The Mad Dog Inspector of the Martial Alliance

Chapter 62 : Breaking the Trap (2)

There were a total of eleven people in the guest room, which had been elaborately decorated to welcome guests at the Jangseong Escort Agency.

Two martial artists from the Huashan Sect, Jang So-gil, and Yang Gwan. And the escort leader of the Jangseong Escort Agency and his six subordinates.

Among them, four had died in an instant.

One's head had fallen off from a surprise attack, two were pierced by a spear, and the remaining one's head had burst.

But this was not murder. Because that person was an inspector of the Martial Alliance.

Ah-! The Martial Alliance!

The symbol of the orthodox sect, the pillar of the orthodox sect, the Martial Alliance!

This was not murder, but the execution of justice.

Everyone would think so.

A single tear flowed from the escort leader's eye.

'The Martial Alliance is punishing us, using the failure of the escort as a pretext. After killing us like this, they'll frame us with some strange crime and make us into bad guys who deserved to die. So this is how it ends. So this is how I die.'

He even saw a glimpse of his life flashing before his eyes. He felt a renewed sense of injustice.

The single tear that had been flowing down his cheek became as thick as a waterfall.

Sorrow welled up, and a wail came out on its own.

He cried like a child and shouted.

"Keoheuhuk. It's unfair. It's unfair, Inspector! I'm not guilty!"

"So I already said that the escort leader is not at fault. Get up. You are not guilty."

"Keoheuhuk. It's unfair!"

"Damn it, he's not listening."

"I! With trust! And honesty as my motto! Without a single lie, the escort agency!"

In fact, the ledger was very clean.

That's why the Jangseong Escort Agency was selected in the first place.

"I have never abandoned my duty of sincere tax payment! And I have lived a life of distancing myself from the private and getting closer to the public-!"

"Hey, just one verse. I get it."

"Keoheuhuk."

"Stop crying. It's distracting."

Jang So-gil wiped the blood that had splattered on his face with a cloth and let out a sigh. It was not a sigh directed at the escort leader, but a sigh of relief. It was uncertain whether the surprise attack would work or not, so Jang So-gil had also been quite anxious inside.

'It's a relief that my body moved as I thought in my head.'

Now, his heart was pounding with tension and excitement. The fight was not over yet, which was a problem.

As Jang So-gil frowned, Yang Gwan asked.

"You told me to cut them down, so I did, but is it alright?"

"Yes. Two of those four bastards are assassins, and the other two are spies of the Yuan Dynasty."

"How did you know that?"

"I have my ways."

"Was that unreasonable stubbornness, perhaps, a means of interrogation?"

"Oh, you're pretty good? You're right."

Jang So-gil was originally skilled at reading people's emotions. In his merchant days, he had used it to guess the other party's inner thoughts by observing their expressions or gestures during conversation to lead the deal in his favor, but it could also be used to ferret out spies like this. He would change the terms of the deal several times, playing with the other party's emotions up and down, and check the changes in their emotions.

"The escort leader's emotional expression was very rich, so it was easy to read. And perhaps because he had such an escort leader by his side, the others couldn't hide their emotions at all. Among them, there was a guy who was coldly organizing his qi like a block of ice and was aiming for my neck if he got the chance. It would be funnier if I couldn't distinguish him."

"Heo... You're amazing."

"Well, it's just the beginning, so be tense."

He had entered the tiger's den and plucked the tiger's whiskers.

An assassination den's killing is only once. A failed commission is never accepted again.

So even if they were hit by an unexpected surprise attack, once the killing had begun, they had to see it to the end.

That was the organization called an assassination den.

Now, whether they liked it or not, it was time to see it to the end.

Jang So-gil, who had drawn his sword, narrowed his eyes, and Yang Gwan held his spear upright and listened.

"It seems they spent quite a bit of money."

The sound of people running on the roof of the Jangseong Escort Agency could be heard. The footsteps of assassins were usually hard to hear, but for them to be this loud, it meant there were more than one or two. Yang Gwan's ears twitched, and he grumbled.

"There are more than a dozen assassins. They say all the money in the world is with the bad guys, and it's not wrong. It must have cost a huge amount of money to hire that many."

"They'll definitely have a lot of money. But the cost of this assassination probably won't be that huge for them. The Dali Ye Clan has always had a lot of money."

"D-didn't you say they couldn't spend much because of that reverse tracking or whatever?"

"They must have used their hidden assets."

"Hidden assets? What's that?"

It would be troublesome if the martial artists of Huashan got involved and died.

Jang So-gil, while roughly shoving the martial artists into a corner, replied.

"The current world is based on silver. It means that silver is the foundation of currency. Hidden assets are other physical assets that are not silver. For example, it refers to wealth that can be easily converted into silver and is easy to accumulate, like rice, tea leaves, or silk."

Yunnan was a place that cultivated bitter yet delicious rice and two of the five great teas of the world. There must be an inexhaustible amount of rice and tea leaves. If they paid the assassination den with rice and tea, reverse tracking would be difficult.

"Still, there are ways to reverse track and screw them over, so don't worry about it. For now, we have to fight and survive. But..."

A fight inside the escort agency was disadvantageous for Jang So-gil.

The Cloud Dragon Eight Forms was the martial art of a dragon swimming in the clouds. A fight in a place where the sky could not be seen was frustrating.

If he were to fight, he would have to go out and fight. But were assassins assassins for nothing? There would surely be a trap.

They might have set up silver threads, or it might be a poison trap. Since they had come first and were waiting, they had plenty of time to predict the escape route and set a trap. Moving from here was no different from moving as the enemy wanted.

Strategy and tactics are about doing what the opponent dislikes and doing what is advantageous to me.

Therefore, if he were to flee now, he would fall into a trap, so it was the worst of the worst choices. And fighting back as it was was an ordinary choice, so it could be called a mediocre choice.

Then what was the best choice?

The corners of Jang So-gil's mouth went up.

"Escort Leader Oh Jangseong, speaking as an inspector of the Martial Alliance, I don't think you conspired with the enemy forces, but there is a lack of physical evidence. If you cooperate with us, I can give you a favorable testimony... Can you cooperate?"

"I don't know what it is, but please just save me! I'll do whatever you say."

"Good. Good."

He had gotten the word, and he had also gotten permission.

Jang So-gil looked at Yang Gwan intently. Then he pointed his finger at the ceiling.

"Burn it."

"You're finally burning it."

"But I got the owner's permission. This is a fair and square thing to do."

"Well, I'll follow your command."

Yang Gwan raised his internal energy from his lower dantian. Then, a wheel of fire began to rotate behind his back. He was deploying the Fire Wheel Art to its maximum.

The three wheels, large and small, were called the Silver Wheel, the Iron Wheel, and the Copper Wheel. Since the Gold Wheel was lacking and he had not achieved all four wheels of the Wheel-Turning King, it meant that Yang Gwan's achievement had not yet reached the peak of the Fire Wheel Art. But even that was a level that ordinary people dared not approach.

As the wheels rotated, Yang Gwan's momentum gradually grew stronger. The rotating wheels passed his back and gathered on his spear.

The two rising stars of the Huashan Sect, who were watching with a dazed consciousness, let out a groan of admiration, and Jang So-gil took a step back.

Then Yang Gwan let out a shallow breath and swung his spear. A single flash that swung wide from left to right at the ceiling. Flames danced along the trajectory.

"Kuaaack-!"

"Uwaak!"

The ceiling collapsed. The flames exploded, and the tiles flew.

The leg of an assassin who was caught up was cut off, and screams were heard from here and there.

Through it, the bewildered gazes of the assassins could be seen.

"No way!"

To collapse the ceiling with a single spear, it was an unimaginable situation that made the prepared trap futile.

Moreover, two assassins had died from the explosion of the prepared explosives due to Yang Gwan's single flash.

But those who had died like that might have been the lucky ones.

The silver threads that had been set up to block the escape route were cut and whipped the assassins like a switch. The silver threads, which had been sharpened to be sharp, could cut a person's body in two. It was unknown how many were cut by the swirling silver threads.

It was one misfortune after another. The trap to kill Jang So-gil had now become a trap that ensnared them.

The survivors were in shock, watching their comrades die without even being able to scream.

Then the assassin leader let out a shrill scream that would have come from a crushed pig's bladder.

"Calm down!"

Would they calm down just because he told them to calm down in such a voice?

The team members thought so, but they were not ordinary people, but trained assassins.

They erased their bewilderment, changed their expressions, and composed their minds and bodies.

Those who couldn't all died.

The ones left here were those who could, those who made a living by killing.

They would surely be able to change the atmosphere within a single breath.

"I can't let that happen."

Without even giving them a moment to catch their breath, Jang So-gil flew up.

He kicked off the collapsing tiles and kicked the person who was screaming with a cut leg.

And a blue light flashed.

"Ugh!"

One sword strike for each leap. He repeated that five times in the blink of an eye, and the corpses of five assassins fell through the collapsing tiles.

Their breathing stopped, and the assassins' pupils trembled.

'This is completely different from the information we received.'

He had heard that he was a merchant who had rolled around on the market floor. He had heard that it had been less than three months since he had learned martial arts.

But that level of martial arts far surpassed that of a first-rate master. Wasn't he not being swayed by the supreme lightness skill called the Cloud Dragon Eight Forms, but deploying it freely?

His sword skills were not outstanding, but the sharpness was alive. The sword strikes he casually deployed were not the moves of a famous sword art, but they had a grandeur like that of a master of the sword.

It was inevitable. That was the movement of the number one in the world, Gumen Long.

Jang So-gil was a martial arts novice whose own color had not yet been applied to his martial arts.

Due to his lack of real combat experience, when his body stiffened with the tension of a fight, it was not his own thoughts that moved, but the movements that Gumen Long had engraved on him that were automatically deployed.

It was not shown intentionally, but that one movement. The sword strike that changed direction five times in the air while deploying the Cloud Dragon Eight Forms was truly the skill of a master.

It wasn't all good. Gumen Long's movements were high-dimensional movements that Jang So-gil couldn't even digest one-tenth of. Even if it was a light matter for Gumen Long, if Jang So-gil were to do the same movement, it would require dozens of times more internal energy.

Jang So-gil when he had deployed it before, he had been in a state of exhaustion with just one movement due to a lack of internal energy.

Then what about now?

"This is why they talk about internal energy, internal energy. It was worth risking my life to eat the elixir."

This time, he didn't even feel a stir in his lower dantian. The difference between the half-year or so of internal energy he had when fighting the monsters of the Diancang Sect and one sixty-year cycle of internal energy was this great. He could finally feel the reality of the words that his internal energy alone was at the level of a peak master.

The body arts forcibly engraved on his body and the internal energy obtained from the elixir.

He was a hastily made first-rate master created by one of the ten great famous swords of the world and one of the five great lightness skills of the world, but a master was a master.

The money that the Dali Ye Clan and the remnants of the Yuan had conspired to gather was a total of one thousand one hundred taels. It was more than enough to kill a mere inspector.

But the assassins of the assassination den had no choice but to admit it. To kill Jang So-gil, this money was not enough.

The assassins were not enough, and the information was not enough.

'The mission is a failure.'

'Just that guy named Yang Gwan alone was not enough for one thousand one hundred taels.'

'And his growth rate is too fast.'

'At this rate, isn't he already a first-rate master?'

The thirty assassins who had come here would not be able to return alive today.

As the assassin calmly read the future, a light spread throughout his vision.

It was a blue light that stole the soul.

(End of Chapter)