Gosan Gong was the squad leader of the Third Squad of the Namgung Family's Heavenly Wind Corps.
Coming from a rural warrior background, he had made a living with his sword in the Namgung Family and risen to become a squad leader of the Heavenly Wind Corps.
In a way, his life was quite a success.
There was just one problem.
“Yaaawn~.”
He was always bored.
His current yawn was also due to the monotony of his daily life.
Today, again, he had taken his ten squad members from the Third Squad and come before the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall at the Third Watch to take over the shift from the Second Squad of the Heavenly Wind Corps.
He was sick and tired of these tedious, repetitive days.
More than a decade ago, he had joined the Namgung Family as an Outer Disciple… Back then, his heart was always pounding, and he looked forward to the next day.
It was because of the sense of accomplishment from finally achieving a long-held dream.
The stories and dreams he had heard since he first started learning martial arts from his first master at a rural martial hall.
Become a warrior of the Jianghu.
Roam the world to your heart's content.
Gosan Gong believed he had achieved that dream when he entered the Namgung Family.
Naturally, he began to dream of even greater things.
Since he had set foot in the Jianghu, he might as well become a hero.
Victory through a bloody battle, splattering blood with the Demonic Soldiers of the Heavenly Demon Castle.
Beheading the soldiers of the Assembly Hall and conquering the south.
Crushing the conspiracies of an unknown power lurking in the darkness and saving the Murim.
He made such grand resolutions every day.
Back then, it felt as though he could achieve such things immediately.
However, a dream was just a dream, and reality was completely different from what he had imagined.
The original mission of the Heavenly Wind Corps was to pursue and annihilate enemies or to scout and spy on enemy territory.
That was what it was originally.
The current main duty of the Heavenly Wind Corps.
It was nothing more than standing guard, just as Gosan Gong was doing now.
Due to the long period of peace, battles were rare, especially for a great sect like the Namgung Family, which was the hegemon of its region.
Moreover, the only major Murim power in Anhui Province was the Namgung Family.
If only someone would pick a fight, he could achieve victory, conquer something, or become a hero, but such an event had only happened once in over a decade.
Besides, ten years ago, he was such a low-ranking warrior that he didn't even have a chance to play an active role in battle.
Things were different now.
He made himself believe that.
“A true man is supposed to cut off the enemy's head on the battlefield, drink their blood from the skull, and sing a song, but what am I doing here? Damn it.”
He was confident he could win against anyone, yet he resented the reality that didn't even give him a chance to become a hero.
“If only the bastards from the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River would attack again, but even they've been quiet lately. Good grief. So this is how Gosan Gong rots away, just standing guard.”
The Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River.
Although the current Central Plains was said to be a world of the Three Hegemons, they were not the only ones in the Jianghu.
Countless minor sects and factions were scattered throughout the Murim, and among them were quite a few powers that, while not on par with the Three Hegemons, were larger than other minor factions.
The so-called 'Third Power'.
Among them, the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River, along with the Thirty-two Mountain Fortresses of the Green Forest, were a large force that called themselves the Blue and Green Twin Heroes.
They didn't belong to the Orthodox, Unorthodox, or Demonic factions, but on the mountains and rivers, they wielded an influence that no one could ignore.
They were the Yangtze River Waterway Fortresses and the Green Forest.
Although the world called them the Blue and Green Twin Bandits, implying they were water and mountain bandits, their influence was so great that no one in the Jianghu could ignore it.
Blue on the Water, Green in the Mountains.
The water is blue, and the mountains are green.
The people of the Jianghu used this short phrase to describe their dominance on the water and in the mountains.
It was a six-character expression of the might of the Yangtze River Waterway Fortresses, which controlled the Yangtze, the lifeblood of the Central Plains, and the Green Forest, which held sway over the mountains where the great Murim sects were absent.
Due to their nature, they did not unite into a single, tightly-knit group, but were nominally connected as a large confederation, much like the Martial Alliance.
Thus, although they were divided into Eighteen Fortresses and Thirty-two Fortresses respectively, they were generally considered to be of the same ilk and were called the Yangtze River Waterway Fortresses and the Green Forest.
The reason Gosan Gong was talking about the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River now was that the Namgung Family's most recent major armed conflict had been with them.
That clash between the two powers had occurred in the very year he entered this place as an Outer Disciple.
The reason the Namgung Family was usually called Anhui's Number One Power was not because the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River were weaker than the Namgung Family, but because only one of the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses was located in Anhui Province.
If all Eighteen Waterway Fortresses were gathered in Anhui Province, even the Namgung Family would have difficulty maintaining its dominance.
They were spread across the entire Yangtze River, and naturally, they frequently appeared along the waterways in Anhui Province, which the Yangtze River cuts across.
The Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River, being water bandits, constantly wanted to expand their influence in Anhui Province, and the Namgung Family tried to stop them, so a clash between the two was inevitable.
Ten years ago.
The Grand Fortress Leader of the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River, the Dragon Hero of the Yangtze River, Sa Sa-ho, ignored Namgung Byeok's warning and attempted to expand his influence toward Chao Lake.
Feeling a threat to its hegemony over Anhui Province, the Namgung Family Head, Namgung Byeok, immediately mobilized almost all of the family's military forces and marched to Chao Lake.
The two confronted each other fiercely across Chao Lake, eventually leading to a clash.
The battle was intense, but it did not last long.
This was because both sides decided there was no need to overdo it and withdrew their forces just as the battle was about to escalate.
They realized that if the two fought to the death, they would only be giving an advantage to other sects who were covetously watching their territories.
In the end, the two powers engaged in tedious skirmishes for about another year before finally calling a truce.
Through the agreement made at that time, all profits generated from Chao Lake became solely the property of the Namgung Family, and in exchange for promising not to make any further advances into Anhui, the Eighteen Waterway Fortresses of the Yangtze River obtained a Pledged Word from the Namgung Family not to interfere with their business on the Yangtze River.
It was an agreement where they gave what they could and took what they could, rather than continuing to growl at each other.
That incident had already been ten years ago, and it was the only real battle Gosan Gong had experienced.
In fact, since he was a newcomer to the Namgung Family at the time, he was barely deployed in actual combat and only performed duties like scouting or standing guard.
Nevertheless, he had been milking that one sortie ever since, boasting greatly about it to his squad members.
But his squad members knew well that he wasn't that impressive.
If he had been, he wouldn't be just a guard squad leader here after accumulating more than ten years of experience.
Gosan Gong's reality was that he was merely the leader of a guard squad that watched over the Cloud Bridge area of the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall from the Second to the Third Watch.
Especially on days like today, when the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat went out for a trip on Chao Lake, he was in a position to be saddled with the menial task of searching the pleasure boat.
Since the pleasure boat was highly likely to return at this time, it was usually the most incompetent among the guard squad leaders who was assigned to the shift at this hour.
“Hey now, Gosan Gong. Well then, good work.”
The leader of the Second Squad finished handing over the duties to Gosan Gong and returned to the barracks with his squad members.
Among them were the members who had washed the drunken guest from the Heaven Guest Hall earlier.
“Hey, but do we really have to search that thing?”
Gosan Gong frowned as he looked at the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat moored in the deepest part of Soman Bay.
In fact, there were also guards on duty over by the Western Heaven Guest Hall.
The pleasure boat was moored in the bay, right between the island with the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall and the island with the Western Heaven Guest Hall, and he was dissatisfied that the Heavenly Wind Corps guard squad was always in charge of the search.
But it couldn't be helped.
The Heavenly Thunder Corps, in charge of the guard duty over at the Western Heaven Guest Hall, was also responsible for guarding the Earth Guest Hall beyond it.
In that situation, it would be ridiculous to make a fuss about searching a pleasure boat, which wasn't even a daily occurrence.
“Hey, three of you stay here. The rest of you, board the sailboat.”
“Yes, Squad Leader.”
No matter how unreliable the squad leader was, he was still the squad leader.
The members of the Third Squad left a minimum of three guards behind and moved toward the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat.
As they went around the bay, the light from the tinderboxes they carried reflected off Chao Lake.
The area around Soman Bay was temporarily brightened.
The wind was blowing quite strongly, so the waves, though not rough, sparkled as they caught the light.
The sight created a rather impressive night view, but it was a scene that any member of the Heavenly Wind Corps could see often, so they paid it no mind and simply walked toward the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat.
Plop-.
At that moment, a small sound was heard, like something sinking into the water.
It was so faint that none of the Third Squad members heard it.
Also, the sound came from behind the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall, which was exactly in the direction of Chao Lake on the inner side of Soman Bay, and it was a blind spot, with the view blocked by the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall building.
In fact, the position they were guarding was not the island where the Eastern Heaven Guest Hall was located, but rather beyond the Cloud Bridge that connected the island to the mainland.
It was a guard duty performed under the assumption that all the guests staying at the Heaven Guest Hall were people whose identities had been verified.
The squad members soon rounded the edge of the bay and arrived at the mooring where the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat was docked.
The sailboat, moored in a corner of the dark bay, was a quiet little fortress.
It was so quiet that it seemed somewhat frightening.
It was only because they had done this job so many times that they could remain unfazed.
They stepped onto the temporary boarding ladder placed against the bow of the ship and climbed aboard one by one.
A moment later, the flickering light of the tinderboxes on the deck completely disappeared.
Presumably, they had all finished searching the deck and gone down into the lower chambers of the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat.
When the distant light of his squad members' tinderboxes vanished, Gosan Gong, as he always did, leaned his arms on the end of the Cloud Bridge and fell asleep standing up.
The remaining three squad members, now used to this, paid him no mind and faithfully carried out their duty of keeping watch.
Thus, one meal's time (about 30 minutes) passed.
But……….
Not a single squad member who went to search the Trigram Scarlet Sailboat returned.
No, they couldn't return.
Drip, drip, drip.
While Gosan Gong was drooling in his sleep, his seven squad members had already turned into a pool of blood, dripping from the tip of Dong Bongsu's sword.