Chapter 253 — Yeongu's Martial Prowess Seen from the Junior Officer's Place Inside the Cell
The junior officer could not move inside the cell.
The door was open, and Yeongu had already gone outside.
Yet the junior officer could not bring himself to follow.
At first, he pretended to be waiting for orders.
Then he pretended to be assessing the situation.
But deep down, he knew.
If he went out, he would be hit.
If he got caught in that mess, he might not die, but he would no longer look like a proper human being.
From inside the cell door, the yard looked strangely narrow.
The yard that had seemed wide moments ago was now so packed with men that there seemed no room for one person to move.
Spear shafts crossed one another, bows were raised, and armored shoulders pushed in.
Yet Yeongu walked through those gaps.
No, more precisely, he walked, stepped, leapt, vanished, and then appeared again on another man's shoulder.
The first man who blocked him had a fine build.
The junior officer had chosen him on purpose.
Yet the moment Yeongu's fingertip struck his pit of the stomach, the man opened his mouth and collapsed.
He could not even make a long sound.
His knees folded first, and his body sank after them.
The junior officer saw that and unconsciously drew his neck back.
The point that had been struck was small.
The body that collapsed was large.
Yeongu stepped on that body and rose.
The junior officer's eyes widened then.
He had seen a man use another man's shoulder as a foothold before.
He had seen it in wrestling yards as a joke, or when catching someone falling from a horse.
But he had never seen anything like this.
The moment Yeongu's foot touched, the body beneath him collapsed, and Yeongu rode that collapsing force to spring upward again.
It was as if the movement that brought one man down and the movement that sent him flying toward the next were one and the same.
One archer raised his bow.
He could not shoot.
There was always someone's back in front of Yeongu.
When the archer tried to aim, the back of a comrade's neck entered the line.
When he shifted his aim a little, Yeongu had already moved onto another man's shoulder.
The archer stood there stupidly with his bow raised, then Yeongu's toes struck his chest.
He dropped the bow and fell backward.
The man who tried to catch the falling archer became entangled with him and collapsed as well.
The junior officer's mouth fell open.
This looked less like a fight and more like someone overturning a box of toys.
When one man fell, the man beside him stumbled.
When the man beside him wavered, Yeongu passed over him.
Yeongu spent little time stepping on the ground.
He crossed over shoulders, arms, backs, and knees.
Wherever he passed, men became lower.
A man who had been standing fell to his knees.
A man on his knees fell flat.
A man lying flat caught the ankle of the one coming behind him.
Someone thrust a spear.
To the junior officer's eyes, the spear point seemed to move fairly fast.
But Yeongu looked as if he had not even seen the tip.
He slipped inside the spear arm and drove his knee into the man's ribs.
At that instant, a sound like air leaving a pouch came from the man's mouth.
The hand went to his side too late.
His body was already folded.
The spear fell to the ground.
Yeongu stepped on the spear shaft and rose again.
From that moment on, the junior officer gave up counting one by one.
He saw one man.
Then two.
From the third onward, the falling bodies overlapped.
Men clutching their stomachs, men sitting down with both hands on their chests, men struck in the lower back and folding at the waist, men hit under the jaw with their eyes rolling back — they all appeared at once.
To the junior officer, Yeongu seemed to have several hands and feet.
In truth, he was probably striking one person at a time as he passed.
But from the watcher's side, it felt as if men were collapsing all over the yard at the same moment.
The strangest thing was that the sound came late.
Yeongu's foot touched first.
Then the man froze.
Only after that came the sounds — thud, crack, knock.
Finally the groan followed.
The junior officer found that order frightening.
These were blows that gave no time even to scream at the moment of impact.
The breath stopped first.
The body folded first.
Only afterward did the mind understand the pain.
The junior general shouted from outside.
"Surround him!"
The junior officer thought to himself.
They cannot surround him.
That man is not standing where he can be surrounded.
He is walking over the heads and shoulders of the men trying to surround him.
The ones rushing in to encircle him are blocking one another instead.
The men in front cannot retreat, and the men behind cannot advance.
Yeongu used that jammed place as a bridge and crossed over it.
The archers were pushed back.
They held bows, yet retreated like frightened foot soldiers.
Yeongu stepped on one man's back and leapt.
The hem of his plain military robe fluttered in the dust.
He twisted in the air and passed by, bracing himself on an archer's shoulder.
The junior officer could not tell whether it had been a hand or a foot that touched.
He only saw the archer's shoulder sink, and that body collapse straight down.
Another man tried to grab Yeongu's ankle.
Yeongu did not pull his foot away.
Instead, he pressed down on the man's hand with the foot that had been grabbed.
The man's face twisted.
At that moment, Yeongu's other foot struck his side.
The man let go and rolled away.
Only then did the junior officer realize it.
Grabbing that man did not mean catching him.
It meant giving him a place to strike.
The air in the yard changed.
At first, everyone had rushed at Yeongu.
Now they scattered to avoid the places he passed.
But there was nowhere to scatter.
There were too many people.
The fallen blocked the way, and those who had come behind blocked the path of retreat.
Amid that confusion of bodies, Yeongu moved like the only person who knew the road.
The junior officer unconsciously took one step back.
He stepped farther inside the cell.
The fight was already outside the cell door, yet he retreated deeper within.
He did so because Yeongu might return toward the door.
His hand was still clutching the ring of keys, and sweat filled his palm.
Then Yeongu sprang up one last time, stepping on the shoulder of a large man.
That large man tried to hold his ground, but the very act of holding only pressed his body down deeper.
Yeongu used the rebound to fall onto the archer in front.
The junior officer saw the phoenix-eye fist strike the 鳩尾.
It was a small fist.
Yet the archer who took the blow sank down like a man whose breath had left him.
The yard grew quiet.
It did not become quiet all at once.
First the shouting stopped.
Then the footsteps stopped.
After that, only groans remained.
The junior officer watched the scene from inside the cell door.
The men who had filled the yard just moments ago were all lowered to the ground.
Only a few remained standing, and even they could not move while holding bows or spears.
Yeongu stood in the middle of the yard.
Blood and dust marked his face and clothes.
The rope around his wrists was nearly undone, but he had deliberately left it hanging there.
As if he were still a bound prisoner.
That sight frightened the junior officer even more.
One man pretending to be bound had overturned the entire yard.
Yeongu looked at the junior general and said,
"I told you to send the letter up."
The junior officer shut his eyes tight when he heard that.