Chapter 358. Assassination 2
Youngwoo narrowed his eyes.
How had the man gotten in?
This room stood in a detached wing of the estate.
Maids passed outside the door, and the room had been heated since early evening.
If there was a way into the space above the ceiling, then only someone familiar with the structure of the house could have found it.
Or the assassin had received help from someone inside.
Xiao Baoxian?
Someone from the council chamber who had been talking about kings?
Or perhaps one of the men surrounding Go Youngchang?
The possibilities flashed through his mind, but Youngwoo did not rush.
The name of the culprit mattered less than the position of the living enemy.
He lowered his breathing.
One by one, the sounds inside the room grew distinct.
The faint burning of the lamp wick.
Snow melting and dripping from the eaves outside.
The muffled breathing above the ceiling, as though someone were swallowing back pain and blood.
Youngwoo spoke quietly.
"Come down."
No answer.
"If you come down now, I will let you live."
A short breath escaped from above, almost like a laugh.
It was the breath of a man who did not believe the promise.
Then something rolled across the ceiling space.
A small vial dropped through a gap and struck the floor.
Youngwoo turned instinctively.
The vial shattered, releasing an acrid smell.
He could not tell whether it was poisonous smoke or a powder meant to blind him.
He stopped breathing.
Covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, he lowered himself toward the window.
At the same moment, one of the ceiling panels flew open.
A black figure dropped down.
Even wounded, the assassin moved quickly.
He held a short blade in one hand and a bundle of fine metal needles in the other.
Papapapapak!
Several thin needles burst toward Youngwoo at once.
Youngwoo swept his sword through the air like a wall and shifted aside.
The needles struck the blade and scattered across the floor.
Even after landing, they hissed and gave off thin trails of smoke.
Poison again.
Youngwoo was already against the wall.
The assassin had landed beside the bed where he had expected Youngwoo to be.
Youngwoo's hwando moved low.
The blade flashed once in the darkness and struck the assassin's wrist first.
Another bundle of needles scattered across the floor.
The assassin clenched his teeth and twisted his body.
Blood sprayed from the wound in his side.
Even so, he did not retreat.
He lunged for Youngwoo's throat.
Youngwoo moved only one step aside.
The short blade brushed the edge of his cloak.
The next instant, the pommel of the hwando smashed up beneath the assassin's jaw.
Crack.
A dull sound of bone taking the blow.
The assassin's body snapped backward, and Youngwoo kicked behind his knee.
The man collapsed.
Youngwoo immediately planted a foot on his back and wrenched one arm behind him.
The edge of the hwando came to rest against the back of his neck.
"If you make a sound, you die."
The assassin clenched his teeth.
Blood ran between his lips.
His eyes shone with pain and venomous hatred.
Youngwoo looked at the poisoned needles scattered across the floor, the broken vial, and the blackened quilt on the bed.
Then he looked up at the ceiling again.
There was a narrow passage above the recessed ceiling, just large enough for a man to crawl through.
A passage made for killing people.
Youngwoo's expression turned cold.
The night was still long.
And somewhere outside this room, there was likely another person waiting to learn whether the assassin had succeeded.
This could not have been done without help from inside.
A bleak thought came to him.
Even between the estate's thick walls, warm rooms, courteous servants, and splendid reception halls, there were hidden blades.
Where people lived, there were always doors.
And wherever there was a door, there was always someone willing to draw back the bolt from the inside.
Youngwoo moved toward the door, keeping clear of the acrid smoke.
He did not step outside immediately.
There might be someone waiting beyond it.
He grabbed the heap of bedding from the bed and hurled it through the doorway.
Thud. Thud.
Swords struck from both sides of the open door.
Two blades drove deep into the airborne quilt.
Their points tore through the cotton, sending tufts of stuffing into the air like snow.
Two men.
Shock crossed their faces when they realized they had stabbed only bedding.
Both looked into the room at the same time.
Youngwoo moved through that brief opening.
His foot crossed the threshold low, and the hwando was already turning below his waist.
The blade swept horizontally first.
The leading man's wrist and side split open together.
The sword then dropped vertically, cleaving into the second man's shoulder.
With a turn of the wrist, a diagonal cut followed and skimmed across his neck.
Horizontal.
Vertical.
Diagonal.
The entire sequence ended within a single breath.
Neither man managed a proper scream before collapsing.
One struck the doorpost and slid down.
The other fell face-first into the snow-covered courtyard.
When Youngwoo stepped outside, large flakes were drifting beautifully through the night.
The estate courtyard was already white.
The lamps beneath the eaves wavered dimly through the snowfall, while poisonous smoke seeped from the room and spread low across the ground.
Youngwoo rolled the fallen men onto their backs.
Blood spread across the snow.
Red soaked into white like blooming flowers, then slowly darkened.
He checked their faces.
As expected, he knew neither of them.
For a while, Youngwoo simply stared at the poisonous smoke drifting from his room.
Only then did he slowly exhale.
As his cultivation had deepened, so too had his breathing.
He drew in a thin breath through his nose and guided it down into his dantian, examining the flow within his body.
His qi circulated cleanly.
It passed through his chest and throat, then his head and fingertips, without obstruction.
The poison had not entered deeply.
Youngwoo circulated his internal energy once more and confirmed that there were no signs of poisoning.
Only then did he lower the tip of his hwando.
The snow continued to fall.
The room that had been so peaceful only moments before was now filled with poisonous smoke.
The warm quilt had blackened and burned away.
And across the snow-covered courtyard lay the blood of three men.
The night in Liaoyang was not over yet.