while gravely wounded, and died immediately afterward? Using the last of his strength…"
"Hm. Hyu Jasung, that man?"
It was possible, if he had been a warrior of strong duty.
But the Hyu Jasung Juwon-seo remembered had never struck him as a man of loyalty or responsibility.
On the contrary, he had given off the unsettling impression of secretly enjoying killing.
After a moment's thought, Juwon-seo issued new orders.
"Cease the investigation for now. Gather everyone. We'll return and report to the Grand Strategist, then await further orders. But you three—stay behind and track down those women who were rescued. Get testimony on who saved them."
"Yes, sir!"
With that, Juwon-seo and his subordinates went their separate ways.
Then, as the manor fell silent—
From the shade of a tree beside the deserted estate, a shadowy figure in black rose like a ghost.
It was Sak Muhun, once the fifth squad leader of the Shadow Division—now an ally of Hae Cheongyeon.
With a grimace, he muttered,
"Just as Junior Sister Cheongyeon said, they came to investigate in person. And of all things, they're looking into the rescued women too. Sharp, sharper than I thought."
Hae Cheongyeon had long anticipated such a development, and had instructed Sak Muhun to leave behind traces making it appear as though the Demon General's gang and the Shadow Division had slaughtered each other here.
With so much time passed since then, of course the investigators would find nothing suspicious.
But they hadn't been able to prepare against inquiries about the rescued women.
Managing them all was not something Sak Muhun could do alone.
So they had simply hoped the investigators' suspicions wouldn't reach that far….
"Things are about to get complicated."
Sak Muhun scribbled a short message, tied it to a messenger pigeon, and released it.
It was a report for Cheongyeon.
Watching the pigeon fly safely into the sky, he immediately set off after the men dispatched to question the women.
If they happened to discover anything significant, he might have to deal with them.
***
The Sword Gate Sect, driven to the brink, had somehow survived.
Despite two disastrous defeats, most had believed this time would spell the end of the Sword Gate Sect for certain.
After all, the Jeonghyeop Sect had gathered its full strength at Guizhou's border to destroy them. It was the natural conclusion.
No one could have predicted that the Jeonghyeop Sect would collapse from within.
But once it was revealed that the Jeonghyeop Sect's master was in fact Somyeon Magun, a Blood Sect demon commander, and once their headquarters was seized by Cheongseong and the Tang Clan, the Jeonghyeop warriors massed on Guizhou's border could not help but fall into confusion.
Most of them were not cultists, but upright orthodox warriors who had taken pride in the Jeonghyeop name.
At first, when the news spread, they laughed it off.
"Our master is a Blood Sect demon commander? Hah! What a joke!"
"The Sword Gate Sect must be spreading lies to save themselves!"
"Such despicable tricks—typical of heretical sects!"
But as time passed, the news grew more detailed, and their leaders—who had seemed ready to march immediately on Sword Gate—gathered only to whisper in grim councils. The rank-and-file could no longer deny it.
It wasn't baseless rumor.
Despair spread.
"This can't be…"
"Then everything we've done, all of it, was orchestrated by the Blood Sect?"
They no longer knew what to do, or whose words to trust.
Some warriors, overcome with disillusionment, abandoned the army on the spot.
But most remained, still camped near Guizhou, paralyzed by confusion.
It was then that someone came to them.
To their shock, it was Heo Gyeong, master of the Sword Gate Sect—the very man they had come to fight.
He arrived with only a small group at his side, walking straight into the Jeonghyeop camp.
Then, filling his voice with inner strength, he shouted:
"I am Heo Gyeong, Master of the Sword Gate Sect! Though I lost my own younger brother, Deputy Sect Master Heo Jung, to Jeonghyeop's invasion, I refuse to believe it was truly the will of righteous men of Jeonghyeop! No—it must have been, as revealed, the Blood Sect's scheme. We have all been ensnared in their plot to make us slaughter each other!
Therefore, I propose a council! If you yourselves are not puppets of the Blood Sect, then meet with me at once!"
He declared himself a victim of Jeonghyeop's aggression, yet swore he bore them no grudge—so long as they proved themselves not the Blood Sect's pawns.
The Jeonghyeop side could not refuse.
Though more of their warriors had fallen, it was true they had struck first. And by now, the rank-and-file were already eyeing their leaders with suspicion.
Thus, compelled, Jeonghyeop's peak masters agreed to the meeting—only to hear words they never could have imagined.
"These people with me are the Five Falcon Siblings, who came to our aid and saved the Sword Gate Sect."
The Five Falcon Siblings' reputation was already well known, even among the Jeonghyeop Sect.
As enemies, they were perhaps even more famous than among their allies.
Their names alone carried weight. And among them, the beauty of the fourth sibling, Yeonhae, the Heavenly Beauty, left the Jeonghyeop warriors stunned.
While all eyes were captivated, Heo Gyeong continued.
All exactly as Hae Cheongyeon had scripted.
"In truth, they are not mere wanderers. They were sent by a benefactor from my past. Especially here, Lady Yeon hae has inherited the true legacy of the Hangsan Sect."
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