The Legend of Red Cloud - Chapter 96

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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 96. I Don’t Know Anything
The cave that Jeok Sa examined held nothing of note.
It appeared to be a natural formation, and since no trace of human hands could be found, this meant the Chivalrous Master who had saved them did not dwell here.
Besides, having safely moved both himself—who had lost consciousness in the forest—and the betrothed woman out of danger, the stranger was unlikely to harbor either hostility or malice toward them.
Moreover, since they had been rescued from the hands of Yuseong Chuhon, a master of the Yeongha Baekwi, it meant their savior was of equal rank to him, or perhaps even greater still.
There would be no reason for such a master to bring them to a cave and hold them hostage.
At last, Jeok Sa shed even that final small anxiety, releasing a quiet breath of relief.
‘Ah… it was heaven’s fortune.’
It truly was.
He hadn’t expected that bastard to return from Taru so quickly.
In any case, thanks to him, the betrothed woman had come through unscathed.
That alone was enough for Jeok Sa to be grateful.
He’d nearly failed the rescue, died in the attempt, ruined the mission entirely, and left Dong Pil—held captive in Gunma Rim—without protection.
Having thus concluded his assessment of the situation, Jeok Sa became aware that his body still wouldn’t move smoothly, and forcing himself into motion, he sat down cross-legged.
Since his Internal Force remained unresponsive, he meant to attempt Wind Training instead.
He believed with absolute certainty that his left wrist had been fully protected by Wind Training, and now he intended to expand that protection further.
Beginning his Wind Training, Jeok Sa started to loosen his muscles with gentle Resonance.
Slowly, he worked the tightened and injured muscles free through the Resonance of his Wind Training.
So long as he couldn’t use Internal Force, there was nothing he could do about the broken bones themselves, but if he could at least manage his muscles, he might be ready for whatever came next.
***
When Myosel arrived at the Yuseong Cheolga estate, it was in complete chaos.
Numerous warriors rushed about in every direction, their faces flustered and bewildered.
Amid this tumult, information cascading like a waterfall, Myosel picked through it all with ears pricked and mind racing.
Then, at some point.
Whoosh!
A spear thrust suddenly before him left Myosel gasping for breath, and one of the Yuseong Cheolga warriors glared at him.
“You bastard, tired of living? What do you think you’re doing coming in here!”
So focused on gathering information, he had followed the crowd past the main gate and through the entrance without thinking.
Myosel quickly pulled his feet back outside and bowed deeply.
“My apologies, Master. I only meant to see if there was anything I might do to help…”
“What can a wretch like you do? Get out of here before you break the gate!”
At the warrior’s roar, Myosel scrambled backward and hurried away from the Yuseong Cheolga grounds.
Though he hadn’t gathered everything he’d hoped, he’d gleaned most of the essential details.
According to what Myosel had learned, the estate had been attacked by the son of Haedong Gwi.
From the mouths of Yuseong Cheolga warriors, he’d picked up clues about the attacker—”a man with three swords”—that he’d overheard.
He’d also learned that Yuseong Chuhon had been struck down.
He heard warriors rushing for physicians, crying that the Sect Head was in danger—hurry!
Like Myosel and Buntaju’s suspicions, Haedong Gwi’s son had indeed pressed Yuseong Chuhon to the ground.
The only pity was that he hadn’t managed to cleanly sever Yuseong Chuhon’s neck.
The problem lay in something else that had been mentioned in all this: the matter of “that one.”
It seemed “that one”—mentioned mainly among the high-ranking warriors of Yuseong Cheolga—had been abducted.
And this was where Myosel began to grow confused.
The son of Haedong Gwi would have attacked the Yuseong Cheolga estate to rescue the daughter of Munchang Soga.
Yet the warriors of Yuseong Cheolga themselves said that “that one” had been taken captive.
Why would the high-ranking warriors of Yuseong Cheolga refer to the daughter of Munchang Soga as “that one”?
For a moment, Myosel doubted himself and shook his head.
Moreover, the Yuseong Cheolga warriors kept using the word “abducted.”
If the daughter of Munchang Soga had been rescued and taken away, they would have said she’d been taken off again—not that she’d been abducted.
‘So the son of Haedong Gwi took the wrong person and left? But… why?’
Myosel’s mind grew increasingly tangled.
***
Myosel was not alone in his confusion.
Jeok Sa in the cave was quite bewildered as well.
“You don’t… know, you say?”
“Yes.”
Jeok Sa, wearing an expression of difficulty, asked the woman who had nodded in assent.
“You truly don’t even know who you are?”
“That’s right. Why don’t I know who I am?”
Wondering if some Mental Suppression Drug had been used, Jeok Sa urgently peered into the woman’s eyes, but her pupils were not only clear—they were bright and lively.
If a Mental Suppression Drug had been administered, her pupils would have been glazed over; that wasn’t the case here.
‘And yet I don’t even know who I am…….’
Jeok Sa asked again, at a loss.
“Do you remember anything at all about Munchang Soga?”
“What is Munchang Soga?”
The woman’s wide, bright eyes turned toward him with her question, and Jeok Sa found himself sighing inwardly.
‘Hah…….’
He spent a long time in the Cave with this woman, who seemed to embody ‘I know nothing’ with her entire being.
They waited for the Chivalrous Master who had saved them to return.
But the sun that had lit the mouth of the cave set, and darkness fell, yet no one came back.
He had to consider the possibility that their savior simply did not wish to reveal their identity.
When day broke again and still no one appeared—when the moon had waned and full daylight returned—Jeok Sa was forced to accept that the Chivalrous Master would not be coming.
Yet still, he could not bring himself to leave the Cave.
The problem was that he had no idea how to take this Betrothed Woman, who remembered nothing, to Munchang Soga.
He worried they might blame her for the loss of her memory and demand that the wedding proceed at once, holding it against her as her fault.
But neither could he simply cast her out into the world defenseless and alone.
In the end, after much hesitation, Jeok Sa left the Cave only after the sun had climbed fully to the zenith.
And he did not go alone—the smiling woman was with him.
***
In their location at the eastern edge of Haenam Province, Hae Gu and Munchang occupied nearly identical positions.
The distance between them was scarcely fifty li—roughly twenty kilometers—a span that could be covered in half a watch on horseback.
For martial artists employing the Light Body Technique, which surpassed even horse-speed, it was as good as next door.
Naturally, the Munchang Soga, who had been keeping watch over Yuseong Cheolga on suspicion of abducting their daughter, received word of the incident.
So Cheong Jin, who had barely managed to restrain So Heui Jun—the youngest of the Soga’s three swordsmen, eager to strike at this opportunity—now sat facing his older brother, So Gwang Yeo, who was the Sect Head.
“What of Heui Jun?”
So Cheong Jin answered the Sect Head’s question.
“I’ve calmed him down.”
So Gwang Yeo asked in response to his answer.
“Do you share the same thinking as Heui Jun?”
“The boy spoke in haste out of eagerness, but……. Even he must know it’s impossible.”
So Gwang Yeo nodded at his brother’s dark reply.
“You’re right. Even if Yuseong Chuhon were to die, we don’t have the strength to stand against Yuseong Cheolga. My failure as a father cuts deep.”
“Don’t speak such words. This isn’t your fault—it’s the doing of that cursed Yuseong Chuhon.”
So Gwang Yeo found himself unable to meet his younger brother’s comforting gaze.
He had no choice but to show the face of a father who could only say he was helpless while his daughter was taken from them.
He could go himself and meet his end in a glorious last stand, yes—but he feared what Yuseong Cheolga might unleash upon Munchang Soga in retaliation.
A single misstep could bring a torrent of bloodshed down upon his sect.
He had long believed himself generous in his dealings, yet now that Munchang Soga faced true danger, he found no allies to turn to—and this realization weighed on him heavily.
Decades spent in the Kangho, building relationships with other martial sects, now felt hollow and fleeting.
So Cheong Jin understood his brother’s anguish perfectly.
This was precisely why, even with the sect’s only daughter—his own niece—abducted, he held himself in check.
And he knew well that his brother was not to blame for the fact that no one came to their aid.
Many in the Haenam martial world still spoke of Chivalry, but the world no longer moved by such principles.
It had become a world that turned on each man’s gain or loss.
This could not be condemned.
In the present state of the Kangho, one misstep meant tumbling a thousand fathoms into an abyss.
There was no need to look far.
Hapsan Yeonga, which had flourished in Gwangseochon, mere steps away from Haenam Province, had crumbled to ash in a single night.
It was no provincial backwater sect either.
It was a mid-tier sect with regional dominance, controlling the area.
By size alone, it rivaled Munchang Soga more than two times over.
Such a sect had been completely obliterated in the span of a single night.
Nor was it the result of a grand war.
A thousand warriors and three times that number of their dependents had been slaughtered in a single night—all because they had dared to interfere with Sa Hwang Gok Ya’s gathering.
Sa Hwang Gok Ya, wearing the Ghost Mask, and a hundred of his followers had swept them all away like dust in the span of a single night.
The slaughter was so immense, so many had fallen, that even the government—which normally stayed clear of martial world affairs—had intervened, such was the stench of blood that hung in the air.
After perpetrating this atrocity, Sa Hwang Gok Ya had held a banquet days later, without a shred of shame, in honor of Weol Pa Geom Hwang, the lord of the Baek Ui Ryeon and the chief of the Haenam Swordsman Sect.
Even Myo Dok Mun Jo, the tyrant of Gwangseochon, who had every reason to protest and remonstrate against the massacre, was so astonished by Sa Hwang Gok Ya’s brutal power that he sent congratulations instead—proof that the current Kangho was an age ruled entirely by force.
The era when each sect held its own colors and opposed one another across the white horse and both camps had long passed.
Now all gathered under the Cheol Hyeol Maeng, Gunma Rim, and Baek Ui Ryeon, watching one another warily for survival.
To fall outside those three powers was to find oneself unable to survive in the Kangho of today.
This is why Myo Dok Mun Jo dared not offend the Haenam Sword School, the heart of Baek Ui Ryeon.
Sa Hwang Gok Ya, the chief elder of the Haenam Sword School who knew this better than anyone, could act as he pleased precisely because of it.
Knowing well the state of Kangho, it was not that So Gwang Yeo, the sect head, lived poorly, but because this was an era where a careless move could annihilate an entire sect—this was why no sect would step forward to aid them readily.
Moreover, their opponent was the Yuseong Cheolga, which Sa Hwang Gok Ya openly supported.
Even when Sa Hwang Gok Ya had no backing, the Yuseong Cheolga was a formidable force to reckon with because of Yuseong Chuhon’s brutal temperament, but once Sa Hwang Gok Ya became their backer, they became utterly unstoppable.
Some said that even Myeong Gwang Geom No, a sub-faction leader of the Haenam Sword School, could do nothing but tread carefully around them.
They claimed they avoided the Yuseong Cheolga because the sect was filthy, not out of fear—but there was no one in Haenam who didn’t know how hollow such an excuse was.
It was this very Yuseong Cheolga that had brought about the incident.
Though the Munchang Soga raged that it was a crime that heaven and earth would condemn together, whispers circulated that the sect should count itself fortunate the Yuseong Cheolga had not washed the Munchang Soga in blood.
It was not an unfair assessment, for Yuseong Chuhon had once slaughtered dozens of innocent martial artists who had gathered only to claim the courtesan Cho Hyang.
The Munchang Soga lived in an age when the suffering a powerless sect must endure to survive had grown greater than ever before.
And it was to this very Munchang Soga that Jeok Sa had come.
So Cheong Jin, who learned the news while conversing with the sect head, turned to the gate guard with startled eyes and asked.
“Who’s arrived?”
“The son of Haedong-gwi… your young lady’s betrothed, they say…”
At the gate guard’s words, unable to speak properly as he watched So Gwang Yeo’s expression, So Cheong Jin hurried outside.
He had understood that the son of Haedong-gwi, whom the Gangdo Poong family had promised to send, had arrived.

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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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