“Do not be afraid…!”
With the main thoroughfare completely sealed, the rebels loyal to the Moyong Clan hemorrhaged into the labyrinth of back alleys, desperately seeking a vein of escape.
“Our Revolutionary Army can do this…!”
One of the stronghold commanders bellowed to rally his wavering men.
“The main road is blocked, but our retreat path is open…!”
As an impromptu slogan shouted in the heat of the moment, it possessed a veneer of plausibility. Reality, however, was far less forgiving than his rhetoric. The Grand Young Master’s forces had no intention of allowing them to slip quietly into the night.
“Wall of spears! There are constabulary spear walls everywhere!”
Every alley was choked with government troops. Under normal circumstances, the martial artists of the rebellion would have sneered at the subpar skills of the constabulary. But in the claustrophobic confines of the city, the sheer weight of numbers was a suffocating burden.
“Raise spears! Block the enemy!”
“Hold the line! I will behead anyone who flees!”
The swarm of soldiers became a terrifying obstacle in this critical moment.
“The constabulary…!”
Upon hearing the frantic reports, the rebel commander finally realized the truth: the massive volley that had decimated them on the main road had come from the constabulary’s archer units.
“Why is the government intervening in a civil war to restore the Moyong Clan?!”
Should they force a breakthrough? Or hunt for another detour?
His hesitation was fleeting, but it was long enough for the spotters to relay the coordinates of their new location.
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!
Arrows soared high over the slate rooftops, raining down like a torrential iron downpour. Even without a direct line of sight, the archers were executing indirect fire with lethal precision.
“Gah…!”
“Aaaargh!”
The rebels fell in tangled heaps.
While the majority of the constabulary forces—mere police rather than soldiers—were little more than a rabble, their archer units were a breed apart. Training skilled archers was a costly endeavor, leading most local governments to avoid maintaining large units.
But this was the North.
To counter the foreign tribes who could fire freely from horseback, the Northern officials had no choice but to cultivate elite marksmen.
“W-What shall we do?! Do we retreat?!”
When his adjutant, an arrow quivering in his arm, screamed the question, the rebel commander ground his teeth.
“We break through! There is no retreat!”
“But…!”
“If we fall back now, we will be isolated and crushed!”
The commander raised his drawn sword and charged first.
“Dedicate your lives to the great cause! True heroes of the Moyong Clan!”
Rebels charging through a curtain of falling arrows—it was a suicidal assault, a sprint into the embrace of death that sent shivers down the spines of the observers.
“Hold them!”
As the constabulary spearmen flinched, overwhelmed by the ferocious fatalism of the rebels, a government officer gritted his teeth and roared.
“If we just hold on, victory is ours!”
***
Inside the Command Tent
“Grand Strategist Sima is…?”
Se-ah, the Master of Crescent Moon, looked as if she couldn’t comprehend the words she had just heard.
“Did you say he has not yet arrived…?”
“Correct.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded, his gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the tent flaps.
“Because a force equipped with siege weapons appeared, we naturally assumed that Grand Strategist Sima had arrived with reinforcements.”
Visibility was severely limited by the thickening rain and the veil of night. Yet, from beyond that obscurity, siege engines were pounding the walls with rhythmic violence.
“Ah…!”
Se-ah let out a low groan of realization.
“If that is not him…”
The Grand Young Master tapped his finger rhythmically on the armrest.
“Perhaps creating that very misconception was the greatest move Grand Strategist Sima could make, precisely because he couldn’t arrive in time.”
“…That may be true.”
Se-ah nodded slowly.
“Because of that assumption, you had to pull back all our forces from the fortress walls.”
If they hadn’t retracted their defensive line to focus on the interior, the battle on the walls would have dragged on, giving the enemy no room to maneuver.
“I couldn’t risk a danger that was staring me in the face.”
“Indeed.”
If Grand Strategist Sima had actually arrived, the friendly forces blocking the retreat path would have been hammered between the anvil of the siege and the hammer of the rebels. The Grand Young Master’s judgment in that moment had been sound.
“In any case,” the Grand Young Master said, “resultantly, Sima succeeded in an operation to open breathing room for the Moyong rebels and the Huashan Vanguard, who should have been trapped and annihilated.”
***
A Road Somewhere in the North
A procession of armored carriages bearing the mark of the Luoyang Sword Clan tore down the road, flanked by a cavalry escort.
“…It is deeply regrettable.”
Through the open window, road dust drifted in unchecked. Yet the gaze of the elderly man with the air of a Taoist immortal—Grand Strategist Sima—was fixed on something far beyond the grit.
“……”
The distant night sky. The bright moon and clusters of stars. The wilderness stretching out into infinity. And on the far horizon, where the boundary melted into darkness, heavy rain clouds hung low and ominous.
Right now, beyond that horizon, in Shenyang, a massive bloodbath was taking place beneath those clouds. And the majority of that blood would belong to his allies.
“…I am late. Too late.”
The majestic landscape of the North had a way of crushing the human ego. To Sima, the vastness felt like an insurmountable gap, a reminder that he was but a speck of dust beneath the heavens.
“In the end, as predicted… arriving on time was impossible.”
***
“If the arriving force is not led by Grand Strategist Sima personally…” Se-ah asked the Grand Young Master, her brow furrowed. “Then who in the world is attacking the walls right now?”
If the main army hadn’t arrived, who were those troops?
The Grand Young Master answered without hesitation.
“A force within a distance that could arrive by this time. One that possesses siege weapons and is large enough to threaten Shenyang.”
“Surely…”
As the head of an intelligence organization, Se-ah instantly recalled a group that fit the profile.
“…The Neutral Tribal Alliance?”
“Exactly.”
The Grand Young Master nodded.
***
Near Shenyang
“Did you not hear me?!”
A young martial artist in black robes bellowed. It was Baek Cheong, the “Steel Dragon Fang” and disciple of the former Wudang Sect Leader.
“Ah, honestly.”
His counterpart, wearing traditional Northern tribal armor, picked his ear with maddening nonchalance.
“I told you, I can’t hear well because of our trebuchets.”
Behind him, amidst the pouring rain, the siege engines were relentlessly hurling boulders. These mobile platforms were the sole reason they could launch a bombardment immediately upon arrival.
“Tut-tut. Young people these days, losing their hearing so early.”
“Then I will say it again, filled with internal energy!”
Baek Cheong’s voice pierced through the cacophony of the trebuchets, ringing out like a clap of thunder.
“Prepare your combat troops to charge in with our Wudang Vanguard immediately!”
He violently shook the parchment in his hand—the missive delivered by Grand Strategist Sima’s messenger hawk.
“Grand Strategist Sima explicitly stated that we must utilize the element of surprise to increase our chances of victory!”
“Hoh.”
This time, unable to feign deafness, the Tribal Chief of the Neutral Alliance adopted an even more brazen attitude.
“There is no clause in our contract stating that we must follow the orders of the Wudang Sect.”
Baek Cheong’s face turned crimson with rage.
“This is not an order, it is a request for cooperation!”
“Is that so?”
The Chief shrugged.
“Anyway. We will move according to our own judgment and tactics. So, you Taoists do as you please.”
A battle in the rain. A battle at night. Urban warfare in an unfamiliar city. The rebels and Mount Hua forces inside, who were supposed to coordinate with them, suffered from a fractured command structure, and there was no supreme commander on the outside to unify them.
Tactically speaking, it was a nightmare.
The Chief of the Neutral Tribal Alliance had plenty of reasons not to advance a single step further.
“Damn it!”
Baek Cheong shouted again.
“There is no way Grand Strategist Sima would omit command authority from the contract! Show me your contract right now!”
“Oh dear, what to do.”
The Chief replied, his expression unreadable.
“I don’t have the contract. Naturally, such an important document is with the Alliance Leader.”
“Y-You…!”
***
“B-But…!”
Se-ah couldn’t hide her bewilderment.
“They have already joined the war?”
She wasn’t unaware of their existence, but she had deliberately pushed them to the periphery of her strategic calculations.
“Didn’t you predict initially that they wouldn’t join the war until they had driven their price up to the absolute maximum at the very end?!”
The Neutral Tribal Alliance was a mercenary coalition unique to the North. Only after the clash between the Northern Great General’s Estate and the Dread King had fully intensified would their price hit the ceiling. That was the optimal moment for their intervention.
“The answer is simple,” the Grand Young Master replied effortlessly. “Grand Strategist Sima must have pre-paid the exorbitant sum they would have hoped for at the end.”
“……!”
The price to purchase an entire faction’s loyalty. Se-ah, unable to even estimate that astronomical figure, felt a wave of dizziness and clutched her head.
“But, that means…”
After organizing her chaotic thoughts, she spoke again.
“Are you saying Grand Strategist Sima predicted he would be late long ago, and paid that massive hiring fee to the Neutral Tribal Alliance in advance?”
“Yes.”
“At that point, Sima wouldn’t even have had proper intelligence on Shenyang.”
She asked incredulously.
“If the rebels had held out effectively inside the Moyong main residence, the support from the Mount Hua and Wudang Vanguards alone would have been sufficient.”
She shook her head in disbelief.
“The Neutral Tribal Alliance is a collective of mercenary corps; they are paid per battle.”
“Correct.”
The Grand Young Master nodded.
“And once a price goes up, it never comes down until the war ends.”
“Then from now on, every time he mobilizes them, Sima’s side will have to pay an enormous sum.”
“Indeed.”
She couldn’t fathom Sima throwing precious war funds into a vague prediction from the start.
“Furthermore, in the first place.”
She raised the point that had baffled her most.
“Does Grand Strategist Sima even have that kind of money?”
“He doesn’t.”
“…Pardon?”
The Grand Young Master smiled.
“Sima doesn’t have it, but the Namgung Clan does.”
“But Sima wouldn’t have had the time to secure permission from the Namgung Clan, would he?”
Even if time had permitted, the Namgung Clan would never execute such a massive expenditure based solely on one individual’s hunch.
“……”
When the Grand Young Master shrugged instead of answering, Se-ah looked dumbfounded.
“Are you saying Grand Strategist Sima used the Namgung Clan’s name without authorization?!”
“Even if you look a thousand li ahead, and foresee a thousand days into the future…”
The Grand Young Master spoke as if reciting a eulogy.
“If everyone else is blind, no one will believe your words.”
He turned his gaze back to the storm outside.
“For those who see what is invisible to others… there is always a corresponding suffering.”
***
“…Grand Strategist.”
A high-ranking strategist spoke up, glancing cautiously at the old man.
“……”
There was no answer. When the old man’s long eyebrows twitched in displeasure, the strategist hurriedly corrected his address.
“Grand Strategist Sima.”
Until recently, there had been two Grand Strategists in the New Martial Righteous Alliance. To distinguish between them, people rarely used the standalone title “Grand Strategist.” To Sima, even that singular honorific now felt like a scar of bitter regret.
“…What is it?”
At Sima’s voice, cracked by dust and fatigue, the strategist voiced his opinion a fraction more carefully.
“…Using the Namgung Clan’s name unauthorized to spend such a large sum… it was too much.”
“So?”
“…Uh, well.”
At the unusually curt response, the strategist broke into a cold sweat but pressed on.
“If… if the situation was such that the Mount Hua and Wudang Vanguards were sufficient without deploying the Neutral Tribal Alliance…”
They hadn’t received the latest intelligence from Shenyang yet. Even with messenger hawks rumored to be the fastest in the land, the tyranny of physical distance was absolute.
“If that happens, your credibility within the New Martial Righteous Alliance could be severely shaken, sir.”
Once the dam broke, other strategists chimed in.
“In this case…”
“Therefore, in the future…”
I show them, but they cannot see.
I tell them, but they cannot hear.
Most likely… if the situation in Shenyang was flowing as he anticipated…
The Neutral Tribal Alliance would be avoiding direct combat to stall for time. The Wudang Sect would be hesitant to charge in without the Alliance’s support.
The contract clearly stated that combat command was delegated to the commanders of Mount Hua or Wudang. However, the cunning Neutral Tribal Alliance, seasoned in the art of war for profit, would find any excuse to shirk responsibility.
“…Concerns are…”
“…Elder Namgung Hyeok-cheon said…”
Surrounded by the buzzing, suffocating voices swarming like gnats, Grand Strategist Sima felt his breath catch in his throat.
…Brother Zhuge.
The absence of his kindred spirit—the one person who truly understood the resonance of his soul—weighed on him heavily in this moment.
And.
Just as powerfully.
A dark, pitch-black rage surged from the depths of his being.
Yeon So-hyeon…!