In the blink of an eye, blood splattered in all directions.
As Baek Woo Jin twisted his body sharply, Gu Wang Soo’s blade which was meant for his heart embedded itself in his shoulder instead. Gu Wang Soo quickly let go of the dagger and retreated.
“Team leader!”
Jang Sam who had been frozen in shock finally rushed over. Realizing the situation had turned against him, Gu Wang Soo bolted out of the house without looking back.
Instead of chasing after him, Jang Sam hurried to check on Baek Woo Jin’s injury.
“Are you alright?”
“Hoo…”
The veins bulging on Baek Woo Jin’s usually composed face made it clear he was enduring considerable pain.
“The wound is deeper than I thought. We need to treat it immediately…!”
Baek Woo Jin interrupted him.
“Chase after Gwang Soo first.”
The sharp dagger had sunk deep into his shoulder, but it hadn’t hit anything life-threatening.
Baek Woo Jin grabbed Jang Sam by the collar as he hesitated.
“If you lose Gwang Soo now, I can’t guarantee his life.”
When their eyes met as the knife was driven into his body, Gu Wang Soo’s face had an expression as if he were possessed by something.
Baek Woo Jin didn’t know what kind of trick had been used here, but he was certain that Gu Wang Soo was being controlled by something.
“It’s dangerous to go alone, so go with Miss Tang.”
“…Understood.”
As soon as Baek Woo Jin released his grip, Jang Sam immediately used his movement technique and headed to the house next door.
Bang! Bang!
He pounded on the door roughly and shouted.
“Come out at once! This is an emergency!”
Perhaps his urgent voice got through, as hurried footsteps sounded from inside and the door opened.
“What’s going on?”
It was Shin Ye Hwa.
“The leader is seriously injured. Please treat him quickly.”
“He’s, he’s hurt…?”
Behind her, Jegal Yeon Ji’s eyes trembled as she approached.
“The leader is next door. You two should head over there quickly. Miss Tang, come with me.”
“…Lead the way.”
Tang Seon Yeong followed Jang Sam without a word.
***
“W-Woo Jin-ah…!”
As soon as she rushed into the neighboring house, the thick scent of blood assaulted her nose. In the middle of the room, she saw Baek Woo Jin clutching his shoulder and slumped on the floor.
“Woo Jin-ah!”
A sharp dagger was lodged near his shoulder blade. Judging by how little of the blade was still visible, the wound appeared to be very serious.
Baek Woo Jin, who had been hanging his head, looked up and asked her.
“Where’s Jang Sam?”
“H-He went with Miss Tang. What on earth happened?”
“It seems Gwang Soo is being controlled by someone.”
“Controlled… what do you mean? Then, could this wound also be…?”
Baek Woo Jin nodded silently.
“Hoo…”
A frustrated sigh escaped her.
“Yo-Young master Baek …!”
Jegal Yeon Ji who had been wandering in shock after hearing that Baek Woo Jin was seriously injured finally arrived, came running late and burst into tears.
“Wh-What should we do? It must hurt so much…!”
“Calm down.”
She took a slow, deep breath.
“Hoo… haa…”
Even in her panic, Jegal Yeon Ji gradually regained her composure by following Baek Woo Jin’s instructions calmly.
With a steady gaze, she examined the knife embedded in his shoulder.
“W-We need to remove the knife first.”
She gave instructions to Shin Ye Hwa.
“Bring the medicines from my bag.”
“Alright.”
Though the two were often at odds with each other, in this moment, their minds were in sync.
Shin Ye Hwa quickly returned with the medicine bundle from Jegal Yeon Ji’s bag next door. As she had been waiting, Jegal Yeon Ji laid out clean cloths and hemostatic ointment.
“P-Please hold on for just a moment.”
“Don’t worry, just pull it out.”
“Haa…”
Suppressing her racing heart, she grasped the blood-stained blade.
As she applied pressure and slowly lifted it upward, the blade that had been lodged deep in his shoulder began to rise inch by inch.
She could see Baek Woo Jin’s face, enduring the pain. Though he wore his usual calm expression, the throbbing veins on his temple betrayed the suffering he was trying to hide.
Finally, the blade was completely withdrawn. Blood immediately began to gush from the open wound, and she quickly applied hemostatic powder to the clean cloth and pressed it against the wound. At the same time, with her other hand, she pressed the pressure points around his shoulder to slow the flow of blood.
“Please, please…!”
The blood that flowed out of the wound soon dyed the cloth bright red. Shin Ye-hwa handed her a new cloth.
After some time, the amount of blood staining the cloth began to decrease significantly. When the bleeding finally stopped, Jegal Yeon Ji let out a sigh of relief.
Baek Woo Jin, who was looking at the wound where the bleeding had stopped, grabbed the gourd on his waist with his other hand.
Using his teeth, he removed the lid, then gulped down the liquor he had been holding back for the past few days to keep himself alert.
“Hoo!”
As the warmth of the alcohol spread through him, the throbbing pain seemed to ease slightly.
Baek Woo Jin brought the gourd to his wound and poured the alcohol over it while gritting his teeth.
He acted on the idea that the strong liquor with its high alcohol content might have some disinfecting effect.
As the liquor flowed steadily, the dried blood around his shoulder started to peel away bit by bit.
“Could you wipe off the blood?”
“Y-Yes…”
“I-I’ll help too.”
Jegal Yeon Ji and Shin Ye Hwa who had been watching with wide eyes grabbed the cloths and wiped away the peeling blood clots.
Once the wound was clean, Jegal Yeon Ji spread a thin layer of healing salve over it. She then tore the cloth into strips and carefully wrapped Baek Woo Jin’s shoulder to secure it tightly.
“Does it hurt a lot…?”
When she asked, after finishing the treatment, Baek Woo Jin gave a faint smile and shook his head.
A wound on the shoulder was nothing to him. In the past, he had endured far worse injuries countless times.
What pained him more was the bitter sting of his failure.
“I need to change clothes for a moment.”
“Y-Yes.”
After confirming that the two women had left the house, he took off his blood-soaked clothes and pulled out a spare martial robe he had brought with him.
By the time he struggled to dress himself with only one arm, he noticed the presence outside had increased from two to four.
When he immediately opened the door and stepped outside, Jang Sam and Tang Seon Yeong, who had gone out to track down Gu Wang Soo, were standing there with grim faces.
Tang Seon Yeong was the first to speak.
“Sorry. We lost him.”
“Miss Tang is skilled in tracking, and we followed young hero Gu’s trail diligently, but at some point, it just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t like someone covered the tracks; they just suddenly stopped.”
Upon hearing this, Baek Woo Jin’s eyes gleamed sharply.
“A formation.”
“Ah…!”
“If it’s definitely a formation….”
There was no doubt that the formation they couldn’t find despite searching all over was spread out there.
If “Gu Wang Soo” had entered that place, he must be with the mastermind behind this incident.
Gwang Soo still has his uses.
Judging by how they sent them out and then manipulated Gu Wang Soo, the mastermind was quite cunning.
Baek Woo Jin didn’t think they would be foolish enough to kill someone who still had value as a hostage, but he couldn’t be completely certain.
Baek Woo Jin immediately bowed his head toward them.
“I’m sorry. Everything that’s happened is entirely my fault.”
“Young master Baek ….”
“H-Huh…?”
“W-Woo-jin-ah.”
He was certain that the true mastermind behind all these events was not here. And though there were some suspicious elements among them, he had confirmed that they were all ordinary villagers who hadn’t learned a single martial art. Thinking that no serious incident would occur, he shifted his focus outward, which proved to be a fatal mistake.
While everyone else was growing restless, Tang Seon Yeong reached out and helped Baek Woo-jin sit up.
“I’ll accept your apology, but you know that’s not what matters right now, right?”
“Yeah.”
The most important thing was finding the missing Gu Wang Soo and restoring his mind, which seemed to be under someone’s control.
“From now on, we’ll track Gu Wang Soo.”
“Your injury looks pretty serious. Are you sure you’re alright?”
Baek Woo-jin gave a bitter smile at Jang Sam’s worried question.
“There are wounds that hurt more than the ones you can see.”
Until he made up for this mistake, the pain in his shoulder was nothing to him.
The team quickly went back into the house, gathered their belongings, and assembled in front of him.
“Then, let’s depart imme— no, we can’t.”
They sensed dozens of presences surrounding them.
The very thing they feared most had happened. Just like Gu Wang Soo, the villagers were controlled by someone and they were closing in from all sides.
Sensing it as well, Tang Seon Yeong drew her hidden weapon and asked,
“What’s the plan?”
“Only subdue them.”
“That’s the hardest thing for me.”
As she smiled and tried to step forward for a preemptive attack, someone walked ahead of her.
It was Jang Sam.
“Leave this to me.”
As he stepped forward with a determined expression on his face, one he had never shown even during grueling training sessions,
“Do you think you can do it?”
Even though they were ordinary people who had not learned martial arts, facing a large group meant that any number of unexpected variables could arise in battle.
Moreover, Jang Sam was the weakest among the team members. His martial level aside, his movements were unrefined and unstable, to the point where it was difficult to consider him truly first-rank.
“Trust me this time.”
His voice was filled with confidence.
When someone who usually stayed hidden stepped forward like this, it generally meant they were prepared to reveal a hidden card.
“Alright.”
Baek Woo Jin decided to trust both Jang Sam’s confident tone and his own instincts.
“We’re moving out.”
With Baek Woo Jin at the lead, the team members turned their backs and exited the village through the new path Jegal Yeon Ji had prepared in advance.
Now alone, Jang Sam looked up at the sky with a complicated expression. Slowly, he began to voice the words he had kept hidden, the ones he hadn’t yet spoken.
“This situation isn’t entirely the team leader’s fault.”
From the moment they entered the village, Jang Sam knew.
This place wasn’t a normal village, and none of the villagers were in their right mind.
Despite knowing this, he had concealed the truth.
“I was testing you.”
Why did he choose him, when everyone else called him a fake fortune teller, a liar, a fraud, and avoided him? What did he see in him?
Watching from a step back, he had wanted to assess the depths of this man’s potential as he resolved the case.
“I was curious about that soul.”
A noble, pure soul, seated in an ordinary body, yet so wounded and scarred that its original form was unrecognizable and groaning in pain. What exactly was that soul?
He couldn’t hold back his curiosity.
“My curiosity is what ruined everything.”
He had grown quite close to Gu Wang Soo, one of the team members. He believed they had built enough trust to call him a friend.
Yet now, just like the villagers, something strange had taken hold of that friend, leaving him in a state where life and death could no longer be determined.
“How foolish of you, Sam-ah.”
That was the phrase his sect leader and master at Huangshan always repeated to him while he studied under his teachings.
“Even now, I should fix this.”
Just as Baek Woo Jin had bowed his head and admitted his mistakes, he should have admitted his own mistakes as well. However, the power he possessed was one that everyone despised, so he couldn’t bring himself to step forward and had to hide in the shadows once again.
Normally, he would have run away as usual, but this time, he vowed he wouldn’t.
His instincts were screaming at him. This was his final chance, and he had to seize it.
And so, even though it was late, he barely managed to resolve to right his wrongs.
With firm determination, he rummaged through his bundle and pulled out the sacred staff and bell he had barely managed to grab after struggling with Baek Woo Jin.
“Come on, come now.”
The villagers closing in from all directions began to pick up speed.
Their pace was so unnaturally fast that it was hard to believe they were mere villagers, causing him to doubt his own eyes.
Once the villagers had come close enough, Jang Sam shook the bell clutched in his left hand.
Jingle, jingle!
Each time the bell rang, the crisp sound pierced the ears of the approaching villagers.
“Ugh!”
“Argh!”
“Kyah!”
They screamed in agony while clutching their ears with both hands.
Jang Sam continued to shake the bell as he moved toward them.
“Damn bastards.”
He could see them. That is the grotesque vengeful spirits clinging to the villagers’ backs and controlling their wills.
He swung the sacred staff and struck the creatures hard on the head. The spirits who were still latched onto the villagers’ backs let out silent screams before their wriggling movements ceased, and they hung limp.
Thud!
At the same time, the villagers also lost consciousness and fell to the ground.
Jang Sam smiled sinisterly and shouted at the villagers who were still groaning in pain.
“Your backs… let me see your backs!”
Thud! Thud!
Each time he swung the sacred staff, more villagers fell to the ground and lost consciousness.
“Haa, haa…”
Finally, after successfully subduing all the villagers, Jang Sam let out heavy breaths and sank to the ground.
The feathers that had once adorned the sacred staff had all fallen off, and even the bell which he must have swung a few times was now dented in places.
He stared blankly in the direction where Baek Woo Jin and the others had left and slowly spoke.
“I believe this should be enough to count as a small atonement.”
So now, I’ll leave it to you to save young hero Gu.
Exhausted, Jang Sam closed his eyes and collapsed to the side.
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