The Legend of Red Cloud - Chapter 2

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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 2. Crimson Ghosts, the Hyeolgyui
Despite their sinister name, the Hyeolgyui Dae had been suffering a string of consecutive defeats of late.
The backlash threatened to drive them out of Sajapyeong entirely.
Unable to stand by and watch, Gun Ma-rim devised a singular countermeasure.
That countermeasure had arrived at the Hyeolgyui Dae encampment in Sajapyeong and assembled in ranks.
Some came as recruits, others as supply porters—all mustered under a careful pretense.
It was a measure to escape the notice of the Cheol Hyeol-maeng and their vanguard, the Maeng Ui-dan.
To those gathered subordinates, their commander issued an order.
“Quietly. Swiftly. Eliminate and withdraw.”
“As you command!”
The man who turned to acknowledge them was so strikingly beautiful it was startling to behold.
Muyong Changyun, the Jade Demon Dragon.
One of Gun Ma-rim’s Five Dragons, counted among the Three Finest Youths of the realm for his looks alone.
Yet that extraordinary beauty masked his true talent—his martial prowess.
At merely twenty-five, he had reached the highest realm: Peak Level.
This meant he stood among the hundred masters known as Yeonghabaekyui.
And among those Yeonghabaekyui masters belonging to Gun Ma-rim, he was the strongest.
When ranking those capable of ascending to Ipshingyeong—the ten supreme masters—Gun Ma-rim placed him first among all their number.
Martial skill alone?
No.
The heavens must have been mad to grant so many gifts to a single person.
He excelled not only in Calligraphy and Painting, but held refined skill in Music Theory as well.
The tale was famous throughout the Gangho: how Yu Dam-un, the great musician of the age, once snapped his pipa strings before Muyong Changyun and declared he would never play again.
Such talent came from the Muyong Family.
One of Gun Ma-rim’s ten great Mumun—that very Muyong Family.
With both formidable lineage and outstanding ability, Muyong Changyun bore the weighty responsibility of directing the Magajeon, first among Gun Ma-rim’s five major branches.
When he raised his face mask and fastened the Crimson Wind Robe, he became indistinguishable from the ordinary warriors of Hyeolgyui Dae.
All those who moved with him wore the same garb.
Every last one bore the dress of the lowest-ranking Hyeolgyui warriors.
Yet they were not truly Hyeolgyui.
Those Muyong Changyun had mobilized for this mission were masters of the Magajeon, his direct subordinates.
The heart of the Magajeon, composed of Murim families under Gun Ma-rim, naturally consisted of the Dang Family and the Danli Family—both among Gun Ma-rim’s ten great Mumun—alongside the Muyong Family.
Those deployed this night came from these three houses.
He had not held back the ten great Mumun scions while scraping together minor families for glory; these were the true elite.
As they departed the Hyeolgyui Dae encampment, an extraordinary aura radiated outward from their ranks.
The Hyeolgyui Daeju, watching their departure, drew a sinister smile across his lips.
“Kekeke… at last, the blood of those Maeng Ui-dan dogs will flow thick upon Sajapyeong.”
From the Hyeolgyui Daeju’s murmur, a dense, bloodied reek seemed to spread.
***
Jeok Young-jo belonged to the Jeokmuryeoldae, the vanguard known as the spear of the Maeng Ui-dan.
His duty was infiltration and reconnaissance.
To gauge the enemy’s weak points and strengths, to scout the advance routes beforehand and identify hazards—such was the role of men like him.
By the nature of their work, they handled the beginning and end of nearly every Maeng Ui-dan operation.
Every last one of them had been deployed.
The mobilization of nearly a hundred infiltrators and scouts meant an operation of unprecedented scale was unfolding.
Indeed, when the Fire Arrow rose skyward—signaling that the advance route was clear of danger—hundreds of warriors poured from the Maeng Ui-dan encampment and funneled into Sajaegwan.
The mountain called Sajaegwan, named for its meaning as “the resting place of the dead,” filled instantly with tension.
Within that suffocating alertness, Jeok Young-jo scouts stationed throughout the terrain guided the Maeng Ui-dan warriors racing up the mountainside along the routes they had carved.
The passage Jeok Young-jo had opened pierced straight through the heart of Sajaegwan, leading directly to the exit toward Hyeolgyui Dae territory.
The Hyeolgyui would find Maeng Ui-dan warriors erupting before them without warning.
For this ambush, the Maeng Ui-dan had even exercised the patience to wait until dawn.
In fact, they had deployed even the Jeok Young-jo reconnaissance teams at Zishi—the hour between eleven at night and one in the morning.
All of this was effort to blind the Hyeolgyui’s eyes.
The fruit of that labor lay within reach.
Bong Jin, the squad leader of the Jeok Young-jo vanguard who stood at the very front to witness it firsthand, suddenly widened his eyes at an unexpected sight.
Not from the direction he stared intently ahead, but from far behind—from the direction of the Maeng Ui-dan encampment—came screams.
Bong Jin spun around in alarm, his gaze falling upon flustered subordinates.
“What? What’s happening?”
In response to Bong Jin’s urgent cry, a series of Sound Transmissions relayed the report, which finally reached him.
“Ambush, sir! Our Maeng Ui-dan warriors advancing through Sajaegwan are under attack in the middle of the passage!”
That story meant Jeok Young-jo had failed his mission.
It meant he’d created a passage without even noticing the enemy lying in ambush.
“This makes no sense!”
Bong Jin spat out the words harshly and dashed toward the direction of the screams, a handful of trusted men at his heels.
He needed to see the situation with his own eyes to understand what was happening.
True to his role as captain of a unit selected by Jeok Young-jo for mastery of Concealment Art and Lightness Martial Art, Bong Jin moved with the speed of wind itself.
He cut through the mountainous forest—where obstacles erupted at every turn—faster than a horse galloping across open plains.
By moving with such speed, Bong Jin reached the site of battle in less than a quarter of an hour.
What met his eyes upon arrival was one-sided slaughter.
Masters were sweeping away lesser fighters right before him.
The problem lay in the clothing of those who wielded such merciless blades.
“Hyeolgyui?”
It made no sense.
The martial prowess of the Hyeolgyui—the lowest-ranking warriors of Hyeolgyui Dae—ranged from Second Class to First Class.
Absolutely, the level of technique on display here could not come from such a realm.
Of course, speaking this way makes Second and First Class sound trivial, but the truth is that even a Third Class warrior—one who’s merely tasted martial skill—given a blade, could send half a dozen street thugs who call themselves fighters to the Yellow Springs in a few breaths’ time.
Ten such warriors constitute Second Class; those who can face ten of them alone are called First Class.
Deploying a single First Class Master can disband an entire street gang organization within a Shichen.
So disparaging them as merely Second or First Class doesn’t mean they’re weak—far from it.
The problem was that the scene unfolding before Bong Jin’s eyes could never be produced by such fighters.
Because those being carved up like straw stalks, their necks severed, were the Jeokpyojodae—the vanguard unit to which Jeok Young-jo also belonged.
Though they selected primarily those with excellent Lightness Martial Art, their role was as the main force’s spearhead.
Naturally, they were the first to meet the enemy, and their combat strength was substantial.
The recruitment standard of the Jeokpyojodae—selecting only First Class and above—bore witness to their power.
In fact, the captain of the Jeokpyojodae was a Peak Level Master.
A Master so superior that Bong Jin himself would barely qualify as a warm-up exercise.
Yet Bong Jin witnessed that captain’s head, severed by a mere two sword strokes, soar into the air.
Of course, when facing a Master of superior ability, no matter how Peak Level one is, having one’s head cut off is unavoidable.
The problem was that the figure producing this result wore the clothing of the Hyeolgyui.
A black face mask, crimson martial robes, blood-hued Crimson Wind Robe.
Clad in the typical garb of Hyeolgyui, this figure had severed the Jeokpyojodae captain’s neck in mere moments, and was now driving a shoulder strike into Heukya Daeju.
Bong Jin’s eyes were so wide they nearly burst from his skull.
Heukya Daeju was a Master of a higher rank than the Jeokpyojodae captain.
Of course he was.
Heukya Daeju possessed martial skill that surpassed even the master of Jeokmuryeoldae, the organization to which Jeok Young-jo and the Jeokpyojodae belonged.
Though ranked in the same Peak Level as the Jeokpyojodae captain, the gap between them was so vast it would be shameful to mention them in the same breath.
Yet with a single blow, he yielded his shoulder and buckled at the knee.
Watching in shock, Bong Jin’s vision swept across the surrounding chaos.
It was not only the Jeokpyojodae captain and Heukya Daeju.
The captains of Heukya Dae, as well as those from Maeng Ui-dae who had come to reinforce them, were being swiftly overwhelmed by the Hyeolgyui scattered across the field, wielding their blades.
The captains of Maeng Ui-dae—called the main force of Maeng Ui-dan—were all Peak Level Masters.
Peak Level Masters are so rare that even traveling to provincial cities, one would struggle to find anyone stronger than them, yet these warriors fell like autumn leaves stripped from a tree.
Those producing such a spectacle could not possibly be Hyeolgyui.
Absolutely not.
So then…….
“They’re imposters. High-ranking Masters from Gun Ma-rim itself! It has to be!”
Before Bong Jin finished his whispered realization, his eyes locked with those of one of the Hyeolgyui sowing chaos.
“Hm!”
Without hesitation, the Hyeolgyui warrior twisted his form and launched forward toward the startled Bong Jin.
The speed was twice that of Bong Jin, who was second to none in Lightness Martial Art within Maeng Ui-dan.
“Damn!”
Before Bong Jin’s curse finished forming, the Hyeolgyui’s blade arrived.
He threw himself forward and tumbled across the ground.
Thunder-fall Rolling—a technique so shameful in Gangho that it was considered worse than death itself.
Yet among those standing with him, only Bong Jin and one other member of Jeok Young-jo’s unit survived the maneuver.
Of the three Jeok Young-jo’s men who stood with them, two did not survive the Thunder-fall Rolling.
With the blade that had sent two of his subordinates to the afterlife, the Hyeolgyui surged forward again.
Too fast. Impossibly fast.
Bong Jin had not yet recovered his stance and balance, broken by the Thunder-fall Rolling.
Bong Jin thought: ‘So this is how it ends.’
then.
Crack!
His subordinate shoved Bong Jin aside ruthlessly and met the Hyeolgyui’s blade as it fell like lightning.
The price was a wound that split his body vertically, but thanks to his sacrifice, Bong Jin tumbled clear and escaped the Hyeolgyui’s steel.
Of course, survival was not assured.
The Hyeolgyui, drenched in his subordinate’s blood, burst through that scarlet spray and came straight for him.
The trajectory was direct.
The will to finish Bong Jin burned in the Hyeolgyui’s eyes as he came charging, blade raised high.
Bong Jin’s eyes stretched so wide they tore, blood streaming down his face.
Shock had pushed them far beyond their natural limit.
The head of the one who had caused it all rolled across the ground and came to rest at Bong Jin’s feet.
It belonged to the Hyeolgyui who, moments before, had come rushing at him with blade raised, fierce with the intent to kill.

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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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