My Younger Siblings Are the Greatest Masters in the World - Chapter 139
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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139.
If she had been hit by the arrow, the archer wouldn’t have rushed to grab another arrow like that.
‘I need to retrieve my sword.’
There wasn’t time for that.
While searching for a sword that had flown who knows where, another arrow would come flying.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon shot straight toward the archer.
The sight of the archer nocking an arrow to the bowstring and raising the bow rushed toward her eyes.
She swung her fist toward the archer’s jaw.
Thud!
The archer’s head turned from the punch, and blood-stained teeth flew out.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s elbow spun in midair and struck the archer’s temple once more.
The mounted archer fell powerlessly to the ground.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon, who had exhausted all her inner strength, also fell shoulder-first and sprawled out.
“Huff! Huff!”
The distance between her breathing heavily and the archer was less than five ja.
The archer bleeding from his nose didn’t move at all.
The archer was dead and she had won.
As tension released, she felt like she would lose consciousness if she closed her eyes now.
However, the sound of hoofbeats penetrating her ear pressed to the ground made Hwangbo Ryeoseon snap back to alertness.
The cavalry pursuing them had approached within thirty jang.
As Hwangbo Ryeoseon stood up, arrows flew like rain.
She hastily kicked off the ground, and arrows thudded into where she had been.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon ran toward where her companions were.
On the way, she even found her sword glinting in the sunlight.
Arrows flew at her ceaselessly, but she narrowly dodged them and reached where her companions were.
With no more arrows from the archer, cavalry had taken that position and were attacking Jegal Jaeryeong.
“Move aside!”
With one stroke of Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s sword, two necks flew off.
The cavalry formation became disrupted due to panic from Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s sudden appearance from behind.
Blood stains were visible on Jegal Jaeryeong’s shoulder as she fended off attacks coming from all directions.
“Sister!”
Jegal Jaeryeong let out a joyful cry and flew like a swallow over water to slash an enemy’s chest.
“Join up with Seol Podoo!”
Due to being surrounded, the distance from Seol Mujin had widened.
As they fought back-to-back through the cavalry, Hwangbo Hyeonguk suddenly appeared.
“Sister!”
Over Hwangbo Hyeonguk’s shoulder, she could see Seol Mujin cutting down enemies while scattering blue sword energy.
Whether it was spears, horses, or people caught by Seol Mujin’s sword, they were all cut like paper.
‘How is such martial arts possible?’
She had vaguely thought he would be stronger than her father, but his current martial prowess seemed to far exceed that of the Odaesega family heads.
Seol Mujin shouted toward the rear.
“Not much left now!”
At that cry, Hwangbo Ryeoseon also snapped to attention and swung her sword with all her might.
She couldn’t clearly remember how they broke through the forest of cavalry.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon entered an almost trance-like state and just followed Seol Mujin.
Before they knew it, the cavalry was left behind, and their light body technique was faster than horses, so they reached the foot of the mountain.
A few arrows flew at them, but not enough to pose a threat.
From when they broke through the cavalry, Seol Mujin took the rear guard instead of the front.
The reason the arrows weren’t threatening was because Seol Mujin deflected most of them.
They climbed the mountain, choosing pathless routes.
It was a mountain thick with trees and high rocks that horses absolutely couldn’t climb.
The cavalry that stopped pursuing from the bottom of the mountain dismounted from their horses.
If they continued the pursuit, no matter how many they were, they would only end up dying to Seol Mujin’s group.
But they didn’t wait for the cavalry either.
Breaking through the cavalry had been quite an ordeal for them too.
So throughout the mountain climb, all four were breathing through their mouths.
Seol Mujin, who had been at the front and killed the most enemies, was in the best condition.
After climbing to the mountain slope in one go, Seol Mujin checked behind them and stopped walking.
“There doesn’t seem to be any pursuit. We can rest for a moment.”
As soon as those words fell, all four collapsed with a thud.
“Whew! I thought I was going to die!”
Seol Mujin approached Jegal Jaeryeong, who was lying almost flat against a rock.
“You seem to be injured.”
Jegal Jaeryeong was covered in blood.
Most of it was enemy blood, but blood was seeping through torn clothes at her shoulder and side.
“It’s not serious.”
“It’ll get worse if it festers.”
Seol Mujin took out wound medicine and bandages from his chest.
“Do you always carry medicine with you?”
“It’s being prepared for any contingency.”
Jegal Jaeryeong wasn’t the only one injured.
All four except Seol Mujin had two or three torn wounds each.
Fortunately, they weren’t major injuries, so treatment could be completed with just applying wound medicine.
“I don’t understand why Yeongchun Wang is so desperate to kill us. We were just trying to persuade Habuk Paengga.”
Hwangbo Hyeonguk agreed with Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s words.
“That’s right. What reason do they have to charge at us like we’re mortal enemies?”
Seol Mujin said.
“There must be something we don’t know.”
Seol Mujin was also extremely curious about what that reason might be.
After resolving matters in Jinan, there was now a reason to hurry to Beijing.
Because Ju Cheonmyeong would be able to uncover the reason.
“Now that we’ve caught our breath, let’s depart.”
“Yes. I want to go to an inn in a nearby village and wash up quickly.”
Everyone desperately wanted to soak their bodies in warm water.
But the enemy apparently had no intention of giving them warm rest yet.
Seol Mujin’s steps stopped as he was going around the mountainside, cutting through brush and weeds.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon, who was following right behind, asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ll have to postpone that bath for a while.”
The four people’s senses weren’t as sharp as Seol Mujin’s, but they could tell that enemies had appeared.
Jegal Jaeryeong asked.
“The cavalry didn’t catch up already, did they?”
“From the presence, they seem to be martial artists.”
“Habuk Paengga?”
“Probably.”
Hwangbo Ryeoseon let out a long sigh.
“So Peng Uncle has finally decided to cross a river he can’t return from.”
Though they had rested, their fatigue wasn’t completely gone.
“Habuk Paengga will be in front, and the soldiers will be pursuing from behind too.”
Jegal Jaeryeong said.
“Then we should break through as quickly as possible.”
However, Seol Mujin only stared intently at the direction they needed to go without moving.
“What’s wrong?”
At Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s question, Seol Mujin spoke without turning his gaze.
“I don’t think there’s any need to rush.”
“What? What do you mean…?”
“Because we’re not fugitives.”
Seol Mujin’s face as he spoke was as cold as if covered with thin ice.
Jegal Jaeryeong asked.
“You want to fight?”
Hwangbo Hyeonguk said.
“Of course we have to fight to break through the enemy.”
“That’s not what I mean… Brother Mujin seems to want to settle things on this mountain.”
“Settle things? Brother, are you saying the five of us should have an all-out war against Habuk Paengga?”
“It’s not just Habuk Paengga.”
Seol Mujin looked back at the dense forest they had climbed up.
“The cavalry dismounted from their horses too. Cavalry without horses are just a ragtag bunch.”
The four people were startled.
“Are you saying you’ll annihilate the enemy now?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“We don’t know exactly how many there are.”
“The cavalry was roughly three thousand, and we killed about two hundred while breaking through the encirclement. Hwangbo Sega wouldn’t have sent too many. They thought the cavalry would kill us. The reason the encirclement was late is probably because they were being leisurely. The Paeng Family Head probably didn’t even come. Habuk Paengga’s warriors are at most one to two hundred. It’s a number we can handle sufficiently.”
“But…”
Hwangbo Hyeonguk only uttered those words and mumbled.
“Why? Is it hard to kill too many people?”
Startled, Hwangbo Hyeonguk couldn’t deny Seol Mujin’s words.
Unless one was born with a murderous nature, killing couldn’t be enjoyable.
Hwangbo Hyeonguk had only experienced killing for survival.
But Seol Mujin was talking about killing to win.
And not just one or two people, but against nearly three thousand.
Hwangbo Ryeoseon asked.
“Is there really a need to annihilate them completely? Risking our lives?”
If Habuk Paengga’s forces weren’t deployed in great numbers as Seol Mujin said, escaping wouldn’t be difficult.
“Because they’re enemies.”
“You’ll kill them all just because they’re enemies?”
“If I don’t kill the enemy now, that enemy might kill me someday.”
“That may be true, but…”
Seol Mujin cut off Hwangbo Ryeoseon’s words.
“The lesson I’ve learned living so far is that there’s no mercy to show enemies. My petty mercy always came back as a dagger. Do you think those soldiers will become daggers? I don’t know. So you’re saying there’s no need to kill them? Then they shouldn’t have come to kill us. I’m stronger than the enemy, so why should I show my back? I can’t find a reason for that, but what about you, Lady Hwangbo?”
“Well, because there are too many…”
Realizing her words couldn’t serve as a reason, Hwangbo Ryeoseon closed her mouth.
Though she didn’t know about Habuk Paengga’s warriors, the soldiers now slowly climbing the mountain would likely face massacre.
As Seol Mujin said, they would be nothing but a ragtag bunch.
Was that really right?
Seeking out and killing enemies who posed no threat and could simply be avoided?
Seol Mujin moved toward the direction where Habuk Paengga warriors were and said.
“After breaking through the encirclement, you four return to Jinan.”
Startled, Jegal Jaeryeong asked.
“Brother Mujin, are you saying you’ll stay here and fight?”
“I told you. There’s no mercy to show enemies. And I need to find out why Yeongchun Wang is so determined to kill us.”
Jegal Jaeryeong followed Seol Mujin while rubbing her palms on her pants.
Shortly after they started resting, her hands began trembling incessantly.
She didn’t say it, but today was her first kill.
She was a martial artist and would live in Murim, so she thought she would kill someone someday.
She still remembered the face of the person she had cut down.
It was a cavalryman in his mid-twenties with unusually large eyes.
That person, who would have farmed diligently if he had held a hoe, became Jegal Jaeryeong’s first sacrifice on the desolate plains.
After that, she killed dozens more.
There was no time to feel any emotion about killing people.
She just swung her sword to survive, and thinking back, she fought quite well.
When she felt relieved about surviving that carnage and was about to praise herself, the trembling came.
She thought it was just tension being released, but the trembling didn’t stop easily.
And she finally realized it was a reaction to killing.
She had heard that some people left Murim unable to overcome the shock of their first kill.
A martial artist leaving Murim because of killing? How ridiculous.
That’s what she had thought.
But the shock of killing struck her heart much harder than she had expected.
She desperately wanted to return home quickly and hide in her room to digest this shock.
But Seol Mujin wasn’t trying to stop fighting here.
He said he would kill not for survival, but for the sake of killing.
Why did it have to go that far?
Just because they were enemies?
Was that really right?
“Aaahhh—!”
At the sudden scream, Jegal Jaeryeong was startled.
She saw a warrior whose chest was cut by Seol Mujin’s sword falling down.
“Sister, take the left!”
“Chiyeon! Stick to the right!”
While walking lost in thought, she had somehow entered the middle of battle.
Jegal Jaeryeong instinctively channeled martial power into her flexible sword.
The flexible sword that had been fluttering like a belt stiffened and raised its head.
“Die!”
A cold blade fell from the left with the momentum to split her head.
Startled, Jegal Jaeryeong blocked the blade with her sword.
Clang!
Between the deflected swords, the enemy’s armpit was exposed.
Jegal Jaeryeong’s sword swept across that armpit.
A scream like vomiting one’s heart and hot fresh blood splashed across her face. The fishy taste of blood.
All of it threw Jegal Jaeryeong back into reality.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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