THOOM—!

“Khahaha! I won! I won!!”

A Sado Union fighter thrust both arms high and shouted.

He was a stockade lord from one of the larger Green Forest stockades.

He had rushed over when he heard about the friendly matches and, seeing the Sado Union being pushed back, had stepped up on his own.

“Waaa—! Stockade Lord, you’re incredible!”

Naturally, the Sado Union fighters roared.

After winning the first friendly match but then dropping the second and third in a row, the cooled mood flared back to life in an instant.

Meanwhile, the defeated Martial Alliance fighter sprang up and jabbed a finger at the Sado Union man.

“Coward! You hooked my leg!”

Just as he swung his sword, a leg hook knocked his center away and sent him sprawling.

Among all who had crossed blades so far, not one had tripped an opponent during a friendly match.

“You said we’d fight fair and square, then you pull a filthy trick like that! Do you have no pride as a martial man?!”

“What was that?!”

The stockade lord, savoring his victory, suddenly twisted his face and turned back.

“If you lost, wipe your neck and walk off instead of running your mouth! What’s ‘cowardly’ in a fight! Winning is what matters!”

Voices rose behind him as Sado Union fighters hooted and backed the stockade lord up.

“Boo—! Big talk for a loser!”

“If you lost, get off the stage!”

The Martial Alliance warrior’s face flushed red, then blue.

Seeing the stockade lord’s triumphant look fixed on him, a rage he could not swallow surged up.

He pointed and shouted.

“A martial man is supposed to have pride! If all you want is to win, how is what you do any different from a street brawl, not martial arts!”

The stockade lord did not yield.

“Bandit fighting is street fighting—what more do you want! And! Is what you define the only thing that counts as martial arts? Who decided that!”

“One need only look at the footsteps of the sages to know! But of course, a street fight has no history, so you wouldn’t know!”

Before long the stockade lord’s face, too, had gone red then blue.

The jeers and rebukes between the Martial Alliance and Sado Union fighters were growing harsher by the moment.

The stockade lord jabbed his finger back.

“You lost that fight and you’ve got a lot to say!”

“That’s why people call °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° your lot wastrels! Cowards who only pull filthy tricks!”

Right then—

KWAANG—!

Someone dropped between them, in the center of the friendly match platform.

With nothing but the force of his landing step, fine cracks ran across the platform boards: the Green Forest War King had arrived.

Ssssss...

A faint, golden radiance breathed up around him.

Having practiced Shaolin mental law for a long time, the Green Forest War King carried Shaolin’s cultivation in his bearing.

“Who did... what, did you say?”

He slowly turned his head toward the Martial Alliance fighters.

Under that overwhelming presence, even the men who had been pointing and shouting at the stockade lord a moment ago, even the ones who had been jeering without pause, fell instantly silent.

“Do you think a mouth lets you spew whatever you please?”

THOOM—!

The sound of the Green Forest War King knocking his two fists together boomed across the grounds.

It hit like two great boulders slamming.

“Th—that isn’t what I meant...”

“Wait!”

Someone else hurried up onto the platform.

It was Peng Yeopmyeong, who had been watching the matches with growing agitation.

“We made an agreement! To decide victory and defeat by friendly matches! To cow our fighters like this is not right!”

Shielding the Martial Alliance warrior behind him, he spoke—and the Green Forest War King snorted.

“You’re right. There’s one last match left.”

He flexed and loosened his hands with a dry crackle.

“So, come forth. Our side’s final fighter is me.”

“!”

In that instant, the faces of Peng Yeopmyeong and the Martial Alliance fighters filled with shock.

By contrast, the Sado Union side broke into cheers and shouts.

“Long live the Green Forest War King!”

“This fight’s as good as ours!”

“What, afraid?! You flunkies of the Orthodox!”

Peng Yeopmyeong’s gaze, before he knew it, slid toward where Tang Sangcheon sat.

Who was the Green Forest War King?

One of the world’s Ten Great Experts—a master of the Flowering Realm.

Only one person on these grounds could stand against such a master.

Elder...!

The other leaders who had gathered wore troubled looks and cut their eyes toward Tang Sangcheon as well.

But Tang Sangcheon stood with hands clasped behind his back and a gentle smile, showing no sign at all of stepping into the match.

Damn it...!

If Tang Sangcheon wouldn’t move here, no one could face that monster.

Then the friendly match would tilt into a Martial Alliance defeat—and there was no chance the Sado Union would cover that up.

This is why I tried to avoid my match!

Peng Yeopmyeong cursed his past self for treating the match with Maeng Deungho lightly.

What is martial skill to me!

As head of the Peng Clan, to have failed to restrain even that much curiosity and caused this mess!

Even if we lose, better that I am the one shamed.

He squeezed his eyes shut, resolved, and was just stepping forward when—

“I’ll go.”

A woman’s voice sounded from somewhere.

In a ground filled with jeers and rough shouts, it was a calm, clear voice that did not fit.

It wasn’t only Peng Yeopmyeong who felt the strangeness; everyone on the grounds turned at once toward the place the voice had come from.

M—my daughter-in-law...?!

At the entrance to the grounds,

with a sweep of blue long-coat hems, Namgoong Seolhwa was walking in.

****

Tap-tap—

Namgoong Mucheon hurried toward the grounds.

The closer the surge from that direction pressed on his senses, the harder his face set.

A friendly match or not, there was no way a place packed with fighters from the Black Path and the Orthodox held not a trace of hostility.

The Martial Alliance had been founded to protect the martial world from Black Path forces, and the Black Path had been formed to break free of the Orthodox martial world and the imperial yoke.

No matter that this force had been built by Seolhwa’s labor—its birth stood opposite; they could only be wary of and hostile to each other.

Which was why he had labored throughout the banquet to blend the two camps together.

Fools.

He sighed at how the situation had been ruined in a blink and lengthened his stride.

“!”

Someone stepped in front of him.

“Alliance Lord.”

The one barring him was the Martial Alliance strategist, Jegal Myeong.

Namgoong Mucheon halted and regarded him with a peculiar look.

His bearing was not as usual.

“...Step aside.”

The path was wide.

Even without Jegal Myeong moving, there was plenty of room to pass.

But Namgoong Mucheon’s words were asking the reason for that odd bearing.

As if he understood, Jegal Myeong’s voice sounded in transmission a beat later.

[Voice transmission] I serve the young lady.

“!”

Namgoong Mucheon knit his brow.

It was surprise, not displeasure.

“Since when?”

“From before the Martial Alliance was founded.”

“Then...”

It had been Jegal Myeong who gave the most counsel and contribution in founding the Martial Alliance.

A man who had never once appeared on the rivers and lakes, secluded deep within the Jegal Clan, had in short order won universal recognition and taken the strategist’s seat—there was reason enough.

Even now he handled the Alliance’s overall practical operations.

Ha.

Namgoong Mucheon let out a small, wry laugh.

“So that’s how it is.”

Just as she moves the Sado Union as its Union Lord, Seolhwa had been moving the Martial Alliance through this man.

“Are you disappointed?”

“How could I be. Only now do many things make sense.”

He had been grateful that Jegal Myeong moved for the Alliance, but not knowing his driving force had, in another way, been unsettling.

For what did this man devote himself so completely to the Martial Alliance?

Having the answer was enough.

“Then you have reason as well for standing in my way now?”

“I do.”

“Since when was this planned?”

[Voice transmission] The young lady emerged from closed-door seclusion today around the hour of the Ox (1–3 a.m.).

The moment she came out and heard the situation, Seolhwa planned this.

[Voice transmission] She saw through their scheme and chose to turn it back on them.

She set the Hao Sect Lord and the Green Forest War King in motion to swell the situation, and set Jegal Myeong in motion to draw the Patrol Unit Lords’ eyes elsewhere.

“If we’d been late by even one shichen, we couldn’t have stopped it.”

“Had that been so, none of this would be happening today.”

The Sado Union would never have answered such a provocation, and he, too, would have stopped it by any means before it broke out.

They had long known there was a Blood Cult infiltrator within the Martial Alliance.

If it was the Blood Cult, then in the midst of Alliance–Sado Union accord they would attempt something; this, too, had been anticipated.

The variable was that the Alliance–Sado Union meeting had been set after Seolhwa entered closed-door cultivation.

[Voice transmission] Only, that she came out before it broke loose was coincidence.

“People call this Heaven’s favor.”

Jegal Myeong smiled faintly.

Seeing him speak of Heaven’s favor upon his granddaughter and truly rejoice, Namgoong Mucheon let out a weary chuckle.

Just then—

from the direction of the grounds came a vast aura altogether different from before.

Reflexively turning his eyes that way, a satisfied smile spread over Namgoong Mucheon’s lips.

“It may not be only Heaven’s favor.”