The Legend of Red Cloud - Chapter 69

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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 69. An Early Morning Cup of Tea
Yi Song questioned Ryu, who spoke in that careless manner of his.
“Are you worried she might be your younger sister?”
“I know the likelihood is low.”
It was because of Moyong Chang Woon’s appearance—her half-brother.
If she resembled her half-brother, then whose features she’d inherited was obvious enough.
“So let me confirm things first…….”
“What, you’re saying she should accept or refuse?”
“Well, that’s…….”
Ryu spoke to the flustered Yi Song.
“You know it’s not possible. Neither for me nor for her.”
…….
As Yi Song, unable to utter a word, looked on, Ryu entered his tent, and the members of Jeok Sa Jo watched him with worried expressions.
***
After a restless and turbulent night, morning came again.
Those who had woken to the loud calls of mountain birds emerged from their tents and froze in surprise.
They had spotted Moyong Ji Eun sitting beside Yi Song, who had been on the final watch, tending to a campfire.
Dong Pil, who was stretching grandly in front of his own tent, and Jwa Ryang, who was rolling his shoulders, seemed to have known already.
But the others, who had slept deeply—even Jang Min Su, who had considerable operational experience—bore unmistakable looks of shock.
‘We’d grown too careless, relying on the night watch!’
This thought struck through the minds of all present.
‘What if it had been an enemy instead of Moyong Ji Eun?’
As the members of Jeok Sa Jo reached this realization, a chill ran down their spines.
Dong Pil, glancing at them, delivered a rebuke.
“Stay alert.”
Those who hadn’t anticipated it couldn’t offer even a single word of protest.
“But what’s with the campfire anyway?”
At Dong Pil’s question, Yi Song smiled.
“I thought Miss Moyong might be cold.”
“And you’re not worried about the Hyeol Gwi Dae?”
“The ones holding their breath on the far side of the forest? They already know we’re here—it’d actually be more suspicious if we didn’t light a fire, wouldn’t it?”
At Yi Song’s answer, Dong Pil scratched the back of his head.
“Is that so?”
Moyong Ji Eun then poured tea from a kettle hanging over the campfire and offered it to Dong Pil.
Dong Pil eagerly accepted the cup she held out, took a sip, and broke into a wide grin.
“Ah! Now that’s the taste. A hot cup of tea from a beauty after a cold night outdoors. Exquisite.”
Moyong Ji Eun, charmed by Dong Pil’s theatrics, offered her lovely smile and then poured tea for Jwa Ryang as well.
At this, the others fell into line.
They too were hoping to receive a cup.
From the first light of dawn, Moyong Ji Eun had been kept busy.
Just as she was handing a cup to Gwak Ki Ryang, Ryu emerged from his tent and quietly took his place at the back of the line.
The hand holding the teacup belonging to Moyong Ji Eun turned toward Ryu instead of Gwak Ki Ryang.
Gwak Ki Ryang, having extended his hand and now feeling awkward, hurriedly withdrew it and laughed sheepishly, while Ryu, accepting the cup, spoke.
“Stop wasting time. We’re busy.”
Jwa Ryang caught Dong Pil, who seemed about to object at what he found excessive.
In the meantime, Moyong Ji Eun looked at Ryu for a moment, then left without a word.
“Ah, I didn’t get to drink my tea.”
Gwak Ki Ryang muttered without thinking and caught the reproachful eyes of the others, laughing awkwardly.
“Aha! Well, that is to say, it’s not like you absolutely have to drink it or anything…….”
As Gwak Ki Ryang flustered, the morning of Jeok Sa Jo, which had begun more busily than usual, passed in this manner.
Each member rolled up their tent and shouldered it, and Jeok Sa Jo began moving again.
They chewed their rations—which served as breakfast—while walking, as always.
Breakfast and lunch were consumed on the road, each to themselves; dinner was eaten together at the encampment while resting.
This was the operational meal routine of the Jeok Sa Jo members.
Whether from having experienced this during the Hwan Do Great War and the operations that followed, even O In Bang, a veteran low-ranking member, naturally adopted this eating method of Jeok Sa Jo.
As Dong Pil walked, chewing his rations, he glanced sideways at Ryu and spoke.
“I don’t understand how we can simply walk like this when we already know where the enemy is.”
“What, you want to go catch and kill them?”
At Jwa Ryang’s blunt remark, Dong Pil shot him a look and replied.
“That’s not what I mean. Since we already know everything, why not find a good spot, settle in, and rest? You always need to hear every word spelled out, don’t you?”
Before Dong Pil’s sarcasm had even finished, words spilled from Ryu’s lips.
“Last night, they found us far too precisely.”
He threw out only those words, then fell silent, but no member of Jeok Sa Jo missed the implication beneath them.
They themselves hadn’t even noticed the location until the enemy had drawn close.
By contrast, the Hyeol Gwi Dae that had guided Moyong Ji Eun here had found their position with uncanny accuracy.
‘How?’
The thought crystallized in the minds of every Jeok Sa Jo member who heard Ryu’s words.
From among them, Jwa Ryang’s voice transmission cut toward Dong Pil.
-That beast thing, or is it a cat? You know what I mean?
Dong Pil, catching that Jwa Ryang meant Choo Yeon Myoh, shook his head.
-That creature has no qi signature. No trace of any beast-class animal at all.
At Dong Pil’s answer, Jwa Ryang’s expression darkened further.
Because that meant the Hyeol Gwi Dae possessed some ‘method’ to pinpoint the exact location of every Maeng Ui Dan warrior inside Saja Pavilion.
As they walked onward, they climbed Aegi Peak—the second-highest among the twelve peaks of Saja Pavilion.
“Ah!”
At Hee Jun’s exclamation, everyone’s gaze turned skyward toward what he was pointing at.
“A kite… is that it?”
At Dong Pil’s words, Gwak Ki Ryang slapped his knee.
Tap.
“That’s it.”
As the others’ eyes converged on him, Gwak Ki Ryang continued his explanation.
“It’s a method the military uses from time to time. They suspend a person from a large kite and send it aloft for reconnaissance.”
“Is that even possible?”
Dong Pil, astonished, watched as Gwak Ki Ryang nodded.
“If the wind cooperates, yes.”
At Gwak Ki Ryang’s answer, Ryu raised his hand to gauge the wind’s strength, then shook his head.
“But the wind now isn’t nearly strong enough.”
At his words, every Jeok Sa Jo member held out their own hands to feel the wind, and all of them nodded in agreement.
A faint breeze was perceptible, but not nearly strong enough to lift a kite bearing a person.
“Then how is it flying at all?”
The answer to Dong Pil’s curiosity came from Ryu.
“If you don’t know, go catch them and ask.”
Before the reverberations of those words had even faded, Ryu’s form vanished.
Hwangbo Jang Seong, realizing he had darted toward where the kite was aloft, tried to rush after him, but Jwa Ryang held him back.
“Wait. We can never match his speed. If we scatter carelessly chasing after him, we’ll lose each other in the forest and get picked off one by one. We stick together and follow. We’ll figure out the direction as we go.”
The Jeok Sa Jo members nodded at Jwa Ryang’s words as his eyes remained fixed on the kite still hovering in the sky.
Using Lightness Skill in a densely forested mountain is actually an extremely difficult feat.
Countless obstacles—trees, rocks, and more—lie irregularly across any path where one might deploy such movement.
Therefore, when Lightness Skill must be used in a forest, most warriors run along the treetops.
Of course, this is only possible for those capable of Super Realm Lightness Skill and above, but in such cases obstacles cease to be hindrances.
Yet even this carries a disadvantage: one cannot escape the sight of observers.
A figure bounding across the treetops is far too visible from all directions.
So in forests, most warriors either forgo Lightness Skill entirely, or use it only while retaining enough margin to dodge obstacles.
They cannot achieve maximum speed.
But such constraints seemed not to apply to Ryu.
Whoosh.
After a sensation of something piercing through with a sharp crack, rough wind followed in its wake.
Whistle.
It meant that whatever had passed was faster than the wind itself.
Thus, having cut through the forest at such terrifying speed, Ryu reached Janggun Peak, where the kite hovered.
Janggun Peak, the highest among Saja Pavilion’s twelve peaks, lay geographically within Hyeol Gwi Dae territory.
From the Hyeol Gwi Dae garrison’s perspective, it was the third peak, and it sat well to the west of the implicit boundary between both sides.
At the summit of Janggun Peak, dozens of Hyeol Gwi Dae warriors and technicians had gathered.
Ryu, having drawn Yumyeong by then, descended upon them like a meteor.
By the time the Hyeol Gwi Dae warriors realized an intruder was present and moved to respond, more than a dozen of their comrades lay dead.
It spoke to how ferociously and swiftly Ryu had struck.
While the warriors held him off, the technicians fought desperately to lower the kite.
When the technicians had finally brought the kite down completely, not a single Hyeol Gwi Dae warrior remained alive.
The one who had descended from the kite was a Hyeol Gwi Dae warrior, true enough, but the Yumyeong blade pressing against his throat left him with no choice but to keep his mouth shut.
By the time the rest of Jeok Sa Jo arrived at Janggun Peak, Ryu had already finished gathering all the kite-related equipment and was preparing to move out with the technicians.
“We pull out immediately and return.”
Yi Song questioned Ryu’s decision.
“You mean to take them with us?”
“I need to know how they’re launching that kite.”
Once Ryu’s decision was made, the Jeok Sa Jo members scattered and formed a prisoner escort formation.
At that moment, figures who had been maintaining distance and shadowing the Jeok Sa Jo revealed themselves.
All dressed in pitch-black night garments, with the Mi Character barely visible in blue silk thread embroidered upon them.
The Heuk Gwi.
The same Heuk Gwi that had been annihilated by the Jeok Sa Jo in Moyong Ji Eun’s defection incident years ago—now reformed and reorganized.
Their numbers matched the old count: thirty.
Among them stood Moyong Ji Eun, her expression plainly bewildered.
“You may leave. But you’ll be leaving that behind.”
It was Dae Heuk, the commander of the Heuk Gwi, who stepped forward with a gesture toward the technicians burdened with bundled supplies.
Yi Song’s eyes grew heavy as he watched the Heuk Gwi members move with flawless coordination at Dae Heuk’s signal, and his voice came through transmission.
-The Heuk Gwi has acquired a commander.
At Yi Song’s transmission, all the Jeok Sa Jo members fell into heightened alertness.
The Heuk Gwi had been a formidable threat even when divided into separate units.
If they were now consolidated and moving under a single will—
Even reorganized at their previous strength, they posed a serious danger to the Jeok Sa Jo.
No matter how far Ryu had ascended into the Hwagyeong, he alone could not kill thirty Heuk Gwi assassins in mere hours.
Inevitably, the other Jeok Sa Jo members would be drawn into combat with them.
How many would fall in such a battle, no one could say.
Ryu slowly turned his head to gauge the eyes of his other members, then drew the blade of Yumyeong long and deliberately as he spoke.
“We can stop them. If we can stop them.”
Despite his calm tone, a thick, murderous intent flowed along the extended length of Yumyeong’s blade.
Moyong Ji Eun’s voice arrested Dae Heuk just as he moved to advance on Ryu.
“Don’t! Dae Heuk.”
Dae Heuk stopped and turned to look back at her.
“Until now I have shown respect because of the Master of Command’s order and the Moyong clan’s precious position. But if you block our path again, I will cut you down first, then proceed.”
After uttering those cold words, Dae Heuk took another step forward—until Moyong Ji Eun’s voice stopped him once more.
“No matter the circumstance, conflict is forbidden! It was the Master of Command’s order. Does Dae Heuk intend to disobey such an absolute command?”
Dae Heuk hesitated at her words.
She was right. Ja Jeon Geom Wang, the Master of Command and leader of the Hyeol Gwi Dae, had ordered them never to clash with the Sarang under any circumstances.
That order existed to avoid provoking Ryu, who had risen to the Hwagyeong.
Stirring him would only mean death for the Hyeol Gwi Dae’s warriors.
But unfortunately, Dae Heuk did not know Ja Jeon Geom Wang’s true reason.
He did not know that the man facing him now had reached the Hwagyeong.
“I will ask for forgiveness later by my own hand.”
With those words, Dae Heuk’s hesitation broke, and his form exploded into motion.
As Dae Heuk closed in at that terrifying speed, a rich plum-blossom fragrance radiated from his entire body.
And with each slash of his blade, plum blossoms bloomed into being.

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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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