“If you’ve got a problem with it, come over here and settle this with a fight.”

The Life-Stealing Ghost Sword unleashed a surge of killing intent so absolute it petrified the Heilongjiang general cowering beneath his boot. The man’s body became a statue, his instinctual terror overriding his will and locking his joints in place with a single, chilling realization: Move and you die. Even though the blade wasn’t yet at his throat, his entire life flashed before his eyes in a frantic, kaleidoscopic blur.

The riders of the Iron Cavalry felt the storm as well. The fury they had felt at the Ghost Sword’s insolence was instantly replaced by a visceral reminder of exactly who—and what—they were facing. The summer breeze that had been whispering through the trees died in an instant. The cicadas and birds fell into a terrified silence, and not a single leaf dared to rustle in the oppressive stillness.

More jarring than the sudden quiet was the man himself. As Life-Stealing Ghost Sword bared his teeth in a predatory grin, his killing intent didn’t dissipate; it thickened, coagulating into something heavy and foul. It wasn’t the refined, disciplined aura of a master warrior—it was the raw, jagged madness of a vengeful spirit.

“Well?” he challenged, his voice cutting through the silence. “I said, if you’re annoyed, step up.”

The tension reached a breaking point, a hair-trigger moment where the forest seemed poised to explode. It was the Grand Nobleman who finally shattered the stillness with a weary, resigned sigh.

“…You say the Grand Young Master of the Luoyang Yeon Clan ordered you to bring him the Heilongjiang generals?” she asked.

“Yeah,” the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword grunted, nodding slowly. “That was the order.”

A complex shadow of emotion flickered across the Grand Nobleman’s wrinkled face. “I know you are powerful, but… to break an entire legion and deliver the generals? He ordered you to do that alone?”

“Hell if I know.” The Ghost Sword shrugged nonchalantly. “He gave the word, I follow it. Simple as that.” A twisted smirk played across his lips as he looked from Grand Nobleman to her elite riders. “Besides, the timing worked out perfectly, didn’t it? The Heilongjiang legion is a pile of scrap, and the generals are scattering like rats. Makes my job of rounding them up a lot easier.”

The Grand Nobleman fell silent for a long moment, her eyes searching the Ghost Sword’s face before she spoke again. “I received a letter… back when spring was fading into the heat of summer.”

The Ghost Sword’s expression clearly said, ‘And why should I care?’, but Grand Nobleman continued, her voice steady and resonant. “The author of that letter introduced himself as Yeon So-hyeon, the Grand Young Master of the Luoyang Yeon Clan.”

At the mention of his liege’s name, Life-Stealing Ghost Sword’s ears twitched with a flicker of genuine interest.

“In that letter…” the Grand Nobleman paused, her voice tinged with a lingering sense of disbelief. “He claimed that a war would ignite in the North. He predicted the sudden death of the Heilongjiang Governor-General and warned that the defense legion would abandon their posts and retreat.”

The general pinned under the Ghost Sword’s boot was the first to react. “W-Wait! What did you just say?!” He looked up at Grand Nobleman with wide, frantic eyes. “You’re saying that brat predicted the war? He knew the Governor-General would die and that we would fall back? Long before it even happened?!”

It was too much for him to process. The words were a physical blow to his sanity, a terrifying truth he desperately wanted to label a lie. “Don’t talk rot!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “That Yeon kid isn’t a god! There’s no way he could have known—!”

BOOM!

“Shut up.” The Ghost Sword’s foot was faster than the general’s tongue, slamming into the man’s abdomen and sending him into a coughing fit on the forest floor. Life-Stealing Ghost Sword looked down at the writhing man with bored contempt. “I told you to keep your trap shut. Unless you want another beating, don’t interrupt your betters while we’re talking.”

Told him to shut up or he’d get hit… then hit him before he could even talk. The irony wasn’t lost on the general, but he clutched his stomach and forced himself into silence.

“I know it sounds impossible,” the Grand Nobleman said, nodding slowly. “Even as I held the letter, I found it hard to believe. But it arrived months ago—long before the first arrow was loosed in this conflict.”

The Ghost Sword let out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Surprised? To me, it just sounds like my Lord’s usual Tuesday. That man lives in the future.”

The Grand Nobleman let out a long, low hum of thought. His usual Tuesday, is it? Following the receipt of that letter, she had exhausted every resource to investigate Yeon So-hyeon. But nothing she found matched the figure in the letter; the reports from the Central Plains had felt like the absurdly exaggerated tales of traveling bards, twisted by the distance of the border.

“Initially, I dismissed it as nonsense,” she admitted, rubbing a hand across her aching brow. “But then, one by one… the things mentioned in that letter began to manifest as reality.”

As she spoke, her mind raced back to the day they had approached the border between the Central Plains and Haedong.

“Grand Nobleman,” her adjutant had asked as they rode. “Why have we come so far out for a training exercise today?”

Truthfully, she had no logical reason to schedule a drill for that day, let alone conduct it so close to the border. But she had led the Iron Cavalry out regardless, driven by a nagging sense of destiny planted by that mysterious letter.

“It’s because—”

Before she could answer, the sharp cry of a messenger hawk had pierced the air. A scroll was retrieved, and the contents had frozen her heart.

“The Governor-General of Heilongjiang has died suddenly, my Lady.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, acting like a woman possessed, she had issued her command to the riders.

“Today… we reclaim our ancestral soil!”

Returning to the present, the Grand Nobleman narrowed her eyes. “In that moment, I realized I had no other choice. I had to follow the path laid out in the letter.” She looked directly at the Ghost Sword. “Your Lord… he wrote one last thing at the very end of that missive.”

She recited the words as if they were etched into her soul. “If you do not cross the border at this precise moment, Grand Nobleman, the Dread King Yelü Nuzhucha will seize the entire Northern continent. And if that happens, you and your people will never set foot on your ancestral lands again.”

The Ghost Sword laughed again. “Yep. That sounds exactly like him. Arrogant, bossy, and unfortunately right.”

“I have a visceral distaste for those who speak of the future as if it were set in stone,” the Grand Nobleman said with a bitter smile. “Usually, such people are charlatans or fools who should never be trusted. But… I found it impossible to doubt Grand Young Master.”

And just as predicted, the Heilongjiang Defense Legion had abandoned their province and fled like cowards, allowing her to march all the way to this Governor-General’s Estate in Jilin without a single obstacle.

“(Is it possible…?)” the adjutant whispered in his native tongue. He spoke enough of the Central Plains dialect to follow the conversation. “(Did the letter also predict that the retreating legion would end up here?)”

Grand Nobleman nodded slowly. “(It did.)”

“(So that’s why…!)” The adjutant’s realization hit him like a thunderbolt. “(That’s why you weren’t surprised when we found them here! You were expecting them!)”

Grand Nobleman remembered the exchange from earlier.

—“The enemy is camped before the Governor-General’s Estate!” 

—“They look as though they are preparing to siege the estate rather than defend against us, yes?” 

—“Th-That is exactly it…! How did you know, my Lady?!” 

—“And the enemy… they are the legion that fled from Heilongjiang, are they not?”

“(Everything,)” the Grand Nobleman murmured, her voice sinking into a heavy register. “(Everything happened exactly as it was written in that letter.)”

The adjutant stood in stunned silence, unable to formulate a response to such terrifying foresight.

“Hey,” the Life-Stealing Ghost Sword interrupted, scratching his chin. “I don’t know what kind of secret club meeting you two are having in that Haedong gibberish, but I’m taking this guy and leaving.” He delivered one more casual, bone-shattering kick to the general’s ribs. “Quit faking it, you piece of shit. Get up. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

“I-I’m getting up…!” the general gasped, staggering to his feet with a groan of pure agony.

“Wait,” the Grand Nobleman commanded, her voice dropping all pretense of curiosity. “Not so fast.”

“Ugh.” Life-Stealing Ghost Sword let out a theatrical groan of annoyance, but Grand Nobleman pressed on.

“What does the Grand Young Master truly want?” She stepped forward, her presence expanding to fill the clearing. “He didn’t send an official diplomatic envoy to Haedong, nor did he request a personal alliance with me. He acted in the shadows.”

The questions she had lived with since the arrival of the letter finally burst forth like a breached dam. “Has he truly just handed us Heilongjiang? Did he choose this unofficial route because a formal trade or alliance would carry too much political weight? Or is it something else?”

Her voice, usually so measured, began to rise in pitch and intensity. “Does he plan to settle the score with the Dread King and then turn his blades on me for control of the province? Or does he simply want me to do his dirty work and fight the Dread King for him?! What in the name of the heavens is that boy truly after?!”

Grand Nobleman stood panting, her chest heaving as she vented months of suppressed anxiety.

“Hmm.” Life-Stealing Ghost Sword scratched his head vigorously, looking thoroughly inconvenienced. “Listen, lady… you’re asking the wrong guy. Even if you asked anyone else in the world, I don’t think a single person could tell you what’s rattling around inside my liege’s skull.”

“Your liege knew my army would appear here,” the Grand Nobleman pressed. “Are you telling me he gave you no instructions on how to handle this encounter?”

“I got orders,” the Ghost Sword replied, pointing a thumb at the swaying, half-dead general. “He told me to bring these bastards back alive. That’s it.”

“…Is that truly all?”

The Life-Stealing Ghost Sword let out a savage, feral laugh. “Political schemes, grand strategies… none of that shit means anything to me,” he said, his smile sharpening into a razor’s edge. “For a warrior, a single word from his Lord is more than enough.”

Grand Nobleman searched his eyes and found only a terrifying, uncomplicated sincerity. She nodded slowly. “…I see. For a true warrior, I suppose it is.” She paused, her expression hardening as she raised her hand. In unison, the Iron Cavalry riders gripped their weapons. “However, since the Grand Young Master has refused to clarify his intent, I have no choice but to treat him as a potential adversary for now.”

She leveled her blade at Life-Stealing Ghost Sword. “Leave the general. And if you have any sense, you’ll surrender quietly as well.”

“Hah!”

Life-Stealing Ghost Sword’s laughter boomed through the forest, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy. “Now we’re talking!”

Cling-clang-clang-clang!

In one fluid, explosive motion, five swords were unsheathed from his person. They were five swords of entirely different shapes and sizes—Form, Sensation, Perception, Impulse, and Consciousness—each hummed with a unique, haunting frequency.

“Let’s see if the legendary Grand Nobleman lives up to the hype, shall we?”