Chapter 57. Water Shadow
Sasa-ho… Water Shadow continued speaking quietly.
"I received word from Ashen Shadow that you would come, so I was waiting. Otherwise, I wouldn't have recognized you."
"Haha. I see. Even so, you recognized me well."
"No matter if it's you, you wouldn't be able to act exactly like them without knowing the fort leaders well."
"Hahaha."
Shadow Shifter laughed again and agreed with Water Shadow's words.
Maintaining a smiling face, he walked over and stood beside Water Shadow. Unlike Water Shadow, who was looking down below, Shadow Shifter gazed at the rising sun.
After standing like that for a moment, he tossed out his words casually.
"You said you drove Tang Wu into Seonjung Mountain, didn't you?"
Water Shadow replied while still looking downward.
"The peak of Seonjung Mountain."
"Then once they cross the mountain, pursuit becomes impossible, doesn't it?"
"Seonjung Mountain is half mountain, half cliff. On the side opposite Chaohu, you can neither climb nor descend."
Shadow Shifter heard only after arriving here that the celebratory guests had been driven into the mountain. At first, he couldn't understand it, but after hearing Water Shadow's explanation, he finally grasped why.
"Half mountain, half cliff… then they're cornered at the edge of a precipice with no escape. They must be desperately climbing to find a way to live. How pitiful. So—land or water?"
It was a question without context, but Water Shadow skillfully understood and answered.
"Land. If it were water, I wouldn't have driven them there in the first place."
"I see."
After the conversation reached that point, silence returned between the two, though it didn't last long. Shadow Shifter still had something he couldn't understand.
"But truly, was there no peak expert other than Tang Wu?"
In truth, this was the reason Shadow Shifter had come here instead of going toward the Namgung Family, but Water Shadow didn't know that.
"There wasn't."
Hearing the short, firm reply, Shadow Shifter shook his head and muttered to himself.
"That can't be… the reason for causing such chaos must've been to leave the Namgung Family, so why didn't he appear even when driven into such a corner…?"
Shadow Shifter's words lacked a subject. However, Water Shadow could easily guess that he was referring to another peak expert who should have been there besides Tang Wu.
As Water Shadow surmised, the one Shadow Shifter was talking about was the "protagonist of the Three Sacred Lights." By now, that person should have revealed himself and slaughtered the bandits and demonic beings, yet he still showed no intention of surfacing from beneath the water.
That said, there was no way Water Shadow and Ashen Shadow had missed him.
The heavenly net was perfect. Every route leading to the Namgung Family had been sealed off. Though the Namgung Family was a great family, its estate wasn't so vast that their manpower couldn't blockade it.
So had they truly missed him?
'No. That can't be.'
Shadow Shifter shook his head again.
If they had missed him, they would have noticed his existence because of that very fact. To escape the heavenly net, he would have had to break through in some direction, and that alone would have required revealing his identity.
"With all directions completely sealed… slipping away without even rats or birds noticing."
Where in the world was he?
As Shadow Shifter pondered the man's whereabouts, Water Shadow—still gazing down at Chaohu—spoke as if in passing.
"I don't know who you're looking for, but if that person were someone like you, I might have missed him."
"…!"
At Water Shadow's words, Shadow Shifter felt as though he'd been struck on the back of the head with a hammer.
Yes, Water Shadow was right.
Why hadn't he thought of that? If it were me… if the opponent were me, could I catch myself? There's no rule saying there's only one person like me.
"Hahaha. I see. That's right. That's why both the Namgung Family and you missed him."
That man could freely change his appearance, just like himself.
Shadow Shifter was certain of it. And if so, didn't everything fall into place?
He even thought the man might be superior to him in disguise techniques. After all, he had recognized Shadow Shifter when no one else had.
But then—If that were the case, how could they capture him now? There was no way. Shadow Shifter was absolutely confident that no one could ever capture him. Then the opponent would be the same.
At present, Shadow Shifter knew only a few things about that man: that he was inside Seonjung Mountain, and that he had likely transformed into a bandit or a Heavenly Demon Castle follower.
After long deliberation, Shadow Shifter arrived at a conclusion—a method that would force the opponent to reveal himself.
"Kill them all."
At Shadow Shifter's low murmur, Water Shadow's gaze finally shifted from Chaohu to him.
Meeting his eyes, Shadow Shifter repeated forcefully.
"Once the First Stratagem ends, they're all going to die anyway. Dying a little earlier changes nothing. Isn't that right, Water Shadow? Hahaha."
"...…."
Only after a moment of thought did Water Shadow understand what Shadow Shifter meant. And he thought how fortunate it was that Shadow Shifter was on the same side. No—at least that he was pretending to be on the same side.
Water Shadow once again looked down toward Chaohu, while Shadow Shifter continued to laugh heartily as he gazed at the crimson sun.
Do Heo-ok's laughter. What in the world did it signify?
***
Day broke.
Yet the pursuit unfolding on Seonjung Mountain was still ongoing.
Since many survivors including Tang Wu were still alive, it would take a considerable amount of time before the chase finally ended.
Dong Bong-su had become part of the pursuit force and was carrying out a class change quest. However, once the quest completion count reached 80, he could no longer complete it.
"Damn it! Why aren't they reinforcing the pursuit?"
A bandit with a hooked nose standing beside him spoke up.
As he said, the reason the pursuit had stagnated was because the steady stream of reinforcements had suddenly stopped.
Though only a few celebratory guests remained alive, all of them were experts. Naturally, killing them required heavy sacrifices.
In severe cases, dozens would die just to take a single head. With no additional reinforcements in such circumstances, the pursuit force's advance could only be halted.
And that wasn't the only strange thing.
'They aren't getting reinforcements either.'
The Heavenly Demon Castle side was also not aggressive in their pursuit. No, they couldn't be. The same thing happening here was happening there as well.
The Heavenly Demon Castle's pursuit force was also struggling because replacements were not being made.
The fugitives took advantage of the loosened pursuit to quickly follow behind Tang Wu.
The pursuers were still chasing them, but it was no longer easy to pin them down.
Dong Bong-su couldn't shake the feeling that the halt in reinforcements was troubling. As he matched steps with the other bandits and climbed the mountain, he thought.
He needed to know the reason. Nothing in this world happens without a cause. If a madman kills someone, madness itself is the cause and motive. Cause and effect always interact.
A cause always exists.
Seen in that light, the delay in reinforcements was clearly strange. Wasn't the goal of Do Heo-ok and his group to kill the Namgung Family and everyone invited there? Why would they slow down just before annihilating their targets?
No matter how much he thought, Dong Bong-su couldn't find the reason.
A sense of foreboding stimulated his survival instinct. Sometimes intuition precedes reason. Dong Bong-su felt that now was exactly such a moment.
'What should I do in a situation like this?'
Across all eras, an unchanging truth—the roadmap in situations like this was always the same.
'When you don't know, evade.'
If the pursuit ended normally, he would eventually have to become a member of the bandits. But with this face, fully blending into the Yangtze Eighteen Water Fortresses would be impossible. Once the blood was washed away and his wounds healed, scabs would form and his face would become recognizable to some extent. At that point, he might be trapped with no way out. Moreover, voice modulation also had its limits. Perhaps even before his face properly healed, someone might realize he wasn't Kang Dal-hee.
In any case, once the timing was right, he would have to leave this place. Dong Bong-su decided to move that timing up and leave immediately.
Just as he made that decision—
"Damn it! They're finally here. The higher-ups dragging their feet—bureaucrats or bandits, they're all the same."
The hooked-nose bandit, who had been complaining about the lack of reinforcements, spoke again.
Dong Bong-su followed his gaze and looked down the slope. Sure enough, bandits were climbing up.
Along the steep incline below, heads were packed so tightly together that it looked pitch-black. Though thick trees prevented a clear view, at a glance it seemed like more people than all previous reinforcements combined.
'Too many.'
The thought suddenly crossed Dong Bong-su's mind, and the sense of foreboding flared again. And then came one more fact that poured oil on the fire.
Though the color of their clothes matched that of the bandits, the characters for "Yangtze" embroidered on their chests were flipped left to right.
"What the hell is that? Why are they all wearing their clothes inside out?"
As the hooked-nose bandit said, the newly deployed bandits all appeared wearing their uniforms reversed.
'One or two might be coincidence, but everyone wearing them inside out? That means…'
Uniforms—military, school, or otherwise—only have meaning when they are uniform. They prove belonging to the same group. Yet now, they had deliberately reversed the Yangtze Water Fortress uniforms to create a different uniform.
The meaning was obvious without explanation.
Pababak!
The moment the thought occurred to him, Dong Bong-su was already charging forward.
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