I asked my Escort Guards.
“Does anyone here think we shouldn’t kill these pirates?”
At my question, they answered.
“Not at all. I’m not merciful enough to spare villains.”
“These are men who cut open pregnant women’s bellies and tell fortunes by the child’s sex. They’re not people who should ever be left alive.”
“They cut off children’s wrists and use them as talismans. What more needs to be said?”
I nodded.
“So we’re all of the same mind.”
Then I charged back at the pirates, cutting them down again and again.
My Escort Guards, as if refusing to fall behind me, swung their swords with equal diligence and struck the pirates down.
There were quite a lot of pirates, but from the beginning, this was never a fight we could lose.
After all, we had three Peak warriors and one Profound warrior.
On top of that, many of them were drunk.
Some realized they could not possibly handle us and hid.
But we paid them no mind.
The captain was what mattered.
He tried to use his own men as shields, but things did not go the way he wanted.
Because as I drew closer, the Soul-Enslaving Incense’s effect scattered, and his subordinates stopped listening to his orders and fled.
I stood in front of him and asked.
“How does it feel to be abandoned by your own men?”
“D-Damn it! What kind of evil art did you use?”
I snorted and threw the question back at him.
“Evil art? You’re the one who used evil art. But that ends now!”
Slash!
One of his hands flew off beneath my sword.
The reason these pirates were called the Blood Claw Pirates was because the captain’s weapon was an iron claw.
And because that iron claw was always stained with blood.
But with the attack I had just made, one of those iron claws was now useless.
“Aaaagh!”
He screamed in pain and ran. But running did not mean much when we were still on a ship.
I leisurely followed behind him, wounding him little by little.
If I wanted to, I could take his head with a single strike, but I deliberately did not.
He needed to feel at least a fraction of the pain suffered by those he had tormented with the Soul-Enslaving Incense.
Some might think I was being cruel, but this was not what true cruelty looked like.
True cruelty was making innocent people shed tears of blood.
Because that did not just destroy the victims. It destroyed the lives of everyone around them as well.
And I was not that kind or righteous a person.
Which meant I could do this without the slightest hesitation.
After about fifteen minutes of that deadly game of tag, both of his arms were gone.
Which meant his weapon, the iron claws, was gone too.
I had learned this while dealing with someone who used iron claws before.
Destroy the claws first, and they became helpless.
At last, perhaps because his strength had finally run out, he collapsed.
“Hah, hah… P-Please, stop!”
“Did you stop when other people begged you like that?”
“…”
“This is exactly when people use the phrase karmic retribution, isn’t it?”
It was then.
“Damn you! Die!”
The captain tried to kick me.
A sharp blade was attached to the toe of his shoe.
“I knew you’d try that.”
I dodged the kick as though it were nothing and swung my sword. My blade cut off even his leg.
“Aaaaagh!”
He howled in agony, and I looked down at him with cold eyes.
“D-Damn it! Why are you going this far! What did we even do wrong!”
“Plenty of things. So many that listing them all would make my mouth hurt.”
I continued.
“And your biggest mistake was touching the small liquor bottles that the Eunhae Merchant Group worked so hard to prepare. That was meant to be presented to the Great Yue Kingdom’s king.”
“…”
“It’s about time to finish this.”
Step.
I raised my sword and swung the Silver Mist Sword toward his neck.
Slice!
What the Silver Mist Sword aimed for was not his neck, but the necklace hanging from it, the Soul-Enslaving Incense.
The Soul-Enslaving Incense split in half,
clack, clatter.
and the red glow vanished from the Soul-Enslaving Incense as it fell to the floor.
Crack!
Immediately after, the Soul-Enslaving Incense crumbled into powder and vanished, scattering into the sea breeze.
At the sight, the captain screamed.
“N-No! My Soul-Enslaving Incense! My treasure! Aaaaagh!”
He seemed more aggrieved over losing the Soul-Enslaving Incense than over losing his own limbs.
And so the evil Artifact that would one day fall into the hands of a member of the Unorthodox Sect, make countless people shed tears of blood, and drive them to their deaths, disappeared.
My first goal had been achieved.
Perhaps meeting the Soul-Enslaving Incense earlier than I remembered had been heaven’s will, telling me to destroy it.
“It looks like it’s time for us to withdraw.”
At my words, the Escort Guards moved to my side in perfect order.
“Do we leave now?”
“Yes.”
There were still quite a few pirates who had not died yet, but it did not matter.
And Geumryeong had already slipped back into my sleeve.
That meant the work was finished.
I spoke to the collapsed captain.
“Well then, we’ll be going.”
And just like that, we leaped off the ship.
Four unidentified martial artists had swept through the ship and vanished.
No one knew why they had suddenly disappeared, but for those who remained, it was fortunate.
“Aaaagh!”
Jeon Jung, who was still clinging to life, shouted at his subordinates.
“Wine! Bring me wine! Guh!”
He yelled for his men to bring him wine so he could forget the pain.
“Captain. Is that Soul-Enslaving Incense gone?”
“Yes! That damned bastard destroyed the Soul-Enslaving Incense!”
“Then you can’t force us to obey you with it anymore?”
“…”
The voice somehow sounded cold.
At that, Jeon Jung realized too late that he had made a mistake.
The reason a man who was not particularly strong had been able to overwhelm the crew and reign as the leader of the Blood Claw Pirates was largely thanks to the Soul-Enslaving Incense.
But now that the Soul-Enslaving Incense was gone, his situation was obvious.
And hadn’t both his arms and both his legs just been cut off?
“Thud!”
A fist slammed into his face.
Then a foot drove into his side.
“Guh! You fucking bastards! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“We’ve endured quite a lot from you until now.”
“So shut up and take it.”
“Heh heh heh.”
The pirates had no interest in collecting their dead comrades’ bodies.
They were far too busy mocking the captain who had ruled over them despite lacking the skill to deserve it.
The emotions they had been suppressing had finally exploded.
Naturally, their own dispositions were nowhere close to good.
Amid all that mockery and violence, Jeon Jung wanted to bite his tongue, but even that was no longer possible.
Because the pirates had punched his face until his teeth had fallen out.
Listening to their jeers, Jeon Jung suddenly realized that all of this was exactly what he had done to the sailors of the ships he had captured.
He could almost hear Eun Seo-ho’s words again.
“Did you stop when other people begged you like that? This is exactly when people use the phrase karmic retribution, isn’t it?”
In the end, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Thwip, thwip, thwip!
At that moment, arrows pierced into the pirate ship.
“What? What is this?”
The subordinates who had been mocking Jeon Jung and venting their anger were startled by the arrows that suddenly came flying in.
But their shock did not end there.
What followed were flaming arrows.
Thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip!
Those flaming arrows embedded themselves all over the ship, and fire began to spread across the vessel.
“D-Damn it!”
“Fire! Fire!”
“Put it out!”
They hurriedly tried to extinguish the flames, but that did not go smoothly either.
Thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip!
“Argh!”
“D-Dodge!”
Because the arrows that came flying next prevented them from moving to put out the fire.
In the end, the flames grew beyond anything they could control and began devouring the ship.
On top of that, the wine they had been drinking had been spilled all over the place, and the fire fed on it, burning even more fiercely.
The fact that all of it was high-proof fire liquor played a part as well.
Once the pirates realized they could no longer save the ship, they remembered one thing before escaping.
“N-Now that I think about it, there are gold wine cups in the captain’s cabin!”
“Gasp!”
“W-We should at least grab those!”
They hurried into the captain’s cabin.
But the doorway was narrow, and as people kept pushing their way inside, the captain’s cabin became packed full.
Those who had entered first confirmed that nothing remained inside, but with others continuing to force their way in, they could not get back out.
If they had quickly jumped into the sea, they might have had at least some chance of surviving, but their greed hastened their deaths.
Fwoosh!
Before they knew it, the flames had spread all the way to the captain’s cabin.
“Aaaaagh!”
“Hot! It’s hot!”
“Save me! Save me! Please!”
Hearing his subordinates’ desperate screams, Jeon Jung could only laugh.
He had wondered why the people who attacked this ship earlier had disappeared, but now he understood.
This was why.
And the reason they had left him alive instead of ending his life was…
‘They wanted me to suffer more.’
His expression turned bitter.
Why had he touched the Eunhae Merchant Group’s goods, of all things?
If he had not done that, he could have continued living in comfort and arrogance.
Fwoosh!
The flames consuming the ship reached him as well, and because the others had poured wine over him while mocking him, his body caught fire in an instant.
“Aaaaagh!”
Unable even to take his own life, he burned alive and regretted his past.
But it was already far too late.
I watched the Blood Claw Pirates’ ship burn fiercely.
After leaping off that ship, we landed on the boat that the Escort Guards waiting below had prepared in advance.
And as soon as we reached the shore, the leader of the archer unit standing by approached me.
“We’ve been waiting.”
“If you’re waiting here, does that mean you can attack that ship from this position?”
“Of course.”
“This is your first real battle. Are you nervous?”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you.”
He immediately gave orders to the archer unit, and they split into three teams to shoot.
Arrows carrying oil jars.
Flaming arrows.
Arrows meant to interfere with anyone trying to put out the fire.
The result was what we saw now.
And so, the Blood Claw Pirates were annihilated.
Seriously, why would you touch the Eunhae Merchant Group’s goods?
.
.
.
Only after confirming that the Blood Claw Pirates’ ship had completely sunk and that there were no survivors did we return to the inn.
“Seo-ho!”
Brother Jeong-ho came running out.
“What on earth happened? The gold wine cups in the warehouse disappeared, and you took the Eunpoong Archer Division with you!”
“Ah… that?”
I grinned.
“The ones who touched the small liquor bottles turned out to be pirates called the Blood Claw Pirates. So I sank them.”
“What?”
Strictly speaking, we had killed most of them directly or burned them to death.
The reason I did not tell Brother Jeong-ho that was not because I looked down on him, but because it was obvious he would worry.
“We recovered the goods they stole, so now we just need to go to the Nanjing Provincial Command Office together.”
A short while later.
After straightening my clothes and appearance, I headed to the Nanjing Provincial Command Office with Brother Jeong-ho.
“We would like to see Lord Assistant Director.”
At my request, the Assistant Director’s Attendant briefly went inside, then came back out and said,
“He says you may enter.”
Together with my brother, I headed to the Assistant Director’s quarters.
“Deputy Merchant Lord Eun Jeong-ho and Deputy Merchant Lord Eun Seo-ho have arrived.”
“Let them in.”
The door opened, and we stepped inside.
“We greet you, my lord.”
“It seems this may take some time. Sit comfortably.”
“Thank you.”
After giving our respects, we sat down, and Lord Assistant Director also took his seat before speaking to us.
“I heard. The gift you intended to present to the Great Yue Kingdom’s king was stolen.”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“So are you planning to use the gold wine cups you purchased separately as a substitute gift? Surely you understand that the meaning will be diminished, no matter how fine they are. Even from the empire’s perspective, this is…”
With a deeply worried expression, he began pouring out his concerns.
“Forgive me for interrupting, but that matter has already been resolved.”
“What?”
“The story about us preparing gold wine cups to replace the stolen small liquor bottles was a form of smokescreen.”
“A smokescreen?”
He tilted his head.
“We learned that the pirates operating in this area, known as the Blood Claw Pirates, had stolen it. So we went there ourselves and recovered everything.”
“W-Wait!”
He raised his hand, stopping me mid-sentence, and asked,
“Did you say the Blood Claw Pirates? Aren’t they an extremely infamous pirate band around these parts?”
“So I’m told.”
“How in the world did you recover it?”
I explained everything that had happened.
“…And in that manner, we sank them all.”
When I finished, Lord Assistant Director’s mouth fell open.
“I-Is that true?”
“Yes.”
I continued.
“They nearly ruined something the Eunhae Merchant Group put great effort into preparing. Moreover, they are vermin eating away at this empire and a threat that could damage trade. We judged that leaving them alone would be dangerous, so we took strong measures.”
“…”
For a moment, he seemed too stunned to speak. Then he cleared his throat.
“Ahem. In any case, this is fortunate. You’ve worked hard.”
“Not at all. We simply did what had to be done.”
I gave a respectful bow and continued.
“There is one thing I would like to request.”
“What is it?”
“I would like you to spread word of this achievement as widely and as grandly as possible.”
It would serve as a warning to other pirates.
.
.
.
Brother Jeong-ho and I returned to the inn.
And then I had to endure quite a long scolding from him.
“What kind of dangerous stunt was that?”
“But I didn’t have a choice.”
“I know that, but… sigh.”
Brother Jeong-ho let out a deep sigh, then smiled and said,
“You did well.”
“Really?”
“Yes. If I said you did badly, you’d be upset, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. I would’ve been extremely upset.”
At my words, Brother Jeong-ho gently ruffled my hair.
“Well, I won’t say much about you rampaging like that, but please, don’t get hurt.”
“Don’t worry.”
“And thank you. Thanks to you, the Eunhae Merchant Group won’t be held responsible.”
Responsibility.
That was right. That responsibility was also why I had personally stepped in.
Then it was time to head to my room.
I needed to give Geumryeong the gold wine cup I had promised.
Since Geumryeong had recovered not only the small liquor bottles and the gold wine cups, but also all the gold, silver, treasures, and other expensive things that were originally on the pirate ship, it did not feel like a waste at all.
Geumryeong was going to be very pleased.
–TL Notes–
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