Chapter 192: Perilous Road (3)

“...What did you just say?”

“If you’re staying in this village, you pay the stall fee. Didn’t you hear me, kid?”

Soyak glanced at the woman beside her.

The leader also had a vicious-looking club hanging from his waist.

The only difference was that his had two iron bands wrapped around it.

Soyak slowly raised her left hand and rested it atop her scabbard.

At the sight, the leader drew his club.

“Don’t try anything funny. Mount Hua or whatever, a teenage brat like you—”

While he talked, Soyak was calculating.

How could she repay the traveling peddler’s kindness, drive these men away, and avoid creating more resentment than necessary?

Her Master was not here to answer that question for her.

She had to find the right line herself.

Maybe cut their ankles.

They certainly would not be able to chase her after that.

And if they could not run, they would be capable of even less than if she merely cut off their wrists.

Soyak glanced at the woman again.

Somehow, she had the feeling this woman... was not accustomed to seeing people get hurt.

She was only an ordinary traveling peddler.

There was no reason she would be used to bloodshed and blade fights between martial artists.

Then Soyak needed something gentler.

Maybe break their arms?

That was certainly more moderate than cutting off wrists or ankles.

She had never formally learned any joint-locking techniques, but she did remember once watching a fist art from the side.

...Falling Blossom Meteor Fist.

But that was a high-level fist art.

A fist practitioner’s body was trained far more heavily than a swordsman’s to begin with.

Even if she could imitate the technique, she had no idea whether her own body could withstand it.

Damaging her muscles and bones before she even reached the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering would only create another problem.

That left one option.

“You’ll regret this.”

“That’s my line!”

The man whipped up the club bound with two iron bands and swung it like lightning.

Or rather, he tried to.

The Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge reached his wrist first.

Thwack!

The scabbard traced a perfect semicircle and slammed into his wrist at precisely the right point.

The speed was nothing the man had imagined Soyak’s slender body capable of producing.

He never even had a chance to react.

All he could do was take the hit.

And it did not end there.

Soyak rolled her sword through a deft circular path and struck the fingers wrapped around his club.

There was a distinct crunch as the bones gave way.

“Aaaagh!”

The man was forced to drop the club.

Clutching his right hand with his left, he glared at her with bloodshot eyes.

He was probably about to shout something like, “Get her!”

But Soyak had no desire to make any more of a commotion.

So she struck him across the mouth.

“Mmph!”

Then she gave the crown of his head a light tap.

“Light” was perhaps generous.

She had not put any internal energy into the blow, but it still landed on the exact point with perfect precision.

A common street thug who had never learned a proper martial art could not withstand that kind of impact.

His eyes went unfocused almost instantly.

His legs gave out a moment later.

Thud.

When the men behind him saw their leader collapse unconscious, they began edging backward.

“Take him with you. And don’t come back.”

They did not even answer.

They threw their leader onto someone’s back and fled.

And the most astonished person throughout the entire affair was...

Naturally, the traveling peddler, who had watched the whole thing with wide eyes and a blank expression.

“...Child?”

“Can’t you see the plum blossoms embroidered here? I may not look like much, but I am a martial artist of Mount Hua.”

“I know that... but...”

Soyak shrugged.

Then, for no particular reason, she rested her sword across her shoulder like one of the very thugs she had just driven away.

“It’s late. We should get some sleep.”

******

The inn was not bad, just as the traveling peddler had said.

It was cheap, but at least the roof did not leak and no cold drafts seeped through cracks in the walls.

In a village with little traffic and almost no travelers passing through to bring in money, that alone made it an honest establishment.

Soyak rented a separate room.

It was not as though she lacked the travel money and needed to impose on the woman by sharing hers.

Of course, there was another, more important reason.

...He probably won’t accept it.

The man she had knocked out that evening.

He was almost certain to return with more of his gang.

Soyak slowly opened the wooden shutters of her room.

She was on the second floor, giving her a clear view outside.

The inn stood along one of the larger roads in the village.

That was why she could see men carrying clubs emerging from alley after alley under the moonlight.

Soyak made no attempt to hide.

Instead, she sat on the windowsill with her legs dangling outside and swung them idly.

“Hah! Look at that girl. Cocky as hell!”

“That kid? She’s the one who cracked the boss over the head?”

“What a brazen little brat. Seriously!”

Ordinarily, if someone had defeated their leader in a single exchange, common sense would have told them not to start this sort of trouble.

But that assumed the leader and the men who had witnessed it had honestly described what happened.

Most likely, they had made excuses and claimed they had been attacked unfairly.

None of it mattered.

Even if every man in the village gathered in front of the inn, Soyak would not be afraid.

And she intended to show them exactly where that confidence came from.

A gust of wind swept through the great old tree standing in the inn yard, sending leaves swirling into the air.

Soyak dropped from the windowsill.

And then...

Right before their eyes, she descended toward the ground by stepping from one windblown leaf to the next as though they were stairs.

With every step, the men’s faces grew paler.

By the time Soyak’s toes finally touched the ground...

Every last one of them looked utterly defeated.

“You seem to have lost your confidence.”

“W-Well...”

“You’ve probably never wandered beyond this village in your lives. Am I wrong?”

Most of the men nodded.

A few lowered their heads with troubled expressions, rubbing their faces.

Apparently, those had been the ones who tried to stop the others.

Which made sense.

Anyone who had spent even a little time traveling through the martial world would know just how absurdly formidable disciples of the Nine Great Sects could be.

Calling someone “just a third-generation disciple” was something only another young talent from the righteous factions, at least of comparable standing, had any right to say.

Not frogs at the bottom of a well who had spent their entire lives trapped in a backwater village, running in circles and measuring the whole world by the limits of their own narrow experience.

But even frogs at the bottom of a well knew when to bow their heads before a marvel unfolding right in front of them.

Surely they had heard the storytellers’ tales.

Of martial artists who skimmed over water and blades of grass as though flying, or crossed snow without leaving a single footprint.

“I’ll leave this place soon enough, and I doubt I’ll ever return. But the traveling peddler from earlier did me a kindness. If so much as a scratch appears on her, you will learn, deep in your hearts... exactly how a sword kills a man.”

Soyak spoke quietly, her voice low.

Not one of them failed to hear.

They merely stood in silence, nodding vigorously.

Soyak waved them away.

Then, with a single leap, she returned to the windowsill where she had been sitting.

“...As I thought. These clothes draw far too much attention.”

Soyak slowly changed into the somewhat worn clothes she had bought from the traveling peddler.

She carefully folded her original martial uniform and outer coat into a bundle, then wrapped her sword over and over in a broad length of cloth until it was hidden.

All that remained was to wedge the bundle near the wrapped sword hilt and sling the whole thing over her shoulder.

Once her preparations were complete, Soyak left the shutters open and spread out the bedding.

The room had no luxurious furniture such as a bed.

It was the sort of place where she ought to be grateful that the floor mattress did not smell musty.

Normally, a short circulation practice would have been enough to relieve her fatigue.

But Soyak simply lay down.

This was not a particularly friendly place.

Circulation practice required withdrawing completely inward and cutting oneself off from the outside world.

Here, that would be dangerous.

I can do it after I reach Shaolin.

Simply sleeping was safer.

She was a light sleeper.

The sound of the door opening, or of someone stepping onto the window frame, would be enough to wake her.

Soyak slowly closed her eyes.

Then, little by little, she regulated her breathing and drifted into a shallow sleep.

******

Fortunately, nothing happened through the night.

It seemed the men who had been rubbing their faces in dismay had made sure the others properly understood the situation.

They were probably drifters who had wandered here and there across the Central Plains without any steady occupation.

Men who attached themselves to a village for a while and lived from one day’s earnings to the next.

Whatever else could be said about such people, they tended to hear plenty of stories from the road.

After all, surviving while wandering the rough martial world without family ties or acquaintances meant they had at least learned how to read a situation.

Thanks to them, not a single thug blocked the path of the traveling peddler and Cheon Soyak when they left the village the next day.