Chapter 360. Assassins Keep Filling the Courtyard
Whenever the circle of archers seemed close to breaking, more men stepped in from behind to fill the gap.
And now the swordsmen had entered.
The men with long blades did not rush Youngwoo immediately.
They stood behind the archers, blocking the paths he might use to break through.
Their sword tips moved low, and their feet slowly found stable ground in the snow.
Youngwoo watched them and pressed his lips together.
Could he simply keep enduring like this?
Whenever he cut down several archers, swordsmen moved in.
Behind the swordsmen, still more men followed.
The courtyard looked broad, but in reality it was a square trap enclosed by walls, the detached residence, and a narrow gate.
Then another group came through.
This time they carried long spears.
The spearmen flowed in behind the swordsmen.
Their shafts were so long that they knocked against one another as they passed through the gate, but once inside they immediately spread apart.
The spearheads gleamed coldly through the falling snow.
Only then did Youngwoo see the whole formation.
Archers.
Swordsmen.
Spearmen.
The short arrows pinned his feet in place.
The long spears kept him at a distance.
The swordsmen finished him if he managed to close in.
None of them was particularly formidable alone.
Together, however, they were troublesome.
No.
More than troublesome.
This was a formation designed specifically to kill an expert.
At long range, the archers poured in arrows.
At middle range, the spears cut off his path.
At close range, the swordsmen absorbed his attack.
No matter how skilled one man might be, if his space to breathe and place his feet were taken away, fatigue would eventually claim him.
Youngwoo pushed the corpse in his hands forward.
A short arrow flew in and buried itself in the dead man's back.
The fletching trembled.
At the same moment, a long spear drove in beneath the corpse's ribs.
Youngwoo released the body and twisted aside.
The spearhead tore through the edge of his clothing.
He struck the shaft with his hwando.
Tak.
The spear shaft snapped sideways from the blow.
Youngwoo moved to cut down the spearman, but swordsmen filled the opening.
Two of them.
A long blade came down from above.
Youngwoo did not meet it directly.
He stepped inside the strike and hit close to the man's sword grip.
The swordsman's wrist buckled, and his weapon dropped into the snow.
The moment Youngwoo shoved him aside, another spear thrust in.
This time at his ankle.
Youngwoo lifted his foot over the spearhead and simultaneously pressed the blade downward with the spine of his hwando, driving it into the ground.
As the spearman pulled desperately to free it, Youngwoo stepped on the shaft and sprang forward.
His foot smashed into the man's head.
The spearman's head snapped backward, and his body collapsed without resistance.
He had lost consciousness the instant the kick landed.
The neck of the nearest archer lay open before Youngwoo.
His sword swept horizontally.
Blood sprayed over the snow.
But more arrows came from behind.
Youngwoo seized the dying archer by the shoulder and dragged him in front.
The short shafts punched into his back.
Using the body as a shield, Youngwoo advanced two more steps.
Then two long spears thrust in simultaneously from left and right.
Youngwoo stopped.
If he kept moving, he would be impaled.
If he stopped, the archers would fire again.
That was what made the formation dangerous.
He lowered his breathing.
He settled his qi beneath the dantian and opened his hearing before his sight.
He expanded his sense of qi as far as he could.
He refused to be deceived by the multitude of movements before his eyes.
The sound of bowstrings being drawn.
Spear shafts scraping across the snow.
Swordsmen shifting their footing.
He heard each sound separately.
He had to break them all at once.
If he accepted the distances they had created, he would lose.
If he fought at the archers' range, then the spearmen's range, then the swordsmen's range, the man holding only one sword would tire first.
He had to collapse all those distances into one.
Youngwoo lowered himself.
He drove forward so low that his fingertips almost brushed the snow.
Short arrows passed over his head.
As the long spears dropped to stab downward, he hurled the dead archer into their path.
The spearheads buried themselves in the corpse.
That was the moment Youngwoo moved.
He slid over the tangle of corpse and spear shafts.
His hwando swept in a long horizontal cut.
Both spearmen's wrists opened at once.
As the sword returned, the back of one swordsman's neck split apart.
One side of the formation wavered.
Youngwoo drove deeper into that weakness.
He cut down whoever stood nearest.
Used falling bodies as shields.
Caught arrows from behind with those same bodies.
He did not try to prolong the fight.
One breath.
One man gone.
But from the gate came more footsteps.
Beyond the narrow entrance to the detached courtyard, fresh spearheads appeared.
Someone was continuing to feed men into the fight.
They meant to exhaust Youngwoo in this courtyard.
Make him bleed.
Slow him.
And eventually stop him altogether.
Youngwoo's eyes flashed coldly.
This was no accidental ambush.
Someone who understood how to kill a master had arranged this battlefield.
And whoever had arranged it knew the inner workings of this estate.
Youngwoo seized an incoming spear and yanked it toward himself, then cut the spearman across the neck.
As the startled man froze, Youngwoo looked beyond him.
There were more soldiers waiting beyond the wall.
Quite a few were already standing on the rooftops.
He had already brought down more than twenty men.
This would not be easy.
Then another group of archers rose above the wall.
They must have placed something beneath it and climbed up.
An attack without warning.
An assassination with no explanation.
And yet they continued even though they should have known that this alone would not be enough to kill him.
Were they Liao men?
No.
Liaoyang was now occupied by the Balhae army.
Then perhaps they meant to kill the one man opposing the enthronement and proceed with what they wanted afterward.
When he thought about it again, Okjeong's request may have been a final ultimatum.
Go Hoewon was still in the meeting, she had said.
There was a good chance he had agreed as well.
One more reason could now be added to the list of why Balhae restoration movements failed.