Namgoong the Sword Ghost - Chapter 165

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 165. The Geom-gwi Obstructs the Water’s Transformation
Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!
The swollen rapids of the Yangtze River, engorged during the rainy season, roared against the massive stone barrier that held it back.
The barrier’s name was the Samhyeop Dam.
It was Zhongyuan’s greatest dike, positioned upstream in the Xilingxia Gorge.
“Heavens, what are we to do!”
“Director! The beasts have all perished—we don’t know what sickened them!”
“Blast! The pulleys seized up days ago, and now the oxen are causing trouble?”
The roar of Jeong Jeong, Director of the Samhyeop Water Gate, was swallowed instantly by the thunder of the swelling river.
Jeong Jeong raised his voice higher still.
“Requisition them from the surrounding villages! Now!”
“Two hundred oxen, sir?”
“Two hundred, three hundred—I don’t care! Just requisition them! And if this dike fails because you dawdle, you’ll answer for it!”
“Y-yes, understood!”
Jeong Jeong watched his subordinates scatter in panic, his thoughts darkening.
‘This is maddening! Why does this have to happen now, in the middle of rainy season?’
Ordinarily, the water gates of the Samhyeop Dam should have been opened by a third to regulate the water level.
But since the rainy season began, a cascade of mishaps had prevented the gates from opening as scheduled.
‘One day the pulleys fail, the next the steel rope snaps, and today the oxen drop dead. It’s too much.’
He couldn’t shake the suspicion that someone was deliberately sabotaging the gate operation—the incidents came too frequently, too conveniently.
‘But it doesn’t matter. The Samhyeop Dam won’t crumble so easily. I’m certain of it.’
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
Jeong Jeong gazed at the Samhyeop Dam, firmly holding back the Yangtze, and nodded with satisfaction.
Built from limestone, clay, iron ore, composite sand materials, and iron-reinforced framework, the Samhyeop Dam could stand for another hundred years without issue.
The unexpected losses were troublesome, but hardly catastrophic.
“You there! No problems?”
Jeong Jeong called up toward the watchtower.
A shadow atop the tower answered with vigor.
“All clear, sir! No abnormalities!”
“Good! Signal me at once if anything changes!”
“Yes, sir!”
Tap-tap-tap!
Satisfied with his inspection, Jeong Jeong hurried off to oversee the requisitioning. The man atop the watchtower, watching him go, let out a soft laugh.
“Hehe, futile efforts. By tonight, the Samhyeop Dam will have vanished into history.”
He was a killer belonging to Cheongmun, infiltrated into the dike command post.
Whoosh!
The man drew an empty ceramic vial from his robes and cast it into the churning river, which swallowed it in an instant.
Inside that vial had been Tribreath Qi Dispersal Powder—a special compound of Cheongmun that required only a trace amount to produce toxic vapor, and now the oxen were dead by it.
The Samhyeop Dam’s water gates were designed to open and close through mechanical means, making them easier to operate, but still insufficient for human labor alone.
Oxen were essential to the process, yet now that the beasts had been poisoned by the Tribreath Qi Dispersal Powder, there was no way forward.
“Hehe, have no fear. Soon there will be no need to open the gates at all.”
The man turned his gaze to the rear face of the dam.
Unlike the front that held back the Yangtze, the rear was silent and still.
But the man knew.
He knew that some hundred Heaven Thunder Mines were positioned throughout the dam’s structure.
“The elevated water level during rainy season. The Yangtze’s waters, piled high because the gates won’t open. When they detonate with the dam, won’t all that come pouring into the valley at once?”
The man’s smile turned sinister.
“A replay of the Xilingxia flood from a hundred years past!”
* * *
“Move quickly!”
“Hurry!”
“Midnight approaches!”
“What’s the meaning of this chaos?”
“What’s happening?”
“We don’t know. Students from Baekmu Academy arrived suddenly and…”
“In the middle of the night, of all times…”
Uichang was in complete disorder.
The students of Baekmu Academy had abruptly begun evacuating the townspeople to higher ground.
“Lord Mayor! It’s impossible! You’re asking us to evacuate every civilian in the central district within half an hour!”
“Commander! If you have time to complain, use it to move one more person!”
Ak San Gun bellowed orders, his voice cutting through the chaos as he directed his troops.
When Du Il and Du I had brought word that Uichang would be submerged, Namgung Ho Yeon and Ak San Gun had divided their roles.
Or rather—it wasn’t a division so much as a unilateral command from Namgung Ho Yeon.
“I’ll hold them back, whatever it takes! You get word to Baekmu Academy!”
“What? Then I should come with you—”
“I’m far faster! You evacuate the people right now!”
“It’s impossible! Even if you made it in time, what could one person do?”
“It’s not about can or can’t—I’ll do it!”
“That makes no—”
“Tell Jegal Ahyeon. If anyone can find a way, it’s her.”
With those words, Namgung Ho Yeon vanished from sight like a phantom.
“Curse it! There’s someone out there staking his life on this very moment—and you, a martial artist of the Ak clan, dare speak such weakness?”
“Yes, sir!”
At Ak San Gun’s roar, Ak Dae Wi, commander of the Chungmu contingent, swiftly relayed the orders.
“The Chungmu division will gather the elderly, children, and women—move them to higher ground as quickly as possible!”
“By your will!”
“By your will!”
A burst of movement as soldiers scattered in all directions.
Watching his men disperse with urgent haste, Ak San Gun clenched his jaw.
“Is there truly no way… truly none?”
Even pushing his mind to its limits with Sog Nyeom Ji Ryu, no clear solution emerged.
The upper reaches of Xilingxia Gorge, where the Samhyeop Dam stood, was not a place one could reach in mere hours.
However extraordinary Namgung Ho Yeon’s Light Body Technique might be, without using Void Step itself, there seemed no way to beat the clock.
“Damn it! If only we’d learned this even an hour sooner—”
Precious time had been wasted fighting Yin-Yang Double Demon.
That failure was entirely his own.
“Ho ho, boy. We have no further quarrel with you. Surely you’ll step aside?”
“I cannot. Your people have laid low more than a hundred students of this academy these past days.”
In hindsight, Yin-Yang Double Demon had never truly wanted conflict.
He had provoked them, squandered those precious hours on a confrontation that need not have happened.
Namgung Ho Yeon, by contrast, had shown them respect—and from that respect, gleaned the very information about the Samhyeop Dam’s destruction.
‘To judge them by their appearance alone and make such a grave mistake—’
What reckless righteousness, what half-baked sense of justice had driven him to this?
The peril facing hundreds of thousands in Uichang—that was his doing, his alone.
‘What “Broad River Master”? What “Student Council President”? How could such a fool ever hold such titles?’
He tasted blood at the corner of his mouth.
Then—
“Ak San Gun, stop torturing yourself. Listen to what I have to say.”
“Mm?”
Ak San Gun turned his head.
There stood Jegal Ahyeon, her dark eyes alight, unfolding a map before him.
“Have you heard it said? Qudong is majestic, Wuxia graceful, and Xilingxia strange.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Xilingxia Gorge winds like a serpent. In other words, it’s a collection of many smaller gorges.”
Ahyeon pointed at the map as she continued.
“The Sword Saint headed for Hwangmyo Gorge—the farthest point. White Victory headed for Deungying Gorge next. For you, the Broad River Master, I ask that you take Gongnyeong Gorge.”
“What exactly—”
“Collapse the gorge.”
“…!”
“If you collapse the gorge and pile soil and sand, you can slow the current of the Yangtze and minimize the damage.”
Ak San Gun’s eyes widened at her explanation.
Watching his reaction, Ahyeon pressed on.
“It’s beyond my ability, but someone who commands inner force like you—it should be possible, shouldn’t it?”
Ak San Gun marveled at Jegal Ahyeon’s wit.
She had conceived a way to minimize damage even assuming the Samhyeop Dam’s collapse.
“Can you do it?”
When Ahyeon pressed him again, Ak San Gun nodded and answered.
“It’s not about can or can’t. I will do this—I swear it.”
* * *
Dozens of boats lay anchored on the Yangtze River, several miles downstream from the Samhyeop Dam.
“Ahahaha! You’re all out of your minds! Completely insane!”
Jang Han, who had a Trident Spear slung across his shoulder with its three-pronged blade gleaming, burst into hearty laughter.
“Blowing up the Samhyeop Dam? Aren’t you afraid of the imperial court?”
“Hehe, the brave hero of the Yangtze Water Route Alliance, the great Chu Taek, also known as the Wave Ghost Trident—surely that’s not your concern?”
“Pfahahaha! Well, if a river bandit starts trembling at the court, how else would he eat?”
Chu Taek chuckled, eyeing the man with burn scars running down his left cheek.
“Hehehehe. Though we’ve always been thorns in the government’s side, you lot are going to spend the rest of your lives on the run. You’re all right with that?”
“How thoughtful of you. Worrying about my future and all?”
“Eh, not particularly. Watching you commit such mad acts, I just wondered if you had some grudge against the imperial court.”
“We have no grudge against the imperial court. The destruction of the Samhyeop Dam is simply the most effective means to achieve our objective.”
Mo Yong Hak twisted his lips into a thin smile as he spoke.
“Since the Baekmu Academy opened, the region around Uichang has developed rapidly. If all of that were to be swept away by floodwaters, what would become of the Baekmu Academy?”
“Buhahaha! It’d have to close! Who could study with corpses rotting all around?”
“Precisely.”
“You’d drown thousands of Uichang residents just to eliminate one academy? Huh, I’ve seen many people in my time, but your ruthlessness is the first of its kind I’ve encountered.”
“From the perspective of Gucheon Seong, the closure of Baekmu Academy is nothing but a long-cherished wish. Destroying the Samhyeop Dam alone fulfills thousands of old grievances.”
“Well, true enough. That’s precisely why I agreed to this operation in the first place.”
Tap! Tap!
Chu Taek tapped his shoulder with the Trident Spear as he spoke.
“That dam cinched the Yangtze’s waist. Without the court’s permission, we can’t pass through. A dam like that is better off gone.”
The Samhyeop Dam sat at the boundary between the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze, serving as nothing but an obstacle to Gucheon Seong’s territorial expansion.
It was true enough—the Yangtze Water Route Alliance, which once stood as a rival to the Green Forest, had been neutered since the dam’s construction.
“Now I can finally meet with my brothers from the east without trouble! Krahahaha!”
“Hehe, there’s not even half an hour left now.”
“Listen up! Once the Samhyeop Dam explodes, we’ll plunder the chaos-stricken Uichang clean and announce the resurrection of Gucheon Seong!”
As Chu Taek thrust the Trident Spear skyward and bellowed, the bandits roared in response, their voices rising in chaotic fervor.
“Krahahaha! We’ll strip everything but their lives!”
“I’ll strip their lives too! Ahahaha!”
“Hihihi, you idiot. Will anyone be left alive? There’ll be nothing but water ghosts! Just have to gather what we can.”
“What? So there won’t be any women either?”
“Virgin ghosts, sure? Tehehehe!”
As they stood on the brink of plunder, the bandits laid bare their debased desires, anticipation written across every face.
Watching their revelry, Mo Yong Hak spoke to Chu Taek.
“Did you know? Today happens to be the Zhongyuan Festival, I’m told.”
“Is that so?”
“The Zhongyuan Festival has another name: the Ghost Festival.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s said to be the day when the gates of the underworld open and spirits walk the earth. Don’t you think it fitting?”
Mo Yong Hak gazed toward the Samhyeop Dam, a smile playing at his lips.
“What better day for tens of thousands of water ghosts to be born?”
“Huh, you’re quite learned, aren’t you?”
“Haha, perhaps this will be the day your name, Chu Taek, becomes widely known.”
“Ahahaha! Right! After all, I’m the Wave Ghost Trident!”
“It’s time.”
“Indeed.”
The gazes of the two men, their faces mirroring malevolent joy, turned toward the Samhyeop Dam.
Boom! Rumble―!
The sound of Heaven Thunder Mines detonating echoed distantly across the water.
“Buhahahaha! It’s blown! Gather round! Hoist the anchor! We’ll ride the current straight into Uichang!”
“Yes!”
“Yahahoo!”
“Let’s go!”
Clang! Clang!
The bandits raised the anchor and unfurled the sails, waiting for the surge.
Once the Samhyeop Dam was destroyed, the dammed waters of the Yangtze would flow forth all at once.
But one moment passed. Then two. Then three.
No matter how much time elapsed, the current did not quicken.
Sensing something amiss, Chu Taek turned to Mo Yong Hak and asked.
“What’s going on here?”
“…A failure? That can’t be. We installed the Heaven Thunder Mines according to the General’s blueprints. All the main pillars should have been destroyed?”
Mo Yong Hak muttered, his tone edged with disbelief.
‘And now that I think of it—there’s no dust rising at all. If that explosion had the force of what I saw in Gucheon Seong, clouds of earth should be billowing up by now.’
Mo Yong Hak’s expression hardened into something grave.
Chu Taek spoke.
“Hey, is that one of your people too?”
“…What?”
“Damn it all.”
Tap!
A youth landed hard on the deck, three swords slung across his waist, the curse still hanging in the air.
Blood streaming from his nose, his eyes fierce and narrowed, he swept his gaze across the deck—then caught sight of Mo Yong Hak’s stricken face.
“You—how did you get here…!”
“You? You bastard?”
Namgung Ho Yeon smiled, but it was a predator’s smile.
“You made my nose bleed like a faucet. Now you’re going to answer for it.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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